Thursday 25 October 2012

MY NEW FRYE BOOTS! (warning, lots of pics)

I had recently been looking around for a new pair of military style lace up boots. There were many that I nearly bought but for one reason or another just didn't make the cut. I was having a browse on my favourite shopping website revolveclothing.com and saw that the Frye Engineer 8R boot in black was one of their very top sellers. Looking at the pictures on the site I didn't think much of these boots to start with until I had a quick squizz on google images to see tons of celebrities and fashion bloggers alike wearing these boots. I became hooked. I could see so many different ways of wearing these shoes and I loved all of the different styles. They looked so amazing and versatile when worn as  opposed to looking a bit plain and boring on the revolve website. 

I am a bit of a sucker for buying 'the exact thing' I see a celebrity wearing, so when I saw the likes of Keira Knightley, Miley Cyrus and Minka Kelly wearing them it only made me want them even more! I got them in the mail soon after ordering them and have been wearing them every day since! I can't get enough of them they are amazing! I only hope it won't be too hot to wear them with shorts as summer approaches here in Australia but still, they are going to be PERFECT for my trip overseas coming up in December. But enough of my raving for now, here are some pics. Enjoy looking at my boots modelled by me in my purple galaxy leggings from blackmilkclothing and have fun thinking about all the weird and wonderful positions I had to twist myself into taking these photos haha!


The standard shot

le bottom

le inside of boot

le bottom of inside of shoe

side views




the white stuff you see in these couple of photos is just the really old carpet coming off onto my boots. I brushed it off and it was fine

These complete the look of wearing leggings and an oversized tee/sweater and look really badass too. They also look fantastic with a range of dresses. I have worn them with skimpy tight clubbing dresses as well as cute flowing spring dresses. They have heaps of room around the leg so you can fit them over your jeans too. They look amazing paired up with jeans and a leather jacket!

Because these boots are so popular they go in and out of stock all the time but revolve seems to keep good stock of them. I got mine for $215 which isn't super cheap but these boots are built to last through the ages with super sturdy oil resistant leather.

My feet fit in shoes anywhere between an Aussie 8-9. 8 usually fits, sometimes 8.5 and if its a really tight shoe for some reason I will go for a 9 but then the shoe will always have plenty of room. I can squeeze my feet into a 7 if there are no other sizes available and I am desperate for the shoe. I ordered these in a size 8 (Aus and US womens shoe sizes are the same) and they fit perfectly. Not to tight, not too loose. Initially I found them a little hard to get on, as I had to get used to the way my foot would slide and then 'pop' into the bottom bit of the boot. I found there was a little bit of tightness around the arches of my feet but this has gone away as I have worn the boots in more. If you are worried about the sizing being too small then get a half size up. I think that doing that the only problem you MIGHT have would be a little bit of extra room around the heel but they're not going to fall off either way because of the style.

I now have my sights set on the Kira High Top sneaker after seeing Kristen Stewart wearing them here and there (as much as she is criticised for having little facial expression, I love her hair and style!). I have a bit more research to do and a bit more saving before buying them though!

 What do you think of my Frye boots? What are your favourite shoes right now? Do you have boots similar to these and are just as infatuated with them as me?

Saturday 20 October 2012

Isika Spa Retreat

This week Tom and I had our 3 year anniversary! We spent the Saturday shopping for gifts for each other then on Sunday I booked us a private room in the day spa at the resort where I work. At the beauty boutique next to the spa I also bought a fantastic new lip gloss which I will share too.


My bubble bath prepped and ready to go!

The ISIKA Plate Ritual with lots of goodies to pamper myself with!

Me creepily enjoying my champagne before hopping into the spa haha!

I was fascinated by this amazing spa shower!

Needless to say my skin and hair felt amazing after using the products from the ritual. The body polish (darkest beige colour in the pic) was particularly effective being packed full of granules of all different sizes. I didn't care much for the face moisturiser at the end because it smelled a bit 'chemically' however it didn't aggravate my skin or anything so all good there!






I first tried this lipgloss a few weeks ago when I borrowed it off another girl I was filming a commercial with and knew I had to get my hands on it as soon as possible! It is AVEDA lip shine in grapefruit and cost me $27 after my staff discount. It looks pink in the tube but when you put it on your lips it looks a lot more nude. It is also quite sparkly but again, when put on your lips it just comes across as a nice natural glossy sheen which I like. I smells and tastes like any of those plumping glosses you can find, with a pepperminty aroma.I can see I am going to run out of this one very quickly because it is one of those lip colours that you can just wear everyday with any look or even without any other make-up!

Monday 15 October 2012

Flour-less Banana Pancakes

I recently found a recipe for flour-less banana pancakes here and was really impressed with how simple it looked so I decided to give it a go!

All you need is a ripe banana and two eggs to make a portion for one person (I got two pancakes out of my mix). You mash up the banana, beat the eggs, mix them together, throw it all on the frying pan and off you go!

I didn't have a potato masher so I chopped up my banana and mashed it up with a fork instead. Make sure your banana is nice and super ripe so this bit is easy.


The raw ingredients

Mixing it up (not the most appetizing-looking thing at this stage!)



As you can see I am a terrible cook as I cant get a proper pancake shape but this is actually a very good standard for me! I think that 'banana omelette' would be a more fitting name for this recipe. They are not bad and definitely worth a try. The taste of the banana really comes through nicely. A very good diet recipe as they are high in protein, relatively low in calories and of course, all natural. I had mine with a bit of honey too.

Let me know how your attempt at this recipe goes!

Wednesday 10 October 2012

LUSH: "Sweety Pie" and "It's Raining Men"

I bought these two body washes a while ago but kind of forgot I had them and now I have been using them a lot recently because I can't get enough of these wonderful smells! I started using them when I ran out of my usual Palmers cocoa body wash and now I'm not sure if I want to go back!



What I love about both of them is how they fill the bathroom with their aroma after a shower as well as leaving my skin feeling soft, clean and gently scented. Their smells are indeed what drove me to buy them both from the shops.

Ace was helping me blog today!
The main ingredient in this body wash is honey! This worried me a little as I thought it would be sticky and difficult to wash this but there was no problems at all. It squeezes out of the bottle like honey but it is far less 'syrupy' than pure honey. It makes a light lather and I use it all over my body, I haven't tried it in my hair though like it says you can!



With flash so you can see more of the sparkles


Sweety pie smells so amazing, if you are a fan of blackcurrant you absolutely cannot go past this one! I wish they made this jelly in more flavours, a strawberry, honey or vanilla version of this stuff would drive me wild! The jelly stays together so you need to cut it up or scratch/scoop out sections with your fingers to use it. I take a little bit and scrub it into my loofah. It bubbles up like crazy and you only need a very small amount, this will last you a very long time! It has tons of blue sparkles all through it that don't show up much in my photos and I haven't noticed any left on my skin after a wash but still a nice touch I think!

What are your favourite body washes at the moment?

Tuesday 2 October 2012

A Facebook Rant

There have been recent concerns and reports regarding private messages on Facebook being publicly visible on peoples' timelines. The issue was that there were claims of a glitch on the system causing all private messages dated from 2010 and before being displayed on the a users timeline for all to see. This was obviously quite shocking for many, as things could get very awkward very quickly if this was the case. Users scrambled through their timelines and panicked as they saw fragmented, embarrassing conversations on their walls. My friends started posting status updates like:

"Alert: Facebook has douched it up again.
Your private messages from 2010 and earlier can be seen on your timeline. This is not a hoax- it was true for me. Go down to the part of your timeline and hover your mouse over the posts and click "hide".

Guess what though, even if you hide the posts on your own wall, the messages that you sent in 2010 and earlier will still be visible on everyone else's wall. So, in other words, boooooooo Facebook, BOOOOOO. Everyone hide."


and....

"Guys, if you haven't heard yet, all of your private messages prior to 2010 are publicly accessible on your timeline. Facebook have obviously stuffed up on their privacy settings when they switched to timeline view.

If you go to your timeline and use the year nav on the right to open 2010, you'll see a box on your timeline with "friends have posted to your timeline". That box needs hiding, cause it's got all your messages in there.

Do that for each year prior to 2010 and you should be sorted."


I quickly followed such instructions, worried about ANYTHING I might have said to my friends in confidence being exposed to unintended audiences but I was still really peeved about the possibility of my posts still being visible on other peoples walls. 

There has since been a lot of coverage about this issue:

Forbes
Guardian
Sydney Morning Herald
Wired

Some of my friends are still convinced that their private messages have been exposed. I think this is silly in light of all the information that has been given to us and by the fact that Facebook has not seen any serious lawsuits or at least taken any action in 'fixing' said 'glitch' or 'problem'.

Facebook used to be a much cosier place where we would share a lot more information with each other without worrying and without realising how long that information would stay there. I still have a lot of private messages on Facebook but they are private. I do, however want to delete a lot of them and this in itself is an issue. 

You can permanently delete private messages from your profile (however you get through the process) but unless the recipient of those messages also permanently deletes them, they will always be stored somewhere in their archive of messages. This concerns me very much, but there is nothing we can do about it so I have resigned myself to take a lesson from all this and that is to reconsider the consequences of communicating using the internet. Once it is out there, it is out there forever. 

What I also hate is how whenever I tag a friend in a photo of mine, I suddenly get a bunch of strangers and randoms interacting with this photo. DO NOT WANT! I was quite sure I had everything on my profile, photos, posts, the lot - set to 'friends only' definitely not 'friends of friends'. If anyone can help me with this little issue (without the obvious- don't tag anyone) then that would be peachy.

So my rant comes from:

  • being annoyed at stupid friends still worried about old private messages being exposed (they were always visible on friends walls - now timelines).
  • being annoyed at myself for initially getting caught up in this panic
  • my frustration at Facebook for repeatedly overhauling the site sparking these panics and issues. "WE DON"T LIKE CHANGE!!"
  • The complexity of the privacy settings on Facebook and how to change/navigate these settings
  • Not being able to properly delete messages or anything you post off the site. (It will be deleted or 'hidden' from your timeline but will still exist somewhere else).
  • Having to keep my Facebook profile because I will miss out on so much (events, business offers, news) if I delete it. Without getting into the 'discovering who your real friends are' discussion, the reality is, no matter how close or distant I am to my 'friends' or 'aquaintances' my social life and relationships WILL suffer if I don't use Facebook. Even if I DID delete my profile, it will always be sitting there in cyberspace waiting for me to come back and reactivate it.

Argue with me, agree with me, add to anything I have missed....vent away!



Monday 1 October 2012

September Bellabox


This month's Bellabox came with some interesting goodies! Along with a bunch of great new samples I received a $15 voucher to use at theiconic.com. I haven't tried everything yet so instead of doing full reviews of each product I will just do a quick share and if your have any questions or are particularly interested in anything here in particular then ask me in the comments and I will be sure to get back to you.


I got a cute little sample of the 'It's potent!' eye cream from Benefit. I usually use 'all about eyes' from Clinique but am really looking forward to trying something new when my next pot runs out. Actually, I am saving this sample for when I go travelling in December, along with a heap of other sample pots of my beauty regime products. I was more than impressed with the 'porefessional' from Benefit so am looking forward to giving this one a spin.


This concealer kit from saviour faire contains four different shades of concealers and two powders to go along with them. I have gotten into the habit of using the darker shades to give my face contour and the lighter shades for highlights. I am still experimenting with some ways to change the look of the shape of my face using this kit but so far so good! I'm hoping to get a bit more confidence using different coloured concealers to shape my face before buying some full sized foundations in different shades. 


These were two samples I got from Bioderma. The blue one on the right was a facial wash cleanser. It was really small and I was a bit let down by this because it was only enough to use it a couple of times, especially when Bellabox has sent me plenty of full-sized similar samples before. Not really enough to get a good idea of wether or not a facial wash will work for me. I have been using the one on the left as a spot treatment for acne and it seems to work quite well. I am still going through a similar sample from my last Bellabox and with all the great products I am receiving I don't seem to be getting as much acne as I did before!


I was not really a huge fan of the last product I got from this brand but am yet to try this one. It is suppose to be a sort of all-purpose styling product. It smells nicer than the grassy one from the last Bellabox. I am thinking I will try it in my future attempts to replicate a 'Kristen Stewart' hairstyle, using it to pump up the roots of my fringe and hair around my face before letting the rest of it drop down and flow to my shoulders. Only time can tell!

This was a really interesting find! It is a body moisturiser but it comes in a spray can and comes out of the can like hair mousse. You spray it into your hands or straight onto your skin like any other mousse and spread it around. It gets absorbed by my skin super quickly and leaves my legs feeling fresh and moisturised. I think you need to use it quite liberally because it gets absorbed so quickly it can be hard to spread but not if you use plenty. Something I have never seen before and I do quite like the idea. We may or may not be seeing a lot more products like this one in the future. Keep an eye out and try one out if you get the chance!

What are your most recent favourite samples?