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Curiously Carmen

Urban Decay All Nighter Long-Lasting Setting Spray

August 20, 2016

About two months ago, I posted a picture on Instagram asking what other glasses wearers do when wearing foundation. I normally wear glasses, and I find it so annoying to wear foundation with glasses because the foundation goes on the glasses, which is so gross to me!

Fortunately, I don’t wear foundation everyday so it’s not a struggle I have to deal with daily. Why do I mention this? Well, I recently tried the Urban Decay All Nighter Long-Lasting Setting Spray. Does it help prevent foundation smudge on glasses?
Urban Decay Setting SprayI received this sample size from my friend. Naturally, I was very excited to try it because I am a huge fan of Urban Decay products!

After putting on my foundation, I spray this arms length from my face, with my eyes closed (which protects your eyes from stinging and sets your eye makeup too). Initially, there is a slight alcohol smell that disappears pretty quick. It feels as if I’m spraying water on my face, and I always think that my makeup is coming off before the spray dries.
Urban Decay Setting Spray 2I really like how weightless this feels. Once it dries and the alcohol smell disappears, I always forget I’m wearing it because it’s so comfortable on my skin. It doesn’t feel dry or heavy at all!

I spent a day out shopping and then took a nap. Usually, my makeup is a bit smudged after I wake up (Yes, I know it’s bad to sleep with makeup on but I rarely do it, I just forgot this time!), but I was really surprised that all my makeup remained intact. That was when I remembered I had used this setting spray! Needless to say, I was already quite impressed for my first use.

After a few more uses, I have really come to love this setting spray and it is definitely going to become a staple for special occasions, or when I will be out longer than usual and have no time to touch up my makeup.

The BEST part?! It doesn’t leave ANY foundation smudges on my glasses! I just spray this on, and don’t have to worry about ANY part of my makeup smudging, caking, or fading away.

It is a bit pricey at $38 CAD, which is why I would save this for special occasions only. But I highly recommend trying this!

Received as a present from friend. Opinions are own. 


Filed Under: Beauty, face

Kat Von D Shade + Light Eye Contour Quad

August 17, 2016

After a stressful and busy summer, I am so relieved that everything has finally died down. With two weeks to go, I am determined to make the most out of it by relaxing and catching up on blogging. I’ve nearly exhausted all of my backup drafts!

It’s been very hot in Vancouver this weekend. Well, hot for Vancouver that is… and seeing how my house is not equipped with air conditioning, the boyfriend and I were uncomfortably melting away despite the fan working overtime. It was not a pleasant at all.

So, we decided to go to the mall and enjoy some of that sweet A/C! I spent a bit of time in Sephora and spontaneously decided to treat myself after what I’ve been through this summer, and because I haven’t purchased any high end makeup for awhile.
Kat Von D Eye QuadI’ve been looking for a matte shadow palette for awhile, and this one just spoke to me. I was in love at first swatch. The colours were incredibly pigmented, and felt velvety soft on my skin. I am a HUGE fan of the Kat Von D tattoo liner and I also love the everlasting liquid lipstick line, so naturally, it is time to progress into the KVD eye territory!

There are four different quads available. I bought the one in rust, which features brownish red matte shades – exactly what I was looking for! I’ve been really into matte shades lately, but most of my palettes are more on the shimmery side so I am glad I bought this!
Kat Von D Eye Quad 2The top, light pink is the base. The brown is to define, while the orange one is to contour. Lastly, the white one has the slightest shimmer and is used for highlighting. I’ve never contoured my eyes before, so this should be interesting!

I am in love with the reddish/orange shade. I LOVE how pigmented and smooth it goes on!

While the shades go on extremely pigmented, are easy to work with, and have no fallout, my one complaint would be staying power. Now, keep in mind that I have really oily eyelids and I always have to use primer if I want my shadows to stay the whole day. Without primer, the shadow lasted a mere two hours, which was disappointing! But I can’t entirely blame the shadow because my eyelids can get pretty oily.
s1671353-main-Lhero
Even though I love the colours in the quad, I am considering purchasing the shade & light eye palette instead. There are similar colours in here, and a lot more matte shades I can choose from. I can create a lot more eye looks with this palette as well, I feel like the quads are limited because there are only three shades you can work with. We shall see if I end up replacing it with this!

Picture taken from Sephora.com

As I mentioned earlier, I love the quad. As usual, Kat Von D has WOWed me with their products. I have not tried a KVD product that I haven’t liked yet! The pigmentation and feel of the shadows are incredible, but definitely do require a shadow primer if you have oily lids like I do.

yay-nay-or-meh

Meh…

Disclaimer: Product purchased by me. Opinions are own.


Filed Under: Beauty, eyes, makeup

Shanghai Elan Restaurant

August 14, 2016

Usually, whenever we go out for dinner with relatives, we go to a Chinese restaurant. I don’t blog about these dinners because the food is generally the same and kind of boring to me. However, this time, my aunt suggested we go for Shanghai food!
Shanghai1We went to Shanghai Elan, a restaurant inside Crystal Mall. You can also either enter the restaurant through Crystal Mall or outside along Kingsway. It is located at the end of the Crystal Mall section known as ‘Computer Alley’ – city famous for cell phone & computer repairs!
Shanghai2Chicken w/ spicy sauce ($8.50): Our appetizer chicken came chilled in a spicy peanut chili sauce. It was pretty delicious and had a nice kick to it, meanwhile the sesame and onion garnish topped it off nicely.
Shanghai3Shanghai rice cake w/ meat & veggies: Sorry, couldn’t find the price of this online. The rice cake was chewy and moist. This dish could have had a bit more flavour to it, but it wasn’t bad.
Shanghai4Shanghai fried thick noodle w/ shredded pork and soy sauce ($10.50): Mmm, how I love Shanghai fried thick noodle!

The noodles had a delicious ‘wok hei’ flavour to it. Wok hei refers to the taste that comes from the wok (a huge Chinese frying pan). Despite the wok hei aroma, I found the dish to be underwhelming, and only alright.
Shanghai5Sweet and sour spareribs with vinegar ($14.50): I’m not a fan of spareribs, so I didn’t really like it much. The sauce wasn’t that memorable and I found the meat itself to be very bland.
Shanghai7Hot & sour soup ($10.50): I was very excited to try this as I love hot & sour soup. However, the soup was very bland and wasn’t that spicy. It should have been called a sour soup instead of hot and sour. On the upside, the soup had a generous amount of ingredients inside.
Shanghai8Shanghai style juicy pork bun w/ crab meat ($9.50): This dish was underwhelming as well. Nothing special, it tasted like the frozen ones that you can buy at the grocery market. The inside had a bit of crab meat inside, but the crab meat had a slightly frozen taste and did not taste fresh.
Shanghai10Marinated beef w/ pancake ($6.50): Perhaps the only dish that I didn’t find ‘meh’. This was delicious! The outside ‘pancake’ was thick, but the outside was flaky and crunchy. On the inside, the marinated beef came with cucumber, other veggies, and hoisin sauce. We liked this dish so much that we ended up ordering another.

Overall, Shanghai Elan is a pretty meh restaurant. Nothing too special about it. The service was really slow and not friendly either, but I’m not too surprised about that.

yay-nay-or-meh

Meh..

Thanks for reading,
Carmen

Shanghai Elan Restaurant Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato


Filed Under: chinese, food & drink

Midam Cafe

August 11, 2016

Originally, my friends and I had plans to try G-Men in Richmond, but we could not find parking. We ended up going to Aberdeen Mall to eat instead. You may think that resorting to food court food is pretty atrocious compared to a restaurant, but Aberdeen’s food court is amazing.

Continuing our streak of bad luck that night, we wanted to try a dessert place in Richmond but it was packed. We decided to just go back to Burnaby, as my friend had told us about Midam Cafe many times.

It is a pretty hard place to find, located right under a flight of stairs and tucked into the corner with no visible signage. But it ain’t an Asian restaurant unless it has those features, amirite? 😉
Midam3Green tea float, $6.99: Essentially a green tea ice cream smoothie. Yes, it was as good as it sounded, judging from how Cheese was raving about it. I would have tried it too,  but that’s just asking for death when you are extremely lactose intolerant.
Midam2Rice cake with bean flour & apple sauce: I wanted something sweet that day, which is usual for me because I would take savoury over sweets usually. Sadly, my options were limited seeing that I can’t have dairy, so I settled for the rice cake from the recommendation of the server.

This was a very odd dish, and was not my cup of tea. It wasn’t bad at all, but I was expecting the rice cake to be sweet. Instead, it was very salty and had hints of cinnamon flavour. I also didn’t taste the apple sauce at all. My friends tried it and they thought it was a bit strange too. Maybe we just aren’t used to Korean rice cakes, but it was nice to try something new! I would order this if I was craving something savoury.
Midam1Strawberry sorbet, $4.99: I wanted to order this, but was afraid there was dairy. Luckily, Macaroni ordered this and confirmed that there wasn’t any dairy, so I was able to try it. It was so delicious that I ended up ordering one myself (especially since i was in a sweets mode and my rice cake ended up being surprisingly salty). It reminded me of the strawberry slush at Milk and Sugar. I found it to be a bit chunky and not blended enough, but it was still full of fresh, delicious strawberry flavour.

Oreo milkshake, $4.99: The boyfriend ordered this and fell in love with the flavour instantly. It was one of the BEST milkshakes he’s ever had in his life. Macaroni and Cheese also tried it and confirmed the boyfriend’s thoughts – it was indeed THAT amazing and delicious. To this day, they still talk about how great this oreo milkshake is while I am left imagining how delicious and heavenly this is. Perhaps if I bring my dairy supplements, I can try this out for myself but I find that those supplements do not always work for me.

All in all, we enjoyed our late night visit to Midam and I can see myself coming here again for some late night snacks/drinks. One cool thing to note about Midam is that the place is completely decked out in NBA gear – there is a basketball hoop, jerseys, posters, pretty much a NBA lovers dream in here!

yay-nay-or-mehYay!

Thanks for reading!

-Carmen

Midam Cafe & Bistro Menu, Reviews, Photos, Location and Info - Zomato


Filed Under: dessert, food & drink, korean

TAG: Boyfriend describes my makeup products

August 8, 2016

I am very happy that I have a boyfriend who willingly goes to, and suggests, that we go to Sephora together! When we first started dating a few years ago, he had absolutely NO clue what type of makeup products there were. In fact, I remember him asking me, ‘What is a Sephora?’ – how far he has gotten!

Even though he now knows what ‘a Sephora’ is now and has a decent amount of makeup knowledge, I thought this would be a fun tag to do! I got this idea from Celina over at The Celution, you can see her post here.
tagFor this tag, I chose ten products that he is supposed to describe what the purpose is! Let’s get this post started!
tag1Josie Maran coconut watercolour cheek gelee: “Cheek geleeeeeeh…..? Gelleeeeeeeh? I’m going to say blush for your cheeks.”

Estee Lauder BB creme: “BB… I don’t remember what BB stands for… it’s like a… smooths out lines or something.”
tag2Urban Decay makeup setting spray: “Setting spray… is this like primer? It helps the makeup settle and not come off.”

Estee Lauder cheek/lip ball: “Some kind of lip colouring? Lip liner? I dunno.”
tag3Dolly Wink liquid eyeliner: “Eyeliner. It’s used to line your eyes to make your eyes look bigger.”

Beauty blender: “It’s used to blend your foundation. I don’t know how you use it. Just rub it. Rub it all over your face.”
tag4Stila stay all day 10-1 illuminating beauty balm: “Uhh… bronzer? It gives you that dewy effect. Dewy means shiny looking.”

Estee Edit pore vanishing stick: “Pore vanishing stick? It’s the uh.. pore minimizer. It fills in your pores so that your foundation will not look like it’s full of holes.”
tag5Maybelline mineral powder: “Isn’t this foundation? This is the dry powder, I don’t know. What’s the difference between wet and dry again… uh… the dry foundation sits on the surface more and is for oily skin.”

essence lip liner: “Lip liner. It’s used to define your lips.”

That’s it! Some of his responses really had me cracking up, like the Beauty Blender and Stila illuminating balm! Special thanks to the boyfriend for being a good sport and making this post possible! Perhaps I should do a part two because it was a lot of fun, and I do have a lot more makeup that he could attempt to describe =P

I encourage others to try this post out as well! Be sure to link me if you end up doing it 🙂


Filed Under: eyes, face, lips, makeup

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Hi and welcome to Curiously Carmen! I am Carmen, the girl behind the blog. You can read more about me here!

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