I'm gonna make this place our home

"This is home."

Do you ever get that feeling? When you go somewhere, old or new, and it hits you like a tidal wave: you've come home.

I felt that way in London, but since I'm not quite wealthy enough to live there, I've been looking for a place in my hometown. There have been hardly any available flats all summer and autumn, so it's been a very frustrating search. The best ones always got snatched right from under my nose! However, it seems I do have a bit of luck on my side after all, since I just found the perfect flat in the centre of the city. Apparently there were over ten applicants, but the landlord liked me the best. The importance of first impressions, eh?

Fast forward a couple of weeks: everything is in place and I'm sitting on my desk drinking my favourite tea. The balcony door is open, the autumn leaves cast a perfect view of warm red and orange, and I think "yes - I've truly come home."

London haul

There's nothing like a bit of retail theraphy to elevate your mood, eh? Not that I needed much cheering up while in London, but now that I'm experiencing a bit of wanderlust after the trip, it's nice to go over the stuff that I bought. Just staring at all the pretty things makes me almost more giddy than I'd like to admit, so snapping a few photos really was a delight. I suppose this is all a bit vain, but a little bit of vanity never killed anyone if you ask me.

First things first, I bought a pile of clothes, but since my interest mostly lie on cosmetics and knicknacks, I'll only be sharing those for now.

I knew that I wanted to get a few Soap&Glory products, but to my surprise, all the shops were running low on stock. I can't even remember how many Boots I visited only to find out that the Soap&Glory shelves were almost empty. What a bummer!

Still, no worries, because I did find a few treasures elsewhere.

This little duo is probably my favourite of all the things I bought. I needed a new topcoat and I found this Barry M 3in1 base coat, top coat and nail hardener at Superdrug for around £3. I've only used it as a  top coat, but so far I'm really happy with it. I actually prefer this to a lot of other top coats I've used. It certainly beats Essie, Orly and my usual go-to top coat from Seche. It dries fairly quickly and I haven't had any issues with air bubbles as I often do with other products. The brush is a bit narrow for my taste, but all in all I'm very pleased with this.

Now, the product I'm really phsyched about is that orange beauty from Illamasqua. At Selfridges, I navigated straight to the Illamasqua till and instantly clapped my eyes on this. The shade is Marquise from their Shattered Star line (similar to the OPI liquid sand collections) and the colour is to die for! A vivid orange with a luscious amount of gold glitter mixed in, it really draws attention to itself. The colour very visible even in low lighting, but it really shows it's true beauty in the sunlight. I will swatch it someday, but until then you will find good swatches all around the internet.

I also needed a blush, concealer and a few lipsticks. For concealer, I went for the Nars radiant creamy concealer in the shade Vanilla. A cult classic that, in my opinion, deserves all the hype. It was rather pricy at £22 (around 27€), but it does cover my occasional breakouts better than anything I've tried before. And since I have oily skin with dry spots, I need something that doesn't dry out my skin and leave it flaky. This does the trick, it's creamy consistency is just right for my problematic skin. Worth every penny!

Something I'm not so picky about is blusher. I've previously been using a mineral one from Lily Lolo, but I got really frustrated with the powder getting everywhere, so I decided to switch it for a compressed one. Since I've never tried anything from Bobbi Brown before and I was curious (partly because of the sleek packaging), I decided to give this a go. I went for a compressed powder blush in the shade Nectar. The price for this was £19 (~23€), which was quite reasonable for my budget at the time. I've been using this religiously since, it's a nice subtle pink and gives my pale face a healthy, natural glow.

As for the lipsticks, I needed a few nudes and thought I might stock up on them a little. I went for the Mac counter first because I like the feel of them on my lips. They aren't drying and stay on for a decent amount of time without touch-ups. I might do a seperate post on lipsticks soon, so I won't get more into these now. I will tell you that the shades I went for were Lustering and Patisserie in the Lustre line and Peach Blossom in the cremesheen line. The price for each was £15 (~19€).

I also wanted a Shu Uemura lipstick and I picked up one in the shade 941 for £20 (~24). More on that one later as well.

I always keep a travel diary when I go abroad and this time I bought one from the destination. This little owl print notebook was on sale for £3 and I got the stickers from Accessorize for £2 each. I might also use the stickers for some scrapbooking.



And last but definitely not least, books! I recently sold my old Sherlock Holmes and The Hobbit paperbacks and wanted to replace them with hardbacks. I bought the Sherlock Holmes hardback (complete with illustrations!) from the Sherlock Holmes museum on Baker Street. It was £15 and I'm sure I could have gotten it for cheaper on Amazon, but I was feeling impatient so I grabbed it. The rest of the little pile is from Waterstones, the largest bookshop in Europe. 5 floors of books and stationery plus a café on the top floor. I probably spent about an hour there just browzing, but eventually I decided on The Hobbit hardback that I was looking for plus Now & Then by William Corlett and a little book of Oscar Wilde's quotations. I wanted to get the collective works of Oscar Wilde, but I was worried about the weight limitations on my flight back to Finland. Maybe I'll just order it from Amazon someday. I  might do posts about books in the future, but for now I won't get too much into these.

So that's all I have to show this time, but keep an eye on future posts if you wish to see swatches or book reviews.

British at Heart

Long time so see! There was a time when I thought I might give up blogging (after having barely just started), but today, fresh winds are blowing and I think it's time to start again. We'll see how this goes, but for now, let us begin.

This was our address during our trip.

So. I went to London last month. I only stayed for a few days, but as it was my first time in Britain, it was long enough. I'm from a small town in Finland, so needless to say I was quite overwhelmed by the size of everything. The shops, the crowds, the buildings, the level of noise... holy sheep! Nevertheless, I enjoyed every minute and I quite feel like a part of me stayed behind when I jumped on the plane back home - corny as that sounds.

Our schedule was packed, but I managed to do all the things that I was most looking forward to. I saw the Lion King musical, visited the Sherlock Holmes museum, had ice cream in Hyde Park, drank way too much tea, experienced new tastes and did quite a lot of shopping on Oxford Street, Kensington and... well, all over to be honest. Since I also visited a relative in a suburban area, I also got to see a slightly different side of London, far from the city buzz. It was an amazing experience and I can't wait to go again. There's a Sherlock Holmes exhibition in the Museum of London from October 2014 to April 2015, so that might be a perfect time window. Can you tell I'm a bit of a Holmesian?

Anyhow, until the next time, here are some pictures of the trip. I'll also be sharing a little haul in the next post, so if you're interested in cosmetics, books and the like, stay tuned!

Lebanese restaurant

The guestbook at the Sherlock Holmes museum.