Hi everyone! I'm on a post-Generation Beauty high and blogging up a storm this lovely long weekend in Toronto. The sun is out, all the windows are open, robins are hopping around and my cat is snoozing in the yard... and I'm blogging!

Real-talk time. I'm a former frugalista. Some of you may have followed me from my personal finance blog, househippo.org where I tracked my student loan repayments and my emergency fund growth, up until the winter of last year. I've taken a bit of a hiatus from that site for a few months, but as I've now started condo-hunting, the personal finance side of me keeps poking in and saying 'Danielle, can you REALLY afford that Too Faced palette? Do you NEED that Make Up For Ever Foundation?' So to keep myself grounded as I prepare to make the biggest purchase of my life, I'm going to highlight some of my favourite budget buys every week on the blog!

First up? Essence's All About Paradise Eyeshadow Palette.

A beautiful specimen from Essence's 'All About' series, this little $5 eyeshadow palette is a steal as it's nicely pigmented (as many Essence's eyeshadows are, how do they do it for the price!?) with some great colour pairings and, in combination with other products, decent staying power.

As you can see from mine this is a well-loved eyeshadow palette, especially the peach, champagne and yellow shadows.

The champagne colour is a good base but I find it's slightly cool on me so I don't wear it that often, but the yellow and peach are phenomenal together, and make a really lovely 'sunset' when combined with the magenta. The green is a bright jade, and the blue is a not-quite cobalt, that gets a bit muddy when mixed with other colours. It's a good shadow for under-the-eye looks though as it's really a nice deep blue.

To make sure these colours POP, I often use a NYX Milk eyeshadow pencil on the base of my lid (a trick I learned from Makeup Your Mind!) and it really helps these colours, the yellow especially, stay affixed all day long.

The one thing to keep in mind is that this IS A $5 PALETTE so it will have a bit of fall-out when applying, but it's 100% totally worth it. Basically I haven't met an Essence All About palette I didn't like and this one definitely gets used weekly in my rotation.

You can find this and other Essence products at Shoppers Drug Mart.

What's your favourite Essence palette? Let me know!