Current Favourites

I realized I haven't done a favourites in a while, and there have been so many items that I've been loving lately, so I thought I'd do a little post with mini reviews.

First up, the Zoeva Rose Gold Brush Set. I know, everyone is probably so sick of seeing them on every second beauty blog (I know I am), but they really are so worth the hype. Besides looking gorgeous, they are honestly the best quality brushes I've ever had. I got them as a christmas present and I can finally say, these are in fact better than the Real Techniques brushes. My two absolute favourites from the set is the 102 Silk Finish foundation brush and the 127 Luxe Cheer Cheek blush brush. The foundation brush literally halves the time I need to blend out my foundation. The cheek brush is also a dream to use, it's the perfect size for my face and it picks up product really well. I personally use it for powder blush and bronzer.

Second thing I've been loving have been two minis I picked up from Antipodes: the Divine Face Oil (Avocado & Rosehip) and the Vanilla Pod Hydrating Day Cream. These two together are gorgeous. I had been suffering from dehydrated skin for months and finally found something that, when I put them on, made my skin sigh in relief and go "Ahhhh..". Ever since I got these two, my skin hasn't been dry in the slightest and has been pretty darn clear too. I first apply the oil and then the cream on top. I highly recommend this set to anyone (it's for all skin types, mine is combination/oily) who wants to make their skin sing from joy.

The Mary Lou-Manizer, a blogger classic and rightly so. I had this highlighter on my wish list for years now and finally one of my good friends made this wish come true this winter. How much do I love it? Well, let's just say my boyfriend has caught me singing "You know I'm all about that glow, bout that glow..." ;). I mean, who doesn't want to glow like JLO??

The L'oreal Lumi Magique Concealer has been a staple in my kit ever since November. It's just the ideal highlighting concealer. It's perfect for under the eyes and wherever you want some glow. The finish of it is quite unique because it dries down matte (and therefore doesn't budge ALL day), but still looks glowing and fresh. Will forever keep repurchasing.

And my last two favourites are oldies that I have rediscovered. The Tarte Amazonian Clay Bronzer in  Park Avenue Princess and NYX lipgloss in Tea Rose. For some reason, years ago I thought this bronzer was too orange/dark, but now it's the just right. Basically, I constantly fall in and out of love with certain bronzers and now I'm back to loving this one :P. I also have a goal to hit pan with this bronzer by the end of the year and I'm quite chuffed with the dent I've already made with it. And the NYX lipgloss is one of the prettiest pink shades I own. Looks amazing with some warm peachy cheeks, and golden eyeshadow.

And there you have it, my current favourites! Let me know in the comments what you've been loving lately :). 

Read More

Review: GHD Style - Root Lift Spray

Living abroad in Germany occasionally has its downsides. One of them tends to be me wanting to  repurchase a beloved, trusted product that sadly is only sold in North America. And when times get tough (aka none of my relations or friends back home are visiting anytime soon), I am forced to find alternatives. Such an occasion arose a while back when I found myself with an empty bottle of my holy grail hair product, the Sally Hershberger Supreme Root Lift Spray.

How good of a product is it really, I hear you ask? So good, that it's the reason I started this blog in this first place. Just to tell the whole world how awesome it is... #firstblogpost. Now, moving the nostalgia aside, I realized that I needed to find a substitute for it during my time here in Europe. So I searched far and wide... on the web that is, and finally came across something that sounded like it had full potential of being a dupe. 

And that my friends is the GHD Style Root Lift Spray. Essentially, these were my expectations of the product: it would lift my hairs roots (thus giving me MUCH needed volume), and as a lovely consequence of lifting my hair slightly, increase the time my hair stayed clean/non greasy. Sadly, it did none of that. Made hardly a difference to my hair. It would give it a hint of lift for the first hour and then just fall back down, flat as an ironing board. But that's not even the worst of it. It completely dried out my hair. It became knotty and dry, and thus breaking a whole lot more easily and just made brushing an absolute nightmare. Oh, and when you spray it, the smell is so strong and chemically that you end up having a coughing fit and sounding like a grandpa. Lovely. 

Honestly, I feel a bit stupid for having bought it in the first place when I eventually realized what the second ingredient was. Alcohol Denat. *Face Palms*. I had hoped that it wouldn't be that strong/bad, but it really was. For those of you who are curious,  there is zero alcohol in my holy grail Sally Hershberger spray. Juuuust saying ;). Needless to say, the next time I'm in Canada, I'm stocking up. Sorry GHD, it simply wasn't meant to be. 

If you have any recommendations for a root lifting spray, let me know in the comments! :)

Read More

Review: Yves Rocher - Nutritive Vegetal Repair Cream Mask

I thought I'd get back into the swing of reviews and start off with a brand that I've always been fascinated with: Yves Rocher. Hard to come by in North America, but fairly available in Europe. I have fond memories of my mother using their products when I was younger, their cleansers always smelled aaamazing.

I had been suffering from dry skin when I was browsing the store and therefore my eyes ended up landing on this product. It was labeled as a hydrating mask, the ingredients looked ok, and it was on sale, so I hurriedly placed it in my basket and went on my merry way.

I'll spare you the details and just cut to the chase here: it was a complete flop. Zero effect on my skin. I put it on, left it on for 20 minutes, washed it off, and bam! Same old dry skin. It was as if it was never on my face to begin with!

And I have tried leaving it on for much longer and it still had virtually no effect. My skin did feel softer, but it still felt very parched. To me, a good hydrating mask is one that leaves your skin feeling so quenched that you don't even need to put on a cream afterwards. With the Nutritive Vegetal Repair Cream Mask, I instantly bolted for my moisturizer. Ah yes, the woes of a disappointing product...

But don't worry, this hasn't deterred me from trying out other products from Yves Rocher in the future. I know they have some gems out there. If you have any recommendations yourself, please let me know in the comments! :)

Read More

Recommendation of the Week: "It's Okay, That's Love"

If you're one of those people who are in to "Trash TV" like Keeping up with the Kardashians, the X Factor, The Vampire Diaries, etc, then this recommendation is most likely not for you. If, however, you are one of those people that enjoy a real work of art that makes you think and question things in life, then stick around and read till the end! :)

I know what you're all thinking: isn't this just another typical K-Drama? Hell to the no. This series is nothing like I have ever watched before. And thank god. It's rare to come across something unique and original these days. This show has everything you could ever want: humour (plenty of it in fact!), romance, drama, character building, the overcoming of issues, the relations between humans as a whole, and most importantly - the destigmatization of a topic that has plenty of misconceptions in our society today.

That topic happens to be Mental Illnesses. A very sore topic in many countries, undoubtedly. Thankfully, this show really opens up one's eyes and makes you look at it from a completely different view. 

Plot Summary: Jang Jae-yeol is a writer of bestselling mystery novels and a radio DJ. Playful and a bit arrogant, he also suffers from obsessive–compulsive disorder. Ji Hae-soo is a psychiatrist on her first year of fellowship. Driven and ambitious with her career yet compassionate towards her patients, Hae-soo has a negative attitude towards love and relationships in her personal life. Once Jae-yeol and Hae-soo meet, there is much contention between them caused by their strong personalities and refusal to give in to each other. But slowly their bickering turns into love and they begin to learn how compatible they are. Jae-yeol and Hae-soo attempt to heal each other's deep-seated wounds, but their fledgling relationship takes a blow when they learn that Jae-yeol's mental health issues are more serious than they initially suspected.

A quote from the show that really represents the message is this: "He's not crazy. He's sick". There are tons of more quotes from this show, some really beautiful ones in fact, but I'll let you watch it for yourself rather than list them all. 

If anyone feels like being enlightened and having a good laugh, and cry, then I couldn't recommend this show enough. It truly is an emotional roller coaster. Though I must say this: "It's Okay, That's Love" is very very raw. There's nothing unrealistic about this show. The writing reads off like real life. This series is the opposite of all things Hollywood; nothing is sugar coated, and the acting really portrays that. Meaning, when they cry, they will CRY (snot and wailing and all)- not have some pretty fake tears and a little sob. And it all feels incredibly refreshing.  

I would write more, but I don't want to give anything away. So to conclude: everything about this show is perfect to me - down from the writing, to the actors, to the soundtrack. It's very rare for me to not have a single complaint about a show. It's one of those series that as soon as you have finished it, you just want to instantly re-watch it all over again. And if you are reading this now and you have watched it already, let me know what your thoughts are in the comments!

till next time ;)

Read More

Picturesque

“When the wind blows, let it come, stay, and leave.

When a feeling of longing comes, let it come, stay, and leave.

Pain will come. It will stay and live. It will live then leave.”

I thought I'd get back into the swing of blogging with a short and sweet post. I was going to originally write up a review on something, but then I realized it was already dark and not ideal for photo taking (damn you daylight savings!). Nonetheless, I wanted to post something. Just to confirm that I'm still alive. So here you are. Still alive. See you later then. 

P.S. whoever recognizes this poem/quote is awesome. 

Read More

Learning a New Language: My Experience

I'm shaking things up today on Curious Alisa! I thought I'd write about something quite big that I've been doing for almost a year now: learning a new language!

Now, to quickly give you a backdrop: I am a twenty year old girl from Canada. My first language is English (duh), but I am also fluent in Russian thanks to my parents, which essentially allows me to label myself as "bilingual". And I was totally content having those two languages. I took French at high school, and was pretty darn good at the grammar bits. However, I haven't used any French ever since I graduated High School and therefore hardly remember any of it. It became a passive knowledge, rather than active.

But then for several personal reasons, I ended up moving to Germany last year. And in order for me to be able to study at the local university here, I had to learn German. Don't get me wrong, I didn't exactly start with zero knowledge when I got here. I had taken a couple german courses at my university back home, but it just gave me some basic knowledge. I mean, you can't exactly learn a whole language from just two classes a week, 45 minutes each...

Now you're probably wondering, did I actually want to learn German? Well, my answer is yes and no. I didn't want to seriously learn it, maybe just a phew basic phrases and words. The reason behind that was that I honestly didn't think it was possible to actually learn a whole new language after childhood. After all, the brains of children are like sponges when it comes to languages. And even if it was possible, it would take several years.

Boooy, was I wrong! I started seriously learning the language and taking intensive courses in January, and I went from being an A2 to a B2 in 5 months. That's insane if you think about it. Here's a table that explains exactly what each level stands for. For reference, I have just passed an exam for B2 and am now currently doing a C1 course. I am getting closer to fluency day by day and it's an overwhelming feeling, having succeeded something that I thought was completely undoable. Words simply cannot express my joy and surprise.

So essentially I learned two things: not only is it actually possible to learn a new language, regardless of your age, but it is also possible to learn it quickly! The main key to success is doing it intensively rather than moderately. High School and Uni courses are moderate and barely scrape the surface, whereas 3 hour  lessons per day is intense and leads to incredibly fast progress! Of course, living in the actual country does help a lot because you hear the language all the time. Therefore, immersing yourself as best as you can is definitely an essential.

However, my weakness in the language is ironically talking. This might sound strange, especially since I now live in Germany, but hear me out. Just because you may live in the country where the language is spoken, does not actually mean you have to use it a lot. You hardly talk when you go out, whether it be to a store or something of the sort. All you normally would say is: "hi, yes or no, thank you, bye". Unless you have friends that only speak in the language you are learning, you will essentially never really have an opportunity to practice speaking.

Another reason why talking is a challenge for me is because I'm a perfectionist. I can't stand the idea of making a mistake *cringes at thought*. It sounds silly, but it really does stop and hinder me from saying a sentence sometimes. Talking is naturally a very spontaneous thing, and therefore we don't exactly have the time to "auto-correct" what we say. And that scares me. I'd rather say something 100% perfectly or say nothing at all. Which of course, is totally the wrong approach! You learn by making mistakes, so you have to risk making them. I try to push myself outside my comfort zone and I do see results from it.

This post is getting quite long, so I think I'll save my thoughts on how I find the German language itself for a different post :). But my main message is this: anyone can learn a language, as long as you put the hours into it! :) Let me know if you'd like to see more posts like these in the future. It's become quite a big part of my life and I would love to share it with you all!

Read More

Where are the Layers?

I know I've had a long hiatus, but I can assure you that it is somewhat justified. My reasoning is not your average writer's block. It sadly went much further than that... I essentially got stuck in a rut. Every time I wanted to write something, for example a review, I just thought to myself: what's the point? there are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of the exact same thing already out on the internet. Did the world really need another virtually identical post?

Yes, of course, there are many different aspects to a beauty product that one can look at: does it work well, packaging, pricing, longevity, etc etc. But is that actual depth? Or is there really only one layer to it? Don't get me wrong, I am still utterly obsessed with all things beauty related! I can never just "go" a drugstore and not stop at the makeup aisle and swatch things for 20 minutes. Heck, I went to the store yesterday to just buy detergent and I came out with two new moisturizers (don't judge, we've all been there...). It's just that it's quite difficult to pour your heart and soul into something that is - dare I say it - a bit superficial *waits to receive a smite from the gods of beauty as punishment*. Apologies aside, it is in fact hard to bring your personality into something that can only go so far in terms of meaningfulness.

I guess it only makes sense as to why beauty bloggers always eventually start to branch out into writing lifestyle posts as well. To me, writing is a form of art, in which the author can beautifully portray his or her personal thoughts and emotions. But how many thoughts and emotions can a lipstick really hold?

Essentially, what I'm trying to convey here, is that I'd like my blog to grow and sprout new branches. I'd like my audience to be able to get to know me through my writing. And I know that people are more interested in reading about whether a new palette is worth the hype, rather than something a bit more philosophical like the idea of beauty (which I did write about here), but I am going to try and ignore the obvious difference in page views and push forward regardlessly.

Honestly, I still don't have a single notion of what I'll be writing about in the future. There will still be reviews and things of the sort, but it will no longer be the main content of this blog. It'll just be a feature. I will certainly need time to figure out in which direction I want to go, but I am excited (mixed in with a bit of fear and panicking) to begin this soul-searching journey. I can only hope that you'll stick around for it.

Much love,

- Alisa

Read More