Category: Uncategorized

This month’s Nails by Tanya feature isn’t going to be jammed pack with a month’s worth of nail looks because Tanya has been super busy with school but she was so kind to share with us two looks that she created this month.

The first look is:

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, Tanya did her nails with China Glaze “I’m not lion” and China Glaze “Graffiti Glitter”. 

The second look is:

This is in honor of Easter. I really love this look. Don’t you?

The thumb and pointer finger were done using a dotting tool and thin nail art brushes and the ring finger is a stamp. For the bunny and chick I used a thin nail art brush to create the outline of the shell and bunny head and ears. Then I used a dotting tool for the eyes and mouths, dragging my line for the mouths so it wouldn’t just be a dot. The polishes I used were:

Butter London:
-fruit machine
-fiver
-artful dodger
-molly-coddled
-jasper

no name nail art pens in black and white
With Easter being this weekend I am tempted to try something creative. 

Thanks once again Tanya for sharing your nail art with us and for perhaps inspiring me to get creative this holiday weekend.

When I am not doing my normal every day things (laundry, cleaning, cooking etc) I am either reading, getting blog work done or hanging out on facebook.

I am in a Canadian Swap group on facebook and over the past few months I have gotten into doing swaps. I tend to stick with local swaps only because its so much easier to do then packing and shipping it out.

My March swap partner was someone local to me, Rebecca (she lives roughly 15 minutes from me) and I was excited to meet her because we have been talking for a little while now. We were finally able to nail down a night to meet because I have been swapped with hockey.

We met at a mall that is close to me and I got there a little before Rebecca did and I only went into one store and that was Lush because I wanted to buy an Easter bath bomb. I was surprised at myself for only buying that.

After meeting we went to Starbucks to sit and talk. I have to say that meeting and talking with Rebecca it felt like I have known her forever. We talked about anything and everything. We noticed that Starbucks was starting to clean up so we decided to do our swap.

I have to admit that I was a little nervous at first, then overwhelmed when I peeked into the bag and then felt totally spoiled. Rebecca was a fantastic swap partner and it was like she was able to read my mind as you will see below in my comments.

 This is what the swap looked like when I spread it all out. Doesn’t it look amazing?

 I loved that Rebecca included some other kinds of goodies in the swap. The Play-doh spring eggs was instantly claimed by Michael when I got home. I love that he still loves Play-doh. The other cute item is these shoes post it notes which you can never have too many posted notes right?

 I was so thrilled when opened these nail polishes because they were both ones I have been wanting. The first one is Essie Tart Deco which is the best spring color and Fergie’s Hollywood Walk of Fame.

 I also got this little brush (which has now found a home in my son’s hockey bag, I guess he must of nabbed that as well), cute little hair clips which is something I have been thinking about getting but never did, Macadamia Oil (hair treatment), sample of La Roche Posay anti aging sensitive skin fill in care, sample of Elizabeth Arden Green Tea Honeysuckle eau de toilette spray (love the Green Tea sprays), L’Oreal Paris Colour Riche eyeshadow in the shade Snooze Addict (it was so funny because I got Rebecca almost the same one but I got her the more nude one from L’oreal), Burberry Body Tender sample (I have been wanting to try this one out awhile now), sample of Vichy liftactiv CxP Total and Etude House I miss You lotion. (something else I have been wanting to try for awhile now)

 EOS duo lip balms in the flavors of Strawberry Sorbet and Passion Fruit, (love eos lip balms, i have them all over the house), The Balm Balm Shelter tinted lip gloss in the shade dream girl (its a very nice nude shade), two Cover Girl jumbo gloss balms in the shade watermelon twist and cocoa twist (this has been my latest obsession, I love these balms) and Baby Lips lip balm in Coral crush.

Today was one of those days that I was feeling blah and its due to two things, one is that I am suffering with a sinus cold again and the other is Montreal is under a snow storm warning. We are suppose to get roughly 30cm of snow. Plus its been cold again with temperatures reaching below 0 here.

I am honestly so over with winter now and really longing for Spring to come. I had hoped with the warmer weather we were getting a little while ago that things would be changing but I guess not. Hopefully it will start warming up sooner. I need Spring.

Thankfully I got an awesome package in the mail today that cheered me up.

I am part of a swap group on face book that involves Canadians and this was actually my first time taking part in one that required me shipping something out. This was the second swap I took part in.

I was so happy when I found out who my swap partner was going to be, its Stephanie and she blogs over at Fun Size Beauty . You should go over and check out her blog and let her know I sent you over. She blogs about anything and everything. I have been enjoying the time I spend over there.

Here is what she sent me:

 I was so happy that I was home when my mail man rang the bell for this. He sometimes is the gentlest with packages when he puts them between the doors.

 Everything was wrapped up in pretty tissue paper and stickers. I loved this because it was like Christmas morning. I couldn’t wait to open all the little goodies.

So here is all the goodies I got from Stephanie:

In the bubble wrap pouch was: samples of Henriksen pur perfection night cream, Kiehl’srosa arctica youth regenerating cream, Garnier intense 7 days lotion, TRESemme split end shampoo & conditioner, amd a Marcelle day cream. There was also a handful of candy, a chocolate bunny and mini eggs.

Which BTW if you mircowave the desired amount that you want for a few seconds you will get a melt in your mouth treat. Yummy!

Now onto the other make up goodies Stephanie sent me:

-Cover Girl lip slicks (tinted lip balm) in the shade Daring. Its a very deep berry shade and at first I was like wow that is dark but its actually a sheer color. Its very moisturizing on the lips. I think this will be something I will use alot.

-Revlon brillant shine nail polish in the shade Magnetize (#140). Its a silver metal polish and I will be using it this weekend when I apply my new nail polish for the week. So when I do that I will come back and edit this post.

-Essence 24 hour Stays no matter what volume Mascara. I have heard alot of amazing things about this so I was so happy when I saw this. I am going to resist opening this one for now and hopefully I can hold of. I know its going to be hard.

-Essence Quattro eye shadown in #12 Purple Day. The shadows are about the size of a loonie and there is a purple, magenta, a light silver and a darker silver. Very pretty colors.

-Finally another Essence Ready For Boarding palette in the shade 01 Beauty On Tour. Its got 6 shades and they are in silver, yellow, mint green, blue, gold and copper. Very pretty colors.

UPDATE!!!

To my surprise I got this cute little package from Stephanie. I have never tried Indie Polish before. Its a Canadian business that you can see here if you CLICK ON THIS

 There are mini polishes (5ml ) in the shades Sweet Heart, Teal Tidal and Wonder Lust

About the Polishes:

Sweet Heart is a great over coat polish or with 3+ layers a great stand alone polish. It’s made up of beautiful high grade red holographic glitter!

Nailpolish is made using a 3-free base and is cruelty-free. NO Dibutyl Phthalate, NO Formaldehyde and NO Toluene.

Teal Tidal: (available) Teal Tidalis a mix of HIGH GRADE holo (holographic) teal microfine glitter, larger round teal glitter and teal diamond glitters. It can be worn as an over coat or a polish

Nailpolish is made using a 3-free base and is cruelty-free. NO Dibutyl Phthalate, NO Formaldehyde and NO Toluene.

Wonder Lust: (I think there is only one available in this size) Wonder Lust is a SERIOUSLY sexy color and no matter how I went thru the 15-20 pictures I took in an attempt to capture it’s beauty it’s hard to see the purple and gold shift and teeny tiny holo glitters. It’s BEAUTIFUL and really shows off in bright sun.

The purple gold shift color is a mixture of mica’s that actually work against each other to make this neat illusion. Than I added just a tiny bit of 008 holo glitter to pick up on the purple. I LOVE this polish. You will too!

All product descriptions were taken from the sellers etsy shop.

I am so happy that my first mailed swap went so well. I won’t be taking part monthly just because it will get expensive in shipping but I am thinking perhaps four times a year.

Have you ever done a swap before?

Today is the day that I get to share some exciting news with you guys, my readers. I have known about this for a little while now (a little over a month) and to keep this under wraps has been really rough because I wanted to tell you about it.

This has been the year of friends I know becoming authors (published ones). I am so happy for them and just want to support them all and I think you should to.

Today, one of my local book blogging friends, Linda has her first short story, The Blind Side of Control published on NFTU.co.uk so you should click on that link and go and read her short story.

CLICK HERE TO READ BLIND SIDE OF CONTROL

Place you can find Linda at:
http://www.lindamc.com/
https://twitter.com/lindamcnguyen
http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/3275660-linda-m-c-nguyen

Congrats Linda and wishing you much success with this. I really think you need to have a book next. What do you say?

It was exactly a month ago (February 16th) I met up with a local facebook friend, Mihaela,  to do our first official swap (if you click HERE you can see my first swap meet up with her) within the group we are in and during that meet up we decided that we should do this more often (perhaps not a monthly bases but every few months) and so brought on this weekend. We finally were able to pin point a date and we decided to stay at the same mall (this mall is awesome).

This time we took advantage of some shopping and I think I did pretty good. I only bought some Lush bath items (Easter ones that I will be talking about in a review shortly) and some spring candles from Bath & Body Works (with an upcoming storm scheduled I am in need of some spring scents). I will probably do a review of them in a few weeks.

After shopping we headed to a coffee shop to sit, talk and do our swapping.

Mihaela told me in advance I would be surprised and teased me with a photo and that the box weighed 10 lbs (which at first I didn’t believe here but upon picking on the box she was not kidding.)

This is the little teaser she sent me. Everything was wrapped so pretty and the box smelled so good. I didn’t know why until I had opened it all completely.

This is eveything unwrapped. I was so over whelmed at first but as I was opening everything I was so happy because these are things I really wanted to try and a few items I almost picked up but didn’t because I knew I would be getting some swaps in.

I know last time I didn’t include alot of pics in my post so this time I am including a ton of pictures and I hope you don’t mind.

The first items I am going to talk about is the eye shadows Mihaela got for me. The last time we met up we talked about MUA’s (Make up Academy) Palettes Undressed (black casing) and Undress Me Too as these are suppose to be dupes for the Urban Decay Naked and Naked Two.

Honestly comparing the colors in the all the palettes they are similar. I have seen swatches online and quite honestly if I didn’t know any better I would say they are exactly alike. The difference is the price and quantity of course. The Mua’s palettes are roughly under 5 pounds and are 9.6g and the Naked Palettes are $60 and you get 15.6g.

Mihaela told me it was time to add some color to my eyes so she included a Wet N’ Wild in the shade Petal Pusher. This has been something I have been eyeing for a little while now but never purchase it. I actually get to the point of having it in my basket but returning it before I leave. The eight colors are very pretty, silky and very pigmented. This is a great compact that you can travel with because it can take you from day to night instantly.

The other smaller palette that I got is by NYX (a line of make up I have been wanting to try since hearing about it and didn’t realize that a drug store here was selling some of the line since I thought it was a US line). Its in the shade TS 03 and the colors are nude, taupe and dark brown. These are my colors. This is another perfect traveling compact as well.

Bronzing powders are all very new to me and honestly it sorta of scares me. I have never tried bronzing powders before but I am willing to give it a try. This is in the shade 706 Hamptons Radiance.

Next up is nails. Who doesn’t love nail polishes? I have been looking for a dark blue polish since hockey started because I was hoping to do something neat with my nails for the team but could never find the right shade and I think this OPI Listen to Your Momanger will be perfect. I also got this Essie kit with the shades Ballet Slippers (a sheer pink) and As Gold as it Gets (Glittery Gold) with a nail file. Mihaela also told me I should try the Nail Cavier. She included the colors green, teal, pink, gold, silver and copper.

On to the lips items. I have become some what obsessive with the L’Oreal Paris Colour Caresse Wet Shine Stains since they came out recently ( I have a few of them and just love them) so Mihaela got me one I might not have purchased on my own because I am not much of a colour on my lip kind of person) and its in the shade #186 Berry Persistent (I think I need to do a post on this), Burt’s Bees is something I have seen in stores but just never purchased on my own. This is a duo kit and includes a Nourshing Lip Balm with mango butter (smells so good) and a lemon butter cuticle cream (which I am need of as my cuticles are really dry),  another item I have heard great things about it the baby Lips by Maybelline and this is in #030 Peach Kiss, another one of my obsessions lately has been the Cover Girl Lip perfection jumbo gloss balms and they are in the shades Rose Twist and Plum Twist (very nice sheer kind of colors and something I will be wearing and I think this will be another one I will review) and finally the last lip item is by NYX and its a lip liner pencil in the shade 849 Beige (another nice neutral colour for me)

I have heard of MAC and the only items I have purchased from MAC are the lip sticks (which I absolutely love and would buy more of if I could) so I am excited to try out this Skin Refresher/Finishing Mist. Mihaela told me is one of her most loved items.

When I feel sturdy I use eye liner pencils (sadly not as often as i should) and I recenly got a Urban Decay 24/7 Glide On eye pencil in a beauty box recently and have been using it and I like it so I was thrilled to see a few in my box. One brand that I have been looking to try is Tarte (have been hearing amazing things about this Brand) its a smoldering eye pencil in the shade  gunmetal (silver) and two Urban Decay’s Glide on’s in ransom (purple) and bourbon (brown). They are all very silky and smooth.

Now the best part honestly is the chocolates. Mihaela included a bunch of solid chocolate eggs which got eaten pretty quickly when I got home and this cute Ferro Rocher chocolate bunny. I have been eyeing this bunny since they came out because I have never tried it and was thinking of picking it up for Easter while I am so happy I wanted but if this is anything like the ferro rochers then I am in trouble. 🙂

Thanks Mihaela for this awesome swap and you know I loved everything. We are so alike in taste and items that is scary but in a good way. Looking forward to future swaps with you and meet ups.

Some of my readers might not know this but when I am not blogging, reading or shopping I am sitting in cold arena’s watching my son at hockey practice or at hockey games.

This is his second year playing. He has been loving it.

One of the benefits of playing hockey within an organization is being able to take part in CBC Hyundai Hockey Nation camp.

 This is Michael with Mike Keenan.

This is Michael with Canadian Gold Medal Olympian Jennifer Botterill (Canadian Women’s Hockey team)

He enjoyed meeting Mike and Jennifer and was thrilled when they signed his jersey.

If you son or daughter is playing hockey I highly recommend attending this event when it visits your city. I think the kids learn a few things on the ice in the training session. This was Michael’s second year taking part and he can’t wait to go back again.

This is a group shot from the 10am group. I was told that 500 kids would pass through the doors on Saturday and roughly another 500 would pass through on Sunday.

When I am not reading or blogging I like to hang out on facebook and chat with fellow Canadians about make up and deals etc. I am in this one group on facebook and we recently decided to organize a swap and I was so lucky to get an awesome local lady, Mihaela. Sadly she is not a blogger but perhaps I can convert her hehe.

When we contacted each other we decided that we were going to change up the budget that was given to us because we weren’t going to mail them out so why not add what we would have spent on shipping to the gift.

I had so much fun shopping for Mihaela and she told me the same thing. So we decided that we would meet up today (Saturday) at a huge shopping mall and we would perhaps do some shopping and then go and sit for coffee and do the swap.

Driving to the mall was fun and sadly I had no Canadian magic to guide  my way LOL. I have only been to this mall a few times and every time I go I get lost. Its roughly 20 minutes from me and requires me to take two highways. There was alot of turning around and doing the route all over again but it was fine because I didn’t mind.

I finally made it to the mall safe and sound and managed to scope out a good parking place that didn’t require me to park 10 miles away like you would normally have to do at this mall because its always busy.

The day before meeting up we shared some sneak peeks. Which peeked our curiousity even more.

As you can see Mihaela wrapped each one up in pretty purple tissue paper.

Isn’t the box beautiful? I have actually put this on my bedside table. The two pictures are taken from Mihaela when she sent them to me. I knew I wouldn’t get pictures other wise and I wanted you to see the before product.

• Julep Popova Trina Turk Fall 2012 collection (I have bee wanting a nice green polish for sometime now)
• Misa #285 epiphany (its a gold glittery kind of polish)
• Essence Cherry Blossom Girl in  04 It’s Peach not Cherry
• Maybelline color show in 320 Green With Envy (this is sort of a dupe for Essie’s Mint Candy Apple)
• OPI top coat (which I really needed since I threw out my old one)

• Revlon color stay ultimate liquid Lipstick in 030 miracle mauve
• The All natural Face vegan lip gloss in the shade frosted bronze
• Maybelline Color Whispers in 80 made-it mauve (this has been something i really wanted to try)