las vegas - our family's thanksgiving tradition

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  

As part of an immigrant family, I have childhood memories of us trying to "fit in" and enjoying the traditional Thanksgiving meal - turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, pumpkin pie and the whole kit-n-caboodle.  However as time passed, we all came to the conclusion that we really didn't like turkey all that much.  So, we started doing surf n turf Thanksgivings.  Then in recent years, we got even lazier and developed a new tradition for Thanksgiving - namely, Las Vegas!

best things i ate/did the last couple of weeks (new orleans, peche, wilde wine bar, republique, jessica jones, return to fitness)

(Week of November 9th and Week of November 16th).

Bourbon Street at dusk.

Two weeks ago I went to New Orleans for a friend's 40th birthday party and it was super fun!  I absolutely love New Orleans - for its music, amazing food and cocktails and its general fun-loving spirit.  The standouts for this trip, besides the great company?

favorite tools for applying foundation (beauty blender and sephora stippling brush)

My favorite tool for foundation has consistently been the Beauty Blender.  It provides the most natural, flawless finish for the majority of my foundations.  I've read some reviews where people think it's all hype, but I suspect they are not using the sponge properly.  You have to really wet it through and squeeze out the water multiple times until the sponge becomes quite large and full.  Then you sort of "bounce" it on your face to apply foundation or to blend in other cream products.  (It also helps to de-cake or lighten powder if you accidentally used too heavy a hand in applying product.)  

However, there was one foundation that even the Beauty Blender couldn't get to work for me - the ByTerry Cover Expert - which seemed to just sit on top of my skin in an odd, unflattering way.  But recently I discovered a brush that magically applies this foundation beautifully on my skin - the Sephora small stippling brush (#42).  I had read so many reviews about this brush so I thought I would give it a go during the recent Sephora VIB sale, and boy am I glad I did!  I can finally use the overpriced ByTerry foundation and get a lovely, natural and dewy finish.  

I still love my Beauty Blender and for the most part it still gives me the best results for my other foundations and cc creams, but the Sephora stippling brush is now my go-to brush for the ByTerry foundation and what I use when I'm feeling lazy. 

(Random note - My Hakhuhodo foundation brush is also quite lovely - amazingly soft hairs - but I don't think the price is worth it.  But I just got it and am getting the hang of using it so my opinion might change.)

asian beauty: lip mask review

I had seen these funny lip masks on youtube so I thought I would buy some on my recent trip to Japan.  There were several "flavors" - honey, herb, lemon, fruit, etc.  I decided to try the "honey" one since I love all things honey.  The instructions were all in Japanese but it seemed pretty self-explanatory:

• open package
• peel jelly mask in the shape of big lips off the plastic sheeting and 
• put on clean lips for 5 - 30 minutes

 So how was the lip mask?

best and worst things i did last week (sephora vib sale, jonathan gold's la times event, seven deadly sins, etc.)

(Week of November 2, 2015).

Sadly, these delicious shrimp tacos were not at the Jonathan Gold event...

 Last week started off quite slow.  The "big" event of the week was the Jonathan Gold Los Angeles Times food event on Wednesday in Downtown Los Angeles ... but that turned out to be surprisingly disappointing.  There were only a handful of restaurants and bars, but the variety and amount of food and drink available was quite slim.  In fact, some of the vendors ran out of food hours before the end of the event.  I was hoping to try something new and exciting but alas there were no standouts.  Some general thoughts:

ncla "so rich" cuticle oil - the first cuticle oil that actually works for me

I don't do manicures very often simply because I'm not particularly good at it, and I'm usually too lazy to go to a nail salon.  But as a skincare fanatic, I do want my hands to look nice even in its "natural" state.  I've tried a few cuticle oils and natural oils (e.g., Sally Hansen, Essie, Burt's Bees, Josie Maran argan oil, etc.) and I never really felt they did very much.  It just felt as if I were putting a greasy or oily layer on my fingers with no real results.

But recently, I got the NCLA So Rich Cuticle Oil in a subscription box, and the moment I put it on my cuticles I felt like it was working.  Weird, huh?  I tried it again a week later, and again, I  felt it absorbed into my cuticles and really did moisturize and improve the texture of my cuticles.  Now, I do it once or twice a week before going to bed.  If you are on the market for an effective cuticle oil, check this one out.  Or if you have your own recommendations, let me know!

I'm not sure where it's available but I found it at beauty.com online for $16.  See here.

best things i did/ate last week (halloween fun, boiling crab, daylight savings, etc.)

(Week of October 26th)

I can't believe it's Halloween already!  Soon it will be Thanksgiving, then Christmas, then a whole new year!  Time really does seem to pass more quickly as one gets older...

Since it was the week of Halloween, the best things I did were pretty much related to that holiday.  I don't have kids so Halloween for me means dressing up and partying with friends and touring around our neighborhood to see the amazing decorations that go up every year.  So the best things this week?