You realize in life, you make time for the things that are important, even where there’s no time. Generally when it comes to New York Fashion Week there’s no getting ahold of me — literally it’s the 2 week span my friends and family know not to call or text because I’m completely unavailable. Well right before the designers hit the runway, I was forwarded an email from the non-profit, Family-to-Family, which was working on a special drive in honor of Valentine’s Day, collecting unused cosmetics to help distribute them to women in homeless shelters on the 14th. 
And just like that, I contacted them to help with their efforts and unite some of my friends in the beauty blogger/online community to organize a drive for NYC. With less then a week to put everything together, I sent out an email to the group (all of which we’re just as insane as I was with fashion week) and somehow, between this amazing chain of ladies, a ticking clock and pounds of unused products clogging up our apartments and offices, we were able to collect over 500 products to hopefully make it a happy Valentine’s Day to the women on the receiving end. 
Of course I love fashion week, it’s been a priority every February and September for the last decade and yet in the face of all the momentum and good that was coming together by this team work, I was missing shows left and right, or squeezing in pickups (in my heels no less!) in between events. Truth be told, I’ve been trying to do a drive like this for a while, with the amount of events beauty writers go to, especially in NYC, it’s incredibly wasteful how much we accumulate. And while living in a Sephora sounds like a dream, it is until it’s a reality! And at this stage of our careers, there’s no use hording because as long as your blogging, products will be coming in faster then they can be used. And considering how sustainable I try to be, this partnership was amazing on so many levels!
I know there were so many that wanted to participate but couldn’t because of the timing and weather, so I look forward to doing so many more of these in the future and on an even larger scale! A MAJOR thank you to, Birchbox, StyleCaster, Eye4Style, Style IT, A Little Alytude, Rouge 18, Fashion Pulse, Mom Trends, Pamela Pekerman, BeautySweetSpot, BeautyNewsNYC, Caravan Stylist Studios and especially my Pretty Connected teammate, Teresa Tomato who kept me sane and helped me do pick ups and carry all of these boxes to my apartment. You ladies rock! My boyfriend also deserves a special shout out for living in a box filled apartment which bled into our hallway (which in this case is a sign of success!) We did so good!
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!