The Colors of the Rainbow

The summer collection that changed my life. I bought 3 of them, but I'm going back for the rest. The colors I bought are Coral Chic, Noite Quente and Garota Verão.

Recently I've been more obsessed than normal about nail polish. When I sat down and pondered it, I realized that it's because there are so many beautiful colors around right now. I normally stick to red, red, and more red - with the occasional slip into burgundy or black. There are few occasions when I break from that and because I use 3Free nail polishes, I try to stick to OPI.

Rio right now is wicked hot and disgusting, but I finally found something I love about summer here: the amazing summer polish collections. Most of the brands here are 2Free, and then there's Colorama that's 3Free, so all in all, we're good. I wandered into my fave beauty supply store the other day and right before my eyes stretched an endless array of all the colors you could possibly imagine. I was a kid in a candy store. Have you ever taken different skittles like: regular, smoothy, berry, etc, and mixed them all together? Well, that's what it looked like. Bright, pastel, creamy, sparkly, shiny, transparent, full coverage, not full coverage, everything!

This is a lovely pastel, creamy lilac from Impala called Zaz I bought. I am in deep, deep love.

Seems silly but, then as I walked around running errands I noticed that all the women, girls, tweens, you name it, were wearing super colorful, fun, bright, fantastic nail polish colors. One of the employees at the supermarket was wearing pastel green, another one orange. The lady at the bank was wearing a fun summer pink, another woman standing in line next to me was wearing a very pretty coral (which I bought).

This week I'm wearing a bright orange red, I mixed 2 colors to get the shade I wanted, and I'm loving it! I guess all of you out there in the winter reading this can bookmark some of these colors for your coming summer - we're doing the same with winter colors. I saw some pretty spectacular winter collections online that I can't wait to get my paws on.

Tata for now!

Dave Barry's Superbowl Review

Photo from the Telegraph

Check out Dave Barry's Superbowl review. It's classic.

Lancome Mineral Makeup Brush

Lancome Minerale Foundation Brush

These days I've been going for my easy-breezy look to compliment the universe of freckles all over my face. My normal routine includes, Avon Magix primer, SPF powder or light Shiseido foundation, Lancome Tropiques Minerale Bronzer, Benefit BadGal mascara, and gloss (shades of fun pink or nude). I make sure my eyebrows are defined and perfect with my Dior eyebrow powder pencil and spooli. There were a couple of days when I wore eye pencil, but it was a burgundy pencil and I smoked it out really well with my smudge brush.

One thing that has made my entire experience a real joy has been my amazing Lancome mineral bronzer brush. It is heaven on my face. I feel special when I use it and I take my time putting on my bronzer because I like the feel of the brush on my skin so much. Now, I think this particular short handle one was a limited edition, however, if I'm not mistaken, the mineral foundation brush is the same as the mineral bronzer brush, just has a longer handle and is silver, not brown.

Lancome Mineral Bronzer Brush

Maybe I'm crazy, but the price seems reasonable to me, especially considering how awesome it is. I think it's $36, a total steal when you take into consideration how many cheap brushes you bought that were total rubbish and you had to toss them and buy a different one. This is the brush. Basically, after you buy this one you can stop looking. It wouldn't be a very good blush brush, because you want to keep blush in a smaller area, but for bronzer or loose powder, you won't find a brush that beats it.

Another thing that's super cool is that I heard about a super brush manufacturer in Japan, Hakuhodo, so I contacted them and they will ship anywhere in the world. How awesome is that? I'm going to start a super elite brush collection as according to Samantha, they are the best brushes she's ever used. That's serious. I've already made a list of the brushes I want and I'm going to start buying them little by little, a couple of brushes at a time. They also have Geisha brushes, and they look incredible! Anyway, I just wanted to let you know what my new brush obsession/real-need-no-one-understands-but-me is.

Saquarema and Arraial do Cabo Weekend Adventure

All images were taken with a blackberry so you'll have to excuse the poor quality.

Last weekend we went to a beach town about 90min from where we live. It's not a fancy place full of pricey hotels, there's no Club Med there, it's just simple people enjoying the most spectacular beaches known to man. This particular place (above) is called Pontal da Atalaia, in Arraial do Cabo. It's paradise. You have to drive up this steep hill, park at the top, then walk down a precarious path to get to the beach. The water is crystal clear and no matter how deep you go, you can still see your feet. There were schools of fish swimming where we were, fishing boats that had been used earlier to catch fish and shrimp and bring in supplies to the small kiosks that prepare the most amazing fresh seafood and tropical drinks. The sand is perfectly white and super fluffy.

Here's the table we were at when we weren't in the water. The cup with the white milk looking liquid is actually a delicious elixir called Batida de Coco and it's made of coconut milk and cachaça (Brazilian fire water). They were so good we almost lost count of how many we drank.

There's a guy that passes by every half hour or so with fresh shrimp. It's just simply grilled with lemon and salt. So good! Those are my son's fingers in the shot. He couldn't get enough.

We finally left when the sun started going down. The climb back up the hill to get to the car is a bit rough. It's like you're paying a toll for having enjoyed such a terrific beach, but what can you do? This is the shot from the road heading down the mountain back towards the town. It's so beautiful, but it doesn't translate very well in this picture. You had to be there.

Every night we would go into the little town and walk around with the locals and get stuff to eat. The first night we were there Gui (my sister's boyfriend) took us to this very simple, fantastic place to eat Pastel. Pastel is a salty pastry dough that is filled with goodness (shrimp, cheese, bananas, anything you want) and then deep fried so that it puffs up and is very crispy and not at all greasy (the temperature of the oil has to be very high). These things were enormous and so scrumptulescent (that's a made-up word). This is a picture of my oldest son eating a Bobó de Camarão (shrimp and other delicious stuff) one. Yummy!

Sometimes we forget where we live and how great it is. The heat kind of poaches our brain and we have to take a step back, maybe take a 90min trip in order to gain some perspective and remind ourselves of why we live in Rio.

Grammy Beauty

What a great look. No one can pull it off like she does, but man, can she pull it off. Hair is fantastic, dress, and makeup too. She has a great beauty team!

I was traveling over the weekend (post to come) so I missed the Grammys. I love the Grammys and I love to see what everyone's wearing. It's always out there and it's always surprising, and wonderful. I was dying to see what Lady Gaga would come up with and I was not disappointed. She wore many different looks throughout the evening and they were all out there - way out there - and glorious. After skimming through pictures online, I chose a couple that stood out to me. By the way, all the pics I got are from JustJared. Go there and look through all the Grammy shots. Awesome!

Lea Michelle. I love her and I love, love, love her dress, jewelry, hair and OMG the makeup! She looks amazing!! I would kill for cheekbones like hers.

JLo looks so, so gorgeous here! The 70's inspired hair is beautiful in its simplicity and paired with the most amazing eye makeup it is perfection. Her dress was also fantastic! While I think she may be a bit tacky herself, and for the most part quite "Jenny from the block", I give her, her stylist and hair and makeup team serious props for this ensemble. Bravo!

I hate, hate, hate Beyonce's look. Her new super blond hair and black brows look trashy and quite honestly, stupid. Her earrings are ridiculous, and I have no love for her dress. This was a hit and miss for me.

Fantastic Finds

Two wonderful things happened today: I found an amazing primer with SPF, and my Louise Young Foundation Taklon (that's what they call it, but it's really just a brush) arrived.

14 days ago I ordered the foundation brush because I was wholly unimpressed with my previous one (synthetic and the bristles poked my face). My order arrived in a hurry and in perfect condition. The brush is amazing, soft, beautiful and makes my face feel pampered instead of punished. I highly recommend it. I bought mine directly from the Louise Young website and since everything went so well, I'm going to buy the rest of the ones I'm missing from there. The reason I bought Louise Young to begin with is because the Pixiwoo sisters are always raving about it. So if any of you out there are wondering, yes, Youtube makeup video advertising totally works. I got to see the product in action and even though I couldn't test it before buying, their word was enough for me to make a blind buy - and I'm sooooo happy I did!



Now on to the primer. I had heard about Avon's MagiX skin perfector, but hadn't tried it, or even given it much thought. That was stupid and snoby. But mostly stupid. I tried it today and fell in love with it. Naturally, I bought it and am happy to say that it feels like heaven on my face. It's a perfect silicone feel primer that makes my makeup look better and glide on like nobody's business. An added benefit is that it's SPF 20, how cool is that? In the winter I'll probably have to use a moisturizer first, then MagiX, then makeup. But in the summer, I can use MagiX on its own and treat my face to all the cool benefits this product has to offer. Hurray for Avon! This is now a permanent addition to my makeup/face product essentials.

I Love, Love, Love!