Make-up Counter Women

Can you trust them?

Rach and I happened to be in town the other day, I wanted some eyeliner, in brown, that was my goal for the day! We wandered through Debenhams and into the "beauty hall" and started browsing. I squeeed over the new Benefit counter (I have an obsession, what can I say!) and then stopped by Urban Decay. They had some awesome eyeshadow palettes with some really bold, striking colours in them, and the counter woman offered to do my eyes for me, so I could see how they looked on my skin.

Bonus! I said yes of course, well, why not. I tried out Fishnet and Ransom, two brilliantly pigmented purples.
While she was doing my eyes, the lady commented that I had really good skin. Without sounding conceited, this isn't the first time a counter lady has said this, at the Benefit counter in Leeds Boots they said the same thing, but I never take them seriously! They're there to sell products, and I just hear a ploy to sell me something. Am I being silly? Maybe they genuinely think I have great skin (a thousand thank yous to Lush skincare if so!). I just find it hard to trust the opinion of someone who's job is to sell.

I ended up getting two things from Urban Decay - the eyeshadow palette I tried, and a set of super bright eyeliner pencils. Then I swung by the Gosh cosmetics rack, and grabbed some more eyeliners. Let's just say, I've enough eye colours to last me a long long while now, especially considering my recent purchase from Coastal Scents *blush*
I also noticed a small small sign on the Urban Decay counter. They're doing a makeup evening, where the counter people help you learn which colours work for you, help improve your application techniques and so on. It costs €40 for the evening, which is then redeemable against UD cosmetics purchases on the night. I'm very tempted, but then, can I trust them to tell me the truth...

I've always been interested in make-up, and I've recently become the make-up artist for a friend of mine. He's started doing drag, and needed some help in the "face" department, so I stepped up and volunteered. It's been a lot of fun, and I'm really enjoying the process each week, using bold colours, trying out new things, and it's made me more creative with my own style at the same time, so much so, that I buy mad eyeshadow palettes with insane colours in, and actually consider wearing them outside the house! Stay tuned for my Pride look, something a bit special for the parade! :)

The house that almost was ...

Ever since my recent run-in with our landlord (a small conflict over the hoovering and so on, that he yelled about on a "drop-in" visit - long story!) we've been looking at houses, to buy, wondering if we could do it.

I started looking at mortgages, and with our wages, we are approved in principal for some fairly hefty sums of money. This got us a bit excited, if we can get a mortgage, we can buy a house! So we started looking. I like modern houses - but I also like a bit of quirk and interesting-ness too. Older houses tend to come with problems, and since we don't have family close-by to help us out with issues, modern seems to be the way to go. I heard about the site chap.ie on the radio, and started idly browsing, seeing what was available in the area.

We started looking in the village we live in at the moment, it's somewhere we know, and like, and we're comfortable here, but sadly, the prices are just a little beyond what we'd really like to pay. Which is a shame, because there are some nice houses round here! (For example this one, this one and even this one)

So one afternoon I just checked out all the available developments around Cork. We're not tied to a specific area, we have our own car, so transport isn't an issue, and we don't have to rely on buses or trains to get to work. So we could pretty much go anywhere, and this opened up a whole host of opportunities. Then one particular development caught my attention. Mullavale, in Castletownroche.

The thing that really got me about this place, was that it was an "eco-build". By that I don't mean it has a grass roof and a reed bed for it's own water filtration, nothing quite so eco! But it's designed and built with a higher level of energy efficiency in mind. I like that, that means we save money on heating! It even has a really cool wood-pellet stove in the living room, that serves as a focal point much like a fire would, but also, acts as the central heating boiler. Nifty!

The boiler even goes with the colour scheme we had always wanted to put in our living room, black and red! It was like fate.

We booked a viewing, and were really excited to go and have a look round, check out the village, and try and picture ourselves living in our own house! Imagine that! The viewing didn't disappoint. The furniture and decoration weren't exactly to our taste, but that's fine, it's just a show house, we could do anything we wanted in our own version! Paint the walls! Put up shelves! Design our own kitchen. After 10 years of renting, these are big things, trust me.

We set to arranging finance the very next day, our hearts in our mouths as we phoned the bank and applied for a loan to cover the deposit. Sadly, through one thing and another, we've never had a chance to put away savings. For nearly 4 years we had only one wage, and everything that was earned went on living costs, so our savings are fairly pitiful. We prayed and prayed that the bank would look at our history with them since we moved to Ireland, and agree to loan us the money.

Unfortunately, it wasn't to be, I guess in the current climate, we're just too risky. We don't have enough credit at the moment, to show we can responsibly pay back money. How stupid is that? So, having spoken to a friend who had the same issue, she recommended another bank, who had happily given her a loan when our own bank hadn't. We tried again, with less excitement and anticipation, knowing that the answer would likely be no. And we were right, still no luck.

This story doesn't have a happy ending yet, we're still renting, and still don't have the deposit to put down on the house we have totally fallen in love with. We might try the Credit Union, but at this point, we're really not expecting a different answer. So for now, we will keep saving, and hope that in a year, we're in a better position, and that phase 2 of the development is well underway, and we can book one of the houses in that phase instead. I just hope they don't go back to pre-recession prices, otherwise we'll be needing another €60,000 overall. Ouch!

Retro Style

My dad came to visit a few weeks ago (and I didn't take a single picture, stupid of me!) and while he was here, he mentioned that he had been scanning all the photos of our old photo scrap books from my mums house. Of course I begged for the pics on CD, and they arrived today! Yay!

Here are some of my favourites.

Me and my dad at the beach. :)

Me on my rocking horse, I believe it was a birthday present.

Me and my mum sitting on the little bridge over the stream at my Grandma and Grandads cottage.

I'm going to upload the full lot to Flickr shortly. It's so cool to have access to all these pictures again, and this is only from the first half of the albums.

What we woke up to!

Snow!

Not a huge amount, but snow none-the-less! Was an interesting drive to work, and now I'm going to have to make up some time afterwards. Hopefully, it won't get worse before I go home, not sure the car will get up the 3 hills to home otherwise. :)

Speedy update

I realise I have been slack lately, and I apologise. There's been lots of changes at home, and I've ended up with very little PC-time! Which is why I'm taking a sneaky break at work to post this. :)
One place I've managed to keep up-to-date, is Twitter, I have become a Tweet-o-holic of late! Such a simple system, but damn, it's fun! I use Tweetdeck at home, and Twitterfox at work to keep up to date with my tweets. Feel free to follow me as you wish.

Workwise - I got promoted. No longer a frontline monkey, I'm now part of the team that grade, coach, and train the frontline monkeys! Taking the best parts of my previous job, and helping other people improve. It's very much "me", and the pace of work is awesome. It used to be a case of a constant flow of work, no downtime other than a lunch break, and it was making me very stressed. Now I have a weekly quota, and I plan my own time accordingly. The hours are very different, I finally have a "real" working week! No more shifts for me. Just plain old Monday-Friday, 9-6. Unfortunately, Rach is still on shifts, but she's at least managed to switch teams, so she now works Tuesday-Friday, 12-11.

Rach and I recently returned from a trip to her parents. We had a really great time, catching up with family, and did a lot of shopping! I finally got to visit the B Never store in Leeds too, and wow, it didn't disappoint. I'm more hooked than I was before! My favourite purchase has to be the Ding Dong box set, of 21 liquid eyeshadows! I use them as bright eyeliner, and am having lots of fun experimenting.The other major change, is our new regime/lifestyle/whatever you want to call it. Choosing healthier options, consciously cutting out on "junk" food, and regular visits to the gym over the road! It's costing us a fair whack to join, which we are hoping will be extra motivation to go. To help us track our progress, and also hopefully get support, we're blogging our slimming journey as we go. In the next few days Chicka Cuccina will get updated with our goals, and loads of other details. Rach and I will both be blogging there, so please follow us, comment, and give us plenty of encouragement along the way!

For now I shall bid you all adieu. Have a great Wednesday!

would like to let everyone know that her mobile is on the blink. Call me at home if you need me!

has misplaced her Holga in the move, and is quite saddened by this. :(