Girls Day at CurliQue

Last weekend I got a much needed makeover and manicure with a friend, compliments of the Blanche MacDonald students and CurliQue Beauty.

 The makeover was a fun, unexpected portion of the day. I planned only for manicures, but once they were done with my nails, the girl asked if we wanted to do a makeover. I take more of a foundation-and-mascara type of approach to my daily makeup routine, so it was nice to get some feedback on what I can do to update my look (without taking too much time).Of course, it's always nice to have someone compliment your skin for half an hour. Such incredible talent coming out of this Vancouver school: thanks girls for the makeover and makeup tips.

My friend Vicky (left) and me (right) after our makeovers.

The makeup and haircare selection at CurliQue is fantastic. They have rows upon rows of Bumble and Bumble, Makeup Forever, Kerastase, and other well known, high quality products you would expect from a boutique-style beautician. They also have some interesting, hard to find brands that I was introduced to by the extremely knowledgeable Blanche students and CurliQue staff. My personal favourite has to be Honoré Des Prés; I absolutely fell in love with their organic scents. I am very picky about perfumes, and I instantly fell in love with the heady, musky scents and crisp without being too flowery florals. $100 on a teeny tiny bottle might be a little hard to justify when I have a full bottle of Lovestruck by Vera Wang and Halston Woman (not to mention a trip to NYC coming up), so I opted out this time around.

They have student work on the walls! 

 As for the manicure, it was incredibly relaxing. The colour I chose is from Butter London's S/S 2012 collection. The creator of Butter London gets her inspiration straight from the runways of Paris, New York, and London. She takes note of designers collections for the season, and bases her formaldehyde-free, vegan nail polish around these colour schemes. The result is a great, on-trend nail polish that goes on smoothly and with little mess (although that may have been the manicurists doing). I chose the mint green colour, and was really impressed with how long the manicure lasted. I generally don't keep nail polish on due to the fact that when I'm not clacking away on a keyboard, I'm sewing and pinning, and generally my hands don't get treated as well as they should be, but the colour stayed put for well over a week.

Curlique Beauty puts on events like this often; be sure to follow them on facebook to find out when the next one will be!

Finishing Touches

Well, my final collection for grad school is finally done. My portfolio is in, and now the only thing to do is start applying for internships and jobs. I've been putting everything off because I wanted some downtime, but really I know it's because I don't quite know what I want yet.

I'm torn between dreams right now. I wish I could have a "Remedial Chaos Theory" segment to my life, where I flip a coin and get to see both outcomes of my life. One where I stay here inVancouver, with its glorious free health care and clean mountain air; one where I move to New York with its incredible culture, exciting new adventures, and job opportunites in my field. Both options are quite viable at this point, but each has its own distinct benefits and sorting out which thing I'd like to do most is causing quite the internal conflict.

I know what I have to do, now the only thing really stopping me is myself.