Proposing to my Bridal Party

Today is another wedding post, although it does include some beauty products! I recently asked my closest girlfriends to be in my wedding party. While guys keep it nice and simple and just verbally ask their friends to be the best man/groomsmen, there has been a recent trend for brides to “propose” to their friends when asking them to be in the bridal party. My lovely friends would say yes regardless of whether I did anything extra, but I thought they might appreciate a little something special. I kept it really simple because I wanted to save the nicer things for the bridesmaid gifts, which they will get at the rehearsal dinner the day before the wedding.

We’re getting married in 2017 and our wedding colours are dusty blue and blush. Yes, those are basically the Pantone Colours of the Year for 2016, but I decided they were going to be our wedding colours in the summer before he even proposed (not creepy at all) and wasn’t willing to change them just because they became the ‘it’ colours…although when the topic of the Pantone Colour of the Year came up between my fiancé and I, and he found out this was actually a thing, he said, “But our wedding colours are going to be soooo last year!” 😛 Anyways, I thought I’d make my proposal centered around our colours. For the most part, it turned out general blue and pink instead of our specific shades of pink and blue…so this gift can also work if you’re announcing that you’re having a set of twins, one boy and one girl 😛

Fresh Skincare – Black Tea Line

I have been a user of Shiseido skincare since my teenage years, and rarely stray from the brand. However, I realized while going through my samples in January that I had a bunch of skincare samples from Fresh, so I decided to test them out this month. I received three items in the Black Tea range and two products in the Creme Ancienne range. Today’s post will talk about the Black Tea line.

It takes me forever to get through skincare products, and the sample packets of the Black Tea range took me about two weeks to get through. I don’t think two weeks is enough time to allow one to see any long term effects of a skincare line (whether positive or negative), but it is enough time to see short term effects. For the record, I also admit that I am not at all well-versed in skincare ingredients, but have included the ingredients for those that are interested.

The Black Tea range claims to be full of antioxidant-rich ingredients. One of these ingredients is black tea ferment, more commonly known as Kombucha, an antioxidant meant to help reduce the appearance of fine lines and firm the skin. Because I have mid-20’s skin with a few fine lines under my eyes, I don’t have the best type of skin to test out the firming abilities of this line, but I will share my general thoughts on the products.

To no surprise, all of the products in the Black Tea range have a strong scent of black tea. I personally loved this scent, but this may be an issue for people with skin sensitive to fragrances, or those that just prefer not to have fragrances in their skincare.

Foodie Friday

It’s been a while since I did a Foodie Friday! We haven’t been eating out much due partly to having packed weekends furniture shopping/wedding planning, and partly to us just trying to save money.

We went out for dinner on Saturday for Valentine’s Day this year. This year, we decided to go to a restaurant called Anju, which is a tapas-style Korean fusion restaurant. According to the restaurant’s website,the word Anju means ‘food you eat with alcohol’…which we didn’t do 😛 The atmosphere was modern and romantic with dim lighting, which was nice for Valentine’s Day.

My HG ‘My Lips but Better’ Lipstick

For some reason, I’ve always had a very difficult time finding a ‘my lips but better’ (MLBB) lip colour. When I first started getting into lipsticks, which was quite late into my makeup journey, I didn’t realize that 1. everyone’s natural lip colour is different 2. my lips were especially pigmented, and 3. ‘MLBB’ did not necessarily mean nude. I went to MAC and asked to try out the most popular pinky-nude shades circling on YouTube at the time, such as MAC Myth, Shy Girl, and Angel. To no surprise, it looked like I was wearing concealer on my lips. The MUA’s didn’t really help in recommending shades that would work for me, so I went a long time not wearing any MLBB shades at all.

The shades in my featured image are some of my favourite MLBB shades, but today I wanted to share with you my holy grail out of the four, which is the second swatch from the left.

Pink and Purple Valentine’s Day Look

We’re not all that big into Valentine’s Day in our household; if anything, we just use the holiday as an excuse to try out a more expensive restaurant that we’ve been meaning to try, regardless of whether it has an romantic atmosphere or not.

Either way, I still find it fun to do Valentine’s Day looks on Valentine’s Day. Most years I usually go with a pretty neutral pink and brown look, but for today’s post I decided to try something a little different – pink and purple! I pulled out my Too Faced Le Grand Chateau palettes, which has pretty much not been used at all since I bought it for Christmas. It was handy because they had all the colours I wanted to use in the look.

Wedding Planning – Choosing a Venue

What with February being the month of lurrrve, I thought it would be a good time for me to write my first wedding blog!

After getting through some of the more “boring” aspects of wedding planning like setting a budget, having a rough headcount, and picking a date, the next thing to do is to find a place to get hitched. This part is very important because the venue can set the whole tone of the wedding. Venues typically get booked up quickly, so it’s best to start looking as soon as possible, especially if your wedding is on a Saturday in the summer, the busiest time for weddings.

Browbone Highlights

While it’s not a necessary step, I’ve always thought that highlights of any type (cheek, inner corner, browbone) can really pull a look together. Going through my makeup collection lately has made me realize that I have somehow amassed a small collection of browbone highlights, which is what I want to talk about today.

On a side note, I had no idea how to take a picture of all my matte shadows for my featured image, as they’re spread over different palettes!