…because I will not be buying much in the near future! See previous post about Chester and his money-eating, multi-vet-trip hip. He is doing fantastic and his ability to get around on three legs is kind of scary, he just had some swollen foot issues and then his bandage needed to be re-wrapped. We’ve all gotten used to the routine of carrying/being carried up and down the stairs. We moved all of our stuff back upstairs because I was unhappy sleeping on the couch, neither of the dogs were eating right, and Chester seriously spends most of his day upstairs sleeping anyway. I’d rather carry him up and down the stairs than have all of us be miserable. Moving on!

P.S.  This wasn’t all supposed to be beauty products but I kind of went on for so long about zit cream that I decided to cap it at three things.

I’m sure i’ve mentioned it before, but my hormones started going apeshit a few years back and I had to start dealing with seriously itchy, oily, cystic acne (I also now cry off and on for three days before I get my period, it’s lovely).  I had acne in junior high, and the occasional zit thereafter from passing out in my makeup and such.  But cystic acne is AWFUL.  It starts with an itch.  Then the grease comes.  Then a painful bump slowly appears.  And you couldn’t even pop it if you wanted to, because it’s so deep under the skin.  There’s no turning back, no washing your face or using some zap-zit product to beat that little bastard back.  We’re talking a good week, and that’s if you manage to keep your dirty hands off of it (if so, you’re a better person than I am).  Then there’s acne scars which take weeks to fade!

At first, I would just get a single zit on my chin around period time.  I bought some face scrub from Lush, used it 1-2 times a week, and had no problems.  Then it slowly got worse, until I was using half a dozen things to try and help my skin.  Tea tree oil pads, vitamins, jojoba oil as a nighttime moisturizer, eating yogurt like it’s going out of style (and yes I drank plenty of water and all that).  That also worked for awhile, and then about two months ago I realized that despite my best efforts, it…wasn’t working.  I always had a zit.  And again, not a tiny whitehead, but a painful, deep zit that hung around forever.  I was really tired of spackling my face every morning to cover up the redness that takes forever to fade, so I gave in and bought the acne.org treatment (which is benzoyl peroxide, and vegan).  I have had exactly three zits in the last month, all regular small ones, all were from skipping cleaning or forgetting to put this gel on.

Even though I love this stuff and it’s only 2.5% BP, I should note that there are some possible side effects from using it, so if you want to give it a whirl and you’ve never used a BP product, order the travel size first!  The regular tube is eight ounces, which is a loooooot of product to be stuck with if it makes your skin dry or itchy.  I don’t have that problem, but your mileage may vary.  I’ve read that using BP can make your skin ‘age’ faster, but i’d rather have wrinkles than feel like clawing my face off nearly every day.

I do like to try and use as many natural, good-for-me-good-for-the-earth products as possible, and that’s why I love Pumpkin & Poppy Cosmetics.  I’ve mentioned Kristy’s youtube channel before, but this past year she started her own vegan mineral makeup company, and it’s amazing how much she’s grown in such a short amount of time.  She’s gone from just a few mineral foundations to doing themed collections with lipglosses and now eyeliners.  If you’re wary of buying homemade ‘vegan’ cosmetics (thanks, Glittersniffer), Kristy is vegan herself so she won’t be selling you pinks with carmine in them.  But I think my favorite part is that she themes her collections after movies and literature, so instead of trying to pick some random brown out of a product lineup, you can be like, “zomg, I love Labyrinth and I totally want a Bluto inspired eyeshadow!”  Her holiday collection was called Christmas In Gotham, people.  Kristy is also super friendly, interactive, and is very transparent about her ingredients and why she uses each one.

If you buy anything I suggest the Moth Wing eyeshadow, which is a really cool but work-friendly color, or her foundation sample pack so you can figure out which color works for you.  Thanks to the above zit gel, I can now get away with wearing just my mineral foundation without having to polka-dot my face with concealer.  And look at that crazy gorgeous vegan red blush up there!  Hot shit, dudes.

And finally, I give you…my nail polish collection, as it will stand for quite awhile.  After the holidays were over, Ulta and Sally’s both started clearing out the old nail polish collections to make room for the coming spring collections.  And…I went a little crazy.  And maybe doubled the size of my collection.  But i’m a bargain hunter and i’m pretty sure that all of maybe five bottles were bought full price.  Most of my Zoyas I got through some kind of promotion on their site, all of my Sinful Colors polishes were $1 at Walgreens…and most of the holiday colors I got (almost all of the China Glaze and a lot of the ORLY) were $4-2.

P.S.  I found out after my spree that while China Glaze polishes (not counting treatments and some top/base coats) are vegan and they don’t test on animals, they currently can’t confirm that their ingredient suppliers don’t test (but they’re in the process of getting that info to comply with the animal testing ban that’s coming up in the UK).  I think this is a personal comfort thing, on one hand it’s kind of like ‘no one is vegan because mice get killed by the threshers that harvest fields’, but on the other hand, it is just nail polish and not food or what have you. I don’t buy from Essie or OPI because they are owned by parent companies who definitely test, some people think that’s okay because Essie and OPI don’t test themselves.  I don’t think any of their polishes are so amazeballs that I need to buy them over 100% vegan or 95% vegan brands.  Once you get outside of food, veganism can be tricky, just do the best you can.

I tried to arrange them by color (the top is all glitters) for the people who are like, “How many colors do you need?”  ALL OF THEM, FOOLS.  But I am pretty happy with my color selection right now and it will take a long time before I get bored.

And here are some random close-ups of polishes that you really need to get all up in to appreciate, plus my fancy storage system:

So here is the funny thing about 2011. I spent the first three months in a solid depression over Bonny, sleeping about four hours a night on average. I spent most of my summer inside, watching t.v., instead of riding my bike or paying proper attention to my garden. And the panic over the holidays set in and most of fall was shot. Sounds pretty shitty, right?

But. BUT.

When I was going back looking for posts, I found a lot of good things. I got to see three of my favorite artists, I blogged about Ted Leo and The Thermals, but did I mention that I went to see Wild Flag and I washed my hands next to Carrie Brownstein? If I hadn’t just gone to the bathroom, I would’ve peed myself. When Brian and I left the show, I kept clutching my newly bought shirt to my face and smile-screaming into it.

I had lots of fun with MoFo and my theme.

I made friends with a baby squirrel.

Brian and I made donuts, something i’ve always wanted to try.

I helped raise over $500 for Ride To Light, and the frustration only made me cry once. Or twice.

I put myself on a personal budget to buy a new computer and became obsessed with nail polish.

Fawkes. He has come so far in just a few months, from a scared dog who didn’t even want to be held or play with toys to a chewing fiend who constantly wants to be rubbed. He is also a little shit who chewed the vacuum cord, escaped the back yard TWICE this weekend, and one of those times was to the neighbors yard, and he came back without his dapper sweater that makes him more visible at night. And we still can’t find it. Speaking of dogs, after two years of blood tests, medication, and playing with his diet, Chester’s liver levels FINALLY dropped and he lost three pounds. It was nice to have a vet visit that didn’t end with me wondering if his liver was about to shut down. I love my dogs, I love my cats, I love our little family.

And lastly…Brian and I started P90X! It’s EXTREEEEEEEME!!! fitness, six days a week. We just started week three (out of 12) and it is crazy. Google ‘I hate Tony Horton’ if you want to see what we’re putting up with. But I enjoy it overall, and after being sad all year I was glad to end 2011 feeling strong, productive, and working towards a goal. I am NOT on a diet. I do not have a goal to lose x amount of pounds. My goal is to complete P90X, and that’s it. I actually couldn’t be on a diet and effectively do P90X because of all of the strength training! I am eating lots of proteiny things and green smoothies so I am eating pretty good by default, minus the upcoming pictures. I will probably go into greater detail about the hilarity that is me trying to do a pushup at another time.

Onto New Year’s eats! Now, Brian and I don’t drink. We are also lame anti-social assholes, so we just stayed home and made pizza and Dr. Pepper floats, and I actually crawled into bed 20 minutes before midnight. I was just happy that I wasn’t ringing in the new year shivering on the couch, stricken with stomach flu and sadness like I was last year.

My pizza was another take on the Amy Deluxe/Supreme, basically all I did was put it on top of a pizza crust (using Upton’s italian seitan), sprinkled with Daiya. Brian’s pizza was the rest of the Upton’s, mushrooms, and Daiya. Then before midnight, we assembled what I thought was the genius idea of Dr. Pepper floats with cherries. Don’t do this! The ice cream kills the DP flavor, making it taste like plain soda water. Also, it made me feel like shit the next day! I should’ve just drank my celebratory Dr. Pepper and called it good. Lesson learned.

For brunch on New Years day, we made biscuits and gravy, adding mashed up black eyed peas to the gravy and I put steamed kale with mine for color and vitamins and what not. And I drank a lot of water. A LOT.

And here is my mix of my favorite songs from 2011 (that came out this year, I listened to this song a few hundred times and let’s not talk about all of the Ke$ha). Also judging by this year’s album collage, almost every single band/artist I like that is still making music/not dead came out with an album this year! So next year is probably going to be a boring year for music.

Thank you so much to everyone who participated, or even shared the link.  The total amount of new donations raised was $545.86.  Of course I wish it was more, but last week as I lay on the couch crying and watching Jersey Shore and feeling like a failure, I thought, “Well, as long as I get $500, I can live with that.”  So thanks!

Raising money is really really hard.  I have so much respect for people who do this all the time, it can beat a person down.  I thought that offering prizes would mean people would fall all over themselves to give, but if people didn’t care to donate already, you can’t make them care.  I also know a lot of people are broke, last summer I had zero extra income to give to Farm Sanctuary walks, and I felt so guilty.  Which is silly, because it’s not like I was broke because I was spending it on blow and hookers, we were just on a ridiculously small income.  There’s always next year.

Okay, onto the winners!

If you are curious, I made a spreadsheet with everyone’s name, and they got a row for each of their $5.  I also forgot that First Giving lets you add a little bit to cover the fees of the charity, so in that case I rounded up, so if you donated $10.77, you got three entries instead of two.  And then I made a list of the prizes, went over to random.org and went to town!

I will be emailing the winners, cc’d to the prize givers, shortly.

Herbivore gift certificate:  Kali G!

Herbivore t-shirt: Miles S!

Herbivore cross necklace:  Megan B!

Book from Celine and Joni:  Shannon L!

Art prints from Amanda:  Joceyln K!

Liz Lovely cookies:  Amanda S!

Teeny Tiny Tantrums pins:  Diana J!