Project chio-ier, skin edition/nose update

My post titles are getting better and better, I think you'll agree.

So I started an updated skincare regime on October 3rd (last Wednesday).  My number one goal is glowing, clear, even-toned skin.  My skin is pale and prone to freckles, but not the cute defined dot type of freckles - unfortunately I get the blotchy, mottled sort that just make my skin look blemished.  I'm also seeing a few breakouts on my chin but I think that's due to always holding my jaw because of wisdom teeth pain, so hopefully that will clear up after my operation!  Finally, now that I'm in my late 20s (ugh) I'm interested in early intervention for fine lines, wrinkles and other general age-related signs.  Meet the team!

Morning crew, L-R: Bioderma Solution Micellaire, philosophy turbo booster c powder, L'Oreal Youth Code Luminosity serum, Neutrogena Ageless Intensives Deep Wrinkle Moisture with SPF 15+

Evening regime, L-R: Clarisonic, Neutrogena Extra Gentle Cleanser, philosophy miracle worker pads, miracle worker serum, Hada Labo Arbutin Whitening Lotion, miracle worker moisturiser.

This regime, particularly the evening, has a heavy focus on retinoids.  Retinoids are great for addressing all of my concerns - they're the only product approved by the FDA to reverse wrinkles, smooth the skin and even out pigmentation.  They also do well at treating blemishes.  I bought the philosophy miracle worker miraculous anti-aging trial-sized kit (try saying that ten times fast) from Adore Beauty.  I guess this is a mini-review!  It comes with retinoid treatment pads, serum and moisturizer.  There are 15 pads in the kit but they are quite big and I am quite stingy, so I cut them all in half before adding the magical elixir to them.

I also bought the philosophy turbo booster c powder while I was at it to add to my morning routine.  Vitamin C is a potent antioxidant so it's good for resisting sun damage, and it also stimulates collagen production.  This particular product is unique as it's a powder that you mix into water or a serum of your choosing.  This is good because Vitamin C is more stable in powder form than aqueous, so making it up fresh daily means that it's more potent.  (This sounds like an infomercial -_-  I wish I was being paid but I guarantee that the good people at philosophy wouldn't know me from a bar of soap.  I am a biochemist, which is where the Urge To Explain Things is coming from.)

So, my routines.  First thing when I wake up, I wipe my face and neck with a cotton pad soaked in Bioderma water.  I then mix half a scoop of turbo booster powder into a squirt of Youth Code, and massage that in.  Once it's sunk in, it gets locked down with an application of Ageless Intensives.  I've been using this product for a while and it's great but I wish it had higher SPF :(

In the evening, I take off my makeup with Bioderma (plus Neutrogena Oil-Free eye makeup remover if I'm wearing waterproof eye make).  I then use my Clarisonic with Neutrogena cleanser, rinsing with tepid water at the end.  After that, I wipe my face and neck (excluding eyes and lips) with miracle worker pads.  Once that's sunk in, I use one pump of miracle worker serum.  Next I apply the Hada Labo whitening toner, patting it in gently.  I then seal in all the goodness with miracle worker moisturizer, and apply eye cream (I'm bouncing between several at the moment because I have a scaly inflammation due to allergies, so I haven't pictured any above.  The one I plan to use regularly after the allergies clear up is also from the Neutrogena Ageless Intensives Deep Wrinkle blah blah line because it has retinol and hyaluronic acid, which makes me happy.)  The miracle worker moisturiser tingled a teeny bit the first couple of uses but not anymore.  (I say "tingled" because it was milder than what you might describe as stinging.  Some people are sensitive to retinols, so please ease into them by only using them every few days when you are first starting out!)

It's been a week and my skin definitely feels springier and smoother.  I also think it is a bit brighter though it's not super obvious in photos yet.  Photos for your perusal:

Left is last week, right is just now.  Curse my bathroom's lighting/my lack of decent camera/my hereditary dark dark undereye circles!  I also have just realised that my eyebrows are quite hideous.  But anyway yes I think there is less uneven pigmentation now.  I'll take another shot in a few more weeks' time to compare further.  Right now I'm really happy with how it's looking, anyways.

I am a little bit antsy about having so many no-make photos on my blog >_<

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I also had a follow-up treatment today for my IPL on my nose that I blogged about last month.  The therapist was super excited at how un-red my nose is now.  I didn't realise there was such a difference until she showed my my before photos, but boy was she right!  So yes I very much recommend the treatment for anyone who has a rosier nose (or any area I guess) than they would like.  She re-treated my one stubborn broken capillary on my nose, which is now almost invisible.  Woohoo!

I also had her treat a few spots on my chest  - I dunno what to call them, they look like little clusters of broken capillaries that are raised flat patches - which worked like CRAZY.  They are all black dots now (gross) that will fall off in 5-10 days and be gone forever after that!  One of them looks a bit yucky right now though because it was in a blood-vessel rich area so some of the vessels around it got a little bit treated - looks like a bruise.  The surrounding vessels are still quite pink though so I am confident that there has been no damage done to them.

I might go back for treatments on other areas in future - we'll see!  Please check Skin Resus in Floreat out if you are interested in having this done, they are so nice and very professional (and very reassuring when you wimp out about how you think it will be painful, haha.)

Marshmallows

Ant is helping me make a blog banner today.  I've decided to embrace the lame act cute-ness of my blog title and just go with it, seeing as how I can't think of anything else.  I did throw it open on Twitter, and my brother-in-law suggested poshyhoshi, which... ehhhh, sorry Trav.  Anyway, the marshmallow thing is actually me misquoting Amelie.  One line refers to her as "mon petit Amelie" and another as "Amelie-melo", and somehow my brain has mashed it into "petit-melo", so there we are.  The marshmallow stays.

Here is a Pusheen cartoon to prove the usefulness of marshmallows.

Fin.

UPDATE:  Another Pusheen marshmallow!

Lazy weekend

Things have been *crazy* around these parts for quite a while now, so it was nice to take some time over the weekend to slow down a little bit.  Here's what I did:

• Breakfast on Saturday at cantina 663, my favourite breakfast spot in Perth, which coincidentally is happily walking distance from my house.  I had a strawberry and rhubarb salad with yoghurt and oat crunch, which was light and delicious.  So delicious, in fact, that my phone ate the photos, so you'll just have to use your imagination.
• Tidied up the bedroom and finished laying our new rug.  

Like the bedside dressers?  They're IKEA Rast dressers that I painted myself to surprise Ant one weekend when he was away.  I'm still sort of ridiculously proud of them.  It was *hard work* cutting out the stencils for the gold bits, lemma tell ya.

• Also changed around the interior fittings in my half of the wardrobe.  

Now I have a place for my shoes!  (Heels are not visible as they are stored on the floor of the wardrobe.)  If I could change two things about my house, it would be 1) sound insulation between us and our downstairs neighbour, and 2) more wardrobe space :(  We installed this wardrobe when we bought the house and it's as big as it can be, but... still pretty small, unfortunately.  My dream for the next house is a walk-in.

• Had my hair done.  

I wanted to go all-over lighter with a lilac undertone, so I booked for that on the phone, but unfortunately the apprentice that took my call didn't allocate enough time so I had to settle for highlights and a root touchup.  I'm pleased with how it turned out, but next time I will make sure I speak to my stylist on the phone.  Anyway here's how it looks right now:

• Used some MilkyFoot exfoliating pads.  

You've probably seen them around the blogosphere before, they're the plastic socks with lactic acid inside that cause your feet to shed all their dead skin in a dramatic/disgusting/awesome manner.  I've used these several times in the past and they give me a rash on the tops of my foot (ie where there's no dead skin to treat), so this time I tried to be crafty and slathered the tops of my feet with Vaseline first.  Didn't work; I look like I have crazy sunburn on my feet and it itches like mad :(  Does anybody have any suggestions...?  Anyway it's a temporary discomfort; should be fine by tonight.

• Went to mum and dad's place and played with their bunny.  

This is Trogdor the Bunninator.  He's very demanding when it comes to cuddles!  He nips at your leg if he thinks you're not paying him enough attention.  It's quite relaxing to snuggle a bunny for a few hours :)

So that was my weekend!  Now back to work for a week until Wisdom Tooth D-day *ominous rumble*  Hope you all had a nice weekend!

Bird Boutique!

So last week I woke up and grabbed my phone to check my email (this is what I always do first thing in the morning, addict much?) and amongst everything was this:

And I was like "ha ha spam, nice try, imitating a company I follow, I didn't enter any competition," and I thought no more of it and got up to have breakfast.  And then over breakfast I checked Facebook and I saw this:

So apparently the crew at Bird selected one of their Facebook followers at random for a voucher.  How nice is that??  After I got over my "le wha?" reaction, I headed over to their website to choose my goodies, and settled on these lovelies that arrived today!

Repetto BBs in black lambskin!  They are *so* soft - the word "buttery" gets thrown around a lot but it certainly applies here - and they are a dream to wear.  And look at the sweet handwritten note they enclosed!  They're right, I absolutely will wear them a ton :)

Thanks so much Bird!  I was having a rotten time last week and you improved things no end!  :D

Please head over to their website and check them out!

Italy!

Very very late post here about the trip that Ant and I took to Italy in July.  Ant's dad was born near Vicenza, which is quite close to Venice, and he's keen to see a fellowship of our church get started there.  Consequently he organized a 2-week outreach to see if he could generate some interest for the idea among his fellow Vicentini.  We went over to help him out, along with a few other Italian-speaking members of our church.

The difference in photo quality here is due to them being partly Ant's photos taken with a good camera but mostly my Instagram shots -_-

View of the Swiss (probably) Alps flying from Amsterdam to Venice.  Amsterdam airport is awesome!  Definitely the nicest European airport I have experienced so far.  Nice food, decent shopping, calming sort of atmosphere.

Actually I got really sick on the long flight from KL to Amsterdam - I took some antihistamines to help me sleep, which totally worked, but I woke up about 5 hours later sweating like crazy even though it was freezing cold in the cabin, so I got up to try to get to the bathroom to splash some water on my face or something, but I blacked out and slumped up against the wall in a corner.  It was dark and nobody even noticed :(  (Apparently I faint in very subtle ways haha.)  When I came to I still couldn't see anything which was quite scary, and I couldn't feel my hands.  I put my head down for a while and eventually everything went back to normal.  But yeah pretty freaky.  No antihistamines for me again any time soon.

Digression over!

Lots of gelato was eaten.  Vicenza is quite well known for its excellent gelato so we made the most of it.  Here's a selection:

#1.  First day, pistachio on the left and mascarpone with walnuts on the right.  This is from Tutto Gelato, which was really good and I highly recommend.

#2.  Cassata (Sicilian dessert) on the left, rockmelon on the right.  Man it is a good thing I feel kind of queasy today, otherwise I would be very tempted to break my diet right now.

#3.  Walnut on top, fior di latte (milk, basically) on the bottom.  I never liked fior di latte before this trip and now it's among my favourites.

#4.  Strawberries and cream on top, pistacchio on bottom.  This was from a pretty posh place, Pretto, in Piazza delle Erbe that looks more like a pharmacy than a gelateria.  It was about twice as expensive as any other place we went to and was definitely worth it.

#5.  Another one from the same place - milk and honey on top, strawberry on the bottom.  Strawberries and cream was better.

#6.  Pistacchio and hazelnut from Suso in Venice.

#7.  Chocolate and mint/white chocolate from Pretto again.  The chocolate was intenso!

#8.  Pistacchio (yes again) and fig.  I forget where this one is from.

OK enough gelato.  (I did manage to eat like 2 per day, but sugar shame caused me not to document all of them.)  Let's cleanse the palate with a shot of one of the piazzas in Vicenza, Piazza dei Signori.

Vicenza is a seriously beautiful town.  Its main town planner was the architect Palladio, and there are loads of his buildings scattered around the place.  It's also a relatively wealthy town - lots of designer bags and shoes to be seen.  One thing I noticed is that pretty flat sandals or wedges are mandatory summer attire for all Vicentini women.  Closed toes?  No!  Heels?  No!  Lack of embellishment?  NO!  I dunno where they all buy them from though; didn't see much variety in the shops in town, weirdly enough.

This is inside the Teatro Olimpico, one of Palladio's most famous buildings.  This is actually the backdrop of the stage.  It's a clever optical illusion that makes it look like the set extends waaaaay back.

Vicentini are known as "mangia gatti" ("magnagati" in local dialect), which means cat-eaters o_O  Apparently there was a rumour during the war that times were tough for people, and... somewhat tougher for cats as a result.  Whether or not it's true is open for debate but the locals have embraced the nickname.  This is a poster for a play being performed in dialect.  I don't understand dialect very well at all, but I have at least learned to identify the fairly distinctive regional accent.

One thing that really surprised me about Italy the first time we visited is how much the place lives up to all the cliches that you expect from it.  Look, a row of Vespas.  Of course.

Posting this picture because my legs look long and skinny *^^*  *coughdamnvaincough*

And now we interrupt this blog entry for a photo of me posing like a 60s film star or something.  New digression time!  This photo was taken 4 days after we arrived and already my clothes were crazy tight because all of us were retaining water like nobody's business.  Seriously it was insane.  I had brought some compression thigh-high sleep socks to wear on the plane, but didn't end up using them because they were sort of loose-ish and not compressing well.  Tried to put them on the day this shot was taken and could barely get them over my ankles -_-;;  Everyone was having the same issues which made me feel a bit better at least.

And here's Ant in his super Italian outfit.  Ant has been a snappy dresser for quite a few years but really took it to the next level on this trip with his coloured pants and fedora.  There he is eating breakfast at our favourite cafe (can't remember the name exactly but something like Cafe Due Collone or something).  Time for breakfast shots!

Nutella-stuffed pastry and cappuccino.  Italian cappuccini have no chocolate powder on top.  Consider yourself schooled, yo.

Two crema-filled bombolone and two cappuccini.  Ant and I usually order the same breakfast as each other haha.

The two columns referenced by our breakfast spot.  This is the main piazza in Vicenza and as far as piazze go, it's pretty huge.

This is the view from the window of Ant's Nonna's house, where we stayed.  She lives in a town called Chiuppano, which is about 20 minutes from Vicenza, nested at the very base of the Dolomites (which themselves are a subsection of the Alps).

We took a day trip to Venice.  I'm always amazed at how charming that city is.  It's so utterly unique, like a living fossil.

Gratuitous Venice posing shot.  Even the gondolier is posing!  Ha.

Also went to Verona for an afternoon.  Verona is seriously lovely and definitely worth a detour if you're in the area.

Verona again.  Streets paved with marble!  Feels very refined.

Photo taken at the top of Monte Baldo, which overlooks Lake Garda.  It's a bit of a hassle to get up there but the view is 100% worth the effort.

Here's some of the crew posing at Limone, a town by Lake Garda.  I miss these guys so much, especially the girls who we drove around places :(  Hello Priscilla, Candice and Rachel! :D

This is our car!!  I was so excited to drive a Fiat 500 around Italy :D  It was really great for city driving.  Petrol was mad expensive though :(  like 1.8 euro per litre.  Ouch.

Another shot of Limone.  Such a perfect holiday town.

Please enjoy the artiness of this photo and ignore the sunburn lines on my arms and my overall chubbiness.

The outreach itself went really quite well; we ended up baptizing 5 people.  Almost all of them were refugees from various parts of Africa though, so I'm not sure if they plan to stay in the area.  Anyway we'll see what happens; if it's meant to be the Lord will bless it.

Finishing off with a couple more food photos:

My favourite food discovery of this trip - bigoli co' l'arna.  It's thick spaghetti with a duck sauce and it is AMAHHHHZING.  It's a local specialty so if you want it, you'll have to go to Vicenza.

And finally, tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella for lunch, nom nom nom.  If you haven't tried this, you must you must.  It's only worth doing with proper buffalo mozzarella and good in-season tomatoes, though.

That concludes this belated trip (food) roundup.  Thank you if you made it all the way! :)