If I had been at the mall... my world of beauty products would've remained so small!

As you may have already gathered, I have a slight addiction to beauty products.  Makeup, lotions, hair products, body washes, shin care, you name it, I probably own it or at least have tried it.  I watch product reviews on YouTube and read beauty blogs.  Even when they are about products I would never use or even try, I still watch/read the reviews.  I think it's still a hobby at this point but Im dangerously on the edge of diving into a full-blown problem.  Without Sephora in my life over the last four weeks I have actually been making progress on another personal challenge to use up skin, hair and body products I already own!  I have emptied a couple of shower gels, a hairspray and TWO bottles of lotion.  That's kind of a record for me!  

And then I found Lux Beauty Boutique.  Oh my. Is this what Heaven will be like??  It makes Sephora look like purgatory.  I have heard about the wonders of Lux and I think i had even been in there once before but never really had a need for it with my mall stores meeting my beauty needs.  And since I started the challenge I had thought about heading that way a few times but I knew there was no way I would be able to control myself and maintain my budget.  But I found Lux calling to me last weekend on a wander down 124th.  I didn't buy much my first visit because it was mostly new brands to me and i like to do a little research about products before I buy them.  So I came home and spent two days Googling all the bands listed on their website.  I made a list of brands I was interested in and products I wanted to try and I went back with Diana on Wednesday.  The LuxySalesgirl was really enthusiastic and loved talking products.  She gave me some good information and gave me a very logical, well thought out argument for why I should go with the Geisha Ink mascara over the Blinc mascara I had intended to buy.  And, once again, I was won over by samples.  Look at these adorable little sample bags!!  

SAMPLES!!

Sephora has never packaged my samples into tiny, cute bags!!  The only downfall, however, is that I haven't really wanted to break up the products and their sweet bags to actually try any of them!  They look so pretty on my coffee table... 

So overall, I would say Lux is kind of the high-class call girl to Sephora's $23.50 hooker.  Except for one thing... Ok, so because I can't read price tags or ingredients lists or often, even what a product IS, I take pictures on my phone and then zoom in to read what I need. Sephora is big and crowded and nobody is ever paying enough attention to me to notice.  Or maybe they are noticing and I'm just not noticing them noticing me but regardless  it isn't a big deal to busy myself in a corner looking at my phone in Sephora and nobody bothers me.  Lux is very small and uncrowded and the staff are very attentive so I didn't really feel comfortable busting out my phone and snapping pictures of things.  Which is how I ended up going home with a $15 lip balm.  It's the same reason I often leave Victoria's Secret with ill-fitting underwear; the one time I tried to take pics of the tags I felt like such a creeper I couldn't do it again!  Imagine me trying to find a quiet corner with enough lighting to take pictures of panties without the flash going off.  I'm sure my skulking around and nervousness brought me MORE attention to than had I been cool and calm and acted like it was no big thing to be capturing my lingerie purchases to my photo stream!  But I digress....

I'm not really sure how I'm going to manage future visits to Lux.  Obviously there will be future visits.  I have been known to set up a code word with a friend so that she can read me the price on something without me yelling across a store, "Hey!  How much is this??" Instead I discretely say, "Hey, 'robot'."  Or if Friend is not nearby I go over and say, "I need you to robot something for me!"  It's less obnoxious and WAY more fun to have a code word... like spies!  

One other thing... Lux is right next to the candy store, where the Necco Wafters live.  Mmmmm.... You'll notice in this picture they are already opened.  The wolves couldn't even wait long enough for the photo to be set up before busting them out! 

The wolves and their High Street purchases!

Discovering a whole new world of products right in my neighbourhood never would have happened if I had been at the mall!