Michelle in a Nutshell

First things first, sorry for my short hiatus this past week. I hate it when that happens. But somehow my first week back at work mixed in with some Christmas festivities (the 7th of January Orthodox type) just got in the way of blogging.

Hi everyone, I'm back!

I've missed this little blog of mine :) 

My 10 day vacation was absolutely wonderful and I really enjoyed the time away from the computer and internet. But obviously, I'm glad I'm back to wi-fi and my laptop ;)

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE!

I just had a wonderful day and evening spent with loved ones, lots of laughs and delicious food. Oh, and some awesome gift-giving went down as well...score!

Seeing as I'm headed out of the country tomorrow for 10 days and won't be able to post on here since I won't even have an internet connection most of the time, I thought I'd make one last mini post about today's nails and makeup :)

(photos taken with my iPhone)

I know, I know, this post (as well as the gift ideas) is pretty last minute, but I still wanted to share a few of my gift ideas which are mostly DIY (do it yourself). 

I think DIY gifts are always thoughtful and interesting - and I love gifting them as well as receiving them. So here's what I chose to gift a few of my best girlfriends.

Today I finished decorating our apartment for Christmas and thought I'd snap some photos. 

I really love decorating for the holidays and I sometimes peruse the pages of blogs and Pinterest looking for decorating inspiration.

So I thought I'd share my decorations if any of you are looking for some last minute ideas :)

Get ready for photo overload...

I'm back with another holiday nail tutorial! Woo woo!

Alright, I'll stop tooting my own horn. But hey, don't we all love nail polish and nail art?

Ya...I thought so :)

So, here's something I came up with last Sunday whilst hanging out at home on a cold wintery day. I was of course inspired by Christmas but I didn't want to use the traditional red and green colors. So I went for a simple "wintery" shade with this light blue.

Hope you like it!

I've noticed lately that I've been wearing a few lipstick and lipgloss combo's lately and thought I'd share them for anyone looking for some lip inspiration. 

I love reading blog posts about lip products because personally, I find the lip products area at any makeup counter to be quite daunting. I like to know what I'm looking for in advance, swatch it at the store to make sure it's right, and then buy it. Quick process. Since there are so many shades available, I quickly feel overwhelmed and don't know which shade is right for me.

On December 5th, 2013 the first Inglot store in Switzerland opened in the Löwencenter in Lucerne!

A little while ago, my friend Hollee sent me a link to a blog post featuring "candy cane nails". I've seen this idea on a few blogs and YouTube channels but I wanted to tone down the candy cane pattern to one nail instead of having it on all 10. Hollee also asked me how one should go about making this design, since the aforementioned blog post didn't include any instructions.

I've been loving quite a few MAC Cosmetics eyeshadows lately so I thought I'd share them for anyone interested! I really like reading blog posts about random eyeshadows because I find it's much easier to decide on which ones you might like rather than going to the MAC counter and being overwhelmed with the choices. 

So here are my picks at the moment!

Anyone else out there having as much fun with their Ciaté Mini Mani Month advent calendar as I am?!

I discovered this Christmas tag on Fee's blog Makeup Savvy and thought I'd join in on the fun since I also love the Christmas season! Georgina from Makeup Pixi3 came up with this tag so click on both these links to check out Fee's and Georgina's answers :)

Photo credit: Pinterest

Happy December!

Yay, December is finally here. Now the joy of the holidays and Christmas can finally set in and no one has to feel guilty that they're excited for Christmas at the beginning of November (me!).

And since it's December 1st, today is the day to....

Before jumping into December, I thought I'd share a few photos from our summer vacation in Turkey! 

Yay for CHRISTMAS!

I'm so excited for the holidays and Christmas vacation and going to Serbia & Bosnia and for gifts! Receiving and giving, of course...

Seeing as I love reading other bloggers' wishlists and gift ideas I thought I'd share my personal wishlist this year.

Something kind of funny is that I already (sorta) own three of the items on my wishlist...oops....

Anyways, here we go!

Hi guys!

Today I wanted to show you and introduce you to my sister Daisy's handmade jewelry collection called Calysto. She makes beautiful, unique and creative pieces all by herself!

While I lay at home sick with the flu, I'm reminiscing about a trip to Venice, Italy my boyfriend and I took over a long weekend, Nov. 1st - 3rd. It felt way too short spending only 2 nights there but it was so lovely being able to get away for the weekend and experience a new city.

We arrived on Friday at about 4pm after driving for about 8 hours. The road trip was supposed to take us about 6 hours but we ran into a huge traffic jam in Italy which made us arrive 2 hours later than planned. We parked our car in a humungous parking garage and were told to take the water taxi into the city center. They don't allow cars to drive into the city - which is so cool.

I'm really into trying out various foundations at the moment. I've had some crazy breakouts in my chin area (you damn hormones!) and this has moved me to find a better full-coverage foundation.

In my last foundation post, I tried out the YSL Youth Liberator foundation. I liked it, but I feel like the coverage wasn't as high as I expected it to be.

Drumroll please.... it's MAC HOLIDAY HAUL time! Woo woo!

Okay, my excitement may be a teensy bit over-the-top but come on, the collections are just so beautiful.

Here's what I picked up at the MAC counter in Lucerne:

I chose this brush kit because I know that I'll use at least 4 of the 5 brushes. The 217 blending brush is obviously a must and the 239 eye shader brush is very useful. I own both of these in the full-size version and use them very often. They'll be perfect for travelling since they're in the "mini" size. The 212 flat definer brush is perfect for applying dark eyeshadow as liner on the bottom lash line and the 168 angled contour brush is great for contouring with bronzer or for applying blush. The only brush I'm iffy about is the 193 angled foundation brush. I've never been a fan of these flat foundation brushes since my foundation always seems streaky after using this type of brush. I'd much rather apply my foundation with my fingers or with a buffing brush. But we shall see :)

Here's a swatch of the rest of the products I purchased.

From the Divine Night Holiday Colour Collection:

Kohl Power Eye Pencil in Raven

Divine Night Lipstick in Private Party

Divine Night Cremesheen Glass in Private Party

And lastly, I also purchased the Pro Longwear Paint Pot in Frozen Violet which is part of the Stroke of Midnight Eye Bag in Violet but it's also part of the permanent paint pot line so I bought it without the kit. Frozen Violet is a frosted purple silver cream eyeshadow and it's so pretty in real life (not coming across in this crappy lighting). I've used this eyeshadow as a base so far, but I still need to use it alone, I'm curious to see how that comes out.

The eye pencil in Raven is quite a dry pencil but still applies nicely. It's described as an "intense black with red pearl" but it's a really interesting shade because in certain lighting it can come across quite bronzey and even burgundy-like. 

My absolute favorites from this purchase are definitely the lipstick and cremesheen glass in Private Party. The description of the lipstick is pretty spot-on: dirty plum mauve. I love it. The cremesheen glass is a plum mauve with pearl so these two are perfection when paired together.

For every day use in the fall/winter time, I like to apply some of the lipstick onto my ring finger and then I pat it onto my lips creating a stain-like berry lip. I then apply the cremesheen glass over that.

So gorgeous, trust me.

I'll definitely do a makeup look soon using all the products to show you how they look.

I'm excited. Are you excited?

*This is not a sponsored post.*