At the end of last month, I had 16 items leaving my collection over what entered it. That’s a really nice total that I felt great about.

One tiny piece of housekeeping before I get any farther. First of all, since I do not currently have any sachet sized samples in my collection to use, I’ve decided not to continue adding them to my count when they arrive or leave my collection. I will still show them off when I use them up, but I am not going to count them in my totals anymore.

Regular sample or travel sizes will still count though. Things that I can get more than one use out of are to be counted. I’ve still got a lot of them in my drawers and I do want to use them. Plus, it seems like every time I place an order, new arrive.

Now, let me explain what I did this month. I had a nice chunk of ulta points to use. They weren’t expiring, and I’ve had them for a while. Over the past few months I have kept putting eyeshadow palettes in my cart, then pulling them back out and replacing them, and then putting new palettes in my cart, and repeat. I figured I’d spend my points on the things I loved the most.

But then I got to thinking about how sometimes I don’t even feel like I am getting use out of all the lovely palettes I own now. I feel out of touch with so much that I really love. The change of seasons has me eager to pull out my cool-toned palettes which I haven’t messed around with since early spring. I just did that major depotting and have renewed interest in my “new” magnetic palettes. My reality is that I do not need any more eyeshadow, and at the moment, it would have to be something pretty spectacular to not make me feel a little stressed out about having more in my collection.

In addition to this, there are so many other brands who sell eyeshadow I’d love to try. Brands who are not sold at ulta. If I am going to add to my collection at this point, I’d like it to be from one of those brands.

So I did something to put a hard stop to contemplating which eyeshadow palettes I should spend those points on. I spent the points on not eyeshadow palettes. More specifically, I used the hair event to purchase some hair products half price that I wanted to try. My new weird style requires a lot of work to get it to sit as high on my head as I want, and trying new products for that is fun. The white hairspray came as a gift with purchase, so that was lovely.

I also picked up some lipsticks I wanted to try and then some other more logical additions to my collection of things that I’ll actually work through in a reasonable amount of time. My favorite waterproof mascara, some soap for brush and sponge cleaning, some concealer I wanted to try, some body wash.

I picked up two mac lipsticks, one in the brand new formula, the love me lipstick, and one cream formula. The new formula is a violet color since I’ve been craving another violet color after finishing my nyx intense buttergloss earlier this year. The cream formula is a pinky nude. Then I picked up a L’Oreal colorriche shine lipstick because the formula sounds exactly like something I’d enjoy. It’s a brown nude. I am really eager to give these a try.

And then, of course, there are the freebies and samples that come with the purchase.

Now that I am not counting foil sachets, this category has been greatly reduced. There were a LOT of foil sachets. I gave all the conditioners to Miss Butterfly and saved the shampoos for myself. There was also a large amount of foundation samples. The samples are so small that it’s funny to imagine being able to cover my entire face with them. Maybe one from each brand? Hah. Anyhow, these three are the only measurable items that count toward my beauty balance now.

That’s 16 in, so I am back to balance unfortunately.

No matter, I do have a few things that I finished:

I finally finished the verb texture cream. I am glad it’s gone. I finished my living proof texture spray, really glad it’s gone, I didn’t like it at all. And, after many many many months, my belif toner is finished. I won’t be replacing this in my collection, I have another toner that will take its place. That’s now 3 items leaving over what arrived for my October balance.

I may pick up another texture spray or two, I would like to find ones that I like that I can pick up at ulta. But, my morracan oil texture spray truly is my favorite. I am not sure I’ll find one that compares. Other than that, I am good for this month and can ride out the month anticipating that my project pan will give me the rest of the empties I am hoping for this month.