Actual and Post-Birthday Treats

So, to continue my boastful tirade of "look how wonderful my birthday was!", I'm writing this post. When I got home, after keeping things pretty secret (I didn't want much of a fuss) Nick presented me with a surprise birthday cake which was all kinds of airy cream and chocolate.

The strawberries on top were a sweet bonus, because I'd been growing a little strawberry plant for the past few weeks, and after finally getting it to sprout by placing it in the corridor...it vanished.

Either my Korean is terrible or nobody reads notes asking you to please kindly not steal my tiny little strawberry that could stand on a 50p piece. But either way, I was a little devastated and Nick convinced me it'd gone to bulk up and become part of my birthday celebrations. Dark.

Birthday cakes are pretty easy to find here for very reasonable prices and they're all far superior to the dry, cloying things you tend to pick up in supermarkets back home. They also have the added bonus of coming with candles, matches, and a little knife so you can celebrate anywhere and everywhere. Super cute.

We also joined Ziggy for samgyeopsal in the gogijip (it's literally called "Bupyeong Meat House") behind our apartment and found out that it's not only a great price but also really delicious! After gorging ourselves on pork and beef, we went to get some bubble tea and generally hang out for fun times. Thank you to you both~

An Etude House Love Affair

What follows is a long and boring story about skincare, so if you're not into seeing pictures of my face and bottles, I'd skip this post, hahah.

I've always had bad skin. As soon as I hit about 10, my hair went curly and greasy, and my skin wasn't far behind in breaking out all over the place.
I had no idea what to do, and neither did my mum, who has always had naturally straight hair and healthy skin. I was also pretty lazy and hated all the faff that went into cleaning your face "properly", insisted any soap stung my eyes, and didn't like drinking water. Also, I picked. Pick, pick, pick. In short, I was a nightmare.

As I got older, I didn't really do much to fix this. My family would buy me toiletries full of teatree (which I detested), witch hazel (which was quite nice but sticky), and various other lotions and potions that either didn't work, or I was too lazy to use regularly enough for them to work. Combined with what I now know is probably dermatillomania my skin was far from perfect.

Over the years the spots seemed to slide down my face, congregating on my chin, neck and chest, rather than the nose and temples of my younger years. But the damage was done, and like exercise the longer you leave it and ignore it, the harder it is to do anything about it.

Enter Etude House. My knight in shining armour and cute, frilly princess packaging. I discovered the brand via this very helpful journal entry by BehindInfinity, one of my absolute favourite cosplayers (along with the rest of TuxTeam) and general internet angel. I learnt a lot about skincare from that one post and it inspired me to actually try and do something for once.

I went to buy some of the products mentioned, and had to turn to the internet because they were all Asian brands that for some reason don't get sold in the UK. Ugh. Thankfully, Cosmetic Love are a pretty reputable online store specialising in Korean cosmetics, and actually have pretty decent prices for that matter. Rather than risk anything cheaper on eBay, I went for it, picking up a few extra pieces that I thought were cute or sounded good.

(side note: Cosmetic Love were great. They shipped everything out really quickly in as small a box as possible, and also crammed any gaps left full of samples. My eternal shopping love goes out to them and I would definitely recommend trying them if you're in the UK wanting to try some Korean brands.)

So, here's my current (and rapidly expanding) stock of things-I-use-on-my-face: