Today I am wearing...

The baby fell asleep while I was getting dressed this morning, so while she takes a nap and I wait for her to wake up so I can feed her and we can go out and do some shopping, I thought I'd do a quick post on my makeup today.

When I was working I tended to wear the same makeup every day, so being on maternity leave is a nice chance to look through my collection and pick out new things to wear every morning, often finding things I'd completely forgotten I own. Today, for example, I came across the Becca Eye Tints, which I own in three shades and which I'd completely forgotten about.

The picture above may not be great for accurately depicting the shades, but here's what I'm wearing:

Giorgio Armani High Precision Retouch: A fantastic under-eye concealer, this blends beautifully, covers dark circles, brightens the eye area and lasts all day. I wear shade 2 and I'm fairly pale.

Giorgio Armani Micro-fil Loose Powder: Perfect for taking down the shine of sunscreen when I don't want to wear foundation. This is really light and looks very natural on - I use shade 1 in this.

Giorgio Armani Sheer Blush in shade 10: The picture doesn't do it justice but this is a pretty rose bronze with shimmer. It's easy to overdo it with this, so I use a light hand when applying. Lovely summer shade and nice if you're not a fan of bronzer but like to look just a little bit sun-kissed.

Becca Eye Tint in Baroque: At least I think it's Baroque - for some reason they don't put the shade name on the tube - if it's not Baroque then it's Paracus. This is a cream shadow in a lovely neutral brown with fine shimmer; doesn't give a lot of colour, but evens out the eyelid and is perfect for a very natural look. Very easy and quick to apply and also works well as an eye shadow base.

Becca The Ultimate Mascara in Black: This is one of those tubing mascaras and gives my lashes lovely length and definition. Unfortunately this tube has been on the go for a while and is drying out a bit so it's time to replace it.

Shiseido Perfect Rouge lipstick in BE208: This neutral beige shade has just the right amount of pink in it so that I don't end up looking like a corpse and finishes off a natural look nicely.

Orla Kiely Etc SS10 - Baby Changing Bag

As you may have gathered from previous posts, I love, love, love Orla Kiely. So when I discovered the baby changing bag in the Etc range for SS10 while I was pregnant, I immediately started plotting my justifications for spending that amount of money on a changing bag.

As it turns out, having a baby means you don't have to justify wanting a fancy baby bag and my very lovely husband picked it up for me for my birthday.



In case you do need a justification, however, this isn't limited only to baby stuff and the multiple pockets will also make it very useful later on. There's a large zip pocket on the back where I keep my wallet and keys, a smaller zip pocket on the inside that's perfect for a mobile phone, two slit pockets on the front where I always know I'll find my carpark or train ticket and then the six elasticated compartments inside which are currently being used for nappies, muslins, babygrows and cotton wool, but will also work for water bottles, umbrellas, cameras and sunglasses in the future - goodbye to searching blindly through a jumble of items thrown together in a vast bag!

Chanel Riviera is summer in a bottle

The summer sunshine at the weekend made me crave lollipop shades on my fingers and toes, and when I spied Chanel's Riviera nail polish on the counter I knew it was the one for me. I also fully expected it to be sold out - this is Chanel we're talking about, where shades like Black Satin, Vendetta and Particuliere have sold out before even hitting the shelves in recent seasons. The gods were smiling on me, however, and I scored the very last bottle they had - "I'll be murdered when all the women who looked for this during the week come back in! I told them we were getting an order in and we only got two bottles" breathed the sales assistant, her eyes wide at the drama of it all.

Caught up in the excitement, I gave in to her suggestion that I absolutely needed a base coat to use with it. And although I rarely bother with basecoats or topcoats, I have to admit that this one seemed to do a good job - despite my recent manic hand washing habit and a less than careful job applying the polish, I got a full 5 days out of the manicure before a chip appeared.

Riviera is a delicious Legally Blonde pink - depending on the light it varies between a bright raspberry and a neon pink and yet somehow manages not to look garish against my paleness. Perfect for fingers and toes - now if only we could get last weekend's temperatures back so I could break out the sandals and some perfectly pink toes...

APC Madras

I took a look at the APC website the other day and happily discovered the new Madras collection is up. The Madras collections are always lovely and summery and happily more affordable than the main line.

I fell in love with this blouse, but it was sadly sold out:



(the print looks much better in this close-up:)



Luckily they still had this t-shirt in stock:



and I couldn't say no to yet another summer scarf:



Finally, since the lovely April weather has given way to a much cooler May, leading me to wonder whether there's any chance of a warm summer this year, I had to pick up this sailor pullover:



Loving the button detail on the hip!

Mmm, macaroons

Happy birthday to me!
The H scored major points by bringing home red roses and these...



My actual birthday present came from my beloved Orla Kiely and will be the subject of a future post :)

My latest accessory...

... and the reason for my blogging silence lately:



Zoë arrived on March 1st, a whole week early. Which surprised me, as I was convinced she'd be late. Maybe it was something to do with the full moon the previous night. Either way, she was in quite a hurry to make her way into the world.

We love her to bits (even when she insists on staying awake crying until 5am) and when things settle down a bit (I'm assured they will at some stage), I'll be back to the world of blogging again.

Bye bye Cara

Deviating a bit from the usual, but our family dog Cara passed away in her sleep last night and a tribute was needed. Known as the Red Sister or the Mad Sister (depending on the extent of her adventures that day), she was a 12 year old Irish Setter who still looked like a puppy (she wasn't a full-sized Setter).

She liked to stand and lean against your leg when you sat on the sofa and sometimes she'd rest her head on your knee while leaning. Or she'd lie down on the floor and use your foot for a pillow. She liked to drink rainwater out of plant pots rather than clean water from her bowl and if she caught you looking she'd go all mad guard dog on the magpies in the garden.

From time to time she'd be brave enough to climb the stairs in the house (varnished wood and slippery under doggie paws) and then she'd sit stubbornly at the top looking down, too afraid to make her own way back downstairs. And when you'd lift her to carry her back down, her paws would stick straight out in front of her, she'd be so tense (although she'd turn her head and look nonchalantly in the other direction as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening).

She will be missed a lot. Here she is, caught in the middle of offering her paw to the photographer.