Links & Loves #2

This week has been a complete write off in ye olde blog world, I had grand plans last weekend to get a few videos done and a couple of lip swatches. That was until an alien decided to come and plant itself right on my face under my lip. I thought the offender was a cold sore I never get them, but the fiancee does and he assured me it wasn't. It was a big ass nasty pimple and it hurt like hell! 

Source - Google Images

I honestly didn't plan to pop it but it kind of just happened, and then the sucker came back! WHAAAAAAAT! It's now only just going away... a week later.

So anyway in lieu of any real posts this week I thought i'd do another installment to my links & loves posts.

LINKS

- Lilit from Makeup & Macaroons gives her 5 tips on wearing bright lipstick - this girl rocks the bright lipstick so it's a great guide!

- Celina from Fables in Fashion wrote this amazing post about Filming Tutorials & Taking Self Portraits it has so much useful information it'll be forever bookmarked on my computer! She has also done this amazing Zombie look for the Book of Fables... LOOOOOOVE!

- Emma from Emma Bovary Beauty has been haulin' Illamasqua and her post on the Complement Palette may have created a new lemming for me!

- Chelle from Cosmetic Cupcake does an amaaaaaaazing macaron manicure for Adriano Zumbo's Zumbaron day - guess who lined up at 7.30am in the morning for macarons with her? Me! 

- Reese from Reese Atomic has done what I wish I could do and dyed her hair pink! Go have a look, it looks rad!

- I'm easily enabled and Jess from The Belle Lumiere has not helped the situation with her must have Etsy store picks!

- Stef from Girl 3000 has written an inspiring post on the 100 things she has learnt about being healthy, this is a must read if you are lacking in motivation at all!

LINK & LOVE

An amazing new blog started up this month! If you're interested in Gardening and growing your own vegetables check out The Green Thumbed Gnome - I may or may not know the writer of this blog ;)

LOVE

Tonight i've been on trawling tumblr for the past few hours. I've had some good and bad results form it, here's what i've found that I liked!

Source - http://noblogjustinspiration.tumblr.com/post/33847437061 

Source - http://daisylouise.tumblr.com/

Source - http://kellensblog.tumblr.com/

Source - http://depopulatehell.tumblr.com/

Source - http://screwxthexstandard.tumblr.com/

I hope everyone has a great weekend, and if this bloody pimple clears i'll be busy doing videos and swatches... wah-hoooooooooo

Links, Loves, Breaking News! & Something called IMATS!

Back in the good ol' days I used to do a post every Friday containing my favourite blog reads for the week and some random pictures from the interwebz that I found inspiring, cool or just plain pretty.

I'm bringin' it back!

Lets start with some blog posts that have tickled my fancy this week, I reached a milestone this week and actually caught up with all the posts in my google reader! Yippee! Let's get into it -

Kimberley from Pop Couture Beauty reviewed the new Revlon Just Bitten Lip Stains and I can't wait to get my little mitts on them!

The new Urban Decay Vice palette is coming out just in time for Christmas, yes i'd like it please Santa! Check out Xsparkage's review and swatches....PRETTY!

Lizzi from Makeup and Smell The Coffee is a new blogger i've discovered, and her post about the 10 items she'd purchase if there was a zombie apocalypse is fantastic!

If you want Ulta3 swatches check out The Life & Times of Kiki Chaos she has swatched the new pastel collection, perfect for Spring!

Nails again! Chelle from Cosmetic Cupcake does an amazing studded mani! Right up my alley as i'm all about studs (the metal kind, not the man kind...although they can be quite nice!

Lube as a primer? Whodathunkit! Check out Suzanne from Don't They Know Who I Am? show us about a great primer alternative and what you can do with your spare lube? (haha awaiting interesting google searches to my blog now!)

BREAKING NEWS! THIS IS SERIOUSLY JUST LANDED IN MY INBOX AND I'M GOING TO DIIIIIEEEE!

Peter Alexander has launched a new Disney collection.... and there are Ariel pyjamas! NEED SOME NOW! (FYI The Little Mermaid is my favourite Disney movie).

I can't link the picture for some reason but LOOK HERE

Okay now back to the task at hand, my blog post.

Let's look at some pretty things I've found on the interweb of late!

Source: shop.premonitiondesigns.com via Katie on Pinterest

Source: holographic-hussy.com via Emilee on Pinterest

Source: karmaloop.com via Elyse on Pinterest

Source: arti-st.tumblr.com via Anita on Pinterest

Music is my fuel and this is what i've been loving musically :)


Frank Ocean - Lost (hope this works because i'm in the office I can't listen)

Metric - Youth Without Youth

And to finish off this long post, I'll be heading to IMATS tomorrow! Come say Hi if you see me. Check out my Youtube Channel to see some of my IMATS videos (i've done haul videos for the past 2 years i've been and most recently the IMATS tag - below)

Link Love & Random Shizz!

I haven't done a Link Love post in eons... actually I think my last one was way back in January 2011..A YEAR AGO!! I typically did them on Fridays and was actually planning to get this up on Friday but hey I had social commitments :P

The good news is i'm fully caught up in my google reader so have managed to put together a little list of blog posts i've enjoyed over the past couple of weeks!

Enjoy!!

This is a bit of an upsetting one but one of my favourite bloggy gals Jacie from You've Got Nail is shutting up shop for awhile, she is an amazing asset to the Australian blogging community and it'll be sad not seeing her updates every week but she works so hard and sometimes taking a break is for the best. However give her some love as she is keeping the blog open so we still have access to all her wonderful and witty posts.

Jess from All I Want Is Everything has a NARS blush collection so drool worthy it makes me want to go on a major NARS shopping spree! She has kindly swatched her collecti0n so go have a squizz, don't blame me though if you end up buying a few. Check out Part 1 and Part 2.

Kimmi from The Plastic Diaries has made us a list of 11 Online Beauty Stores we need to check out! Are your pockets burning yet?

Tine from Beautyholics Anonymous lets everyone know what it's like being a beauty blogger, it ain't all champagne and lipsticks :P

Jen from The Nail Polish Project & my fellow Pro Nail Supply shopper does an amazing lightning bolt tape manicure,  I love the colours she's used!

Tegan from Tegania's Thoughts rocks some awesome Lime Crime lipsticks, I think the red is her colour, do you agree?

Chelle from Cosmetic Cupcake is awesome... full stop! Check out this amazing lace manicure she did, I reckon this would be awesome to rock at a Burlesque club!

Sarah from Dempeaux shows us how to do wing eyeliner, I've been practicing and I think I ALMOST have it down pat thanks to this tutorial!

Now for some photos etc I've been liking all around the place (all photos have been snatched from either my tumblr or pinterest)















A couple of songs i'm loving right now -


 



And lastly... something I'm lusting after, I want a rose gold watch!



 

Link Love

Happy Hump Day Y'all!

I'm back with more link lovin' and of course my regular rambling about whatever I want afterward :)

Check out Am I There Yet? for some great reviews and ideas on how to rock tints!

You've Got Face let's us know about her Laser Hair Removal experience and lives to tell the tale :)

Jade Musing raves about Paulas Choice BHA 2% Gel, and reminds me I need to find my samples and give them a go!

Girl With A Curious Nose goes against the grain and admits to liking YSL Babydoll, which I am also a fan of!

Dee aka Miss Prissypants talks Cheap and Cheeful (my favourite subject!)

There are a few giveaways going on at the moment, I think everyone is getting into the Christmas giving spirit :) Here are a few I've noticed this week!

Gilded Nails is having a giveaway, you can win gorgeous Deborah Lippmann polishes!

You've Got Face has a great November giveaway, including nails, neon liners and some gorgeous bracelets with an amazing message.

An Obsession With The Fabulous has a fabulous giveaway! Including a bunch of great items, I'm eyeing that China Glaze polish myself :)

How was Halloween for everyone? It was very uneventful in my house, I'd bought choccies for the Trick or Treaters but no one came. Last year I had kids come a week before Halloween and I had nothing so I knew to be prepared. Now I have 2 bags of chocolate that i'll end up consuming myself!

I've been looking at the celebrity Halloween pictures, I have 2 clear favourites.

Heidi Klum - She & Seal always do amazing costumes, this one is freakishly amazing... you can't even tell it's her!



The other costume I looooooved, was my girl Snooki as the Pickle Queen! If you know me you know I adore Jersey Shore and in particular Snooki (admittedly she has only grown on me in this 2nd season).



Lauren Conrad aka LC as the Twitter bird, girl is cute! I love her style!



How did everyone go in the Melbourne Cup? I only put 1 bet on and went with Shocking... I think he fell asleep on the track!

On the weekend Boyfriend and I went into the city to pick up Metallica tickets for next week (yep, he's counting down like it's xmas) and I said ooooohhh since were here let's check out the new Westfield Sydney. So we did! It was cool but there is still a bit of work to be done. Something weird happened though when we were in Typo (I love that store!) I heard a massive loud crash, and being a sticky beak went and had a look. A phone cover stores cabinets fell in on each other, all glass... There was glass everywhere! Not a good start to opening week but they dealt with it really quickly and efficiently.

Another reason I wanted to go to Westfield Sydney was to try out the new burger place that Justin North has opened up called Charlie & Co. It was so busy, Justin was actually there making the burgers which was cool but we ended up lining up for about 20mins to order and then there was about a 30min wait on the burgers. Lucky I wasn't overly hungry. The burgers were A++++++ sooooooo good! I have a weak spot for a good cheeseburger so I went with the Wagyu Beef burger (with beetroot relish, pickles, cheddar on a brioche) and Boyfriend went with the Federation burger with Angus Beef, Cheddar, Fried Egg, Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato & Onion. We were going to share but once I bit into mine, I couldn't pass up any of it! We also went fancy and had Parmesan & Truffle Chips... There is only one way to describe the food really... NOMS! and pictures... ie food porn





This Saturday we have a Sydney Blogger/Youtuber meet up! I'm looking forward to meeting the girls I haven't met yet and of course seeing the lovely Jade which is always a pleasure :)

I also reached 50 followers this week! It may not seem like a lot to some people, but to me it's amazing! Thank you all so much for following/supporting my little blog. I do all this out of love and the fact I get to meet so many amazing people is just an awesome bonus :)

Link Love

It's Link Love time!! Here are a few blog posts that have caught my eye this week and general blogs you should check out. I've figured out a way to organize my favourite posts during the week as I read them so expect these as a weekly (if I remember...) thing.

Probably the most exciting thing I've heard this week, The Plastic Diaries teases with news of Sephora hitting our shores!

I need an Ikea Helmer in my life, check out Cosmetic Cupcake and her new nail polish storage *droooool*

One of my favourite blogs is Tattoologist, check out some amazing ink here!

I Came To Make A Bang has discovered EcoTools brushes! I love them too :)

I loved Rainbow Brite as a kid, and on Bec's Beauty Buzz I was reminded of her awesomeness (really a word...promise) in this manicure!

The Best Concealer Ever? The Makeup Mole has found it!

Jade Musing hauls and discovers Mad Men (which sadly, I couldn't get into!)

Check out the ahhhhmazing swatches of the China Glaze Awakening Collection on You've Got Nail, I've got Zombie Zest and will be painting it on my nails this weekend...my swatches will not be as good :)

Counter Obsession asks if were using protection.... did your mind go there? Silly Rabbit! Check it out to see exactly what she means :)

What's ahead this week... It's Halloween on Sunday and while we don't really celebrate it in Australia i've been noticing it's getting a little more shoved into our faces. I'm not complaining i've always wanted Halloween to be something we celebrated here. I think I'll have my Zombie Zest nails on and watch some horror movies on the day, sounds perfect right?.

One thing I did really want to do, is dress my dogs up. I'm one of those furmummys who dresses her dogs up. When I was thinking about outfits/costumes for them I thought something that wouldn't really take a whole lot of work was if I dressed my Boston up as Taylor Momsen... add a bleach blonde wig and she'd be good to go. Hold your applause...Visual below -

 

I am still obsessed with The Vampire Diaries.... no really it's actually quite bad. I challenge you to find a better looking ensemble cast then that cast. Amazing! For your viewing pleasure is Mason and Tyler Lockwood (that's the characters names, I don't know real names and can't be bothered going on IMDB and finding out) and of course I couldn't not put a picture of Damon/Ian Somerhalder :)





Don't forget Target have 25% off cosmetics this week!!! I want to get my hands on Revlon Melonade lippie from the new collection... Hoping it's still at my local Target tonight.

Also Stella McCartney for Target launches tomorrow in Australia, some really gorgeous pieces and well worth checking out. You can't layby this time though. I love layby!

Have a wonderful rest of the week everyone, keep smiling were almost at the weekend!

Link Love Wednesday

This is my first link love post, So many of my fellow bloggers do it and I thought i'd jump on the bandwagon and join in :) YEE HAH :)

It's Cheap & Cheerful week over at The Lip Print. Check out Stef talking about my favourite Maybelline lipsticks.

Angie sure knows her celebs, She's been talking about one of my favourites Lauren Conrad on her blog An Obsession With The Fabulous

Jacie asks the question about leading a double life on You've Got Face

Bec has been trawling the MAC website for halloween looks on Bec's Beauty Buzz, I love this zombie look!

Hannah talks brown nails on Counter Obsession - looking good lovely!

Jade makes me want to run to strawberrynet and order Dior Amber Diamond NOW! on Jade Musing

Celine shows how fabulous the lacquers from the MAC Venomous Villans collection are on Fables In Fashion

Jess is super cute on Youtube and showing us her favourites on All I Want Is Everything

Check out  Tara's new blog Keeping Up With Me, she has a fab post about online shopping (which I clearly love)

In other news.....

I'm loving this lipstick colour that Kirsten Stewart is wearing, I don't really like her as an actress I find her a little boring but this colour is fab! It actually looks a bit like OCC Lip Tar in Grandma



Confession time! Katy Perry is my current guilty musical pleasure. I love nothing more then dancing around the house and belting out Teenage Dream at the top of my lungs. Another thing I love about Katy is she's a total nail gal! This is a long time coming and I wish it was a bigger collection but her collaboration with OPI looks awesome and I can't wait to get my little fingers onto it!



Teenage Dream (Pink Glitter...eep totally me!), Not Like The Movies (Silver Metallic), Last Friday Night (Blue Glitter), The One That Got Away (Dark Berry Purple), Black Shatter (CRACKLE!!!)

One nail polish collection i'm not excited about is the Justin Beiber nail polish collection, I wonder if we'll see them on his nails at all? Doubtful!

Celebs I'd love to see do a nail polish collection are... Gwen Stefani, Courtney Love & Britney Spears (it'd be chip city right?)

Thank Tumblr It’s Friday #5

It's Friday!

So another picspam post from me, I have quite a few today!

I want this shirt!!

This has to be my favourite picture of the week, and I need to get one of these for my puggy :)

Taken from the following Tumblrs -
http://jessicaliseria.tumblr.com/
http://fuckyeahfreffy.tumblr.com/
http://cookie-whore.tumblr.com/
http://fuckyeahbuffy.tumblr.com/
http://dirtylittlestylewhore.tumblr.com/
http://prettyfoods.tumblr.com/
http://cupcakesoftheday.tumblr.com/
http://secondhandjoy.tumblr.com/
http://fuckyeahmarykateashley.tumblr.com/
http://stefanimarie.tumblr.com/
http://bohemea.tumblr.com/
http://amores-perros.tumblr.com/


I hope everyone has a great weekend ahead of them. I'll be doing housework...blahhhh but also going to see Wicked on Sunday for the 2nd time :)

I'll also leave you with Katy Perrys new video clip for "California Gurls" at first I didn't like this song, but it has grown on me so much I can't stop signing it.

I love this film clip! It's so cute! I want fairy floss cherry blossom trees in my house!!!

Music Code Provided by MusicVideolife.com

Bottle Blondes, Pay Attention!

This may come as a shock to you.... but I am in fact a bottle blonde.. shocker! 

If you could see me through your screen right now you'd be able to tell because I have regrowth at the moment that needs to be sorted by my lovely hairdresser ASAP (when I can find the time to go into the salon that is).

Because of my last post about Blondie, and dressing up as her due to my Blonde do' I thought i'd post some little reviews and thoughts on some Blonde Shampoo's I have used over time.

A bit of a background, I was born Blonde and when I was about to go into high school my hair turned a gross dirty mousey dark blonde/light brown colour that I hated. When I was young and naive (thats Evian spelt backwards, props to Reality Bites for pointing that out to me) I dyed my own hair and basically looking back can say I had a big ol' brassy mess on my hands.

Then I got older and wiser and decided to try out this thing called a Hairdresser, HALLELUJAH! (sing it... yeh!!) and over the years i've developed a better relationship with my hairdressers that I am now not a scared little dirty blonde mousey hair mouse. I now speak up and say exactly what I want (I've gone through a few that have made me look as bad as my home jobs...blah!)

I think Hairdressers are also trained to sell product... well thats how I made my first foray into Blonde shampoo's. If you don't know they are often a scary dark purple colour which is what counteracts the brassiness and leaves you with a brighter and much prettier blonde colour, it also prolongs the blonde you left the salon with. A must have if you're going to venture into the world of Blonde, and trust me it is a very fun world!

So here are the ones I've tried over the years and my thoughts. I do really want to try Redken Blonde Glam next so when my current bottle is finished i'll grab that and maybe do an update.

PPS Classic Blonde

One of the first Blonde Shampoo's I owned, also one of the worst. The product was okay as a Shampoo but that's it. The light purple of it really didn't counteract any brassiness and it was soon shelved and kept for emergency only. It was also a pain to get out of the bottle, having to squeeze it so hard to get a little product out.

De Lorenzo Nova Fusion - Silver

This one has a great dark dark purple colour which really counteracts the brassiness, you get a more intense finish if you leave it on longer too. My only gripe about this product was that it dried my hair out so much! Being a bottle blonde plus having curls means my hair is pretty dry already so i'm not a fan of products that make it worse. Having said that though I still think this is one of the best if you need a really intense treatment to get rid of the brassy/yellowness some blondes can have.

Matrix - So Silver

I first read about this product on the Vogue Forums and decided to try it out. LOOOOOOOOOOOOVE! This is probably my favourite of all the Shampoo's i'm mentioning today. It has a great dark purple like the De Lorenzo but it's not drying at all and a little goes a long way. I had a bottle of this and it lasted me months and months. If Redken doesn't work out for me i'll be going back to this one for sure.

DNA Products - BlondeBrite Shampoo

This is the one I am currently using. A girl I work with owns a Hairdressing salon and stocks this product so I bought some off her to try. It's not a bad product it's quite moisturising and the colour payoff is good. My only gripe is the size, at 250mls it's quite a small bottle. Another plus is the ingredients in this product are all certified organic, if that's your thing this is a good option. I'm also using 2 of the conditioners from this range as well (not blonde specific) and they are pretty great! You can check out their website Here! I will warn you though, it's quite poorly designed and hard to navigate. So good luck :)

You can buy most of these products at your local Hair supply store like Price Attack & Hairhouse Warehouse. Also try http://www.strawberrynet.com/ because sometimes they are cheaper there too.

Ohh It's Friday today! I will do my Tumblr post later this afternoon :)

I may also try and an do a YouTube video this weekend because the lovely GoldDusk has inspired me and I've done a fair bit of hauling and it'd be the easiest way to show everything!

Have a great day everyone :)