The Prudence 2010 Best Buy Beauty Awards

I have a bit of a soft spot for Prudence. 

And not just because a book review they published a couple of years ago gave me one of my first looks at my name in print.

A glossy Irish lifestyle magazine, Prudence is all about spending smarter to achieve a champagne-looking lifestyle on an own-brand lemonade budget, and I was delira to be invited along to their 2010 Best Buy Beauty Awards. They were held last Thursday night in the rather swanky Gibson Hotel, which is just across the old car park from the Point (I fecking refuse to call it the O2) and would be very handy indeed for post-gig sleeps.

The awards were compèred by TV3's Sinéad Desmond, who is even teenier In Real Life than she appears on the tellybox. Winners on the night included L'Onglex, who had the Hand & Nail category nailed (groan) with their great acetone-free nail varnish remover, €3.67, and Penneys, who scooped awards for their SPF30 Sun Lotion, €2.70, and Ta Ta For Now concealer, €3.

The primary focus of the awards is on new products which deliver all that they promise at purse-friendly prices. You'll find the full rundown in the 32-page Best Buy Beauty Awards booklet which will accompany the September/October issue of Prudence (on newsstands from this Wednesday, 1^st September.)


Pic via Prudence. Forget Where's Wally, can you find Aoiffffffe from last year's D'Apprentiss in it?

The (Interwebs) Week In Review.

» He's being branded a terrible sell-out altogether by the design elite, but frankly I don't much care what they think. My iPhone would look very lovely indeed in one of Jonathan Adler's new cases (via Apartment Therapy).

» UK-based Beadesaurus had me at "acrylic gingerbread man ring". Awe. Some. I can forsee entire paychecks being lost to their kitschy offerings.

» From the Irish Times' Fash Mob blog comes the welcome news that you'll get 15% off purchases at ASOS until midnight on Tuesday 31^st August 2010 by using code AWSTYLE15 at checkout. Huzzah! Rosemary recommends shopping in The Queen's Pounds Sterling for additional savings, which is a top tip and exactly I'll be doing when I manage to finally decide on a design and colourway in Vivienne Westwood's Lady Dragon shoes. These are the tentative winners so far and are in my basket even as I type:

Enjoy the rest of your weekend, whatever you get up to. I'll mostly be concentrating on shouting at the telly for the next little while.

COME ON THE LILYWHITES!

Meal-time musings

One of the reasons you won't see me on the Irish version of CDWM and that I could never be a food blogger is, well, I am really not a great cook. I quite like having a go, but trying to co-ordinate the finishing time of different dishes brings me out in a sweat, and my attempts to make my own pastry always end in disaster (which is bizarre because my hands are always freezing.)

The other reason foodie endeavours like these wouldn't work out is because I rarely enjoy the meals that I prepare. I always expect them to be way more delicious than they usually are, which is very disappointing given the amount of effort (and, on occassion, frustrated tears) that goes into them.

While this meal melancholy is obviously bad news for me and drives Himself to distraction (apparently having someone say "Lookit, don't feel that you have to eat it. I know it's not great" doesn't actually add to the dining experience), it's good news for you! It means that any recipes I post or link to resulted in meals that I liked, so they're probably dead easy, look far more impressive than the level of work required to prepare them would indicate, and are wildly tasty.

Case in point: this seared pollack, pea and watercress purée, and oven-roasted tomatoes recipe from BBC Good Food. 

I've cooked it twice, with a few minor adjustments. I substituted some frozen cod with parsley sauce from the Birds Eye Simply "Bake to Perfection" range for the pollack, used petit pois because they came in a smaller bag than the other frozen peas on offer, and added a knob of butter to the purée. It was still gorgeous. Both times. Even Himself, who is not big into green things and has a special dislike of frozen peas, pronounced it tasty.

Both times.

Result!


Image via BBC Good Food

Today, I am mostly wearing...

... cream lace dress from Penneys (in store now, €17)
... taupe leggings from Penneys (in store now, €3)
... gold shoes from Dune
... and Sephora by OPI Ocean Love Potion (a gorgeously murky teal creme) on my nails.

Not too shabby for a Tuesday where I'm working from home, not expecting to leave the house, and there are no visitors due, eh?

Talontastic Thursday: Rrrrraaarrrrr!

Talontastic Thursday will be happening on Beaut.ie today - mosey on over to see my step-by-step DIY leopard print nails how to!

Foolproof & Easy Peasy Savoury Tart

So.

Do you wanna see what I made for dinner tonight?

(Course you do.)

(It's very impressive.)

(More bracketed sentances.) 

(To build suspense, d'you see.)

Well, imagine me striking a jaunty pose, flourishing some jazz hands and chirping "Ta da!"

I shocked myself with the awesomeness of this parma ham and buffalo mozzarella tart; it turned out absolutely brilliantly. Not only was it gorgeous looking and really, really delicious, it was also super easy to make. 

Thanks to Like Mam Used To Bake for posting the recipe - head on over there now to check it out!

Let's go fly a kite...

Despite Mary Poppin's chirpy encouragement, it's years since I've flown a kite.

Maybe even - gulp! - decades. (Yes. Plural.)

I used to be completely obsessed with kites as a kid, strangely enough, and regularly tried to make them myself using, er, plastic bags and canes and baling twine. The last time I had a go of a kite that would actually take off - none of my DIY numbers were capable of becoming airborne, would you believe - was on the shores of Lough Corrib in Galway, when myself and the sister and Mam and Dad were on our summer holidays with my aunt and uncle and three cousins.

The kite - I remember it being green and purple, but it could just as easily have been yellow with orange spots, given my appalling memory - eventually ended up in a tree, which Dad was devastated about, but it was great fun while it lasted.

Happily, I had better luck playing with Himself's nephew's kite down on Clonea strand yesterday...

Duping the turquoise-y Tiffany goodness of China Glaze "For Audrey"

My rainbow nail tips post on Beaut.ie yesterday drew a question from reader SJP's Missing Mole, who wondered if Barry M Mint Green was a dupe for China Glaze For Audrey. I thought I'd do a quick comparison swatch of some of the blue-greens in my stash to show them side-by-side.

Daylight, overcast, no flash

From L-R:

1. OPI for Sephora Teal We Meet Again is obviously way off. It's much darker than For Audrey and, of course, it's shimmery, but it looked a bit put out at not being included in the line-up so I had to let in sneak in. (The fact that I simply adore its mermaid's tail qualities may or may not have influenced my decision.)

2. Rimmel Sky High is more vibrant than For Audrey, but I think it's certainly in the same family. You could definitely have a go at frankening something very similar to that Tiffany blue by slowly adding a couple of drops of cream or white nail varnish to a bottle of Sky High and shaking well after each addition.

3. China Glaze For Audrey. 'nuff said.

4. Barry M Mint Green is even more green and different to For Audrey In Real Life than it appears here.

So no exact dupes in my own collection, sadly, but Essie Greenport, Chanel Nouvelle Vague, and the Accessorize version of same (which you might now be able to snap up on their sale, down to €4) are all easy to come by dusky turquoises which would pass for For Audrey. A galloping horse wouldn't notice the difference, etc. 

Probably the best dupe I've seen for it is Orly Gumdrop - another creme, it was part of their SS10 'Sweet' collection. Although it doesn't look it in the picture below, the Orly is actually fractionally lighter than For Audrey, but it's only a weeny shade out and on the nails the difference really is minimal.

The (Interwebs) Week In Review.

This week, I am aaall about Fashionable Accessories.

» Despite staking out Topshop online and fleaBay since last year, I have been unable to snag a pair of the Topshop Victoria flats above. Sadface. The Lux Monster has a simple solution, though - just make a pair! (Happywhydidn'tIthinkofthatduhface.)

» Etsy has some awesome jewellery and accessories. I love the acrylic cat's eye spectacles rings from seller Isette...

» ... and CosmicFirefly's silver robot cufflinks.

» Get some SATC2 shoe style on sale over at ASOS. These tan t-bar heels with black toe-caps are very like the two-tone Louboutin Ginos that Carrie wore with her purple tiered Halston Heritage dress (sizes 4 and 7 only); magpies may prefer these pointy-toed gold glitter numbers to channel the Pigalles we saw Carrie in during the first scenes of the film. Remember them?

Source

» If you quite fancy a designer bag but the thoughts of the splurge involved make you feel a bit queasy, why not treat your laptop to some new threads? (Designer wallets are so 2009.) Net-A-Porter have a good range, with the lips design from Marc by Marc Jacobs being the most affordable of the bunch at €60. 

Talontastic Thursday: Tiffany Bling

Apologies to anyone who tunes in here for anything other than nail stuff for the recent glut of, well, nail stuff. The random ramblings will resume shortly, no doubt.

In the meantime, take a lookie at this and tell me what you think:

China Glaze For Audrey is a colour that I've been lemming for a really, really long time. On the recent holliers, we happened upon a Sally Beauty Supply sign hanging out the back of a mall in LA. One shriek of extreme excitement later - and that was just Himself - we were screeching into the parking lot. 

About half an hour later, I emerged brandishing a load of supplies, among them a bottle of For Audrey (yay!) and as soon as we got back to our hotel I took off the silver Blixz on my toes to give it a whirl.

A soft antique feeling green blue that is immediately identifiable as "the Tiffany colour", it's only gorgeous for a pedi and is a fab colour in its own right. However, I decided on a bling-tastic accent nail of Lancome BB Sand for a bit of sparkle on this mani. I actually think it's not that great a combo, to be honest - the gold is more of a different language nail than an accent nail, y'know? - but it'll do for today!

By the way, If you've been thinking about adding For Audrey to your collection, I'd say do. Definitely. It is beeyoriful. Sally Salon Services in Ireland sell to the public and some stores carry China Glaze; find your nearest here to see if they do and if they have For Audrey in stock. For online retailers, try eBay, or TransDesign if you're planning a big purchase.

Manicure Monday: OPI for Sephora Teal We Meet Again & Rimmel Sky High

This has been a bit of a strange day. I feel like I've been chasing my tail and getting nothing done - have you ever had one of those? Rotten.

At least my nails were pretty :)

The (Interwebs) Week In Review.

Helloooo Friday evening! Where have you been all my life?

»  First things first: I'm sorry that there was no Talontastic Thursday post yesterday, but here - have a nail-related link for your troubles. WAH Nails are a London nail salon who post nail art porn (like the ladybirds above) several times a day. Pretty much guaranteed to inspire.

» Off on holliers and worried about your hair getting fried? Well, worry not - I gots you covered in this week's Herald column!

» I bought an Ikea Expedit bookcase for my office nook on Tuesday. It actually looks grand as is - and needless to say my productivity has soared since its installation - but I've bookmarked Pepper Design's round-up of prettified Expedits in the event that I decide to jazz it up in the future.

» Of course, rather than faff about with tacking on painted or patterned custom-cut particleboard (the Expedit is backless so that it can function as a room divider as well as a bookcase), I could always just make like John & Sherry and decorate the wall behind it.

» Last Expedit mention (promise!) - check out this Ikea Hacker guide for instructions on how to fashion a hanging file box that will fit perfectly in its cubbyholes.

» In foodie news, I haz mostly been making Hasselhoff hasselback spuds for dinner this week, mostly following Babaduck's recipe. I did cheat a little one night that I wasn't arsed to start crushing garlic, so I used two mini 20g tubs of Kerrygold Garlic Butter instead. I just turned the contents out into a bowl and zapped them in the microwave to meltify them before brushing them on the spuds. As recommended by The Glutton and Like Mam Used To Bake (thanks ladies!), I kept the fan oven at 200C for them and added some oilve oil as the cooking process went on and the butter disappeared, and they were NOM.

Now, tell me this: what are you up to for the weekend? I am going to try and pare down my wardrobe - hasn't been done in 4 years, oops - and am thinking that an online jumble sale stylee thing might be a fun way to thin out some of the contents. (Although I think you know me well enough at this stage to realise that what will actually happen is that I will just rearrange them and refuse to let go of anything!)

A Fashion Friday Frock?

So. Here's the thing.

There's 50% off this little Lipsy number over on Doo-lally.com at the minute.

And today was payday for me.

Hmm...

I wonder how this is going to play out?

New Addition.

We came home from a trip to Wexford on Sunday with this gorgeous purple hydrangea in tow. (Thanks, Aunt Liz!)

Although I usually veer towards architectural, fairly modern planting for our garden, there are a couple of old fashioned plants that I'm a real sucker for, and hydrangeas are definitely on that list.

This one reminds me of my granny's garden so I'm really, really hoping that it can survive my black thumb.