FAVES OF 2013

Hey you!

This is my very last 2013 themed post (and then I finally can start with fresh new 2014 posts, haha). It’s about all my favourite products that I bought in the year of 2013. I have other holy grail products, but most of them I didn’t buy in 2013, but earlier. So it’s just going to be about my favourite products of 2013, not my all time favourites (I can make a post about that too, if you want?) Personally, I really like those kind of blogposts. They’re useful, because they’re like collective mini reviews. So you can see a lot of great products all together very easily! I have a couple of categories of favourite things to go through, so leggo!

Fashion

There were a couple of trends this year that I absolutely loved. The first and most recent one is (you can probably guess it already) fucking fluffy things! Who doesn’t love this trend? It’s cosy, comfortable and it keeps you warm during the cold winter months. I love things with interesting textures, so that’s also a reason why I love fluffy stuff so much.

A picture of my fluffy shit collection haha. I have a black sweater from New Look, a cardigan from Bershka, a furry coat from H&M and a little cute sheepskin carpet from Ikea.

The second trend I totally was obsessed with was leather, and especially leather panel leggings or coated jeans. I’ve always been a leather jacket kinda girl, but this year I also wore a lot of leather at the bottom! I just love the very shiny effect that leather has.

You’ve seen me wearing these pieces loads, so you probably already now where they’re from. But if you’ve been living under a rock (haha just kidding), the black coated jeans (left) and the leather panel leggings (right) are both from H&M.

I also absolutely loved rose gold things in 2013. To be honest, I started liking rose gold in 2012, so it’s not something that I only liked this year. But in 2013 I added a lot of items to my rose gold collection, so my obsession with rose gold was even bigger this year, haha. My favourite rose gold things that I bought (they’re actually all gifts haha) were these ones:

They’re my Frends headphones (the model is called Taylor), my Guess make-up bag, my Gassan dainty bracelet of course my Michael Kors Watch (you can read more about it here)! Don’t they look pretty all together?

Another thing I was totally obsessed with this year was knuckle rings! I almost didn’t feel complete if I didn’t wear them. I like the way my hands look when I wear them, I feel like a Greek goddess (they already found knuckle rings during the Ancient times in Greece, cool huh?) mixed with some swag and edge haha!

The knuckle rings in the picture are from H&M, River Island and Urban Outfitters.

Favourite OOTD

Okay, this was a tough one… Only 1 favourite ootd? That’s cray cray! But believe it or not, at the end I accomplished to choose only one! I was debating between an outfit with my leather panel leggings, my black fluffy sweater and this one, but in the end I decided to choose this one, because you’ve never seen it before.

It’s a very easy outfit and not very haute couture or something, haha. I just love the shorts I’m wearing, because they’re very comfortable, I love the fact that I’m very tanned and I love the sandals. I just really miss the summer I think, and that’s why I really like this outfit! 

Beauty

Okay, now on to the beauty category. I’m going to start with skincare, because your skin is the most important thing if you want a good make-up day! If you take good care of your skin, you have to wear less make-up and you’ll have more time in the morning (yeaah more time to sleep!). Unfortunately, my skin was always a problem for me, and nothing changed in 2013. This year, I also didn’t find a lot of amazing skincare products, except for this one:

This face wash, Purity Made Simple by Philosophy, is the best one I’ve ever tried. It removes my make-up very well and doesn’t dry my skin out. It doesn’t leave my skin feeling squeeky clean, but moisturized. I especially love that during the winter, as my skin is very dry at the moment. I also like the smell, but I don’t think that’s very important for skincare products. I also like the packaging (but again that’s not so important haha). The only thing I don’t like is the price. It’s not very cheap (but not very expensive either). But I think it’s worth it, because it’s the first face wash that I used that not only removes my make-up, but also ‘does’ something for my skin. As I said before, I really get a moisturized feeling after using this (but of course, I still use moisturizer afterwards). So I really recommend this face wash!

This year was the first year I regulary (okay, kinda regulary) wore lipstick or lipproducts in general. I never was a lipproducts kinda gal. My lips were too chapped, I didn’t had the time to put them on or I forgot to re-apply them during the day. But this year I bought two lipsticks I absolutely love, and I wore them often! Funny that they’re totally the opposite of each other.

The nude lipstick is from Catrice and it’s called Hey Nude. I love the fact that it’s a pinky nude, so you don’t look like a corpse bride when you wear it. It’s not drying on your lips and it’s very cheap (although the packaging isn’t cheap looking at all). It won’t survive a meal though, so you need to re-apply it during the day. Luckily it fades very nicely, so you don’t have to worry about weird lines on your lips.

The other lipstick is Diva by MAC. It’s the perfect true dark red, there’s no purple in it. It’s a very vampy colour and I feel like a good girl gone bad wearing it (just kidding haha). Although the colour is very intimidating, I still think a lot of people can pull it off. It’s an universal shade, because it doesn’t have a purple tint to it, which would make it hard to wear. It has a matte finish, so I recommend scrubbing your lips before applying it.

The last beauty related thing I wanna talk about is my favourite nail polish! I wore a lot of nail polish this year. The reason for that is that I also had an obsession with knuckle rings in 2013, and I didn’t like wearing them if I didn’t paint my nails. So I tried to do one or two manicures a week. Of course, I didn’t do this throughout the whole year, but I tried to.

You’re probably wondering, how in the world can you paint your nails so often without totally fucking them up? Well, this year I discovered the perfect base- and topcoat. I never used base- and topcoat, until this year. I’ve had an issue with every basecoat I tried, because if I used it, I could peel my nailpolish right off. The topcoats I’ve tried were also crap, because it took ages before my nails were finally dry. But then I discovered the basecoat Grow Richer from Essie and the topcoat Good To Go, also from Essie. The basecoat didn’t peel and the topcoat made my nails dry very quick. I’ve also noticed that since I started using the basecoat, my nails were stronger and they (almost) never broke this year. So if you’re searching for a good base- and topcoat, try these ones!

This year, I had two favourite nailpolishes. One of them I wore the whole spring and summer, and the other one I wore during the fall and winter! The white one is called Blanc from Essie, and was my favourite nailpolish to wear when I was tanned. I just love the look of white nails (combined with knuckle rings). It looks very clean and polished (haha). The other nailpolish was Red Dingue from Bourjois. It was a perfect dark red, and it matched with my MAC Diva lipstick! Every time I wore this nailpolish, I tried to wear my lipstick as well. It always felt so well put together when I did that haha! Both of these nailpolishes have a great consistency. They’re opaque in one coat, but I usually wore 2, just to be sure.

Music 

This is my last category! My favourite artist that I discovered this year was J. Cole. Of course I knew about him, but I’ve never listened to his albums. But when he came out with Born Sinner I fell in love with his music, so I downloaded all his albums and mixtapes. And I went to his concert. Haha, yeah I really like his music. I like the fact that he’s a storyteller, I like his beats, I like his flow and his voice. And he’s a great performer. He’s just perfect!

Another artist that I already knew in 2012, but whom I saw performing in the Melkweg (Amsterdam) this year and totally loved in 2013, was Kendrick Lamar. Especially at the beginning of 2013 I listened to Good Kid, m.A.A.d city a lot. Such a great album. My favourite songs on the album are Sing About Me – Dying of Thirst, Poetic Justice and Money Trees. If I have to choose between Kendrick and J. Cole, I’m going to choose Kendrick, because he has an innovative sound, I love the way he tells stories using metaphors plus he has a very uncommon voice (it’s hard to describe, you just need to listen to him to understand what I mean). But Cole is a close second!

And the last artist I wanna talk about, or actually album that was released this year (and I’ve listened the crap out of), was Wolf by Tyler, The Creator. I listened a lot to OFWGKTA as a whole (the group Tyler is a member of) previous year, but in 2013 I especially listened a lot to his album Wolf. It shows a whole new, grown up side of Tyler. It’s also a perfect album to listen to during the summer. I especially love Bimmer, IFHY and Answer.

Of course, there were a lot of other artists that I listened to in 2013, but these really stood out to me!

Well, I hope you enjoyed this very long post!

xoxo Lilia