Cargo 50% off haul and The Body Shop blush review

OMG. I finally do a beauty related post. I'm sure all my beauty readers have long abandoned me as this was turning more and more into a cooking blog >.<
Don't leave!!! I promise I'll do more beauty posts!!!
So by now I'm sure everyone knows that Cargo is pulling out of Sephora stores and thus all their products have been reduced to 50% of their regular price. Being Asian, a good deal pulled me in even though I've officially declared Sephora to be the root of all evil.
So what did I buy?(so far)

This!

Cargo Colour Eyeshadow Palette in Barcelona.

A look inside.

Swatches

Sephora describes the colours as: Shimmering Periwinkle; Matte Royal Purple; Matte Vibrant Violet and a Pale Teal Sheen. I'm unedumacated so I'm probably wrong, but I didn't find any of the colours in the palette to be 'matte' in any way. Their finish reminded me more of MAC's veluxe pearls. All four colours carried an equal amount of..er...sheen? damn I am just not in the know how to describe colours and finishes! Although you can't see it, the teal contains a gold shimmer which is so pretty in the light!! The royal blue is gorgeous too, although I have absolutely no idea where I'd wear that to =.=". Yes I'm extremely guilty of buying things which I have no intention of using hee! The packing is a bit bulkier than what I'd like, but I do love the clear lucite and the huge mirror included. At $14 it's a steal, I'm gonna go back tomorrow and pick up a couple more but definitely in more subdued colours xD.

On another note, a couple of you seem to be interested in the blushes I picked up from The Body Shop, so I thought I'd do a some swatches and do a mini review.

Let's start with the marblized blush trio, I got mine in Warm Sunset. Size wise, it's quite a lot bigger than a standard MAC blush and is approx the same size as a MAC Shape & Sculpt powder.

A closer look,swirled together is a light peachy pink, a ruddy red orange and a dirty brownish bronze (can you tell I suck with describing colours?)

Swatches: From the left: 1. mixed together; 2. lightest colour; 3. medium colour; 4. darkest colour.

Closeup of the mixed colour.

 

As you can see from the swatches, these blushes are really pigmented. You really have to apply with a light hand and blend like crazy, otherwise you'll end up with clown cheeks lol. They remind me of MAC msfs with a lot more pigmentation, and none of the frostiness. For me, this would be more of a "summer" colour, as I dislike peachy tones during the winter months because it looks really fake on me when I have no tan. I prefer cool pinks during winter to give that 'flushed from the cold' look xD.

The second blush I got from The Body Shop is their Roseflower blush in Fuschia.

Smells just like roses. No seriously, it's rose scented! but the scent is light enough not to be grandmotherly.

 

Swatches

It reminded me of a slighty pinker version of NARS Super Orgasm actually, with the large flecks of gold glitter. Nunu no likey Super Orgasm, thankfully the glitter is just from the overspray used in the rose pattern and would soon disappear. It's not full on shimmer, yet it's not matte, it's got a bit of a glowy sheen to it.

On mah cheeks!Really natural, just the type of flushed from the cold look I like during winter!

Roseflower blush with Dior Rose Diamond skin shimmer as highlight. @.@ glowy! Excuse the spot on my cheek, we've been eating hot pot lately n I've got hot pot face, but c'mon this was my bare face with zero foundation and cover up! I owe it all to the My Beauty Diary masks that I've been using every 2nd night. It's still the shizniz!

And that's it for my round up of Body Shop blushes. I hope I've encouraged some of you to spend some money xD.

Ta.

Nunu's Kitchen - Mushroom risotto

Food I make!

I'd previously made this dish for the bf's parents when they came over before Christmas. I made this again the other night for dinner and thought I'd share it with y'all. The only changes I made was to add garlic and onions this time round. Oh make sure you have at least 40 mins to spare when you're making this and you're also gonna be in for a bit of stirring. I apologise in advance for not taking step by step photos like I usually do, I only decided to make this into a Nunu's Kitchen when everything was already in the pan...
PLEASE DON'T STOP LOVING ME!!! T.T

Mushroom Risotto

You will need:

• 1 cup Arborio rice - I believe this is special rice for making risotto, to reduce cooking time, I presoaked the rice in warm water for approx 30mins.
• 1 extra large Portebello mushroom - sliced
• 200grams Oyster mushrooms - sliced
• 3/4 dried Porcini mushrooms - they either don't sell this at my grocery store or it's not in season, whatever, I substituted it with a type of dried mushroom all Chinese people have at home; shiitake xD.
• 1 stick butter - I used garlic herb variety, u can use plain ol' unsalted
• 1 412ml can of Swanson chicken stock - use any type you have at hand, we like to stock up on Swanson like there's no tomorrow.
• 1 clove garlic - diced
• 1/2 small onion - diced
• olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• Dry mixed Italian herbs
• Parmesan cheese.

La Methode:

• In a hot pan, saute your garlic, onions and your mushrooms using half of the butter and a drizzle (I've always wanted to say this!) of olive oil until it goes golden brown.
• Add the rice, turn it a couple of times with ur spatula to coat it with the sauted mushroom mixture.
• Turn heat down to medium, add 1/4 of the broth, mix well, make sure liquid is evenly distributed.

•  Cover with pan lid.

• Now you kinda have to just stand here and keep an eye on your rice, you have to stir it quite regularly or it'll stick, and add more broth once the previous batch has been soaked up and your rice begins to look a bit "dry".
• Stir in the rest of the butter.

•  I'm sure there's a way that chefs can just tell when rice is done just by looking at it, but I can't so I just taste it xD. Well mine is done! Add your dry Italian herb mix, and salt n pepper to taste.

• Sprinkle with Parmesan. Buon Appetito.

WAIT!!There's more!! Photos of the first New Year's Dinner made by yours truely!

Fin.

First award, tag, small haul and food pr0n

My first blog award!! Nat gave me an "I <3 your blog" award! Awww, thank you sweetie xD you love me! you reeeally love me!! When I first started this blog, I didn't think anyone would even read it let alone love it xD. It was gonna be my equivalent of JLo's Oscar worthy performance in El Cantante.

She also tagged me to find things around my house that was pink! Ahahahahaa! I've always vigorously denied that I like anything pink, thus I was pretty sure I wouldn't find anything. I've been proven wrong lol.
Exhibit 1:

Exhibit 2:

Ok, so I do have a lot of pink stuff xD. I tag everyone who reads my blog with Purple my favourite colour!

Went to The Body Shop the other day and hauled a little bit xD

Snacks from Japan and cheap Xmas chocolates!Milka!!my fav!!but somehow it tastes different to the ones I had in Europe... Does anyone else find North American sweets to be much sweeter than their European counterparts?

Lastly, we went to a Japanese restaurant close to our house called Toyotomi for dinner the other night. Very reasonable prices. If it weren't for the Hamachi sashimi, dinner for the two of us would've only been around $35.
Salmon Tartar with tempura bits

I'd already gobbled up 2 pieces of the negitoro (my fav and must have!) and those were the 2 last pieces of sashimi in the Pookie's plate.

Some roll. Tuna and avocado topped with eel tempura.

Another roll. Spicy salmon topped with avo and eel. We'd only realised we had eel on everything when the food came. It's ok we like eel xD.

Food was pretty good and prices were very reasonable. There was one thing we were after that they didn't have on the menu...

Uni!!!
Yeah, yeah it looks like cracked open brains but it's really good!
So how is everyone doing in their first week back at work? I'm still not used to the pace yet, I'd barely begun to relax into holiday mode and it's over already >.< I want my month long school holidays back! Well at least it's not snowing...
More posts coming up! Gonna be putting all my new toys to work!

New Year, New Layout

Egads! What has happened to le blog?!!
Well...um...I discovered btemplates.com xD
Let's just say it took me the better part of last night to adjust everything to the way it looks now. I had to use the 'Edit HTML' option on Blogger and the last time I touched HTML, some of my subscribers were yet to be born, Yahoo! did not own Geocities, and "blogs" were known as "homepages". Thank god for Google search. Omg, talking 'bout Geocities and homepages, did any of you ever own an Angelfire or Lycos account? For the life of me, I can't locate my over a decade old Angelfire homepage, dude that thing was my baby man, I created that thing from scratch with html! Now you have all these fancy pants programs called Java, C+ and wotnots...bah! Bring back the old stuff I say, bring back Turbo Pascals screensavers and starting online chats with "a/s/l?" requests....ok...maybe not that last one xD
Anywayz, wanna cyber?
aznpryd man.
lolz.

...

No! Don't go!!! Come back! Come back!

Go watch Avatar on IMAX 3D. Seriously, go right now. I still haven't forgiven Mr. Cameron for Titanic, but the visuals for Avatar are ABSOLUTELY amazing. My bum felt the 3 hours spent in the cinema chair afterwards, but my eyes and mind said it was still far too short. I wanna go sleep and wake up on Pandora.
The storyline is kind of rubbish, think Fern Gully mixed with Captain Planet and you're dead on, and the other thing that REALLY bothered me was that the Na'vi spoke English like African tribal people would. Don't know what I'm talking about? go watch Shaka Zulu and listen to how the actors speak, and you'll realise that the Na'vi sound just like them. No biggie for most people, but it irks me xD.
Anyways, go watch it.
Oooeh! I notice I can has new subscribers! Hi! thanks for subscribing! do leave a comment and say hello.
Lots of new posts coming up, including an EOTD, a tiny haul, a Sephora rant (another!) and a tag thingy. Keep reading!!!
xx