My Birthday Preparation

Hey everyone,

It's my birthday on Tuesday :-)

Over the next week I'm going to be really busy with outings and getting my house ready for people coming to visit, and I'll be getting myself ready too!

I went out for Kayleigh's birthday last weekend, and left half my brushes and make up at a friend's house, including some pigment samples from Glamour Doll Eyes that I wanted to show you, but hopefully I'll be getting them back before my birthday!

When you're preparing for a big night out like a birthday or any special occasion, (or any time you're going out and you know someone special is going to be there ;-p ) you want to look your very best, free of blemishes and uneven skin, perfect hair and stunning make up. This is my plan for skincare up to the day (bare in mind I have less than a week and no money to buy new things or pay for treatments).

I hate my upper arms and my shoulders. I always try to have them covered. Not just because of my size and my bingo wings; my skin is uneven with redness and stretchmarks, and most annoyingly I get these little bumps full of sebum (that firm-ish white substance inside blackheads) all over my shoulders and down my forearms.

To combat this I plan to use a body scrub like Soap & Glory's Flake Away or Gok Wan's Gorgeous body scrub (because that's what's in my bathroom) on a daily basis, probably interchanging because Flake Away is some serious stuff and I'll be red raw if I use it every day, even for a short time. Scrubs are not meant for daily use unless otherwise stated on the packaging, but this is for an intensive short course to get my skin up to scratch for the day and I have been neglecting my skin for the past couple of weeks, being away and concentrating on spring cleaning.

I'm going to extend my face care routine down onto my chest. Bigger busted ladies amongst you will know that with great boobs come great responsibilities. Wearing heavy duty bras and even not wearing bras can often make you hot and sweaty, and the rubbing of bras on the skin will lead to blocked pores and blemishes whilst the nature of that area of skin doesn't lend itself well to body scrubs because they are too chunky, gritty, and rough, and I don't want to damage the skin.

Speaking of my face care, I'll be using my Soap & Glory Fab Pore cleanser every day, my Body Shop face brush every other day, and my Lush Herbalism cleanser in a number of different ways throughout.
Sometimes I mix Herbalism just with water for a normal cleanse, as it is meant to be used. Sometimes I add it to a creamy cleanser to make it feel more luxurious. This week I'm going to be experimenting with it as a base for a mask by mixing it with egg or yoghurt or honey to help it stick, because it helps remove redness and I want to use it as much as I can for that quality.
I'll be moisturising, using my GinZing on my eyes and a light moisturiser on my face, and steering clear of make up when I don't have to use it.

My friend has just passed her course and become a qualified hairdresser (yesterday!) so I'll be heading down to Kingston College on Monday morning to get my hair re-coloured and neatened up. I'll probably get a conditioning treatment done whilst I'm at it. Going to a hairdressing school to get your hair done is always a lot cheaper, and they use quality products. If you don't know anyone in training and you don't trust an unknown student to do anything complex, get it styled by someone you trust and just go in to a training salon for touch-ups later on. I'm quite lucky to have known Kitten for a long time, and I know she's good and I can trust her to do what she wants knowing that I'll like the results.
(Congratulations on passing your course Kat, I wish you the best love x.)

I had a Garra Rufa fish pedicure the other week when I was in Dundee, it was pretty awesome. They trimmed my cuticles! My feet were left a lot softer and smoother, but I've been out in heels since then and I'll be needing a touch up. Sadly I don't think I can afford another fish treatment, but I do still have some Lush Stepping Stone left, and that's where the hubby-to-be comes in. I'll be wrangling him into giving me a foot bath and rubbing some Stepping Stone all over them. Nice.

My hands will come last. Doing so much housework is not making it easy to make them beautiful, so I'll just put my L'Occitane Shea butter hand cream on them daily, and give myself a manicure the day before I start to celebrate, to save my nail polish chipping.

Will it all work? We'll have to wait and see.
TTFN

Hell Thirteen (soon to be Fourteen! Just kidding, I'll be 26 this year.)
xoxo

An Award? For Me? Aww!

I was just looking at my Twitter mentions (you can see my feed in the side bar and you're welcome to follow me) and I saw that the lovely lady who writes The OPI Junkie has given me an award.

Thank you!

The Liebster Award is designed to bring well deserved additional recognition to those bloggers with less than 300 followers.  If you receive the award you link back to the blogger had nominated you and nominate 3 more blogs.

So here are my nominations:

Gemma, who writes Flab To Fab, a blog about her quest to loose weight and be healthier. I find her inspirational. She just reached the 2 stone mark.

Laura Pernetti Kinch, my friend who writes Healthy Skincare For You. She reviews skincare products and she's lovely.

Lastly, the beautiful Sarah May aka Purplepain, author of The inept's guide to first-time gardening. She, like me, is responsible for a garden for the first time, and is documenting her attempt to turn it into something wonderful.

I moved to a new house a year and a half ago and have a garden after 24 years of a tiny balcony filled with mum's pot plants. Now I'm having to teach myself how to make my garden beautiful without my mum to guide me (though the library she left me does have books on most subject matter, including gardening) and it's great to read Sarah May's posts and know I'm not alone. Starting a garden can be a daunting task, (like re-decorating a room only you have to grow the paint!) and she has some great ideas mixed in with hints and tips.

Thank you again to The OPI Junkie for the award. I am humbled at being made to feel so welcome in the blogging community.

TTFN,

Hell Thirteen

xoxo

News Update

Sorry no post proper just yet, I'm in the middle of editing another two videos on the make up I did for Kayleigh at Hotter Than Glammed.

Just to give you a peek into the future, I have some more reviews coming. I have a GINORMOUS e.l.f. haul/review to do (probably why it's taken so long to get round to) including the new Complete Coverage Concealer in "light".
I got a gift bag from Origins including the GinZing I've been hearing Jim Chapman rave about (brother to the Pixiwoo girls), duo lipgloss and mascara.
I got a few things from Lush, too, and have been testing them so I can tell you about them.

I also won a prize!

Eyeko have been running a competition for best beauty tricks and one of my tricks came second, so as soon as said prize arrives I will review whatever comes in it. In the high likelihood that I already own everything they send me I will probably run my own competition and send it on, but we shall see. I think I need some more subscribers before I do another giveaway. Shall we say, 50? I'll have to think about it...

Speak to you soon,

Hell Thirteen
xoxo

News for Mass Effect fans plus Games to Look Forward To

For those of you who don't know, I am really looking forward to Mass Effect 3's release. The first two were amazing and I really didn't have the same problems with the sequel as I did with Dragon Age 2. It still took time to complete and while it's true that many places were copied there was still a lot of content to get through, the story was awesome and what you did in the first game had a real effect on what happened in the second.

In case you are wondering why I compare Mass Effect, a sci-fi game, with Dragon Age which is a fantasy game, it's because both games are made by BioWare and both are RPGs.

News has just been released that Mass Effect 3 will not be released until the first quarter of 2012, between three and six months later than the original release date given of November 2011. Nobody wants to wait, especially with great games so sparse on the ground this year. The time it takes to complete a game appears to be decreasing, and we gamers are being left for longer and longer periods of time with nothing decent to play that we haven't already clocked. On the upside, hopefully this means that ME3 will be an even better game than it would have been if it were released in November.

It is easy to forget with the excitement over games like Skyrim, DAII, ME3 and Portal 2, that there are a whole bunch more games that look awesome on their way this year. Personally I'm really looking forward to Uncharted 3 and Batman Arkham City. Lego Pirates of the Caribbean is out on May 13th and I love the Lego games and the Pirates of the Caribbean films (not so much the games) so it looks to be a good one. I never played American McGee's Alice the first time round, but it seems like the kind of game that would be right up my street. Unfortunately the original game is both rare and expensive. However, with an ETA of June, Alice: Madness Returns looks to be a decent sequel and it comes with a copy of the original, and I'm assuming they've reworked it for the PS3 to go with the sequel. PC gaming isn't really my thing, aside from anything I don't have a working mouse.

One game that I'm really not sure about is Shadows Of The Damned. It could be amazing or awful, and I really don't think I'll know until I've played it. I could make a pretty safe assumption that it will be the same format as every other Japanese horror game, because playing through Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, Project Zero (Fatal Frame to any non-Brits), Dante's Inferno, and I'm sure there are others, they all have the same menu and sound effects within the menu, even the same font. Project Zero is the game that stands apart because it is the only one of these which is truly scary, and the gameplay is very different in that the speed is slower, you can enter a 1st person view, and there is far less music involved. This doesn't necessarily make the game bad, you just have to look at the more subtle differences, like plot ;-) I could always be wrong, and the game sounds cool regardless.

Anyway, that thar be my stuff to look forward to this year. It only really comes to about six. DA2 is already out and I've already finished, ME3 is moved to next year along with Bioshock Infinite. I have plans to get Portal 2 as soon as I can find it in stock, and in the meantime I am finally playing Assassin's Creed Brotherhood. Yes, I know, I'm really late. I just missed the bandwagon with that. I was all over the first 2 games, and I think I thought of it as more of an online multiplayer add-on than a continuation of the storyline.
I must say I've been watching The Borgias of late (the tv series with Jeremy Irons as the Rodrigo Borgia) and it adds a whole new depth to the story, so many of the characters are the same. It makes me want to replay Assassin's Creed 2 but I think I traded it in when my PS3 died.

So, I will be off now. Many things to do!

TTFN

Hell Thirteen
xoxo

News for Mass Effect fans

There's a new add on DLC for Mass Effect 2 coming out next Tuesday called "Arrival." The pack will set you back 560 Microsoft Points on XBox Live Arcade, £5.49 or roughly $7 on the PSN store and 560 BioWare points on the PC. - according to the Facebook page.


Mass Effect fans who have already downloaded the various expansions from BioWare will probably have mixed feelings about the upcoming add on, as Mass Effect is a great game and the more we can do within the Mass Effect universe, the better. However, this DLC is coming a long time after most will have set down their controllers and moved on to pastures new.
Previous downloadable content as been pretty short, a few extra missions that won't last a hardcore gamer more than a day. 


BioWare's other roleplaying giant, the Dragon Age series, brought out Origins: Awakening, which was a proper expansion that lasted some time at least, but cost as much as the original game. I would entertain buying a GOTY (Game Of The Year) edition, had I not already purchased and downloaded most of the available DLC for Mass Effect 2. Of course, with add ons purchased online, there's no way of knowing if they will be worth the money until they have already been purchased, and if you don't like it, there are no refunds and no way of selling them on. 


I plan to get Arrival and review it here, to help you decide if it's a purchase you want to make. In fact, I might as well review all available DLC for the game while I'm at it. There's just one problem - I lent my copy of the game to a friend.


No matter what this expansion brings, I think BioWare need to step up their game. Bethesda brought out two main expansions for their last installment in their Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion - The Shivering Isles and the Knights Of The Nine were proper expansions, The Shivering Isles in particular was my favorite thing to play in a role playing game ever. Then you get BioWare releasing things like Witch Hunt for Dragon Age Origins and it looks pathetic in comparison.


Until next time, buh-bye!