Because Lip Gloss Baby Lip Gloss is Pretty Much the Way My Mind Works

Amy,
Ok, a few months ago I purchased the Two Faced Box of Chocolates and I LOVE it. Not only are the colors awesome but they all smell like chocolate. How can you go wrong!?
Anyway, my main dilemma is that while I love these colors I never wear them because it’s a bit ridiculous to lug around a big plastic box so you can reapply your lip gloss. I am desperately searching for a refillable lipstick palette that I can use to put whatever colors I want in there and put them in this cute bag and hit the bar.
Sephora USED to carry one but mysteriously I can’t find it anymore. Any suggestions?!
Thanks!

Well. Hmm. Of course I have SUGGESTIONS, but as to whether those suggestions are anything short of useless, I cannot say. But that’s pretty much the way things go around here, right?
Here’s the thing: Two Faced, the manufacturer of your delicious box of chocolately lip gloss goodness, does not make a refillable palette. But several other brands do, but obviously the palettes are designed to hold their own cosmetics. Stila, Beauty Buffet, Body & Soul and even Mary Kay offer a bunch of empty compacts. If your glosses come in little removable metal pans of some kind, you might be able to make one of the magnetized options work.
But if your glosses aren’t in a removable pan, they aren’t going to work in any of the refillable palettes I’ve come across. Unless you want to scoop them out and smush them in, but what’s likely to happen is that you pop open your Frankencompact at a bar and oops! The entire misshapen blob of lip gloss falls on the floor. (There’s something kind of magically gravity-defying about the way cosmetics are packed – like once you drop an eye shadow and break the seal, it will no longer stay neatly in the pan. Same goes for pats of lip color.)
So I think instead of a lip gloss palette, you should consider buying a little pot of some kind. You could get a lip gloss in a similar color like Nars or Hard Candy and then once you’ve used it up, transfer one of your Two Faced glosses in there. Or skip that step and buy this little powder jar and remove the sifter part. It certainly won’t be as pretty as your custom palette, but at least you’d be able to actually carry the glosses around pretty safely.
Or you can completely overthink this (as I have obviously done, oh my God, won’t I ever shut up?) and keep an eye on eBay for some cool vintage-kind of makeup compact. (Although good luck sorting through the 400 million billion Bare Escentuals compacts which seem to have completely overtaken eBay altogether, good freaking lord.)
Dear Amy,
I am having my first baby in December. (Yeah!) My family all lives out of town, but my inlaws are 5 miles down the road. As the date gets closer, I’m having to deal with everything from my MIL begging to be in the delivery room (no chance in hell) to the latest situation of my aunt telling me the whole family is coming to stay with me at Christmas. One week after the baby is due! Crazy talk! Even if they do not literally stay in my house, I can imagine 15+ people being more than I can bear, especially at the holidays. What is a reasonable amount of time for me to recover and bond with my daughter before permitting extended family to descend upon us for extended lengths of time? Oh, and any hints for making my MIL feel useful while simultaneously keeping her out of my hair?
Monica
Two weeks. You deserve at least two weeks of peace. And by “peace” I of course mean “no family staying with you for any length of time, unless you specifically invite them, and this goes double for in-laws who live within the unannounced-pop-in-visit range.”
Trust me, it is worth any amount of hurt feelings and potential family huffiness to absolutely insist on the two-week rule. Those first few days? You will think you are going crazy. You will feel split open and destroyed. Your boobs will be hanging out all time and possibly bleeding. You will be sleep deprived and in shock and completely in love with your new little family and will want nothing more than to pile up in bed with your husband and daughter and just STARE AT HER.
And you will probably not want to share.
Now, some women want their own mothers there, and for some of them that’s a wonderful solution. I was not one of those women, although when my mom said goodbye to me at the hospital I did get a little panicked about my Two Week Decree and considered begging her to stay with us. But I knew it would end badly in a few days, and I knew we needed our space.
She came to stay with us the third week, after Jason went back to work. And it was lovely. She did laundry and made me lunch and reminded me to take a shower and a nap. After a week, she left and my mother-in-law came down. Which was also lovely. At first. She stayed busy painting all sorts of cute little animals in the nursery and doing housework, but you know how it is. It’s different when it’s not your own mother, and I think we both drove each other crazy after a few days.
Anyway, my point is, you must lay down the law NOW, when you are pregnant because people listen to pregnant women more than they listen to hysterical five-days-postpartum women who can’t stop crying. Tell your aunt that everyone is welcome to stay in hotels and see the baby in small groups so as not to overwhelm her, and that under no circumstances will you be hosting holiday meals or having 15 people over at once for more than a few hours. And tell your in-laws that they must call before coming over, and again, the visits should be kept short while you get used to the baby’s schedule.
You can always change your mind later if you feel up to visitors, but if you’re thinking you want some privacy, then demand your privacy and don’t let anyone make you feel guilty about it.
Dear Amy,
My entire life has been a quest for two things: wondering if Jack Bauer will marry me (scratch that– I want him to save me from a ticking time bomb in the very last possible moment and then show the tiniest glimmer of lustful emotion as he hacksaws my handcuffs and delivers me safely to CTU), and finding the perfect lip balm.
I’ve been through a gajillion balms in my life. Bonne Bell, Burt’s Bees, Carmex, Blistex, Juicy Tubes, Clinique, Prescriptives, BeneTint, you name it.
And? I have yet to find the perfect gloss. Real Girl Beauty recommends ModelCo’s Glass lip gloss from Sephora, claiming it has the perfect blend of gloss, tint, no gooopiness, and just the teensiest bit of sophisticated sparkle.
But! I am a researcher. I research things to death before I buy them. And take opinion polls. Ask the experts. And so on.
So, in closing, help.
Thanks,
Christina
Well, the thing is that lip gloss is a very personal thing, and you could probably poll the entire lip-gloss-using population and come up with hundreds of different answers.
Like here’s thing: while I love and respect Real Girl Beauty, I have never used the ModelCo’s gloss and never will. Because I hate nay, I DESPISE any gloss that comes in that kind of slanted-tip applicator tube. They drive me crazy. I can’t get them to apply evenly and always end up with gloss over the natural line of my lips. And even if I try to use my finger I always squeeze out too much or too little and argh. Hate.

But that’s just my own personal dysfunction. Your neuroses may vary.
My favorite lip gloss in the world is Chanel. But again, I’m so particular and fussy about my lip gloss that I only like ONE SPECIFIC lip gloss from Chanel, and it’s not even available at Sephora.com. I can buy it at the Sephora in Georgetown or directly from Chanel. It’s the ‘L’VRES SCINTILLANTES GLOSSIMER’ in shade #14, GLAZE. (Some online places list it as FLASH GLAZE, but the Georgetown Sephora had a whole OTHER gloss called FLASH GLAZE, which freaked me out to no end, and now I can only buy it live and in person, where I can open the box and ensure that I’m getting the right shade).

(Which is really funny because it actually isn’t really even much of a color… it’s mostly just shine with the barest hint of tint. You can wear it alone or over other colors. It’s never goopy, only barely sticky, and comes with the doe-foot applicator wand that I love so much.)
(Man. I am CRAZY. I have PROBLEMS.)
My other, less-emotionally-charged favorite lip gloss is the NARS lip lacquer. I love these. They are a very nice blend of color and gloss and have remarkable staying power for a gloss. Which is good since they come in a little pot, which means I have to use my finger or the applicator from my Chanel gloss, which you know secretly kills my soul a little bit.
Anyway, I’m sure if we polled our Intrepid Advice Smackdown Commenters we’d get another dozen or so different votes for Best Lip Gloss Ever. So I guess let’s do that! Just to confuse you further with even more options!
(Do you live near an Actual Sephora? Yeah. I’d just go there and start testing glosses out. It’s really the only way to find the one that’s right for you.)
(God. It sounds like we’re talking about birth control brands or something, doesn’t it?)
(Parentheses!)