In the beauty world, it feels like the holiday season is starting earlier and earlier every year. I remember back in the day when it wasn't until after Halloween that we started seeing holiday sets popping up at Sephora, but these days it seems like we start seeing them released even before Labour Day hits. I have to be honest... it takes a little bit of the magic out of it for me and I actually thought I was going to be pretty disenchanted with this year's holiday beauty releases... but so far, there are actually quite a few that have gotten me excited. Of course, there's also quite a few that I'm just... not at all interested in, so I figured I'd share both the hits and misses for me and why I would or wouldn't pick them up for myself. 

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Hey guys! It's that time of year again - when makeup brands start releasing their holiday collections WAY too freakin' early. Once upon a time, I would get incredibly excited and have my eye on pretty much all of the holiday collections, but as the years go by I'm finding myself a lot more conservative about what really gets me excited. It also, honestly, really doesn't help that holiday collections start coming out in August now. Anyone else actually find more annoying than exciting? Anyway, I was perusing the Sephora website to check out what was new as we get bombarded with holiday collections and I wanted to put together a little list of some of the ones that stuck out for me - both because they excite me and because they bore me to tears! Be warned, there's a lot of stuff that I do not like in this post...

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I feel like one of my favorite things that Sephora does is their Sephora Favorites kits - and if I had my way, I'd probably buy all of them. Since the Sephora Favorites Winter Skin Saviors Set is no longer available - and I only got my hands on it because my local Sephora still had a couple in store right after Christmas - I wasn't sure whether to review it. However, I also decided that I want to do a new series here on the blog where I do mini reviews of mini products. I actually try a lot of things in smaller-than-full size because I like to try things but don't often go through them, but it can be hard to give a full review when I don't necessarily have enough product to give a full test. Anyway, for my first foray into Mini Mini Reviews, I want to talk about all of these products after testing them for a few weeks.

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Every year during the holidays tarte releases a blush palette and I've always been tempted but I never pulled the trigger until this year. The Sephora Birthday Gift this year included an absolutely gorgeous tarte blush and I pretty much used nothing else on my cheeks for the last four months of 2017, so it was easy for me to decide to try out the TARTE Blush Bazaar Amazonian Clay Blush Palette when I ended up withe some gift cards I was itching to spend.

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With the holidays coming up, it always seems like there are a million choices on the market in the beauty category and brands seem to be stepping it up more and more to stand out. To me, Paul & Joe products always sort of stand out based on their adorable and entirely unique packaging, but I feel like the Paul & Joe Holiday 2017 Makeup Collection* goes above and beyond even their usual. 

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When it comes to drugstore priced holiday gift sets, I really think Hard Candy has always stood out as being interesting and different. I remember seeing their first advent calendars years ago, before everyone and their dog were doing an advent calendar, and I just thought it was brilliant. This year, however, the selection of holidays sets from the brand seems absolutely massive and ranges from $1.47 up to $19.97 with options at seemingly every point in between making for some great options for stocking stuffers and, specifically, gifts for teens. I was sent a few things to feature here, but I also bought a few of the sets myself because I was really curious about them and wanted to feature them in this post as well. 

To see some of the sets that Hard Candy has on offer this year and to enter to win a few of them for yourself, keep reading!

When it comes to holiday gift ideas, I like something a little bit different. When it comes to beauty gifts, I've actually been finding myself a little bit underwhelmed because everything is starting to feel a little bit the same. Recently, I got the chance to try out the Avon Beauty Boost Face Masks Set* and I instantly felt like this would be a great gift idea or stocking stuffer for someone in your life who loves skin care and beauty products. 

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I think I've becoming a little bit more disenchanted with holiday sets than I used to be. I used to go ham and put every single one on my wishlist, but that's not really the case anymore. In order to get me to want to spend my money, a holiday release either has to be a really great value set or it needs to be an incredibly interesting and unique product. The first one that really grabbed me this year and had me setting an in stock alert over on Sephora was the Smashbox Drawn In. Decked Out. Shadow + Highlight Palette Set. As soon as it was in stock, it was in my cart and ordered.

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I feel like the holiday sets started so early this year that a lot of them are already sold out and have been for a while. And by "I feel like...", what I actually mean is "I know that..." Admittedly, I'm not a huge fan of how it played out this year, considering we started seeing holiday sets before fall even fell, but I guess I don't personally have any say in the matter. All of that said, I do love holiday sets because I feel like they're usually a good value and they always get me excited to both give and receive. I did a LOT of theoretical online shopping and also read and watched a lot of reviews so that I could put together what I think this the ultimate makeup gift guide for this holiday season!

Keep reading to see what made the cut!

I thought about giving each of the categories of Skin Care, Hair Care, Bath & Body, and Fragrance their own posts, but I felt like that would only encourage me to get way too out of hand with my picks for each category so I streamlined everything and chose either things that I've tried or things that either have a phenomenal reputation or have been highly recommended to me by people I trust. Sounds good, right? So if you want to check out my picks for each of these categories, keep reading!

One of my favorite holiday sets for the past few years has been these little tins that BITE Beauty releases every year. Generally they're just under $30CAD ($25US) and contain 4 deluxe sized lip products from their line. This year's set is called The Perfect Bite and is available exclusively at Sephora. Unfortunately, I missed out on last year's set because by the time I decided I wanted to buy it, it was well and truly sold out, so I didn't hesitate this year and bought it pretty much the first day it was available to not VIB Rouge members on the Sephora website.

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Stocking stuffers are my absolute favorite thing to shop for. When I put together gifts for people, I rarely choose to pick up one large thing and instead go for a series of smaller gifts to make a kind of stocking. This is true for every occasion, really, especially birthdays. I feel like there's something a little more fun about getting a series of smaller gifts that are exciting rather than one big gift - like a little kid who feels like they have more money just because it's broken down into change rather than one bill. Anyway, this post was really fun for me to put together and I would love to get any of these products as a gift this holiday season.

Keep reading to take a look at the under $30 items that I chose!

At this time of year, it seems like everywhere you look in the online beauty space, there's amazing and beautiful gift sets. Of course, a lot of those gift sets are of the high end variety and, as beautiful as they are, it's hard to justify the purchase of all of the ones that we all want. Along with all of the high end goodies, there are actually a lot of great drug store holiday sets that just aren't easily attainable for us Canadian girls. It was with that in mind that I decided to do a little looking around and see what we do have. During a trip to Walmart earlier this week, I noticed that they really had some adorable sets from Hard Candy out on the shelves, so I decided to do a little bit of research and I found that there are a TON of kits out there from Hard Candy this year and I decided to share them.

(These are the Canadian sets at the Canadian prices, but I believe that they're pretty much the same in both price and packages at US Walmarts as well.)

Keep reading to take a look at what I was able to find online from Hard Candy at Walmart this holiday season!

So... Let's be honest... This post is basically an excuse for me to fantasy online shop for my own gifts, most of which I will not receive, but also an opportunity to make suggestions for those of you who might be picking up gifts for a beauty obsessed friend or family member this year. This really is the most wonderful time of year for us beauty lovers because companies far and wide are putting together their gift and value sets, usually expertly curated and greatly discounted. It's admittedly pretty hard to keep one's self from ordering them all for her hoardy little self. And by "one", I clearly mean me. 

So without further adieu, keep reading for a look at my picks for Palettes, Value Sets, and Stocking Stuffers. Just as a warning, some of the stocking stuffers might seem a little bit spendy, but I tried to keep them all small and $30 or under.

At this time of year, every cosmetics and skin care brand seems to be coming out with their various curated holiday sets and everyone goes pretty much mad with power over them. Can you blame us? For me, the company whose sets I was really looking forward to hearing about was definitely Bite Beauty. 2014 has been the year of Bite Beauty lip products for me and I was looking forward to a value set to soothe my inner lip product hoarder. So when I saw this set, which include 4 mini sizes of Bite's High Pigment Lip Pencils, it was pretty much a given that I was going to buy it - especially after I did the math and figured out what a genuine deal it is price wise.

Keep reading for a closer look and my review of the included products...