ESSIE GO GINZA

I have been M.I.A. for the past few days because I travelled back home to my hometown, and figuring out how to maintain a certain photo quality without the usual light, equipment and location is more difficult than I expected it to be, and you all know how important photography is to me and what a huge part of my blog it is. :)



As this year is coming to an end, interesting new things are being prepared for this blog and I cannot wait to show them to you at the beginning of 2015. I cannot wait!

I am utterly excited for today - Christmas Eve is such a special night. Every member gathered around a pretty Christmas tree, with wrapped presents underneath prepared to bring a smile to each one of their faces. My three dearest friends surprised me a day early with this lovely pastel lilac nail polish by Essie. They follow my blog intensely and they managed to pick out a shade that I adore. I find pastels make every hand look softer and more feminine, and this lovely lilac does that job perfectly. Even though the website describes the color as a soft cherry blossom pink, I think that its undertone is a very strong blue which makes it appear more lilac than pink.

Go Ginza goes extremely well with greys so I had to wear my new, comfy, grey sweater to match the color.
 

I hope you all enjoy this Christmas Eve with your family and loved ones!

CATRICE LUXURY LACQUERS IN STARS & STORIES

It isn't possible to walk by these glittery lacquers without stopping. When I spotted the golden glitter in Stars & Stories, it immediately ended up in my shopping cart.

BODY CARE ESSENTIALS

I've gotten a few requests to talk about the beauty products that I use to take care of my skin, body and hair. So I thought I'd start with the necessities that I use either daily or weekly, starting with the body. I personally love taking a peak in other people's skin care and hair care routines. Click Read more after the image to see my essentials.

ESSIE ETERNAL OPTIMIST WITH A TWIST

I adore optimists. They're the kind of people I admire the most. Always seeing the glass as half full, never giving up on anything. Essie's Eternal Optimist found its way into my hands through a very old and dear friend of mine - the friend isn't old, but our friendship is :) - because she purchased it as a replacement for In Stitches. She's the exact friend I mentioned in my In Stitches post, I had to paint her nails after she fell in love with the color. Unfortunately, she wasn't able to find it in Croatia, so she went with Eternal Optimist as a replacement. Upon seeing the photo of her wearing the shade, I had to have it. It's a whole bunch of shades lighter than In Stitches.

ESSIE SHEARLING DARLING

This week has been somewhat of a nightmare. Not because something bad happened, no, but because next week is the actual nightmare. Two exams, two presentations. Doing my nails and blogging about them is the only break that I allow myself to take to relax for a while and close the books for a short time.

ESSIE GIVEAWAY RESULTS!

I am beyond thankful to all of you who entered the giveaway. There were over 100 girls who entered with over 200 individual entries!

ESSIE SPIN THE BOTTLE

The Essie giveaway is officially closed and the two lucky winners will be announced tomorrow!

Unfortunately, winter isn't the ideal time of the year for blog posts if you're always coming home around 4 PM and there is barely any proper light available for photographing. Today was an incredibly sunny day, and luckily, I was home around noon to use the opportunity for photos. For the first time in my life I have shaped my growing nails into a round form, and I must say that I have been enjoying them. Right now it feels like they are less fragile, but time will show if that is indeed true, when they grow a little longer.

I must say that round nails make my hands look more feminine and elongated, which is definitely something to enjoy.

I ran into an Essie sale (certain shades were 40% off) so I couldn't miss out on this wonderful soft nude shade called Spin The Bottle. This is a fantastic nude color because it has just the right hint of pink that will give that certain mademoiselle look to your nails. What do you think about round nails? Do you feel like they're more or less rigid than square nails? 

NOVEMBER FAVORITES

Since we have December 1 marked on our calendars, there is obviously no better time than to post my November favorites.

November is over and I think this sentence will not come as a surprise to any of you: I cannot believe the year 2014 is already over! I remember being a child and feeling annoyed with how long it took for a year to go by, and now I wish for it to last longer.

You will recognise a few of the products as I have already mentioned/reviewed them on this blog, but there is also a couple of new ones which will also be featured on this blog in the coming weeks.



The first November favorite and an absolute holy grail of my life is the Invisibobble hair band. It's a strange telephone wire looking hair band that doesn't make my head hurt and that doesn't pull on my hair or break it every time I take it out. To keep this short and leave enough material for its own post, I can just recommend you to try these. They are fairly expensive, so I also ordered a pack of 20 copies on eBay, which I will be reviewing in the standoff "Invisibobble VS eBay "Invisibobbles".



Now that it's getting colder and colder and we're starting to reach zero on the thermometer, my lips need more care and moisture, so I went for labello's lip butter, hoping it would be more moisturising than their regular labello sticks. It didn't disappoint. Even though numerous versions of this lip butter are available (coconut, vanilla, blueberry), I went with the mild classical scent and I'm really happy about it. The packaging isn't ideal because neither pressing it against your mouth or using your finger to scoop some product out of the tin can are the most hygienic ways of application, but the pleasing effect of this lip butter makes me ignore that.



Finally, I'm mentioning two (or three) products that have already made an appearance on this blog.
The two Matte Me lip creams by Sleek have really been a great discovery of the month of November. I am in love with their long lasting matte texture, and if I had to pick one that I favor more than the other, it would be the color Rioja Red.

Click here to view Birthday Suit's post.
Click here to view Rioja Red's post.

Following all the Essie nail polishes that I acquired over the past month, I had to decide which one was my favorite. And this was a reaaally tough one. But, in another way, it really wasn't. In Stitches is the shade that I definitely got the most compliments on and it is a shade that I haven't seen a dupe for anywhere.

Click here to view the Essie In Stitches post.



I am already looking forward to reading other people's November favorites! List yours in a comment! :)