I got this Baylis & Harding Sweet Mandarin and Grapefruit body lotion from a friend from England. To be honest, I wasn’t very excited about it because I didn’t think it would be something that I would personally like. To my surprise, I came to really like it!
Baylis & Harding products are sold especially in Debenhams, UK (one of my favorites stores in England ♥). They are sold mostly as gift sets and aren’t very expensive (around 10£).
Discreet scent
What I LOVED about this product is the smell! It is very discreet, delicate and fresh. You can really feel the citrus scent, but not as if you just ate some mandarines. My husband hates all my body lotions because of their smell, but this one is THE ONLY FRIGGING ONE that he actually likes.
Fast absorbing
Another BEST THING about the Baylis & Harding Sweet Mandarin and Grapefruit body lotion is that it is easily absorbed into skin. All my other body lotions took a really long time to get into the skin and I couldn’t get dressed immediately after applying these lotions. Fortunately, the Baylis & Harding body lotion goes really, really fast into the skin. If I apply it on my whole body, I can get dressed in 2 minutes.
Moisturizing
And, of course, last but not least, it is moisturizing (who would use a body lotion if his/her skin wouldn’t need hydration?!). This season I got really dry skin and I use this body lotion daily, after I take hot baths and destroy my sensitive skin :/ .
Will I repurchase?
Hmm… tough question. If it was BIO or at least had more natural ingredients it would definitely be my one and only body lotion. But, since it is kind of unnatural, I have doubts about purchasing it again… I so wish they would make a similar body lotion, but BIO…
If you’re looking for a body lotion, check out my other review on this subject:
My experience with the Sabon body lotion:
REVIEW: Sabon Body Lotion Delicate Jasmine
2. Or my thoughts on the “The Body Shop” COCONUT and SHEA shower creams:
Review: The Body Shop
3. And last but not least, my experience with the Clinique Sparkle Skin Body Exfoliating Cream:
Hi everyone! I am very excited to share with you one of my favorite present day artist, whom I admire and follow ever since I discovered her paintings. I hope I will succeed in writing a nice article about her (more like a short biography + some of my thoughts) and arouse your interest for her work.
Source: https://www.janethillstudio.com/
I’ve been delighting my eyes with her paintings for at least 7 years now, so I thought I should write something about her because there are many people who would love her work but don’t know about her yet.
Her name is Janet Hill, she is a canadian painter. She studied art at the Queens University in Kingston Ontario.
Janet Hill opened a fancy soap store and owned it for some years, until she decided to paint full time. In this store she exhibited some of her paintings (in the picture below, in the left corner you can see some early paintings). This store looks so amazing… I would have loved to buy beauty products (and art, maybe?) from this store!
In 2008 and 2009 she created a new paintingevery single day and posted it on her website. I think it is absolutely amazing that she made approximately 700 paintings in just 2 years, this helping her define her own style and technique. I’ve been following her blog and I clearly saw an improvement of her subjects, techniques and overall creativity throughout the months and years. I think Janet Hill is a good example for the saying “Practice makes perfect”.
Her art is sweet, girly, sometimes silly, optimistic, funny and warm. It is the kind of art that makes your day better, happier. I’m saying this literally, not in a complicated, metaphorical way.
Janet Hill is certainly a 21st Century post-modernist painter, leaving behind the 20th Century art crisis, exploring new, girly, feminine and optimist emotions in art. Janet Hill is feminine, whereas a 20th Century artist would have been feminist.
Source: https://www.janethillstudio.com/
Janet Hill’s paintings aren’t meant to shock the eye or the expectations of the viewer, they are simply ment to bring joy to those contemplating them.
The funny and comic subtext of her paintings must also be mentioned. For instance, she once created a series of paintings depicting girls with supernatural powers. In the picture below you can see the painting cleverly named The Invisible Nature Of Tansy Fairchild.
Source: https://www.janethillstudio.com/
The clever and punny titles are a constant feature of Janet Hill’s paintings. Reading her blog, I always enjoyed these titles. See the picture below with the title: The Disappearance of Lonnie Lightfoot.
Source: https://www.janethillstudio.com/
What kind of art is this, you might ask. One could label it as naive art. This is a modern art current, successful in 20th Century, but rooted in 17th Century or even earlier. Although I would characterize her art style as naive, the painters that I think they share something similar with Janet Hill aren’t always considered naive. I have many painters in mind, but I will try to keep it short and name just a few.
There are many other painters who deserve to be mentioned, but this article would become too big :). I should although point out Gauguin’s Tahitian women who somehow resemble in posture to those painted sometimes by Janet Hill.
Besides her wonderful paintings, what I like about Janet Hill is her tenacity and the inexhaustible creativity flow that underlies her paintings.
She is truly inspiring and I absolutely love her and her work! ❤❤❤
P.S. When I started this blog I searched a long time for an image for my website’s header. I wanted it to depict a girl reading a book, but really reading, not just posing. It was EXTREMELY hard to find one. I was shocked to see the lack of this kind of women’s representation in painting. Another great thing about Janet Hill is that she painted lots of women reading books. Here are just a few of them:
P.S.2: Another cool thing about her paintings is that every girl can identify herself in one of the paintings. For instance, this is me: 🙂
Source: https://www.janethillstudio.com/
I really hope you liked this article and Janet Hill’s paintings.
Sophia Thomalla is a German socialite. She is 28 y.o. and despite the age gap, she was Till Lindemann’s girlfriend and then Gavin Rossdale’s. She has a lot of tattoos and one of them is Till’s face tattooed on her arm. Pretty strange I’d say…
Anyhow, her infamous tattoo is not the point of this post. The point is her extremely funny hat I’ve seen on her Facebook page. She looks happy with this hat and I would love to have one. I wonder where she bought it from…
Look how cute is this pink rabbit hat! ❤
I think Sophia Thomalla is a really nice girl and I hope in the future she will do something more “real” than just some TV appearances and being skinny. Maybe she will get into acting or singing, or painting…
Last weekend I saw a live transmission of the ISU EUROPEAN FIGURE SKATING CHAMPIONSHIPS® 2018 from Moscow.
I like watching figure skating because I find it very relaxing. I love the smooth sliding on the ice, the beautiful music, the elegant movements and the amazing costumes. Talking about amazing costumes, there was one with which I fell in love with!
Sorry for the blurry photo, but it is a print screen of the video.
It was warn by the ice dancer Penny Coomes (if you would like to follow her, check her Instagram account) from Great Britain, when she performed a beautiful dance with her partner Nick Buckland. The music was Muse – Butterflies and Hurricanes and Penny was supposed to be the butterfly and Nick the hurricane.
Her dressed looked like a butterfly, with 2 beautiful wings in the back. The colors were beautiful: deep blue, misterios violet and mesmerizing black with sweet glitter and white dots.
It seems that they’ve been performing this dance for a while and Penny used to wear another dress:
I didn’t use to wear lipsticks because I tend to smudge them and in just a few minutes my lips would look horrible. I also have very dry lips, so I must use lip balm all time. It seemed that I had no chance in wearing lipstick and sometimes I really wanted to have colored lips.
Then the miracle happened. About 5 years ago I’ve discovered the Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick in the shade 020 angelic. In fact, it was a friend who gave me this lipstick as a Christmas gift. She was a big fan of this lipstick and she had been using it for years. I remember very well the day she offered it to me. I tried it straight away and then she asked me to drink a glass of water. I drank and she asked me to look on the glass for any lipstick marks. There were none. I looked in the mirror and the lipstick was the same. It didn’t move a bit, nor fade.
I said “WOW”. And wow it was, for another 5 hours.
It is truly a remarkable lipstick. I’ve been using it ever since. The lipstick comes in a little box, with 2 recipients: the lipstain, which you use only once, and the gloss/lip balm, which you’re supposed to use from time to time (my friend never uses it because she has very good lips, but I have to use it once every 2 hours because otherwise my lips dry out).
This lipstick is rather cheap (about 12 EUR) in comparison to other similar stay on lipstick. I generally buy it from DM.
Pros
First of all, this lipstick won’t come off. It is a lipstick that lasts all day (almost 🙂 ).
The color remains intense for about 4 hours, then it stars slowly to fade, but it is good another 2 hours or so. Even after a total of 8 hours, you will still have some lipstick left.
I’ve purchased some other colors but 020 angelic is my favorite color for sure. I love how it matches my style.
Sorry for the tiny photo, but it is the only one that renders the color as it truly is on my lips.
Cons
Some women have been complaining it dries their lips. I, who have the most dry lips in the world, disagree completely. You just have to use the balm, that’s what it’s for!
Will I Repurchase?
Definitely. I’ve been repurchasing it for 5 years now. Every time I wear it, I feel confident and happy!
Tips and tricks
There are 2 things you need to do to get the best out of this lipstick:
Be sure your lips are clean and exfoliated before applying the color. If your lips are oily (either because you’ve applied a lip blam that left your lips oily or you’ve eaten something oily) the lip stain will not stick to your lips. So you need to have them really clean before applying the lipstick.
If you are going to eat, it lasts better if you apply the balm before eating.
You will need a makeup remover for long lasting makeup to get this lipstick off or to make some adjustments.
Well, that’s it. I hope this review will help you choose your lipstick. If you are a girl like me who has a hard time wearing a lipstick and you’re looking for a lipstick that stays on, then the Max Factor Lipfinity lipstick is the right one for you.
Let me know if you’ve used it or if you’ve used similar lips stains and what do you think about them.
I really like non-alcoholic beer: it is refreshing in summer, nourishing in winter and have tons of health benefits. Unfortunately, I had hard times trying to find a non-alcoholic beer to match my taste.
I am not a gourmet expert and I don’t know how to express the things that I don’t like in a regular non-alcoholic beer. It lacks something, it has too much of something else, its consistency is strange, my tongue would feel odd… Does this make any sense?
A certain period of time I’ve drunk radlers (half beer, half lemon juice – or some other juice) but I didn’t like them very much because: 1. They did contain alcohol and 2. Too much sugar. I don’t like consuming sugary food on a daily basis, plus I don’t think it is healthy either.
Clausthaler unfiltered – the taste
I was extremely content when I discovered the Clausthaler unfiltered, dry hopped, non-alcoholic, beer. Yet again, I can’t really describe the taste and why I prefer this one to the other non-alcoholic beers, but it is more consistent and the taste is more temperate. It certainly doesn’t taste like a normal beer, you can feel the lack of alcohol taste, but I like it even more this way.
Its history
Clausthaler unfiltered is a german premium non-alcoholic beer, produced in Germany. I think it is important to know that unlike other beer companies, they produced, from the beginning, non-alcoholic beers. This is their specialty. And they are very good at it.
How much does it cost and where to find it?
In Germany, I buy it from normal stores. I pay around 1 EUR for a 0.33 bottle. I think it is easy to find it anywhere in Europe. Before I started to write this article I googled this beer to see what other people say about it. I was surprised to see Australians and Americans complaining that they don’t find it in their countries.
Did you drink the Clausthaler non-alcoholic beer? If yes, what do you think about it?
This is by far the most expensive shower gel (not a gel actually, more like a cream) that I’ve ever had, although I wouldn’t say it is by far the best one I’ve ever had, but it definitively makes top 5.
In Germany it costs 32 EUR but I in U.S.A. I found it with 26.50 DOLLARS. 😐 I don’t know what’s the deal, but anyway, it is an expensive product.
Pros
The best thing about it is the action it has on the body. It really (but really) makes the skin smooth. Its consistency is the best of any other exfoliating cream I’ve ever used. The exfoliating grains are perfect (as number, density and size) and they blend perfectly with the cream.
Also, I believe that for people with mild acneea or blackheads on the back, this product would be good, since it is so smoothing. It really leaves a sparkling skin (without actually containing any glitter)!
Cons
For me there are 3 things that will not make me repurchase the product. If it would had been only one of the three, instead of all of them, I would have repurchased it.
It is too expensive
It is not BIO
I don’t like the smell (but this is a personal opinion)
Maybe if it was just like it is, but cheaper, I would definitely repurchase it. Or if it was BIO, maybe this would be the perfect excuse for its price. Or, of course, if it would have a great great smell, I would have repurchased it.
Conclusions
It is, for sure, a premium quality product. I’ve read some reviews on their site and, if they were written by real customers and not written by Clinique’s own staff, people seem to really like it. I will not repurchase it, but I did recommend it to a friend.
Marina Abramovic is a performance artist, known for pushing her limits with her body by pain and stillness.
I’ve known her artwork for a while now and, although I am not a big fan of this kind of art, I always appreciated the fact that she explored other ways of expressing the emotions. By pushing her limits she also pushed the boundaries of art, and for that I appreciate her very much.
When her book, titled Walk Through Walls: A Memoir, was released (25th October 2016), I was keen to read it. I bought it from Amazon for about 20$. It is not cheap, but not expensive either. It has 370 pages, but it is easy to read, the text is not condensed and it has tons of photos (both colored and black and white).I read it in 3 days.
What I liked
It offers the perfect chronology of all her performances, usually accompanied by a photo or two, where they took place and the whole artistic AND personal context. This info is very useful especially for art students, teachers, historians and just art lovers, I guess.
I also liked the fact that it seems to be a true confession. It sounds sincere. I think Marina Abramovic really opened up for this book and just went ahead and told all her stories. Her personality transpires through the written words of this book.
What I didn’t like
Since Marina is not a native English speaker, Walk Through Walls: A Memoir is supposed to having been written with the help of an american novelist, James Kaplan, whose name appears on the title page, next to Abramovic’s (I’ve never heard of him before). The problem is that reading the book you can actually feel that it is written by not a native English speaker. Before reading the book, I kind of got accustomed with her topic and word choice because I used to watch some interviews with her. Now, while reading the book, I expected to read a real english book, but no, there was still the voice of Marina, the non-native English speaker. So, I may ask, where’s the work of James Kaplan in all this business? Maybe it’s not his fault, maybe Marina wanted this way… well, I don’t know. I would have preferred though to read a real english book.
Some sidenotes
Marina states several times in this book that she used to talk with entities. I don’t know what to believe, but I think it is funny to get this kind of info from this kind of book.
She hasn’t understood that neither Ulay, nor her mother, loved her. Nope, not a single moment. Ulay is the kind of man always preoccupied with himself, he would never love another person, especially Marina. She was too old and too big and masculine for him. He is the type of man looking for younger girls, petite girls. She was his mommy. That’s awful. She wasted her life with him. Also, her mother didn’t love her either. I don’t understand why she continue to talk to her. I am sure that in her heart she always hoped that one day her mother would act like a real mother. Imagine the disappointment!
After reading the book, I also saw the movie Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present (2012). It is not very interesting, the book offers far more information about her life and art, but it is enjoyable and, once again, it shows how unsuitable Ulay is for her.
In Mexico there is this tiny animal and his name is Cucaracha. This animal, although its name could be translated into English as “Cockroach”, doesn’t in fact have nothing to do with the insect. Cucaracha is a cute little animal, a little bit furry, who wears a big mexican hat. He is very friendly and brave. He always has a gun and he defends Mexico when needed. The girls are crazy about him.
No one has succeeded in photographing Cucaracha. He likes to keep some mistery around him, but those who’ve seen him, describe him saying that he has certain similarities to Speedy Gonzales.
Now, about Guacamole, this tasty food that we eat with tortillas.
Cucaracha’s most favorite food is avocado. Each day he eats a few avocados and, after a while, he poops Guacamole and this is how Guacamole is made.This is the original recipe to make Guacamole and if you’re willing to taste the original one, you must go to Mexico and find Cucaracha.
If Cucaracha is in a really good mood, after pooping Guacamole he will dance around it singing “La Cucaracha”.
* Although I made up this story and obviously it is not a true Mexican story, I like to think there is indeed a little tiny and cute animal in Mexico, called Cucaracha, and maybe when I will visit Mexico, somehow we will meet 🙂 *
Today, a very good friend of mine cleaned her wardrobe and selected the things she didn’t want to wear anymore or those which she hasn’t used in a while. I did the same with my wardrobe.
Then we met and exchanged some stuff and the remaining stuff we’re going to give to some other people. I think this is a great activity (especially for a good start for a new year) and everyone should do it because there are so many benefits:
You get to have more space in your closet
You receive cute stuff that you will like
Other people will benefit from what you don’t like
You get to reevaluate your shopping skills: what to buy and what not to buy next time, what you tend to wear and what you tend to avoid wearing
You have fun with your friends exchanging clothes and whatever other things you don’t want anymore
It was a little bit complicated with some clothes. Even if we don’t wear them anymore, we would still somehow find it hard to say goodbye… But, in the end, unless they had some sentimental value, we gave them away. We hope they will have a great future with somebody else. Farewell, clothes & stuff!
I hope that our activity will give you new ideas for a fresh New Year start!
![Cutest Guacamole Recipe [Not Really a Recipe]](https://eva-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/guacamole-and-tortillas-640.jpg)
