Zoella's Gingerbread Biscuits + Eggless Royal Icing Recipe

My sister and I spent yesterday cooking dinner for the fambam. We attempted at making risotto which looked and smelled AMAZING but tasted SO BITTER :( I think we put too much lemon zest.... sigh. Next time we'll leave that out and hopefully it'll work out. But anyways, we didn't want to end the night in failure so we decided to do a little bit of christmas baking! 

You may have already seen Zoella's baking DIY video for Gingerbread Biscuits. Let me just say that it turned out PERFECT! We decided to top it off with some royal icing which really brought the sweetness level up. 

You can click here for the baking video 
I almost forgot to say that I replaced bicarbonate of soda with baking soda and treacle with maple syrup! 

And here's my recipe for royal icing! I really love it because theres no merengue powder yet it still hardens and is really easy to work with. I tailored my recipe from this website's recipe. 


ROYAL ICING RECIPE 

- 1 cup confectioners' sugar 
- 3 teaspoons of whole milk 
- 2 teaspoons of honey 
- 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
- food coloring! 

Mix it all together and slap it into a piping bag and you're good to go. 

Drugstore Eyebrow Battle

 Today's post is a comparison between the NYX Eyebrow Cake Powder and the Elf Eyebrow Kit. As you can probably see, both products have gotten a reasonable amount of love over the past weeks so I thought it would be fun to write a comparison review and let you guys know which one wins! The Elf duo is in medium while the Nyx duo is in medium dark.

Price
Elf: $3.00
Nyx: $6.00

Content 
Elf: A dual ended brush with a blending and angled brush, dark brown wax, shadow
Nyx: two shadows, an angled brush, a spooley brush, and clear wax

Packaging
Elf: Sturdy

Nyx: Sturdy

There are definitely pros and cons to both products-- the angled brush in the elf duo is sosooso nice for filling in eyebrows because its very thin and precise while the blending brush on the other end is completely useless for me. On the other hand, the angled brush on the Nyx duo works alright, but the spooly brush is really useful for blending in the powder.

As for the products themselves, both seem to last, but do show some signs of fading throughout the day-- I used one for each eyebrow and I couldn't tell the difference.

If you want to get creative, you can mix the Nyx wax with the powder and then apply which gives a more opaque precise line-- except you end up using 5x the amount of wax. Just by looking, I'm probably going to run out of wax in the next few weeks... :/

If I had to pick a winner, I think I would go with the Elf Kit-- it's half the price and works just as well. Even though you don't have a spooly brush, you can use the angled brush when its clean to spread out the product.

Hope you enjoyed reading! 

PERFECT WINTER LIP Endless Red

I've recently rediscovered this lip stain while shopping my stash for a nice festive lip color for the holidays. Since then, I've been wearing it as often as I can and thought that it was about time that I wrote a full review.

You may remember the release of the L'Oreal Color Riche Caresse Wet Shine Stains last year-- they became known as dupes for the YSL Glossy Stain. I, like many others, got roped in and ended up purchasing this product in 190 Endless Red.

This color is the perfect natural flush red lip tint. The product is basically a yellow toned, highly pigmented gloss with no shimmers-- my kind of product! I love dotting it onto the center of my lips and patting it in. You can keep it sheer or add about two more layers for a very opaque, glossy shine.

It's perfect for a dewy complexion when you want to look like you've just been out in the cold. I love pairing it with a natural pinky blush, dark eyebrows, and a touch of mascara.

Pros: natural lip tint, build-able, glossy, long lasting stain
Cons: tricky brush, yellow tint(your teeth look more yellow), while color lasts gloss does not

The Original Tangle Teezer!!!

This week I got to try out the VERY hyped Tangle Teezer! I've heard so many beauty lovers raving about this hair brush so when my old hairbrush started fraying and getting quite disgusting, I thought I would give this one a whirl. 
For those who don't know about the Tangle Teezer, it's a plastic hair brush designed specifically to be used on wet hair. The product claims to painlessly detangle and be easy use. Sounds like a miracle, right?

Before we start, I have pretty long hair that goes till right below my bust. It's pretty thin and gets pretty dry and knotted at the ends.

This is a pretty pricey hair brush. I bought mine from Sallys, and even at the checkout the clerk muttered, "woah 14 dollars for this? jeez..." which made me a little bit uncomfortable because there were two different knock off brands both for around 9 dollars... but I wanted to get the real deal-- especially if so many people have been praising this thing.

I tried this out right when I got home, and I have to say that I absolutely love it! It really gets rid of any snarls in your hair without tugging and pulling. I think this is because of very thin bristles of varying length that come over the surface of your hair and get all the tangles out. I was SUPER impressed. It didn't even hurt!

I would DEFINITELY recommend this, and am already planning on buying this for my sister for Christmas. I think she'll love it.

ps keep checking back for more posts-- finals season is coming and blogging is my favorite thing to do during my study breaks! ;) 

COMBAT BOOT DIY

Heres a quick and easy tutorial that will show you how to get that warm, cozy sock look with a pair of old gloves!

Hope Line by Philosophy

Maybelline Color Tattoos

Just about everyone has been raving about the Maybelline Color Tattoos-- if you haven't heard of them, you're SERIOUSLY out of the loop. I decided to try out Bold Gold and Bad to the Bronze; I was contemplating Tough as Taupe, which I had heard a lot about, but I really wanted some metallic colors for the fall.

I bought these two on ulta.com a little while back during one of Ulta's many buy-one-get-one-half-off sales. The first thing I noticed was that Bad to the Bronze was much creamier than Bold Gold. Bad to the Bronze also blends a little bit better... regardless, both shadows last all day and do NOT crease. They also look gorgeous on the eyes-- either as a primers or by themselves. The pigmentation is also very vibrant and the product dries on your eyelids pretty fast.

Matryoshkas' DIY COSTUME HALLOWEEN 2013

Happy Halloween! This year, my friends and I decided to dress up as Matryoshkas or Russian nesting dolls-- shortest to tallest! We had lots of fun making our costumes and taking pictures with other group costumes at school. And maybe even some trick or treating?! 

Our inspiration came from this photo, which I found on pinterest.com. Since we all wanted to match, we decided to make our aprons, skirts, and hoods. We could NOT have done it without the help of Macbarbie07 and her wonderful no sew tutorials :) 

MAKEUP

We kept our makeup very low maintenance-- two round circles of bright pink blush with a red pouty lip. I would definitely recommend using powder for the blush-- 

COSTUME 

Apron

We decided to just cut an apron out of white fabric and create our own unique patterns for our aprons! I did some research and found this pattern online. 

I really liked the design on the middle doll's apron, so I decided to go with it, but use a different color scheme-- when I finished, I realized that I had a lot of empty space in the middle, so I added a heart!

Skirts

We decided to cut a scalloped hem on the bottom of our skirts as an added touch. :)

Click here for the Macbarbie07 tutorial

Hood 

We put the same scalloped edge on out hood.
Click here for another, heaven sent Macbarbie07 tutorial. 

  

++++++++++++++++++++++

^ Our football team dressed showed up as black cats-- complete with booty shorts, whiskers, and ears. Their official title was, "The Average Teenage Girl on Halloween" When one of the football players walked into class, everyone paused and then BURST into laughter; I'm not sure if it's only my school, but every year we have a girls dressed as billion black cats on halloween. That moment was definitely the highlight of my day. 

Thanks for reading! How is Halloween where you live? Do you dress up for school? 

FOTD #1 Natural Look for High School

I love this combination as an every day high school look. In the morning, I usually give myself about 30 minutes to get ready before I'm out the door. This includes putting in my contacts, getting dressed, and eating breakfast. For make up specifically, I usually allow myself 5-7 minutes. If I've wasted too much time, I'll usually skip the rest of the products for that given day. For this blog post, I decided to list the products in the order that I use them-- aka most important to least important. Hope you enjoy!