How I get beauty products delivered to my door for (mostly) FREE!

Let me start off by saying this - I am no beauty guru. But I am a girl who loves makeup and all things beauty. I love watching beauty guru's rave about this product or that one on their youtube channels, and I'm always on the hunt for the next perfect product that will change my life.

I'm also on a pretty tight budget. 

I was in the habit of going every once a month or so to CVS, Target, Ulta, or some other dangerous store with the intention of buying just one new product to try out - just for fun, just to try something new. 

I know, you're probably shaking your head, thinking "going into Target and leaving with one thing? Yeah, okay..." and you are exactly right. I usually would wind up walking out of there with more than one (or 5 or 10) new things, and having spent a pretty penny. That was not fitting into my 3rd year college student budget, to say the least. I wanted to be able to try good products, and not have to spend all of my money doing it. 

I began doing some research on ways to try samples for free, or to see if there was a good option for me as far as paid subscription boxes.. Here's what I've found!

This is an option that you may like, but wasn't my favorite. I've had a subscription to Birchbox in the past, and I will say there were some really cool products in there every once in a while (I got a BeautyBlender in one once. What??) But I found that after a while, I was basically getting the same products (perfume samples, lotions, self tanners) over and over again, even after I updated my account info (to basically - please send me makeup I'm begging), After my prepaid year-long subscription was up, I decided not to renew it, because spending $10 a month on tiny samples just didn't seem worth it to me. 

 This is now the only paid subscription box I have - Boxycharm. I LOVE this subscription. At $21 a month, it is definitely pricier than Birchbox, but that's because you get FULL SIZE PRODUCTS. The total retail value of every product in the box is usually over $120. This month, I recieved a full size eye shadow palette (with 20 different shadows), a mascara that is hands down the best one I have ever used, an eyeliner, and 3 eye shadow brushes. The mascara alone retails for $27, and I would have been happy if that was the only thing I got in the box! Here's a link if you want to check it out!

This next box I get randomly, usually once or twice a month. It's called PINCHme, and is completely free - all you have to do is create an account, fill out your membership profile so they can match you to samples, and on sample day (there's a countdown clock on the website) you log in, fill your box with 3 items, and you're done! After you receive your products and test them, you fill out a quick survey to tell them what you think! Check them out here!

And finally, my favorite one - Influenster's VoxBox. This box is also free, but requires a little more work. However, the payoff can be great, as they often feature products from brands like YSL, and can contain anything from 1 to 60 products, depending on the Box you win! Here's how it works: After creating an account, you fill out a profile. Then, you connect your social media accounts via your dashboard's Social Impact page to get an impact "score" based on the number of connections you have. Next, you answer some quick questions about your shopping behavior. Influenster runs many different campaigns, and Influensters can recieve free themed product shipments based on the info they provided by answering Snaps, Social Impact score, demographics, and sometimes - just plain luck! Here's a helpful tip for qualifying for VoxBoxes: stay active on the site by reviewing products and answering questions. Visit Influenster here to learn more!



Comment below if you've had any good (or bad) experiences with any of these boxes, or let me know if there's any not mentioned that you think I should check out!



DISCLAIMER: This post is not sponsored. These opinions are my own, and these are not affiliate links!

10 Things I wish I had known before I came to college

1. Always back your cell phone contacts up.

So this should be obvious right? Wrong! Most of us never even think about the chaos that will happen when your phone crashes on you. This is me telling you to think about the chaos! My 2nd week of college, in a different city, away from my parents, guess what happens? My phone crashes. Literally deletes everything, and I mean EVERYTHING off of it. Because when iPhones get too close to storage capacity, they do that apparently. So here I am, by myself, with every important contact I've ever had - including my entire family, previous employers, scholarship offices, friends from out of state, and friends from back home - just gone. Disappeared. Never coming back, despite the two and a half hours I spent at the Verizon store with the Verizon lady who said she could fix it and then couldn't. Out of all the 200+ contacts I had in my phone, the only two numbers I had memorized were my mom's and dad's, and only because they've had the same cell numbers since they first got them at the end of the dark ages. I don't even know my home phone number. (Don't judge, I've moved more times than I can remember). So yeah. Buy the apps that let you save everything to a cloud storage drive. Write the super important ones down someplace you can keep up with. Trust me, it might take a few minutes away from your busy life (or Netflix, because let's be real here...), but it is so worth avoiding the nightmare you'll have to deal with otherwise.

2. Go meet your professors. 

This is a big one. Sure, you can sit in the back of the classroom all the way through graduation and never establish a relationship with a professor and be just fine. But going up to your professors and introducing yourself, and going to see them during office hours gives you such a leg up. They can show you how you need to study for that class, help explain a question to you in person that you might not have gotten in class and didn't want to ask in front of 200 people. Plus they'll be more way more likely to help you out at the end of the semester when you are a fraction of a point away from the next letter grade, because they know the extra effort you've been putting into their class. Most of the time they want to meet you and get to know you. (They also write GREAT reference letters.)


3. Not all people know how to wash their own dishes or do their laundry.

Just go ahead and teach your roomies how to do it. They can't help that they were only children.


4. You don't have to have your books on the very first day of class. 

Or the first week. Or maybe even at all... And you ESPECIALLY don't have to buy them from the campus bookstore. Unless you just want to spend an extra couple hundred dollars. Shop around at local bookstores instead and online, and usually if you can wait a few weeks, you'll probably find much better deals.


5. Living with people who aren't your family is hard. Like REALLY hard.

You're going to have to make sacrifices, and have to learn to let things go. To them, leaving that plate on the kitchen counter for a week might be no big deal because that's what they do at their house. Establish rules for your shared space in your dorm room or apartment as soon as you move in. It might seem silly, and some things might just seem like common sense, but trust me - you're going to have issues down the road if you don't.


6. Your mom is your lifeline. 

Seriously. Call her more often. You might just find that she actually knows what she's talking about, and has some rock solid advice and wisdom for you.


7. The sooner you get involved on campus, the better your college experience will be.

I waited to get involved. My mentality was that I wanted to just focus on school. And while school is important (DUH! It's why you're here in the first place), being involved is JUST as important. I felt so left out my freshman year, because everyone I knew was super involved in something and making all of these friends, and I barely knew anyone. I seriously missed out. I joined a student organization the next year and met some incredible people, but I really regret not doing it sooner, because I missed out on tons of friendships.


8. Take it easy with the Netflix.

Netflix is incredible. We all know that. But it is so easy to start a series, and then the next thing you know you look up and it's next week, and you haven't even looked at your textbook for that exam you have tomorrow. Set up a system. For every 45 minutes of Netflix (aka, one episode of Grey's Anatomy), study for 45 minutes. Research says that studying in 30-60 minute increments is the most beneficial to you, with 30-60 minute breaks in between.


9. Making new friends is hard. 

Everyone makes it seem like coming to college and making all of these new lifelong forever friends is the easiest thing in the world, and people are just walking around begging you to be friends. That's so not true. It's really hard to go up to a random person and try to become friends with them. But don't be afraid to try. Ask the girl sitting next to you in your history class if she wants to go get Starbucks. Or lunch. Or whatever. Just put yourself out there, and see what happens. (The first week of class is like the golden week of friendship making. Everyone talks to everyone and people are way more likely to go to a lunch with some random person. Take advantage of this week and make lots of friends.)


10. Its okay to feel overwhelmed.

College is hard. And for a control freak like me, when things don't go exactly as planned (they almost never do) it's easy to get stressed out and not see the big picture. Here's the big picture - college is more than just the grades you make or how many friends you have or the number of different organizations you're involved in. It's about life choices. It's about learning how to be an adult, taking care of yourself, and preparing for your future. It's about preparing for success, but also learning how to handle failures. It's about finding out what you like and don't like, and what your beliefs are. It's about learning to balance responsibilities with fun, and sometimes it's just about just getting through.

Its a New Day

So I have finally succumbed to the pressure society puts on all of us "millennial" children to embrace the advancement of technology and talk about all the details of our super technologically advanced and otherwise super exciting lives...

 Hah! Just kidding! I just wanted somewhere to talk about all of my new-found wisdom I've gained from being a clueless and broke college kid, and post all of the dorm room friendly recipes I've learned to make and the DIY projects I love doing when I'm feeling crafty. Because let's face it, that's what blogging is about right? Food and DIY projects?

But for this first blog I'm just going to take the time to introduce myself to the maybe 3 people who will actually read this. My name is Ashley. I love Jesus and Auburn. And that pretty much sums everything up...

We believe in Auburn and love it!

Seriously though, I'm from a little town in Alabama called Eclectic, which has a total population of 1,012 people and exactly one stoplight. It's one of those "blink and you'll miss it" kinds of places that country singers write about all of the time. It's also one of my absolute favorite places in the entire world. I have an awesome family and some of the greatest friends you could ever ask for, and a super cool boyfriend (of one year... eeek!! <3 ) who takes me on all sorts of weird adventures. I like colorful prints and antiques and I think yard sales are the best sales.

This blog is about my adventures through college, and what I learn along the way...