Gift Idea - MAC Eyeshadow Compact

With the holidays coming up, it's a great time to start thinking about gifts.  Looking back I remembered one of my favorite gifts ever, from a few years back.  To show some solidarity for my emergency appendectomy, my sweet, sweet mother surprised me with the best present one day out of the blue while I was recovering!

How gorgeous is this compact? I had had my eye on the Reds collection but was saving my gift certificate for some foundation and concealer. The gift certificate I'd had since the previous December, of course.  My mom was like, I know you'll never spend that so I decided just to get you this myself. LOVED  IT!  You can find compacts like this on the MAC website or from the Cosmetics Company outlet store at a discount, even nicer - they usually have a selection of past season compacts or gift sets.

It's the smokey eyes palette if you can't tell from the picture. All of them are GORGEOUS, totally usable colors! I didn't even have carbon in my collection yet and I know its a total staple, so I'm super excited about that. The warm highlight shade is almost matte and the same exact color as my skin, so it pretty much does nothing on me. Except, once I get my lovely tan back, it'll look great I think! And the silver highlight is a bit over the top, but for special occasions (upcoming holidays, anyone?) it'd be fantastic.

I've gotten so much use out of this, and eyeshadow palettes are always a great gift for the girl who loves or uses makeup - they usually go on special, come in a variety of beautiful packaging, and last literally forever and ever.  Make sure you select one with high quality cosmetics - MAC, Nars, etc, they are a world of difference from most drugstore brands, and they will last on the lids all day with great color payoff.  Basically, I love it, it's perfect, it's usable, it's practical and it's glamorous!