Samantha on the Prairie

I have a full-time job, consulting work, a four-year-old, a dog, two cats, run a small condo association, volunteer at school and with the local hospital, cook many of our meals from scratch, and somewhere in there, I sleep, eat, and relax. Sometimes, I look as tired as I feel. When I'm feeling really worn out, a touch of makeup can help me visualize myself more energized. If I look awake in the mirror, then I feel more awake. My husband's a bit sick with a nasty cold, my daughter has been up at night with a cough, and I'm just tired. Last night, I got little sleep and at 9am, still had that "just woke up" look. My remedy is what I call my "weekend makeup routine." For winter, I try to keep my weekend routine simple, while combatting the tired look. Weekend Daytime Makeup Routine 1. About 30 minutes after moisturizing, I apply Revlon ColorStay Makeup  (B) in Ivory around my eyes, the top part of my cheeks, and my nose.  My sister introduc...

I had every intention of touching up my color with what I used last time , Clairol Natural Instincts. My hair had faded a bit and there was some root growth so I went to the store and darn it if I wasn't sucked into John Frieda's fancy hair color box. I figured it wouldn't hurt to try John Frieda. It's pricey, but the John Frieda brand is reputable and I've had good experiences with a few of their products. There were two similar dark browns on the shelf. One was dark chocolate and the other dark espresso. I'd have assumed espresso would be darker than chocolate based on name and the front of the box, but looking at the before and after images, the espresso appeared lighter. So I picked the dark chocolate brown  (4BG), which seemed to be the warmer of the two. John Frieda Precision Foam Hair Colour comes in a choice of 20 shades. The store only had a few, so I wasn't aware of the dark natural brown and deep brown-black shades. I may have chosen the na...

Perhaps you arrived when looking for information on Garnier Olia hair color shades. If so, I've made a handle list of all 24 shades below! I've grouped them into blonde, brown, black, and red categories, but if you visit Garnier's website to see the swatches , you'll find the browns and blacks groups differently - light brown, and brown & black. I'm not sure why they separated the light browns and combined the remaining browns with the set of black shades. Perhaps their medium browns are very dark, or the light brown shades are only for naturally lighter hair? I just don't have an answer for that. Blonde 9.5.1 - Lightest Cool Blonde 9.3 - Light Golden Blonde 9.0 - Light Blonde 8.31 - Medium Golden Blonde 8.13 - Champagne Blonde 8.0 - Medium Blonde 7.0 - Dark Blonde Brown 6.35 - Light Chestnut Brown 6.3 - Light Golden Brown 6.1 - Light Ash Brown 6.0 - Light Brown Black 5.3 - Medium Golden Brown 5.0 - Medium Brown 4.3 - Dark Golden Brown 4....

I bake bread a lot. This isn't a cooking blog, so you won't see many posts about baking. However, a friend asked for my recipe for a buttermilk white bread and it seemed like a good idea to just put it up here so she can see the pictures and not have to write down the recipe elsewhere. So for Claire and for everyone who is interested, this is the recipe I'll be tweaking and tweaking until it's time to have my entry ready for the Olmsted County Fair. I'm not sure if it's our humidity, elevation, temperature, or the calibration of my oven, but this bread will come out different for everyone. Just adjust the flour amount and ratios, and total bake time, until you get a result you love. Ingredients 2 tablespoons of yeast ( not the bread machine kind of yeast. I prefer buying a jar of yeast that I keep in the fridge, but you can just use three packets if you don't bake often. 1/2 cup warm water - temp it to be between 87-108 degrees if you can. Do this e...

Once a month, I review my analytics to see what people are looking for when they come to my blog. Lately, the data has been fairly consistent, but I noticed a surge in people looking for info on the Sinful Colors Holiday 2013 Collection. I posted about the latest Sinful Colors collection recently, but there are other great writeups as well. Some reviewers have done an excellent job showing how the colors look with different basecoats. If you want to get the scoop on the Sinful Colors Holiday 2013 collection, be sure to check out these posts: Samantha Reviews' Sinful Colors Holiday 2013 Collection Horrendous Color's  Dupe Alert! Sinful Colors and OPI Nouveau Cheap's  Spotted: Sinful Colors Holiday 2013 Be Happy and Buy Polish's  Sinful Colors Holiday Glitters Cool Polish's  Sinful Colors Holiday 2013 Collection Tinsel N'ice Lacq Lustre's  Sinful Colors Glitz & Glittered Collection Also check out Nouveau Cheap's  HOT deal alert: New ...

Recently, Two Moms, a Little Time, and a Keyboard hosted a giveaway for Trusted Health Products' Beautiful AM moisturizer and I was lucky enough to win a bottle! It didn't take long for my little bottle to arrive, very cute with my name printed on the label. I was definitely surprised at the tiny bottle at first, but then thought maybe it's just a sample size for the giveaway. After reading the instructions and trying it the first time, I realized it's exactly the right size. It's so concentrated, that you use a very tiny amount (a few drops). This little bottle lasts a very long time. I'm really picky about skincare ingredients, so I looked at the label and found it's made of all botanical oils, including orange, lemon, olive, avocado, and almond. I'm familiar with almond and olive oil for skincare, but I had to do some research on the rest of the oils. Avocado and olive oils have antioxident properties and are great for dry skin. Olive oi...

More than a year ago, I came across Martha Stewart Home Office with Avery No-Iron Clothing Labels while shopping for office supplies at Staples. They were a bit pricey for one pack of labels, but I bought them anyway because I have a terrible time writing in my daughter's clothes and don't have any interest in hand sewing labels on everything. The labels I primarily use are fairly small, which means I can fit them on a clothing tag or inside the hem of a shirt, under the tongue of shoes, or inside mittens quite easily. They're smooth, white plastic-feeling, but flexible rounded rectangles. My ink of choice is a black Sharpie, but you could get away with a ball-point pen. To attach the label, you just smooth it on the fabric (or along the side of the sole of a shoe) and you're done. That's it. No ironing and no sewing! Though I've never tried, the product instructions indicate they won't work on denim, so be sure to stick them to the tag inside jeans, n...