2014 Favourites

Hi everyone,

I don't usually do blogposts about my monthly favourites but I wanted to do one big post about all of my 2014 favourites because there were quite a lot of products that I fell in love with last year. January is almost over but I thought I may as well post it anyway. Better late than never! 

I've already reviewed a few of them on my blog already and I'll leave links in case you want to read a more in depth description about any of those. There will also be a few I haven't blogged about yet so hopefully it will be an interesting read.

Skincare

Bebe More Melt Away Cleanser

This was my go to cleanser throughout 2014. It's cheap and works wonders! I'm pretty sure that it's part of the reason why my skin looked and felt nice throughout the whole year. It's paraben free and is great for cleanising sensitive skin. It has a foamy, mousse like texture and I found it to be moisturing. It's great for moving any excess makeup and leaves my skin  feeling extremely clean and soft. I'm on my second tube already and will probably repurchase it once that one is done. Read more about it here.

La Roche-Posay Effaclar Mat

My skin can get quite oily during the summer and I used this on a daily basis. It worked extremely well at reducing the oil and keeping my complexion looking matte. It felt really nice on and didn't bother my sensitive skin at all. It's quite expensive but a tiny bit goes a long way and it has lasted me a really long time. 

La Roche-Posay Effaclar Duo +

I was a huge fan of the original Effaclar Duo and had been since 2012. Contrary to the original version, the Effaclar Duo + claims to prevent marks on the skin as well as correcting imperfections and unclogging pores (like the original). The consistency and texture has also changed. Where the first was more like a transparent gel, this one is creamier and white in colour. The first few times I used it, I was rather disappointed as it seemed to cause more breakouts but I was determined to stick with it as once again it's fairly expensive. After a while it cleared up my skin and I fell in love with it. I apply it after cleansing and toning, before putting on makeup.

La Roche-Posay Effaclar A.I.

Another long time favourite that I've never blogged about. This one is targeted more specifically at preventing spots and imperfections. I can't fault it. It has always worked wonders whenever my skin decides to play up. I apply it to any spots and redness just before going to sleep after cleansing and toning my skin. That way it has time to work it's magic over night. 

Makeup & Brushes

Zoeva Rose Golden Luxury Set

2014 was the year I decided to invest in these beauts. I did a blogpost on the original set here and my lovely mum bought me the eye brush set for Christmas. I adore these brushes, they're super soft and do their jobs extremely well. You get a bunch of different brushes, each with their own individual use (although feel free to use them for different things). The quality is incredible and I actually prefer them to my other brushes. 65€ may seem a lot for makeup brushes but when you calculate it, it works out to +/-5€ per brush which is amazing. Also there is the added fact that they are rose gold! So beautiful.

NARS Blush in Dolce Vita

I hadn't been using a lot a face products for a while but I fell back in love with this blush towards the end of last year (summer and autumn in particular). It's the most gorgeous deep red/pink colour and looks amazing on my skin (if I do say so myself). I've had it for over two years now and still haven't hit pan. As it's NARS, it is expensive but if you have money to spend and fancy getting a new blush, I definitely recommend it. I've written about it here.

Chanel Rouge Coco Lipstick in 49 Liasion & NARS Lipstick in Heatwave

Both of these lipsticks were featured in my Top 10 Lipsticks for Spring/Summer which you can read here. They're both beautiful, both expensive, both amazing. i love pairing Liaison with a brown smokey eye and Heatwave with winged liner. They're both creamy but Heatwave has a matte finish and Liaison has more of a pearl finish.

MAC Palette

I almost completed my MAC palette last year and I found myself using it on a day to day basis. When it comes to eyeshadows, MAC is definitely up there with my top favourites. Amazing quality, beautiful colours and reasonably priced. The ones I used the most were Sable, Mulch, Patina, Charcoal Brown and Naked Lunch but I adore all of them. Read more about my palette here.

Hair Products

Philip Kingsley Elasticizer Extreme

This has to be one of my all time favourite new discoveries of last year. I first started using it in March or April and have since repurchased it, despite it being fairly expensive. I really think that this has been the main reason why the condition of my hair has improved so drastically. It really is a hair saviour. Read more here.

Nivea Diamond Gloss Shampoo & Conditioner

Hands down my favourite shampoo and conditioner. They smell amazing and leave my hair looking glossy and feeling super soft. I always go back to these no matter how many other products I try. I wrote a more in depth blogpost about them here.

MoroccanOil & Kérastase Ciment Thermique

These two have been long term favourites of mine. I use them both religiously after every wash and they haven't stopped doing their magic. They make my hair feel so soft and manageable as well as keeping it in good condition. They also both smell amazing! Price wise, they are expensive but you don't need to use a lot and I find they last between six months to a year. Read more about the Ciment Thermique here.

COLAB Dry Shampoo London

I bought this a few months ago and it has since become a firm favourite. I have always had a love/hate (more hate) relationship with dry shampoos. Whether it was the smell or the fact that they didn't really help, I could never find the perfect one. Until now that is! The London scent is lovely and it actually helps make my hair look presentable on the days in between washes. It was also incredibly cheap for such a big can.

Under The Umbrella Sky

Recently a whole bunch of  umbrellas popped up out of nowhere in Luxembourg City. I had seen a few photos and wanted to see them for myself. And sure enough, suspended above the streets were hundreds of colourful umbrellas. At first, I was amazed because honestly, Luxembourg doesn't often do unusual, random but nice surprises like this but then I asked myself what it was for. Are we to expect impending doom or nothing but rain this summer? If so, was this set up as a precaution? I hoped not, especially because I don't think this would suffice. All I found as an explanation was a sign that read: "Un été pas comme les autres" which translates to a summer like no other. Under that was a list of shops that are taking part in this exhibition. It still made no sense and I was left none the wiser. And being really shy meant I refused to ask anyone.

After taking about a million photos (because it was just so pretty!!), we went to a Brioche Dorée Café, where we got ice creams and sat in the sun, watching everyone else take photos of the umbrellas. Not quite a 99 Flake ice cream, but close enough. Then we went on a hunt for sunglasses. 

When I got home, I spent about 5 minutes doing research on why the umbrellas were there and what it all meant. I checked all of the top news websites (of which there are maybe three) and found nothing. Feeling frustrated but not really surprised, I gave up and went back to resizing the photos. The next day, I decided to google it again and found one teeny tiny little article on wort.lu. They even named it the same as what I had originally planned (I won't lie, this did annoy me. I thought I was being clever and creative with my Umbrella Invasion title.) Apparently, the whole thing is an art installation, named Let the Sunshine In, which is ironic because the umbrellas actually block out most of the sun, but I assume this was on purpose. It isn't entirely original though, because a quick google search of floating umbrellas shows that it has been done before, several times in fact. Does that count as plagiarism then, if they insist on referring to it as art? I would have thought so. Maybe avoid the word art next time. Anyway, it's basically meant to attract tourists and attention and I think it has succeeded.

The whole thing reminded me of one of my favourite books, Un Lun Dun by China Miéville. It tells such a unique and interesting story, which involves "unbrellas" i.e. broken umbrellas. I have read it a million times and never get tired of it and this has reminded me to read it again. 

Have a great Friday!

Pumpkin Carving

Last year's pumpkins:

This years pumpkins!

 

 

 

Hey everyone!

Hope you're all having a nice Halloween, if you celebrate it! When I was younger, no one in Luxembourg had even heard of it, let alone celebrate it yet now there are a few fancy dress parties every year and (very rarely) the odd trick or treaters. Whenever we were in England around this time, we'd dress up and eat toffee apples. I think we even went trick or treating once! But usually we'd stay at home and watch a Halloween movie. The thing I love most about this time of the year is pumpkin carving! It's so much fun and you can keep the insides to use in a soup. This year I decided to buy my pumpkins early on and not make the same mistake as last year: leave it until the last minute and not being able to find proper pumpkins anywhere. I bought two big ones and two smaller ones and left them outside until a few days before Halloween, so that they'd be fresh, unfortunately the little ones sort of deteriorated after a day.

Let me know what you usually do to celebrate Halloween!

Champagne Showers!

photos from Val D'Isère;ESF firework display;Raclette cheese;tarte tatin(apple tart);monopoly;skittles;Very Berry face mask from New Look; Lush Sex Bomb;Oberweis flavoured meringues;Oberweis chocolate;Valentine's Chocolate;Coffee&Walnut cake;New fringe;LMFAO concert

Hey my lovely readers! Once again, I haven't blogged in ages, so I thought I'd do another random update type of post. I'll also be doing a giveaway soon, I just want to get one more thing to add to it, so look out for that! I haven't been using my laptop recently, and haven't had time to blog. I got home from Val D'Isère on Saturday, then had a bunch of doctor appointments on Monday. I have to have an operation on Thursday, which means I won't be celebrating my birthday properly, but I'll just have to postpone the celebrations. (I've already bought some pampering goodies for afterwards, a Very Berry face mask and a Lush bath bomb.)  So on Monday, I had to go and talk to the surgeon and the anesthetist, and have a blood test, which they messed up, leaving a huge bruise on my arm. My mum and I decided to make a coffee and walnut cake as a practice cake for my birthday and a welcome home to my sister and her fiancé, who came to visit last week, so I spent a lot of time catching up with them. I might do a post on the coffee and walnut cake recipe, because it is just so yummy! We also went to the hairdressers for a trim, and I had my fringe cut differently too, because it had grown so long! Then on Saturday, a bunch of us went to the LMFAO concert here in Luxembourg, and I have to admit it was unexpectedly amazing! I wasn't sure what to expect, despite the fact that I do listen and like many of their songs, because usually the type of band I'd see in concert would be along the lines of The Killers or Kings of Leon, etc, so I didn't think LMFAO would be too good. But it really was, I loved it and it was so much fun. The support act was Far East Movement, and it's quite hard to say who was better. The atmosphere was absolutely amazing too! The concert was sold out, and since the tickets sold out in about 3 hours, they decided to do two concerts. We went to the original concert, because as soon as we found out they were coming we bought tickets. The room was packed and very stuffy which made my throat really dry and I was so thirsty! So when they started spraying champagne all over the crowd, while singing Champagne Showers, I almost pushed everyone out of the way to have a sip, despite not actually liking champagne. That's how thirsty I was! I'll be going to the Example concert in a week, so that should be good fun too!

Hope you've all had a great week!

1st of December!

picture from Google

The countdown to Christmas can officially begin (as if I haven't been counting the days since October) but not only is it the first Advent Calendar day, it's also World AIDS Day. Last year in school, my group had to organise an event to raise awareness of AIDS to young people in our school. We did quite well, and had almost every class come by to our little exhibition (not all of them because we only had until ten to two). We weren't given any kind of budget by our 'boss', who told us what to do etc, which was sort of stupid on his part but oh well. So we had to think of  ways to raise some money to pay for flyers and posters. In the end we ended up doing a bake sale, but I also had an idea of getting a little extra cash. I wrote to my uncle, who knows a handful of celebs, some of which he is close enough to call his friends (not.jealous.at.all) and asked him if he could maybe arrange a couple of free tickets to see Elton John's concert in Luxembourg last year on the 2nd of December. He said he'd see what he would do, and sure enough my lovely uncle managed to get enough tickets for practically my whole family to see the concert, plus one extra that I could then sell for some extra money for my project. So naturally I was over the moon. We ended up having some money left over, which we then donated to the Red Cross (our event 'boss'), which made us feel all nice and giving. It felt nice having done a little something to inform people, and ourselves, about AIDS. It actually amazed me how little most people knew! Some people we asked had crazy theories on how people got it, where it started etc, and we managed to squish any stereotypes that just weren't true. We also had a bunch of red strips of paper, where everyone could write a little thought or saying, and then we folded them to look like the red ribbons. I know it's not much, but at least now more people are aware of what AIDS is really about.

Our Father Christmas Advent Calendar

Eyeliner & Mascara

I have another FOTD for you all today. Didn't do much with my face, because I feel slightly blah today. I half-straightened my hair with my GHD's but I'm really fed up with it at the moment, so I'll be going to chop it all off sometime this week. Ok, not really chopping it all off, but getting the ends cut and a different fringe.

It was quite sunny earlier, so I took the opportunity to take some pictures, since the lighting was nice. It was all going really well until I heard a buzzing sound and immediately jumped up. It was a bee! A BEE!! In November! I was disgusted and outraged (and really scared. I have an insect/flying things phobia. I start crying and stuff. Really). So I just stood there, rooted to the spot while it was buzzing around my room, bumping into walls and windows, which by the way were open, and the silly thing flew out twice and flew back in! I scoured the room for weapons, but the only things I had were books, and I wasn't going to squish it with a book now, was I? I texted my mum despite being in the same house (I was scared it would fly in my mouth) and she came up and I was thinking 'I bet the minute she comes in, the bee will have flown out' and it did! The silly bugger made me look like a fool! Now my mum thinks I'm imagining bees.

I'm not because I have photographic proof (look at how dirty my windows are hah)

Eyes:

L'Oréal Paris Super Liner Carbon Gloss Eye Liner

Collection 2000 Super Size Fat Lash Mascara

And I must apologise that my 'eye pictures' are so blurry. I haven't yet mastered the art of not wobbling the camera around too much. Sorry!

The ABC's!

Hi! My name is Minnie and I'm a 19 year old, living in Luxembourg. I'm completely new to blogging so you can expect a bunch of random posts, like make up, fashion hauls, OOTDs and the occasional recipe.

Since I'm rubbish at introducing myself properly, I've decided to start with some random info.

Enjoy! :)

here, have a pic of my face

A - AVAILABLE: nope :)

B - BIRTHDAY: 11th March

C - CRUSHING ON: my boyfriend :)

D - DRINK YOU LAST HAD: a nice cup of tea

E - EASIEST PERSON TO TALK TO: everyone in my family & my boyfriend

F - FAVOURITE SONG AT THE MOMENT: Skinny Love by Birdy

G - GREATEST HOLIDAY: Venice '08 and Spain '11 :)

H - HOBBY: photography & art

I - IN LOVE WITH: chocolate!

J - JUGGLE: ehh nope

K - KILLED SOMEONE: do spiders count?

L - LONGEST CAR RIDE: 16 hours

M- MILKSHAKE FLAVOUR: chocolaaaaate

N - NUMBER OF SIBLINGS: 3

O - ONE WISH: is not enough :)

P - PERSON YOU CALLED LAST:  Mama
Q - QUALITY OR QUANTITY: uh quality?

R- REASON TO SMILE: many :)

S - SONG YOU LAST HEARD: Video Games by Lana Del Rey

T - TIME YOU WOKE UP: 10 a.m.

U - UNDERWEAR COLOUR:  white and purple (yeah, I had to check)

V - VEGETABLE(S): yum

W - WORST HABIT: teeth grinding (at night, when I'm asleep so I can't even stop)

X - X-RAYS YOU'VE HAD MOST RECENTLY: wisdom tooth

Y - YOYOS ARE: low,low,low,loooow

Z - ZODIAC SIGN: Pisces