It's starting to look a lot like Christmas...

Few decorations have been going up around the house...




Have you been decorating?

All that glitters

You probably haven't noticed but other than commenting on a few blogs here and there I've been pretty non-existent in around blogger. Since November I haven't been blogging even though I have wanted to. Just too many things to do in so little time!

Slowly but surely I've been working at becoming a good nail tech, mostly in sculpting nails the past week or two and setting up my work station at home.

The new IKEA store just opened its doors in Ottawa on December 7th and I couldn't have been more excited! We had an IKEA before, but it was kinda cramped and crowded all the time, so they built a new one, a better one, a BIGGER one. It's apparently the biggest in Canada now. I was there on December 9th to pick up a desk, a book shelf and two chairs. YAY SALES!

But this is not a post on IKEA, it's a post on my nail tech work station. I'm so proud and excited, it's really hard to hide it when I speak of it to others. I get giggly like a 5 year old that just got her new barbie on Christmas.

Anyway. Enough blah blah. PICS!

The work station: desk, pink chair for the nail tech, white chair for the client. A book shelf for storage in the background, it's the perfect size. The desk and book shelf came together as a set, 70$! Eep! So happy~

The inside of my drawer... can't wait to really be using all these tools. Kekeke~

Martha Stewart glitters I'll be using for color combination,
mixing with acrylic and possibly other super secret projects! Shhhh!

Practice makes perfect... eventually...
(Only sculpted, not shaped, buffed or shined yet.)

Kitty follows me everywhere :3
(Yes I got the kid's meal at McD's for the toy, what are you saying? >_>)

That's it for now!
More as I continue this journey of accomplishing a long time dream~

What have you been up to lately?

Gyaru Brand: GLAD NEWS

GLAD NEWS Around since 2004-2005 Rock trend

GLAD NEWS caught my attention earlier this year as I learned more and more about the different kinds of gal styles and trends. This is a bit more my style as I tend to really like wearing skinny jeans and long black or white tops. GLAD NEWS often uses skull logos into their designs and that seem to be the only thing that keeps coming back through their collections. That and the leopard coat. More on that one at the end of this post.


GLAD NEWS is in Shibuya 109, but I don't know where else in Japan it can be found, I'm sure it is not the only place it is distributed. It seems to be very popular on Rakuten because a lot of their pieces sell out quite fast. Maybe someone that frequents GLAD NEWS in Japan could enlighten me on the where about of this rockin' brand? Sadly though, Rakuten is the only thing I could find online. They don't seem to have their own website like JSG (previous gyaru brand post) does. Here are a few of the coordinates I really liked of Rakuten.


And the "famous" leopard coat...


A different variation of this coat (or even a simpler version) seems to be up for sell every year around November-December. I found out about it last year and have wanted one ever since. I die a little inside every time I see it so much I'm in love with it (yes, it's that bad). And it's all Rii's fault! She got the a different version last year when she was in Tokyo, it sounded like she had been wanting it quite a bit as well.

Of course now it's already sold out on Rakuten, and the single similar coat that I found on eBay doesn't have any buttons or zip... I can't wear that out here in Canada, I'll die frozen. So if anyone comes across this coat while shopping in Japan, please contact me, I'll definitely want it, well the gray/silver one anyway. Until then, I'll just keep dreaming and hoping it's available again next year when I travel to Japan in December.


What do you think of GLAD NEWS? Too rock for you?

ViVi December 2011

Hamasaki Ayumi on the cover of japanese magazine ViVi December 2o11.

Huummm... can we say gorgeous much?? I haven't liked many of her magazine covers in the past year or two, so this is a great surprise. The look in her eyes with those contacts... it's hypnotizing! No?

There isn't much about her in the magazine itself other than her usual DeijiDeiji diary. So I probably won't be getting this mag. But I still really like this cover!


What do you think of this cover?

1st snow of the season

1st snow of the season fell last week, I believe it was... Wednesday, November 22nd! It was very pretty and beautiful, but of course that meant I was getting up earlier to shovel the snow off my car and drive to work in the slow traffic.

Some pictures for you! :3

Car covered in fluffy white snow~

Shoveling... shoveling...

Clean car! Time to go before it piles up on again...

It wasn't that bad a drive to work in the end... just slower, with lots of wet snow!

Have you had snow in your little corner of the world yet?

PeriPera polish review

I heard of Korean cosmetics brands PeriPera a few weeks ago. Their products looked pretty standard of an asian brand to me, until I came across their nail polishes. Cute bottles, gorgeous pastel colors and most of all, the tag like "1 coat, 1 minute, 1 week". Apparently these little beauties only take 1 coat, dry within 1 minute and will last up to a week. Instantly I wanted to try them! I'd wanted pastel colors for quite some time and never found shades that I liked until I stumbled upon PeriPera so even without the tag line I probably would have bought these.

Vanilla lime, vanilla sky, vanilla peach and vanilla pink.

I tried all of them on and my favorite color definitely is vanilla lime.

Vanilla sky and vanilla lime on my toes.

But I was disappointed because their tag line really didn't translate well, not on me anyway. Maybe my nails are too long/large, but one coat definitely wasn't enough. I had to apply 3 coats to get the opaque color I wanted. I didn't take long for them to dry, but with 3 coats it was easy to smudge, I smudged a few of them, so I had to take the time to let the coats dry in between each other. And they definitely didn't last 1 week. More like 2 days. How disappointing... Sigh.

Vanilla pink with chips on the 2nd day.

All in all, I love the colors and will be using them again for sure, but the whole "1 coat, 1 min, 1 week" thing didn't work for me.



Have you heard of PeriPera and their polishes? Have you tried them? Did you like them?

Note: I was not sponsored for this post, I purchased these polishes with my own money and reviewed these on my own time. This is just my opinion.

Breaking Dawn Part 1

Twilight Saga : Breaking Dawn Part 1
Suteisi rating: ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥+

Breaking Dawn part 1 follows Bella as she finally gets married to Edward Cullen. They have a perfect wedding and then go on a perfect honey money... that is, until Bella realizes she missed her periods which makes her pregnant, with god knows what.

Being a fan of the books I was really looking forward to this one, I didn't really care for Twilight and New Moon. Eclipse was fine but it really didn't do the book any justice. I went in after reading many reviews of disappointed fans, so I braced myself to be disappointed also. I could have not been more wrong! I LOVED it!! I thought it was PERFECT! (yes, perfect!) I loved every bit and pieces of it, and will probably be going to see it again until it comes out. My only disappointment is that we have to wait 1 year for Part 2! The acting was way better than in any of the previous movies. I was worried with Taylor Launter who hadn't really been much more than just a pretty face with a ton of muscles. Even though it probably could have been better, I believe him and felt his emotions (especially that part where he cries, OOPS SPOILER! Yeah I cried too).

I thought Kristen and Edward could have had a bit more chemistry but I was so roped into the story and what was going to happen next that it didn't really matter to me in the end. Rosalie's hair looked bad as usual, no surprise with that. Emmett was just as handsome as I remembered him. Bella's father was just too cute. And well, the wolves were OK. I don't like the actress they picked for Leah, but I don't like Leah as a character anyway, so I guess she was doomed to begin with in my book.

I don't want to reveal too many details here, go see it for yourself. I loved it and I will be seeing it again. I can't wait for Part 2! The best is still to come!!




What did you think of Breaking Dawn Part 1?

A busy bee... doing nails!

It's already mid-November! Where have I been?

Pursuing a part-time career. Something I've wanted to do for several years now but due to various circumstances such as time, schedule and funds, I was never able to take on the proper steps toward one of my dreams. That of being a nail technician!

I started my training 2 weeks ago, and it's gone over very well!

My starter kit...

What's inside...

For a starter kit I think it's very complete, I'm really happy with it! The only thing I don't like is brush, I'll have to get me a better one.

Last night I got to do my first set of nails, under supervision. My sister was kind enough to be my model / victim.

Tadah!!

What do you think?

Not too shaby for a very 1st time, don't you think?

Sephora X Collabs

I'm not out at Sephora very often because it's located downtown and I really dislike going downtown, so when I traveled to Carrefour Laval, my 1st stop was the make-up store.

I love all the collaborations they have going on. Especially 2 of which I took pictures of.

First collab: Hello Kitty

I spoke of this one twice on Gossip Candy, and the merchandise looks even better than I thought it would! If only it wasn't so expensive I would have bought the whole collection.

Look at all the cute bottles! X3

I was going to settle for a bottle of polish but the shade (pastel pink) that I wanted was sold out :(


Second collab: Toki Doki

Toki Doki was created by an italian artist, yet I think it represents well what some of your typical japanese mascots look like.

Eye shadows... All of their packages are super cute!

Everything you see here can be found on the Sephora website and most likely at your local store... unless it's sold out of course! Do you prefer Hello Kitty or Toki Doki?

(All of the pictures were taken by me, on my own time. I'm not paid to advertise any of these brands. I just really enjoy them, so I choose to share them with you guys. Hope you like! Suggestions for future products are welcome~)

Butterfly exhibition

On the 1st week of October every year, the Carleton University in Ottawa hosts a butterfly exhibition. They receive cocoons from many countries all around the world and get around 1,300 different kinds of butterflies. All of them are kept in the humidity of their green house.

Until this year I had never heard of this butterfly exhibition but I was immediately intrigued. Not only was it free but it was open on weekends and the advertisement said that if you wore a brightly colored shirt that the butterflies might come down to rest on you. And did I mention it's free?

I invited one of my girl friends for breakfast along with D. and my mother, after our feast we headed out there around lunch time. On October 8th, I was wearing shorts and a tank top!! I don't remember EVER having such a good day in October. Usually the weather out here is miserably cold and rainy.

(There is watermark because these are all pictures I took myself, with my camera, on my time and edited to fix the size. If you wish to use these, please ask for permission and leave the watermark on. Thank you very much~)


We waited in line about 30 minutes to get in, but we chatted and the weather was fantastic so it went by really quickly. I was super excited by the time we got inside!

Inching inside the green house...

Ready set... GO BUTTERFLIES!

I totally fell in love with these pink flowers! I must have taken 15 pictures of them alone. I'd have them all over my bedroom if I could. So pretty!!

Mom's hand... this butterfly landed on her out of no where!

These kids and there mom's had orange slices, which the butterflies really seemed to love. The blue winged butterfly is blue only on the inside, the outside of its wings were brown with creepy circle like eyes. This is one of my favorite pictures.

This one landed on my mom's leg, so it was hard to see. But the inside of its wings were bright red!


That's it!! Enough butterfly pictures for you?

Have you ever been to a butterfly exhibition? Which one of these is your favorite?