Hohohoholidays!

The aforementioned title refers to the ability to sleep in on weekdays... Nua around the house for the whole day... Do all sorts of random things at random times of the day while people are at work or in school. It's hard to express how much I love the holidays, really. :D And I'm trying to make the best out of this holiday because it may very well be my last holiday as a student since I'll be graduating next year. :'( (Cue wailing and screaming)

So, while one is on holiday, it is possible to make time to go to the CBD on a Friday afternoon just to have lunch at 2pm. Went to this Japanese pasta restaurant located at MBFC for lunch, because G liked eating here while he was interning so he's been wanting to bring me there. :)

I love how set lunches are usually value-for-money and cheaper than dinner/alacarte! We opted for Lunch B which includes a pasta, miso soup, drink and salad.

They have a salad bar so you get to mix the salad yourself. You can pile up as much as you want on your bowl (as long as it fits lah), but you're only allowed one serving! I loooooved the sesame dressing.

Drink + miso soup. They actually have apple juice as one of the options for the drink (quite rare considering that most restaurants would offer the standard Coke/Sprite/canned drinks for the complimentary drink).

G's tomato-based pasta with chicken and cubes of parmesan (I think).

My mentaiko carbonara something or other pasta.

My only picture of us humans in this whole blog post! Haha G was shopping for his Timberland boots and I was entertaining myself.

And something else completely irrelevant - a picture of my latest DIY glitter gradient nails!! I swear it looks much better in real life. Lovin' the sparkle. :D

x

Computing group meet-up!

This shall be a short and sweet post that's mostly food-filled. :)

First up, some beef noodles from Thai Noodle House! (Ari's favourite, haha.) I love this too, although probably not as much as Ari because she goes there super often to eat it! It is a little pricey at $7 a bowl though, for a coffeeshop-esque kind of place.

Next up! Pictures from my outing with my computing project group from last last semester! They're kind of special to me because most project group mates who start out as strangers, usually revert back to being strangers once the project ends. This is possibly the only project group that I've gone on to become friends with and have actually bothered to meet up with even after the project has ended!

Look at Jie's stunned face in the background hahaha. He got a shock because when I made my camera focus, the orange light shone on him and he thought he was on fire or something!! -.-

The picture of the chocolate cake that I couldn't take my eyes off! Doesn't it look super delectable in the picture???

Aerial view of our food! We ordered the set for 4 (I think it was called Celebration for 4 or something like that), and it was pretty darn a lot of food for 4 people! We almost couldn't fit everything on the table. :/ Basically, we had:

4 chicken quarters

1 salad

1 pitcher of some citrusy drink

1 serving of peri fries

1 serving of wedges

1 serving of potato lime leaves skewers

1 serving of coleslaw

1 serving of potato salad

YEAH. That was a hell lot of potatoes... But I love my carbs, so. ;)

We were all stuffed from the meal already, but we still went ahead and ordered dessert!

Natas (Essentially just Portugese egg tarts)

The chocolate cake that I'd been eyeing since the start of dinner! IT LOOKS NOTHING LIKE THE PICTURE RIGHT?!!! Omg I felt so cheated! :( But nevertheless, it was relatively yummy. At least it still tasted pretty good I guess!

And a group picture to end off the night! Cheers to good food and good company, I laughed a looooooot that night. :)

P/S: The dress is an upcoming Cocoquettes piece! :D

Beauty Favourites Part I: Skincare (Face)

Gonna try and schedule a post for the first time! :D
I've been thinking about doing a beauty post for a while now because I have quite a few of my favourite products that I'd like to share with you! And I think most, if not all girls concern themselves with beauty in some way or another... So here's my 2 cents worth. ;) My skin definitely isn't as ideal as I'd like it to be (in fact, it's in a rather deplorable state now sigh), but these are some products which I find help me to keep my skin in a better condition than it would be otherwise. So without further ado, here are some of my favourite beauty products (in no particular order)!

I've got 8 products to cover, so this is gonna be a pretty lengthy post! Skip this entirely if you're not into skincare, otherwise, bear with me. :)

1. Dior UV Shield in Translucent
How I stumbled onto this awesome sunscreen was by pure accident. My mum does buy quite a lot of Christian Dior products, but I've always viewed CD as some sort of an older ladies' brand... So one day while I was shopping with her and waiting for her to pick her CD products, a semi-bored me started playing with sunscreen testers and decided to ask for some samples since the SAs are usually quite generous when giving my mum samples hehe.
The UV Shield comes in 3 different types - the BB Cream, Translucent, and Pearly White. I tried the BB Cream and liked how it made my skin look dewy and radiant, but it was a little too emollient for my skin. As for the Pearly White, I felt that it leaves a bit of a white cast on my face, but my sister and mother both use the Pearly White one so maybe I'm just weird. :/ The Translucent sunscreen has a pretty thick texture, but just make sure you blend it out well and all will be fine! The finish is somewhat matte-ish and I like how it doesn't feel very sticky or oily like some other sunscreens do. Plus point: If you're anal about hygiene, you will love the pump dispenser! The only downside of this product is its price, which costs something like $79 for a mere 30ml tube. (But it'll last pretty long because a little goes a long way!)

2. Dior Lip Glow Color Reviver Balm
My lips tend to be quite dry, so trust me when I say this lip balm is aweeeesome! Initially, I didn't quite like it because it has a slightly wet texture, but after using this more, you'll find that that is precisely the beauty of this product because it helps to keep your lips super moisturized! The only issue that I have with this is that even though it looks like a clear balm, it actually leaves your lips with a pinkish tint which has resulted in me neglecting my lipsticks. :( But I'd take hydrated lips over flaky lips with nice lipstick anytime! Again, with Dior products, they do tend to be a little pricey. :( (I think this was about $40ish for a standard lipstick size.) But otherwise, I highly recommend this!

3. Biore Cleansing Oil-in-Cotton Sheets
There's been a lot of blog advertorials being done for this product, so the million dollar question is, IS IT REALLY GOOD? And since I'm not being paid to blog, I can give you a truthful answer heh. ;p Well I'm onto my 3rd refill already (if you count the original that came with the box), so you can probably guess what the answer is! I like cleansing sheets because they're just so convenient for lazy pigs like myself, but I like the Biore ones most because they remove make-up well, even around the eye area! And very importantly, it does NOT sting my eye! I must highlight though, that even though this is sort of a drugstore product, it's not exactly a cheap solution to removing make-up because every refill contains 48 sheets which will last you approximately 1.5 months if you wear make-up everyday. Considering that the refill costs ~$15, a normal drugstore remover that costs the same price will probably last you twice the length of what this will.

4. Cure Natural Aqua Gel
This product is a great way to exfoliate the face and other parts of the body! It's not harsh on the skin, and leaves my skin feeling nice and soft after exfoliation. However, the new Amethystory Mineral Aqua Gel seems to be a dupe of this, and costs almost half the price at $20+. (Although, to be fair, I think you get a little less product in the bottle.) I've seen the Amethystory one go on sale at Guardian before for $19.90 though, while Cure NEVER goes on sale. So yeah, if you want to get either one of these, just go for Amethystory!

5. Clinique All About Eyes Serum
I'm not a fan of Clinique products in general, but they do have a select few products which work well for me. This is one of them - it's not a great product, but it does what it claims to do. It keeps the puffiness under the eyes at bay! And I like these eye roller thingamajigs because they feel nice and cooling on my skin. :D Note that this, however, does not help to get rid of dark eye circles even though it is an eye product!

6. Clinique Anti-Blemish Solutions Spot Treatment Gel
This is something that I've been using for a few years now, so it's definitely tried and tested! The gel contains both witch hazel and salicylic acid which are the ingredients that I think help to fight blemishes. I like this because this product is pretty strong, i.e. it WILL STING when you put it on a pimple (especially a raw and inflamed one). If your threshold of pain is really low, then I'd advise you not to try this. If, however, you are open to suffering from short bouts of pain for the sake of beauty, then this will be right up your alley. I love how it helps to accelerate the drying process of pimples! (Y)

7. My Beauty Diary Sheet Masks
Even though MBD masks come in a huge array of flavours to suit different needs, I honestly can't tell the difference in their effectiveness when using them. I just like them because all the masks generally give me softer and more hydrated skin the day after using them! Do stock up on these when in Taiwan/Hong Kong though, because they're cheaper there! They're cheapest in Taiwan and it seems only the mixed flavour box is available in Taiwan, but Hong Kong is still cheaper than getting it locally.

8. Etude House Sleeping Facial Pack (Pore Tightening)
Honestly, I don't find that this product tightens my pores, but it does work like the MBD sheet masks in leaving my skin soft and hydrated! I like this because it's easy to slap on before you sleep, and you don't have to take it off after xxx amount of time. As with all other Korean skincare/make-up, GET THIS IN KOREA! It's easily 40-50% cheaper than what it is in the local stores. :)

So that's it for the first installment of my Beauty Favourites! I hope you enjoyed this despite how much rambling I've done, and I hope it was useful! x

Angie's 22nd birthday!

Sitting at home, waiting for G to respond to my BBMs so that we can go run some errands together. I've actually finished the work that I set out to do today for tomorrow's launch, so I kind of don't have anything else urgent to do atm. :) Yay to less crazy days this week haha.

Since I started this new blog, I've started using labels/tags for my posts and I realised that so far I've only been blogging about either Cocoquettes or birthdays. :X I guess that's the story of my life, really. Nevertheless, birthdays are joyous occasions! And here are pictures from when we met up with our "youngest" mahjong tile for her birthday!


Random decision to go to TWG. It's been open for a while, but this was my first time ever dining there! #n00b


My dinner companions. :)








We sorta surprised her with a slice of cake! It was a matcha mousse cake which didn't quite taste like matcha hm.


Birthday girl received some complimentary macarons heh. ;)






Surprised her with birthday kisses! (Pressed the shutter too early so I didn't capture her shocked expression, damn!) Xuannie and I are sneaky like that hahaha.






HAHA.


And then it became a trend.

Anyways, for those who haven't visited TWG yet (although most of you probably have already), I think it's a really nice place to sip tea and have dessert or some small snacks during tea time. :) It's a tad overpriced (The teapots don't even come with tea leaves inside?! So they aren't exactly refillable.) I find, but I guess that comes with the branding. Food-wise, my lasagne was alright while Xuannie's chicken was a little weird from what I gathered. So, I probably wouldn't recommend having a full meal there, but otherwise it's a lovely place to visit post-lunch or post-dinner! (Except for when they put on classical music at full blast. :X That was just, very slightly, bizarre.)

To many more years of friendship and birthdays together! x

World Orchid Conference 2011

#bloggingregularlyfail
Yes, that's the first thing I had to say. Although it's only because I have been crazy busy lately with Cocoquettes and meeting up with friends, I really haven't had much time to stop and think, much less even blog.
Speaking of which, it's Cocoquettes' 5th birthday today!!!! Wow, 5 years just flew by like that. We're conducting a freebie giveaway on our Facebook page so go participate okay! I think the freebies this year are pretty darn attractive, definitely a good reward just for a couple of clicks so GOGOGO NOW. 
Yes, so I finally had a short break yesterday and I figured I'd better churn out a blog post before this week gets crazy again! Got errands to run tomorrow for something CCQ-related, it's something quite exciting for both Lala and I, but we'll announce more details later in the week! Plus we're having a clothing launch sometime later this week so... Yes, I have a lot of things to do. Especially cuz Lala just flew off today for 8 days, so I'm handling everything alone! SOOO if efficiency isn't on par with our usual standard, please accept my apologies in advance! (Although I'd like to think that even when either of us are a one-woman-show we're still pretty efficient. :D)
Well, this was supposed to be a photo post, with photos from the World Orchid Conference last month! Actually I only went cuz my mum was helping out with some part of the show, but it was actually quite enjoyable (especially because we got to visit Gardens by the Bay before it officially opens in June next year!). :)
   My outfit! :D Cocoquettes Colours of the Wind Dress in Blue-Green. Lovelovelove this dress, and we had customers who bought both colours, some bought the Red-Purple one after receiving their Blue-Green one and loving every bit of it!
 





















Entering one of the Gardens by the Bay flower domes...
   These look really small in my picture, but in real life they are ABSOLUTELY HUMONGOUS. Do you know what they are?
   They're Baobabs!! Hahaha and those at the Gardens are like a few hundred years old or something. It was quite amusing for me actually because I just happened to finish reading The Little Prince a few days before this, and the author mentions Baobabs a few times in the book!
 
 The flower dome we got to enter was really nice actually! But it's hella cold inside, got to be like 16degC or something!! Probably cuz some of the plants need the cold climate to survive. But definitely worth visiting when it opens next year!
And more pictures from E's camera...
 

 My "stunned tio" look. This is his favourite picture though haha.
 
 
 x