Things I want vs things I should be doing with my money...

Things I want:

• Hourglass Opaque Rouge Liquid Lipstick. Ideally two, in Raven (red) and Icon (purple-red)
• 4 dresses from Oasis. I don't want to buy all 4 (yet), but I at least want to try on all 4. And knowing my luck I won't buy any. I tried on 2 that had been on my wishlist for a long time at the weekend and they both looked really bad on me. Wrong tailoring for my shape.
• Clinique Chubby Stick Intense. Yes! Shortly after saying I wanted to get a red (and maybe more) in the normal, the intense shades came out! I really want the red. It's a lovely red. I only need a few more Boots points to get one for free... I think Mightiest Marachino is the shade I want.
• Clinique Almost Lipstick in Black Honey. Black Honey is probably my favourite Clinique colour ever. Ever. I almost cried when I broke my Black Honey gradient blush palette on the bathroom floor (it shattered) because I waited too long to buy a replacement (trying to be a "good girl" and saving money) and couldn't find it anymore
• Karl Lagerfeld for Shu Uemura painting liner

Things I should be doing with my money:

• Replacing the money I took out of my savings when money was a bit tight last week.
• Adding more money to my savings
• Gradually buying things I need for Japan e.g. suits, smart tights, shirts, shoes, shoe polishing kit...

As you can see, with the purchase of 4 different MAC eye products over the last couple of months, I now want to indulge in beautiful autumn/winter lip colours. For me, autumn/winter make up colours are reds and purples. And now I want purple/red lips. Granted, I do already have some red and purple lipsticks, I guess I should make more of an effort to wear them. My Voluptuous Violet Chubby Stick is getting a lot of use these days - I feel like proper lipstick might be a bit too much for work...

Hair dye

I've been slacking off again, with everything. Well, everything not work-related.

So I've not been studying, I've not been blogging...

I just about made time to pamper myself a little, and tonight I'm finally going to dye my hair again!

My natural hair colour is - of course, since I'm of South Asian descent - very dark brown, bordering on black if not seen in natural or bright light. When I was still at school, I always wanted to dye my hair different colours, which is something my sister actually did instead of dreaming it. For almost any bright colour to show, I would have had to bleach my hair, like she did, so I ended up not doing it. It was too much hassle, I was scared of ruining my hair with super strong bleach, and the school got incredibly pissed off when my sister dyed her hair.

(at our school we had to wear uniform until we were 16, and then the rules about hair were a bit more relaxed as well. My sister started dying her hair green, blue, red etc when she was still in uniform, so there were a lot of senior staff complaints)

Then in my second year of uni (19 years old) I decided to finally dye it red. Not a firetruck red, mind, but something red that would show. My mum first suggested using henna, which is what she did when she started to go grey (a very traditional South Asian thing to do). I tried it, but it just made my hair dark brown and it smelt like henna (which I associate with mud) for ages. So I asked some friends for advice, and they recommended I try Schwarzkopf.

Anyone who knows a teeny tiny bit of German might see why someone with my natural hair colour was recommended a brand called "black head". The dyes come in different shades depending on your natural hair colour, so if you're anything from light blonde to dark brown to black, you should be able to find a shade which will show up on your hair.

Perfect for me!

And ever since I've continued dying my hair with 43, Red Passion. And gotten many compliments about it.

Sadly, it's now a very popular shade - yesterday I had to go to 3 different Boots to find it. And then a new type of their hair dye caught my eye, next to the other reds. (My one has a different picture on the box...)

A red hair dye with natural lightening in it, no need for an extra bleach step (which I don't do anyway). So I thought, why not! Although, since my hair is already mostly dyed - except for the inch of roots which is driving me mental, though since my hair is naturally dark anyway and the red isn't bright, it's not as bad as it could be - this could go horribly wrong.

If it goes wrong, I'm dying my entire head a nice light shade of brown.

We'll see.