Food July 24, 2015

Around the web

Note: This Friday Faves is dedicated to faves around the web.

Fave food story

I’ve been seeing this story pop on different sites all week! (Esquire, Cosmo) As it is I’ve been craving Chipotle for so long and I haven’t fulfilled that craving yet. Probably because the closest Chipotle near my home is about 10km away. Not that far, but far enough for me to contemplate whether to go or not. Hmph. Anyways, this guy-Andrew Hawryluk, ate Chipotle for 153 days and had nothing but great stuff to say about the results of doing that.

Fave recipe

The way I love my tea, London fog. Now I can have my cookies like that too. Thanks to this recipe I found on the web:

Fave tweet

What a tasty surprise all the way from #England! Can’t wait to try the new #BBQ flavour😍😄 #TyrrellsFirstBite pic.twitter.com/eOgky8V0sL

— Humara Kausar (@HumaraKausar) July 22, 2015

Got a suitcase full of these chips😍 this week! As you know I love BBQ (see twitter profile) and when I saw their new flavour, BBQ.. You can imagine the excitement soaring through me! Yes, food can have that effect on me. These chips are made from the finest, carefully selected potato varieties in the county of Herefordshire England. Classy chipping. They also have no artificial ingredients, gluten free and vegan friendly.

tyrrells chips — Craving some Tyrrells? (Loblaws, Wal Mart etc has them)

Fave song this week

Style July 3, 2015

Rips and Ruffles

It was a Rips and Ruffles kinda day…

I must say..(totally off topic) but Lays chips has done an amazing job by naming their chips, ruffles. I’m talking about ruffles in your clothes but for some reason when I say or think ruffles, the chips come to mind. (I don’t even eat chips anymore!). I apologize in advance if by the end of this post you’re craving chips.

I love this high and low ruffled top. To be honest, I can’t figure out where I got it from because the tag was driving me crazy, so I cut it off. Oops! The rips in these Zara jeans are poifect! Only because they’re just surface layer rips, not ripped to show skin. Which is great if it’s a bit chilly out. I don’t like being cold.

ootd

I feel as if I take this bcbg tote bag everywhere! It was one of my favourite buys on a trip to California. I love the colour and since matching/pairing your shoes with your purse is trending, this did the trick! Which by the way you need to check out this glamour post and their suggestions of soulmate purse and shoe pairings> here – loooveee it!

These wooden animal print bangles were gifted to me by a special friend of mine who went to Africa. They were bought from a market in Uganda. So you might or might have not noticed that I love purchasing items from my travels and then styling them into my everyday wardrobe. It’s like a constant reminder throughout the day of a memory or experience.

Have you bought something that reminds you of a memory or experience?

Top – Unknown
Necklace – Forever21
Tote Bag – BCBG
Jeans – Zara
Heels – Charles & Keith (Egypt)

Desserts July 2, 2015

DIY Candy Popsicles

candy popsicles how to flat lay with simply lemonade juice — lemonade candy popsicles

Craving something SOUR? Try this DIY sour candy popsicle recipe:

You’ll need:

Simply Lemonade (Pink)
Popsicle moulds
Sour candy

Pour in Simply Lemonade into popsicle moulds and add your favourite sour candy. Freeze and enjoy!

This is a great easy recipe to do with children or when you’re in a rush looking for a yummy frozen dessert. I love sour popsicles, but if you’re looking for a healthy alternative try switching up the juice with Simply Berry (no preservatives or added colours) and add some berries.

easy lemon cake with cake mix

berry quick summer dessert

Spring June 30, 2015

SS15 Shoe Collection 2015

1. Guess Gladiators – These sandals have gone with me to Mexico and everywhere in Italy this spring/summer! They go perfectly with almost all of my outfits.

2. Shoedazzle heels – I tend to skip months (a lot) with shoedazzle, but once in awhile I see something I really like and I’ve got to have it! These wedges are really comfortable surprisingly. Especially since they’re really high.

3. Onitsuka Tiger – This was my favourite shoe purchase made on our trip to Japan in Tokyo. Perfect for my ‘everyday errands’.

4. Shoedazzle Flats – I love the bedazzled front on these flats. Flats with fancy tips go awesome with maxi dresses, wide legged or palazzo pants!

5. Kate Spade Keds – Ah! I loveeeee these! These give me happy feet! They’re so comfortable and the pop of colour makes any day just so much more wonderful. I’ve had so many people compliment the cork material. You can find similar shoes here:

Keds Womens Teacup Cork Flat, Coral, 7.5 M US
or here.

6. Charles and Keith Pumps – Suede and faux leather beauties. These pumps are perfect with jeans and then even better to wear to the office.

Desserts June 26, 2015

Berry Quick Summer Dessert

On a hot summer day you want to make a quick dessert to enjoy outside. Here it is:

You need:

Berries
Whipped Cream
Cake (Preferably Vanilla or Sponge)
Simply Berry juice

Add cake, berries and then as much juice as you like. I added around 4-5 tablespoons of juice. The cake soaks up the flavour, making this a cool dessert. Top with whipped cream and a rolled wafer cookie!

easy lemon bundt cake with cake mix

Marketing June 20, 2015

Periscope vs Snapchat

RANT ALERT: I have no more space on my android to be downloading anymore apps so I steered away from Snapchat until I transferred over all my images and videos to my laptop. Now there’s another player in the social media world called Periscope and the Social Media Marketer in me must know, what’s this peri stuff all about. After deleting some unnecessary whatsapp images/videos, uninstalling viber and shazam, I’ve installed periscope. (P.S I’m glad I didn’t download Meerkat) With all these new social media platforms emerging, how do you decide which ones to use regularly? I’m going to keep it simple and lay out my pros/cons on how you can decide whether you’re a Periscope, a Snapchat or both platforms user.

Periscope

Periscope is an app where you see events happening in real-time. You’re suppose to experience the event from the broadcasters point of view. However, I can imagine it’ll be used for other reasons as well. Like live Q/A sessions, kind of like google+ live hangouts.

Pros
– LIVE broadcasting
– People viewing your broadcast can ask you questions
– People can like your broadcast as many times as they want (Shown by multiple floating hearts)
– Connected to your Twitter account
– Real time blocking of spammers/pervs/weirdos of all types
– You can save your broadcasts and share on Twitter etc
– You can choose to do public or private broadcasts

Cons
– The more people watching your broadcast and commenting makes it hard for you to keep up with any questions
– Stalkers will love this because they’ll know exactly what you’re doing..right now
– Logging out will be hard especially if you’re a nice person because it’s like having a one way video chat with so many people
– Time consuming
– As many likes as you want means it may not be very accurate in metrics if your mom is liking your broadcast a million times

Snapchat

Snapchat differs from periscope because the snap you just posted is not necessarily happening as it happens when people view it.

Pros
– Not in real-time (so you can delete that selfie you took until you get to your best one and then post another)
– You can create a public story or send snap videos or pictures privately
– Using emoticons, filters, geo-location stamps to make snaps creative and fun
– You build a 24 hour story of your day and can focus on highlights as opposed to one live hour
– You can save videos/pictures
– Viewers can screenshot your snaps and you’ll know who did
– No liking system, just viewers (this could be a con to some people)

Cons
– Annoying when people send their public stories to you privately as well
– Glitches in the app can cause your snaps to get deleted before you have a chance to send to story
– Offline saving snaps to load into story later doesn’t always work

Beauty June 19, 2015

GRAND OPENING: Toronto’s First Benefit Boutique!

Toronto’s Canada’s First Benefit Boutique is here!

You probably all know that I own a lot of Benefit products and that I’ve been a huge fan since my Shopper Drug Mart days of being a beauty advisor/make-up artist. If you asked me to name a few of my favourites, I’d start with gimme brow, high beam and the dallas bronzer. For those of you who ~~have been living under a rock,~~ don’t know about Benefit Cosmetics, it’s a San Francisco based make-up brand that believes “laughter is the best cosmetic”. Every product has a fun, girly and unique spin. I’ve been to the boutique in Connecticut and California, so I had an idea of what to expect.

I was over the moon excited to be invited to the Grand Opening of Canada’s first Benefit Boutique, here in Toronto. I must say, Benefit’s corporate team is a bright bunch. I mean, the whole team (brow experts to corporate) are amazing! The strategy of slowly entering the Canadian market by placing little brow bars in Sephora stores around the GTA was brilliant. The perfect way to create a strong clientele and an opportunity to see geographically what/where would work best for the first boutique. Well, that’s my own marketer assumption. If you haven’t heard yet, the boutique is located on 2614 Yonge St and you can’t miss it! (see above image of boutique front)

You don’t live in Toronto? Don’t worry, rumor has it that they’ll be opening more boutiques across the country in the next five years! The boutique has a brow raising variety of services. You can most importantly get your eyebrows done, facial and body waxing, threading, tanning and more.

If you didn’t get a chance to catch my snapchats (HumJK) from that day, here are the highlights:

Friday Faves June 12, 2015

Friday Faves: Essentials

What does your morning look like? Do you have essentials that you grab everyday or do they change based on your daily to do’s? It’s Friday and here are my essentials

Fave Perfume: I’m going to get real with you. I have way too many perfume favourites. I base my daily fave on the mood I’m in, where I’m going and what I’m wearing. So since today is an errand running kinda day, I’m wearing one of my fave freshest perfumes. Acqua di gioia by Giorgio Armani.

I keep this roller ball version in my tote bag in case I need to freshen up throughout the day.

Friday Fave Lippy: Keeping today very low key with my make-up so I’m using my favourite subtle pink by Smashbox in Posy Pink.

Fave Read: You never know where you’ll be standing/sitting, waiting in line for whatever it is, bored out of your mind. I don’t know about you, but I can only do so much instagraming, tweeting and snapping. Sometimes I need to feel that old school paper between my fingers, turn pages for inspiration. That’s where the summer issue of Globe Style Advisor comes in! I just got mine and it’s going in my bag today. You can download the issue for FREE here.

Fave Tote: Confession: I have SO many totes lying around in my closets. Sometimes I have trouble transitioning from my tote bag days to carrying a nice purse. Especially since my totes carry a lot more than most of my purses.

Fave Jewelry Holder: You need one place where you keep your everyday go to jewelry. A’int nobody got time to be going through jewelry boxes early in the mornin’… This triple fish dish is made and designed by founder of rcboisjoli, Alexx Boisjoli and his studio is in Toronto’s junction neighbourhood. (The triple fish motif is based on old fish can labels, a weathered and textured look was created to give the fish an antique look.) You can also shop for his quality ceramics online: here. He was also featured in Style Advisor on pg. 28.

DIY June 11, 2015

DIY – Tie Dye Pillowcase

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

When it starts getting gloomy outside and I’m stuck indoors, I get an itch to start a new project. A simple DIY does the trick. Have you ever tried to tie dye anything?

I was going through the spring issue of Style Advisor and noticed this page of tie dye cushions that inspired me to do my own!

What you need:

1 pillowcase
1 Rit® Dye colour
1 cup of salt if your pillowcase is made with cotton
Rubber bands
Hot Water
Bucket
Scissors

Directions: Gather the center of the pillowcase in your hand and wrap a rubber band around it.

Continue wrapping rubber bands all around the pillow case by twisting different sections and tying tight with rubber bands.

Fill your bucket with 2-3 gallons of hot water and put in the cup of salt. Stir. Now put in 1/2 the bottle of dye. Make sure you wear plastic gloves. Soak the tied up pillow case into the dye water. The longer you leave it in and the hotter the water, the darker it’ll turn out. Also.it may look dark because it’s wet. Confession: I didn’t follow instructions on how much water to use, to wash the pillowcase prior to dyeing and didn’t use any particular method in tying the rubber bands as some people would.

Take out the tied up pillow case and carefully cut the rubber bands off with scissors. Rinse the pillowcase until it rinses clear water. Wash the pillow case by hand and then put it in the dryer.

5 ways to wear a womens necktie

Beauty May 27, 2015

Benefit RollerLash vs Lancome Ôscillation Mascara [Review]

Benefit Roller Lash vs Lancome Ôscillation Mascara, which one wins at the end?

There are a ton of mascaras to choose from and the only way to find which ones work for you is by narrowing it down by the look you’re trying to achieve and finding mascaras that help you achieve it. Most of the time I use my mascara by Too Faced that gives me thicker lashes but other times I go for a lighter lengthier look. Benefit Cosmetics launched the Roller Lash Mascara last month with a social media campaign that you couldn’t miss.

Product Face Off

Round 1 – Price

Benefit Roller Lash $29
Lancome Ôscillation $39.50

Round 2 – Product/Results

Roller Lash Facts:
This mascara is inspired by hair rollers and gives you curled long lashes for a wide-eyed look. The brush has a patent-pending Hook ‘n’ Roll™ brush. They’re tiny little hooks that catch, lift and curl all lashes. Even the shortest and straight lashes. The curling effect from this mascara is good enough to replace your eyelash curler.

Ôscillation Facts:
This mascara has a vibrating wand to help lift, lengthen and give volume to lashes. This vibrating mascara provides 7,000 oscillations per minute! Pretty cool if you ask me, but doesn’t stop me from still moving my hand to apply the mascara. (I can’t help it!) I love that it doesn’t have parabens, sulfates and phthalates. Also free of synthetic fragrances, synthetic dyes, and triclosan. Which means it’s great for contact wearers or sensitive eyes.

Round 3 – Wear

Lancome Ôscillation:
You can see below that length is mediocre and volume is non existent. I did three coats and this is what I got. I found the vibrations don’t really do much. Instead, it started to get a bit clumpy close to the base of my lashes.

Benefit Roller Lash:
Below image shows lots of volume, length and a bit of lift or curl midway. This is with two coats. No clumps.

Winner:
Roller Lash! Great price comparatively, true to its facts and winning results.

Have you tried the Roller Lash or the Lancome Ôscillation mascara? Which do you prefer? Comment below 🙂