January favourites | Beauty & Random

Hey there! 

I hope you had an awesome first month of 2014, wow, already this year is rushing by! 

So I haven't done a favourites post in ages and I was just looking through my desk and I saw some products that have been a staple of mine recently. But then I realised that I haven't really talked about them on my blog, so that's what I'm doing today :)

As you can see I have also 2 random favourites but I'm gonna start off with my beauty faves.

In terms of face moisturiser I've always been kind of a Garnier lover but in the beginning of January when I finished my Garnier moisture match moisturiser I thought it's about time for me to try something else. And I'm really glad I did. The Lumene Arctic Aqua cream feels so nice when I apply it on my face, it's so light yet it still does a good job moisturising my skin It also has so much less artificial ingredients than Garnier does which is a massive plus. To be honest I was a little sceptic when I first tried it at the store, the scent isn't the most pleasant and also the packaging isn't that inviting but obviousely I can look past these minor mistakes.

Now the next thing is an old favourite of mine but as I said I haven't done a favourites post for a while so I had to include it in this one. I'm talking about the Lush lip scrub in popcorn, I reviewd it on Becca's blog a while ago and I still absolutely love it. It's such a saver if you get chapped lips easily like I do, especially in winter time.

Moving on to makeup I also have an old favourite and it's the Rimmel stay matte powder. This is a great product to put over your foundation, it really does keep your face matte basically the whole day, it's really important step when I do my makeup. Now one thing that I do not like about it is the packaging, it just feels like it's gonna break any minute. Also the lid isn't really doing it's job, when I put it in my purse then I'm very likely to find it lidless next time I open my purse.
When I got the Maybelline super stay better skin foundation tester along with a magazine I didn't have any high hopes for it since the Fit Me foundation was kind of a let down for me. I still decided to try it and I was really positively suprised! It has a medium to full coverage and I really like this type of foundation. First I just have to talk about the smell again, it's definately a lot better then the usual foundation smell and I just love it so much...is it weird that I like the smell of a foundation? It leaves a perfectly matte finish, I didn't have to use my Rimmel stay matte powder with it, and as I said, the powder is usually a very important step for me. I'm so sad that the tester is all empty now and I'm pretty sure that this will be my next full-size foundation.
Also one of my beauty favourites of the month is Bourjois cream blush in 02. I had never owned a cream blush before this one but I really wanted to try it. I kinda fell in love with this shade from Bourjois and now it's in my favourites. This cream blush gives such a natural pinched-by-cold look and I think it looks absolutely gorgeous!
The second to last beauty favourite is from Manhattan and it's called couture carnival eyeshadow cream. This is perfect when you're in a rush but you still want to have something on your eyes. You just pop it on your eyelids, smudge it a little bit with your finger and you're good to go, simple as that! I also really love the colour, it's such a nice dark bronzy colour, mine is in the shade 03 Ballroom Babe and I got it on sale for only 2€!
And my last beauty favourite of January is Mua lipgloss...I don't think it has a specific name. This is the one that I got from Lola and I'm loving it so much. It's kind of a natural pink and it's really glossy. I like to use it any day when I want something going on with my lips but don't want to wear lipstick. It smells absolutely amazing, so delicious!

Now I also have 2 random favourites, first being The fault in our stars by John Green. I knew this book was on such a hype so I asked it for Christmas and when I got it, it literally took me I think a bit more than 2 weeks to read it all the way through. I've never been so obsessed with a book before, infact, I've never been obsessed with a book. I'm usually the last person to read on my own free will but this book really got me. I'm not gonna tell you the ending of it becuase maybe some of you haven't read it yet (if you haven't then you have to!) but basically it's about a boy and a girl who are both very sick and they meet at a support group and fall in love.
And finally my last favourite of this month is a chai latte by drink me chai. I'd never tried chai latte before but my friend talked about it and said that she really loves it. I bought the spiced version but it had many other flavours too. So after buying it I went home and immediately tried it with boiled water as the package says and I actually didn't like it at all. But then next day I tried it with milk and from the moment I took the first sip I was obsessed. Like this is not a healthy obsession, sometimes I drink more than 1 or 2 cups a day!  So yeah, I'm obsessed.

Now that's about it for my January favourites, I hope you saw some things here that got you interested :) Let me know in the comments what do you think of my favourites, I'm going to leave you with some of my recent favourite songs.

Have a beautiful, magical, wonderful day!

Merilin xx

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams // Catching your dreams

Hey there!

As you can see then this post has quite a deep title so I recommend you to get your snorkels out, just kidding, stop it, you're not funny!

But first of all, new year's resolution fail! One of my resolutions was to blog more often, and also in my mind I told myself that I'll make atleast 1 post per week. *Checks the blog homepage* last post was made on 2nd January! But that's not entirely my fault, my computer is pretty much on his death bed right now which means that there's very limited list of things I can do with it, uploading/saving pictures isn't one of them and since most posts that I want to do come with pictures then you can kinda figure it out from here. I know it's a poor apology but that's all I got for now really. This is also the reason of this post, I can't publish any reviews or anything and I've actually wanted to talk about this subject for quite a while so yeah :) On the other hand I've been pretty good with keeping my other resolutions so I'm not gonna beat myself up for that one fail. 

Onto the main theme now. I've been working with my biggest dream for the past months now, and that dream is becoming an exchange student. I suppose that some of you have never heard of anything like this? 

Well to make a short summary then it is a year (or well, 9 months) of studying, meeting new people, experiencing new things, learning a different language and lots of other amazing stuff, ABROAD. 

For a long time I thought I can't do this, I'm gonna say right away that it is not easy, you have to really want to do this, that's what it's all about - wanting all that and working for it. But it all pays off since after you've gone through the technical or hard things you can literally go and enjoy life :) And the actual journey until the day you step on your plane is really fun too. In Estonia and lots of other countries (60 in total!) there's this amazing thing called YFU (youth for understanding) which is mainly organized by girls and boys who have been through this amazing year, and they're not old people, more like 17-20 something, I suppose. I'm not gonna write anything else about YFU here but I might do a whole seperate post on it some day. But basically I'm going to Belgium in 2015/2016 (that is if I get the money)

Now more about following and catching your dreams. Besides becoming an exchange student I have had and I still have lots of other, smaller dreams. Coming back to the exchange student theme. From when I first heard about this opportunity I have always dreamt that one day there will be an exchange student in our class too and now quite recently I found out that there is a girl from Sweden who wants to join our class, so I guess I can kind of count it as a dream come true (feels good to say that, doesn't it!)

And also you can call things on your bucket list as your dreams, and if you'd now click on my bucket list (before I die) then you can see that I've had the joy to cross down quite a few from there :)

I've also always wanted a friend from some other country and now I have quite a few that I talk to, but there's one girl who I have grown quite close to :) 

All these things seem like small dreams but once you fulfill them, you feel like you've accomplished something big, wether it's buying an expencive lipstick or making a new friend.

So what I'm trying to say here is never quit on your dreams. As life has taught me, everything can happen (unless your one and only dream is to become a unicorn or something, which is also perfectly fine, just...you get my point)

You never know what tomorrow brings but you just have to sprint after your dreams. Don't just follow them, when you follow something, you will always see it but never catch it but when you go after something with a determined mind and no intention to stop then you're gonna most likely to catch it :)

Ofcourse I have many other drems that still need catching and this is what I try to do, even the smallest steps build the way for you to eventually catch your dreams. 

Have a beautiful, magical, wonderful day!

Merilin xx

Review: Lush shower jelly

Hello! Quite a while ago I picked up this strange looking thing from Lush. It stayed untouched on my table for a good several weeks because I honestly didn't know what to do with it. 

I'm talking about the Lush shower jelly called sweetie pie. 

When I finally decided that I want to test it out, I started looking for some reviews to find out how to use it. Turns out you have to take a little chunk of the jelly and rub it over your body, so, to start the review, I don't really like the application. And the application turned out to be the only con about that product.

I absolutely love the smell, if you're not a fan of (really) sweet scented stuff then this is most probably not for you because it really smells like candy, and I personally like it!

Also, if you're a fan of glitter and all sorts then this will be your bestest shower mate. The picture quality is really unflattering but the jello like thing is actually really glitterly and sparkly and it's really a party in a pot, as the package itself says. 

As you can read out then the scent is cherry and coconut. I can definately smell cherry in it but I'm not too sure about the coconut, it's still good though.

This is what the jelly looks like from top and from the bottom after I've used it about 5 times. It's quite hard to get an exact amount of jelly for one use, I always end up having a bit left over and then I just have to throw that bit away. I also tried using the whole thing at once but then it starts to melt in your hand and gets all slippery and falls down etc.

I wouldn't normally capture the package from every possible angle but with Lush products I just feel like I have to. I find Lush descriptions really unique and cool, especially on this pot of jelly, if you now scroll back to all these pictures here. It's like a sweet cherry on top of a really good cake :)

Overall, I really like the scent and it also does a good job cleaning my body. I was hoping that the sweet smell will stay on after showering too but sadly enough it didn't. As mentioned earlier, the application is the only con about this product, for me, some might like to mess around with it in the shower. I probably won't be buying it again but I'll definately use up the one I have.

Have a beautiful, magical, wonderful day!

Merilin xx