Q&A

       Hi. Sorry for my little hiatus. Since the weather has been getting nicer I have been trying to spend my time out of the house during the days. Also I have made some friends, it's great. Last week I spent 3 of my afternoons having lunch or shopping with different friends. Who knew I would have a better social life in a foreign country in 4 months than I did in 6 months in Atlanta.

     Through Andi's Eyes is my connection to the Fashion and Beauty world right now so it's really special to me. I am trying to thing of ways to revamp it. Maybe with daily themes and or a new layout. Yesterday it was suggested to me that I take questions from readers, either by email or in the comments and have one day a week to answer peoples questions. I think that is a great idea. If you want to participate, please email your questions to andiseyes at gmail dot com.

Thank you all for reading. As I close in to 100 readers I am trying to think of a giveaway to do. Maybe next week.

43 days until I see the ocean again...

Get more for your money

       Recently there was a discussion about the amount of money one has invested in their makeup bag. My number was huge. Of course this is because I am a non working MUA, and my entire kit has now become my own products. I estimated about $800 dollars would be down the drain if I lost my makeup bag. It might be more. That is a scary thought.

      Although that is a large amount of money for an average person to spend on their makeup, for a professional makeup artist it is actually a low number. I do have a MAC discount which helps but I also have a few for using a minimal amount of products to achieve a large variety of looks.

Here are a couple of things that might help you save some money in your own makeup bag.

• Have only two color eye liners, black and brown. If you want a colored liner you can set either of these colors with a colored shadow for the same effect. 
• Why buy 5 different shades of the same color? Instead buy a medium shade and use it with different techniques. You can do several layers of a color to make it darker. Try using it with a shadow primer for richer pigment, and without for a softer color. 
• The shadow that you use as a highlight color can double as the highlighter for the rest of the face, applied to the top of the cheekbones and the nose. 
• Use an eyeshadow to fill in your brows instead of using a separate brow pencil/powder.
• Always apply moisturizer to your face before applying foundation. Your skin is like a sponge, when dry it will suck up anything you rub on it, therefore using more product. A moisturizer is not just good for the skin, but it will fill the skin, and just like a wet sponge can't pick up more water, your foundation will stay in place. 
• Instead of having a lot of different lipsticks (I don't own one), try using a combination of lip pencils (I have 3, one flesh toned, one pink and one red) and glosses. You can create totally different colors using different mixtures here. 

Do you have any money saving tips? 

Just because there were no pictures in this whole post and I hate that. My poor cat. He loves me though. 

Why is it so fun to annoy cats?

Tea for two

      
 I drink tea a lot. I love it. It is a perfect cold weather pick me up. Now that the weather is getting nicer though, I don't always want to drink a hot beverage. Instead I have modified one of my favorite tea recipes for warmer weather. You can find the original recipe in this post. To make it more summery, instead of adding a squeeze of lemon I add the juice from a whole lemon or lime. Then after it's done steeping, I add some organic honey to cut the tartness, add it to your own taste. Then I stick it in the fridge to cool. Then I drink it later over some ice. It's really refreshing. This is also a detoxifying tea.

Even though I have stopped posting my healthy meals (let's face it, I eat the same things over and over, and that isn't interesting), I am still eating healthy as much as I can.

Also, JP and I have started the P90X program. One week in, I am loving it! I will probably do a post on it soon, but I want to get a few weeks under my belt first so I can give a better opinion.

I hope everyone had a great weekend.

Opps I forgot...

    I forgot to include the makeup colors that I used in my last post.

I used Bobbi Brown Shadow in Champagne from lash line to lid.

Then I used a MAC Shadow, Show Stopper, which I am not sure is available in the US. This color I put lightly in the crease and along the lash line. It is a warm grey color

Then I lined my eyes with my usual MAC Technikohl Liner in Photogravure (a dark brown) and went over that line with MAC Shadow, Typographic, and dark (almost black) smokey grey. 

I also want to thank Mere and Taylor for their Sunshine Award that they gave me.

I know I am supposed to nominate my favorite blogs now but I think all of them have already been nominated. I love them all. If you want to see my favorites check out my blog roll. I have just added five new ones there!

Oh, man! I am so sore. It's actually hurting to type. JP and I started P90X last night. Let me tell you, it is a good work out. Round two tonight!

Natural looking foil pattern and LOTD

         A fellow blogger, Steph of Not Just Another Blonde, emailed me a question last night asking about natural highlights. I felt that the best way to describe the foil placement was to try to draw it. Notice I said try. I don't have a great program on my computer to draw pictures so I had to work with what I have and, well, you'll see.

     I did two drawings, the first is to show you a basic foil pattern that a lot of people follow. This pattern is what creates highlights like this...

Ok this is an extreme example, but I just used this picture to illustrate the point. 

A telltale Characteristic of this pattern is that you can see where the line crosses the part in the hair.

The lines represent the direction of the foil placement. 

See how bad the drawings are? But you still get the idea.

The next drawing shows the most natural way to place the foils. It creates highlights more like this...

Where there are no definite lines in the hair. 

In this pattern the foils should fall in the direction that the hair falls on the head. The top section is the most important. The foils in this section should lay perpendicular to the front and back sections and lay across the top of the head like a book.

     On Friday night JP and I had a date night. We went to the best steak house in town, just the two of us and then came home and watched a couple of South Park episodes (one of the only English shows we can watch online). It was a great night. 

Blazer: Banana Republic

Ruffle tank top: F21

Jeans: H&M

Shoes: Steve Madden

I did a look I don't normally do. I know this is shocking, I used a black eye liner. LOL

          I hope you had a great weekend!

xoxo Andi

Are you looking for a new hair style?

          If you are in the market for a new style I have the perfect site for you. UKHairdresssers.com is a Brittish based site. They have thousands of pictures there that range from funky cut and color to more classic looks. When you get to the site just click on Style Gallery and it will take you to the different looks. I hope you find some inspiration.

Company: The Colour Room
Elite Collection
Hair: Sean and James Tetlow
Stylist: Peter Breen
Make-up: Chase Ashton
Photography: Trevor Leighton

Disclaimer: I am not being paid to promote this site. I just get a lot of questions about good sites to find styles and I thought I would share my favorite one with everyone.

Do you have any places that you look to find new styles? Please share if you do.

Bare faced and Fancy Free.

          From Tuesday of last week until Sunday morning (Easter), one of my best friends came to stay with us here in Germany. She and her beautiful family live in Copenhagen, only a 9 hour drive away. We spent the time with them just relaxing and doing whatever we felt like doing. This included chasing around a 15 month old around my non-childproof house, drinking beer and walking around the city. What it did not include was putting on makeup or blow drying my hair even once. It was very nice, but at the same time I can see where some mothers start to feel like they have lose their style. It is important to feel beautiful, and makeup helps us do that.

          To tell you the truth, as a stay at home wife, one of the reasons that I blog is to give myself a reason to put on some makeup. Even wearing makeup once in a while can boost your self esteem. When you look good you feel good. Tomorrow I will definitely be back at it.

Oh man!

     I am sick. I've been sick all weekend but it usually takes me a while to admit it to myself. Yuck! It's just a cold but I slept like crap all weekend. 

     Hopefully I am feeling better by tonight, we are having friends over for dinner. And tomorrow my best friend drives down from Copenhagen with her husband and their 1 year old. I am really excited but I have a ton to do before then. So sorry for the meaningless and short post but I have a lot of stuff to do.

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Mine was great despite the cold. I won a Karaoke Contest on Friday. LOL.

Have a great week!

Hip Hop Horray! Hooo, Hay, Hooo! It's Friday.

     I feel like this week dragged on forever! One good thing this week, we meet some new Americans who were here on their house hunting trip. They will be coming back in a month for good, so it looks like we'll have some new friends. We liked them a lot.
     Last night we went to dinner with them at our favorite place in town. We have to share it with all the newbies (like I'm not still a newbie myself). It's an Italian place called Lo Studente. Delicious food. Their specialty is simply amazing. They have this huge parmesan wheel and they scrape cheese from inside the bowled out middle. Then they come from the kitchen with pasta piping hot, still in the pan and dump it in the cheese. Next they mix it around until all of the cheese they scraped off gets melted all over the pasta. Then they give it to you on a plate with the sauce on the side. It is heavenly!

Ali, scraping the cheese.

The cheese waiting for it's soul mate, the pasta. LOL

DELISH!!!

     Yesterday I promised to start updating the reviews of some products that I have been using for a while. Today I will do two, because they kind of go together. 

      I will start today with the Redken Real Control line. I originally started using the Real Control Intense Renewal Super Moisturizing Mask last Octoberish. I reviewed it here. I liked the mask so I decided to try the shampoo and conditioner. I bought the small bottles and liked those so before I moved I bought a liter of each of the shampoo and conditioner. Yuck!

     It has started building up on my hair. It feels so gross. It was fine at first but after a few months of use it really built up. I hate it now. Luckily I had some left in a liter of Aveda Shampure shampoo and a Color Conserve Conditioner, that I usually used on clients in the US. So I decided to make the change when I colored my hair the other day...

     Because I used the Malibu Pre-Color Treatment to remove the buildup off of my hair before coloring it. A product I actually had a contest to win. Now, this works. It completely removed any buildup that the Real Control had left on my hair so I was able to start with a fresh slate again. I will definitely be using my Aveda until the summer when I get back to the states and can pick up the new shampoo and conditioner that I ordered and sent to my mother-in-laws house. It's a product that I can't wait to try. Stay tuned to see if I like this one.

    

If I sent you one of these treatments have you used it? Did you like it?

Thank you all for reading. I really appreciate your comments and your reading my blog!

Love LoVe, LOVE,

Andi

The poll results are in.

New Same Cut and Color

So the poll ended yesterday, and the results were to keep the same color. The problem was that ends that were colored had faded so much that the red color I used to have was starting to show through. Also I was beginning to get some split ends. I am embarrassed to say how long it's been since I cut and colored my hair, but let's just say it has been since at least Thanksgiving Christmas.

So to freshen up my ends I used Redken Shades. It is my favorite color to use. I always use a demi-permanent color. The only reason to use a permanent one is if you are covering up greys. Otherwise demi-permanent lasts long enough that your roots need to be colored anyway by the time it has started to fade. Also it does almost no damage to the hair. 

I used

2oz 6N + 1oz 8N

The N series has a blue violet background that canceled out the harsh red and orange tones in my hair.

I only put this color on the ends where it was brassy in order to keep the new growth virgin. 

For the cut I only trimmed the layers, taking about an inch off.

I recently realized that I have talked about a few products but not done a follow up of whether I liked them or not. Next week I am going to focus on this.

 This weekend, if it doesn't rain, we might go check out Bamberg, the city with the highest concentration of breweries. Sounds like fun to me!

What are your plans for this weekend?

xoxo Andi

Spring is Finally here in Germany...I hope

     This being my first year here, I can only hope that the cold is gone and the warmth will stay. I love not having to wear a coat. I can't wait to see what German fashion is. In the winter, all you can see is the hair and makeup, which wasn't good. I am giving them the benefit of the doubt though, assuming the hair was messed up by the hats and the make up was skipped so it wouldn't get ruined in the snow and rain. Also, to be fair, I am sure, just like in the US, that the fashion varies vastly from one place to another. Who knows, they might have beautiful hair in Berlin.


     I know Spring just started but I am started to get excited for summer. We are starting to plan trips now. I know we are for sure going to the US in July. We'll be there just in time for July 4th celebrations! My favorite holiday.

     The other trip we are planning I am equally excited for. We are going with friends (hopefully, plans aren't totally set yet) to the Greek Islands, Crete to be more specific.

  Hello Beach. Hello Bikinis. Hello Sunscreen.

     I am so excited! Now I am in the market for a bathing suit and I need to stock up on my SPF's, 70, please!

     Now all I need to do is get my bum in gear at the gym. My husband is talking about trying out the P90X, so we'll see if that happens. He's a lot of talk. LOL I love him anyway.

Do you have any fun plans coming up this Spring and Summer?

xoxo Andi

This week I welcome back an long lost friend.

The Sun!!!    

I actually left the house in a t-shirt today. No jacket. In traditional Michigan Spring fashion, I almost put my open toed shoes on too, but then I thought I might be taking it too far.

Yay for Spring!

More thoughts on this tomorrow. Now, dinner at a friends' house.

Munich in under 100 Euros.

     Early Saturday morning we hopped a train to Munich, or München as the Germans call it. They have what is called a Bayern Ticket. This ticket lets you and up to 4 friends travel around Bavaria all day. It includes trains and public transportation in the city, busses, street cars, subways. Our travel total for the entire day was 28 Euros.

     Because we only had 5 hours to walk around before our train left back home, we ate on the go. At the train station we grabbed a couple of Bratwurst and started walking. A luxury of living in Germany. A delicious lunch for under 6 Euro, all together.

     We picked the perfect day to go. Das Wetter war schön, die Sonne gerichtet. (Are you impressed yet?) It was the first day we could walk around with out coats on all year. We had upper 50's to low 60's all day. It was beautiful.

Walking up to Schloss Nymphenburg

     We took the street car over to Schloss Nymphenburg, the castle, and spent sometime walking around the grounds. I can only imagine how beautiful they will be in a couple of weeks once the flowers start bluming. The castle grounds are huge. It was full of people and dogs enjoying the beautiful weather.
     This is completely free of charge to do. I saw a lot of people doing an afternoon run or bike ride around the grounds. I am totally jealous. I would love to have such a beautiful area to run or bike in everyday.

We even let Georgia run around with out her leash. She had fun.

Swans in the pond at the Schloss

The back view of the castle.

   
     OK, my husband is a total nerd. So we had to go to the Deutsches Museum while we were there. It is Germany's science museum. JP, being an Electrical Engineer, was most excited to see the section about power there. I actually have a cool video of an electricity show that they did that I may put up. We'll see, don't hold your breath. We had fun there too, but after about an hour and a half I was ready to go. I wanted to do the Planetarium there, but since the weather was so nice we put that off until next time.

The Aeronautical section of the Museum

 The entrance to the Deutsches Museum

We will definitely be going back in May, when we have a friend coming from the states. That time I think we will also stay the night in the city, in order to see more.

In my last post I mentioned a video I was going to put up, and I included a cute outtake from said video. Well, my husband so kindly pointed out to me that in the short outtake video that I look like I am pushing my chest out. He was right. LOL, I guess I get nervous about what to do with my hands, so I had stuck them in my back pockets. Anyway, I think I am going to redo that video. So I will put it up eventually, but not today.

I hope you all had a great weekend too. Did you do anything fun or exciting?

Bonus Post Today: My LOTD St. Patrick's Style!

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe night. Please, no drinking and driving.

We are going out with some friends tonight. All of the Irish Pubs were full when I called for reservations so we'll be going somewhere else. The point of going out isn't where we're going, it's hanging out with friends. I am sure we'll have fun no matter where we go.

So I didn't want to cover myself head to toe in green, especially since I am doing a green eye, so I snuck it in with a scarf and Marilyn's lips. 

The scarf is from ATL

The jeans from H&M

The jacket is from Forever 21, and I have had it forever (for all of you haters)

The Marilyn shirt is a hand painted piece that I bought at an art fair in Atlanta

 Undies from VS, LOL

Please pay no attention to the state of my bathroom.

I had just finished doing a video and still had all of my stuff out. The video should be ready in the next few days.

Here is my makeup

Oh and here's a cute little blooper from the video I just did. My cat kept interrupting me, but in the sweetest way possible. Enjoy!

Have a great night! Thanks for reading and don't forget to look at my earlier post from today and vote in my poll on the side bar!

I'm stuck at a crossroads that I haven't been at in a while. Please help.

     I have no idea what I want to do with my hair. Color wise at least. For the last few years, I had everything planned out like a road map, but I have just reached the end of the road. I don't know where I want to go from here. 

You are all probably aware that I have been growing my hair out for the last 2 plus years now, and I don't want to do anything too damaging. So blonde is definitely out of the running. 

Ok, not my finest moment, but you get the picture. 

Right now my options are to either go darker, red or stay the same. What do you think looks best on me?

Here are pictures from a couple of different times that I have had dark hair.

Yes, that is purple in my bangs.

The Pros

Going darker a healthy option for my hair.

It's my husband's absolute, hands down, favorite.

It's super shiny.

The Cons

When I do eventually want to go lighter, it will be more damaging, but maybe by then I will be ready to loose some length.

That's really the only con.

Here are some pictures from my red phases. Surprisingly this is my most common phase but am having a hard time finding good pictures. 

Pros
I love red hair. It is to me the most beautiful color. I always go back to it.
While it's the most damaging of my options, it's still not that damaging. And once I get it red, it is just as healthy to maintain as the other options.

Cons
Fellow redheads please don't take this badly, but the redheaded girl is always the friend, not the star. I want to be a star. The positive redhead stereotypes don't work in my favor... I'm married. ;)
It's the most damaging of all of the options.



Now for the whole reason that I am lost as to what to do:
The color that I have now is so similar to my natural color that I could grow it out without coloring it at all. Why not grow out my natural color one last time, until I go grey and have to color it? (Because that's boring, but humor me)

Recent pictures of my hair.

Pros
The healthiest option, as it involves no color at all.
Very low maintenance.

Cons
Boring. Boring. Boring.
I do notice a little difference between the new growth and the previously colored area, but I don't know if anyone else does.

It is hard to be objective when looking at yourself. So please help me decide what to do. Which do you think looks best on me? Of course I am open to other ideas as well, but this is what I have come up with, in order to preserve the health of my long hair. I still want it a little longer. 

Now I leave you with some wishful thinking. It's gotta get nice soon, right?

xo Andi