A Midsummer Day's Dream

I have the pleasure of having one of my oldest and dearest friends staying with me for a few days.  She came all the way from Paphos (which is 1.5 hours away, oh the distance!) and thus I decided to go with her for a walk to one of our lovely parks here in Nicosia.  We mostly went there for old times sake since that was our hangout back in our uni days :)

While we were there I could not help it but take a few pictures of the park for your eyes only. It is a fairly big park with a lot of space for children to run around, ride their bikes, play football and in general have a relaxed and fun day with their parents.

This little guy came to greet us as soon as we entered the park so I couldn't help but take its picture

The grass area is an ideal place for children to ride their bikes and for those who wish to play a friendly game of football

A little girl with no worries with her little pink bike, this is the life!

taking a stroll in this kind of scenery actually makes it a pleasant one!

This is kind of a famous bridge since a lot of local tv series will employ it for their romantic scenes

Don't feel like riding your bike of playing football? You can spread your blanket on the grass and have a nice picnic :)

What would be better than chilling between 3 palm trees?

And of course what park would be complete without a "waterfall"?

Till next time:) x

A plethora of pictures :)

I know that my two last blog posts have consisted of unrelated topics when compared to my previous blog posts, but since this blog is a little bit of everything I thought that it would be ok :)

This time round I decided to include some more pictures that I have taken either in my back yard, at the beach or at a mexican restaurant! Admittedly they are a bit random but then again so am I! If you stick till the end you even might get to see a little cheeky picture of me ;)

As far as I can remember all but one of these pictures were taken with my compact so again excuse the picture quality.

Here we go!

At the beach, obviously...! In Larnaca specifically, that's the only place in Cyprus where you can see that many palm trees :) 

Little Mindy, when she wasn't even a month old, still cute and innocent at that age

Little Mindy again...still innocent...

Aaand now the wild beast is awaken! Literally! She will not even let me pet her anymore, all she wants to do is bite my hand until it falls off!

This is her little brother who is a year older, he was such a cutie when he was a fluffy kitten!

Even though the quality is horrible I had to include a picture of my little baby boy, this is when a first got him from the shelter :)

As promised a pic of my sis and I (I am the one on the right), again horrible quality since I didn't want to use flash but here you go :)

Till next time! x

Don't always trust ''beauty gurus''

Alright so like any other normal girl watching youtube beauty gurus, I also get sucked into the products they rave about from time to time.  The thing is that PR companies will send them those products for free and then they will go on and on about how fantastic and life changing they are and why you just need to run out and buy them, and of course we are only human, so we do run out and buy them.

To be fair there are a couple of products that I bought due to youtubers' recommendations that have worked wonders and I have repurchased them time and time again.  So in this post I am going to discuss the products that have been worth buying and the ones that I literally wasted my money on.

Here is an overview of the products I bought, the good and the bad!

Let us begin with the good shall we?  Due to the fact that I have super oily skin I am always on the lookout for products that will take the shine away.  There is one specific youtuber that always raves about the Rimmel Stay Matte powder (like seriously always), therefore after watching several videos of her saying how it's the only powder she ever uses I decided to go ahead and buy it, since it is extremely cheap as well.  And to my surprise it worked better than I had hoped for!

Just to give you an idea of how oily I am, after I have applied my foundation the oiliness will begin to come through within the hour!  After setting my bb cream with this powder, not only my bb cream will stay in place for 8-9 hours but I will be shine free for 5-6 hours!

And yes, it does wonders for us oily people out there!

Absolutely everybody in the youtube beauty community have been raving about the Collection 2000 lasting perfection concealer, and rightly so.  I have tried an unbelievable amount of concealers since I do have imperfections that need to be hidden, this is THE only one that provides full coverage, does not break me out and will stay on for hours.  On a good skin day I will only have this on any imperfections and I am good to go! 

Literally best concealer out there!

The next product was a recommendation by two youtubers and since I trust one of them more than the other I thought that it was worth a try.  It is a product that is for acne prone skin and it claims that it unclogs your pores, thus leaving you with less breakouts.  Now to be fair I don't know how well it works on its own since I do apply it at night but I will use another product over that just on my imperfections.  It is the infamous La Roche-Posay Effaclar Duo; now there are two versions of this product, one which contains benzoyl peroxide and one which doesn't.  I have the one which is without it since it was impossible to get it shipped to Cyprus without having to pay a ridiculous amount of money, but I have to say that I got on with it pretty well since it has not irritated my skin.  Therefore I will list this under my ''successful buy'' category!

La Roche-Posay seems to have gotten it right

Now on to the bad!  When Rimmel came out with the Scandal Eyes Kohl Liner they sent this product probably to every beauty guru out there, and of course they all featured them in their videos. They were seriously everywhere; in their everyday make up look, in their monthly favorites, in their tutorials and the list goes on and on.  I like to put liner on my waterline, and since they don't call it a waterline for nothing, the liner NEVER stays put, it will ALWAYS end up under my waterline.  After listening to them go and on about how fantastic this product is and how it stays in place I decided to give it a go.  If only I had known better!  It is THE worst liner that I have ever had!  I tried it on my waterline, didn't even stay on for 5 minutes, i tried it above the lash line, didn't stay on for over half an hour!  It is ridiculous how bad this liner is, not to mention that this ''waterproof'' eyeliner came off extremely easily when I was washing my face.

Big no no!

Every girl will always be on the hunt for a mascara that will give her that false lash effect without having to use fake eyelashes right? The beauty youtube community claims to have found this product in Maybelline's The Falsies.  After having it seen it in tutorials and in monthly favorites time and time again I got sucked into the whole fiasco and went out and bought it.  Again, big mistake.  This mascara does absolutely nothing for my lashes, it does not add any volume nor any length (which to be fair it only claims to add volume), it just makes them more black and that is about it.

Huge no no!

And last but not least a product that is quite recent in the youtube beauty community, the Tangle Teezer! This amazing brush that is supposed to untangle your hair without damaging it.  The problem is that the bristles of this brush are not long enough to actually go into my hair and only stays on the surface!  Or even worse, when it does manage to go through, it does absolutely nothing for my knots which results in me using my old trusty hair brush to untangle my hair!

That is it, my rant is over.  If you do read this at a time when you are considering buying one of the products that have not been in my successful buys list then seriously do not buy them, do not waste your money on them.  In an ideal world youtubers would not recommend products that are absolutely worthless and would not prompt their young viewers who have no money to go out and buy them, but alas, it is their job and at the end of the day and they do what they have to do.

Till next time!

Help! Acne!

I know that I primarily started this blog to post pictures that I take with my camera, but after reading a post on Lauren Conrad's blog about when you should visit the dermatologist and saw in the comment section how many women are suffering with cystic acne I decided to write this post.

This is a very difficult thing for me to write because I have people reading this blog who have obviously seen that I suffer with cystic acne but never discussed it openly with them, but if my tips help even one person out there then it's worth it :)

When my acne began

I began to get blemishes on my forehead when I was about 13-14 years old, back then I had absolutely no idea how to apply makeup or how to apply a concealer correctly so that I would hide my blemishes but also not look like I have a ton of makeup on.  So the end result was me going to school with literally a ton of makeup on my face and having the boys in my class make fun of me, as if having a face full of blemishes wasn't enough...

Thankfully the cystic acne that I got was mainly on my forehead and I would also get a few spots on my chin but that was about it, so I went to the hairdresser's and got bangs to hide the blemishes I had.  I now know that that could be the cause of more breakouts but at the time I didn't know any better, the bangs did the job of hiding my blemishes and making look like I have flawless skin and that was all I needed at the time.

Moving on to my uni years, I remember that at the time I would only wear makeup on my forehead since that was my problem area and I would not put anything on the rest of my face, lucky me right? Wrong, because little did I know that my acne would later on start moving downwards to my cheeks, chin and jaw line!

The current state of my acne

My cystic acne seems to be hormonal, and believe it or not I actually very recently learnt what kind of acne I have and what cystic acne means since none of the dermatologists I ever went to explained it to me!

Now unfortunately I have breakouts all over my face, on my forehead, cheeks, chin, and jaw line but it's mostly on my cheeks.

On a good day I might have just a couple of spots on my cheeks (big ones of course), or there have even been days when I would have no blemishes at all and I would only have some acne scarring.

My skin from time to time (usually at least ones a month) decides to have a freak out session and I get big, red, inflamed, angry looking blemishes which are either going to be all over my cheeks or concentrated on a specific area one next to the other.  What usually happens is that I will get what I call a ''line'' of huge blemishes starting from my dimples and going down to my jaw line, and that is always pretty much a straight line of big, cystic, red blemishes!

Granted that this will normally happen during that time of the month or when I get extremely stressed over something, since when I am calm and stress free I am mostly blemish free!

My miracle product

As many of other acne sufferers, I have also spent A LOT of money on acne products!  At this point I can say which products work for me and which don't.

The product that HAS NOT worked for me is benzoyl peroxide; whenever I decide to use it (usually when I am so desperate that I don't know what else to do), my face turns red and the next day it starts peeling like crazy!

The products that HAVE worked for me are salicylic acid and wait for it...SUDOCREM, yes the nappy cream! I got some really bad breakouts just a few days ago and I have been applying a product that contains salicylic acid all over my face and then I apply just a bit of sudocrem on the blemish itself and it has honestly worked wonders. It reduces the size of the blemish; it will either bring it to a whitehead or make it completely disappear!

I have just realized that this post is already getting too long, therefore I will end it here but if you guys want me to write a post about my full skincare routine or products that I use that haven't broken me out or what kind of pill I am now on then please let me know in the comment section below :)

P.S: English is my second language so please excuses any mistakes :)

Poised Ballerina :)

Aaah, ballet, such a beautiful thing to watch right? So elegant, so poised, so ethereal...these are my exact thoughts whenever I watch a ballet performance and I always think to myself ''If only I could have the balance required to stand one one leg while the other one is up high in the air and look as poised as they do'', and what better way to venture into that by start taking ballet lessons?! Yes I have done it, I have started taking ballet lessons, and no the pictures below are not pictures of me, that's one of my best friends who also happens to be a very talented ballet teacher and took on the (impossible in my opinion!) task of teaching me ballet.

Since I always look for new and interesting things to take a picture of I decided to photograph her right before our lesson and she was kind enough to accept to stand on one leg while the other one is in the air and have me telling her ''hold it, hold it!'' so that I could take the picture. So there you have it, a few pictures of her posing for my camera lens. There is actually going to be a part 2 to this since after this session we found many more poses that she can demonstrate for your eyes only so be on the lookout for that one! Enjoy :)

Our ballerina in preparation

The ''pipes'' of torture

This elegant position that our talented ballerina is demonstrating is called Attitude derriere

And this is a demonstration of a Port de bras

While the sun is beaming on our ballerina we can see a first arabesque

In this picture as well as in the next two pictures below we can see a successful demonstration of various poses of the body

Beautiful Barcelona :)

Hello, hello, hello! Even though I got no feedback whatsoever (either because no one is reading this and the stats are lying to me or because you just don't feel like it, who knows!), I have decided to post a few pictures from my trip to Spain, Barcelona. This was back in 2011 and as far as I can remember I went there during August and at the time we thought that it was going to be incredibly hot but weirdly enough it wasn't! Not only it wasn't hot but during the night it even got a bit chilly, who would have thought!  

I have to say that I haven't been traveling around a lot since I developed a fear of flying but I have been to few countries and Spain was by far the most beautiful place I have visited so far; it was truly magical, very romantic if you want to go with that special someone but also fun filled for a night out with your mates. 

I believe that we only stayed there for about 6 days which I have to say was not enough to see everything that we wanted to but we took the Bus Turistic 2 days tour and we pretty much covered the main Gaudi sights.  If you want some more (and accurate) information on Gaudi then please look him up, but as far as I know he was this very famous architect who designed many buildings including his most famous one, the Sagrada Familia.  I have to say that everything that we saw that was designed by him was absolutely spectacular, his architecture is really quite unique and extremely interesting and intricate.  

I would also like to once again apologize for the picture quality as these were taken with my compact since I did not have my dslr at the time. Now on to the pictures! :)

This interesting ''statue'' let's call it was at the Marina Port Vell which is at the end of La Rambla

This is the at the port again during sunset and what made if even more beautiful were the gorgeous surrounding buildings

Now we are at Park Guell, I never went inside this building so I don't really know what it is but it looks like a gift shop I want to say?

Aaah!The magic fountains which "sang" Disney songs while the water was dancing to the rhythm of the music :) 

These little fellows as well as the picture below were taken at the zoo in Barcelona (obviously right?)

This is the end of part one of my Barcelona trip, I've got so many more pictures coming up in part two so see you then :)

Picturesque Cyprus :)

Alright, I never thought anyone would ever read these blog posts but apparently there are a few people that have! So for today's blog post I thought I would create a little collage of pictures I have taken in Cyprus and maybe next time I could post some pictures I took from my trip to Barcelona:) Please don't be shy to leave me feedback as to what you would like to see next because I literally have soo many pictures I wouldn't know what to post on here!

P.S 1: I know that I tend to take ''close-ups'' so you can't really see any scenery buuut I will try to improve on that :)

P.S 2: Some pictures were taken with my compact and some of them with my new dslr so excuse the picture quality in some of them :)

Now let your "trip" around Cyprus begin :)

This was taken at a beautiful village in Cyprus in the garden of some friends (can't remember the name of the village though...sorry!)

Now this is at the gorgeous Limassol

Again a picture from the village that I can't remember the name of...

If you have ever been to Barcelona you will recognize the ''magic fountains'' (if you want to see more pictures from my trip please do let me know:) )

Oddly enough I took this picture at the parking place of a school nearby my house!

I like to take pictures when I take my doggy for a walk and this is one of them :)

Many people thought that this one was taken outside of Cyprus, but nooo this is from one of the beaches at Protaras :)

If you read my previous blog you will recognize this little monster 

Yes, you have guessed it, at a beach in Protaras :)

And now we are at a port in Zigi which is another village here in Cyprus (same goes for the 2 bottom pictures as well!)

See you next time :)

P.S 3: here's a cheeky little link, click on it if you are feeling lucky :)  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJslkixkaH0