It's All About Skin

I found a few days ago an interesting article about this Japanese lady, whom looks like she is 20 years old yet that is the age of her oldest daughter. She, Masako Mizutani, herself is 43 years old, but she does spend 5 hours a day on her skin. Seeing how young she looks has inspired me to take a little bit better care of myself as I want to stay young and healthy looking. So I started off with taking some of her advice, which went something like this: 

• Eat healthy, fresh food.
• A balanced 4 meals a day in small portions.
• Drink lots of water to clean out toxins.
• Apply lighter makeup as you get older.
• Use Vitamin E based creams to keep your skin soft and supple.
• Always use sunscreen before going into the sun.
• Follow a cleaning, toning and moisturizing regime every night before you sleep.
• Exercise regularly, get enough sleep and don’t smoke.

I already do eat healthy so I just need to tweak it up a bit and I started drinking more water. To the makeup department I use quite little make up so that won't affect me. Some days I wear no make up and some days just some to hide up red spots and mascara as my eyelashes are quite small. I noted that I already had creams with vitamin E so I was happy to discover that but I wanted something extra so I got a face mask. The benefit of pale skin is, that I would never even consider walking outside in the summer without sunscreen so check :) To the last to parts, never have I smoked and just fixing my sleep pattern will suffice. Right now my body is still in Canada time, so I go to sleep too late and get up too late. Gotta fix it soon, since I've got school this week :) The the follow a cleaning regime, these Biotherm products are what I use:

I especially love the smell of the face cleanser as it smells like the flower lily of the valley

For my body I started using this Eau Pure, but before it I was an addict for body shop bodybutters

She also had a 6 day face mask routine she does, but since I don't have five hours a day to spend on my face and skin so I decided to purchase two face masks and use them at least twice a week. 

I also have a face scrub I really like that I got in Canada, but now I'm afraid of what will I do once it ends. Oh well I guess it will be time to try something else. But if any of you see this one, I recommend it strongly.

As we can see from the example of Masako Mizutani: “there are no ugly women, only lazy ones"

Homemade French Manicure

So I tried out for the first time, how to make a homemade french manicure. The first time I had a french manicure was when I had my high school graduation and even then the person that made it for me used a bit of a purple coloring on it so it wasn't a basic french manicure. I tried out a sparkling nail polish I got as a gift during christmas and a basic white nail polish for the tips. This is what it looks like, its a bit odd since some of my nails are longer than others. I just don't want to cut my long ones. I started off with a chip skip(OPI) liquid to harden the tips of my nails natural base coat from OPI (my addiction), then I applied to blue sparkling color that also is OPI just a line that we don't have in Finland. Then the tips with the white color, which was a really thick one and to finish it off a top coat. Simple as that.

the sparkling, blueish color

First attempt at Chinese food

Yesterday me and my panda tried to make some Chinese food, you know the real kind not the modified stuff you get in the Chinese restaurants in Finland. It worked out quite well, it looked and tasted like it was supposed to. The texture was not quite as supposed to but considering we didn't know how much we need of each ingredient we were quite genius! The dish was called 糖醋里脊 (tang cu liji) so in English, sugar vinegar pork tenderloin :) anyway it was quite easy to make the only hard part was how much of each ingredient, luckily I'm not a stranger to cooking so I had some idea of the proportions :)

12 Things about 2011

I've done this before in my previous blog and figured it be fun to re do in a different manner. So in spirit of the 12 days of Christmas or just one thing per month I give you my 2011. It has been an interesting year filled with interesting things, happiness beyond anything I have felt before and also ultimate lows I never thought I would feel. At the end all I can say is, I rather live to the fullest and feel to most good or bad. Life is pain and love, if you go through your life without these two then have you really lived? Anyway enjoy my random 12 things :)

1. Last year New Year I spent with friends and family, little did I know what the future had in store for me.

2. February was full of school, tutor work and officially finding my panda karhu! <3 In the pictures you see an event called Lunar New Year, I was invited to an celebration arrange by some(lots of) vietnamese students here in Lahti. It was fun I even learned some Vietnamese. There are also pictures from me hunting for a outfit for a solo I did, yet my style is more Hip Hop so in the end my outfit was silver Nike's with beige pants and a purple hoodie.

3. In the beginning of March I was on a trip with some of my girlfriends and we went to levi, I taught a vietnamese girl to ski and she even liked it. Good Lucia! March was also full of fun times in the snow with my niece and some cool photo shoots with my friends. It was actually for a marketing project my friends made, hey when ever you need a photographer just ask :D

4. April as well was full of more photography in form of portraits and dunking. My panda is a talented basketball player. I love watching him play. Also in the end of April there was Vappu! We had a Vappu picnic.

5. May started off with a trip to Saint Petersburg, the trip was related to a course I took called Business in Russia. It was fun to travel with my class mates. We ate good food and even went to see Swan Lake the ballet. :) Once I got back from Russia I had to hurry to a competition(Show SM 2011), my group was dancing in the modern dance category. Its quite far from my skills as a dancer, but hey its just me being humble about my talents. :)

6. June was free time, the holiday. Spent mostly on my couch with my panda karhu playing plants vs zombies. We also had a road trip to Vääksy and enjoyed the midsummer festival with burning stuff.

7. July the month I was born in. The month was full of BDay celebrations in form of a late BDay for my sister, I made that lovely chocolate cake for her with all the strawberries, blueberries and some vanilla ice-cream. A friend of mine had a BDay as well and we spent it on the beach as for mine, that was spent in Linnanmäki with running around with my nieces. Before my BDay my panda karhu returned home and I was quite down for a while, but that all changed when August came around.

8. In August I went with my mom and sisters family to Tallinn, for some sightseeing and shopping. The creates sight turned out to be my niece as all the asian tourist liked to take pictures of her. After the trip we had another BDay celebration in the theme of princess. At the end of August I finally made my way to see my panda karhu in China! So many cool things happened there as you guys have already seen in the form of many posts.

A Promise For The New Year

Well I didn't really make a new years promise, more of an attitude change. Going through my closet last summer I realized just how much stuff I have, as in clothes and so on. Yet always there seems to be the problem of what to wear, well seems that is just the way the modern society is. Consumption driven. It would be much better to buy less and wear them out, that way you'd always be stylish lol. So my decision is to minimize my private consumption. Im going to try not to shop till I drop this year and also sell away the clothes that I just simply don't use and if I can't sell them then donate them to charity. I don't want to become one of those shopaholics and also I don't wanna have a closet full of clothes I don't wear and then wear out the ones I like. My goal now is to make it until summer without any purchases clothing wise and if possible the entire year. Lets see how it goes. Wish me luck!