First of all I just have to say that I really appreciate all your comments, it makes me so incredibly happy!! Thank you!! :)
I´m going to help my mummy with the cooking today so it won´t be much blogging from me today. I hope you´ll all have a wonderful Christmas and that you really enjoy this day.. I´m going to eat as much as I can and then just collapse on the sofa!! :D (yes I know that not all of you celebrate Christmas today, but we do ;) )
Red provacative lips are as glamorous and beautiful as they were over 50 years ago and it´s the perfect accessory for the Christmas season. There are millions of gorgeous and beautiful lipsticks out there, but to apply them properly is not as easy as it looks. Do you know how to apply lipstick properly?
This is how I did it for my Tom Ford look:
You´ll need:
I like to use Lush Mint Julips Lip Scrub (A tingly, minty, chocolatey, sugary scrub to exfoliate and moisturise neglected lips ), Elisabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream ( A product that soothes, restores, calms and helps relieve chapped, cracked, dry skin/lips ), Christian Dior lipliner in 988 Mysterious Plum, Sigma SS 316 ( small lip brush ), Sigma SS 252 ( eyeshadow brush, but works just as fine as a lipbrush ) and Tom Ford lipstick in the gorgeous Black Orchid.
1. Scrub your lips gently with the scrub and a few drops of water in small circular motions:
- If I don´t want my lips to be too dark I use the lipliner only on the lipline and make sure that the lines are even.
- With a light hand the color will show lighter, and with a firmer hand the color will get darker as demonsrated underneath. Don´t worry if it doesn´t look even at this point as long as the outer lines are fine.
- Do not apply the lipstick straight to your lips as this will not give you as professional and clean a result as a brush will. Move the brush vertically along the lines of your lips to avoid build ups in the lines, this gives a more even result. The small brush is great for the corners, and the big brush is great for the middle part of the lips.
- To avoid getting lipstick on your teeth, you can put your index finger in your mouth and drag it out, this will catch up any lipstick that would have made a stain on your teeth.
The sweetest and most adorable mum in the world just came by to drop off some christmas cookies for me. How amazingly kind and sweet is that? They are my favourite kind too.. I think they are called almond sticks or something, they really are delicious! :)
Look how prettily she has done them, pure christmas spirit:
Now I´m off to buy the last outstanding christmas presents! :D How have you done so far? Have you worked your way down to the bottom of your Christmas list?
I´m so happy!! I saw this in a magazine and fell completely in love, and I got it as a christmas gift from the sweetest couple that we´re also spending new years eve with in London. When I saw the YSL bag I knew exactly what it was and I was so happy. We celebrated christmas together in the “Bar Americain”, the hotel bar of Hotel de Paris in Monaco on the Casino Square with the most amazing wine.
It is the latest Belle de Jour Metallic Tweed Clutch by Yves Saint Laurent!! It is made in a very elegant design and I think it´s the perfect chic little thing to lift any little black dress. The perfect size as well!
I would describe it as a glamorous and beautiful shimmering black and gray tweed textile flap clutch with a big designer logo monogrammed on the facade as the only external decoration. It has traditional black leather trimming and black leather interior. The satin lining is also black with one smart back wall slot pocket.
I think it is superbly perfect for an evening party and will be perfect with one of my new Herve Leger dresses from the 2010 fall collection that I still haven´t had the chance to wear yet. This just might be my outfit for new years eve ;) The shoes are the gorgeous Tribtoo from YSL that I unfortunately don´t own..yet. I want them in both black and beige and I´m hoping to God that they´ll be on sale when we get to London.
…I´ll tell you more tomorrow ;)
Have you ever seen anything so beautiful? Oh my.. I never thought anything makeup/perfume could make me feel so sophisticated, grown up and glamorous. How is that even possible? Do you want to know the best part about it? I didn´t even pick it out myself. It was my amazingly kind and sweet James that got it for me for my christmas calendar. I´m so moved.. I´ve always thought that I had to stick to fresh and light flower perfumes, but this is amazing on me even though it is a bit on the heavier side. I would say that it is an evening perfume that is best worn for glamorous occasions, but I know that it´s worn for daytime as well. In fact, if I´m not mistaken, British beauty blogger Laura aka Lollipop26 loves this perfume! (Where is she btw??:( )
Set includes a solid Black Orchid perfume, a deep plum lipstick and his first nailpolish, a deep plum.
We are moving into a new and bigger apartment in Monaco in march and I´m so lucky and fortunate that I get to not only have my very own dressing room but I get to design it as well. There are no words that can describe how excited I am about this. Like many other girls, this is something I have been fantasizing about ever since I was a young girl and saw Alicia Silverstone in her dressing room in Clueless. This is in other words important to me and I want it to be the most insane, jaw-dropping, gorgeous dressing room that I can fill with equally insane shoes, handbags, dresses, accessories, etc. ever. I want to store my makeup collection there as well and maybe get a proper mirror with lots of lights too.
Here are some pictures I found on google for inspiration:
The most amazing and jaw-dropping dressing room I´ve ever seen is the one that Mariah Carey has..
My dressing room won’t be nearly as big as this but then again I would never be able to fill it up anyway. Who owns this many shoes, it’s just insane!? Do you have a walk in closet/ dressing room? Which of the pictures above are your favorites?
I´m sure that some of you are going out tonight and over the following weekends, and at Christmas time clothes and makeup are especially important. Please, remember that less is more! ;)
I´m back in freezing cold Norway and it only took my foot first landing in the snow to remind me why why I´m not living here anymore. It´s so cold. That being said I must also say that its a very beautiful country, especially when the snow is so innocently white and the sky is is a big flowerbomb of pink, yellow, blue and green, not to mention the beauty as the sky reflects on the sea. Aw.. I´m happy to be back! My apartment is right by the sea with a beautiful view and I just can´t help but stare out. It really is true what they say, Norway is an exotic and beautiful country and it´s easy to forget your surroundings when it´s minus too many degrees and your face is too cold to move anymore but you have still have 5 christmas presents to find. I say…..
The last couple of months have been stressful. It´s good to be back with family and friends and relax again. Come to think of it there has been a lot of traveling lately. In november alone I travelled Monaco-London-Dubai-London-Paris-Sandefjord-Monaco. Then just as we finished at home in Monaco we had to head off to London the next day. I´ve started to wake up a bit confused in the morning not knowing where I am. James is used to all of this travelling, but I´m still just a girl from Sandefjord. Just a girl that has tried to be calm and has had some cupcakes… but I´m back now and I´m going to do my best to update the blog with lots of interesting things again over the following days. Thank you for being here :)
One day I will bake beauties like these, in the meantime I go to the food court at Harrods.
Do you ever bake cupcakes? Christmas cookies?
I came home to Monaco really late last night because our flight from London was delayed. We even had to sit and wait for 2 hours on the plane before we could take off. Unfortunetely I was too tired to write this post when I came home yesterday. So here it goes…
Questions about James and me
1. How did you and you boyfriend meet?
I lived in Nice for a year back in 2007 with a friend of mine from Norway. I decided to move back home and travel around the world and do that kind of thing before my studies. She stayed in Nice because she had a boyfriend and was happy there. I travelled through South America and Asia and was going to start my studies last august and had just enough money to have one more vacation before a very hectic working summer so naturally I chose to see her. She´d moved from Nice to Monaco in the meantime and I came when the F1 was in town which meant a lot of parties and a lot of people from around the world which I love! When I first got to her place a couple of friends of hers came over for a drink, and one of them was James and that´s how me met. I´m not telling you anymore than that ;)
2. What does James do/work with?
James does a lot of different things and he is very good at what he does. It´s not my place to say anything more than that.
3. Where is James from?
James is from London :)
4. Why do you live in Monaco?
Why? What do you mean? Why not? ;) It´s a sunny and very nice place to live and james´family has been here on and off for over 50 years so it´s kind of like a second home for him!
Questions about me
1. You are travelling a lot these days, but what do you do when you´re “home” in Monaco? :)
Today I was exhausted so I slept way too much, but it was raining anyway so I dont feel I missed much. Normally I spend a lot of time working on the blog, see some friends for a coffee now and then, meet up for lunch with James, try to do some exercise and when evening comes we normally smarten up and meet up with friends in restaurants to have dinner and a drink. If we feel like it, we somtimes go out for drinks after dinner, but this tends to happen more on the weekend than during weekdays. In the summertime I normally spend my days on the beach though ;)
2. If you had to do an everyday makeup using only 5 products, which would you use?
That´s easy! My everyday makeup doesn´t contain more than 5-6 products anyway unless I´m using eyeshadows because then it´s easily more products:) These days I´m using Tikei Mineral Foundation in w1, Mac Melba blush, MUS Cover all mix for red spots and acne scars and under eye area, MAC Coquette eyeshadow to fill in my eyebrows and then I finish off with mascara. (Since mineral foundation actually can be used as a concealer I might sometimes have a eyeliner or a nude colored eyeshadow instead of the MUS).
3. What do you want more than anything for Christmas? (world peace is not an option ;) )
Shoot, that was exactly what I wanted to say!! ;) To be honest there is nothing more I could wish for, I am very happy and feel like I´m the luckiest girl in the world. I have gotten so many early christmas gifts from James already that only 1% of it would be enough. We are not spending christmas eve together which is a little bit sad, so maybe my biggest wish is to have him knock on the door as Santa Claus :) I doubt it though, he is celebrating his Christmas with his father in L.A, but luckily we get to see each other in London for New Years!
4. What do you do in your spare time?
I feel I have kind of covered this with the first question. It´s basically the same when I´m in London with James except I go shopping instead of having coffees and exercise. I´m bad at that.. I should do more exercise and keep my body healthy, that is definitely part of my plan for 2011.
5. Do you work/study?
I had a job in a perfume/makeup shop before I moved here and as mentioned was planning to start my studies in august. It is much more work having a blog that one might think. It´s more than writing a post and taking some pictures. The most difficult part is to edit the pictures to get the real colors to show and all the work with html codes, css codes and functions which make up the layout and design of the blog. I´m also writing in both norwegian and english which is a good thing for me to do before I start my studies in english but which takes double the time.
6. How is it to live in Monaco?
Monaco is a great place when it comes to having lazy days on the beach from may untill september and I have to admit that the parting isn´t too bad either. In fact in my opinion it´s the nicest place to be during the summer. It´s a relatively short trip home to my family in Norway as well. In the winter time however there isn´t as much things to do and there are a lot fewer people around. Monaco is a very small place which means that you know most people after a short period of time. I feel very lucky that I can come with James on his business travels to see and do different things:)
7. What are your plans for the future?
I never really make too many plans because you never know what can happen which my life is a clear example of. I like to float wherever life wants to take me and take a chance on the opportunities that come my way. The only thing I´m actively planning is to study so that I have something for myself. Strangely, education tends to not come floating towards you…
8. Do you wear makeup everyday?
I don´t wear makeup if I´m only at home or on the beach, but I prefer having makeup for other things. I don´t wear very much makeup for the everyday but I like my skin and eyebrows to look as nice as possible. On the weekends I like to experiment a little bit more. Makeup is art for me and I like to try new things.
9. What kind of education do you have?
I graduated from secondary school. In Norway you have to specialise at secondary school and I elected to study Marketing, Law and International commerce. I am beginning University studies in 2011.
10. Where in Norway are you from, how did you grow up and how often are you in Norway?
Actually I was born in Sweden with a swedish father and a norwegian mother. I lived in Stenungsund right outside of Gothenburg untill I was 6-7 years. When my parents split, we moved back to her home town of Sandefjord in Norway and I´ve stayed there since (except for my travels, the year in Nice and now here). I still have my apartment in Sandefjord which I very much love and which I try to come back to once a month.
11. What is you dream job?
I have no idea to be honest.. That is why I have held off with my education so that I could be 100% sure I took the right course. There are a lot of things that I would like to do but nothing that I think would captivate me for the rest of my life. If I could choose anything I would have to say that something involving my passion, make up, would be my dream although I recognise it is a little unrealistic. The chance to be responsible for the make up section of a fashion magazine or to launch my own makeup brand would be my dream job.
12. What languages do you speak?
I speak norwegian, swedish, english and a little tiny bit of spanish and french (that means that I understand a lot more than I speak). In that order.
13. What is your favorit destination/holiday place?
That is a very difficult question because there are so many places I love and it depends on what kind of holiday you are looking for. I love Thailand just because I´ve experienced so much there and travelled around there for a long time and returned year after year. I know Thailand! Bali, Indonesia, is also a big favorite of mine with incredible beaches and even more smiling faces and even cheaper than Thailand. Buenos Aires, Argentina, is the best place I´ve been for shopping in a warm place and at the same time it is a very charming city. If it is a shopping trip in a european big city you´re looking for then I must say that London is the place to go. I love London! If it´s a romantic weekend you´re looking for then Rome is the best place to go, it´s a beautiful place that I really hope we´ll go back to! Now I´m sure there are great places in the US as well, it´s just that I have never been myself so I can´t really recommend any places as my favorite.
It was difficult to choose one good piece of advice from only one reader because there were so many of you that gave great tips so I let James pick one out of a hat:)
…And the winner of a super nice Inglot Face and Body bronzer in 94 is…..
-Congratulations and merry Christmas!! :)
