Glamour Days - Spring 2012

YaY! All the girls out there in Hungary are burning in Glamour fever this weekend. Me also! I decided to freshen up my wardrobe with some nice spring items with great discounts of 20% and more. Of course, I could not come home without some skincare products either. There was a huge discount of 40% for a product purchased in Yves Rocher and I was running out both of day and night cream and of my fave eye makeup remover also. So I happily refilled. I shopped from 11 a.m to 3 p.m. went home and took a nap. Basically I can say I shopped until I dropped. Crowded places can be so tiring sometimes. So here is what I bought on Day One from Orsay and Yves Rocher:

 I especially like this light, flowery blouse from Orsay. It will be really nice for both spring and summertime.

And now a close up with the cosmetics section of the shopping tour:

The next day I just went out to the mall that is five minutes from my home to check out a DM (drugstore) because I really wanted the discounted BB cream. I also wanted to check in to Charles Vögelle because they have such good quality clothes. For the summer I was needing some basic color tops black, white, of a good material and I thought this was the place to get them. So I plunged into the second day of shopping without really wanting to shop too much, and this was the result:

I found the tanktops I needed and in addition to that a beautiful dress with butterflies and a nice belt. I might wear the dress on one of my friend's wedding. Just need to spice it up with some nice shoes and a blazer I guess. The shoes...well yes... I was wanting to buy them for a longer time already but they were too expensive. Now I waited for them to be discounted and they got a discount of 40% so I went ahead and bought them. I think they will be great for summer with both pants and skirts in the office. Because of the air conditioning my feet would freeze in sandals or other summery shoes, but with these it will be optimal.

And finally I got the discounted BB cream also, because yesterday the drugstore I went to ran out and there was no more to restock. Today in this other mall I bought one of the last two that there were still in light. Medium is too dark for my skin-tone. I am pretty curious about trying it out. Will let you know how it works in a future post. So now I am all stocked up with nice things and waiting for the good spring and summer times. Feel free to share in a comment what things you got on the Glamour Days or any other spring discounts.

Spring Aikido Training Camp

Each season we have a training camp. In March we just had the Spring training camp and it was great. We trained a lot, five hours a day for the whole weekend, but we also had a lot of fun. We started off with variations of techniques from katadori menuchi and yokomenuchi. We practiced shihonage, kokyunage, kote gaeshi, ude garami, tenichinage and many other techniques. We freshened up some of the jo katas also, which I have the tendency of always messing up because I don't focus enough. There was a kyu exam at the end of the training camp, as always. I did not take any exam this time as I was not ready, yet. I know I should train harder, but I will eventually get to the next kyu level. Probably not in summer, but maybe after the fall training camp. Who knows... During the exam I was uke for the 6th kyu exam participants and the 4th kyu also. They all did very well. After having piled the tatamis up and then back down to the storage, we celebrated by going out to have a pizza. Pizza can taste so good after a weekend of aikido training! ^.^y 

Nails, Nails, Nails! Looking for the Good Times!

I have been discussing with a friend today about the advantages and disadvantages of having gel nails. I have had gel nails for a couple of times, but it is not necessarily the optimal way to decorate your nails. It lasts long, that is for sure, it does last even aikido training (see my review on gel nails endurance here). However it is quite difficult to remove them, you can see my tutorial for removal. In addition your nails cannot really breathe if a coat of gel nail polish is covering them for a week or even longer. You also need a lot of tools to make it work and special products like nail primers, brushes, UV lamp and so on. Here is a picture of some of the things you need to get in order to prepare some home made gel nails.

Nowadays however I prefer normal nail polished and I am also trying hard to actually maintain my nails. You can paint them and decorate them, but if you don't give your nails the proper attention and don't take care of them as you should, you will always have chopped and frail nails. I am also trying to take care of my nails by using hand and nail creams, taking vitamins (I started my spring multivitamin magnesium complex treatment this week), pushing back cuticles and so on.  I have also seen a reasonably good nail care collection on this website. I like to give attention to maintaining my nails because I believe in the widespread motto that beauty and health are strongly connected. So you cannot have beautiful nails unless they are healthy and properly cared for.

I am also looking forward to try out the new nail polish I got from the swap with Sakura. The video of my opening the swap package is coming soon! Can't wait to post it. And the pictures and reviews of the products Saku has sent me also! Hope to see the stuff I send her reviewed on her blog pretty soon!