Happy Holidays are Over (No review)

Hope everyone enjoyed the holidays and look forward to the new year. This Christmas was pretty good and while it's not about the presents, I did get some awesome things. The things that I'm most happy to see are these.

The white blue box is a Merdiem emulsion that I want to try out, a bottle of this Daeng Gi Meori shampoo that I absolutely love and a Coach Poppy perfume. The best thing in this picture is the Love Box filled with Korean goodies in back. Its chock filled with delicious cookies and snacks that I've never tried before. Squeeee.

On a random note, here are the top five products that I hope to see again in the new year.

 L to R: Midnight Mambo (my most complimented nail polish), Bare Escentuals Sealent ( I've converted my half monolided sister into a believer), the UDPP (no explanation needed), and the Korres lip balm (its the longest lasting but has its flaws).

I once again reorganized my stash of makeup, but there were some casualties.

 Noooo. this was the best highlighter in my collection. Gosh darn. This is why I don't clean. That and I can't seem to find anything after I've cleaned up.

Once again, I have no cohesion in my post. I've also decided to make some rasmalai and I'll be sure to tell you how that goes. Going to use http://www.spicytasty.com/indian-sweets/rasmalai for the recipe.Besides, I have a Bengali and Goan friend that I'll be serving to, so I'll let you know about what they say.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Strips in Groove

During the CVS beauty sale, I picked up a bunch of these Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail Strips. Usually retailing around $10, got these for $3. This isn't my first foray into the nail sticker business, however, this has to be one of the worst. 

As you see on the package, it tells me that with proper preparation, this lasts up to ten days. It's been three days since the. Tell me if you think that it has lived up to its c;aim. Comes with a mini nail file along with a cuticle stick. As the directions instructed, I buffed and cleaned my nails to ensure proper stickage. Now the strips were for people with a tinier nail bed because I had trouble finding the right sized one even with 15 strips. Now unless you are ambidextrous, it is extremely difficult to find the proper point to place these in the middle where it has to over lap your nails on both sides. I tried doing my pinky, but angrily started to rip the nail sticker into tiny pieces after several futile efforts. Now after my sister observed my angry gnomish temper tantrum, she offered to help.

 See my left hand? The suckers are very hard to rip properly. The sticker over lapped onto my cuticles, and it didn't rip cleanly off. It left a jagged edge that threatened to rip the whole sticker off my nails if touched. So after that threat, I just had to live with the sticker on my cuticles. Now here is the other thing, if the sticker hangs out because your nails aren't long enough, they tell you to use he gentle side of the file to take off the excess. Do you know what that leaves you with? No nail on the tip and outer rim of your nails. Let me tell you a secret. Do you now the trick to keeping your manicure for a long time without having it chip  from the base? Painting the rim of your nails. Without that extra sealant, the nails are prone to chipping and since this is impossible to fold under my nails without leaving the I think I have gunk under my nails feeling; I was unable to keep this polish from chipping ever after one day.

 SEE WHAT HAPPENS!

Now my sister became a pro after doing the right hand, and the left came out nicely. Geez, I have a whole stack of these to go through. The non drying part is really convenient, but the time it took to apply these is similar to painting your nails and applying a fast dry top coat, provided that you didn't apply a think coat of polish. Unless you have a bored sister like mine that took mercy upon my pitiful, stocky frame, I really don't recommend this unless you are doing the fancy designed ones. Those take forever to do and only then are these worth it.

Totally unrelated story. Do you know that I got myself the gift that keeps on giving? My sister wanted a espresso machine but guess what? She doesn't drink a lot of coffee but guess who does? So for her gift, I ended up getting her a espresso machine but who will reap the reward of delicious extra espressos? Little ol' moi. Unbeknownst to her, I will drink all of that foamy coffee goodness without the labor. BWAHAAA. Next stop world domination. Happy Holidays.

Maui Vacation

I'm back from my vacation and I'm finally getting back into the normal groove of things. My sleep patterns are a bit messed up, but being back just reminds me of how nasty NYC weather is. We're actually having a pretty warm winter here so far, but coming from a  place that had high 80 temps, it makes me shiver. The vacation was great, especially the scenery and the just too perfect weather but the one thing that really stood about about Maui was the warm hospitality. I've never met rude people on the island, nothing but smiles and a warm conversation. Even the tourists and vacationers picked up on the aloha spirit and were polite. I guess it's since everyone's on vacation or because of something in the air. 

Here are a few pictures that I took.

 This happens to be one of the views from the condo we were staying at. We didn't get ocean view but there was a beach right outside the property that we tried to use everyday.

 Driving around the South of Maui had us seeing a lot of brown patches. My dad was like "I thought it was supposed to be green all around. What 's going to happen when it becomes winter?" Lol. Find anything funny in that statement? Let me know if you get it.

 This was part of the hiking route next to the beach near the condo.

 Forgot to turn this picture, but this is a shot of the Banyan Tree in Lahaina. It was got huge and incredibly interesting to look at. Ended up buying some delicious smelling salt rocks. I'm going to put some of it in my closet, so that my clothes could smell nice. We started to wander around the historic trail and see at all of the local shops. My sister ended up buying shaved ice and began eating that everyday for dessert.

 When I say that the surrounding ares are gorgeous, I truly mean that here. This here is an unphotoshopped picture of the sunset.. Can you see that bits of orange and pink in the sky? We used to just sit on the beach and watch the sunset before heading out to dinner.

 The sunrise at Haleakala Mountain is also pretty but getting there was a pain in the ass. Woke up two hours before sunrise and couldn't see a darn thing when driving up the mountain. Luckily we ended up getting a great warm spot looking out the window of the gift shop. It was too darn cold to be outside, looking at the the sunrise.

 Afterwards, we stopped by the Komoda Bakery for some goods. Had the delicious glazed doughnuts. Honestly, I didn't like the cream puff because I prefer a whipped cream filling but everyone else really enjoyed the custard in this one better.

 Then we went to go see the black sand beach. Noting much to do there because the water was too choppy for swimming. I wore my bathing suit underneath and was really looking forward to the swim. But nope, no swimming.

 During the trip home from the Black and beach, we stopped at a tiny shack that had a huge farm in the back. We were able to look around and see how they grew their own produce and buy some of what they sold. My dad finally got this coconut drink while we picked up a bunch of other fruit as well as this still in the shell Macadamia nut. It was so nutty good. My mother managed to charm some random stranger  and ended up getting free bananas. My sister and I was like, dad why were you sitting in the car when mom's chatting up a random stranger? My dad told that what's the worst thing that could happen? I guess it doesn't matter after 30 years of marriage. The stranger ended up giving him a empty coconut but the bananas that he gave my mother were good.

 There were lots more pictures, but I'm unwilling to share. It has a lot of my ugliness in it. I gained about 10lbs. Been working out extra hard. If there was one thing that I didn't like about Maui, is the roads. I understand that you want to preserve the beauty of nature, but the Road to Hana was so dangerous and curvy. I was so scared during the ride. We thought that we avoid the curves by going back and taking the other road, but that road was dangerous, unpaved and took longer. Argh so much motion sickness. But saw so much cattle.

Btw, can you guess how much makeup I used? After bringing a bulging bag with our makeup and palettes, I ended up putting nothing. Not a damn slick of gloss. Got really laid back and lazy. Who was I going to look pretty for?

P.S.

HAPPY 30TH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!