2013 is almost over, so that means a round up of December's Instagram photos! I hope everyone had a lovely festive season and I am sending Happy New Year wishes to you all!

This edition of NOTD features one of my favourite kind of nail colours to wear at the moment - Mint. Usually I would go for Essie's Mint Candy Apple but I opted for the Revlon offering in the shade Minted (original right?!) Minted is definitely a lot more green when compared to Mint Candy Apple which had a bit more blue through it.

A few weeks ago I decided I just could not live with not having any Benefit products in my life so I went ahead and order a few things (more posts to come...) and this was one of the items I added to my cart. As I had not tried any Benefit before I thought this mini set was the perfect way to sample a few different items and test them all out. The best thing is that Benefit have free international shipping when you spend over USD $125, which isn't hard to do on such an amazing site and is great value instead of buying from the very few counters that we have in NZ (or Auckland I should say).

Merry Christmas everyone! Wishing you all a very happy and jolly day, enjoy your presents, cherish your family and stuff your face with all the amazing food!

Enjoy these couple of snaps of our decorations at home, this stocking I have had since I was very very young and Mum puts it out every year.…

I had always looked at the Lime Crime lipsticks and thought how amazing they were but I just didn't think I had the guts to pull off such unique and vibrant colours. But a couple of weeks ago Nasty Gal had free worldwide shipping and I was surprised to find they stocked Lime Crime on their site. They don't have the largest selection but it is the cheapest I have seen them available, plus with the free shipping I just couldn't resist (I say that every time don't I....)

The Body Shop Tea Tree range has done absolute wonders for my skin and has helped clear and treat my blemishes, as well as keeping the oilyness at bay. Initially I didn't buy the Face Mask but seeing as I was loving the rest of the range I thought why not get the mask as well. It is around $20 (sorry I can't remember the actual price) for a pretty generous 100ml pottle that should last for a while.

December's Sample Bar Glam Pack was a jam packed one! Sample Bar is a monthly subscription service for $25 a month and usually comes with 5 (sometimes 6) sample, or full sized products. I was looking forward to it as generally the Christmas ones tend to be really good and full of great items. There is a total of 11 different products in this months pack, very impressive I must say!

I love pastel colours for the summer and this Essie polish in the shade Tart Deco just screams lying on the beach in the sun (and perhaps with a cocktail in hand also!)

It's time for the second post in the New Additions series (you can see the first post here) and again I will be sharing some new gemstones and minerals that I have got my hands on.

I honestly can't believe how fast the month of November went and now it's only a week til Christmas - where does the time go!? Anywho enough of the cliches and onto my thoughts about the November Sample Bar Glam Pack! You can find my unboxing and initial thoughts here, overall I really enjoyed this month and was happy to have a nice mix of hair, makeup and skincare items to try.

So you may read this and think - a bronzing primer, really, is that necessary? At first I wasn't quite sure about it myself and it took me a few tries to make it work but the Bourjois Paris Bronzing Primer is a seriously good product and I shall tell you why...

This little sample bottle has quickly turned into something I have been using everyday and absolutely loving the results. I received this 15ml sample in a Sample Bar Glam Pack (unsure of the month) and had just not given it a go until a couple of weeks ago when I decided to finally give it a whirl. The Dermalogica Precleanse is as the name suggests an oil to use before cleansing your face.

As summer is finally beginning to be in full force, I thought it was time to bring out the neon on the nails! I opted for this BYS polish in Pink Panic and it is a truly fluoro, neon, hot pink colour.

If you are a reader of my blog, you may have noticed I really have a soft spot for MUA (Makeup Academy). Not only is it super cheap and affordable, they ship to NZ (hooray!) and is one of the few UK 'high street/drugstore' makeup brands that actually do so. They have a great range and I am a fan of many of their products and this blusher is no difference.

I will admit it has been neglected as I tend to reach for MAC or my loved Milani blush most days but I am trying to use products that weren't getting as much love as they should have been and this Blusher has been at the top of my list. I also think it could be a good dupe for MAC Peaches blush!

Yes I know, the combo of an Essie and an OPI polish has been fairly common for the last few NOTD posts, but I just love the shades so much! I used the new Essie polish from the Fall 2013 collection in After School Boy Blazer which is a very dark navy which looks black in some lights. To add some glitter I used OPI Pirouette My Whistle which is a matte silver glitter, with small circular pieces and larger round pieces.

I just had to share these gorgeous little milk bottles I picked up the other day from a small gallery in Akaroa. They were $6 each and there were a few other designs; ones with neon polka dots, and a another with a neon heart. I went for the basis B&W, with the black chevron print and a white star.

For my daily face numero 2 I was off to work so I generally slap on a little more makeup with heavier coverage so it'll last me all day. Most of these items I pretty much reach for on a daily basis and I know that they work well for me.

I hadn't delved into MAC blushes until the start of this year, since then I have added four blushes from MAC to my collection and I think they make the perfect 'capsule' collection (if you will) of colours. I cover the bases of matte, shimmery, lighter and darker shades in only four colours and each one I absolutely love. MAC blushes are of high quality with great pigmentation, colour range and easy to blend. My favourite brush to use with any blusher is the Real Techniques Blush Brush, which I swear by and suggest you get your hands on it ASAP, if you don't own it already!

Along with the 5 bottle of OPI I got during the NZ Sale Flash Frenzy sale event, they also has Revlon & Almay available so I picked a few items from that sale also. I already own many Revlon polishes but grabbed a few more because well, why not!? Swatches and more info all below...

As soon as I got Essie Fiji I pretty much put it on my nails straight away! It really is the most gorgeous shade of soft pastel pink. To add a bit of oomph I paired it with the equally new OPI liquid sand in Honey Ryder.

Wow, less then one month to Christmas now, who can believe that?! This month I have been using a lot of different makeup products, delving into my collection and using things that I don't usually use on a everyday basis - it has been a lot of fun trying out different looks and products! But despite that there have been quite a few items I have been reaching for pretty much every day, let's get into it!

November has come and gone, in between finishing my exams at the start of the month to starting work over in Akaroa for the summer, not many Instagram's were actually snapped. But here is the round up of the photos I did take during the month of November.

I am so excited to have been nominated for Best Beauty Blog by Beauty Review. I am up against 14 other NZ based bloggers (all of whom are really great and I can't believe I am up against them!), my blog is in Heat 4 which has opened today and runs until Thursday 5th December.

I would love your…

A few weeks ago I teamed up with NZ Sale to promote their Flash Frenzy 3 day sale event and I was given $100 to spend on their site, which was so exciting! They had so many great sales going on and the O.P.I. sale was one I had my eye on. They had each bottle for only $10, an amazing bargain considering they are around $23 in store here in NZ (but generally I buy them off eBay for around $10-$12 anyway). I decided to buy 5 bottles and they had such a good selection of shades, it was hard to narrow it down to just a few!

It's time for a new Sample Bar Glam Pack! I always get so excited when this little package arrives on my door step and rip it open as soon as I can to see what this month brings. If you're not sure what Sample Bar is, it is a monthly subscription service for $25 (including shipping) and you get 5 or more samples of various products.

Both of these nail colours I have mentioned on my blog, the Orly one here in my Spring Polish Picks and the Maybelline Color Show Sequins here. I wanted to add a bit of glitter to my nails, so opted for the Maybelline Color Show Sequins in Silver Gleam and teamed it with Orly Coachella Dweller.

I've talked about Postie many times on my blog before as it is a great place to buy cheap, parallel imported makeup and beauty items. They often have good sales and when I went in to buy this lots, they had 30% off all beauty. I only picked up a few bits as the Postie I went to didn't have the best range compared to the one I got to normally.

Lush product were something I had just never got into, I had been gifted a few bath bombs and soaps over the years and only really ventured into the Lush shops every so often. Now that I keep seeing/watching Lush hauls on Youtube and reading endless blog posts all saying how amazing Lush is, I think I have been converted. I went into my local Lush with buying one of their lip scrubs and I came out with this little pottle of Christmas good-ness!

For today's nails I decided to go for something summery and found this gorgeous pastel lemon yellow polish tucked away in the back of my collection. This was a real cheap one brought from a small pharmacy in Akaroa a few years ago and to be honest I had totally forgotten about it! The bottle doesn't even have the the colour name on it, all I know is the brand is Coral Colours.

Another month, another Sample Bar end of month review.  The October Glam Pack was celebrating their first birthday, so it was expected to be a good one. The majority of the items I really loved but there was one that really did not need to be in their and another that I just haven't got the use out of. As boxes go, this was definitely not an all time favourite but I am still happy with the products. If you would like to see the October unboxing and initial impressions with more photos of the products, you can see it here. Now, on to the review!

Steam Cream was something I had never heard of, until I received this in a Sample Bar box at the start of the year and I absolutely love it! It says it is a moisturiser for face, body and hands but I generally just use it for my body and hands as I have many other dedicated face moisturisers. It is uses many natural and vegan friendly ingredients, as well as many essential oils which are great for the skin including lavender oil, jojoba, neroli and sweet almond.

We all have them, those tiny sachets of product samples that end up getting thrown into a drawer or container and forgotten about. That was me until a few months ago when I decided I needed to actually use the little testers and samples as it is a nice way to see how the product would work for you and try things you wouldn't necessarily buy. I have pulled out 7 samples from my stash and given them the test.

Yes, the oh-so-popular-always-out-of-stock MUA Undress Your Skin Shimmer Highlighter finally made its way back to Add To Cart status, and it straight away was being paid for and shipped off to me! I have been eyeing it up for so long and had come to accept that I will probably never be able to buy it due to its high popularity, but it seems they did a large run as it is still available on the website for only £3.00 [approx. NZD $5.80].

I love the site Once It, not only for its great sales on designer home, beauty and fashion things, but as a way to discover a lot of New Zealand based companies and artists. Sarah Jayne Kavali is one of the artists and I just have to share her work, as it is simple, elegant and beautifully done.

A sale for her work came up on Once It a couple of weeks ago and I instantly feel in love! I purchased a set of postcard dubbed Perfume Greats for only $19.95. There were larger A3 and A4 works also for sale but I just couldn't settle on one design so opted for the postcard set to get a bit of everything.

I love me some Cotton On, although the quality can sometimes be a little dodgy, you pay for what you get and they have some great things at pretty cheap prices! Rubi Shoes and Typo all come under the Cotton On brand, so when I got the email they were offering free shipping to NZ on orders over $50 I jumped on the web straight away. I know I could have probably picked these up in my local Cotton On/Typo, but they had a few discounts and there is much better range available online (as it is based in Australia).