30th Birthday (ish) // 200th Post (ish)

What's up, everybody?

If I was a bit quiet on the blogging front this week it's because I was doing a bunch of stuff to celebrate my upcoming birthday. Which finally came today... sort of.

Bit of a candle vs. frosting mishap there, but it'll do.

I was actually born on February 29th, but since that day doesn't happen every year you kind of have to pick a day to celebrate and go with it. Or just celebrate all week because it's approximately birthday-time (which is how I like to do it). Most of my family and friends seem to wish me a happy birthday on February 28th, so that's when the cake happens (though I suppose legally I won't turn another year older until tomorrow...)

Coincidentally, this is my 200th post on this blog... sort of. I deleted the first-ever post on this blog when I changed the name because it didn't make sense anymore, but close enough. Anyway, I just wanted to thank everybody who reads my blog regularly - your comments make my day! No other point to this post really, just saying hi and recording a couple of numerically significant things for posterity.

Cake? Cake.

Blog Tips: Photo Editing When Photoshop Isn't An Option

Get your tiny violins ready: Today I'm going to tell you a blogging tale of woe.

Photoshop has been my go-to photo editing software for years. Living and breathing those Adobe commands, yo. But a couple of weeks ago it just... died. For some reason Photoshop won't run anymore, and because I'm a disorganized jerk I can't remember where I put the installation discs. Perhaps it suffered exhaustion from all resizing all those extreme moisturizer close-ups? RIP, Photoshop.

Background image by Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I'm still looking for those install discs, so in the meantime I've been using a few free bits of editing software for my blog photos. I figured I'd share 'em with you, since I'm sure there are plenty of you who also need to edit your blog photos and don't have the cash for Photoshop.

The Magic of Nexcare Acne Patches

Affiliate Links Bought It

Hey everybody! Sorry if I've been a bit quiet here and on social media this week - sometimes I get busy with stuff outside the internet realm. Strange but true. Things will likely be back to normal by this Wednesday, but for today I thought I'd dive into the product vaults to ramble about something that has been - dare I say it - A GAME CHANGER for me in the unfortunate world of adult acne.

Pictured above are Nexcare Acne Absorbing Covers, AKA Nexcare Acne Patches. I suspect that those of you who are not already familiar with this product are wondering why they're so magical, so here's the deal:

Indie Friday: 4 Current Beauty Favorites

Bought It

Rather than show you a specific collection this week, I thought I'd highlight a few indie beauty items I've been reaching for extra-often. No theme or anything, just stuff that I like a lot or that's grown on me recently.

Weekly Poll/Stan Says: Vacation Nightmares

It's Wednesday, so it's time to get our Weekly Poll on! This week I thought I'd let Stan (my boyfriend) come up with a topic, because he was fascinated by all of your responses to the PB&J question I posed a couple of weeks ago.

Here's Stan's question for you:

What's the worst trip you've ever been on and why?

I've gone on a couple of vacations that ended up being less than ideal, but the first one that springs to mind is a trip I took several years ago with an ex-boyfriend, who I shall refer to as "M" for the purposes of this post. Anyway, M and I had been dating for about eight or nine months when we decided to take our first-ever trip together to go visit some family. Our first-ever trip ended up turning into our first-ever argument during the journey, which was quite intense because new-ish relationship + no previous arguing/fighting + being sleep-deprived and trapped on various airplanes/trains is a rather tense combo. We did make up a day or so later, but then I randomly got pinkeye (Why?! How?!) so I spent the rest of our vacation with one of my eyes crusted shut and my listening to my sister urge her children (who were really little then) not to touch me. Fun.

How about you? What's a travel memory that makes you cringe?

Second Chances: Innisfree Green Tea Pure Sleeping Pack Review

Affiliate Links Bought It

Here's a fun little tidbit of Hello Pretty Bird history for you: The most-viewed post on this site to date is a crappy review I did of an Innisfree Green Tea Pure skincare sampler set that I wrote in August, all the way back when this blog wasn't even called Hello Pretty Bird (link here if you're curious). At the time I wasn't especially enamored with the Green Tea Pure Sleeping Pack sample that came with the set, but since then I've had a few people comment and reach out to me via Twitter saying that they absolutely LOVE it, which made me wonder if maybe I hadn't given it a fair shake. What to do, what to do? Well, why not get a full-sized tub of the stuff and give it a more thorough try?

e.l.f. Studio Makeup Mist & Set review

Affiliate Links Bought It

So today I'm going to be reviewing something kind of boring. Boring, but useful. I've really got your attention now, right? When I posted about the e.l.f. 50% off sale yesterday it occurred to me that I have a bunch of e.l.f. stuff in my collection that I never reviewed simply because I didn't think it was interesting enough. At the same time, I get a lot of search hits on my website for the few e.l.f. products that I *have* reviewed, so clearly people do care about their products enough to seek out information about them. Today I'll be talking about e.l.f. Studio Makeup Mist & Set, which comes in the most uninteresting-looking bottle ever:

Weekly Poll: Regrettable Beauty Purchases

Hey hey hey, it's Wednesday! (Again. Strangely enough, I feel like this happens all the time...)

This week's topic is for all the beauty lovers (or at least the beauty users) out there:


What is your most regrettable beauty purchase in recent memory?


Could be something that looked awful, smelled awful, tasted awful (I won't judge), came with terrible customer service and so on. I feel like I've had pretty good luck recently, but the new-ish e.l.f. BB cream is something that springs to mind... it's not an awful product, but the color is oh-so-wrong for me and I had a feeling that would be the case going in. Some higher-end brands allow "I just don't like this" returns, but not ELF. It's OK though, I'm only out a couple of bucks.

How about you? Any disastrous results? Return attempt nightmare stories? Things that looked surprisingly orange once you put them on your face?

5 Random Juices/Sodas: A Tasting Session

Bought It

Hey, do you remember that 30 Before 30 list I made a couple of months ago? Well if you forgot I don't blame you, because I've been really negligent in blogging about it. I have done a bunch of things on the list, though my birthday is less than three weeks away so some of the tasks may end up being added to a "31 Before 31 list"... shh, don't tell. Anyway, last week I completed #21 on the list ("Get 5 juices/sodas I've never tried before from the supermarket and conduct a tasting session") so I thought I'd share my results with you! Behold the beverages:

Indie Friday: A few fragrances by Darling Clandestine #1 (review)

Bought It

Attention: Who likes to smell good? Well, today I'll be sharing a few ways you can do that in my favorite (semi) weekly feature... that's right, it's Indie Friday!

The indie du jour is Darling Clandestine, an Etsy shop featuring a variety of wonderfully smelly things and the occasional piece of handmade jewelry. I've collected a number of her scents in various formats over the past few months, and rather that overwhelm you with all of them at once I'll just be focusing on a few of the solid fragrance tins today.

Weekly Poll: This Is My Jam

Happy Wednesday everybody! If you can call Wednesdays happy. (Seriously though, I hope you're happy.) Time for another exciting question to stimulate the mind!

This week's question was inspired by an argument discussion I had with my boyfriend recently. Picture this: You want to have a PB&J sandwich. You get out the bread, get out the peanut butter and jelly, and then...


Do you use a separate knife for each condiment, or do you use the same knife to scoop and spread both?


Personally I use two separate knives because I don't want my jam to have random brown smears in it, but more knives = more dirty dishes and that's no fun. So how about you? Are you as fussy as me or is your jam jar a brown and cloudy mess? These are serious issues, guys.