Random Post: Chanel, Benefit, Guerlain & Soulstice Spa

I fail at staying away, don’t I? Yup, I’m back at blogging regularly, just less regularly than before. Here a random post for you today, just for the sake of it.

Thank you C for the birthday present!!

Benefit was being cleared away from Holt Renfrew last month and J helped me grab a Finding Mr. Bright set.

I know I’m one year late on this, but I missed out last year due to my indecisively. I finally found it on Strawberrynet after months of waiting for it to show up. I got a pretty good deal on it too =)

And Soulstice Spa is the newest nail polish range to hit Nail Polish Canada, a Vancouver-based Canadian website that sells nail polish and other nail care products. They carry some very hard-to-find products in Canada, such as Zoya (yes they have the remover!), SpaRitual and Soulstice Spa, a range of vegan nail polish.

Some thoughts on WordPress

Its been a few days since I’ve made the switch from Blogger to WordPress and I’ve had some people ask me how I like it here. I guess I’ll just post up an entry to summarize it for everyone in case you were wondering as well.

I think the main difference between now and when I was with Blogger is that even though I have been getting more hits in terms of visitors, I’ve been getting a lot less comments. I don’t know why that is, I’m assuming that most of my previous readers have no idea I moved to WordPress and so my new blog entries aren’t showing up on their feed. One of the major reasons I made the switch was because WP is organized in a cleaner, less clustered manner which means it would be easier for people to read as well as comment. Well, I’m not getting any more comments, which is quite sad actually.

But I am quite happy I made the move because of the way WP is set up, its made me want to blog more. You can see I post up multiple posts a day now, instead of one post every couple of days, some days now range from two to seven entries. They’re not short entries either, they’re long and I put a lot of thought and time into them.

While it is taking me a while to get to used to WP, I haven’t entirely regretted my decision to move here (apart from the comment thing…. sometimes I feel like I’m talking to myself, LOL). Its a long process and it feels like I’m almost starting back at zero again even with 300+ blog entries and 1200+ comments. I don’t know, I guess its a learning curve thing.

Anyways, other thoughts on WP:

• I love that there is an internal stat counter that is really accurate and actually offers a lot of information to help plan things like marketing (woot business student mode). It counts the links that people click on to arrive at and leave from your site, as well as the number of views each post receives, on a day-to-day basis. I no longer have to install stat trackers from external websites because the internal one works really well.
• Comment counter. Before on Blogger, I had no idea how many comments I had, but once I made the move to WP, I was shocked by the number of comments I have. This is really great because its another way to track progress.
• The option to reply directly to each separate comment. I think that is the biggest drawback of Blogger and why some people elected to move to WP or install a different comment add-on. This way people can get their questions answered directly without scrolling up and down looking for their name/answer. Its also more personalized this way because its obvious that the author read your comment.
• Nice big pictures with captions! I love this feature, its another one of my favourites. While its actually easier and quicker to upload pictures via Blogger, I love how you can organize your pictures on WP. If you are looking to do a photoblog, I would definitely look towards WP instead of Blogger. The quality is just that much better.

Drawbacks to WP:

• Er… the comment thing? And most of my beauty blogger friends still use Blogger, so its like I’m the lonely one out here by myself =(
• You can’t install your own template unless you pay extra for the custom CSS editor or you install the WP software (www.wordpress.org) to your own server/domain. I do plan on doing that after the LSATs because I have registered my own domain (www.maddyloves.com), but right now because I still have that major exam coming up, I dont’ have too much extra time to make the switch official. So now its just rerouting you to the WP blog XD
• Javascript is disabled… I hate this, hate hate hate this. I’m trying to install some widgets like Google Friend Connect (for my Blogger-user friends to re-subscribe to me easier), but it just won’t work.
• There aren’t too many options of customization, even in regular blog posts. If you want to change the font/colour/size of your text, HTML is the only way to go.
• For some reason, it doesn’t show up on Google searches as much as Blogger blogs do, even if I do a really specific keyword search. I would imagine Google favour Blogger because they’re owned by Google, but I didn’t think it was this extreme. Maybe it will be better after I make the switch to my own domain.

I think those are the only major ones I can think of now. In the end though, I still prefer WordPress to Blogger now that I’ve used it for a few more days. Its definitely more professional and just cleaner in general.

P.S To my blogger friends: If you can mention just briefly in your blogs that I’ve made the switch from Blogger to http://www.maddyloves.com/ it would be so awesome. Many of our readers are common so maybe it will notify them that I’m now with WP instead of wondering where in the world I went. Thanks so much in advance =)

If you want to re-add me to your feed, here is how you can do it without Google Friend Connect:

Recent Acquisitions + Random Ramblings

Sorry I’ve been so MIA lately. Even though I’ve been updating, I haven’t really inserted much personality into my entries and I sincerely apologize for that. I’ve still be unable to find a replacement for my camera battery charger so that is my main reason for being so half-hearted… But since I can’t really do much more for my camera, I’ll have to make do with what I do have, and that is my measly 3.2 megapixel cellphone camera that doesn’t even have autofocus. Oh how envious I am of people who have DSLRs and don’t randomly lose their camera charger in a hotel room in some far away land.

Anyways, since I can’t take photos of my recent looks, I am unable to share them with you. But I was wondering… would you still be interested in tutorials even though I can’t show the finished product with you? I can do eye tutorials with pictures of my bare eyelids I already have on my computer at the moment, and you can try the techniques for yourself at home with whatever products you have available. Let me know what you think of it =)

So moving forward with some recent acquisitions.

I went to the department store today and ZA was on promotion, you buy $298RMB of ZA products and you can take $50RMB off plus you get a gift with purchase as well:

I ended up with the True White Plus Emulsion and two of their new Skin Beauty 2-way foundation (one was for me, the other is Erynn‘s late birthday present). The gift with purchase contains 2 minis of their True White Prismizer Enriched (a moisturizing toner) and the True White Cleansing Foam, and 2 deluxe minis of the True White Prismizer (a refreshing toner) and True White Plus Emulsion, plus a silver clutch. The quality of the clutch is not bad, plus the zipper gets stuck easily which means it’ll be hard for other people to steal your things, LOL.

I also ended up with this really cute shirt that was less than $10CAD and a navy stripped skirt that was a whopping 70% off!

I also recently received the Balmain-like Zara blazer that I had previously ordered. It fits gorgeously and I can understand why people would pay a whopping $3000 for the real thing. Thankfully Zara made it affordable for the rest of us non-ballers.

Sorry for the horrible horrible picture quality, it’s supposed to look like this: (picture from Zara’s original campaign)

One of my fave purchases recently is this pair of gladiator wedge booties. I got them off Taobao for less than $30CAD. The quality is kind of meh, but they are absolutely ferocious. I think if Ms Pink were a pair of shoes, this would be it. I think the heel hight is like 6 inches, I can barely walk in them but I look like I’m 6 feet tall when I wear these.

That’s it for tonight.

Please do comment to let me know if you would like tutorials though, it does allow me to share some tips and techniques =)