Coral Dream

Let's say hello to Coral Dream. 

I've mentioned previously that I'm an absolute nail polish addict hoarder. I own a fajillion bottles and I could always own more. This polish came from my ELF haul last month for only $2!

This colour is a very pink-peach colour, with a slight orange undertone. It's apparently one of their newer colours as well - very summery! I applied about three coats on but you really could do with just two. Surprisingly for $2, the formula is comparable to those of OPI, Essie and Zoya. I actually think this might be better than Essie's polishes. I find that their formula is quite streaky and their brushes are TINY. ELF's polish is indeed the opposite - it glides on with a thicker brush. Many people do complain about how it juts out when you close the bottle fully, as in it seems to not fit on properly. That is unfortunately true but fear not, because it still keeps polish quite sealed, so it won't dry out (if that's your concern).

Enjoy your weekend!

♥B

In the Mail

Just a warning that this post has a lot of words and pictures!! Okay okay, so last month I put an order in online at e.l.f. because they had free shipping and I finally received my package this week! For those who are unaware, e.l.f. (Eyes Lips Face) is a cosmetics and beauty company that sells most of their products online for a ridiculously cheap price. They say they have the ability to charge so low because they don't spend money on advertising. Instead, they use word of mouth. I thought, "their quality must be so cheap and crappy" but I read so many reviews I just had to order.

Contratry to my belief, their products turned out quite well! I ordered this on March 17 and I received it April 17 so I'd say their 2-4 week timeframe listed on their website (for Canada) is quite accurate. The only thing was that shipping wasn't actually free. I still had to pay $8 because I'm in Canada.. They only gave me $6.95 off otherwise shipping would've totalled nearly $15. Additionally, they said that if I spent more than $20, I would be charged some amount because of duties and our taxes. Those also didn't happen. Instead, this was stuffed in my mailbox and I gladly accepted my duty-free package.

I don't intend to do a review in this post because you'd be here reading all week so I'll just talk about them as I use them. Here's what I got and the prices:

Essential Eyelid Primer in Sheer

$1

Essential Brightening Eye Colour Quads in Drama and Butternut

$1 each

Studio Powder Brush

$3

Studio High Definition Powder

$6

Studio Eyebrown Lifter & Filter in Ash/Ivory

Studio Kohl Black Eyeliner

Studio Concealer Pencil & Brush in Light

$3 each

Matte Finisher Clear Polish

Nail Polishes in Coral Dream, Mint Cream and Metal Madness

$2 each

That was my little haul :) I spent a total of $29 which I thought was amazing (and so did Hubs!)
Mel also put in an order around the same time so I can't wait for her to show what she got because she hasn't told me yet - she wanted to leave me in suspense :P

Hope you guys enjoy your weekend and happy 4/20 to those who celebrate it, haha.

♥B

Spring-ing

Wow it's been a while since we both updated! As you can imagine, we're busy enjoying the spring weather outdoors. I went out with the family today and it seriously felt like summer already. Anyway, Saturdays mean prepping food for the week - things like baking, or pre-cooking and freezing food. Today it means CHICKEN STOCK/BROTH! If I'm lazy, I tend to resort to chicken cubes which are in fact high in sodium and probably a bunch of other things that aren't necessary to one's body. Instead, I make my own! It's a nutritious alternative to store-bought stock or broth because you control what goes into the stock.

Ingredients: fresh parsley, celery, carrots, onion, tomato, garlic and raw (bone-in) chicken

That's all. You literally put all that in one pot and cover it with cold water. Let it boil and simmer for at least 4 hours so that all the ingredients can really flavour the water.

No, seriously... Just throw it all in one pot. It's so easy you could probably do this blindfolded.

So hopefully, it'll inspire you guys to make your own chicken stock as it really is healthier. If you're a vegetarian, you can just omit the chicken and you get vegetable stock!

* * *

What else to do while you wait for chicken stock to boil for a few hours?

Finger paint!

 Essie - Chinchilly (3 coats)

Happy Saturday everyone!

♥B

Happy St. Patty's!

Happy St. Patrick's Day everyone! A great excuse to get trashed for most people, but since hubs is working and we've got no one to watch the little ones, it's a stay-at-home day for me. I'm sure most people did their nails green so I jumped on the bandwagon.

Nails: Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Green with Envy

I hate how hard it is to capture the real colour of nails in photographs. From the left, I shot that at night. Second picture from the left, that was during the daytime. Both look like two completely different shades. But the best way to describe the true colour of this would be "celery". Yup, I was chopping celery earlier today and realized that it was an identical match. This was about 3 coats with top and base coat.

As for dinner...

Chinese Ginger Beef on Rice

Hope everyone's getting completely wasted tonight!

♥B

Chocolate Dipped Tips

Had some much needed rest and relaxation last night following a few hectic days... Well, what to do when you have hours on hand? Paint your nails! If I have any beauty obsession, nail polish is one of them. I was sorting one of my boxes of polishes last night. Take a peek below! :)

So yeah.. A little extreme but I can't help it! I used to change my colours almost everyday but lost the habit for a few months. Now, I'm starting to get back into it! Possibly because it's spring season and all the newer collections/sets come out during this time. It's hard to avoid good sales ;) So I did a quick mani and got my nails all prepped for a couple coats of liquid looooove.

I decided to use the polish I just bought this week: OPI - Suzy Loves Cowboys. It's a dark chocolate brown creme colour. It was sort of weird putting it on because the first coat is SO SHEER. However on the second coat, it somehow made it almost opaque and I just used 3 coats to make it even. The colour is gorgeous and honestly I keep thinking my hands are messy from eating chocolate. Yuuumm.

So that went well UNTIL the top coat. My HG top coat is either Seche Vite Dry Fast or China Glaze Fast Forward but I decided to give FingerPaints TopCoat a try. Sally's was having a 2 for 1 sale for FingerPaints and I got the base and top coat. The base coat worked fine in terms of setting a good base and has been protecting my nails from yellowing. However, the top coat on the other hand completely screwed up my manicure. Look!

If you look closely at the pictures, it came out all bubbly and streaky! Prior to applying the top coat, the nail polish glided on and left a nice smooth surface. After putting on FingerPaint's top coat, I kid you not, it actually ruined my polish. I literally sat there and did nothing to avoid getting marks on my wet nails but that didn't help. Not only did it take more than 30 minutes to dry, it created this weird surface on my nails. Just take a closer look at my thumb:

Tell me that doesn't gross you out one bit? I'm so disgusted! I honestly contemplated just removing it right away but thought I would document it so all you others won't have to experience this polished heartache. I don't really like giving such bad reviews for products but really, a top coat shouldn't look so disastrous on your nails. Have you guys tried this before? I would love to hear suggestions on different top coats out there.

♥B

Retail Therapy Sesh

I'm incredibly busy this week and will be next week because we're hosting a huge event at work, and yours truly is the planner/coordinator. Soooo, this will be a short post paired with a bunch of pictures! I went for some retail therapy yesterday and bought a bunch of stuff that I probably won't use much:

Blazer & Skirt from H&M | Shoes from Ardene | Purse from random store | OPI

I'm totally into the nudes and browns this season. How boring, I know. Meanwhile everyone is frolicking in bright reds and blues. I've never really liked too much colour, but most of where my colour is found in my tops. I have everything from teal to bright pink to yellow to purple, etc. Also, I didn't own any dark browns in my stash of polish so I decided to get this from my local drugstore. The lady working there told me to keep my eyes peeled every February because that's when most beauty companies discontinue their previous lines and have a huge sale. Most of the colours were gone but I managed to get my hands on the last decent colour available - yay! I paid $5.99 CAD for it as opposed to $10.99 CAD regular price :) Anyway, back to haulin' ass. It's Friiiiiiiday ♥

♥B 

Catching Up

Finally got the chance to blog. I'm typically busier on Mondays and Tuesdays than I am any other day of the week. The biggest reason being that hubs has these two days off, and work is always hectic on these days as well. Wednesday is almost one of those relief days for me since I get to just sit back and relax after a long day of work and errands. Errands being... cook, clean, tend to the daughter and whatever else that needs to be done.

Anyway, for the past couple of days, I've been eating such yummy food I had to take pictures and share them! Most of them were actually made by hubs (he's the chef in the family) but no recipes though. If you want them, feel free to email us at belleplusmel@gmail.com and I'd be happy to let you in on some secrets hehe.

A) Roasted Lamb with homemade fries, green beans and grape tomatoes - Okay, I can't take credit for this at all. Hubs totally made this for dinner on Monday night and mymouth had several orgasms.

B) Shredded Chicken open-face sandwich - Made with crisped up potatoes, some carrots and drenched in delicious gravy over whole wheat toast

C) Mapo Tofu with vegetables and spam - This is one of my daughter's favourite meals. It's literally just rice, tofu, green beans and little bits of spam. She already knows what comfort food is!

D) Chicken in mushroom gravy with asparagus and garlic whipped potatoes - This was just my dinner tonight :) Nothing special but still good.

Hopefully that made your stomach ache a little because it definitely makes me hungry all over again...

On another note, I have a clinical addiction to oranges lately. I seriously eat 2-3 a day almost everyday. I have one a day at least. I guess it's better than being hooked on someting unhealthy. So in celebration of having such a nutritious addiction, I painted my nails just that colour! Yay!

This polish is from Joe Fresh, most commonly found in Canada's Real Canadian Superstore (formerly known as Loblaws). I bought these for a ridiculously great price at $10 for 3 bottles or $4 per bottle. And these weren't even on sale... Surprisingly the formula was great. It's heavily pigmented which only required two full coats. The colour is Pineapple but as you can see, it's almost identical to my oranges! I would've thought pineapples were a bit more yellow but oh well. It's a really cute colour especially for spring. Definitely check out Joe Fresh if you can find their products.

Goodnight. 

♥B

Nude Lips

This post refers to the previous "hump day" post! Despite the fact that I love beauty products and playing with makeup I'm not huge on USING a lot of them. Hence, I'm quite a noob when it comes to it. Hopefully, we will leave Belle to keep me up to date with the must-buy products! I'm one of those that sticks to a daily face wash and moisturizer.. and the staple eyeliner, eyebrow pencil, eyelash curler, mascara, etc. etc. My biggest collection however has to be my lipstick. I don't think there's a single colour I wouldn't want to have on my lips. An old habit of mine was to buy a new lipstick every month which eventually died.. but maybe it's time to start again ;). One of my favourite looks for my lips is definitely nude, keeping it au naturel!

MAC Viva Glam Amplified 'GaGa 2', Elizabeth Arden High Shine Lip Gloss '#05 Frosted Camellia'

The first coat used is my absolute favourite lipstick that goes with me everywhere. It's a part of MAC's Viva Glam line and it's the second Lady GaGa lipstick released within MAC. I have searched long and hard for a perfect nude shade and this is the one for me! It has a matte beige tone which applies easily and looks great on it's own. For this look, I've added a sheer gloss which also has a slight nude undertone. They work extremely well together to give a great finished look.

♥M

Mini Thrift Splurge & A Scrumptious Dinner

I've been sick for nearly two weeks and finally, I'm physically getting better! To treat myself for enduring a fortnight of broken tastebuds and insomnia, I went for a mini shopping trip after work. I didn't by any means go on a full out shopping spree because I intend on doing that in about two weeks, but this was just a little indulgence. Pluuuuus, I was running severely low on makeup.

I have recently been reading reviews over drugstore cosmetics and see that they have stepped up in quality. Thank goodness, because I can't afford to go to Sephora and MAC on a regular basis. Anyway, I picked up a few things that I've been hearing great things about and thought I could share my thoughts on them with you too :)

First one we have is the EOS Lip Balm that many of you may have already heard of, or even own!

This lip balm is quite intriguing, both in packaging and performance. It comes in a little egg/oval/circular shape. At first I thought it would be really small and hard to handle, but not at all. It applies on well and didn't need reapplication for at least 4 to 5 hours. Even after feeling I needed to reapply, my lips already felt softer and hydrated! I paid about $4 CAD (plus tax) and I think it was well worth it. It comes in various other flavours including Lemon Drop, Strawberry Sorbet, Honeysuckle Honeydew, Medicated Tangerine and Sweet Mint.

Next up, I've got the Maybelline Falsies Mascara, the regular one, not the lacey or the flared one.

Personally, I'm not a suck for mascaras since my eyelashes are next to non-existent so basically no mascaras truly work on me. This one wasn't too different. It did not extend my lashes at all but it does give my lashes a more "full" look, as it promises on the packaging. The good thing about this is that it doesn't clump, and it has more of a pasty formula which is better for hold. I would've probably went with a waterproof mascara instead, but all in all, for $7 CAD (plus tax), it wasn't too bad.

Last is my favourite! This is the Maybelline Eye Studio Lasting Drama Gel Eye Liner.

Despite the unnecessary length of the name, this product is by far one of my favourites in all the cosmetics I own. Many people have compared this to the MAC Fluidline Gel Eye Liner and I really think it's quite up there. If you look at the brush, it looks very "cheap" and doesn't seem like it would do the job. However, upon trying it, it glided on smoothly and produced a very defined and sharp line across the lid. It even went on thin enough on my waterline, though I imagine it would smudge a lot faster there. It claims to stay on for 24 hours, which I highly doubt. I'm not even sure I would want any eyeliner to stay on that long to begin with. However it does stay on for quite a long time. For me, I have monolids but not oily so it did stay on for about 4-6 hours without smudging or fading. I paid $10 CAD (plus tax) for this and I can gladly say that I will definitely buy this again. Very impressive product!

*      *      *

All in all, not a big grab but hopefully I'll have goodies to show you when I go on my next shopping spree. Of course after a long day of work and solo shopping, hubs had a delicious dinner prepared for me when I got home.

FEAST YOUR EYES!

Mustard Pork Steak with Roasted Sweet Potato Rounds

fried onion ringlets and red peppers for garnish

♥B