Nordstrom Trend Show + Birthday Haul

Sunday, May 26, 2013

So it's my birthday (hooray!) and while I'm probably going off camping (we'll see about that, my insomnia has been dreadful so actually getting to Sequoia National Park at a decent hour might be questionable) for the day, I wanted to show you some of the stuff I got yesterday while shopping for fun birthday loot.

I attended the Nordstrom Trend Show (also called the Beauty Wake Up Event). This was the first time my closest Nordstrom hosted the event. It was a bit more 'meh' than I anticipated. I had seen pictures from a lot of other Nordstrom shows were there were a lot of demos, models decked out in the season's most popular clothes with coordinating makeup. Erm, not so much. They mostly played video demos and presented like two products (the Clarisonic which I'm already really familiar with and Aveda hair thinning products which I had no interest in), showing only one collection (MAC Temperature Rising) with a single model. It was rather underwhelming. Didn't even bother to snap pics.

I did have an appointment with a regional Laura Mercier artist, which was really nice. She spent an hour with me, going over a lot of LM skincare and the newest products. I ended up buying a few things from Laura Mercier and also additional stuff from other brands. There were a lot of GWPs running but in my opinion nothing was worth it. It was $125 to get a rather cheap looking tote and the individual brands had pretty lackluster GWP products. I was going to take pictures of them and list them for you but again, didn't even want to bother. If your Nordstrom has a Trend Show, I'd definitely make sure it's fairly decent. It was at 8:30 in the morning, I personally would have valued a bit more sleep than another free (albeit) cute makeup bag with a few samples! Tickets are $20 which is refunded to you as credit towards any purchase.

Here's some of the stuff I brought home, you'll definitely see reviews in the up coming weeks.

Though I love my heated lash curlers, I had to buy a metal one, I'll explain later. Naturally, I went with Shiseido! Though Shu Uemura's might be a bit more popular, I like that you can buy refill pads for this one.

Nordstrom finally got the pressed version of the NARS Light Reflecting Powder. Was waiting on this one for a while, thought maybe it was a Sephora exclusive or something.

Laura Mercier Illuminating Eye Colour in Fire Glow (LE). I didn't have any intentions of buying eye shadows but when the MUA applied this on me, I was hooked! I've been such a sucker for orange lately.

I have no business buying more brushes... but when a lovely reader recommended this one, who am I to say no? It's duo fiber!

At Sephora I picked up the Beauty Insider birthday present, by Benefit this year. They also gave me a free tacky tote. See Nordstrom? Didn't even have to pay $125 to get one.

Also picked up the Sephora Pro Angled Brush. Though it is synthetic, I found that it is decently stiff so will probably use it on my brows.

Has anyone else attended a Nordstrom Trend Show? What did you think?

Products featured were purchased by me, some were free gifts. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.