Another end-of-year, another banquet. P.S. I’m done 3rd year uni!

Pictures of the year-end banquet from Friday, March 26, 2010. I’m so glad it was sunny that day, and sorta warm-ish with lots of wind. Pictures generally turned out well.

It was a masquerade so I bought a £10 mask off eBay. It was all good =D Here is me with my friend Cece with our masks on. I think we were the only people who took “masquerade” seriously, other people either did not bring a mask or had paper masks…

Me and Sichen! She is so gorgeous.

Me with Cece again =)

Me with Yuan.

This is me with Ally, who is my roommate. It was really nice to have her as my roommate, we didn’t have any problems or anything throughout the term, and we had pretty similar sleep schedules and stuff, so it all worked out well.

Me with Lizzy. Someone commented that we look like we’re on a movie set because the coats that we’re wearing don’t really match our dresses, LOL.

The banquet set up. It was set up like a banquet, complete with wine and stuff, but it was still caf style. We had to go get our own food on trays and stuff, and the food was still typical caf food.

This is Cece and me with Laura, one of the Assistant Student Service Managers. She is one of the sweetest people I’ve met at the castle.

This is my makeup for the night. I did a neutral smokey eye with bright red lips and glowy cheeks.

I know it doesn’t look very smokey in pictures. Jess and I were talking about how the camera really washes out colour in makeup. This was actually quite smokey but you can’t tell through pictures… *sigh*

Products I used:

Face: Guerlain Parure Extreme foundation in 02 and Diorblush in 839 Vintage Pink (Spring 2010).

Eyes: Guerlain Ombre Eclat 4 Couleurs in 407 Bal de Minuit (Winter 2009), Bobbi Brown Gel Liner in Ink, Anna Sui Super Long Lash Mascara

Lips: Chanel Rouge Allure Laque in 75 Dragon

This was how it looked after dinner. Even though I ate and drank, the lip colour was still very much intact. I didn’t even use lip liner. You can see that the Guerlain foundation is really glowy. I love this foundation, its my HG even though its quite expensive at $60CAD for 30mL.

This was the makeup after about 6 hours of wear. It is still relatively fresh looking, I felt. There was just a little shine, but looked radiant and lip colour was still sorta there.

This was the dress I wore tonight. It fit me just perfectly. I think if I gain a little weight it would probably not be able to zip up, so I have to be careful…

Last pic of myself…

Let’s end off with a silly picture. Here is me jokingly trying to push Yuan into the mote XD

That’s all, I hope you guys had a good week!

NOTD: Dior Vernis in Pink Dahlia, local pics of the southern coast of England and thoughts…

I did my nails for the first time this year with Dior Vernis in Pink Dahlia. It is a very sheer pink (almost no pigmentation), but packed with lots and lots of iridescent sparkles. Its a really lovely colour and perfect for everyday wear because it is not too loud, but still quite attention grabbing because it is so shimmery. The formula is consistent with all other Dior Vernis formulae, applies very smooth, dries quickly and doesn’t chip.

You might have noticed that I was MIA for the past few days. On Saturday, we went on a local orientation tour and saw parts of the southern coast of England, including Eastbourne, Birling Gap, Brighton, Pevensey Castle and a little quaint English town called Alfriston. Here are some pics:

Birling Gap – about 6 feet of coastline (“cliff”) falls into the water each year, so I’m guessing England shrinks about 6 feet in every direction each year.

It was super rainy, cold and windy that day, so my hair was completely done for the moment I got off the coach. My coat and hair were also soaked by the time I got back.

This is me on the rocky beach. The waves were massive that day, and here is me being attacked by one. The view was amazing though, it reminded me of Shakespeare’s the Tempest, perfect for the occasion.

You can see the massive waves in the background, they were almost as tall as a person.

Me in front of Pevensy Castle, a Roman fort built in the 3rd century. It is basically in ruins now.

My lunch back at the castle (our castle). It was a chicken burger with sauteed onions, salad, coleslaw and fries. It was really good, prob the best lunch I’ve had in a long time, and so balanced too! The coleslaw here is heaven, same with the fat fries =P

This was taken from a Coca-Cola bottle. When I saw this, I wondered what were the vegetable extracts in this??

In the afternoon we went for a historical castle tour, where we had an actual tour guide give us info about the historical happenings in the castle. Above is the castle dungeon… yeah.

The staircase in the Elizabethan room was once walked on by Elizabeth the first herself =D

The end.

Now, some thoughts. I’ve been really busy lately, and just always tired, I don’t know why. I think I might be coming down with something, which is really killing my motivation to blog… but nevertheless, I will try to update as often as possible, I know that in February I will be away from my computer for a least 10 days (for the midterm trip to Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris), and then in March I’m in Barcelona. And then I’ll be in China starting in April for 4 months which means I’ll be going on even less since Blogger is blocked there. But I’m currently experimenting with e-mail blogging which means you will be getting updates, maybe just less than now. Anyways, if you have any thoughts or suggestions, please feel free to let me know. Support from you guys means the world to me, so I thank you very much =)

What do your hands say about you? And some random stuff about life.

(Click to enlarge!)

I was observing my hands yesterday, and I noticed something very peculiar about them. My left hand has much better skin, like it is smoother and has a more even skintone than my right hand. That made me wonder why that is.

You know when you go to a cosmetics counter and you try on the various creams? Well because I am right handed, I tend to spread the cream on my left hand with my right fingers. All those whitening creams and serums have really made a difference because my left hand looks spotless.

Of course I use hand cream normally (currently using Crabtree & Evelyn’s Rosewater Hand Therapy, my HG), its still not the same as when you’re smothering on some $200 or even $50 cream on your hand. I guess that just shows that whatever product(s) you’re trying on really works! Yay, lets go buy them all XD

BTW, if you’ve been following my Twitter, you might have noticed I disappeared in the middle of the day yesterday. No, I did not jump on a bus to London (I wish). Instead, our internet got cut off. Yes I know, it SUCKED. I’m here in the middle of nowhere, with nowhere to go, and no internet; can life get any worse? And it was cut off for a whole 24 hours too; we just got back online maybe 30 minutes ago and I’m here updating, aren’t I a good blogger, hehe.

But the good thing is I realized today that I am truly happy here. You see, back at Queen’s school started today, I know that if I were to be back there, I would be completely stressed out starting from day 1. But right now, I’m really enjoying simply living, and not just stressed about school work. I’m having good chats with my professors about anything without worrying that they don’t think I’m smart enough for them.

Last week I had a very good conversation with my geography prof about Canadian vs. American vs. British politics (you must be thinking ‘how is that fun??’ but I enjoyed it, haha). Then my finance prof said that he thought he knew me from somewhere, and then this grad student from Fudan University accurately predicted the characters in my Chinese name (wtf, right?). Hm… I guess the lesson learned is that life is kinda creepy here, but something I would choose over going back to Queen’s anytime =)

How was your weekend?


Oh btw, my blog has reached 20,000 clicks as of yesterday. Thank you to everyone for all of your support! Reading all of your nice comments really gives me that little push to write, so thank you very much!!

More pictures of my room, castle grounds, snow & FOOD!

Here are some pictures of my room! Unfortunately I don’t live in the castle (sad…), I live in a residence building about a 5 minute walk uphill from the castle. I have a roomie, Ally, she is really nice. Up top is my bed, below is my desk. I’m only here for 3 months, which means I am too lazy to decorate my room, but Ally has her side decorated.
Our closets, the one with the big suitcase on it is mine. You can also see my beauty products on my bed side table. I like having them near me, hehe.
This is the morning after the huge snowfall that you’ve all probably heard about (it was all over the news). The entire south of England pretty much shut down because of this snow. My Commerce classes from Wednesday on all got canceled because the professors have to drive in from Brighton. I’m hoping it will melt soon because my tuition is going down down down into the drain. You can probably see the its not very bright out yet, thats because this is like 7:30 in the morning. I didn’t know my class was going to be canceled that day so I got up super early (I have an 8:30 class) for breakfast.
After class got canceled, we went and strolled around the castle grounds. Here is me squinting at the sun in my eyes.
And then we decided to go shopping again (my 3rd time in a week) at the “local” Asda, which is actually in Eastbourne, a 20 minute drive from the castle. I saw these bottles and I just knew I had to take pictures and share them. Aren’t they CUTE??
That black bottle of Absolut also looks quite interesting *takes a picture*
English food!! You guys probably know the English aren’t known for their food. We’ve been eating English food all week but this was the only one I could clearly identify as being “English”: Fish and Chips!! There was also coleslaw (SO GOOD) but I didn’t take a picture of that; coleslaw kind of looks the same everywhere.
Me being a pig and eating =P
BTW, did I tell you guys there are so many celebrity look-alikes here this semester? There is this guy from Dalhousie Univ who looks like Robert Pattinson, and then another girl from Pennsylvania who looks like Rachel McAdams. Didn’t take a picture of them, that would just be too creepy.

How was your week? I’m heading off to London for a day tomorrow for a guided tour of the city, hopefully it doesn’t get canceled because of “extreme weather.”

Review: My Beauty Diary Mixed Berry Mask & more pics of Hogwarts (aka Herstmonceux Castle)!

My skin has become really sensitive over the past few days due to travelling and trying to settle into a new country 9000 km away from home. I’ve been trying to do my best to take care of it, but sometimes it just doesn’t turn out the way you want it to. Plus the problem with my cleanser, *sigh*, just made everything worse. So I took out the My Beauty Diary Mixed Berry Mask to try and make my skin feel better.

The Mixed Berry mask is from the second generation of MBD masks and is one of the newer ones (in comparison with something like Pearl Powder). It claims to make your skintone more even in colour, as well as tighten the skin. It is advertised to be good with any skin type, but recommended for skin with uneven tones and saggy skin (lol).

The first thing I noticed when I took it out of its little packaging is the smell. It has a very fake, berry smell to it, like fruit punch. I really don’t like this smell, especially because I was feeling kind of sick and tired at the time I was using it, the scent didn’t help my feelings. It somewhat starts to go away after you leave it on long enough, but its still not something I would prefer (you can probably tell by my previous mask reviews that I’m really picky about the smell, hehe).

The second thing I noticed is what this sheet mask is slightly thinner than the previous My Beauty Diary masks that I’ve tried. The other ones from the first generation are all quite thick and heavy, but this one is more transparent and sticks a little better. I like this as I don’t have to worry about it falling off my face, or certain parts of it not sticking. However, as with all MBD masks, they are too wide for my face which is a total dislike.

(crazy mask pic)

After a good 25 minutes, I removed the mask to reveal calmer skin. My face is not as red and blotchy as before and it feels nice and hydrated. I finished off with some Biotherm Aquasource gel and it felt enough for the night. After about 10 minutes, everything seemed very nicely absorbed with no greasy residue or anything and my skin has pretty much gone back to normal with a nice glow too. I knew using a sheet mask tonight was a good choice, hehe.

Would I repurchase? YES. Just a simple mask calmed my skin down. It absorbed so easily and the splotchiness of my skin is pretty much all gone. My only problem with it is the smell… It is also quite inexpensive, priced around $3-4 for a box of 2 and $7-20 for a box of 10 (disparity due to purchase location).

My score:  ❤ ❤ ❤ ❤ I took a heart off for the smell.

Wow, I am on a roll. I’ve been doing a ton of reviews this week. They’ll be more to come too, hehe.

Here are more pictures of Herstmonceux Castle (aka Hogwarts), hehe

Looking out into the courtyard.

The corridor with all the classrooms.

Sheep!!

Side view of castle =)