Saturday, January 30, 2016

[Convenitons] Otakon Vegas 2016


This years Otakon Vegas was super awesome for me! Not only was I getting to go back to my second Otakon Vegas as staff (I missed Otakon Vegas 2) I was getting to be the conventions mascot this year! And that was really cool to me. I also got to be Lyra in the Otakon Vegas Murder Mystery Show! So getting to act at a convention is also really cool!



The downside to the trip? I sprained both of my ankles and they were swollen to the size of grapefruits and bruised pretty bad. (and stayed that way for over six weeks....)



The Vegas adventure started for me on Wednesday before the con when I flew into Vegas with a whole bunch of Otakon Vegas staff. It was super early and I was sleepy, so you get silly photos of me on the plane! 

We got to Vegas and got into our hotel (Planet Hollywood, where the con was taking place!) My first mission was to go get food, and an ace bandage, because my ankle was screaming at that point! However I was very proud of myself for making sure I didn't look like a bum during the flight! 


Before I post photos of food, lets talk about how beautiful this view is from one of the hotel rooms I was in. Such a great view! 


For dinner we went to the Paris buffet and OMG! it was AHmazing!


I was way more interested in the deserts, like this French Macaron spread! Look how amazing they look!


I promise I don't have a problem, I do not have a problem! 


Next it was to the Spice Market Buffet to stuff my face with food! And yes I ate all of this. It was delicious and my tummy was very happy after it! 


I made it my goal for the trip to find all the Geeky slot machines and take a photo of them, I found a bunch, but I am sure there were more! I also made my way to the ABC store, which I was excited about since it meant cute Hello Kitty Vegas items! (which I got a shirt and socks with Hello Kitty being her fabulous self on!)



The convention started on Friday and I got into my first Lyra costume to run around the con in! I grabbed the Ace and Crabby plushies and ran around the con with them. 


Even snatched a few of the Otakon Vegas items too, to promote them! 


I then got to get ready and act as Detective Lyra in the Otakon Vegas Murder Mystery Theater show! This was an absolute blast! The audience had a great time and I got to run around and be a detective and solve a murder!


Saturday was the Otakon Vegas ball, so I got all dressed up as Lyra with my date, Ace! This was probably the hardest outfit for me to wear, because heels and sprained ankles don't go together!


I did get some cute items at the con too! Two super cute Pokemon Necklaces, a OV shirt and a panda Tenugui



Once the con was over I had a day to check out Vegas, so I walked around to a bunch of the hotels and looked around in shops, also got some yummy Ramen! I had to visit Margaritaville for my parents and get them something!




 

Also checked out Caesars Palace! This hotel is amazing! It is so pretty!


I was happy to find a Ramen shop! I got the spicy miso ramen, it wasn't the best Ramen I had ever eaten, but it was still very good. The Katsu Don was also really good! 

I then spent my night eating at the Paris Hotel and getting to see Vegas at night, which is beautiful! The last time I went to Vegas, two years ago, I got to go up in the Eiffel Tower, since it was my birthday and they let you go up in it for free. This year it was a couple weeks after my birthday, so I just enjoyed this beautiful tower form the ground! 

I also got to eat delicious Chinese dim sum for dinner! Which made for a great ending to an amazing weekend in Vegas working a con! 












Friday, January 29, 2016

[Bath Products] Lush Unicorn Horn

Each Valentines Day Lush brings out some limited items, this year is no different. They have a wonderful Unicorn Horn bubbles Bar, a lip color, and lots of other amazing goodies! I picked up the Unicorn Horn Bubbles Bar while in Vegas, and have loved it! it is super cute and had a great smell! 


They put out a special flyer with all the new goodies that they have released for Valentines day! I love the look of the rose soap (since I love everything rose!) However, having a giant tub in the hotel room made the Unicorn Horn Bubble Bar a better purchase! Plus look how cute it is as a unicorn horn! 

The stores had cute store settings for the products, displaying them so you could see that they were new and find them easily (which is always good since some places do not make finding new products as easy...)


The Unicorn horn itself was pretty, it has glitter in it and is pink, blue and yellow! When in the water it has a lovely purple look with glitter!! (which really excited me, because glitter in the bath!!)


Like all Bubbles Bars, you break it apart and run it under the bath water to get it broken up so the bubbles will happen! 





Once it has dissolved it makes a ton of bubbles, and I mean a ton of bubbles!! Look at all those bubbles!!! And there is also glitter in there! (can you tell I am excited by this??)



And then when all the bubbles are gone it leaves the bath this really pretty light pastel purple! (I had a hard time getting it to photograph.) 






The Unicorn Horn has a great smell as well, with lavender and ylang ylang fragrances!


The Unicorn Horn retails for 7.95 and is available for a limited time for the Valentines Day holiday so if you want a pastel purple glittery bath then go check it out!!

And can we talk about how there are six Lush stores on the Vegas Strip? That is amazing! The closest one to me is an hour away and I rarely get to go to it! So the fact that almost everywhere I walked there was a Lush was pretty awesome!  



Thursday, January 28, 2016

[Ipsy] January Ipsy Glam Bag

I got a lot of great items in this months glam bag! So far Ipsy has not let me down with what I have gotten!


First off the Bag! This month is cute, for the most part the bags have been solid colors or patterned, this one has a really cute design on it! (I do think my favorite is still the space bag though, it was super pretty!) But I do love the design on this bag for this month, it will definitely get used for stuff! 





Next up is the body cream I recieved from Mitchell and Peach called "English Leaf Body Cream". This body cream was great! It had a light smell and was really moisturizing! I had never heard of this brand before, but am always excited when Ipsy sends me lotions because they have not sent me one I do not like so far!


The Balm Cosmetics; Mr Write Me Now eyeliner! I received the color Jack B. Bronze, a bronze color. This eyeliner went on amazingly, it was smooth and had great color coverage! The bronze color was vibrant and had a bit of shine to it. It also stayed in place and did not wipe off easily. I also love the packaging for it! This was a full size, so that was awesome!


Pur~Lisse, Blue Lotus 4-in-1 eye adore serum. This serum went on the skin smooth and didn't leave it greasy at all. It says for all skin types, and I do not have incredibly sensitive skin so this worked well for me to use. Would definitely continue using.


City Color Eyeshadow Trio, Now I have gotten a lot of brown eye shadows from Ipsy, I kinda feel like that is all I get eyeshadow wise from them. The quality of eyeshadow is nice. The dark brown/bronze color is my favorite, it has a great shiny look to it! The eyeshadows themselves had great coverage. The bronze and light brown are shiny and the tan/orange color is a matte shade. The container was really hard to open though, and still is after a few openings.


Jelly Pong Pong Fairy Lashes Mascara, While I did put I did not want mascaras on my Ipsy profile, I have gotten a few of them in the last year (maybe 3 or 4.) I have rather long lashes so I do not wear mascara a lot. My first impressions of this mascara was that the brush looked like the product would go on well, it was a standard mascara brush, nothing too special. The coverage was normal for mascara, it went on smooth and had good coverage while on.




I am overall very happy with this months bag! I can use everything in it, which is what is important since why have the product if you cant use it. If you are interested in Ipsy you can check it out here on their webpage

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

[Bath Products] Lush Bubble Bars: Big Bang and A French Kiss

One of the things I was most excited about my trip to Vegas was the fact that the Planet Hollywood has huge tubs in their rooms, and that means bubble bars from the Lush there! Last time I went there was one Lush on the strip that I knew of, now there are six..... Luckily one of those is in the Miracle Mile shops where I was staying! The night I got there, I visited the lush and got some stuff (the closest Lush to me is a little over an hour so I am always so excited to visit one when I find them!)


I got a few items there, a massage bar, a lip tint, a shower gel, and two Bubble Bars!


I rarely get to use bubble bars since I normally use the shower. So I was super excited about these, even more so after I sprained my ankle while in Vegas! I got two bubble bars I had never tried before, since I have used a bunch of their bubble bars and their bath bombs. 
I'm going to start off with the Big Bang Bubble Bar! This one last me about three baths, since I broke it into three even pieces (I didn't need a bubblepocalypse while I was in there!)


Big Bang smelled like grapefruit, and almost had a lemon/watermelony smell to me. I was really excited that the avocado butter didn't make me break out in an allergic reaction, since normally it does (I normally stay away from anything with it in it, but didn't know this time, my skin did later get some hives so this could have been it, or something in the hotel, however it was not bad so that doesn't bother me at all because this thing smelled amazing!)


And it made the bathwater blue! And super bubbly!! So many bubbles! It was fantastic! It was super easy to use, for those of you who have never used Lush's Bubble Bars, You put them under the running water so they can break up and create many wonderful bubbles! As you can see the third of the Big Bang I used gave me a ton of bubbles! It also made the entire bath smell amazing! Big Bang retails for $7.95, which is awesome since I got 3 baths out of this one!



The next Bubble Bar I tried was A French Kiss. This one was super pretty, it was white and purple, and smelled amazing! It has a lavender scent to it, which smelled fantastic! This one I also broke into a few pieces since I didn't need the bubbles coming over the side of the tub! I was really excited about this one when I saw it turned the water purple! (since that is one of my favorite colors!)


LOOK how purple and wonderful that water looks! I actually waited until the bubbles all went away so I could get a photo of this one, because I thought the water looked really pretty! A French Kiss retailed at $8.95, and I got three baths out of this one as well. This one was very floral smelling (like I said you could really smell the lavender in it) so would be a great one for those who aren't into the super fruity smells when they bathe. 

I would really recommend Lush to anyone who loves awesome bath and skin products, they have great shampoo bars, massage bars and so on, so they are not just a store with bath items, but really anything you would need to pamper yourself body wise!



Tuesday, January 26, 2016

[Vox Box] Covergirl VoxBox

I have been doing Influenster for awhile now and love it! They send you products and you review them! They go from beauty to food to clothing or electronics! Lots of cool stuff, but they choose you based on surveys and what you review on their site. I got two voxboxes recently. A Slimfast voxbox with lots of edible goodies and a Covergirl voxbox with a lipstick and mascara in it. 



Plumpify Mascara:

 The first item I got in my Covergirl voxbox was the plumpify mascara. This mascara came in a nice box, and the mascara itself was closed off, you have to put the brush in, I am guessing so there is no chance of it drying out while on the shelf. 
The brush has really small bristles and is plastic and the mascara went on great, any clumps that came off on my lashes I was able to get rid of by way of using the brush to wipe them off. I do not always wear mascara because it feels heavy, this was actually pretty nice when I had it on, so I would consider using this more in the future when I have to wear mascara.


Oh Sugar Lip Color:

I received the color Taffy for the Oh Sugar lip color. A natural color that is not too dark, and goes on very smooth. I liked the way this felt on my lips and it had a good smell to it (I hate it when lip colors smell bad.) I would definitely want to try these out in other colors if I got the chance too. It was a bit sheer so not pigmented too much, which is good when you want a natural lip color that isn't too much. 



You can find Plumpify and Oh Sugar online by clicking on their names. Or in drugstores like Walgreens or CVS as well. 



Monday, January 25, 2016

[Tea review] The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf "Flavored Black Tea Apricot Ceylon"

 I visited Las Vegas last week, and while I was there I needed some tea to drink for the week, since the Planet Hollywood hotel does not provide tea in their rooms, just coffee. I went to the ABC store hoping they would have the tea they carry in their Hawaii stores, no luck, so I walked around the strip in Vegas looking for tea (within a few blocks of the Planet Hollywood where I was staying).... and this was actually a hard task..... There was a tea shop in the shops at Caesars Palace, that I looked around in, and the people working were no where to be seen, so I ended up at The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf in the  Miracle Mile Shops in the Planet Hollywood Las Vegas. They had a small but decent selection of teas and I decided on the Apricot Ceylon.



The tea packing is really nice, it has a large 2.47 oz. tin that has 20 tea bags in it. The container says "A fragrant infusion of apricot flavor with our exclusive Bogawantalawa Estate Ceylon tea."


the tea bags are decent sized pyramid bags and they smell amazing. It has a black tea smell with a burst of apricot. Very fruity smelling with a hint of marigold. The taste is strong, so unless you like your tea very strong do not over steep this tea! I added a tiny bit of honey since it needed to be a little bit sweeter for me (which says a lot since I generally don't sweeten my tea.) It had a black tea taste with a hint of apricot when you drank it.


Over all this tea was good, and I was very happy to find something I could drink while I was on my trip in Vegas for Otakon Vegas. It retailed for $11.50 at the shop I got it, but they have it cheaper online here