Wish list: Makeup Geek

  
Z-Palette  //  Shark Bait  //  Ocean Breeze  // 

Unexpected  //  Burlesque  //  Fairytale  //  Unicorn 
Cosmopolitan  //  Crème Brulee  //  Latte  //  Mocha

For some reason, even though I have a lot of eyeshadow palettes, I have the urge to build my own. I was thinking about MAC, but after reading Lilit from Makeup and Macaroons' review on these eyeshadows, it seemed silly to spend all that money on MAC when I could buy Makeup Geek for a fraction of the price! Makeup Geek's eyeshadows are $5.99, compared to MAC's ridiculous $26 for a pro-pan refill, or $33 for a single shadow (which makes the $80 it costs to buy a Naked palette here actually seem reasonable!)

After browsing the Makeup Geek website, and variousblog posts with swatches, it was really hard to narrow it down. It's not possible. They're so cheap that it seems almost silly to just get a few. Instead, I would really like to get a large Z-palette (ideally the pink one), so I can have up to 27 shadows. Or even a medium one would do. Seem excessive? Not for $5.99 a pop! These shadows are at the top of my wish list, but they also do a eyeshadow starter kit ($49.99, you save about $4), which includes some of these shadows, along with a few more that would make my palette perfect.

Greens are something I'm new to. I don't have any, and I've never used them, but Makeup Geek sure have some beauties! If I could get them all, I would, but that would be silly. To start off I would love a beautiful turquoise like Shark Bait, and a deeper sea green like Ocean Breeze would be pretty to use with it. Makes me think of mermaids and tropical islands.

As for pinks, Unexpected is a lovely matte dusty pink shade, which looks quite similar to Nooner from the Naked 3 palette, but possibly even nicer. Burlesque is a shimmery plum colour, quite similar to MAC Cranberry, which is something I already own. But hey, it's pretty!
Purples are another colour that I own a fair few shadows of, but am yet to find the perfect ones. Fairytale is a dusty matte violet shade, which would go with a whole range of looks, but also look really pretty with Unicorn. Or Burlesque's purple cousin Drama Queen.

Expensive Pink is a MAC shadow that I've had my eye on for a while, but Cosmopolitan is a pretty great dupe. It would look lovely layered over Crème Brulee, the first of the neutral matte shadows on my wish list. I have a lot of neutrals, but not a lot of decent matte neutrals. Together with Latte and Mocha (great shade names, don't you think?!), you could create a gorgeous neutral matte look.

Have you tried Makeup Geek shadows before? What do you think of them?

iHerb haul ft. Real Techniques and e.l.f.

Over the past year or so, my makeup collection has really grown. It's huge, considering towards the end of 2012 I was only just starting to get into wearing makeup. Now I have eyeshadow palettes, blush and lipsticks all over the place. One part of my collection that hasn't grown that much though, is my brushes. I only have a handful of them, and of that handful, only a couple are actually decent quality. Where do you go to for affordable good quality brushes? iHerb, of course!

I ordered the Real Techniques starter set and blush brush, which have both been on my wish list for a while now, but also decided to pick up some e.l.f. brushes too. I chose the stipple brush and powder brush, so I had some face brushes to leave at the boy's house.

 

 deluxe blending brush, base shadow brush, accent brush, liner brush and eyebrow brush

The Real Techniques starter set is pretty great! I'm a huge fan of the deluxe blending brush, it really makes blending eyeshadows a dream, and it's lovely and soft. The base shadow brush is a little too big and flexible to really pack on eyeshadow. However, I find the shape is great to use in the outer corner to add a darker colour and start blending it out. I haven't found myself using the accent brush much, except to smudge out eyeliner on both top and bottom lashes, which it's great for. The liner brush is great for gel liner, although I haven't perfected using it to create a winged liner look. Lastly the eyebrow brush is great for brows, but think perhaps it's a little big.

Blush Brush, Stipple Brush, Powder Brush

On to the face brushes, the Real Techniques blush brush is fantastic for blush! It's so much bigger than the brush I was previously using, which I thought might mean it would be harder to use, but nope! It's not. It's so soft, but still fantastic and blending.
These 2 e.l.f brushes were a bit of a spur of the moment choice. I did a little bit of research into the stipple brush, after I got it, and found that the mini stipple brush is way better than this one. This stipple brush is way less dense than my RT one. It sheds, and you really have to work to make sure your foundation doesn't end up looking streaky. It is soft however, and is great around the eye area.

The powder brush is fantastic, dense and soft. It's great for using with powder foundation, or setting your foundation with powder. Although I haven't used it for liquid foundation, I think this brush would work for liquid too. It's dense enough that it could be used to buff it in.

l-r: Powder Brush, Stipple Brush, Blush Brush

What are your favourite brushes?

Ulta3 nail colour review: Block it Out, Strawberry Sundae and Palette Play

Ulta3 polishes. They're a cult product in Australia. $2, fantastic shades, and great quality. I used to find my way to a bin at least weekly to dig through the polishes and find a new gem. Some of my favourite polishes are Ulta3 - Earl Grey, Watermelon, and Lollypop Lilac. So when I was looking through a bin recently and saw they were buy one, get one free, I couldn't say no. I ended up with Block it Out, Strawberry Sundae, and Palette Play. It was a hard choice, I had some pastels in my hands, but these bright colours caught my eye. My mum got a clear polish, which is why I only got 3.

Unfortunatley, these 3 polishes were a little bit of a letdown. They're just not up to the standard I expect with Ulta3. For $2 (or even the $2.50 that this shop sold them for) they're not bad, but they're not as good as other polishes I have from the brand. I heard some bloggers were unhappy when Ulta3 started making their polish in the PRC and the quality changed, but my bottle of Earl Grey was made in the PRC and I never had a problem with it. Now I can kind of understand the annoyance.

Block it Out is probably my favourite of the 3, even though blue is not my go to shade with nail polish. The quality is the best. It applies more evenly and more opaque than the others, and you could even get away with 1 coat. It's a deep blue with a kind of shimmer finish, not really noticeable until you look closely though.

Strawberry Sundae is the next best polish in terms of quality. It applies a little bit streaky, but is opaque in 2 coats. It's a bright pink, and I think a little too fluro to coin the name Strawberry Sundae, which I was a little dissapointed about.

Lastly, Palette Play, a dark 'violet crumble' purple. This was the polish I was least impressed by, taking 3 coats to apply evenly. Maybe it was because I didn't shake the bottle though, because after I did it applied a little bit better, but it wasn't fantastic. I'm not sure where the name Palette Play comes from though...

They didn't last very long on my nails, and all chipped within a day. However, you can tell how bad my nails are in the photos below, so it's pretty common to get chipping so soon even with more expensive nail polish. The quality isn't bad enough to stop me buying Ulta3 polish, and my local chemist just put up a really awesome Ulta3 nail polish display, which was completely untouched and had all their polishes on it. I'm not going to lie, it was kind of like Christmas. Hopefully it stays that stocked so I can attack it myself when I get some money, haha.

Excuse how horribly I applied these!

What do you think of Ulta3 polishes? What's your favourite colour?

My life in pictures #10

1. There's a little diner in Moss Vale that I love to stop at when visiting my grandparents. They've got great burgers, but they also have a damn good pecan pie! It was a huge slice too.

2. I've been giving my KitchenAid a bit of a workout recently, baking lots. It really does make great cakes, and makes baking so much easier.

3. My friend got a job at Guerlain recently and is learning how to do makeup. I got to be the one she practiced on, yay! It was fun and she did a fantastic job.

4. On the way to finding some snow, we stopped at Adaminaby to have a look at the big trout.

5. The boy bought me a giant cupcake tin, and here is what I made. Delish.

6. Puppies. I love them.

7. Finally got to go skiing for the first time this season! Was such a fantastic day, blue skies until around 2pm, lots of great snow, and it was so warm! Brilliant. Can't wait to go again.

8. I've got a lot of free time at the moment, so what do I do? Make a trio of pancakes. Plain with maple syrup and bacon, choc chip with cherry coulis, and raspberry with mango, lemon and sugar. So good.

Lime Crime: Mint to Be and Poisonberry!

Ever since I decided I was going to buy my first Lime Crime lipstick, Poisonberry was at the top of my list. I'm a huge fan of dark purple lipstick, so it had to be mine. Unfortunately it was out of stock everywhere when I made my first order, so I had to skip it. Until late one night, I was searching the web I happened to come across it on Princess Polly. I found a promo code to get $10 off, so I decided to buy Mint to Be as well!

Wish list: More than just makeup

Clinique Extra Mild Liquid Face Soap $29   //    The Body Shop Aloe Eye Defence $26.95

Benefit Total Moisture Facial Cream $42   //   Toni and Guy Casual Rough Texturiser $15.99 

   Toni And Guy Classic Wave Memoriser $15.99  //  Toni and Guy Cleanse Dry shampoo $15.99

I've never really paid much attention to my skin or hair before. Just bought basic products and left it at that. Now that I'm using make up regularly, I need to put more effort into skincare. I usually just use face wipes, but am thinking I need something more. The Liquid Facial Soap in extra-mild from the Clinique 3 Step Kit seems like a fantastic cleanser, especially for my sensitive skin. I get really dry skin around my eyes, so a hydrating eye cream is definitely in order. I've tried and liked other items from the Body Shop Aloe line, so this would be great. As for a good moisturiser, Benefit's Total Moisture Facial Cream is pretty fantastic. I've tried a sample size, and it lasted for ages and I really did love how much it moisturised my skin. The only thing that's stopped me buying it is how expensive it is here ($57!!), and how much I would need to spend to get free shipping from the Benefit's US website.

As for my hair,  I dye it regularly, so the ends are pretty frayed. Other than shampoo and conditioner you can get at Coles and the like, I've only ever used dry shampoo and leave-in conditioners on it. I've started using coconut oil weekly, and paying more attention to what shampoo and conditioner I use, and how my hair reacts to it.  Thanks to Sarah from More than Adored, who continually says good things about Toni and Guy (specifically this and this post) a bunch of Toni and Guy products are making their way onto my wish list this week! When my hair is straightened it can look a bit limp and lifeless, and I think a texturising spray like the T&G Casual Rough Texturiser spray would help add some volume to it. As for when it's curly, sometimes it can get a bit out of control. I'm hoping the Classic Wave Memoriser can define my curls and keep them looking perfect. Lastly, I always have problems with dry shampoo leaving white residue in my darker hair, and I can never brush it out properly. I hear the Cleanse Dry Shampoo is a winner, not leaving any white powder in your hair.

Food Friday: Raspberry and Rosewater Pink Velvet Marshmallow cupcake cake

For my birthday last week my mum got me a new cookbook. She told me she was going to get it for me, and I told her not to bother. I get most of my recipes on the internet now, and we have so many other cookbooks that it seems silly to buy more. She got it anyway, and I'm actually really happy with it! It's a cookbook called Indulgent Cakes by Women's Weekly, and it's full of so many awesome cake recipes. This is the first recipe I've tried, I've also made a lemon and blackberry cake (which I put blueberries in, because I read blueberries instead of blackberries, haha) and a cookies and cream cake. I only got to try the batter of both of those as I made them for my parents' work morning teas, but the batter tasted delicious!

This recipe caught my eye, marshmallow icing is something I've wanted to try for a while now. The cake recipe is also something different. The boy bought me this cake tin yesterday, and I thought this recipe would be perfect to try it out with. Nope. Wrong.

The cake tin is super difficult to use. It cooks the cake unevenly, the base took half an hour longer than the top to cook, meaning I had to awkwardly take the top out of the tin and leave the base in. It made a super dense cake too, I think because the outside of the cake was overcooked. I would seriously recommend using normal cake tins, or testing out your giant cupcake cake tin on a bog standard buttercake mix, or a packet mix. Knowing your oven is also important!!

Raspberry and Rosewater Pink Velvet Marshmallow Cake

What you need...

Cake

250g butter (room temp)

6 egg whites (room temp!)

1 tsp vanilla essence

2 cups sugar

2 1/2 cups self raising flour (recipe says plain, I used self raising without realising)

1 cup buttermilk (or a milk and yoghurt mix)

2 tsp bicarb soda 

2 tsp white vinegar

3 tsp rose pink food colouring (or less red food colouring)

Raspberry cream
1/2 cup raspberries

200ml whipping/thickened cream

Rosewater marshmallow

1/2 cup caster sugar

1 1/2 tsp glucose syrup

1 tbsp water

2 tsp rosewater
1 tsp red or pink food colouring

2 egg whites

How to...
Cake:
Step 1 // Preheat oven to 180˚c if you're using 2 round tins, 160˚c if you're using a cupcake cake tin (160˚c /140˚c fan forced. Line cake tins if you're using round tins, or grease cupcake tin. Seriously, even if the box says it wont need greasing. It will.)

Step 2 // Beat butter in a large bowl with hand or stand mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg whites, flour, vanilla, sugar and buttermilk and mix on low speed until combined. It's super important that the eggs and butter are at room temperature or the butter won't mix in properly, especially if you add cold egg whites. I added the egg whites first and beat them until they'd risen a bit, but the recipe doesn't say to do this.
Step 3 // In a small bowl, combine vinegar and pink food colouring. Add bicarb soda, stir, then add to cake batter. Beat on slow speed until combined, then beat on medium speed for up to 2 minutes, or until the mixture turns a paler colour. 

Step 4 // Divide the mix between 2 cake tins, or between the base and the top of the cupcake cake tin. Bake for 45 minutes if you're using 2 round cake tins. A giant cupcake cake tin will take longer, so check after 45 minutes and keep adding 5-10 minutes until cooked.

Raspberry Cream:
Add cream to small bowl and beat with hand beaters. Once thick enough, add raspberries. Place in fridge till needed.

Rosewater Marshmallow: Don't start this until the cake is ready to be iced. This icing needs to go on straight away.
Step 1 // Add sugar, glucose, water, rosewater essence, and dye into a small saucepan and heat on low until it reaches 115˚c on a sugar thermometer. They're pretty cheap, but if you don't have one, get a small bowl of cold water, and after about 3-4 minutes drop a small amount of the syrup in. Once it starts balling up, it's at soft ball stage and it's ready. Leave aside while it stops bubbling.
Step 2 // Whisk egg whites until they reach soft peaks. Then, SLOWLY pour in your sugar syrup. If you do it too fast, it won't work and will look like it's split. A stand mixer is the easiest way to do this, otherwise get a someone else to hold the mixer while you pour. Beware, it gets messy and it's a pain to clean up!
Step 3 // Ice the cake and serve! I wouldn't recommend piping it, it knocks a lot of the air out of the icing.

Top tips: Does the marshmallow icing sound too tricky? You could make a basic butter icing and add crushed meringue nests to it. Or melt marshmallows and drizzle them on top of the cake. Or if you can find it, buy some Fluff!!

June Favourites!

Well, June went fast! And it got cold, which is super exciting because I can finally pull out my scarf and coat for the first time since I was in Copenhagen. Yay for a second winter! It also means it's finally snowing on the ski fields of NSW, so the boy and I will be heading up for the day on Monday! Exciting times! Especially because it will be the 3rd country we've skied in this year! Anyway, I kept to a pretty boring routine this month with my make up, but it meant I have some clear favourites...

This month it's been all about the eyes. I've put way more effort into doing my brows this month with the help of Maybelline Master Shape brow pencil in Soft Brown. I find the spooly on the end is something I reach for regardless of what product I'm using, and I end up touching them up with the pencil anyway. I talked about the Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette earlier this week, but I had to mention it again in this post! I've seriously reached for it almost every day this month. As for mascara, I had a hard time saying goodbye to my Covergirl Clump Crusher mascara. It's been too long, it needs to be chucked in the bin. I didn't want to buy the same mascara again, and I haven't seen Covergirl mascaras on sale yet, so I've been trying to make the most of the Rimmel mascaras I've recently opened. They're fantastic for when I want a dramatic look, but not so good for every day, especially for work. I picked up the Maybelline The Collosal Volum' Express Cat Eye mascara last month when it was half price at a local chemist. Apart from having one of the longest names in history, it's actually a pretty fantastic mascara. It's doesn't do much for volume, but it's pretty good for length. If you want drama, go for something else. If you want an every day mascara, this is your guy. It's also easy to remove, which is also a plus for an every day mascara.

I recently decided to hop on the Lime Crime train. And I'm so glad I did. This month I have almost exclusively worn Lime Crime Airborne Unicorn on my lips. I love the other colours I've ordered, and I'll give props to Poisonberry for being absolutely fantastic, but Airborne Unicorn is such a wearable purple.

My go to for skincare this month has surprisingly been good old Redwin Sorbolene. I've been using this as a moisturiser since I was a kid, and it's great, especially because it's so cheap. Not only is it good for an all over body and face moisturiser, it's a great shaving cream, and what I've recently discovered is it's a pretty good make up remover too! My skin is dry, and I never have problem with oil or blemishes, so I don't find I need anything else for my face. It's not fantastic with waterproof mascara or eyeliner, but it will take off my regular every day make up just fine!

Props to: Australis 10hr waterproof eye pencil in bombastic bronze for being a great every day brown eyeliner, Essence I love Punk jumbo eyeliner pen for making good winged liner, Real Techniques starter kit for stepping up to replace my one double ended eyeshadow brush and doing a damn fine job too, and Haribo gummy bears for being delicious.

Do you love any of these products? What have you been loving this month?

Review: Too Faced Chocolate Bar Palette

It's been a long time since I first laid eyes on this palette and thought "that needs to be mine!". I waited, as it was out of stock everywhere, and then finally Beauty Bay had it in stock, and on sale!. I snapped it up as soon as I could afford it, and within 2 weeks it arrived on my doorstep. Literally, Australia Post, or whoever delivered this particular parcel and my first Lime Crime parcel, just left them on my door step.

After weeks of anticipation, it was so exciting to open the parcel, even more than usual. No only do the beautiful selection of shadows appeal to me, but the palette is in the shape of a freaking chocolate bar! I love chocolate! The smell when I first opened it was delicious! Something I've come to love when doing my make up every day. Granted the smell goes away soon after you open the palette (unsure if that's your brain getting used to the smell, much like soon after you walk into a cafe you can no longer smell coffee, or at least that happens when you work in one. Or if the scent isn't that strong). The packaging is a little less sturdy that I thought it would be. If I was traveling with it I would probably want to wrap a hair-tie around it to keep it closed as the clasp isn't very strong. The lid also flops right over, rather than sticking up like my Naked 3 palette, but that's not really a big deal, just me being picky.

On to the shadows! It contains a mix of shimmers, glitters and matte shades, with enough variety to create a wide range of looks. You also get a 'glamour guide' with 3 looks in it to start you off. There are 2 large highlight shades, a matte and a shimmer, which I think is fantastic as they're usually the first shades to go in a palette. White Chocolate is perfect for the brow bone and Champagne Truffle is perfect for an inner corner highlight.

As for the rest, the matte shades are the let down, as always. They're not very pigmented, and really need work, and a primer, to get anywhere with. The glitter shades are a bit better, but I find the glitter doesn't really show up on the eye, which is probably a good thing, and they end up looking more like a matte shadow. Lastly, the shimmer shadows, are the star of the palette. They're super pigmented and really fantastic to blend. All the shadows in this palette can be a bit powdery (as you can see in the top highlight shade in the photo above) and a little bit of care is needed to make sure you don't apply too much, or make a mess of your palette. However, this is less of a problem than it would normally be, as the shadows are so good to blend, you can blend it out for a perfect look. Seriously, I can't even say how great these are for blending. I would even go as far as saying they're better than my Naked 3. Yep, I went there.

Semi-sweet also seems to be a fantastic eyebrow shade for me! So if I find I don't use it too much on my eyes, it'll always get used on my brows.

Top Row (l-r) Guilded Ganache, White Chocolate , Milk Chocolate, Black Forrest Truffle, Triple Fudge

Middle Row (l-r) Salted Caramel, Marzipan, Semi-Sweet, Strawberry Bon-Bon, Candied Violet, Amaretto

Bottom Row (l-r): Hazelnut, Creme Brulee, Haute Chocoalte, Cherry Coridal, Champagne Truffle

I'm really chuffed about this purchase. Before, I had my eye on another Naked palette as well, but I think this is a much better palette, as it's way more diverse. I'm quite content with eyeshadow palettes now, so it'll take a really good new release (Ok, or the Chi Chi Elegant palette, whatever) to put another palette on my wish list.

Have you got the Chocolate Bar palette? What do you think of it?

What's your favourite palette?

My Life in Pictures #9

As you can see, basically the last 2 weeks revolved around food. It was really nice spending a lot of time catching up with friends, and it especially made up for the cold weather! The next few weeks will be a little quieter, spent inside job hunting. Hopefully I'll manage to fit in a day to the snow to do a bit of skiing though. The last few weeks I found a photo app that lets me upload portrait photos to instagram, which is a huge help as my new Sony Xperia phone has a really short lens compared to the iphone.

The photo a day project I was involved in this month is coming to again, and I'm really considering going for another month. Some days it's tough to come up with something, but most of the time I'm super proud of my photos, and end up taking a photo of something I would have photographed anyway. I'm also less afraid of taking photos in public now, no fear of taking photos of pretty flowers in peoples front yards, or of a particularly good looking meal.

1. Having tea at Adore tea with friends. The cup said "One may forgive a murder - but a blunder in tea making, never". Also the tea was creme brule flavour, delicious!

2. After my job interview a few weeks ago, I decided to treat myself to some froyo. It was excellent. Chocolate, red velvet and raspberry tart ice cream, with cookie dough, cheesecake, mango, lychee and blueberry bursts, coulis, coconut and milo.

3. Trying out Lime Crime Mint to Be. I'm surprised how much I love this green shade, I think it's going to be amazing for summer.

4. While walking the dog I came across some daffodils! It's quite early to see daffodils about, but I'm not complaining, they're my favourite!

5. While my mum was gardening last weekend she found a frog hiding underneath a pot plant! Crazy!

6. For my birthday I made a pumpkin pie, and oh my it was delicious! You can also see the flowers the boy got me in the background... daffodils and roses.

7. I took this picture of Sadie while walking the dogs, for the #fmsphotoaday challenge. The prompt was sunflare. 

8. My friend and I went out to dinner to the restaurant where the boy works. needless to say I got the plate with the love heart on it :) It was a baileys creme brule with caramelised fig ice cream and berry coulis. So delicious!

You can follow my instagram here, otherwise my username is @Klerr.

Food Friday: Pumpkin and Ricotta Ravioli

One of my favourite foods in Autumn and Winter is pumpkin. I love when your garden gets overgrown with a huge pumpkin plant (unfortunately mine never has, but the boy's backyard did a few years ago and it was fantastic!). I find plain roast pumpkin to be pretty boring, I like to spice it up a bit! As well as making a pie from this pumpkin, I wanted to try making some pasta. Just having it in the sauce wasn't enough, so I gave ravioli a go for the first time. Not only was it my first time making ravioli, I've never made pasta without the help of someone else before, and it turned out perfect! Yay! This is a long recipe, but it's really delicious!

Battle of the Budget Liquid Liner, ft. Rimmel, Essence and Australis!

Essence I Love Punk jumbo eyeliner pen ($4.50), Rimmel Scandaleyes Precision Micro eyeliner ($10.76),  Australis Tiny Tip eyeliner ($12.95)

I'm a big fan of liquid liner. For me, it's the easiest way to get a good winged liner look.  I would prefer gel, as it always seems to last longer, but it's easier for me to use a pen. I had a good thing going with the Covergirl Line Exact liquid liner, but it ran out while I was in England. And they don't sell Covergirl there. So I decided to try something new, and I ended up walking out of Boots with the Rimmel Scandaleyes precision Micro Liner after testing just about every single pen eyeliner in the shop. Since then decided I needed a thicker one and ended up at the Essence stand, and I managed to win an Australis liquid eyeliner in a twitter comp.

What I wore: Winter Daisies

I wore this last week when I had a job interview in a clothing store (didn't work out by the way, boo!). I bought this dress back when it was warm, just after I got home from England. I only got a few wears out of it in the warmer weather, it shrunk a little in the wash so it was a little too short for me to wear without tights. But now it's winter, I can chuck a pair of tights on underneath and a cardigan on and it's perfect. Because this dress is very neutral, I can really go out there with colours for everything else, and I love coloured cardigans and tights. Kmart have a bunch of pink and purple tights at the moment for only $3. I may have gone a little crazy and bought at least one pair of each colour. So far no holes, so I'm pretty happy! You can also see my tattoos through them, which I love. As for the cardigan, both Cotton On and SES had a bunch of coloured cardigans last Autum/Winter, but I haven't seen them this year. Modcloth have a bunch of rad coloured cardigans, but are a little more expensive.

Wish list: Birthday!

This was going to be a wish list for winter, but then I remembered something special that was coming up soon.. My birthday!! I turn big ol' 23 on Tuesday, so can no longer sing 'I'm feeling 22. Poo. It's a bit of a meh birthday to be honest. I'm not doing anything exciting, just going out to dinner with friends, family and the boy. I mean, last year I spent my birthday in Paris (well, traveling to Paris, we didn't get there until late afternoon), so you can't really top that. So here's a bunch of things I'd love for/to wear for my birthday. Even though there's only 1 thing I could actually get by my birthday, haha.

Redwood Black Therapy Shoes c/o FSW $45.99  //  MAC Bloody Brillant Eyeshadow $44US 

MAC Pure Heroine $36  //  Benefit They're Real Push-Up liner $24US

Lime Crime Babette $18US  //  Asos Faux Pearl Triangle Swing Earrings $9.80
All Bands on Deck dress $54.99

It's almost the end of June and I still don't have a good pair of winter boots! I guess it's because it hasn't actually been all that cold. I've have started having a look at boots, and I kinda like these! I've always hated boots with an elastic side like this, they remind me of the boots I had to wear horse riding as a kid which I thought were butt ugly. I haven't been able to fork out money for a new pair of boots yet, but hopefully I can get these soon, especially because they're not pricey at all.
Of course I've managed to find myself wanting items that we can't get in Australia yet. I saw this eyeshadow palette in a pixiwoo video the other day and loved it! I've heard mostly bad things about MAC eyeshadow quads, that they're shadows aren't as good as the single shadows. I don't care. It's pretty! As for Pure Heroine, I'm all about purples! After getting Lime Crime Airborne Unicorn, and then Poisonberry, I'm still after more purples! The darker the better.
I've heard about a thousand good things about this Benefit eyeliner! I have a few eyeliner pens, and a couple of gel liners, but I'm still not satisfied (My Shiseido one is great, but I lack a decent brush to apply it with!). I'm going to have to go to Myer to check this one out though. The last lipstick on my Lime Crime wish list is Babette. It's out of stock everywhere. I won't give up though!
These earrings are super cute! I usually can't wear earrings like this, but these are studs! I love striped dresses, and this dress has a lovely fit too. It would look so cute with a cardigan, stockings, and the boots and earrings shown here.

Food Friday: Not your average smoothies

It's been a while since I bought my blender, and I've been using it quite a lot. It's so easy to get stuck in a little bit of a rut with smoothies and to keep adding the same ingredients all the time. Then it gets boring and you loose the motivation to keep making them. My old blender has recently broken, but soon after I found a Cuisinart SmartPower Blender for $60 less than the RRP, score! It's shiny and new, and has given me the motivation to start getting more creative with my smoothies! Plus, it's way better at blending things more smoothly than my old blender. Coming up with recipes is hard when you're not keen on a lot of fruits - I hate banana and oranges. But, these are 4 recipes that are a bit more different to the usual berry, spinach, cucumber and water smoothies I've been stuck with.

Lime Crime: Geradium, My Beautiful Rocket and Airborne Unicorn!

I've had my eye on getting some Lime Crime lipsticks for a long, long time. It seems like every blogger raves about them, which doesn't help me forget about them. Thanks to Jasmine from Sweetaholic Beauty's epic Lime Crime Collection post and a little bit of time, I finally took the plunge and made an order. Choosing was not easy, there are so many beautiful, bold shades. I wanted to get Poisonberry, but it was out of stock, and ended up picking 3 equally gorgeous shades.

W7 Glitter Polish: Multi Dazzle and Pink Shard

I went to Chemist Warehouse recently to check out their 50% off sale. I've never actually been to a Chemist Warehouse before, I don't live near one. There wasn't anything I had in mind to buy, so I just had a look. I ended up getting a foundation to leave at the boys house (Revlon Colorstay, so much better with the pump!) I didn't want to walk out with just that, and these glitters caught my eye. W7 is a budget brand from the UK. I never paid much attention to it when I was over there (think BOE from Big W and LOL from Kmart) except to have a quick look at their mascaras. Well, turns out they sell it at Chemist Warehouse and their nail polish are $3! There was quite a lot to chose from, but I went with some glitters.

top-bottom: 3 coats Multi Dazzle, 3 coats Pink Shard, 1 coat multi dazzle over Australis Peek-a-Boo, 1 coat Pink Shard over OPI Italian Love Affair.

Pink Shard is a clear based glitter with medium pink hexagons, and white medium hexagons, small circles and thin strips. It also has some medium and small blue glitters in it, not very many but enough to make it seem like it's on purpose. They don't really show up on the nails. Pink Shard has pretty good coverage with 1 coat, with 3 coats being enough to cover the nail.

Multi Dazzle is clear based, full of pink, red, blue, green and silver medium and small glitters. I bought it as a replacement for OPI rainbow connection which has started getting lumpy and gross. I probably would have preferred to pick up the Ulta3 rainbow glitter, but I haven't found it yet. Multi Dazzle's coverage is pretty appalling. One coat gets very sparse coverage, and 3 coats is not much better! This is one of those polishes that you have to dig for glitters.

Both polishes take a while to dry, and can be pretty gloopy already. For $3, I wasn't expecting anything great though. Pink Shard seems to have way more white glitters in it than purple, so would probably benefit from being put over a pink base if you were after a pink manicure. Their bottles are very similar to OPI, as is their brush which is very thick and great to get good coverage. I would like to try their coloured polishes though, to see if they preformed better.

Have you tried a W7 polish? What's your favourite glitter polish?

My Life in Pictures #8

It's been a while since I've done an instagram update. I've been a bit boring on instagram, but this month I've started Fatmumslim's photo a day challenge. I've done a few of her challenges before, but I've only managed to get through the month once, and I was pretty boring with half of those photos. This month I'm challenging myself to take more photos when I'm out and about, to stop caring what people might think when I whip my camera out, because taking a really cool photo makes me super happy.

1. My fringe was getting too long so I chopped it off myself. I'm forever going between having a side fringe and a full front fringe, I can't decide which I like better.

2. Having a chimmichunga from Beach Burrito Co. (amazing, by the way!!) with some good friends.

3. Having dinner at Smoque (if you're ever in Canberra, definitely hit that up!) with Dad. Always a good feed there. Their blue cheese aioli is the best thing I've ever eaten.

4. I've been taking the pups for way more walks now. Dad used to take them every morning, but now I have so much free time I take them on a walk every afternoon. They always manage to get their leads tangled up.

5. The boy had a Mexican party last weekend, and we ended up having the most intense game of Jenga ever. We played elimination. I came second.

6. One of the photo a day challenges this month was 'where we live'. So I decided to drive up Mount Ainslie after work, which overlooks the city. It had been raining all day and was super pretty.

7. Our friends got together to go to Flip Out, a place with lots of trampolines. It was super fun, and we spent half our time there doing backflips into the foam pit.

8. So I finally bought the Too Faced Chocolate Bar palette, after months of wanting it! Yay! It's already my go to palette, .and it smells so good!

Food Friday: Veggie Stir Fry

Stir fries are such a quick, easy and delicious way to get a load of vegetables into your diet. And you can really use whatever vegetables you want to. The most time consuming part of a stir fry is chopping all your vegetables. I find chopping everything into bowls before you start cooking the best way to keep organised when cooking. I like to use the huge amount of metal bowls we've got, but you can use whatever bowls you've got.