NARS Night Porter

I'm pretty sure they don't carry this colour anymore, but they really should because it is beautiful.

Behold, a perfect dark green with the right amount of gold and multi-coloured shimmer in it to give it depth and mystery.  The green is so dark that two coats of the polish is almost black, and under good lighting it looks like the inky pools of marsh ponds or vegetative seawater at dusk.  It made me feel kind of... wicked.

NARS Night Porter

My skin has a yellow undertone, which may play a part in how the colour looks on me.  I have never had anyone else I know try it on, but will definitely update with photos if I get the chance to show it on more skin tones.

And it's surprisingly appropriate for all kinds of occasions.  In the week I had it on, I attended meetings, conducted interviews, went to lectures, ran errands, did yoga, and went to dinners dressed up -- all with dark shimmery green on my nails.  It looks the right kind of vampy without being a red tone, and it isn't so gothic or punk that it can't be worn with business casual attire (assuming, of course, that you apply it neatly on trim nails).  Pair it with dark skinny jeans, casual boots and a beige trench coat, and errands will have never looked so fantastic.

Late Nights and Poor Diet

My skin feels stress better than my brain does.  Where my brain just tells me that everything will be okay and completed on time, my skin decides to throw an acne party on my skin, and all of its hormonal cystic friends are invited.

This diagram upsets me.  Source: https://zenmed.com/skincare/acne/forms-of-acne/Cyst.jpg

So what does one do when one can't get enough sleep and has no time to cook proper food?  When exercise hasn't happened due to time constraints and caffeine is being consumed multiple times more than water?

As I write this, I realize that maybe I should go to sleep instead, so my body sort of has time to repair (although I'm given to understand that the body does most of its repair work between 11 PM and 1 AM, so maybe I'll just finish this since I'm past the point of no return anyway, for tonight).

Does my brain being tired also have anything to do with my shopping spree today?  Because my wallet is very upset with me...  I'll have to give my spoils of war a good few blog posts tomorrow.  For now, as my roommate tells me every night, it's "time to hit the hay".

Review: LUSH No Drought Dry Shampoo

I've recently discovered that I can survive a day without washing my hair.  I had always put it out of question, since puberty made my hair turn into a sopping mess of oils and flat hair, and from then on, the improvements were far and few.  Eventually the excessive oil phased out, and I was just left with hair that can't be slept on, or else will lose all the volume I put so much work into.

But with all the magazine articles insisting that we should not be washing our hair everyday, and the detriments to hair health that comes along with the habit... I had to give dry shampoo a chance.

Enter LUSH Cosmetics' No Drought dry shampoo, the first I ever tried (partially due to circumstance -- working there meant I got to try it gratis).  It took a lot of convincing for me to finally try it, because it is a white powder with a lemon scent -- I don't care for citrus scents, and white powder didn't seem like a good idea with dark hair.  There was a small bottle kicking around in my bathroom though, so after a while I caved to curiousity.

Source:  http://www.lush.ca/No-Drought/9999903589,en_CA,pd.html?start=5&cgid=liquid-shampoos

The talc in the formula works to mop up oil, while the grapefruit and lime oils clarify the scalp and leave it smelling fresh with a hint of citrus.  I have to admit, the scent doesn't bother me at all now that I've used up a bottle of it.  Also, speaking of essential oils, no it does not make your hair more greasy with its oil content.  In fact, compared to the dry shampoo I'm now using (I will review when I am finished with it, or when I can no longer stand it), I quite like that the oils were there to make the scalp smell like you just washed your hair.  Soaking up oil is fantastic and all, but if people can catch a telltale whiff that you skipped your shampoo today... well, what's the point, then?

The only downside I have had from friends and others is the usage.  I admit, it's a weird product to use, but once you get a hang of it the routine becomes fairly easy.  I think on the website and catalogue they suggest shaking it directly onto the scalp and massaging it in from there, but I personally find it easier to use when I shook a small quantity onto my palm (size of a quarter perhaps).  From there, I massage it into my scalp against the direction of gravity, i.e. if I am trying to get the front/crown, I flip my head upside down and carry the powder in my palm to make contact with the scalp, thereby creating no mess.  I found that this way, I used the product more efficiently -- it's not expensive, but it's money nevertheless -- and had less random white flecks on my clothing or on the floor.  My usage also did not leave me with a white scalp, which is a common complaint from users.  Lastly, because I have long hair (but really everyone should just do this), I brush my hair with a bristle brush to get any white residue off the strands so I don't look like I have aged overnight.

With No Drought, I did not find the effect long-lasting.  It was sufficient if I wanted to amp up my day-two ponytail or if I wanted to degrease and didn't mind the lack of lasting volume.  It's definitely not for if you need it to make your hair seem like you did wash it -- if anyone knows of such a miracle product, please tell me about it!  Overall, I would purchase it again.  I think it is still under $20 for the large bottle, and the small bottle lasted me a good couple of years of irregular use.  I think if I were to have used it every day the small bottle would have lasted half a year or less, suggesting that a full bottle would be a good run for your money.  It's better than most other dry shampoos for their value.

Fitness Block

I'm a bit frustrated with my fitness level at the moment, except I'm not really sure what to do about it.

When January of this year rolled around, my work at the time started a self-ran CrossFit group.  It wasn't intense in the way I hear about most CrossFit workouts are, which was just fine by me and the rest of the attendees.  It was a group effort performed at each individual's own pace, and if you chose to push, you knew your own limit.

Then sometime mid-February, I picked up running.  At first it was the most disheartening run ever, because a half-marathon-running friend asked me to go explore the nearby urban forest with her.  I agreed thinking it would be good for me to try running.  I felt bad the entire time because I was just so slow, so I ended up telling her to go ahead without me and we caught each other before heading back to work from our tiresome lunch break.  It was the beginning of something good though.  From that day on, I tried to go for runs every lunch hour that we didn't have CrossFit, and pretty soon I had a good routine of both going, with at least three days a week of lunch breaks spent working out.

                              The urban forest that started all my running                                               Source: http://vancouverisawesome.com/2011/10/31/nicholson-road-week-65-green-timbers-urban-forest-park-surrey/

As an aside, I never really liked gyms.  I'm not sure why -- the people looking at you if you're doing an exercise that required you to splay your legs apart, the smell of rubber mats and sweaty bodies, or the way it makes me think of mice or hamsters in a cage running on a wheel instead of running freely... uhh, I'll stop.

The summer passed by beautifully, with so many opportunities for outdoor activities, it was probably the most fit I have ever been.  CrossFit died down, but running picked up, and so did other random activities.  I tried a beginner's lesson on Tae Kwon Do, climbed the Grouse Grind after an eight-hour work day with keen colleagues, and attended a couple of (fairly competitive) badminton sessions.  Then September rolled around, work ended, school started, and all of those good habits seemed to roll down the drain.

I still try to keep running at least once a week, if not more.  The cold weather makes my respiratory system feel like it is threatening me to fail, but I've been fortunate with a few nice days a week here and there to keep a relatively decent running routine. 

               Why does it always look like this in this city?                        Source: http://www.cbc.ca/vancouverweather/mt/2013/09/fall-weather-here-to-staysept-16th.html

My problem, then, is that although running helps keep my heart healthy, my body seems really reluctant to let go of blubber.  My midsection, to be exact.  I'm trying (days on, days off) to eat healthy, but it just gets so difficult when your brain is on hyper-drive every day for lectures, labs, tutorials, exams...  The studying makes me so hungry!  I keep granola and fruit at my desk at work, which I go to every day between classes, in effort to save myself from caving to the call of fries and cookies and delicious but terrible foods.  Something just doesn't seem right.

Now, for those who know me personally and think I'm being ridiculous, I have to say: I don't dress to show off blubber, and I know what I see in the mirror each day before I jump in the shower.  I'm not complaining in a delusion that I am fat, but I do think that I would like to give my fitness level a jump start.  Or my eating habits a kick in the rear.  I don't know.  Keeping healthy brings up my mood, and perhaps that is ultimately what I am looking for by writing this.  What do you do to keep fit and feel good?

Review: AVON Advance Techniques Volume Root-Boosting Tonic

I am missing my AVON Advance Techniques Volume Root-Boosting Tonic so badly it's not even funny.


But a bit of background to my bottle of this product is in order:

A friend of mine, who believes that she needs volume when really she has beautiful hair as it is (strictly my opinion, because she doesn't believe me), purchased this in addition to some AVON products that she uses regularly.  Her hair is naturally wavy, with a medium thickness and in general good condition.  She gave the bottle to me after trying it, because it didn't do anything to her hair -- neither volumized nor flattened.  I, of course, am endlessly complaining about my search for volume, so she decided I needed to try it.

I have never really been tempted to use AVON products, simply because they are usually sold by people you know who are sales representatives of the company.  My mother used to be one for another skincare company, and I always found the concept strange.  I also have an irrational distrust for drugstore or cheaper brands, since bad encounters are quite frequent in my own experience.  Not sure how much this was, the website says $8 but I can't decide if that's USD or CAD -- I had mine for free because my friend didn't want it

But because she is a friend for whom I value the opinion of... I tried it.  Hence this review.


The product comes in a spray bottle that offers a fine to medium mist.  You spray it onto the roots, wherever you need volume (in my case I sprayed a good amount on my entire head), before blow-drying and styling as usual.  It was very easy to use and smelled of floral-fruity freshness (I may blog about my thoughts on "fresh"-smelling in the future...).  I didn't think much of it at the time, but my hair enjoyed the benefits of having a boost in volume that lasted the day at work.  It wasn't dramatic, but it was a notable difference versus lying plastered onto the scalp.  The only downside I may include is that it does leave the roots feeling a bit gritty if you spray too concentrated, but it doesn't look gritty at all, and if you don't touch it you won't even be affected!

Source:  http://shop.avon.com/product.aspx?level2_id=341&pdept_id=432&cat_type=C&pf_id=40316

My hair does not suffer any (detectable) effects of humidity, so for those who do, I'm not sure if that will make a difference in how the product works for you.  I'll update this if I ever get a friend to experiment on.

Overall, it is the better volumizing spray for the roots I have used to date.  I am currently running with a couple of other products, and they make me miss this one all the more!

Straight, Glossy and Utterly Flat

That's the profile of my hair, in short.  Sure, I have nothing to complain about with the glossy part, but the rest is debatable.  Let me explain.

My hair is very fine.  A hairdresser once told me that I have very thin hair, and very little of it.  That worried me, until eventually another hair stylist negated the notion, telling me that I have very fine hair with roughly the same quantity as everyone else.  That had me feeling a little better.  Not for long though, because after we graduate from the high school phase where everyone wants poker-straight hair (and uses a straightening iron like it's going out of style), along comes a novel idea called volume that my hair just refuses to grasp.  Thus, I am in constant search of a hair stylist that understands my void in volume, products that add it, and styles that promote it.

The trouble is, volume is normally partners with curls and waves, of which my hair is neither. All it wants to do is lie flat all day and play dead.  Curling irons and hot rollers (at least, the one kind I have tried) are a fruitless battle -- the curls straighten out so quickly that, by the time I get to my destination, I look like I have neglected to consider my hair as part of my appearance.  The only way to successfully sport curls for longer than ten minutes is to get a perm of some sort.  I have done it a few times, and loved the results (for the most part, except this one time when it flattened out in two days and I was too naive to know to ask my hair stylist to fix it), but I just don't want to frequently submit my hair to awful damaging processes.  Between perms, then, are times to experiment with products and cuts and all that jazz.

A closeup of my hair, with mediocre lighting

Granted, I am blessed with hair colour that had a previous stylist upset, with all the money he could be making by maintaining it for me if it were colour-treated.  He was none too shy to tell me all about it.  And because I try to refrain from chemical processing, the shine of my hair does perfectly well without serums and creams.  My sister had a straightening perm just to get my hair, which I think is silly business because her hair has the waves and curls I want (she tells me I don't, but the grass is always greener...)

I suppose the point of all this is to help you understand where I am coming from when I review products, cuts, styles and other hair-related bits and bobs.  In the end, I'm still grateful and at peace with my hair -- I make a lot of complaints, but don't we all?

A Little Introduction

I always think that blogging would be a good idea, but my inability to be consistent with keeping it up-to-date is the usual deterrent.  My sister is an avid blogger with her art, and encouraged me to do it as an avenue to escape to when school and work bogs me down.  The encouragement, combined with the lack of blogs (that I have stumbled upon) that I can related to for skin and hair advice, has me sitting here writing this as my upstairs neighbours pound away at a piano, pound away at the floor and pound back drinks with abhorrent noise.

Also my Ocean Conservation and Sustainability course has encouraged us to blog and tweet, but I'm pretty sure this wasn't what they had in mind.

Source: http://www.caudlescatchseafood.com/uploads/Image/images/main_images/information_sustainability.jpg

This being my first post, and what I suspect will be on the main page for quite some time before it eventually gets pushed to the next page, consider this a preface for the extensively (or not so much) novel blog to come:  beauty, skincare and haircare; fashion and my thoughts thereof; food endeavours (don't worry, my face won't be next to the plate with exaggerated excitement -- unless that's seriously how I feel about it); as well as anything else that may catch my fancy to share with all.  

It may turn out to be an adventure after all.