Happy New Year! and Happy Birthday to this blog, I’ve now been doing this for a whole year! I’ve really enjoyed being able to share my love for style, make-up, and hair with everyone who has been following, I can only hope to become more frequent in my posting in the upcoming year and improve the quality of my blog overall. Anyway, on with this post, it’ll be a long one, because I’ve got a lot of things that I loved this year that I want to share, so let’s get started
Fashion:
My first favorite trend, and something that I wore the most often during 2013, was
button-up shirts, particularly ones with a cute pattern. The ones above are some of my most favorites, they are all so versatile and were on heavy rotation in my wardrobe the entire year. (
L —> R: Target, H&M, J. Crew, Nordstrom)
Draped/Open Cardigans have become one of my favorite clothing items since I’ve been in college because they are essentially blankets with arms. As I’m not someone to really “dress down” for class being able wear one of these sweaters, some pixie pants, and a pair of flats makes me feel put together yet just as comfortable as if I were in lounge clothes.
(L—>R T.J. Maxx, Banana Republic)
My last most worn trend was
ankle booties, namely this
Sam Edleman pair. I love the browny-redish-purple color of them, the little heal, the exposed zippers on the back, and just the way they look with virtually any outfit. When I first bought these I was a bit worried that the unique color would make them hard to pair with a lot of different things, but I was quickly proved wrong as they became one of my favorite pairs of shoes to throw on as I was running out the door.
Makeup:
My most worn and favorite blush for this year has to be my
Tarte Amazonian Clay Blush in the color “Exposed”. It’s a really beautiful warm brownish-rose neutral color and I find it can act as both bronzer and blush when I wear it. This color just perfectly warms up my face and goes with absolutely anything else I wear, it was definitely worth what I paid for it!
This year I was introduced to the wonderful
Maybeline Color Tattoo cream eyeshadows. The color shown above is my personal favorite, “Bad to the Bronze”. It’s a taupe-y bronze color that is so beautiful worn either under other shadows as a base or on its own as simply as wash of color. For being an affordable drugstore product it has a pretty fantastic wear time as well, combined with an eye primer I can wear this for probably 12 hours without any creasing (this is a big deal because my eyelids are SO OILY)
In the spring of 2013 I bit the bullet and switched from liquid foundation to and lighter weight/medium coverage powder foundation, the one I chose was the
Korres Mineral Foundation in the lightest color they offer. I was getting really sick of how liquid foundation simply didn’t hold up during the day on my oily skin and my skin had been improving so I figured it was the right time to go with something less heavy duty. This foundation is great, it’s so light weight I often forget I’m wearing it, it controls shine but doesn’t make me look like a pancake, and it has really great coverage. When I pair this product with some concealer underneath I feel just as good about my skin as I did when I was wearing a full coverage liquid foundation.
I’ve always been someone who has loved eyeliner and commonly wear black winger liner to make my big eyes look even bigger but this year I started to learn more towards something more simplistic. I have been a fan of
Clinique’s Quickliner for Eyes for a number of years but my love for it was rekindled when I picked up this particular liner over the summer and started playing with it. Something about smudgy, smokey, dark brown eyeliner just does it for me so this product became a staple in my everyday eye-makeup this year. The liner itself is just the right amount of creamy with an incredible staying power, and it’s highly pigmented. Overall a fantastic product.
It seems as though just about every beauty brand out there has some type of “chubby stick” on the market right now, and I couldn’t be more pleased with the trend. This type of lip color is one of my favorites because of how easy it is to put on and wear for a long time. My most favorite one of these in 2013 was the
Clinique Chubby Stick Intense in Curviest Caramel. It’s a beautiful warm peachy nude color and I LOVE IT! I am generally someone who runs away at the mention of nude lips but I found myself constantly reaching for this product throughout the entire year, definitely one of my favorite purchases.
Other things I loved this year…….
Getting my hair (somewhat) majorly cut! This year was the first time since 5th grade that I’ve had hair above my shoulders, so far I’m still loving it!
All of these albums were on heavy rotation the whole year (
L—>R: The Paper Kites: States, Marina and The Diamonds: Electra Heart, John Mayer: Paradise Valley, Ben Howard: Every Kingdom, Lorde: Pure Heroine, Vampire Weekend: Modern Vampires of the City, Mree: Winterwell, Justin Timberlake: The 20/20 Experience, Everett Thomas: Visions of the Sea, Blind Pilot: We Are The Tide) I was also lucky enough to see both Blind Pilot and Vampire Weekend live during 2013, definitely two of the best days of the whole year!!
These 2013 releases were well worth paying to go see them in the theatre
Nicole Krauss books, I read all three of them during the second half of the year and just felt in love with her way of story telling.
The History of Love is the one I recommend the most, it’s now probably one of my top 3 favorite books of all time. And, fun fact, Nicole Krauss is married to author Jonathan Safran Foer, who is my all time favorite author. So, if you’re a fan of any of Foer’s books I would highly highly highly recommend reading Krauss’ works.
And that’s it! Those are my top top top picks of things and stuff from the entire year, I hope you enjoyed reading about them and are maybe now interesting in checking a few of them out!
The next post I do will be coming at you from London, as I leave for my semester abroad in just 2 days!! (I am freaking out a little bit)
Until then, happy 2014!
-Eva
