Cute, Simple Hairstyle in 5 Minutes or Less!

When it comes to my hair, I'm super low maintenance. I usually just let it air dry, put in some leave-in conditioner and I'm done. But sometimes, I want my hair to look a little prettier without spending years at the mirror. This hair style is super simple, but it's my favourite hairstyle to do when I want cute hair in five minutes or less.

START:

I begin by finding a hair tie (preferably one with a bow attached to make your ponytail more fancy).

I first lightly tease the crown of my hair for extra volume. Then I pull my up hair into a high ponytail and move the ponytail slightly to the side so it is more visible from the front. This should only take a minute or so. Then I take a curling iron and quickly curl my hair while it's in the ponytail.

I curl big sections at once to quickly get bigger, more romantic looking curls. I also only curl the bottom three inches of hair or so, but because my hair is in a ponytail, you can't really tell that you only curled the ends. Curling my ends takes me about two or three minutes, since it's in big sections.

END:

Afterwards, your hair should look something like this. A cute, voluminous, curly ponytail. So simple and quick, yet so pretty!

OOTD: Let's Start a Riot!

So I've noticed there's a lot more graffiti around my neighbourhood lately. I was walking around wearing this weird concoction of clothing inspired by the slightly warmer spring weather (leather jacket, floral top, heart-print shorts, red tights, whaaaat) and came across some cool graffiti. I love having some awesome visuals in my otherwise not too exciting neighbourhood!

I decided to take some pictures next to the word "riot" because it reminded me of the Three Days Grace song Let's Start a Riot. I also think it's a lot cooler of a word than anything else in my neighbourhood such as the ever so creative "penis" or "Ben is gay" in detailed graffiti designs. Really? That's all that people could come up with? You can tell the creativity is in the designs, not the meaning in the words haha.

Anyway, this is where I got my clothing from:

Leather jacket: H&M
Floral top: Sirens
Heart-print shorts: Walmart
Tights: Ardene
Boots: Spring

Korean Beauty Haul and Mini Reviews (The Face Shop, Etude House, Tony Moly)

I've been trying out a lot of Asian beauty products lately, as many of my friends tell me that they are more advanced when it comes to cosmetics and skin care. I'm still testing most of these products out, but at least one thing's for sure: they are really good at getting people to buy them! They all have super cute packaging, persistent sales people (lol) and cool concepts. Almost all of the products are from The Face Shop, except for the blusher and the Appletox cream. This is because The Face Shop recently opened up in malls near my house in Toronto, so it is a lot easier to get Asian beauty products from there than to travel to Pacific Mall. I also do not buy many products at one time, so I have been collecting these products for a few weeks. However, I do hope these mini reviews help you out a bit when choosing products!

I think I've worn false eyelashes...twice in my life? But these ones were so cute and natural looking that I just had to try them out! I decided to wear them to school and noone even noticed I was wearing falsies. I heard that lashes with the criss-cross pattern, like these and in most Asian brand lashes, are the most natural looking. They accentuate my cat eye and make my eyes look more doll-like without looking fake. I didn't read reviews about the glue that came with the lashes, so I didn't really expect it to be that good for the cheap price. But it stayed on all day and it even comes with a little stick applicator thing that makes putting glue on your lashes super easy! I actually love these, best $4 I've ever spent.

I bought these nose strips hoping they would work better than my Biore nose strips. When I put them on my nose and dampened the strip a bit, it got really sticky. The strip was not as wide as the Biore one, so it did not cover all of my blackheads ): When I took it off, it took out even less gunk than my Biore strips and left black residue all over my nose. Overall, I'm not too impressed. The Biore ones are better, but not that great themselves. Maybe I should try The Face Shop's blackhead peel instead?

This was the cheapest BB cream available at The Face Shop. At $8, I thought it would be a good BB cream for me to try out. I think it's okay. It gives your skin a subtle glow, evens out your skin tone a bit and leaves no streaks. It is also super easy to blend in and has SPF 20. However, it only comes in one shade and I can only imagine it working with fair skin. I usually mix some darker tinted moisturizer in it to darker the shade a bit. It is also very light coverage, so only use it if you have near-perfect skin or don't mind using a bit of concealer.

I got the Etude House Lovely Cookie Blusher in the colour "Peach Parfait". I'll admit it. The adorable packaging is what drew me in. I don't even use the puff but it is just so cute. This blush is matte and a pale pink-peach shade. I think it suits fair skin best as on darker skin it might look chalky and too pale. I think it also best suits girls who want a doll-like look rather than a very natural one. I do like it though, and the colour is buildable. However, I don't think it lasts too long.

I actually love this product. It feels more like a liquid lipstick than a gloss, as it is barely sticky and gel-like in texture. It's called the Artist Finger Gloss and I got my sample in the shade PK102. I find that it lasts for a few hours - not as long as a stain but longer than a lipstick or gloss. This shade is a gorgeous, wearable bright pink and the colour is very buildable.

Here is The Face Shop's Vita C mask sheet in blood orange extract. I got this hoping it would help even out my skin tone or fade any marks on my face a bit. It didn't fade anything, but it did leave my face looking a little glowy afterwards. The mask itself is what I found really cool. It says "gel" on the package, but I expected it to be a cotton mask with gel-like product in it. The mask instead feels gel-like itself, and feels really icy (in a good way) on your face. It did not adjust well to my face however, and I had to keep sliding the mouth piece up on my face. I don't think it's really worth it unless you want to pamper yourself for a night. I think it cost me $3 for one mask.

I wore this nail polish for Easter. Isn't it such a fun colour? There is not a shade name on the bottle, but I got the pale pink polish with tiny pink glitter and bigger pink, purple, blue and white sparkles. I also recall there being mint and white polishes of this as well. You need at least two coats for the colour to show up opaque. By the way, the collection is called Yogurt Nails. They are really cute I think I'm going to buy the other two shades ^^ I bought mine for only $3 a bottle.

Behold a photo of my ridiculously blurry bottle of nail polish! It didn't look so blurry on camera...anyway, it's a mint green-ish colour. It says Bride Collection 01 on it.

And here is the nail polish on my nails. I really need to get better lighting. I heard that The Face Shop nail polishes can be quite streaky, which is somewhat true. But if you coat your nails well enough, one coat can be opaque enough and non-streaky as well. The colour looks somewhat light blue-ish on my nails though. Maybe it's just me?

This is the Tony Moly Appletox Smooth Massage Peeling Cream. This stuff is really cool. First, you scoop some out and put it on your dry face (I first used it on a wet face, and it did not work as well). Then just massage your face with the product for about a minute or two. You should start feeling and seeing small balls forming on your face (this is your dead skin)! I then leave the product on for a bit after massaging, and wash it off. It should leave your face super soft and exfoliated without using harsh scrubs! Mine cost about $12 and it smells really good - like fresh apples.

The thing I love about The Face Shop is that no matter what you buy or at what cost, you get samples. Or at least in the stores near my house. So far I got a ton of skin care samples as well as a lipgloss. I can't really review the skin samples as I only got a few uses out of them, but I think the ones I got were very impressive, especially for oily skin. None of them broke my skin out. The Rice Water Bright cleanser foamed up really well and left my skin clean and hydrated. All of the serums and moisturizers were gel-like and not greasy at all.

Excuse my velociraptor hands. But just HOW cute are these teeny tiny bottles of Chia Seed toner and moisturizer (I think I've said cute like a gazillion times)!? I actually quite like these for my oily skin. The toner actually smells nice and non-alcoholy. Both products have a gel-like texture (like most of the skin care products from The Face Shop I've tried out) and do not make my face greasy.

I also bought this mint green loofah. Why? Because I needed a new loofah! My old one fell apart and was literally one long string of loofah. Which I then had to wrap up into a crappy ball of loofah to be able to use it. I finally caved in and spent the $3 for this one :< Works well for a loofah I guess, but it smelt bad when I first opened it.

Well there you go, everything I bought recently from Korean beauty stores I've been to. Sorry that most of them were from The Face Shop! I can do more detailed reviews on any of the products if you'd like(except the loofah haha). Thanks for reading! (:

OOTD: Land of Snow

Hey guys,
It's already April and here in Canada, there's still snow outside!
Oh well. At least I don't have to wear a puffer coat and snow boots to school everyday now.
So peacoats and heeled boots it is! I wore this outfit to school and thought it was cute so I decided I would post this on here and on Lookbook (:

Here are the details:

Hat: Forever 21
Scarf: Ardene
Coat: Forever 21
Boots: Le Château
Purse: Guess


And here is a great portrayal of my current feelings:

Toronto Fashion Week

This month has been crazy for me. Half my days I spend in class, the other half I spend doing an insane amount of assignments, interviewing, job searching, attending events to write about for school, etc. I also applied to volunteer for Toronto Fashion Week, which happened not too long ago.

For some reason, I was one of the only volunteers who had a shift from Monday to Friday. They were only 4 hour shifts, but plus the ride there and back I lost five hours of my day not doing homework (You know your life is literally school when you regret not doing homework...)!

Anyway, I was for some reason expecting to be dressing models or assisting designers or something cool (I know it's too good to be true) aaaaaaand I ended up standing in one place for hours and saying hi to people. It wasn't the most exciting job, but at least I wasn't doing heavy lifting or picking up glasses like most of the other volunteers.

However, I do not regret it at all! I was in the media lounge, so I got to greet and meet reporters and photographers. I also stood next to Jeanne Beker and Cheryl Hickey (who was absolutely stunning)! Coco Rocha made an appearance as well but of course it wasn't during one of my shifts (cry). I did however, get FREE water bottles! Haha just kidding. I actually did get water, but I got free pizza, skincare products and magazines as well, and everyone was so nice. I made a few friends actually, which I wasn't really expecting. I got to go backstage as well and see the makeup artists work on the models.

I managed to see Joe Fresh on the runway, which was awesome but super crowed. My favourite designers for this Fashion Week were probably Pink Tartan, Stephan Karas, Mackage, Vawk and Matthew Gallagher. I tried to take some pictures at the Joe Fresh show, however my iPhone pictures (and everyone else's iPhone pictures) made the models look like human-shaped light bulbs.

Really shows off the clothing, no?

Have you've ever...

Started a blog, wrote a post, then never used that blog again? Basically a memoir by Natalia (me).

I'm sure many people have done the same thing though haha. I am so bad at focusing on one thing at a time and I have the craziest schedule.

Yet I always find myself writing my latest beauty finds in my phone, taking pictures of my outfits or redecorating my house and then...doing nothing with them. So why not share it on here? If I inspire even one of you, then I will be happy!

I am going to make an honest effort to blog on here without stopping after one post or only updating once a year. New Year's resolution, here I come (even though it's already February!)!!!