Rachel Knows... Low Calorie Stove Top Popcorn!

I've been obsessed with making stove top popcorn for over a year now. It is a filling, tasty snack that helps you get your daily dose of fiber. I don't put any butter on it. I only use some salt and I just think it is delicious! That's the only thing I've ever added salt too. I don't usually like salt, but on popcorn it is just the best. It is so easy to make too. It isn't quite as easy as plopping a bag of popcorn in the microwave, but it is still very easy and the healthiness of it compared to microwave popcorn outweighs the extra little time.

Rachel Knows... e.l.f. Duo Eye Shadow Cream!

These Duo Cream Eye Shadows are a decent product. You will definitely need to wear an eye primer and ladies with oily lids may even need to dab some powder on top of the eye primer for these shadows to last. I had a lot of trouble with the darker color of the Berry Mix duo and the lighter color of the Black Licorice duo. I couldn't get them to even out and become opaque no matter what I tried. I'd still recommend that you pick them up because the other half of those duos work great and are beautiful colors, so it's an even trade. This would be nice on a super busy day when you want to sit down and slap on a base color, add a little extra color to your crease and fly out the door. Don't get me wrong they're nice on days when you aren't rushing out of the door, but in terms of convenience these can't be beat. My favorite duo is Mocha Swirl! 

Rachel Knows... e.l.f. Lip Stain!

These lip stains are such pretty colors. They are unscented and unflavored. That totally rocks in my book. These stains are nice because they can give you a subtle flush of color if you aren't in the mood to rock full on painted lips, but if that is what you're looking for then the colors of these can be built up. Pink Petal and Nude Nectar are obviously a little bit harder to build up than the two reds, because they are so much lighter, but you can make them noticeable. I don't think those are two colors that anyone would want to be totally bright and solid. As with any lip stain, these tend to show off lip imperfections. I'd recommend doing my D.I.Y. Lip Exfoliator, putting on your lip stain and then covering the lip stain with a clear gloss or if you're in the mood to get down with your bad self (So lame. I know.) then put come colored gloss on top to give the lip stain an interesting effect. These lip stains also pass the kiss test after a very short time. They don't come off on another person's lips or cheeks. Score! These are all of the color options available on www.eyeslipsface.com. The swatches are done with one layer of color, letting that layer dry and then adding another layer of color on top of that. A normal person would have just said, "Use two layers of color," but I like to hold your hand through every step of the process. I'm caring like that. Ha-ha! Enjoy!

Rachel Knows... My Well-Being!

I've talked before about heart attacks and their symptoms in women. My mother wrote a guest post about her experience with her heart attack. The hardest part after a loved one has a heart attack is learning all of the things about their lifestyle that contributed to their heart attack. Knowledge is the greatest tool in everyone's arsenal. One thing I am the most grateful for since my mother's heart attack is the internet. It has given her and me so many avenues to find the best foods for the heart, the best exercises and just all of the best things for a heart healthy lifestyle.

Read More Here:
http://rachelknowsmorestuff.blogspot.com/2012/12/rachel-knows-my-well-being.html

Rachel Knows... e.l.f. Hypershine Gloss!

Broken record alert!!! I know I keep saying this, but again I am pleasantly surprised by another e.l.f. product. I was looking at these glosses in their tubes and thinking to myself, "Oh yeah, this is going to turn out great..." Low and behold, it did turn out great! These lip glosses were pigmented little buggers. When you follow the directions on the side and twist about 7-10 times you get the perfect amount of product. Several of the lip glosses are shimmery. I'm not usually a shimmer fan, but these were shimmery in a really awesome way. They have an iridescence to them, very slightly duochrome. I just kept moving my arm back and forth in the light to watch them shimmer and shift. I was fascinated. It apparently doesn't take too much to fascinate me. Some $1 lip gloss does the trick. Ha-ha! They are scented, but that is disclosed on the website, so that wasn't a huge surprise. It says they are Cotton Candy scented, but I would just classify it as a Vanilla type scent. I knew they were scented, but until I just looked at the website, I'd forgotten that they'd referred to it as Cotton Candy. I had in my mind the whole time it was supposed to be Vanilla, because that is what I smelled. Maybe my honker is messed up? Naw, I think they were just trying to find a fun way to describe the typical sweet Vanilla based scent most glosses have. I tried my best to capture the shimmery iridescence in all of its glory, so I hope you can get a sense of how pretty it is. Oh, after I'd swatched and uploaded all of the lip glosses and was about to publish this post, I found Mauve hiding in the box I'd put all of the gloss into. So I haphazardly put it on my arm in my makeup room. The picture was taken in natural light instead of my light box that I usually take the pictures in. That's the reason my skin looks a different color. The lip gloss is still color accurate, my skin is just lit in a different way than the other swatches.

Rachel Knows... NYX Jumbo Eye Pencils!

I was so excited to finally get these! I’ve been looking at them for months. As I've said before I'm addicted, at the moment, to eye shadow pencils. I bought these to see if they were comparable to the Urban Decay 24/7 Glide-On Eye Shadow Pencils. The NYX pencils aren't on the same level of awesomeness as the Urban Decay Pencils, but they're good for their price point. You can get four NYX pencils for the cost of one Urban Decay pencil. They're decently pigmented. They could be better. It takes quite a few layers of product to show up, mostly with the lighter colors. The ones that come to mind are Cottage Cheese, Oyster, Cashmere and Sparkle Nude. They feel very smooth and silky like a lot of the products I've been swatching lately. On my eyes I found that I have to definitely use eye primer and a little bit of powder on top of that to keep these guys from creasing. The only negatives I can say about these are that they have three different parabens in them and carmine. If that is something you don't like then you'll have to skip these. They also can't be used without an eye primer underneath them. They tend to crease. They also rubbed off easily. It was weird. I ran my whole arm underneath water and they didn't run or fade. I ran my finger across them and they smeared and rubbed off very easily. I guess that makes them waterproof? I don't know. I haven't worn them for a whole day, but I think they should be okay with primer and maybe ever powder under them. If you can afford the Urban Decay pencils, I'd recommend you get them, honestly. These are a good budget friendly option, but they just don't hold a candle to the Urban Decay pencils. I did two looks with these pencils. The brown look was done over eye primer and powder. The pink and purple look was done with nothing underneath. If you look at the purple (Oyster) in the corner of my eye you can see the creasing because I didn't have anything underneath. Enjoy the pictures! :-D

Rachel Knows... e.l.f. Eyeliner and Shadow Sticks! Updated with an eye look!

I have become obsessed lately with shadow pencils, shadow sticks, shadow crayons, whatever you want to call them, but basically anything that doesn't involve a brush. I was obsessed in high school with an eye shadow, I can't remember what company made it, but it was a cream and it had a wand, pretty much like lip gloss, but it was eye shadow. It was so easy to slap that on in the mornings before school when I was running beyond late. So lately I have been on a quest to find different shadow pencils. I'm iffy on this product. The product itself is wonderful. Very pigmented, beautiful colors, so easy to apply, but there is such a small amount of product in it that I am not sure if it is worth $3. That makes me sound like a huge cheap skate, but when you compare it to other shadow pencils out there it really isn't that great of a deal. I have GOT to quit throwing the boxes away before I see how much product is actually in the thing that I am reviewing. The only color I had a small issue with was the purple shadow. It is a matte color, so it felt a little dry and didn't flow onto my skin as easily as the others did. It sort of tugged and pulled. The others were smooth and silky. They went on great. Would I recommend these? I wouldn't for everyday use, because they might not even last two weeks if you used them sparingly every day. Maybe on the weekends when you're in a hurry or something. If you really fell in love with them and didn't mind spending at least $6 every month on these then by all means go ahead. I just think there are products out there that you wouldn't have to waste time going out and buying as often as you would these. Oh and you'd definitely have to use these over a primer or they will smudge, smear, crease and wear off. 

Rachel Knows... 3 more e.l.f. cream eye shdaows!

First and foremost I want to just scream with happiness because e.l.f. redesigned the packaging for their cream eye shadow. They are now the size of their cream eyeliner. If all of the cream eye shadows that I owned were as small as these new ones, I could fit all of them into one tray of my Caboodles Grande Train Case. (I got mine at Wal-Mart for $29.00. They just didn't have a link for it on there anymore.) I stupidly threw away the box before I could see the amount of product that is in the new packaging. It wouldn't have mattered if I'd kept it though because I don't have the box of the original cream eye shadow that I bought to compare the amounts. I searched to find the amount for both the old and the new and I couldn't find it anywhere. The product itself hasn't changed it is as creamy and as pigmented as ever. I love these little things! You can see my other swatches for a little bit more about the product. 

Rachel Knows... 50% off e.l.f. mini haul!

After that gargantuan nail polish post, I took a teeny tiny break. I got this stuff in the mail yesterday. I took advantage of e.l.f’s 50% off sale. I was a moron and didn't get all the things I wanted, so after the sale was over I went back and got even more, except that little haul wasn't 50% off, but I did get $20.00 of stuff for "free." I also have stuff coming from Ulta. I went way overboard. I took pictures of everything in my makeup case that I hadn't taken a picture of yet and did some swatches tonight that I will post in the coming days. Until then you can maybe get an idea of some of the swatches that will be coming up! See you later!

Rachel Knows... 101 Zoya Nail Polish Swatches!

This was a huge undertaking for a nail polish picture taking newb. Ha-ha! I tried my very, very best to make the colors appear on the screen as they do in real life. That is freaking hard to do! I have been working on these swatches for going on three days now. Some of the pictures are heavily tinted to match what they look like in real life. I took a million different pictures, in a million different settings, with a million different lights and a million different angles and I just can't capture them right without editing them. I don't know if this a problem that a lot of bloggers face when taking pictures of nail polish or if it is just me. I'm also pretty O.C.D. and quite a perfectionist, so I want everything to look as best as I can make them. Some of these I just gave up on and a few that I actually had looking good just disappeared off of my computer. I looked in my recycle bin, on all of my memory cards, I searched for the file names and they're just gone. I have no clue what happened to them. I think it was Faye, America, Harley, Lainey, Malia and maybe a few others that look janky that I was so frustrated with that I just hastily cropped them and just put them on here without editing them too much. They're still fairly color accurate, just not the best quality picture. So I hope that you can trust me when I say that I tried my best to accurately capture the colors for y'all. The Zoya descriptions underneath don't necessarily match the picture because they just totally didn't describe some colors right. Cassi and Willow come to mind immediately. They are straight up orange with the slightest coral undertone, but mostly they are just orange. Anyway, here are the 101 Zoya Nail Polish descriptions. All descriptions, except for the ones that are discontinued, are directly from Zoya.com.

Rachel Knows... Sinful Colors Nail Polish Swatches and their Zoya dupes!

I was at Wal-Mart (Ahhh! I know!) and I decided to look around at their cosmetics section while I was there. I wasn't in the mood to buy anything very expensive. I kept seeing things that I wasn't in the mood to plunk money down on and then I saw this little display on the end of the shelf for Sinful Colors nail polish. I saw some pretty nice colors, but as I was looking at them I couldn't help but keep comparing them to Zoya colors that I already had. I kept saying, "This one looks just like Venus. This one looks just like Charisma. This one looks just like Mira." Jeremy said, "And you think I'm a geek?" (In reference to his video game collection/addiction.) I can't help that I have a good memory and can remember what my colors look like and what their names are! Ha-ha. Anyway, I knew I had to get them to see if I was as right about my color instincts as I thought I was. I bought six "dupes" and one pretty color I liked because it was just... pretty. I bought Daredevil, Boom Boom, Sugar Sugar, Amethyst, Purple Diamond, Dream On and Cinderella. All swatches are 3 coats. All the colors needed at least 2 coats to be opaque. If I were wearing Purple Diamonds or Cinderella on my own nails I would have done at least 4 coats. They're very sheer. When I saw Dream On I just knew it was going to be identical to Charisma. I was the most excited to swatch it. Turns out that out of all of the colors I bought I was the furthest off base with the Dream On/Charisma comparison. I was pretty surprised by that. There are very, very slight differences in all of the comparisons, but you really have to stare and hold them under a light like I did to really find and pick out the differences. Do you know what the most awesome part of this purchase is? I bought 7 nail polishes for what it would cost me to buy one Zoya polish with shipping. The colors I got can pretty much pass as the Zoya colors any day for 4 times less. Doesn't get much better than that! I also know that my picture taking is horrible. I really need to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Onto the polish!

Rachel Knows... e.l.f. Cream Eyeshadow!

These cream eye shadows are awesome! They are so creamy, silky, smooth, pigmented and just all around great. They’re great when you're in a rush. Rub your finger around in the jar (always with clean fingers), smush it on your eye lid and you're out the door. Damn you Jersey Shore for ruining the word, "smush" for me. I mean you can literally put on your lid color, crease color and highlight in less than a minute. Maybe I'm not good at putting on eye shadow or something, but that is just extremely fast for me. Something I'd recommend that you do is get a small spray bottle and fill it with some Isopropyl Alcohol with the highest concentration you can find (it evaporates quicker, the higher the alcohol content) and do a quick spritz over the eye shadow you just used to keep your eye shadow from harboring bacteria, so that you don't infect your pretty peepers. :-D I'm going to buy the rest of the colors, except for the teal, because I just don't do teal. They also have pretty good staying power on their own, but I always put all eye shadow products over my eye primer when I know I'm going to be out for a while. Only on a really, really rushed day I did use these alone and they held up surprisingly well. Not as well as they do over primer, but I was surprised at how long they did hold up. The only downside to this product is that the jar that they are in is just WAY too huge. It would be so much better if it were in a smaller jar because I mean these things take up so much space. It is just kind of overkill. Packaging isn't important to me, so I mean that's a miniscule dislike. The product makes up for it. I think they are very worth $3!

Rachel Knows... e.l.f. Shimmer Eyeliner Pencil Swatches!

This is another e.l.f. product that I'm iffy about. They only cost $1, so I try to keep that in mind, but regardless of the price I'm just not sure they are up to par. They are really beautiful colors, they're really creamy and apply smoothly, but it just takes soooooooooo much product to make it visible at all. They also smudge very easily. I swatched these on my arm and let them sit for at least 5 minutes while I finished taking pictures. I went into the bathroom and I usually take a tissue first to try and wipe products off before I waste water, soap and on the really great products waterproof makeup remover. These guys all wiped off with pretty much one swipe. They're shimmery/glittery, but they aren't unique enough to warrant a purchase. At least in my book. I won't be buying any more of these when these run out. I probably will never run out, because I don't use them at all. They are nice to look at in swatch pictures, because they are pretty, but that's about all their good for. Another downside is that they don't have the name of the color anywhere on them. I don't know if I just got a weird batch that didn't have the names printed on them anywhere, but I had no idea what the names of the eyeliners were without looking up my old order and then looking at that name on the www.eyeslipsface.com website and seeing which color looked the most like what I had. Skip these ladies. There are so many better products you can spend your $1 on.