St James' Garden

Whilst in Liverpool we visited Liverpool Cathedral, which is the largest cathedral in the UK. We didn't find that it was very impressive, considering it was completed in 1978, and many other cathedrals and castles were built hundreds of years ago without the technologies made available in the last century.

What was impressive though, was St James' gardens below the cathedral. This was the main city cemetery, used until 1936 and had over 57000 burials. Now they've moved quite a few gravestones from the centre to make way for a public park. The basin (before it was used as a cemetery it was the a sandstone quarry) is surrounded by gravestones, with areas at either end filled with quite a few. It was a really interesting place to walk around and learn about.

Liverpool Cathedral

Lady Chapel

New English products!

I feel like I've been super restrained with purchases so far. I ignored the 3 for 2 sale Superdrug had when I arrived, and haven't swatched much in-store. I couldn't resist a few little things though.

First up I bought the Nivea raspberry Rose lip butter. I was running out of my other lip balms so thought I'd buy this. I didn't like the scents that are available in Australia, but this one is quite lovely. Although I have to keep it in a pocket of my bag because I'm worried the lids going to fall off!

Next I decided I needed a pink nail polish. I chose Barry M Gelly polish in Grapefruit. I really wanted to try these polishes, but the wear time is pretty awful! It started chipping after a day, and I managed to get at least 3 from the ulta3 polish I had on before. It is a lovey colour though, and I might give it another go with a top coat.

Sorry about how horribly it's applied... just look at the colour!

I picked up one of MUA's new £1 powder blushes with the nail polish. I decided to get cupcake, as I thought it was a more brown based blush that I though I could use as a contour . It's a bit pinker than the swatches I saw online (no stand I came across had a tester) but its still super pretty.

heavy swatch and blended.

I managed to pick up Rimmel's Lycra Pro Matte Finish top coat in a supermarket for half price! I've been looking so long for a matte top coat and found out this one was discontinued, so I was so happy to find it sitting lonely in the Rimmel stand. I've also basically doubled the amount of nail polish I bought with me. Score!

Last of all is Soap and Glory hand food. I haven't tried Soap and Glory before so this was what I went for when my Body Shop hand cream decided to split at the sides. It's got quite a strong scent which takes a bit of getting used to, but the formula is lovely. I only got a little bottle so it could fit in my handbag but I might have to pick up a bigger one to leave in our room.

Do you have anything you'd buy straight away if you went traveling?

Strawberry Fields Forever

A few weeks ago, Toby and I made our way to Liverpool on what could only really be called a 'Beatles pilgrimage'. "Why would you go to Liverpool?" people would ask. Because of The Beatles!

We stayed at what could only be described as a joke of a serviced appartment. No toaster, no information about the hotel or surrounding area (not even a fire escape plan!), oven but no oven trays, iron but no ironing board, no soap or shampoo, and no tea or coffee. There was also a bug squished on the roof, no cold water coming from the sink in the bathroom, and I don't know where I got the term serviced from, because no one but us stepped foot in that place after we checked in. It was a short walk from the main shopping strip, which was nice, and it was pretty cheap.

On day one we went to the Beatles museum, after a quick trip to Primark where Toby tried to convince me he needed 8-bit sunglasses. The museum was really good! I did have a bit of a problem with the timeline, as I got a bit confused to when Ringo Starr replaced Pete Best as the drummer, because they kept talking about both of them. It was very interesting though. You get given headsets so you can just listen to someone telling you things instead of reading things, which lets admit, is really hard to take in.

5 minutes down the harbour was the Fab 4D experience, a 4D short movie with Beatles songs, which was really fun. Toby and I didn't have anyone else in our screening which was great so we could sing along and nobody could care about when I screamed when we got sprayed with water.

We then went for a walk over to the Cavern Quater and Mathew street, where the infamous Cavern Club is. The Beatles played there 292 times while it was open! It's since moved slightly from the original spot, a few meters up the road. The original club got closed because they wanted to build subway vents, but they never got built. The new Cavern Club is really cool though, and even Adele has played there (which would have been one of the coolest gigs ever!)

The second day we went to the Liverpool Cathedral and St James' gardens (I have another post lined up about that!), then walked down to the docks to the maritime museum. We went to dinner at Jamie's Italian that night which was really delicious!

Mac Viva Glam Nicki 2

I just wanted to pop up a quick review about this lipstick. This was never on my (rather long) wish list of MAC lipsticks I have, unlike shades like Impassioned, Girl About Town, Candy Yum Yum, or even the first Viva Glam Nicki!  It made its way into my hands in Harrods when they didn't have the pastel purple from the Baking Beauties collection in stock, which I think was a good thing because from swatches ive seen, this lipstick is much prettier! Not only is this the first MAC Lipstick I've purchased myself, almost 100% of the price of these (minus tax) goes to the MAC AIDS fund. Win win!

Viva Glam Nicki 2 is a lovely cool toned, white based lavender lipstick. It's very light and not the most easy to wear lipstick but for some reason I really love wearing it!  Now that its summer where I am at the moment, (I use that word loosely because I've had warmer winter days when visiting Sydney) this is going to be a great lipstick to wear.

It doesn't last very long, as you'd expect from a light coloured lipstick, maybe 3 or so hours. About the same wear time I get from Angel. It does stick to dry patches on the lips and in the lines in your lips, another thing you'd expect from such a light lipstick. It is very creamy and lovely to apply though.

with flash

in sunlight

Have you tried either of the Viva Glam Nicki lipsticks? Which is your favourite?

First week in England!

So, we've now been in England a whole week! It really seems like longer because we've already done so much.

The squirrels are so friendly!

We spent the first 3 nights in London, and got to our first hotel around 6pm (the one we booked less than a week before we left because we got the date we landed wrong...) When we were waiting in Paddington Station to figure out how to get to our hotel, it was pissing down with rain, but luckily it stopped enough for us to get into our hotel, and then it cleared up and we ended up going for a walk into Hyde Park, which was super pretty. We even saw a squirrel!

The next day was a venture to Oxford street, to find sim cards with the best internet deals, and to have a look at the shops. I pretty much went straight to Superdrug... so fun to see all the new brands of makeup (Sleek! MUA! Barry M!). We also checked out Topshop (which has A CUPCAKE SHOP IN IT!), Urban Outfitters and Primark (which was super packed and not a great place to be in unfortunately. Don't go in there when it's a long weekend) We ended up walking into Hyde park, after spending a really long time trying to find a public toilet (you wouldn't think it would be that hard in a city) and then back to Sainsbury's to get lunch, and up to Regents Park to eat it. 

Eating lunch in Regents Park

white swans are so pretty!

The next day we trecked at total of about 13km! (I checked on google maps) Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, and then all the way along to St Pauls Cathedral past the Savoy and Twinings shop. Then took a train to the Natural History Museum to see the blue whale (again, long weekend, super busy), then back through Hyde Park to go back to the hotel. So much walking! The next day we visited Harrods, and I bought Mac Viva Glam Nicki 2 (which is pretty fantastic). We also got some chilli squid and custard donuts and ate them in, guess where? Hyde Park of course! 

We sat here to eat lunch!

We took the train to Toby's family friends who live in a little town about a half hour train ride from London which is super duper pretty! We've been out to Luton and Hemel Hamstead since we got here and done a lot of walking along the canal to the supermarket (I got a little excited to visit all the supermarkets here. I'm weird). It's rained a lot, but of course today, the day we decide to spend inside doing boring things like applying for national insurance numbers, fixing up resumes and looking for jobs, it's super sunny!

Monday week we're off to Liverpool for a few days which is going to be real cool because we want to see lots of Beatles stuff, then when we get back from there we're off to Edinburgh! We're also thinking about doing a trip to Paris the week after that (FOR MY BIRTHDAY!!!) before we properly look for work.

Hey there, Malaysia!

Hello all! Now that I'm actually traveling, I really have no idea what to write about for a blog post! And I'm sorry all these photos are instagram photos, I'm always worried in Asia that I'm going to take pictures of the wrong things and get in trouble, so I don't want to take my SLR around with me. I blame the Australian government's travel adds for that!

We arrived in Kuala Lumpur last night at around 9pm, and after taking the KLIA Ekspress, and then a taxi, we didn't get to our hotel until 11pm (1am aest). Surprisingly I wasn't that tired, and I didn't even get much sleep on the plane.

View from our hotel room.

We ended up waking up at 7.30, had a rather average breakfast at the hotel, went for a walk only to realise that shops don't open till 10am here! We went to Times Square and spent a couple of hours there walking around the shops and had lunch. There's a theme park in there that looked really awesome (I mean, roller coaster in a shopping mall, how could that not be cool?!) but was a little too expensive (although in hindsight we probably could have splurged a little). 

Piano stairs in Times Square, ie. the coolest staircase I have ever been on!

I ended up convincing Toby to walk to Sephora with me, even though it was more of a struggle for me. It was less than a 10 minute walk and I had acquired some rather nasty heat rash on my thighs already. It was pretty amazing. I didn't really spend as much time in there as I could have, but I was surprised at how expensive everything was! The Urban Decay Naked palettes worked out to about $70 AUD each and you can definitely get them cheaper on the internet, as well as all the Stila products I looked at. It was nice to be able to swatch them though instead of just relying on blog reviews, and I definitely need to get some Urban Decay products into my life! The same happened at MAC, I found the prices were pretty much the same as I'll find in the UK so I'm going to just wait and get some there. I have a lipstick from the Baking Beauties collection in mind which was out of stock when I went in today. There was a rather lovely sales assistant there though, and I had a little chat to him about my tattoos.

We ended up having a beer before walking back to the hotel to use the internet for a little bit and talk to our parents. I'm definitely addicted to my phone, so it was a bit annoying to not be able to check facebook every 5 minutes today, but really it's probably a good thing! We wanted to find a good Malaysian restaurant to eat dinner at, but after asking at reception for any good places to eat, realised we were in China town, and went to a place around the corner from the hotel that had cheap beers and ate there. Which was a really good choice because it was delicious! I had chicken noodle stirfry, and Toby had chicken satay skewers and both were really yummy. My sore legs meant we couldn't really do much after dinner because it hurts to walk, so we ended up going to a 7/11 to get pints of beer to take back to the hotel.

Photo from dinner. We sat next to the water feature which was nice.

We leave for London at 10am tomorrow, which means we get there at 4 in the afternoon, so there'll be plenty of time to look around a bit before bed, and find a good pub!

My 'travel' makeup bag.

So I'm going to be away for around 8 months, and I have restricted myself to 2 relatively small makeup bags. I'm bringing a square Aesop bag I got as a birthday present, and a red polka dot bag I got from my last blog swap. They're pretty chokers, and some of the lip products don't fit, but I think it's pretty good considering what I could (want to) be bringing. I'm scared to think about how much I'll be bringing back because there are so many products available in the UK that I want to try out (especially sleek blushers!) I'll probably end up having to post most of it back!

Face/Base: Face of Australia 3 in 1 Primer, Bourjois Healthy Mix Foundation, The Body Shop Extra Virgin Mineral Powder Foundation, Rimmel Stay Matte Powder, Maybelline Dream Lumi Touch Concealer(not shown) Covergirl Cheekers Blush in Soft Sable, Benefit Hervana, Body Shop Dome Blush in Pinch me Pink, MUA Shimmer Kisses Bronzer, Essence Renesme Red Blush.

I'm just going with basic face products here. I'll easily end up finishing this foundation while I'm there, and I plan on buying some MAC foundation at duty free. I also wanted to make sure I had a decent selection of blushes, even though blushes are something I plan on buying while I'm there. These don't take up much room (except for Hervana!).

Eyeshadows: MUA Undressed and Pretty Pastels, MAC Cranberry and Sketch, MUA Pro-Brow, Essence Glammy Goes To, Cappucino Please, Party All Night, L'Oreal Tender Caramel, Essence Cappucino Please, and Party All Night, MUA 19.

Eyeliner/Mascara: Covergirl Clump Crusher, Benefit BadGal Lash, Face of Australia Glamourous Lashes Waterproof Mascara and BudgeProof Gel eyeliner in blackest black, Covergirl Liquiline Liquid Liner, Essence Stay all Day in Glammy Goes To, Australis 10hour wear eye pencil in Grape Cake and Bombastic Bronze, Bourjois Clubbing waterproof Liner, Rimmel Scandal Eyes waterproof eyeliner in Nude.

I think I've got all the eye products I'll ever need here, especially for nudes! I've got 2 spaces in my MAC quad that I'm going to try and fill, probably with Shroom and Woodwinked (although, I'm up for suggestions!). I even bought a new Covergirl ClumpCrusher during the priceline 40% off sale that ended up being $6, because I knew Covergirl isn't easily available in the UK, and I'll have to throw out my current mascaras while I'm there. I might end up not bringing the Essence single shadows, because I have similar colours in Undressed, but I couldn't leave the L'Oreal shadow behind, mainly because of how much I paid for it (even though it was on sale!)

Lips: Revlon Lipbutters Sugar Plum, Peach Parfait and Strawberry Shortcake, MAC Ruby Woo, Vegas Volt, Angel and Rebel (not shown, as it was on its way from the lovley Sarah from More than Adored! when I took pictures), Rimmel Kate Moss #20, Sportsgirl Pout About it Catwalk Queen, Rimmel Apocalips Luna and Galaxy.

Almost everyone I talk to think I'm crazy for bringing so much lipstick, and the only person who doesn't agree is my friend who thinks I'm crazy for only bringing this much (she loves lipstick even more than me). In reality, I wear lipstick a lot and I bet I end up using all of these more than once. I've got a good selection of shades, including nudes, light pinks, plumbs, reds, bright pinks, and my favourite lip colour, corals. These are also some of my favourite lippies so I couldn't possibly leave them at home. I probably won't even buy many more lippies, unless it's at duty free, I'd love to get a YSL lipstick, and probably some more Apocalips. I might end up swapping the Sportsgirl lippy, as I'm tossing up between taking that and Innoxa Watermelon.

Nails: Sally Hansen Diamond Strength nail hardener and Diamond Shine Base and Top Coat, Ulta3 green mini, Essie Bikini So Teeny, Ulta3 Earl Grey, OPI Italian Love Affair and Rimmel Black Cherries.

I think narrowing down my nail polish was one of the hardest things about packing. Having someone to take care of my collection while I'm gone makes it a bit easier, because it's at least going to get used, but I love having a large range of colours I can use. I think I'll be buying a fair few polishes while I'm there though, I'd love to try some Barry M and Nails Inc! I will end up bringing a glitter, I'm tossing up between Heart of Glass and Studio 54, but I think Studio 54 is going to win!

Brushes: Real Techniques Stippling, Expert Face and Setting Brush, Thin Lizzy Powder Brush, Coastal ScenKabuki, Cosmetica double ended shadow brush, Australis Eyeshadow brush, Essence Eyeliner Brush, and Priceline eyelash curler (not shown)

 Of course I can't not bring brushes. They're all the brushes I'll need to use all of the products I'm bringing. I'll probably end up buying a Real Techniques blush brush, and throw out the Thin Lizzy powder brush (it's not that great anyway!)

What are your travel makeup essentials? Do you tend to overpack too?