I am busy. Like most mommas, or busy women in general, I often feel putting makeup on is a colossal waste of time, time I don’t have to begin with. But I also like to look and feel my best, hence the every day makeup routine. While I am NO beauty expert, I have found a few tried and true beauty products that have helped me get my makeup routine down to 15 minutes or less. These products help me feel beautiful and awake, even when I’m running on little to no sleep and lots of stress.

Serums and Moisturizers

The most important tip I’ve learned seems like one I should have known all along. Take care of your skin! The first step to this is washing morning and night, and having a great set of serums, eye creams, and moisturizers. I’ve seen a huge change in my skin with implementing this routine, to the point where I don’t feel the need to wear full coverage foundation every day now. My skin used to be so blotchy that I always wanted to cover it up.

Products that I love:

Drunk elephant line – Starting with the “littles” sample set is the best way to go to see which of the products you really like before paying the big bucks to invest in the full size versions. My favorites are the night serum, vitamin B, and the moisturizer. Bonus* – I also love the Baby Facial mask.

Rodan and Fields – I never thought I would be one to get involved with these type of companies, but after giving the products a try I am sold for life. The active hydration serum has been solely responsible for evening out my complexion and I also love the bright eye complex for help with my permanent dark circles. I do not and probably never will sell the stuff but I will likely keep buying forever!

Detox activated charcoal facial wash – I’ve tried a bunch of cleansers over the years and also struggled with acne off and on. I have come to find that salicylic acid based cleansers don’t do much for me, but benzoyl peroxide is too drying. I leaned the best tip from one of my favorite insta bloggers, Jordan and Co – if after cleansing, you feel your face tightening and need moisturizer immediately, the cleanser is too drying for your skin. This cleanser that I got off amazon is extremely reasonably priced, not drying at all for me, and the activated charcoal has been the best thing ever to help with my acne. Jackpot!

Makeup

The fact that I’m able to feel better about myself in just 15 minutes by doing my hair and makeup every day is awesome. I feel more confident around other adults and a more put together mom in general when I get ready in the morning. The process of getting myself ready used to take me an hour. An hour which I certainly don’t have these days! 15 minutes is all I need now with these products.

• Lumify – If you don’t know about this product yet, I’m about to change your life. Red eyes is the number one giveaway into the tired mom look. These eye drops do more than just relive redness, they also somehow make your eyes sparkling white. This gives the illusion that you’ve gotten a full 12 hours of sleep instead of the 5 hours you actually got.
• Pixi by Petra correction concentrate – This stuff is gold if you deal with dark circles. (And if you don’t deal with dark circles, you just may be the unicorn of moms 😉) It’s a peachy color that instantly brightens your under eye. Depending on how dark my circles are, I often don’t even need under eye concealer on top. This is amazing because concealer alone often didn’t do much at all to hide my dark circles before this magic product. Also, so little is needed I expect to only buy this once a year at most.
• Highlighter/Bronzer/Blush palette – This has been a game changer in my makeup routine. I have always applied blush, but adding bronzer and highlighter has given me a beautiful glow that has actually spurred compliments about my skin! When I bought this palette, I wasn’t expecting much given that it was only $8 from amazon. I bought it as a starter to give contouring a go, but have since tried several others and keep coming back to this one. I don’t pretend to actually know how to contour, so this palette makes it easy for me because the bronzer is subtle, the blush is a beautiful pink, and the highlighter is gorgeous.

Dry Shampoo

Last but not least, dry shampoo! The fact that I’m just now discovering this amazing product makes me question every single sorority sister I had in college. Dry shampoo allows me to skip the hair washing song and dance that adds an extra 30 minutes minimum onto my morning. I’ve tried a few dry shampoos, but the only one that has made my hair look and feel natural (instead of crunchy or greasy) was recommended to me by my hairdresser.

• Batiste Dry Shampoo – Dry shampoo with a hint of color which makes my hair look even more fresh and shiny than if I actually washed it. This formula also has little to no scent which I prefer.

That’s all for my very unprofessional but very tried and true beauty recs to hopefully help increase your confidence in your appearance while decreasing the time it takes to get you there. Let me know in the comments if you have any recs for me! I’m a total beauty product junky if you couldn’t tell. 💗