Mother’s Day is always a little bittersweet for me. I miss Mama Jolie something fierce, but then again, I miss her everyday. C’est la vie!

Many of the lessons Mama Jolie taught me were beauty ones (sunscreen, sunscreen, sunscreen!), so I thought it would be fun to turn to my blogging brethren to see what they’d learned from their own moms. Et voila!

Amber Katz of Beauty Blogging Junkie:

My mom gave me three pieces of stellar beauty advice:

• 1. Never EVER wear powder on your face. It’s disgusting. It ages you. It creates a chalky finish.
• 2. When doing a cat-eye, always make sure the line is tapered toward the outer edges. I try to do it every time and she totally calls me out when I don’t.
• 3. When applying blush (cream, she eschews a powder, per #1), apply a bit to your forehead near temples for an all-over glow.

Amber Murray, Beauty Junkies Unite:
My Mom never really gave me too much beauty advice, but if there was one thing that I remember vividly, it’s the stern eye I would receive if I ever whipped out my compact or gloss in public! She always told me I needed to step into the ‘ladies room’. To this day, I hear her in the back of my head when I check my teeth or sneak a quick swipe of gloss in public!

Jennifer Mathews of My Beauty Bunny:
My best advice from mom was not to over-pluck my eyebrows. I hear her voice in my head every time I pluck!

Kirbie Johnson from BellaSugar TV:
I know this sounds crazy, but my mom has given me two pieces of really great advice — she was a cosmetologist for years, so she probably knows a little something. First, always fill in your eyebrows. I didn’t realize how important it was until I looked back to my college and high school days and realized I looked like an alien. So fill those puppies in, ladies! Second, you can never wear enough blush — on camera. Blush can be tricky, but it was the first beauty product I grew up being allowed to wear, and I noticed a remarkable difference when I wear a pinch extra in photos and in videos! Mom, I love you for this advice and many other things.

Lianne Farbes of The Makeup Girl:
The best beauty advice my mother ever gave me was

• 1. Always wash your face
• 2. Always wear perfume
• 3. Always be yourself

Jamie Stone of Queen of the Quarter Life Crisis:
My mom always lectured me about shaving my legs and said “don’t start shaving your legs until you absolutely have to because once you start, you’re going to have to do it for the rest of your life.” Naturally, I shaved my legs anyway by the time I was 12.

Aly Walansky of A Little Alytude:
I was born with the same super curl, very dry hair as my mom – and she taught me a few home-made deep conditioning recipes from youth forward. One was mayo (the full fat kind works best!) another was beer and egg yolks (for shine!) – the funny thing is my mom EATS none of these foods, but she keeps them in the fridge at all times in case of hair emergencies – and now, I do too!

Patrice Yursik of Afrobella:
The best advice my mother gave me is this – “beauty is, as beauty does.” It’s a phrase she repeats often and when I was younger I didn’t know what she meant. I found it annoying. But now that I am older, I get it – the most beautiful women to me are the ones with kind hearts, the ones who treat everyone they meet with gracious respect. You can see beauty in their behavior. I try to live my life that way.

Thanks ladies! And Happy Mother’s Day to all of you readers! xoxo

If you’re not in the mood for a cranky-town rant, avert thine eyes!

I know a lot of people don’t “get” Twitter. That’s not my issue. I get it. I understand how and why it’s useful (when done properly), and see examples every day of my blogging and beauty peers using it to great success. It’s just not for me.

Example: If I’m out doing something cool, I suddenly stop and think, “Wait, should I be tweeting this?” The answer is usually, “Well…yeah, I should…but I’m having a good time here. I’m in the moment. I don’t want to tweet.” But then I feel guilty–particularly if I’m traveling somewhere awesome or at a high-profile event–thinking that it’s just sheer laziness not to pull out my phone and update my followers. (“Olivia Wilde just said something hilarious!” “This shop is a must-visit when you’re in Montreal!” “Stubbs has the best BBQ in Austin!”)

So, I pull out my phone and do the update. Then I see something one of my Twitter friends wrote. Maybe I should comment on that, too. You know, just to keep the conversation going! Nobody likes a grouchy navel gazer! Next thing I know, I’ve been staring at my phone for 3 minutes and have completely missed the REAL WORLD happening right in front of me.  (Scratch everything I just said if I’m at a beauty event, by the way, because there’s usually no REAL WORLD to speak of: everybody else also has their head down, buried in their smartphones, tweeting. Yay, technology.)

Change is inevitable, I know, so there’s really no use in bemoaning the fact that everybody is literally addicted to their iPhones and Crackberries and doesn’t give anything their full focus anymore (not even TV! Not even a lazy pursuit! Now it has to be live tweeted, so your friends elsewhere can also share in your moment of “OMG, can you believe what Serena just did?”) I can’t think about it too much, because it makes me so desperately worried for the attention spans of future generations–not to mention worried for my own sanity and intelligence–that I feel like getting my tubes tied.

I know it’s rich, a blogger bitching about tweeting. It’s not like I’m feeding the poor in Calcutta–I’m part of the social media problem. I understand this. Hell, I will probably tweet this damn post. (Gotta keep up with the @Jones!) Making my living in social media is what contributes to my sense of alienation on the issue, however. I’ve made my bed–now I have to lie in it, with the smart phone next to me on the pillow, red light blinking aggressively.

I fantasize about weaning myself off the metaphorical junk food: removing the Twitter app from my phone, deleting my Facebook account (you heard me), and “accidentally” losing my Blackberry. I’d still blog–after all, writing is writing, though I have also returned to pen and paper–but I also wouldn’t feel the pressure to advance my social media platform, make myself heard, field “Friend” Requests from people I’ve never met, and think of clever status updates to remind my friends that I Exist! I’m Having Fun! Life is Good!

Life is good. I’d just rather live it than tweet about it.

If you’re free tomorrow night, come by the Sheraton Delfina in Santa Monica, where I’m one of the speakers at the Mazur Group’s Beauty Biz Roundtable, featuring Poppy King as the keynote!

The theme of the evening is “Why Expertise Matters” and yours truly will be talking about the importance of building relationships and establishing trust with consumers–like you! (I plan to be all: tell it like it is! Don’t be afraid to say Maybelline Great Lash is overrated! Showing photos of yourself without makeup on is scary but necessary! etc).

With the lovely Aly Walansky at BlogHer

I go through at least one existential blogging crisis a year. My friends are used to them by now, although I think the first time I was all, “Who am I? What am I doing with my life?? What else can one say about lip gloss?!?”, they were un poquito alarmed.

It seems impossible that time has sped by so quickly, but I’ve been blogging for six-and-a-half years. In blogger-time, this means I am so old as to metaphorically qualify for my AARP card.

Honestly, it can be difficult to keep things fresh while writing EVERY SINGLE DAY, not to mention remain excited while confining it all to beauty products. (But, but–I have other interests. A cool new hotel just opened. I’ve mastered another recipe. Kate Middleton was photographed wearing a pretty dress. Let my blogging people go!)

Skinny Cow wearing feather boas. Yup, just another BlogHer booth

When I started beauty blogging, there was essentially no competition–now, it’s an entirely different story. If I were the complacent sort, I might be satisfied with the milestones I’ve already reached, the genuine impact I made on beauty and the magazine industry, and the fact that I published two books before turning 30. But when I toss and turn in bed at night, the question that haunts me is, “Yeah…but what have you done lately?” There’s still so much more to accomplish! And while your fair Jolie is mostly cheerful and appreciative, as a neurotic writer, it’s hard to be that way all the time.

This weekend, I attended my 1st BlogHer conference down in San Diego thanks to a stipend/sponsorship from CVS, and I’m so glad I did. I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect, having heard horror stories of mommy bloggers run amok during years past, but it ended up being a fantastic trip, especially since some of my favorite fellow beauty bloggies were attending. (Shout outs to Aly Walansky, Lianne Farbes, Amber Katz, Anne Fritz, Christina Farrell, Marie Denee, and Amber Murray!) The only seminar I was interested in was called “Old-School Bloggers: How to Avoid Burnout” – obviously, highly applicable to me. Hearing other long-time bloggers discussing their concerns–which are basically the exact same thoughts, fears, doubts, struggles and annoyances that I have–was helpful beyond measure. It’s so nice to know that you’re not in it alone!

At the Nuance Salma Hayek event for CVS with my beauty blogging brethren

One of my personal blogging struggles centers on how much to share with you guys. I’m something of an over-sharer and would feel much happier telling you everything. Writing–real writing–is my catharsis, and since there are a million other blogs where you can get beauty info, I hope that you mostly enjoy hearing what I have to say beyond the basic press releases and new launches. (Yes, yes, I know Kate Middleton doesn’t apply. Sigh. She’s just so pretty!)

I got pretty personal a few years ago. (And if I’m being totally honest, I’m still not over my mother’s death–it’s been weighing me down the past several months in subtle but very real ways.) However, shortly after Mama Jolie died, close friends mentioned that they felt my blog was getting too heavy, and that I should stick to the light beauty stuff. I agreed, but the angry, still-grieving side of me privately thought, “My blog is getting heavy? You’re kidding me! Hey, on a totally unrelated note, did you know that my mom just died?”

The famous Gaslamp District: right across the street from our hotel

It will always probably be a balancing act on this end, figuring out where to draw the line between you, me, and my thoughts beyond the beauty industry. I know that mine isn’t a personal blog, per se, although I also like to think that we’ve developed a true relationship over the years that goes deeper than cosmetics. But I hope that, as long as I keep providing you with fresh content, an honest take on the products I think are worth your time, a generous avoidance of all the not-good-enough products I get bombarded with (Oh, God, there are thousands), and a little humor, love and guidance along the way, we can keep this thing going for another six–or hell, sixty!–years.

At the risk of getting all weepy, I cherish each and every one of you, and feel SO grateful to have so many awesome readers behind me.

I love you all!

xoxo, Nadine