Alverde Black & Red Swatches & Review

Alverde has a new LE and they surprised me with some pr samples. Yay! :-)

I got two of the four cream to powder blushes: Bright Shine, Hot Flame

One of the three shimmer creams: Sparkling Silver:

One of the three liquid eyeshadows: Metallic Silver

The classy red lipstick: Red Love

The Volume Star Mascara in Intensive Grey

and last but not least the mascara duo in Black & Red

Some swatches for you:

Shimmer Cream in Sparkling Silver, below: liquid eyeshadow in Metallic Silver: 

Lipstick Red Love, blush Bright Shine and Hot Flame

Before I'll talk about it I'm gonna show you some on-face swatches for you. Always looks different applied.

Finished Black & Red look:

Let's start with the lips, a classy red, simply beautiful. It was a bit difficult to build colour on my upper lip without it immediately getting transferred on my lower lip. I didn't wanna use any other products to correct that, so, other than that, a lovely product!

Next on to the liquid eyeshadow. That was one difficult product.. I really tried, but it didn't get even and the more I tried the worst it got. Intensifying the shade was impossible as well. It got only more blotchy. 

Using an eyeshadow base didn't change anything as well. On the left side I wear none, on the right side I do:

I really liked the blushes and usually, I'm not a fan of cream blushes:

Bright Shine:

Hot Flame:

To the mascaras. 

The grey one first. I liked it a lot, but you can't see anything of that grey/gold shimmer on darker lashes:

To the black and red duo. The black side did a good job, but it was impossible to top it with the red side ending with a nice result or making the red show up:

All in all, this collection has some really nice products. The lipsticks and the blushes are lovely. The shimmer cream has too large shimmer particles for my taste, but that might just be me.

I can't recommend the liquid eyeshadows, they won't make you happy. The Volume Star mascara is good and a solid product, but you don't see much of the described shade. At least not on darker lashes. The duo mascaras weren't special as well. Other Alverde mascaras will make you happier.

The collection has some timeless items one can use all year round. Except for the liquid shadows and mascaras this LE offers good quality for a great prize.

Love,

Guinevere

Essence Vintage District Haul

As soon as I saw the promo pictures, I knew I had to get that blush. Luckily, I was able to snatch the last one at a Müller. I also bought a nail polish. Here we go:

It's called "It's popul-art" and looks awesome. The gold is an overspray, but I'm not planning to use it, so who cares. It's too pretty.

This polish looks ordinary at first, but these orange/golden particles make in interesting.

It was difficult to capture. You can see it a little bit here:

Definitely two items I am happy to own. Did you get the blush?

Love,
Guinevere

LUSH Sale Haul

Lush is having a big sale on all their christmas products and so I had to stop by. I wanted to get one bath bomb and not more, well that's what I ended with:

What a consequent person I am.. I bought three Cinders Ballistic Bath Bombs, the reuseable Madame Butterfly Foam Bath, So White Ballistic Bath Bomb, Father Christmas Bath Bomb and Party Popper Ballistic Bath Tower.

I already used:

Cinders Ballistic: 

This one is gorgeous, it turns your water into a golden/caramel colour and these red sugar dots make popping sounds once they are free of the bath bomb. It has a light cinnamon scent, Really lovely and a lot of fun!

Party Popper:

It has a sort of calming scent and turns your water into a light purple. Inside are tiny green and red strips. A bit weird, but I loved the scent. I wish I could describe it better. *g*

Father Christmas: 

This one is really crazy. It looks innocent from the outside, but inside is a green core which turn your water into a fir green and there's a lot of red glitter as well. Crazy! Personally, I'm not a fan of glitter in a bath, it looks cool, but it gets everywhere and I need to take an extra shower afterwards. 

I will talk about the rest after using them. I saved a lot of money that day, always a gorgeous feeling..

Did you get something? I wanted the Popcorn lip scrub as well, but it was already sold out..

Love,
Guinevere

My new love or theTangle Teezer

This hair product has been around for quite a while and I always thought I don't need it, gosh was I wrong!

There are two different brushes by now. The "normal" Tangle Teezer (mine is the handy travel version) and the big pink one is new, named Tangle Teezer Aqua Splash, and is for wet hair. It can be used after and during showering. That's something I ALWAYS wanted!

Let's take a look at those beauties:

The travel one has a protective bottom which can be clicked on the brush. Perfect for carrying in your purse:

The Aqua Splash Teezer:

This whole makes it easy to get rid of excess water:

Those two are incredible, I have no idea what the secret is, but it works. Especially, for my fine and difficult hair it's a blessing.

I tried using a plastic brush once during showering and it was a truly painful experience. With this brush combing through my tangled, wet hair is no problem at all. It makes it easy to get the conditioner on every strand of hair.

A dream!

After towel drying my hair, I use it again so that the leave-in hair products (which I'll talk about soon) are evenly distributed. I love it!

Honestly, I don't think I'll ever stop using those two. I'm so happy to finally be able to use a brush while showering and brush through my dry hair without tugging.

If you can, buy it!! You won't regret it. Especially, all my girls who have long hair, this will change your life. :-)

You can order all the different versions on there website. There's even one for kids, another genius idea, since some little girls tend to hate brushing their hair. My cousin's like that.

How many of you own a Tangle Teezer?

Love,
Guinevere

New Years Resolutions - Vegan For Fit & My Wedding

I guess we all think about things we wanna do better or finally master this year. For me, one of these wishes is to continue my weight loss project, I haven't talked about it for a while and the simple reason is - nothing changed.

I maintained my new weight which isn't bad, but there is still a lot I wanna lose, I wanna look perfect for my wedding. How wouldn't want that?

I got two books for christmas I wanted "Vegan for Fun" and "Vegan for Fit". I read a lot about it and was really enthusiastic.

The second is a 30 days challenge where you only eat the vegan recipes in the book and focus on your training. I have been a vegetarian for years, I also don't eat fish and I don't like eggs and I only drink milk when it's in hot chocolate or coffee. So I thought, hey that change can't be too hard.

I started three days ago and it's okay, but it's not as easy as I thought. I'm not good at cooking, so my fiancé helps, but it's kind of annoying. I like eating freshly made food though.

The recipes are good mostly, though especially the ones I was most hopeful for, didn't taste that good. A recipe I was excited for was the vegan Sauce Carbonara with zucchini noodles (no noodles, potatoes or things like that are allowed)

I don't like the almondmousse the sauce is made of and the first time I tried the raw! zucchini noodles I had stomache age the whole day.. He only puts a bit oil and salt on them, so I did it as well. They were hard and it made me feel sick. The sauce Bolognese wasn't bad, but that kinda ruined it. The second time I tried those noodles, I cooked them for about two minutes, that way it was okay.

A meal I liked was the Vegan burger:

Something he also swears by is Matcha -> a green tea powder, supposed to be stronger than coffee and healthier.

I'm sure it's healthier, but stronger.. no. At least, not for me. The first time I drank it, I was so disgusted by it, I had troubles drinking the whole cup. In my opinion, it tastes like milled seaweed.. I retried it every day though. There are three recipes with Matcha in the book. The Matcha chocolate-banana shake tastes nice, but only because the taste is burried underneath the other ingredients which aren't low in calories.

Another thing, you have to invest a lot of money to get started. You need a powerful mixer, he recommends and swears by the Vitamix, a genius product, but with a 600€ price tag on it. Nothing I can afford, I bought an immersion blender and it does the job, but not as flawless as the Vitamix. All the vegan substitutes and ingredients you don't have at home, have to be purchased as well. That alone cost about 80€. Since I counted a lot on the zucchini noodles, I got the vegetable noodle/spiral maker as well. Oh, and the Matcha powder cost over 20€ as well. All in all, I spent over 200€.

Everyone, who tries that challenge seems to be completely happy and has gorgeous results. It's quite disappointing that I appear to be the only person who's having problems.

At the moment I'm not feeling good, several health problems haunting me and making every day a challenge.. So probably it's too much for me to handle right now, I don't want to give up too soon, but for now I'll take it slow. I'm definitely frustrated and disappointed.

Some of you are curious about our wedding plans. I gotta tell you, it's been everything but a nice planning process. So much to factor in that's expensive. Originally, I wanted a small wedding with about 20 people, now we are at 50..

In two weeks is a wedding trade show in Vienna where you can see all sorts of products and services, photographers and catering companies i.e. We'll go there and I hope to get some input.

My dream wedding still would be in the Scottish Highlands, surrounded by just a few close friends and family, but it's just too damn expensive. It's frustrationg to put it mildly..

That's it with the news on my life. *gg* I wish it wouldn't be like that. For the beauty posts awaiting you, a lot of reviews and I'll try to do more make up looks as well. :-)

Love,
Guinevere

The shortest trip to the UK ever..

Hey guys,

First post in 2013! It's crazy how fast time flies by.. The last couple of days were quite varied.. I spent 22 hours in the UK: Birmingham Airport to Herefordshire and back to the airport, to be exact.

I love being in the UK, but this was everything but my usual vacation.

So why did we fly there? My family has been without a pet every since Wuppi died in Summer, two months ago my mum fell in love with Cutie, a Labradoodle.

Unfortunately, she's from a breeder who conveniently lives in Herefordshire.. After thinking about it for a long time, we decided to go for it and get her. And guess what, she was so worth it!

That is my beautiful mum, the breeder was nice, but a bit too hygienic.. We had to wear plastic gloves and shoes while being at her place.

It was one hell of a trip. We had to drive to Herefordshire on the freaking wrong side of the road.. I didn't expect it to be so horrible, I actually had planned to drive through the Highlands next summer, that definitely won't happen! 

She was such a good girl in the car:

To call that trip stressful is an understatement. It was the first time my name was exclaimed all over an airport with the words "final call for Ms. G..." Not pleasant. 

Long story short, we got her home safely and she is a delight. My parents are so happy, I hope Kronos will meet her soon.

Love,

Guinevere