Cramps on Christmas

Listening to: Emotions (Mariah Carey cover) by Ariana Grande. 

(This song has no bearing on the themes or feelings presented today)

Merry Christmas Eve, folks. I've not blogged much this year, but for some reason I feel inclined to today.

Today is Christmas Eve, and I woke up at about 2.30pm. Granted, I went to bed at about 4.30am. 

My parents are out of town (or rather, out of the country), as is my sister. So it's just me and my brother. 

Let me paint my Christmas Eve this year for you. 

Wake up, eat some toast. Tidy desk and wipe dust from it. Turn on laptop. Watch a few YouTube videos, all the usual internet stuff. Do assignment (last assignment of my bachelor's degree). Get nagged by brother to come to Xmas party. Decline. Get nagged more. Try to finish assignment. Write blog post. 

All the while surviving through cramps. 

I was also going to attend my church's Xmas eve service tonight (they have a special Christmas production going on, probably would be interesting). But it's sad enough going alone to church at Christmas, let alone going by myself with only cramps to accompany me. Pain + solitude = not the ideal Christmas attitude.

Anyway, I really do have to finish this assignment ASAP. 

Now let's paint the same picture, but hypothetically including my the rest of my family. 

We would wake up, eat breakfast somewhat together (my dad would've eaten earlier), go out to lunch somewhere nice as a whole family, come back, watch movie with mum, play Christmas tunes, help mum/dad prep/cook a BBQ dinner. Go to Xmas service at church, get nagged about my career/finding a job, maybe go on a drive at night to see Xmas lights in the city or through the neighbourhood. 

Perhaps all the while not having to endure cramps. 

I love Christmas time. Christmas doesn't get me down.

But assignments do. And cramps. And unemployment.

Let's finish on a high note. Or more accurately, not a high note, but a less-depressing note.

Here are the cupcakes I baked last night for my brother to take to his workmates for their morning tea today.

These are vanilla cupcakes with chocolate ganache on top and red writing icing saying MERRYXMAS with some love hearts and a star.

Arielle's Green Smoothie for the week.

Just a heads up, there is no recipe for this, mainly because I can't be bothered getting all technical with measurements. Plus, it changes all the time! Depending on what's in the fridge.

But for this week, I went to Spudshed for the groceries as I usually do, except this time I found they had kale! They never have kale! And there were only 3 bunches left so I quickly snapped one up. 

Before this week I've had to do with spinach, which is fine and dandy and all that, but kale is like a super food - it's super good for you in a zillion different ways (I haven't actually done personal research, I've just gathered my info second hand :P). 

Anyway, these are the things I put into my blender to make my smoothie (it makes 1 serving or a little more):

kale - without the stalks

about a third of the coconut water from a drinking coconut

a few spoonfuls of the coconut flesh

banana

strawberries

ice

And presto! A wonderful green smoothie that tastes really good and acts as my pre-workout smoothie. 

I've yet to try a green smoothie with avocado, but that'll be next on my list. I'm always switching out ingredients and trying new combinations (e.g. I'm currently on the look out for chia seeds) but I've come to notice that bananas are a constant in all of my smoothies. 

Catalina Island

So I thought I'd do another travel type of post today and show you a select few of my favourite snapshots from my time on Catalina Island in California, USA! 

This island is one of the most gorgeous and stunning places I have ever been. It's a small island and a short ferry-ride away from Long Beach, CA. I spend one night there with my family and I loved the amazing scenery and laidback lifestyle and atmosphere the place has. Everyone drives around in golf carts. Cars aren't allowed!

We were there in December around Christmas time. It was a bit chilly but sunny during the day.

It's peaceful and beautiful, the people are so nice... I wouldn't mind living there, actually.

Hope you enjoy the pics. 

The view from the window of my hotel room

Our first lunch was at this pirate-themed restaurant. Christmas on a pirate ship is a great combination.

There were quite a few of these huge, colourful animal statues just hangin' about the place.
Bulls are also very popular here

The building in the right bottom corner is the casino!

Icecream cones were only three bucks! I got peppermint and it was sooo delicious.

My sister got birthday cake.

Oh, Antonio! What a jokester. 

My dad, and well, all of us, really loved this shrimp salad!
Oh and they give you free peanuts (well, they throw them on the table) and you''re meant to chuck your empty husks onto the floor! 

And of course we had to order a pizza from Antonia's pizzeria.

I told you about the bulls, right?
This one''s just casually hanging out in the cart-rental building.

There were so many cacti plants everywhere!

Our not-so-little six-seater golf buggie!

And it's me! 

I would definitely like to go back to Catalina Island, maybe next time in the warmer seasons when they have fun summer water activities like parasailing available!

Oh hello. Another pancake-y post.

It's been a while hasn't it? Since I've last been here...

Happy Saturday! I made pancakes for myself for breakfast.

That is, if you can call pancakes-at-1.30-in-the-afternoon, breakfast. 

I was pretty darn chuffed at how they turned out. 

Yay for fresh fruit!

For the pancake batter I just mixed together an egg, a tbsp of white sugar, a pinch of salt, a dollop of vanilla essence, some SR flour and lite milk together, making sure the consistency wasn't too thin and liquid-y. 

I accidentally put in a bit too much flour, but that just meant I needed to balance it out with more milk and I had more batter in the end, so I made a batch for my brother too! (His had fresh banana on top coz we ran out of strawberries).

I got a soup spoon to scoop the batter into nice little round blobs onto the frying pan (which I sprayed with some EVOO, instead of butter, to be a bit healthier... it was also a heck of a lot easier to get out the spray can than a block of butter). 

Once they were done, I had 7 little pancakes and stacked them, decorated them with the cut up strawberries and drizzled the entire thing with some maple syrup! (Well, to be honest it was maple-flavoured syrup, not the real thing unfortunately, so not as healthy as I'd like).

In fact, I pretty much threw 'healthy' out the window as soon as I brought out the flour and sugar from the pantry (which also happened to be as soon as I walked into the kitchen).

Don't fresh strawberries look gorgeous in photos? 

P.S. I thought about sifting a nice snowfall of icing sugar on top for the pretty aesthetic bonus, but once again, I chose the healthier alternative (to not)... and also I couldn't be bothered. 

Heehee!

BellaBox: HAUL + Free Goodies!

Alpha H liquid gold; Bellamer eye treatment balm; Bioderma crealine h2o

Hollywood Feet velvet cushions, Compeed foot blister thingymabobs x2, bellabox toe separators (is that what they're called?), bellabox compact mirror, Cellilux glacial mineral gel (facial mask) sample, natralus paw paw ointment, pure DKNY a drop of rose perfume sample

<INSERT EXCITED SQUEAL>

I got my bellabox parcel in the mail today! I was napping on my sister's bed when the postman rang the doorbell so my sister went out to sign for it for me. Yay for siblings!

I ordered three things from the bellabox online store (I don't get the bellabox beauty box anymore because I'm not a monthly member). I love the bellabox online store because not only do they stock some really awesome skincare lines that are super difficult to get where I live, they have a handy dandy members' points system so I had a $10 voucher to use up.

I got :

Alpha H liquid gold

Bellamer eye treatment balm

Bioderma crealine h20 micellar solution

I have been wanting to get my hands on the Alpha H liquid gold for ages and finally decided I need some more skincare products and bit the bullet. I hope it helps get rid of my acne scarring. The blogosphere has been hyping this one quite a bit.

I tried the Bellamer eye balm when I got it in my bellabox last year and I loved it as a nightly eye cream. It's oil-based and pepperminty and just lovely to use. For the quantity (15g pot) it's pretty expensive ($40) but a tiny bit goes a LONG way and my sample pot had lasted me several weeks.

I tried the green bottle of Bioderma micellar solution (I still have it & use it sometimes) but the one that's been hyped to a level beyond belief across the internet is the Bioderma crealine h20 version (the pink bottle, as opposed to the green). 

When I got my parcel I realised I had forgotten the other reason why I love the Bellabox online store so much. THEY GIVE LOADS OF FREEBIES with your order! I got a whole bunch of them, and just then I tried out the Cellilux glacial mineral gel which is actually Canadian and deserves a whole blog post of its own. I got two samples of that but you only see one in the photo because I already used the other. Also I put the paw paw ointment on my lips as soon as I took it out of the bag and it smells amazing! My sister thought so too. It's got a very thick lanolin-y consistency. 

I might actually do a blog post on the Cellilux stuff. It was pretty darn impressive. 

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Pancakes and Nothing of a day.

Right now I'm sitting here listening to Poppy's songs/covers. She's from the YouTubez.

Today my alarm went off and I was all, NO THANKS. 

So I got up about 3 hours later...

Then I decided I'll skip uni today. I only had one 45 minute class anyway. 

I didn't know what to eat, so I just watched YouTube videos and Suburgatory episodes until my sister and I decided to go have "breakfast" at Pancakes At Carillon. 

I love that place.

We had a lovely honeycomb milkshake (which really disappeared a lot faster than I expected) and I ordered asparagus crepes and my sister had some tropical potato pancake thing with banana and pineapple and hollandaise/sourcream. 

Our food was delicious. And we got 25% off the total bill.

We went straight home and I finished watching the final episode of Suburgatory, while my sister rushed off to have a social life. 

Today was also a sad day because I dropped two full tacos on the kitchen floor.

I felt very, very melancholy about that.

I desperately need to muster the motivation to finish reading Ulysses by James Joyce. My Modernism tutor keeps giving us tips for reading it but none of them help. I guess I just need to be more disciplined.

Also I've kinda been drowning under a wave of existential crisis... and therefore will solve my unemployment/lack of career prospects problems by becoming an online content creator. This idea's been in the works for a long, long time and I don't know if I should take myself seriously about it. 

I could be a youtuber and live. da. life.

Shrugs. 

This is my final year of university so I should probably figure out this stuff pretty soon. 

I have 4 hours of class tomorrow morning at 9am so I better go to sleep soon. 

A day in the life in photographs.

 

Lovely scented candle I'm currently burning.
You can read the label yourself.

My green glass of water.

Doing my Greek homework

I re-organised my nail polish collection by brand name and desirability (which ones I reach for most).
I kinda had to, because I moved one of the book platforms the tiniest bit and they all proceeded to fall down in a nail polish landslide at my feet.

the pile of laundry I still have not put away

A Walter Benjamin essay I need to read for my Modernism unit

My day also consisted of watching two episodes of Cougar Town, an episode of Hart of Dixie, the last episode of Flower Boy Ramyum Shop (finally that's over!), eating a sandwich, mi goreng noodles, and drinking many cups of tea. I also read most of Freud's essay on the Uncanny.
And watched a whole bunch of Youtube videos.

Oh, here is my to-do list for today (in case you're interested on what I might be doing this evening):

Gerunds galore: studying, working (not), watching.

So right now I'm kinda struggling for air under a tidal wave of homework and assignments. (A)

And I still haven't found a job yet. (B)

And I have established a new addiction. (C)

A:

So you remember last weekend how it was Easter?

Well, for the kids at UWA, we have Good Friday off (with the rest of society for once!) and then a whole week free of classes after that. It's our study break. Or study week. I used to be able to treat it as a study break but I made a bit of a booboo this semester. 

It came down to Good Friday and I was pretty happy and excited for my class-free week ahead, because I would have time to prepare my presentation, catch up on lectures, and do the necessary readings of novels and screenings of films that I needed to...

And as I was getting ready for church it hit me. 

I have two essays DUE during my break! One on April 4 and one on April 8.

I'd forgotten how far into March the time had gone and how soon April was approaching and I hadn't even read any of the essay questions let alone started researching for them let alone started WRITING them. (Thankfully they are both only 1500 word essays)

But I've been spending my entire week getting these two essays done (coz they're worth a gosh darn lot).

Instead of catching up on lectures and preparing presentations and reading Ulysses and Freud and Virginia Woolf and watching M and Sholay for my cinema unit. 

I have about two days left and I'm just about to watch Monsoon Wedding for the second time (so I can take notes on how desire might be portrayed as a sense of lack within the film).

B:

I am pretty much inert.

Lazy.

Don't like interacting with people very much. 

Don't like to contrive an atmosphere of welcome.

C:

K-drama. 

My mind loves to amble (sometimes I visualise it as a drunkard stumbling onto crooked paths), so one night a few weeks ago, I was remembering this Japanese drama my sister was given called One Litre of Tears (which was sooo emotional and every darn episode made me cry), and I thought "hmm wouldn't it be nice to watch something like that again" so I googled Jap dramas and the results were closely associated with Korean dramas and then I clicked on one that looked really cool and watched the entire thing in like three days. 

If you're wondering, my mind likes to wander into TV-related things like this pretty often, because I already have an addiction with American TV. That's right. Not just US tv shows. Canadian too. (And even one or two Aussie ones). 

Anyway the K-drama I clicked on was Flower Boy Next Door. 

After that I watched Boys Over Flowers. (A slight obsession with Lee Min Ho ensued)

Right now I'm currently going through Flower Boy Ramyun Shop. 

And yes there does seem to be a pattern here, and one day I will branch out into other dramas that don't have the word "flower" in their titles. 

WHO KNEW HOW ASIAN I COULD REALLY BE?

I've been eating a lot of instant noodles (mi goreng) as a result of Gu Jun Pyo's obsession with ramen. 

And now the show I'm currently watching is focused around a shop that sells ramen. 

I need to start working out again. 

A lip product haul.

These are all the lip products I bought while in the USA! I got them all from Sephora except the Revlon ones which are from Target. 

Smith's Rosebud Salve - the tube version! If I can recall correctly this lip balm was around $6. I love the rosy scent of it (I don't have a lot of rose-scented products even though I quite enjoy the smell of roses), and it really melts onto your lips. I heard that the version in the pot/tub is more moisturising, but I don't have any problems with this one so I doubt I'll be trying the other one any time soon.

Revlon Just Bitten Kissable balm stain in Honey Douce. Or is the name of this colour just Honey? I'm not sure. I LOVE this product, the colour is an interesting one. When I apply it in a well lit room I can see the change of colour on my lips but if not, the colour doesn't show very well. But the shade it really is seems quite different to how it looks on the stick - it's a brighter pink than you would think. The stain lasts really well and doesn't fade/wear off unevenly. And it's minty too! So there's a cooling tingle on your lips when you put it on and that makes me love it even more.

Benefit Benetint is a lip and cheek stain (originally a nipple stain :O!) but the consistency is so watery it's not the easiest thing to apply onto the lips... especially with that applicator (which you can easily mistake for a nail polish brush!). So far I don't really like to use it (the first time I tried benetint the stain didn't last long at all!) and I always gravitate towards other products instead but I'm going to keep giving it more chances and maybe next time it'll be a hit once I try it on the cheeks.

Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Berry Smoothie. I love lip butters and when they first were released in the States early last year I was literally craving to get my hands on them. I only have them in Pink Truffle and now Berry Smoothie but I seriously NEED MORE! Especially after watching this essiebutton video. They are so soft and lovely on the lips; the colour pay off is spectacular and they're moisturising. What else could you want?

Smashbox Lip Enhancing Gloss in Illume. This little sample size lip gloss came in the Smashbox Try It Kit which were a set of Smashbox's best-selling products. This gloss has shimmer and glitter but it's this perfect nude neutral colour that once on the lips, looks fabulous. I wish it were a bigger sample though, because mine's almost empty and I'm going to miss it when it's gone! :(

 

Korres Lip Butter in Mango. I think this is the first cosmetics product from a Greek brand I've ever used! These were being raved about in the blogging/vlogging world so I had to pick one up at Sephora to try. I love the scent/flavour, the consistency and the packaging, but sometimes I feel like the colour is unnecessary.  It's really orange but it doesn't look too orange on the lips... I really want to try the other ones, especially Quince (which is a deep pink). The only issue is that it's not a cheap lip balm. It's $12, and I'm not yet certain if I can say it's worth what you pay for.

New York, New York.

I thought I would veer away from the cosmetics for today's post and show you some of my favourite memories from New York when I was there with my sister early in December last year. 

Here's a short stream of photos documenting a few of my favourite moments. I also had some videos but those are trickier to post up... for now you'll just have to deal with mere stills!

~~~~~~~

My sister dragged me to the TOYS R US store in Times Square

I really felt for these teddy bears, all stuffed and cramped in this glass box together!

Me wearing Hulk's face

~~~~~~

Enjoying the Holiday Markets at UNION SQUARE

Gorgeous/delicious macarons from one of the stalls at the Union Square holiday markets.
(L-R: Apple Cider Caramel, Red Velvet, Candied Bacon with maple cream cheese)

My sister and I sitting in Union Square Park having a rest from the Holiday Markets
(there were literally hundreds of squirrels leaping through the grass just behind us!)

I lied! Here's a sneakity sneak sneaky video of the macaron stall for you:

~~~~~~~

MAX BRENNER after our shopping trip at The Strand Bookstore.

Chocolate syringe!

~~~~~~~~~

Having a relaxing stroll through Central Park.

~~~~~~~~

New York City really knows how to decorate for Christmas!

Do you see that? There is a CHRISTMAS TREE in that tree!

~~~~~~~~

Bergdorf Goodman is my favourite store in the world.

Their Christmas decor section was amazing! So intense. And awesome.
And expensive.

Xmas tree decorations can even be EATEN!

Oops! Another cheeky sneaky video I really wanted to add in: 

Wedding display/consultation room

BG rock candy

The whole building/store is filled with amazing display rooms like these. Bergdorf is seriously amazing.

Swanky looking napkin holders

~~~~~~~~~

Back to Central Park

The famous ice rink smack bang in the middle of the park!

My sister made friends with this particular squirrel.

~~~~~~~

A lovely, chilly morning walking the streets of SoHo finding cool shops.

Ralph Lauren store window! Definitely rockin'.

I <3 SoHo

See you in my next post!