A Very UST Christmas ♥

So Christmas is today and my cousin who I spend every day in school with, Anj Puyat just started blogging! It's always so strange describing what she is because she's a cousin who I met in college, and now one of my closest friends (and cousins, of course!) But anyway, she started blogging and I got jealous so here I am! I really hope to become a regular blogger someday.

So how has my Christmas break been so far? I really hate the school days in between Sem Break and Christmas Break because it's something like 6 weeks and everything is so lax. But finally, the break came and it started off with our class christmas party! My first time to EVER stay up and out until 6 am, it was so wild. I woke up at 11 am and then when I went home, I died on my bed for another 5 hours! It was so much fun but I'm not sure if I'd ever like to stay out until 6 am ever again. Haha I'll stick to the 3 am curfew that I gave myself. HAHA!

Last hike in Hawaii: Makapu'u Lighthouse Trail!

OMG, I gained a total of 10 pounds in my one month of staying in Hawaii! No regrets though, the food was amazing and the locals really know what things to put in their mouths. The local cuisine is amazing! Hungry tummies + Japanese culture = AMAZEBALLS. Haha! I noticed this trip that anything filling can be characterized as Hawaiian cooking. Fried chicken and/or burger steak with two huge scoops of rice, spaghetti with beef stew and the all-famous spam musubi (spam on top of a brick of rice and fastened together with a small strip of seaweed) all have one thing in common: that they can fill a hungry tummy! I really loved all the food. :)

That was a mouthful about the food! Now on to the highlight of this entry: my last hike in Hawaii!

Sigh :(

I know, I am a pretty bad blogger. :( It's not my fault I'm so busy all the time! I hope to be more motivated as the days go by. I was supposed to "test myself" and blog religiously for a month and if I passed, on my standards of course, I was going to get myself my own domain. But I think on anyone and everyone's standards, I failed! I promise to try harder soon.

Today I indulged in an official rest day! I ate everything and did anything, including this:

No schoolwork done today. I can catch up on that tomorrow. :) My sched is terrible! But more on that next time. Toodles!

P.S. In case you were wondering, yes that is me :D And wow, the last time I posted was EXACTLY a month ago! I really am bad at this. :( :(

DIY in Hawaii

Because I have been bringing my LV Speedy 30 around EVERYWHERE, including my hikes, I have resolved to make a new beach bag. I don't know what my problem is, I didn't bring my Longchamp Eiffel with me. Well at the time I was packing, I had just gotten out of school so maybe I didn't want to be reminded of it. HAHA I had been using that as a school bag for my entire third year of college.

So how did I make these babies? click over the jump to learn more!

Chronicles of Hawaii: The Great Hike up Koko Head

Heads up for a pretty photo-heavy post; I'm pretty sure I won't be going up there ever again so my dad and I made sure to take as many photos of each other. Haha!

I would say that I'm a pretty fit person. I was an athlete in high school, being varsity of my school swimming team and even captain of my local club team. When I went to college I went on a 2-year hiatus from exercising because I got so burned out with all the requirements for swimming. It was no joke! But early this year I started going to the gym almost every day, and since Christmas I have lost about 13 pounds. Only 5 more pounds away from my thinnest weight EVER since I was 13!

But in Hawaii, at first I was dieting, not eating so much. Now I eat like a baby dinosaur! HAHA. I figured I should just worry when I get back to Manila. But in the mean time, my dad and I have found a new way to try to keep off those extra pounds, and it's through hiking! Click on the jump to read more about this. :)

One Less Lonely Girl Collection by Justin Bieber: Step 2 the Beat of my ♥ Nail Polish Review

Okay everyone, I'll say it loud and proud: I'M A BELIEBER!

Mwahaha, I'm 20 years old and at work last month I listened to nothing but Justin Bieber songs all day while doing my assigned tasks. Oh, and Katy Perry too. I have a playlist each for all of their songs. How funny, the two of them have lines for OPI, my number one nail polish brand!

So you wouldn't believe my excitement when I saw a line of Nicole by OPI in the nearest drugstore, apparently these bottles were rare!

The bottle of pink and purple hearts with glitters looked interesting to me so I just picked it up to take a better look. But when I saw that it was part of the Justin Bieber collection, with the cutest name ever I just had to get it!

Mika Ninagawa for Shu Uemura

Last summer, I had a major tan from all the beach trips that I was going to with friends and family. So all of a sudden when I had to go to a wedding, I was fixing my makeup and aaaah! My foundation wasn't my shade anymore! I survived that day with my mom's foundation, but the next weeks I searched far and wide for the perfect shade for me.

I tried Maybelline, Loreal and even Shiseido, but wasn't happy with them! Something always bothered me: some went on too thick, some made me look too yellow and even too white. People say that in love, it is when you're not looking when you find, and wow this renders true for me even when it's not about love! Haha :)

I actually fell in love with the compact before the actual powder. Yes, I am a sucker for super cute packaging. Aside from Shu's limited edition guest artist collections, I love Benefit's cheeky names for their lines and hollywood packaging. So anyway! I bought the compact case along with my mom's cleansing oil, and just carded it without asking her so that she would get me the refill! Haha. The powder itself isn't cheap, and what sucks is that you have to get the case individually as well. The case costs 700 Php at Rustan's and the refill is 1800 Php.

What I love about Shu is that it's an Asian brand, so what company would know better about Asian skin tones than ones that were based here? :) Plus because I'm one of the lighter skin tones, but with yellow as my base, it's often hard to find a powder with my exact skin tone. So yeah, this one impressed me very much!

My shade is no. 764-described as a warm undertone. Since this is a powder foundation, I pat it on lightly with the sponge and it gives me minimal coverage. Just what I need for sunny hawaii! And a good plus is that it's SPF 26++! So yay for that! I still put on sunscreen moisturizer daily though. :)

Greetings from sunny Hawaii, by the way! Will get back to blogging very soon. I apologize for the huge, unannounced hiatus as to I was a working girl for the whole month of April! But now that that's over, I've been able to settle down and relax. Back to la dolce vita! :)

Will keep you posted!

xx Saira

FOR SALE! Tory Burch Reva Flats

SOLD :)

Hello everybody! After a few months of thinking about it, I've finally decided to sell my Tory Burch Reva Flats.

These are super super like new and come with the box. I can give them for 8,000 Php, since they're an old style and in Rustan's they sell for 10,800 Php. They're a US women's size 10 but run a little small, about 9-9.5 I would say.

They're gold hardware with leather trim, and rubber soles. Really gorgeous, but too bad they don't fit well on me :(

See, super almost new! They can be considered as brand new. Look at their undersides! :)

For more details, please text ------- :) Please, these are authentic. You don't even have to ask. Haha

iPad 2

I can't wait to go to the States, mainly because I'm getting an iPad 2 when I go! My parents already agreed to half with me. HD apps and Architectural reference books in full color, here I come!

The reason to why I'm getting this aside from a Kindle is because I noticed that the Kindle is only for reading novels and the like. It's not so good for full-color, graphical books like my architctural reference books because

a) it's black and white only,

b) it's kind of slow when showing graphic photos,

c) zooming in is kind of hard and

d) its capacity is only 4GB and one architectural book is almost 500MB. So yeah, I really need an iPad for my architecture books. :)

Look at the iPad vs. the iPad 2. Super big differences:

iPad

iPad 2

Display	9.7-inch LED-backlit IPS LCD	9.7-inch LED-backlit IPS LCD
Resolution	1024 x 768	1024 x 768
Processor	1GHz Apple A4	1GHz dual-core Apple A5
Graphics	PowerVR SGX 535	?
Memory	256MB RAM	?
Storage	16GB / 32GB / 64GB	16GB / 32GB / 64GB
Front camera	none	VGA
Rear camera	none	720p
Cellular radio	EDGE plus triband HSPA	EDGE plus quadband HSPA or CDMA / EV-DO Rev. A
WiFi	802.11a/b/g/n	802.11a/b/g/n
Bluetooth	2.1 + EDR	2.1 + EDR
Accelerometer	3-axis	3-axis
Gyroscope	No	3-axis
Thickness	13.4mm	8.8mm
Weight	680g (WiFi), 730g (WiFi + 3G)	601g (WiFi), 607g (Verizon), 613g (AT&T)

Table c/o Http://engadget.com. :) As you can see, it's lighter, faster and has two cameras, one in the front and the back. AND another thing to look forward to is the Smart Cover!What is so impressive about this Smart Cover? First, when it's covering your iPad it automatically locks it, and when you lift the flap, it automatically wakes it up. It also doubles as a stand for your iPad, and of course protects it from all the other objects around it in your bag.
Of course I'm going to get one in pink, but I'm quite sad that the genuine leather ones are all the boring colors only! I wish the fun colors were made of leather as well and not polyurethane. :( It better last me long!
So there, hello iPad in more or less a month! :)

Kindle post

I'm on a short break from school (finally!), so now I can't believe it, I can actually choose what I read!

Hi everybody, meet my Kindle reading device! With all the talk going out and about with the iPad 2, I must say I am tempted to get one for reading my architectural reference books and HD apps, but I'm still an original Kindle girl. It's strictly for black and white text reading only. I love reading from it because it really looks like a printed page.

I received this Kindle for Christmas from my parents, and from my godfather I got its Kate Spade cover. I love my case! It's made of patent leather with canvas inside. It's plain but pretty and makes a statement every time I pull my Kindle out. :)

This is my favorite screensaver. One amazing thing about the Kindle is that its battery can last up to 30 days! Also, anywhere I go that has 3G, I can surf for free! But of course it's black and white and navigation is not so good. It works though, and is very handy especially when you need to Google something quickly for reference.

The back has speakers, in which you can use the text-to-speech function that it offers for most books downloaded from Amazon. It's pretty cool if you ask me, but audiobooks don't work for me because they put me to sleep. Haha! I chose the white over graphite because it looks more clean-cut and futuristic. :)

If you ask me, the Kindle is a great buy if you love reading novels and printed books! Imagine not worrying about messing up the cover or spines of your books, tearing or folding any pages and lugging around heavy hardbound books? Up to 4 GB worth of books can be stored in your device, and one book is just 125 KB, more or less! But don't expect much out of this device if you want to use it to surf or play games. It's really just for reading. But it's really amazing, how it looks like a printed page. The eyes don't strain at all :)

And I leave you with this photo. Spot the odd one out? :P

Mogu Celebrations

Ladies and gentlemen, I am now a sister of a Kagawad! :D My baby sister ran in the Sangguniang Kabataan special elections in my district, and she won :) Fr those who don't know, SK is a youth council per district in the Philippines, run by the government. This was a great cause for celebration, so we decided to eat at a restaurant of her choice. Mogu has been on her mind because she tried it with a few relatives without us, but we wouldn't listen to her when she would suggest it. So she took this time to choose Mogu so that we would see how yummy it is, and I must say that we were indeed very impressed!

The new thing nowadays is that while we're on summer, before going out and running errands my mom likes to eat out. But since she takes FOREVER to get ready (and I MEAN forever!), we end up eating at around 2 already. So one super hungry and grumpy family ordered up a storm that day! And even though Mogu's lunch hours end by 2pm, even though we arrived at 1:50pm and the doors were closed, the chef, who was sitting at the bar having his lunch still let us in. Thank you so much! Haha :)

I noticed this decorated wall right away with the specials, and we ordered most of our things from there.

This was the main reason to why we came here, for the Harami! It's their house special of house specials. Flavorful strips of thinly sliced beef drenched in a sweet barbeque sauce. Yum! We order two of these to share between four people. :)

Asparagus wrapped in bacon is my usual order in any place that has it, so I decided to try their twisted version of it. This is tempura-battered asparagus wrapped in bacon. It was good, but I don't think I could eat just that with rice. It's too oily, and when something is too oily, you usually can't have too much of it. I only had about two pieces and poor daddy had to eat the rest. Haha :)

My sister likes tempura, and though I don't eat it I just had to post a photo. It looks really good and crunchy! And I'm betting it was good, because there was none left by the time lunch was over!

Because I spotted this on the board, I decided to try their mixed mushroom spaghetti, which used 3 different kinds of spaghetti in a stir-fry sauce. I wasn't too entranced by this, but kagawad loved it and finished most of it. Haha!

My sister and I had our meal with a side of Wagyu rice each. I didn't like it so much because it was all the pieces with fat :( Boooo. But it was a good siding! I think I would prefer white rice next time, though. photo courtesy of foodspotting.com :)

I really loved the canvas lanterns hanging around the place. They weren't your ordinary lanterns; the geometric patterns were so unique! I wonder if they're from here. :)

Time for dessert! My sister ordered the Strawberry Napoleon which was really good but so super creamy, and my order is coming up ahead!

Mine was the Mango Tempura. I didn't have much of these because everything I had was so oily already! So more cream or tempura anything did not sound like a good idea to me. Haha! We had to place all of our orders the moment we walked into the restaurant because the kitchen was doing their last full orders already. :)

Mogu was really good, and I'm glad that Kagawad forced us to eat here. Haha! Congrats, baby sister! :)

Mogu is located at Serendra, Bonifacio Global City. :)

A Pretty Splendid gadget

Hello everybody! It's my first gadget post on Pretty Splendid, and I'm so excited to talk about it :D

So I'm finally ready to partition my Mac hard drive and adding Parallels to my system interface so that I can use AutoCAD :) Along with my nail polish, I got something else!

A new 1TB external hard drive that I am very, very happy with. I got it on Amazon.com for 117 USD, which is an amazing price, compared to my last hard drive that I bought and sold within 2 months. Though the WD My Passport Essential (the PC version) was cheaper than the WD Passport for Mac, I decided to trust my instincts and get the Mac version because after my major problems with my old hard drive, I wasn't going to take any chances with an iffy hard drive. I really researched about this guy before getting him, took a chance, and here he is!

Compared to my old hard drive, the 500GB LaCie Rugged, this one is SO TINY! The dimensions are 4.3" x 3.2" x 0.7", and placed beside the iPhone, they're roughly the same size.

It's also a little thicker than the iPhone, but still tiny! I was very impressed that for 1TB of space, it's so tiny and light! Definitely not a hassle at all to take around with me. :)

I chose silver over dark blue and red because though it's a boring color, it matches with my Macbook Pro and was cheaper than its colored siblings. Though it doesn't come with a firewire or power cord, backing up all of my files using Time Machine was no problem at all. It was easy, fast and pain-free :D It took about 4 hours to back up all 200GB of my computer.

So there, super happy me signing off! Hope you guys enjoyed this post. More to come soon!

Essie Matte About You

...and the quest for unique nail polish continues! Look at what I finally got in the mail today:

Essie matte finisher! I had seen matte polish before on Tumblr, and ever since I saw it in black, I knew I had to at least try it, though we've already established that my color isn't black. Haha! So i looked around online, placed an order for my polish and waited patiently for it to arrive.

I was a little disappointed though, because as you can see in the photo above, it leaked around the container! Boooo. But I didn't get discouraged, I peeled it off and went straight to my mom's parlor bag to look for a shade that I was feeling today.

This is what I came up with. (L-R) OPI two-way base coat, OPI Red, OPI Didgeridoo Your Nails, Essie Matte About You. The Didgeridoo Your Nails is actually my very own shade, it's the shade I usually have one when I'm not feeling very loud or red.

This is how it looked on my nails. (L-R) OPI Red, OPI Red with Essie Matte About You topcoat, OPI Didgeridoo Your Nails, OPI Didgeridoo Your Nails with Essie Matte about You topcoat. Huh, they look so good in photos! I didn't like the look of the red so much in person, but instantly fell in love with the pink! :) So pink it was.

It's very important to always follow directions, especially with a new product. I learned that if you apply too many coats, and thick ones at that, the colored polish sticks to the brush of the Matte About You. So I learned to remember where I painted already and to make nice, even strokes.

So, here's the look! Without flash:

And now here with flash:

The downside of matte nail polish is that it works exactly like matte lipstick, that if you have cracked or chapped lips, it will definitely show! I must admit that I removed this right away because even though it's not so evident in my photos, I didn't apply the polish very well. Since I'm in a course that requires a lot of hand-work (Architecture), I'm always looking at my nails and am often OC with them. So I'm sorry, I just had to remove this manicure. Haha!

So the final verdict: do I like it? I love it! BUT I won't ever apply it myself. So I'll have to wait for my next manicure at the parlor to have this done again, even though it's my polishes they'll be using. :)

'til my next find! xx

Is this the real life, is this just fantasy?

When I went to Cebu 2 years ago, I had heard that there were these cookies that were a must-try. I ended up buying about 6 containers to give to my relatives back home, and 3 for my family.

Finally, I found some at an extremely good price :D Apparently, they bring them in cheaper than the deli in Cebu! Our cookies were wiped out within two days, and I don't think my parents even got to taste them, I ate most of them, but my sister and cousin had some too. I just couldn't help myself! I love sweets, especially cookies and chocolate!

These lace cookies aren't your ordinary lace cookies. They're two super-thin cookies sandwiched with chocolate in the middle. You can buy them in separate flavors of mint chocolate, semi-sweet chocolate, dark chocolate and white chocolate, but if you buy the big 600g container they have it in assorted of milk, dark and white chocolate.

My personal favorite kind of chocolate is dark chocolate, but for these lace cookies I'd have to say that my favorite is the semi-sweet chocolate because it doesn't overpower the taste of the cookies. When eating the dark, all you taste is crunchy dark chocolate. At least you can feel the flavors of the cookie and the semi-sweet chocolate blending in your mouth. It's like a party in your mouth!

And that just reminded me of ratatouille, when fireworks would go off in the mouse's mouth while he was eating. Gotta love that movie! :)

'Til the next post!