Today's nails: My birthday mani

I have the Awesomest Kids Ever. Seriously. Apologies to anybody who thinks their kids are the awesomest, but mine bought me nail polish and shoes for my birthday. I repeat: Awesomest. Kids. Ever!

In my imagination, the conversation went something like this:

11YO Son: "Oh sister dearest, what shall we buy our wonderful mother for her birthday?"

15YO Daughter: "Well, brother dearest, she is truly the most wonderful mother, so we must buy her something that she will love and that will express our devotion to her."

11YO Son: "She loves nail polish."

15YO Daughter: "And shoes."

Together: "Let's buy her nail polish AND shoes!"

Apparently in my imagination I have borne Children of the Corn. Great.

So here is the nail polish they bought me. L'Oreal Resist & Shine Titanium No 733.

(I'm still messing around with the macro settings on the camera I got for my birthday and I haven't yet quite perfected it yet so apologies. The camera is awesome, its operator needs some lessons!)

I love the L'Oreal Resist & Shine Titanium polishes - especially this series of black-based colours which come in the bottles with the black lids. 733 is a stunning shimmer that I think I would describe as a black-based plum (I'm not always the best at colour descriptions). This has a beautiful glow to it, and the plum colour is apparent in all lights.

The best part of all: this is ONE coat. Brilliant! The formula was a little tricky to work with - a little on the thick side which meant it was hard to get a nice line at the edges but still - ONE coat!

My only quibble is with the packaging: the chunky, curved bottle design is lovely to look at, and the lid pulls off to reveal a smaller brush handle which is meant to be easier to hold for applying polish (shown below), but it is actually a little bit too small - especially length-wise - so it's a bit fiddly to control. But like I said, that's a small quibble for such a gorgeous one-coater!

L'Oreal Resist & Shine Titanium 710

It's been a while since I swatched some nail polishes for you, isn't it my pretties? That would be because my nails and I are currently not on speaking terms. They're being all soft and breaky, so in a fit of pique I clipped them right back. Realistically I only have myself to blame for their state, normally I'm fanatical about moisturing my hands/cuticles/nails which improves them no end, but lately I've been a bit slack. And so they have returned to their normal state, which is ridiculously soft and prone to splitting.

However I have at last swatched a polish for you, on my poor stubbular little nails. This is L'Oreal Resist & Shine Titanium in shade 710 (what, the colour naming fairies were off duty that day?):



I love dark charcoal greys, and this one is gorgeous. Click on the picture for a close up look at the gorgeous pin pricks of silver glitter it's packed with. Two coats, nice formula and application although the flat brush is a little on the stiff side so it doesn't fan out. I'm impressed with the wear on this. I normally change my polish every day so I don't very often get to test wear thoroughly, but because my nails are so soft and bendable I'm bound to have chipping and peeling even after one day, no matter how good the quality of the polish and even when my nails are super short like now. This photo was taken today after three days of wear and you can see there's a tiny bit of tip wear and that's all. Colour me impressed - I think I'll be getting some more of this range which retail for around NZ$15.99.

Like (shopaholic) mother, like (shopaholic) daughter

14 Year Old Daughter and I went on a shopping spree the other day with her boyfriend in tow. Poor boy. He did quite well, except for the lingerie department. At that stage he threw his arms over his head and wailed. Seriously. He did get lots of sympathy and blokey pats on the back from other men in the same situation. Never let it be said that men lack empathy.

Anyway, we bought lots of stuff. Lots.

14 Year Old Daughter bought these for herself:


From left a BYS lip gloss, a mwah! eyeliner pencil, mwah! glittery liquid eyeliner and mwah! roll on eyeshadow. She has the most gorgeous grey/blue eyes and these greens and blues look stunning on her.



I stopped in to the M.A.C. store and picked up some Prep & Prime and a bottle of Beyond Jealous nail polish from the Jin Soon collection. There's a few colours in the collection I've been coveting, but M.A.C. polishes aren't cheap and Beyond Jealous was top of my list. I also signed myself up for a M.A.C. technique class on November 18th, which I'm looking forward to enormously. They cost NZ$120, but NZ$100 of that can be redeemed for product on the evening. I gather they teach the smoky eye, which is a look I've never quite been able to master.

Remember that thing I do where I decide I don't like a particular look and promptly find an example of said look that I do like? Ok, let's add a couple of things to my list of looks I don't like shall we?: I'm not really big on the wedge heels that are being seen on shoes this season, and cork heels don't appeal to me at all. Alrighty? Also, look at these gorgeous shoes I bought:



How adorable are they? NZ$35.00 on a Novo clearance table. And yes, they have wedges and cork. But they carry it off, so there!

Farmers Department Store are celebrating their 100th anniversary, so there are plenty of discounts storewide, including 25% off womenswear. I picked up this cute tee, the motorcycle on the front reminds me of my ex-husband's Honda CB-650 Custom. We spent many happy hours riding around Wellington on that bike! I even had the most awesome leather jacket with fringing. I rocked as a bikie chick.



14 Year Old Daughter managed to persuade me to buy her a couple of cute tees and a gorgeous military style jacket.




How gorgeous is she in that jacket?

The beauty department had 10% off:



I was remarkably restrained, there was so much more I wanted to buy! Left to right is the Australis Rush Hour palette in Down to Earth, Chi Chi nail polish in Merman, Orly Nail Rescue Kit (Orly should totally pay commission to Michelle from All Lacquered Up - since she blogged about this product I think every nail polish blogger I follow has bought some!), L'Oreal Resist & Shine Titanium shade 710, and Australis Rush Hour palette in Pinks on the Go.

I've mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of makeup palettes, too often there'll be a couple of colours in the palette that work for me, and the rest sit there unused. However here's a photo of the colours in the Australis palettes:


All colours that I find wearable, and I venture to say that most people would. That's Down to Earth on the left and Pinks on the Go on the right. I gather all the colours are drawn from their current range, I know I already have a couple of those lip gloss colours in the full sizes. For NZ$14.90 each these are an incredibly good deal. Plus they were 10% off, so what's not to love really?

Much to my delight I found a Color Club stand in Life Pharmacy. Color Club is hard to find here in New Zealand, in fact so far I've only seen them in Life Pharmacy and they have a very limited range. However I did buy this gorgeous colour:



That's Blue Light. Pretty.

And one more small haul - before I went to Melbourne I got a discount code for pop beauty, and the parcel arrived a few days after my return. Look at these puppies:



That's Ocean and Turquoise. I also got one of these clever eyeliner pencils in Black Onyx:



The picture's nabbed from the pop site, because my pencil's all the way upstairs, and it's such a long way to get it and bring it downstairs and photograph it and ... *sigh* Anyway it's a very clever pencil, held one way it draws a standard thin line, and turned 90 degrees it draws a thicker line perfect for cats eyes.

And, pop threw in a sample size of their eyelid primer - great service pop!

A haul and a reward

A few more visits from Mr Courier Dude the last couple of days, including one super-duper exciting parcel which I will get to in a minute. First up, some more polishes from TradeMe:



Left to right: Love My Nails Heavenly, Sea Grape and Plum Pearl (all from the Chrome range), Revlon Glimmer Gloss Blueberry Burst, Pure Ice Iced Copper and L'Oreal Resist & Shine Titanium (no name) Number 305.

And now, drum roll please... I've been smoke free for over a month! The Eccentric English Boyfriend promised me a nail polish reward for lasting one month (at three months I get expensive shoes) and I was going to get the Butter London Spring Fashionista's Favourites, but it turns out they don't ship to New Zealand*. So instead I decided to get the Kit Chalk It Up range, and added the two polishes whose packaging was designed by Kit Design Award 2009 winners.



Left to right: Dream Run (packaging designed by Jessica Singh), Wild Ride (packaging designed by Lucinda Dryden), Game On, High Roller and Winner Takes.

Did I mention I've been smoke free for One Whole Month? I am so proud of myself - YAY ME!

* Note to American retailers: Shipping internationally and shipping to England are two entirely different things. If the only place outside of America that you ship to is England then don't say you ship internationally. Just saying.