Coffee Break: Afterglow Liquid Blush Duo
This post may contain affiliate links and Corporette® may earn commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
This looks like a fabulous option in this year's NAS: two NARS liquid blushes, in two of their most popular colors, the shades Orgasm and Dolce Vita.
Orgasm is one of my longtime favorite blushes that I have in powder and The Multiple, and I believe I have Dolce Vita as a lip gloss and a lipstick. I have this liquid blush product in another color (Wanderlust), though, and really like the product — the dispenser, the buildable formula that wears well, and more.
(The colors look pretty dark on the model swatches, but it really is a very buildable formula… IMHO it would be pretty hard to screw this one up.)
They describe Orgasm as a “peachy pink with golden shimmer,” and Dolce Vita as a “dusty rose;” both colors are offered in a ton of NARS products. Additionally, if you spend $100 on NARS products, you get a lot of nice samples as a gift with purchase.
The duo is $44, only during the NAS.
Sales of note for 7/8/25:
- Nordstrom – The Anniversary Sale has started for all cardholders — stay tuned for our roundup!
- Amazon Prime Day! I just finished our full roundup — check out deals on hair tools from Shark and Dyson, leather jackets from All Saints, classic makeup like Black Honey, as well as deals from Lo & Sons, Rothy's, Theory (love this lady jacket), Levi's, Kate Spade (love these shoes, this tote, and lots of tech gear), Club Monaco, and Gap — full roundup here
- Ann Taylor – Semiannual sale, 30% off your purchase and extra 50% off sale styles
- Athleta – Last Chance Semi-Annual Sale – Up to 70% off + Extra 30% Off (cute gym bag!)
- Banana Republic Factory – July Fourth Event, 50-70% off everything + extra 25% off
- Boden – Final call sale, up to 60% off + extra 10%
- Eloquii – Flash sale, extra 60% off all sale
- J.Crew – End of season sale, up to extra 70% off sale styles with code
- J.Crew Factory – All-Star Sale, 40-70% off entire site and storewide and extra 60% off clearance
- M.M.LaFleur – Try code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
- Rothy's – Up to 50% off seasonal faves, plus new penny loafers and slingbacks
- Spanx – End of season sale, get an extra 30% off sale styles
- Talbots – 40% off your entire purchase, + free shipping on $150+
I was a high school kid who was told “you can do anything,” but I would have appreciated a run-down on how things work IRL if you opt for a high-level career (my family was teachers or government workers or farmers, so this was all new to us).
I went to law school. So can anyone who can fog a mirror (so you will get it to some school, somewhere). You should be able to pass the bar exam, but getting a job that will let you pay your loans off? It’s not a given. But you can decide where you work and take the bar exam where ever you want to.
My cousin went to med school. Getting in was very white-knuckle and she had to scramble for a medical-type McJob for a year while she re-applied. Then, she had some input on residency, but it was very scary for me to see that her location AND specialty essentially got picked for her. AND it mattered a ton because she was married and already had a kid in med school and was again pregnant by the time she found out, including that BigLaw maternity leave is nothing like what med students or residents get. It took day care + two sets of grandmothers to pull all that off, so it helped that they were in her husband’s city and close enough for my aunt to drive in to help also. Totally family effort. She got through it.
Without having seen this, I wouldn’t have believed it. Since we are first-generation to these types of professions, I am wondering what else we missed or how everyone (given the cast involved to support my cousin) could have seen this coming. If she had matched in a different time zone, she might have had to quit or IDK what to get through. And forget loans — if the family help hadn’t been free, she could not have afforded what paid help would have cost.
The truth is that this is one of the huge downsides of being first-gen anything: the lack of resources and connections to get the nitty-gritty details that you need to know. I’m not in law or medicine, but I am the first in my family to have a professional white-collar job. I was freaking clueless, and I sure didn’t have anybody to ask. The college mentoring programs were a joke, I’m sad to say.
Huh? This is weird … announcement(?)
No it isn’t. It’s a really important conversation about how the exposure level and background we grow up with influence our opportunities tremendously later on.
It’s worded like a journal entry rather than a conversation. I don’t understand how she thinks their experiences would have differed any if her mom had been a doctor.
Oh, wow. Think of the discussions you’d have at 8 and 12 and in high school and college and maybe not having to reapply to med school and knowing how specialties work. The shadowing. The everything.
I can use my imagination to brainstorm on this topic, sure, but none of that is in the post. Did her sister think med students get free childcare because her parents misled her or what?
I agree that to some extent you just figure out your profession, unless someone close to you has the same one. I’m not first generation, but my parents had zero knowledge of what the world of academic research is like because they have two if the thousands of other professional jobs. Would I have liked to know some things sooner? Of course. But that’s just the complicated world we live in.
It is very similar to my own experience, and I don’t have the paid help. Even though I got to director level before having babies, it’s very eye opening to see how expensive it is to be able to continue to work.
This is a very important conversation to have.
I relate to this a ton. My parents were teachers and most of my family didn’t go to college. I got straight A’s, perfect SAT score, and a full-ride to a tony boarding school. I got into my dream college, but I had no idea the career fields that would make you rich later on – finance, tech, etc. Meanwhile, peers whose parents were in those fields had them doing relevant internships at 18 and setting them for success. They understood what careers would position them well and how to get to those careers. I didn’t even know what those jobs were. Don’t even get me started on how MBAs and JDs from the Ivies cost six figures and how hard it is for a kid without parental help to make that work.
People don’t understand the barriers for even the highest achieving lower income kids at the best colleges.
Is being rich the goal?
It was depressing to me how many smart kids I knew in college went into finance/consulting instead of other fields where their brilliance could have been put towards better use.
This
I studied international relations in college and I was one of three students in my major who didn’t go into consulting or business. One became a corporate lawyer and me and one other work in the field.
I’m sure as heck not single-handedly saving the world, but I know my job is making a difference.
I mean, they may need to pay for school loans, so the high salary may be spent on paying those down. See the other “art is a luxury” post. For me, art can only be a hobby.
The goal for me wasn’t to be rich, but for a lot of poor kids, the reason for going to college is upward mobility. I wish I had had any sense of what white collar professions there were out there (including the helping ones) as it would have made things way more accessible.
I think some of this is inevitable, unless you go into the exact same field as your parents. And even then, things change over time. I had parents who were highly educated, and fairly affluent (college professors) but I’m sure they would have had no idea about the struggles of maternity leave during medical residency. My maternal grandfather was a doctor (and my maternal grandmother had an advanced degree and worked outside the home, which was so rare back then) but I think things changed so much between his day and mine I’m not sure he would have really been any help if I’d decided to go to medical school.
Good for your cousin for persevering. I had a cousin (on that side of the family) who also applied to medical school, didn’t get in anywhere and gave up – despite having a grandfather who was a doctor. Having parents (or grandparents) who can fund your education is a huge leg up, for sure, but I’m not sure how much they can really guide you about what the career path will look like or help you succeed in the field beyond easing financial stress.
I still feel K12 is falling short if teachers aren’t knowledgeable enough about the world to even convey a rough sense of what kinds of careers exist.
Most teachers don’t know much about the world besides teaching and I say that with respect for the profession. But like, they also went right from high school to a college education major that focused on handling the classroom. How would they know what other careers exist?
I’m confused by this – I’m also from a family of teachers, small business owners, and government employees (as in all of my grandparents and both of my parents and every single aunt and uncle are in one of those professions).
I followed the family into government, but many of my cousins gave big jobs in finance (i banking) or medicine. You have to go into these professions with your eyes open and do your research before you commit. If you don’t know to do your research then I don’t know if these fields are for you…
I think for a lot of us, for a lot of things, you don’t know what you don’t know.
People say to kids, you could be a lawyer or a doctor. That is true. But these fields are so wildly different. And being “smart” in high school is necessary but not sufficient. Not by half.
I relate to this in terms of gender norms. I was never into or good at the things girls are supposed to be good at. But “you can do anything!”. Cue the sh*tstorm when I actually did. Don’t tell your kids that if you don’t mean it.
Hindsight is always 20/20, and as a parent, you can only pass on what you know.
In my case, my mom didn’t really figure out what she wanted to do until I was in college, in part because she is old enough that she felt like her only options were to be a nurse, teacher, or secretary, none of which appealed to her. So she was big on me “following my dreams.” I got a BA from a SLAC but majored in art and tried to be an artist. I didn’t have a trust fund or anything, so always had a day job, and luckily that turned into a reasonably lucrative and fulfilling career in nonprofit arts work. But I am extremely lucky that my parents paid for my expensive degree and I didn’t have loans to worry about. Perhaps because I had a comfortable upper middle class childhood, I’ve never wanted to be rich rich, and don’t regret at all that I didn’t go into law, finance, or medicine. Actually even in my extended family, most people are engineers, teachers, or scientists. But I do wish I had understood what a luxury profession the arts are in general. It took me a long time to understand that many starting salaries in my chosen field were meant for people with trust funds, and that college teaching gigs mostly go to people who are already successful as artists.
All that to say – with my own son, the focus is a little less follow your dreams than find a career path you can live with that will support you in the manner you want to live, and don’t go into massive debt for education unless you are sure it is worth it.
I learned a lot of this stuff in college. I went to a prestigious school where it seemed like everyone had a parent in law, medicine, consulting, or finance. I picked up a ton of information from classmates that I wouldn’t have learned otherwise. This is why those DEI and economic diversity initiatives a few years back spurred the “Will Harvard still be Harvard” arguments. A big benefit of those schools is interacting with students who know “insider” information
Agree that so much of this is osmosis versus someone being direct. Sadly.
I wonder about this for schools for my kids. If they undershoot colleges in hopes of getting more aid, what are they giving up? Can they make up for it by working harder and being intentional? IDK. I hope so.
Part of this is that your cousin was a woman and didn’t put off having kids. For men, a LOT of guys in my BIL’s med school class already had a SAH wife or one in a profession she could easily leave and go back to (kindergarten teacher) later. For a woman in medicine, I agree that two grandmothers are needed, even with daycare. The working spouse no doubt steps in a lot, but with in person shift work and being in call, it takes a village for a woman to succeed on the same terms as a man. And no one will go out and say it to a kid in high school or college.
I was just thinking about this the other day. I lost out on an internal promotion when my boss retired. He had a very specific skill set that you can only learn by doing. I had done it but only a few times and only under supervision. I could have learned and gotten faster if given the opportunity to do it – but they hired someone who already has a lot of experience..
She got her experience when she spent 18 months as a volunteer (they provide food and housing but not much else) after she graduated from college. That was possible because she had no student loans, parents who could support her and keep her on their insurance, and who recognized the opportunity and encouraged her to take it (her grandfather was in our field). I saw the listing for that same position and did not even apply because I did not see the value in doing hard physical work in a remote location for no pay. She made the sacrifice and I did not – but that was largely because nobody in my life pointed out there would be long-term advantages. And my parents would not only not have supported that decision – they would have though I had lost my mind.
Generational wealth is not just money.
In my former BigLaw firm, you can have the career or a family but not both (unless you are a man or have a SAH spouse or cash flow for two nannies). No one says this, but everyone sees it. Pretty sure that no one ever put it this way in high school, college, or law school. I can remember in high school biology learning how Down syndrome risk got higher after 35 and wondering why on earth anyone would be doing that. FAFO is no way to go through life.
It’s interesting how cultural and family dependent it is. My parents basically told me I shouldn’t have kids before 30 or I’d disappoint them. I think I’m fourth (?) generation of women on my mom’s side having kids after 30 . My husband’s mom had both her kids after 40.
I mean if that is something that is important to you to avoid, prenatal testing exists.
Your cousin was extremely lucky.
You don’t even mention $$ so I suspect someone helped her pay for college, maybe med school too? So she was so lucky. I worry more about the doctors (and future lack of doctors) entering medical training now with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
Your cousin also had a child during med school, and again during residency. Almost no one does that. They put off their kids until they have more stability. She was so lucky she was married with a supportive spouse and family nearby. Almost no other med students have that.
Your post is so confusing to me. Your cousin had to know med school and residency was extremely demanding and few people have children during them?
I don’t know that you know how hard kids are until you have them. In our family, plenty of women have gone through nursing school as parents. Nursing school is hella hard. Throw kids and often being a single parent into the mix and IDK how they did it EXCEPT that they were all local to their parents and married / divorced local men, so plenty of local family who were very interested in their success. They needed support even once they were working due to shift work, school pickups, etc.
Nursing school is not medical school.
I think this is true for rural kids too. As in we may know lawyers, but I wouldn’t have known what BigLaw was other than tv. I think it’s unfortunate that many kids in those schools, particularly smart kids, will miss out on career fields that other kids are exposed to.
Yep, this – I never knew any lawyers growing up, only heard about caricatures of them as slimy ambulance chasers or corrupt politicians. Likewise, if you said “banking”, I’d have thought you were talking about a teller. Becoming a doctor seemed about as attainable as becoming an astronaut.
anyone else enjoying MAGA implode over Epstein? Hoping we’ll at least be able to get Bongino and/or Kash out but wtfdik.
Not really, the whole Epstein story is upsetting.
They don’t seem to be imploding, just inventing more new conspiracy theories
Exactly. As usual, Trump is teflon
Oh yeah. And I saw someone trying to float the newest conspiracy that they couldn’t find anything because the Biden administration destroyed the files. I don’t think that one is sticking though.
I have to laugh at how DJT keeps telling his followers to shut up about Epstein. I don’t really think it’s working.
Those Q following knuckle draggers thought Obama and Hillary were going to be on it, but instead I’d bet good money that the Cheeto is on every single page of it.
If Trump were on every page of it, the Biden administration would have nailed him for it. The Left threw everything it had at Trump; it didn’t throw Epstein, so it didn’t have Epstein.
Keep drinking that Kool Aid
Why would the Biden administration have exposed all the skeletons in their party’s closet just to go after Trump? Also, you know that “the Left” didn’t throw everything they had at Trump. DNC botched their own primary process twice.
Surviving the primary process and winning the general doesn’t mean that the other side didn’t do everything possible.
That’s basic logic, honey.
Are they actually imploding? I feel like the left is always saying this, but I live in a state that went for Trump by almost 20 points and no one here seems unhappy with the admin.
I thought the story about 2/3 of the lawyers in Trump’s Justice Department quitting was amazing. How can they possibly handle all the lawsuits? Love to see them flail.
wait, recently? that’s great.
Today there was a great article.
Does it even matter? Nothing will happen to any of them.
I am, but even more enjoyable for me as a New Yorker is watching the business world lose its mind about Mamdani. Every day, we are treated to new articles about desperate plans.
This is good for you why?
Because I do not support Cuomo or Adams and do not understand why so many people in the business community are losing their minds about Mamdani. Mamdani wasn’t my first pick due to his lack of experience, but I generally support his policies.
His policies of not wanting the police to get involved in DV?
You mean acknowledgments of how often women endure DV in order to avoid the risks of getting the police involved?
Yuh, because we might get Mamdani!
“stop bringing up Epstein!”
the lady doth protest too much, methinks
random vent: trying to organize dinner with two girlfriends and ready to strangle one of them. it’s 4:14 and she will not pick a f’ing place to eat, just keeps asking more questions. neither of the other of us care. just give me a town at least so i can figure out where to run errands. (we’re all about 30 minutes away from each other.)
“I made a reservation at [name]. If you’d rather go somewhere else, make a reservation and let me know where to meet you.”
Why don’t you just propose a plan or make a reservation?
i’ve proposed 3 places but the best place depends on where the other two are coming from and going to; i just have the dinner so i’m the most flexible.
anyway she finally picked one, thank goodness.
My sister is a little like this, if I’m understanding your story. She’s an optimizer, so for instance when we all have menus and are waiting to order, she will take forever dithering between different choices. Should I have the halibut or the chicken? Then when everyone says the halibut, she will order the chicken, and then call the waiter back to change her mind to an entirely different option.
She now reminds herself that “this is not the last time I will ever eat in a restaurant” and that has helped a lot.
So is your friend trying to find the perfect restaurant? Choose for her, and be firm.
If she won’t pick, then pick yourself. Problem solved?
Our group decided Place A is our default restaurant. If someone wants something else, they have to speak up by 3pm. Otherwise, we all accept that Place A is the location, and since our whole goal is to spend time together the venue is not the most important part of the equation.
My spouse and I do this, too. We have a default restaurant; if we want to go out but can’t decide, that’s where we go. If that doesn’t sound good, the person who doesn’t want to go there has to name an alternative location (or just admit we don’t really want to go out). This has cut down on SO MANY ARGUMENTS.
I love this idea and can’t believe I havent thought of it. –an Optimizer
My best friend and I have ended up with this solution by default. There is a restaurant we both like that is about half way between our two offices, so when we want to meet for lunch that is where we go unless someone says otherwise. I have another friend where we alternate between two places. We never really decided to do that explicitly, but now we know that if we had sushi last time, then it will be the fancy salad place next time lol.
does anyone have any good recipes for either lemon balm or preserved lemons? i love lemon and happen to have both the herb and some preserved lemons on hand from another recipe. thank you!
Fresh lemon balm makes a nice tisane/tea. It’s great before bedtime.
I’d look into Moroccan recipes for your preserved lemon.