New lip products

(l-r) Australis colour inject mineral lipstick in Honky Tonk, Face of Australia lip quench in Lychee Crush and Essence stay with me lasting lipgloss in Me and My Ice Cream.

As you can see from my recent lipstick wishlist post, I've been wanting to try honky tonk and lychee crush. I managed to get honky tonk during the priceline 20% off sale, and, after a lot of searching, I found Lychee Crush at Big W. Honky Tonk is such a nice coraly pink colour, and it's not too in your face so it's good for every day wear. Unfortunately it doesn't last very long, only a couple of hours, and isn't so great for dry lips. I don't really need to talk about Lychee Crush, seeing as everyone ever already owns it, but I am super happy with it. I haven't actually bought a lipgloss in ages. I had some when I was in high school, and since then I've always thought of them as messy and sticky (of course because I used to buy cheeeeap brands, and back then they were horrible). This one is just the right about of glossy and not too sticky. It also has a really nice colour and is good for putting over pinky lipsticks or just by itself. I especially liked how cheap it was (less than $5!).

Australis honky tonk.

Face of Australia Lychee Crush

Essence me & my ice cream.

(l-r) honky tonk, lychee crush and me & my ice cream.

My life in pictures #1

Pictures from instagram of the last few weeks.

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1. Wearing my favourite necklace at the moment - it has teeth!
2.I've been at uni for almost 3 years and this is the first time I've managed to get a pictures of the cute rabbits that seem to be all over the place. They didn't run away from me this time!
3. Pulled up some carrots from the garden (they tasted better than store bought ones, btw).
4. Feeding time at the boys place. The cats go crazy - almost as crazy as my dogs at dinner time.
5. A picture from the photo a day challenge I'm doing on instagram, (day 6, favourite thing(s)).
6. Getting ready to work a late night shift (6-10) at my new job. I love being able to dress up pretty and not get covered in coffee grinds and chocolate powder.
7. Managed to find lip butters at Target for $13! Only got 1 though (strawberry shortcake. So bummed I didn't get more though because I realy like it). Also found season 8 of NCIS because I've almost finished season 7.
8. New tattoo almost healed. I'm so happy with it, it was worth taking 3 months to finish and all the pain.

Feel free to follow me on instagram. My username is Klerr.

Wish list: Blush

1. Benefit Hervana face powder   2. Benefit ChaCha tint lip & cheek stain
   3. Australis High Lights mineral face highligher in Pearl
4. Essence Breaking Dawn pt 2 Blush in Renesmee Red   5. Bourjois little round pot blush in Rose D'or.

So I might want to buy all of Benefit's box o' powders, but that would be silly, right? Hervana looks like the prettiest to me, and when I do a Benefit order in the near future this will be the first thing in my cart. I also love the colour of ChaCha Tint. I'm totally digging coral right now. But I'm not sure how great I'd go at using a cheek stain so I'll just stick to powders for now. I blogged recently about the Australis High Lights mineral face highlighter I won in gold recently, and this is their other shade. Pearl is a lighter, pink colour which I think would suit me a lot better (or at least I would feel more comfortable using). The essence blush is from their Breaking Dawn pt 2 collection and is called Renesmee Red. I think the only reason I want this (and pretty much the entire collection) is because it's Twilight and I used to be a massive fan of Twilight (ok, kinda still am a little...). Regardless, this blush looks a little dark and scary but I will probably end up buying it (and the entire collection) anyway. I'll make sure I give a review when I do! I've heard so many good things about Bourjois blushes but I am yet to buy one for myself and try it out. There are so many shades it's hard to pick a favourite but rose d'or looks like a really nice light pink.

I would also like to add that Rimmel's wake me up instant radiance shimmer touch in peach glow is another illuminator I'd like to try. It's such a pretty colour, but it's a little too close to my Nude by Nature illuminator that it's not worth the purchase. Also, I can't seem to find a picture of that shade on the internet! What's with that? I think it's the nicest of the 4 available shades.

ELF and NYX.

3 weeks ago I did an order from beautyjoint.com. I'd heard some good things about the ELF studio blushes, and I'd also been looking at NYX ultra pearl mania loose eyeshadows. There are a few sites selling both of these, but beautyjoint seemed to have the cheapest products and shipping, and I don't mind waiting for things.
Picking the blushes were easy. I wanted a coraly/peachy colour and peachy keen was a cool name. Yes, I chose things based on names rather than what they actually look like! I also chose tickled pink because I heard it was a lovely pink colour with minimal glitter. Choosing the pigments was a little tougher. I wanted some pinks because I didnt have any pink shadows, and pink is my favourite colour. I didn't want to just get 2, but trying to pick a 3rd was hard. There were so many lovely colours, but in the end I ended up just getting Penny, a colour I think goes with the pinks nicely. I also ordered a pack of 2 eyeshadow brushes from La Colours - a shader and a blender.
They came very well packaged in bubble wrap, the blushes wrapped together, and the eyeshadows and brushes wrapped together.

Tickled Pink (l) and Peachy Keen (r)

Peachy keen (l) and tickled pink (r)

You can see how sheer they are in the swatch. I tried to get more colour but I just couldn't. They're very powdery, almost chalky, too. Ok for $4 each, but I think it would be worth spending more to get better quality. In saying that, they're not this sheer when applied on the cheeks and you can build up a decent colour.

NYX ultra pearl mania baby pink (l), very pink pearl (m) and penny (r).

I put my Australis domed eyeshadow brush (from the 5 piece travel set) in for size comparison. The openings for this are pretty hard to get into, but I have some small bead containers coming that I will depot them into. These are also somewhat chalky in texture, and felt kinda weird when I applied them. They were only $3 each though, and the colour is nice, so I might get over that. They're pretty sheer too, but not so much when applied over a primer.

baby pink (l), very pink pearl and penny (r).

A photo showing the blender (l) and shader (r) brushes. You can tell from this photo how poor quality they are. They'll do the job though until I get around to buying some better quality brushes, and together they were only $2.25.

I would do an order from beautyjoint again, but I have read some horrible stories about them on the internet about appalling customer service and broken nail polishes.

Australis High Lights

I haven't really ever used highlighters. I'm still not really sure how they're supposed to work or where to put them. I only own 2, this one and Nude by Natures' flawless liquid lustre, and I haven't used either much.

This is one of Australis' 2 new High Lights Mineral Face highlighters. I won this from a Priceline competition on twitter. I got in the colour gold. I probably would have preferred their other shade, pearl, but I guess the world is set on me trying new things. It was free so I am not complaining. I like that it's a pump pack which makes it a lot easier to get only a little out (unlike my other which is in a tube and squirts wayyyyy too much out).

I've been using this on my cheeks over coral coloured blush. The colour is quite nice, and would be great for summer. It has a fine shimmer to it, and it is fairly long lasting considering I rarely use a primer. I'm sure I'll be able to get some good use out of it, but I'm more of a pink cheeks kinda gal. I will probably end up buying this in pearl though.

Heavily swatched (l) and blended (r).

Wish list: Eyeshadow

Eyeshadows are one product where it seems you can never have enough of. I mean, putting the same shades on every day gets a bit repetitive. Currently I only have 1 decent palette - Australis paparazzi perfect HD in Snap Attack, which I think is pretty fantastic (especially when it came with a free eyeshadow primer), along with 2 essence stay all day creams (both neutrals and great) and a couple of shadows I got with my october bellabox. So it would be nice to be able to choose what colours I wear.

1. Urban Decay Naked 2 Palette   2. MAC pro pan refill in Cranberry   3. MAC pro pan refill in Shroom 
4. MAC pro pan refill in Sketch   5. MUA pretty pastels palette
 6. Revlon ColorStay 12-hour eyeshadow in precious metals.

Ok, so maybe my wishlist is staying towards the neutral side of things. I don't really mind. Of course I have a naked palette on my wishlist, although it's probably something I will never get around to purchasing. The MAC shadows are just 3 that caught my eye, and I think they'd work well together. I would love to pick some up when I travel next year and getting a pro palette seems like the way to go. I know when I do it's going to be tough to decide which shades to buy! The MUA pretty pastels palette is full of really lovely soft colours. They look lovely, but I've heard mixed reviews about how good they actually are. I'm planning on getting this one when they have their 35% off sale (read about that here). This Revlon palette caught my eye when OzSale had a sale on Revlon products. It was only $8, but I decided against getting it because I didn't really need it. I am kicking myself a little bit because they also had lip butters for I think $14? Maybe next time.

Smoque

Smoque is a new restaurant that opened up in the city recently. It's a Southern American style bbq restaurant and as far as I'm aware, the only one of it's kind in Canberra. And it's amazing!!!!
As soon as you walk in you're hit with the smokey bbq smell, and the decor is very Southern American, with wood and antlers hanging on the wall.
The place has only been open a few weeks and I've already been for lunch there twice, which says something about how great it is because I rarely go to the city. The menu has things like pulled pork, buffalo wings, sandwiches (burgers) and all kinds of slow cooked melt-in-your-mouth delicious meats on a protein platter. They have a whole lot of salads, and fries, nachos, mac and cheese, mexican street corn, and possibly the greatest thing I've ever eaten: blue cheese aioli. They've got a whole bunch of American soft drinks too, including my favourite A&W creamy soda. For after lunch/dinner they have  pies and ice cream. I've had their pumpkin pie (which was really great) but I've seen apple and pecan (really keen to try this one) as well as New York cheesecake and some really really great looking brownies. I've been lurking their facebook page and saw they have peanut butter and bacon chunk ice cream. Yep.
It's just a really great place to eat and I could seriously gush about it forever. I love food, and I've never been to anything like this before. Sure, there's hogsbreath, but it aint got nothing on Smoque.

Here's some pictures from when I went for lunch.

The first time I was with Dad and it was packed so we had to sit up on the bar (they had the NFL on the tv in front of us which was pretty cool). I got an original sandwich (pulled pork, coleslaw and bbq sauce) and we had fries with the blue cheese aioli to share. I got ginger beer served with a cute striped straw.

We shared a piece of pumpkin pie for desert with icecream.

The second time I went with the boy and we got there super early so we got a table. I had the smoque signature (brisket with cream cheese, jalapenos and smoked capsicum). He had 12 hot buffalo wings with blue cheese aioli, and we got fries and mac and cheese to share. The mac and cheese was pretty average, but everything else was amazing. We didn't have enough time for desert, but I almost walked out with a brownie to go.