Jig and Jog

I used to manage the front desk of a small gym near our old apartment, and Saturday I did some data entry for the owner, which is going to be an ongoing thing. It’ll be nice to have the extra income for sure, but it did mean I lost the better part of my Saturday.  Travis was working from home, and running all over LA scouting locations all day, so by the time he was finished, it was almost 7pm and neither of us really felt like cooking, or grocery shopping.  So, since we knew our original Valentine’s Day plans (gun range and Outback, seriously,) were foiled since he was also working Sunday, we decided to run out to sushi for dinner.

It was totally worth the money, and definitely nice to treat ourselves.  The last time we went out to dinner was a few weeks ago, and before that, I can’t even remember when we’d gone out to dinner.  We go to Miyako sushi out in North Hollywood for their all you can eat special.  It’s such a great deal because it includes all their specialty rolls (like the one above, my personal all time favorite, Crispy Rice.)

Sunday, after skipping my long run, again, we headed out to do laundry.  While our laundry was in the wash we decided to skip the donut shop and try All About the Bread which is just across the street from the laundromat.  I’d seen Lynn over at The Actor’s Diet talk about it before.  However, as someone who is not overall a big fan of sandwiches, I’m not the best person to review the place.  It was underwhelming to say the least.  Travis and I shared the special which was fresh burrata with sun dried tomatoes, pesto and a tomato.  The bread was just kind of meh, and the sun dried tomatoes were mostly roasted red peppers.  By the way, I do not like peppers.  So, clearly, I was not a fan.

The best part was that they have one of those new fangeled  coke machines, which has like a million choices.  I got Cherry Coke.  After we finished our laundry, I stopped at Arch & Sole, then we came home and put all that laundry away, and did some cleaning/organizing.  I started with what I thought would be a small project, of organizing my makeup.  Turns out, as a make-up artist, this was no easy feat.

I started by pulling out all the makeup I’ve got shoved into various places in the bathroom, and dragging out my make-up case which I used in make-up school and now holds pretty much only my FX makeup, or what’s left of it anyway.  You see, before we moved last year, I did a MAJOR clean out of my makeup, and it was difficult.  I had A LOT of makeup.  But, I hadn’t been working as a make-up artist for a while, and I decided it was time to purge my kit since we were losing a lot of storage space in our move.

I then organized the makeup itself, tossing anything that was gross, or empty. I discovered that I not only have four pencil sharpeners, but I also have 3 eyelash curlers, and 3 sets of tweezers.  Who knew?!

So I put everything into a category, like in the picture above: tools.

Then I separated out the items I use on a regular/semi-regular basis.

And, the stuff I don’t use so often.

Then I started putting it all away.

Into my large case goes the extra sets of tools, and my least used eye shadow and blush pallets, along with what’s left of my fake eyelash collection.  In that case also stays what’s left of my special FX kit.

Into one of my makeup bags went the less frequently used stuff, including my “dance” makeup.

Into the cute case goes all my “everyday” makeup.  Note, I definitely do not wear makeup every day, or even once a week, really.  It’s rare now that I wear makeup, but I am trying to work on that since I do think that putting in a little more effort into my look will make me feel better.

Once all of that was settled, I set to work cleaning my brushes.  Ideally, you should clean your brushes after each use, or at least once a week.  Sadly, I’d gotten pretty lazy, especially since I hardly wear makeup anymore.  So I was long overdue.

Cleaning brushes is actually really easy. You don’t NEED brush cleaner, but it does help, especially since it’s easy on the hairs in the brush and dries quickly.  However, if you don’t have brush cleaner, you can use baby shampoo and warm water.   Since I do have some brush cleaner left, I simply pour some into a shot glass (any small container will work,) dip the brush in, mix it around and then wipe it out on a rag.

Here’s the final product on its shelf in the bathroom.  Next to the makeup is my makeup remover, and my basket of nail stuff.

On the other shelf, my brushes, pencils, tweezers, mascaras (yes I have like five, I know, it’s a sickness,) and of course my hairdressing shears, because everyone should have a pair.

Once I finished that I moved right onto organizing my closet, and filled a bunch of bags to go to Goodwill, but that’s another post for another day.  It wasn’t until after 6pm that we finally hit up the grocery store.  That will have to be another post too since the organization process took up way more time than I anticipated   Do you use weekends to do big and small organization projects?