beauty favourites

You know how when you are pregnant you are supposed to have dream hair, skin and nails? But you are also supposed to feel nauseated 90% of the time and your rings are not supposed to fit you anymore and nor are your shoes? Well none of that happened to me thus far… nor the good or the bad! The jury is still out on whether I should be happy or not about all that, but I guess that feeling normal is a good thing, and by normal I mean brassy hair, a few zits, weak nails but topped by an overall good feeling about myself with rings and shoes that still fit despite being 32 weeks pregnant.That said, during my pregnancy I did not feel the need to ignore all my hair treatments and even tried a few new ones. You know how hair treatments work: you feel a slight improvement but not really that much – and right now I am talking about the really expensive ones as the ones that are mid-ranged from a price point of view do no more than a quick fix of your issues that usually lasts five minutes into the late autumn humidity. Well, not the one I am going to talk about in this post! This one, despite being a medium priced salon treatment was very impressive and three days later it still is very impressive despite the humidity levels hitting 85% in the past few days!

I am talking about the L’Oreal Professionel Pro Fiber Reconstruct treatment. While I always avoided L’Oreal because of the high silicone content, I thought I’d give this one a try because it is receiving quite the rave online. As I stated this one is a reasonably priced salon treatment (about 35 $) but it promises big results. And it does just that! Now, I have no idea if the other treatments in the line work, I can say that this one did miracles on my blonde-damaged hair despite me being quite the skeptic at first and hence not thinking about taking any before of after pics of my hair. You are just going to have to take my word for it and go ahead and try it yourself. My hair before the actual treatment was a mess. By mess I mean 90% of my top crown was brassy and it lacked shine, especially when it was not styled properly – yes, throughout the years I learned a few tips and tricks on how to style it so that it does not look like a hay stack. Going in with the mindset that I should not expect much, I totally skipped the photo/video phase of the treatment but did take a few snaps of the actual products, mainly so that I know what to buy for home if I thought the products were ok-ish (I recently ran out of shampoo and hair mask) – so this post will have to work solely on those pics.

The procedure in itself is very easy and quick and right now, given my current situation I was happy with that because I can not sit in one place for more than two hours and I dreaded the thought of having a long and complicated treatment done. Basically, the stylist washed my hair twice with the shampoo, applied a full vial of the treatment (I currently have a lot of hair with my extensions and all – otherwise you only need half) and on top of the vial applied the activation mask and all I had to do was wait 15 minutes before she gave me a good rinse and the treatment was over – all in all, about 20-25 minutes. This is so easy to do at home and the thing that impressed me the most thus far is the smell – this is perfect for the winter months – spiced vanilla, but a very intense and comforting spiced vanilla! That alone helped me decide on my next at-home haircare!Then it was off to drying but not before applying the line’s serum on wet hair (no pic unfortunately!). This is when I really started to believe that this treatment actually works wonders as you know when your hair is in a bad place it’s always complicated to style it because the brush keeps getting tangled in the damaged parts of the hair no matter how much oil or serums you put into it? Well that never happened during the drying part after this treatment and by the end my hair looked and felt healthier and stronger than ever. I was hooked! especially since, even today, three days later my hair feel amazing, looks amazing despite wearing a beanie twice a day – for the dog walks – and still smells divine!

Obviously that made me buy the at-home products instantly and I even bought the vials just to see if I can fully re-create the results at home. I will keep you posted on that in a later post as I really feel that this new treatment line deserves all the praising it can get especially since it is on the cheaper side and actually delivers the promised results. I really hope that all you ladies out there that, like me, have damaged hair and a skeptical approach to hair treatment will be convinced to give this treatment a try as it really and unexpectedly delivers great results for half the price compared to other ‘luxury’ in-salon treatments.

Nope, this is not a make-up tutorial as I know almost nothing on the subject… I do however want to share with you some amazing newly discovered make-up products as I feel that a bit of a review is always nice. As always, I am doing this review with only praise in mind as I hate the negative energy I get after writing a bad review. On that note… these are the best products I found this autumn! Naturally they are not all newly launched products as I am not a beauty blogger, but they are my most recent finds as I had to overhaul my make-up bag.

I always like to buy new stuff at the beginning of the season as I feel that both my skin colour and my texture tend to go through some changes – and I do not want to even start on the changes my skin went through during this pregnancy! This post comes after a long period of hits and misses in the make-up department simply because my skin is chaotic these days and finding something that works well with it is rather hard. Most of these products here were tried for at least two weeks just to be sure that they work well with my skin and, to be honest, not being the make-up expert that some people are, it always takes me a while to learn how to apply each one depending on the texture.

Here are this autumn’s heroes:

Giorgio Armani Maestro Fusion Make-up in shade 5.5
Giorgio Armani Liquid Sheer in shade 2
Chanel Eclat Lumiere in shade 20
Dior Diorblush Light & Contour in shade 002
Benefit They’re Real Mascara in Black
Chanel Rouge Allure Ink in shade 140 Amoureaux
My besties – BeautyBlender The Original and the Micro

How I apply them:

First, I would like to clear the air on one thing: I do not use any primer! Yes, I know that is a make-up felony, but I just hate the way most (or at leat the ones I’ve tried) of them feel on my skin. Therefore I just apply my foundation on bare moisturised skin. This Giorgio Armani fluid foundation was a bit tricky at first given that it has a very runny texture and it wasn’t tricky from a skin application point to view but rather because it took me a while to figure out how to get it onto my skin. In my opinion, the best way to go about it is to put small drops of the products on your fingers and pat it in key areas of the face. While I do love my BeutyBlender, this foundation works best for my skin when I apply it wth my fingers – no, a brush did not work as well either!

Then it is off to correcting whatever spots and dark areas I have on my face (mostly dark under-eyes). For this I use the Chanel Eclat Lumiere. I have used this product for a few years now and I love the way it seamlessly blend with any foundation. Yes, I know, it is about time to try the YSL Touche Eclat, but somehow I always end up buying this one.I just brush the product in the areas that I feel I need some extra coverage and pat it with my BeautyBlender Micro.

Now for a bit of contour. I must confess that mastering this step took me quite a while…And I always needed up looking like I had dark spots, but with the new Dior stick this has become quite easy. No, I am not yet a ‘strobing specialist’ and honestly I have no idea what that is. For this step I just put on my ‘war lines’ – as D calls them – and blend them really well with my BeautyBlender.

A bit of highlighting is always much needed after the contour step and I do not use the lighter part of my Dior stick simply because I feel that it contains a bit of glitter as opposed to the pearly texture that captures the light perfectly that I found in Giorgio Armani’s Fluid Sheer. I have tried applying this miracle worker both underneath my foundation as well as mixing it into the foundation, but I feel that it looks best when applied in key ares over the foundation. So I apply it on my upper cheekbones, my upper eyelids and on top of my upper lip.

What’s left? A generous layer of jet black mascara. I am currently using They’re Real from Benefit and I have to say that I am quite happy with it. I confess that it is not as good as the G by Guerlain but hey, it is less than half the price and it does the job nicely!

As for the newest favourite in my make-up bag, the Chanel Rouge Allure Ink, I only have great things to say! First of all, I am that annoying person that only wears nudes or very light pinks and hates matte lipsticks. I bought this because a good friend that actually nows make-up secrets at a way more advanced level than me recommended it and naturally I bought the lighter shade available (which is darker than what I normally wear). I love everything about it! Yes, even the colour as I feel it perfectly mimics my natural lip colour! The texture is to die for, you do not really feel like you are wearing a matte lip as your lips do not get dehydrated for one minute and it lasts for about 5-6 hours which is amazing! I seriously think this is the best beauty product of this autumn and I feel that it is rather hard to be topped by anyone else when it comes to matte lipsticks.

That’s it! That is my autumn no-make-up make-up routine! I hope it has been helpful, not from a make-up point of view necessarily, but rather from a review standpoint. Keep in mind that these are all products that work very well for my pregnant skin, but I have a feeling they are great for any skin. Again, I would like to add that all the products here are bought by me, so this is not a promotional post!