Christmas Haul!

Sorry it’s been so long since my last post, but things have been busy! However, I’m back now, and I have a whole bunch of Christmas presents to show you! I remember feeling weird about this post last year, but this year a ton of the Youtubers I follow have done these, so it seems like it’s become a thing… Though, to be honest, I’d be posting this either way.

I’m not going to list or describe everything I got, unless I was really excited about it or if it’s somewhat relevant to this blog, but there are pictures of pretty much anything. If you want reviews of anything, let me know, and I can do that in another post =)

Finally, before we get to the pictures, I apologize of the quality is a little low on some of the pictures. I didn’t use my good camera Christmas morning, so those pictures are from my cell phone.

Christmas morning/family presents:

Stuff I don’t have better pictures of:

• Harry Potter Calendar
• slippers
• Soft Kitty t-shirt (like from The Big Bang Theory)

• Rose scented soap
• fruity marshmallows
• Mint Chocolate chip lip gloss
• Raffaellos, Ferrero Rochers, Peppermint Dark Chocolate and Milk Chocolate lindors, toothpaste

• Blue Henley shirt (which you can barely see)
• Vanilla Latte Tassimo discs
• deodorant
• slippers
• sticky lint rollers
• Brita filters

• Candy Cane coffee
• Candy Cane hot chocolate
• snowman mug

• Shortbread
• chocolate Santa-pop
• mini bubble gum dispenser
• gum
• mint chocolates
• Zero chocolate bar
• and other chocolate I mentioned earlier

• Leopard umbrella
• itty bitty flashlight
• pink change purse
• Hard Candy makeup bag (I’ll show you what came inside later)
• Hard Candy heart shaped lip gloss
• 3 pack of gloves
• Fuzzy socks

• Earrings: rainbow K’s, dangly purple things, hearts, “I <3 London”, double decker buses, pink Statue of Liberties, golden Eiffel Towers, bows

• Sinful Colors polish in Dream On (a matte colour)
• Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear in Sunny Side

A swatch of Dream On:

• be Sweet Vanilla Flower scented antibacterial gel, body lotion, and body mist from Upper Canada Soaps. These smell so so good!
• Hard Candy Cream Bath, Body Mist, and Body Lotion (from inside the makeup bag), in the scent Mango Coconut Kiss. Also smells so nice! I didn’t even know we had Hard Candy in Canada…!

• Tea! Stash Cinnamon Vanilla, Holiday Chai (which is wonderful, by the way), and decaf Pumpkin Spice. And the David’sTea Red Velvet Cake I mentioned in my last haul post, from my boyfriend.

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (which is funny, because I think it’s my sister who owns Part 1)
• The King’s Speech
• A cool Chinese panda metal bookmark thing (from my boyfriend)

• J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy
• George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones (From my best friend, Brit, not from my family.)

Other stuff from my boyfriend:

The bhCosmetics First Edition 120 Eyeshadow Colour Palette!

So gorgeous. I have tons more pictures, which I intend to show you in my review of this palette, which I intend to do a little later, once I’ve played with this a bunch more!

A faux leather, studded backpack from Spring:

And it came with the British pin! So cute. I absolutely love it. I’d been wanting something classier and more waterproof than my childish Jansport backpack for a while. And I love that this is small and cute enough to use as a purse, and big enough for all my gym stuff, plus a notebook, and a textbook on days I have class!

There was also some stuff I didn’t take pictures of that I got from my boyfriend, including the exact boots I showed in my Fall Wishlist post (thought I technically paid half), and also a t-shirt with a Union Jack on it made out of mini TARDISes, like this:

Image from ThinkGeek.com

And I think that’s everything, though I do have a couple presents I still haven’t received yet! =)

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas, and enjoyed seeing what I got this year. Please let me know in the comments what you got, and also if there’s anything you want to hear more about! I definitely plan to do a review of the eyeshadow palette, but you’ll have to let me know if anything else interested you. =)

Thanks for reading, and I hope you all have an awesome New Year’s as well, if I don’t post again before 2013!

<3

My first (real) Bath & Body Works haul!

So, if you’re Canadian (I don’t think they’ve expanded to the US yet), you might know about the SPC card. It’s a student pricing card you can get each year, I think it’s 9 bucks now, and it gets you a discount at a whole bunch of stores for the entire year. Usually the discount is only 10%, but with stores like American Eagle, Aldo, and Spring included, that can pile up pretty quickly, and it easily pays for itself by the end of the year. Anyways, this post isn’t to sell you an SPC card, so let’s move on…

This year, they were giving out $10 off coupons for a variety of stores with your SPC purchase online, so I did that, even though it added 2 bucks for shipping to the price of the card, and I got the $10 off a purchase of $30 or more at Bath and Body Works. The coupon was going to expire the end of the month, so I had to use it up, hence this haul. (Also, I was so happy when they told me I could use the coupon on sale prices, since it’s value would have gone way down otherwise!)

I’m sure you also noticed the DavidsTea bag in the above picture. Apparently my boyfriend is counting this as one of my Christmas presents, but I’ll present it here, rather than in my Christmas presents haul post later this month, since I have pictures already taken, and it may well be gone by Christmas =P. I got the Red Velvet Cake tea, which smells amazing, and tastes just as good. Not sure it tastes like cake, it probably tastes better. You can read the ingredients and description below, but it basically smells like frosting:

And a look inside:

It looks so cute with the sprinkles and white chocolate bits!

Now on to Bath & Body Works…: I walked around the store several times before figuring out how I could get as close to $30 as possible without being under. I knew I wanted candles, and I almost bought more sanitizers, but in the end, I found this lotion for $12.50. It smells so amazing, and also filled up quite a chunk of my $30 budget. It’s the Pink Chiffon Triple Moisture Body Cream:

I didn’t think I’d like it, since it looks from the packaging to be really floral, but it actually smells kinda more like candy than flowers! It is so nice, and feels so nice on the skin, too. Definitely a good buy!

Next, the mini candles were on for 3 for $6, so I definitely wanted to get some of those. Unfortunately, the scent selection was rather limited at my location:

I did, however, manage to find the fantastic French Baguette scent. It. Smells. Exactly. Like. Bread. Oh my god! I love it, so I got two of these little ones:

I’m also a massive lover of vanilla scents, so for my third mini, I got the Merry Cookie scent, which smells just like a vanilla cookie. Maybe a sugar cookie? It’s lovely, and the only vanilla candle I got, since I already have a few random vanilla scented candles at home:

Finally, the small candles were on buy one, get one free:

You might be able to tell what kind of scents I go for by now, but I fell in love with this sweet, caramel scented Toffee Crunch candle! Mmm… it smells amazing:

I definitely thought, when I picked it up, that this was going to be my favourite of the haul… Until I met the next candle:

First of all, just look at this bloody adorable box!

Of course I picked up the London candle to smell it, but oh my god it is like heaven in a little glass jar! It claims to be smell like tea, sugar, and lemon, and dear god, that is exactly what it smells like! I’m almost afraid to burn it, because then it will disappear! Mmm… It seriously smells like actual happiness!

And the inside of the box and the candle itself are also bloody adorable!:

I also got two coupons tucked into my bag… Bath & Body Works is definitely the kind of store you should probably never buy anything full-price at… it just seems so unnecessary!

And finally, a shot of the first candle I had to try out:

You also get a slightly blurry glimpse of two of my favourite things right now in the background of this picture: PC Cranberry Ginger Ale from the Great Canadian Superstore (I think Canada Dry also has a version of this, but I found this one first), and my little robot tea-ball guy… I’ve named him Earl. (Let me know if you get why, though I think it’s pretty obvious…). In other news, this candle makes me hungry.

Anyways, that’s my whole little haul from this past Thursday. I said in the title that it’s my first real B&BW haul, because I have bought tons of sanitizers there, and a little lotion or two, but that’s it.

What are your favourite B&BW candles right now? Have you smelled the London one? (OMG go smell it!)

Thanks for reading!

Contest Link: DrinkCitra’s Holiday Giveaway (and a question)

Hello again, just a quick post to let you all know about the pretty awesome giveaway going on on DrinkCitra’s blog:

Both prizes look so awesome. This contest is open internationally, and closes December 23rd, so make sure to get your entries in soon if you’re interested!

http://www.drinkcitra.com/2012/11/2012-holiday-giveaway-open.html

Also, there are a lot of winter and Christmas tags floating around YouTube and beauty blogs right now, so let me know if you want me to do any of them, or if there are any other posts or tags you want to see from me Also, I should have a Bath and Body Works haul up very soon!

P.S.: I just recently got to 41 followers, and I wanted to thank you all for following, it means a lot! =)

Thanks for reading! <3

2012 Christmas Wishlist!

Alright, I know this post should probably have been up ages ago, since it’s less than 2 weeks until Christmas now, but on Monday I had a paper due, and I had an exam today. But I’m all done now! So I have no more excuses… sort of. I’m sure I can think of something if I need to… =P

Anyway! I wanted to share with you some of the stuff on my list. I’m not going to bother sorting the cosmetic stuff from everything else, because this is really just a fun post.

1. The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling

Image from GoodReads

This is honestly probably my number one thing. It’s also the only thing I’ve asked my parents for thus far and my mom is a reader and a Harry Potter fan as well, so I think I’ll finally get it!

If you don’t know (how?), this is the new novel by J. K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series (you’ve at least heard of that right?). It’s an adult fiction novel, not fantasy, more drama-based. I’ve only read about 30 pages so far, so I can’t tell you much more. Which is good, read it yourself! =P

2. A Sigma or Real Techniques brush set (I’d probably settle for Sephora too)

Image from SigmaBeauty.com

I have some pretty nice ELF Studio line brushes for my face, and some passable ELF regular line eye brushes, but that’s it, and I would love a few really good brushes. I’m pretty alright with my eye brushes, so if I was getting Sigma, I’d probably opt for a face set. Ironically, for the Real Techniques sets, I’d probably choose the eye brush set, because it just looks more useful to me. But yeah, those are expensive! (Pictured is the Mr. Bunny Travel Kit)

3. A England polishes

Image from A-England.co.uk

Any of them really, I kinda just want to try them out. They are the one brand I’ve been waiting to get around to. I’d most like to try out anything holographic, or anything with a cool name. (Lots of their stuff is named after characters from cool books/stories, like King Arthur legends!) Pictured is Lady of the Lake, probably one of my favourites.

4. Skylark Ava and Sophia lipgloss duo

Image from Blush.com

For those who don’t watch them, Skylark is the makeup line by the Fowler sisters, Blair and Elle, who are juicystar07 and on YouTube. I love them, and they are also so adamant that they wanted to make their stuff the best of everything in makeup, that I really want to try these out. Also the colours look fantastic. They are supposed to be really well-pigmented, not sticky, and have a nice applicator. Also, it keeps going on sale for $20…

5. Some Wet’n’Wild Shadow trios or 8-colour palettes

Image from MarieALaMode.blogspot.com

Because I want to try them out and because Emily Eddington of Beauty Broadcast on Youtube loves them, and she is amazing. Also, they’re cheap! (This was one of the best images I found)

6. The Game of Thrones books, or at least the first one.

Image from ZainabKhawaja.Wordpress.com

I’m through watching the first two seasons of the show and completely in love! I’d love to get into the books now too, since I hear the characters are a lot more fleshed out! Daenerys is my favourite, which brings me to my next thing:

7. A Targaryen shirt/pin/something

Image from Store.HBOUK.com

Daenerys Targaryen is my favourite person on the whole show, I love everything about her, and if I was in that world, I’d want to be related to her! There’s a really nice shirt at HMV right now for only like $20 that I’d really like!

8. A Nerdfighter pin

Image from DFTBA.com

From the DFTBA store… thing is it’s like 8 bucks plus shipping to Canada… Sigh!

9. The Simarillion (with a matching cover to my copy of The Hobbit and my  Lord of the Rings set)

Image from TheApricity.com

I haven’t read it, and it may take me years, but I will read it. I can do this! >_<

10. Other general stuff I’d love but don’t actively want:

Anything Portal Anything Doctor Who Any black tea from DavidsTea Any John Green Book (besides The Fault in Our Stars)

Giftcards to: Sephora American Eagle Starbucks Chapters

What’s on your Christmas wishlist? =)

(Oh, and voting is still open for the NailPolishCanada contest until the 12th, so please go vote if you haven’t yet! Also, if you wanted to vote and it didn’t show up, it might be because you are using Chrome. Thanks again! <3)

Tiny Haul

Just a reminder that voting is open on the NailPolishCanada contest until Dec. 12th, so if you haven’t voted yet, please do! Thanks!

This haul is just some pretty basic essential products (as much as makeup can be essential, but you get my point).

Here’s an overview:

Baby Ruth Chocolate bar:

First of all, this was kind of an impulse buy by my boyfriend in Dollarama on my behalf. We were in line to buy the cotton pads, and I noticed this in the candy display. I thought these were only American. I don’t know if they imported it, or if this is a new thing for Canada, or what… but I tried these while in Seattle and kinda fell in love.

Renpure Originals Argan Oil:

As I mentioned in my last favourites post, I’m in the process of growing out my hair, which my boyfriend is totally in approval of, so when I mentioned that it would be helpful if I had a hair oil or treatment of some kind, he decided he had to buy me one. This was one of the cheapest, purest things at London Drugs. It’s a pretty good size, especially since you use so little at one time.

Also, it’s organic, and has very few ingredients, as well as having “No sodium chloride, salt, dyes, sulfates, parabens, or gluten.” Now, I’m not sure what’s so bad about gluten (if you do know, tell me in the comments!), other than that, it sounds like it only has good stuff for my hair in it. And so far it’s been working wonders! Plus it smells great!

Rimmel Stay Matte Pressed Powder in Natural:

I’m back to my old favourite (and seemingly a favourite of much of the blogging/YouTube community!). However this time I’m trying out a different colour. I used to use Transparent, (or is it translucent?) and this time it was between that and Natural, which both looked about the same, but this was more pinky and the other more yellow. I’m kinda pink toned so I went with this one. It also had a little British flag beside the name on the shelf, and I love England too much to not choose the even more British one. Granted I don’t know what the flag meant to represent. Still, this colour is a great match for my skin.

The only issue is, when I swatched this on my hand, I noticed it had the tiniest microshimmer in it! What? A shimmer in a matte powder? That makes no sense. The pictures don’t capture it, and I’ve asked several people about if my face looks glittery when I’m wearing it, and no one can see it, so I guess I don’t really mind, and it’s a great basic powder. Still seems odd though. Have you used this product? Did your colour have any shimmer?

Dollarama Cotton Pads:

I don’t think these have another brand, they were just $1 cotton pads at Dollarama, whereas most cotton pads are more like $4 or $5, so I chose these. I can’t really tell the difference. Just an essential for a nail junkie like myself!

Old Navy “Tami” tank tops:

These were only for $7, or something great like that, plus we were there the day before Black Friday, so everything in the store was something like 30% off, so these were a great deal. I’d been wanting another tank top like my comfy one from H&M, which is just wonderfully fitted, a bit stretchy, but also loose and comfy and flattering. However, they had only one colour, and it was nude and a size small. My boyfriend suggested Old Navy. Now, I have a mental block about Old Navy, I hate them on principle. They are preppy and housewife-ish in my head, and also related to the GAP. However, everytime David suggests shopping there they have pretty much exactly what I want, especially for basics.

These are great, and exactly how I described the H&M tank above. The name is a little ridiculous… “Tami” is supposed to be a hybrid of a tank and a cami… so… what, they have slightly skinnier straps than a tanktop? I don’t understand the need for a new name. But either way, these are great, and so comfy!

And that’s everything I got. Have you bought anything great (or super basic but essential) lately? Also, I’m always open to post suggestions, so let me know if you have any!

Thanks for reading <3