Combined Makeup Sale Haul

Hey guys! 

Here is my first proper post of the year! Today I am bringing to you a makeup haul. 

Just before christmas we had two back to back makeup sales so I thought instead of bombarding you guys with a bunch of hauls all at once, I combined them into a big haul.

First up, I got got both these at the same makeup sale. The top one is w7 In The Nude and is a dupe for Urban Decay Naked 3.  The bottom one is w7 In The Mood which is an all matte palette. Both these palettes are amazing and super pigmented. I definitely recommend picking these up if you can. I have swatch posts of other w7 palettes if you would like to check those out!

The blush and bronzer palette I got from the second makeup sale (the same one as the w7 palettes) and the foundations I picked up from the first one. The blush and bronzer palette is by a brand called Profusion. It comes with 4 blushes, two bronzers and two highlights. They are all incredible pigmented and amazing and the only thing I fault this palette on is how powdery they are. The two foundations I haven't used much. I picked up Loreal Magic Nude Liquid Powder Foundation in Buff. I wanted a new foundation in a shade that matched when I was tan and this sounded interesting. I've used it once and didn't like it. It applied patchy and was basically non existant on my skin. I do want to give it another go though. The second foundation I picked up was Revlon Colourstay Aqua Mineral Foundation. I haven't really used this just because I'm not too sure how to actually use a mineral foundation. If you have any tips on how to use this, let me know!

The eyelashes and mascara I grabbed from the second makeup sale, and the eyeshadows from the first. Theres not too much I can say about the eyelashes as I haven't used them yet. I'm still learning how to apply eyelashes. The mascara is w7's Absolute Lashes which is a dupe for Benefit's They're Real mascara. I love it. It makes my eyelashes super black and long, and I haven't experienced any clumping with it. The three eyeshadows are Maybelline Colour Tattoo Pigments. I had no idea these existed until I saw these. I picked Downtown Brown, Breaking Bronze and Buff & Tuff. These are such nice eyeshadows. They blend super well and go on so smooth.

The w7 Brow Parlour and LA Girl Powder I picked up from the second makeup sale whereas the two City Colour products I grabbed from the first one. The w7 Brow Parlour has revolutionised how I do my brows. I used to use the Elf Brow Kit, but this has just blown my mind. It comes with a wax, highlight, blonde and brunette powder as well as a brush/spooly and tweezers. My brows have never been more on point. I use this with the City Colour Bold Brow Gel. It was clear but since it goes on my brows it now has a tint to it. The other City Colour product is a dark spot corrector. This looks amazing underneath a brightening concealer. It is a orange based concealer so it cancels out the blue under my eyes. The last thing is the LA Girl Pro Powder. This is a translucent powder I picked up to try out baking. So far so good!

Lastly, my favourite products. Lippies! These all came from the same makeup sale I believe. Firstly we have three Rimmel Lip Lacquers. Aurora, Nova and Galaxy. All of them are just super pigmented lip glosses basically and they're awesome.  I also grabbed two Yes To Carrots tinted lip balms, although in my opinion they're not very tinted at all. They do moisturise well though. The one actual lipstick I grabbed was a Revlon one. It's colour is Hot Cocoa and is a warm brown colour. I'm totally digging the brown lips trend, I'm just too scared to try it out myself. Lastly, I grabbed a lip gloss. This is Maybelline Colour Sensational Lip Gloss in Luxe Lilac. Theres not much to say about this, its just your standard every day lipgloss.

I hope you guys liked this new idea of pairing up Youtube videos with a blog post.

Let me know what you think about it.

Here is the video for this blog post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCU2nTt9G0o

Shannen xx

YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCjNKymrFCLKvcEZ4rqupZQw

Instagram: _shannenlorraine

Twitter: _kaleidocolours

Blog: http://kaleidocolours.blogspot.co.nz

Facebook: https://facebook.com/kaleidocoloursx

For business inquiries: xkaleidoscopecolours@gmail.com 

Life Update

I'm having a huge writer's block at the minute, so I thought I'd take a step back from my normal posts and give you all a quick update.

I'm even struggling to write this. I really need to sit down and plan ahead. I have returned to studying so I've been a bit busy this last week and I kind of let my blog fall behind a little. But now that I've returned to a good routine, I'll be able to organise and plan a lot better. So watch this space for bigger and better blog posts. There will be all the normal makeup posts, DIY posts, and fashion posts, but I'm thinking about including the odd student post. Posts about how to organise yourself for study,  healthy eating for students or people on a budget, and a whole bunch more DIY aimed at students or budget living. 

If you have any requests for posts you'd like to see, let me know! I am definitely keen to hear any feedback or comments. I would love to hear from my readers! 

I'm going to talk a little bit about where I see my blog going as well. Right now, my blog is a hobby. It's something I enjoy doing in my downtime. It will always be a hobby of mine. I never want to stop posting and sharing my ideas with you guys. At it's very core, it is always going to be a fashion and beauty blog, but I do want to take it on a branch of architectural and interior design blogging too as this is my life goal and what I aspire to be when I grow up. 

Throughout my course, blog posts will be once or twice a week, depending on workloads from my lecturers. In my course breaks and holidays, I will try to increase this to approximately 3 or 4 times a week. 

Now with my YouTube, which I hope you've all checked out and subscribed too (I'll leave the link below (:), I will stick to my one video a week in my course time. This may increase to twice a week, depending on how much footage I've got building up. A lot of that is going to be pre filmed, aside from the odd video, just because I do want to focus on my studies. Although, when I say pre filmed, it will have been filmed the week or two prior to being uploaded. 

Any requests for videos you'd like to see, please let me know! Ideas for videos are harder for me to think of because the whole 'talking to a camera' thing is still kinda new to me. 

Now to connect these two hobbies together, my main blog posts and that week's video may be connected to each other. For example I might do a blog post about a brand, and then that week's video might be a makeup look using that brand. That kind of stuff. Ya know how it is.

Aside from all of my hobbies and studying, I've been working on getting healthier. I've started yoga and pilates, and do about and hour to an hour and a half of exercise a day. So there might even be blog posts and videos on my getting healthy. If you're interested of course. 

So that's all thats new to my life at the moment. Study and getting healthy being the main changes.

I'm looking forward to this year and what it will bring. I'm also looking forward to being super organised. I've been watching a ton of videos about decorating planners and diaries. If you wanna see how I've decorated and organised mine, let me know in the comments below, or even on my Facebook page.

I hope that you guys now understand the recent sporadic posting. I will get it under control.

Thanks for your support guys. 

Shannen xx

YouTube: https://youtube.com/channel/UCjNKymrFCLKvcEZ4rqupZQw

Instagram: _shannenlorraine

Twitter: _kaleidocolours

Blog: http://kaleidocolours.blogspot.co.nz

Facebook: https://facebook.com/kaleidocoloursx

For business inquiries: xkaleidoscopecolours@gmail.com 

My Beauty and Fashion Idols

 These are people who I watch daily, and always check for new videos or blog posts. They are definitely a huge inspiration to me and why I started this blog up, and why I started my YouTube as well.

As I am way more into clothes and fashion than makeup, I'm going to start with my three fashion idols.

My Fashion Idols:

My number one fashion idol, or even my favourite blogger/ youtube is Rhiannon (FashionRocksMySocks). She is so amazing. She is funny, cute and dresses so adorable. I am definitely in love with her style and her personality. She's so easy to relate to and seems so real, like we truly are friends in real life.

Next up is Jess (sunbeamsjess). She is from the UK, just like Rhiannon. I'm not sure why I love Jess so much but her style is awesome. It's so different to how I dress, but here I am watching her videos every time she uploads. She also dabbles in a bit of makeup every now and then too, but she mostly focuses on fashion. I think I enjoy her so much because she is the same age as me, so I feel like we have tonnes in common.

 My last fashion idols are twins Steph and Mel (thefashioncitizen) Their banter is fun to watch and they both have awesome styles. I lean more towards Steph's style, but Melissa also has a great sense of style. Steph is way more punk and grunge, whereas Steph is more preppy, girly. More like what you'd see in magazines, in my personal opinion. Steph is more like what you see on tumblr or instagram. These girls are from Arizona and I love having the opposite styles all on one channel.

Now I love makeup almost as much as I love clothes. It's the best accessory to compliment any outfit. So I do watch a lot of beauty gurus on youtube for inspiration. Here are my top 3:

Every one knows who Shannon Harris (shaaanxo) is. She's the most subscribed person in New Zealand and there is a reason for that. She is amazing at what she does. She is charismatic and funny. The longer she's been on youtube, the more experimental she's gotten and that is awesome. She is my go to for neutral looks.

 Lauren Curtis (laurenbeautyy) is an Australian version of Shaaanxo, pretty much. She's also really funny and down to earth. Lauren does a lot more glam looks than Shaaanxo so I go to her for inspiration for more dramatic eyes. She also has a cute laugh that you'll hear often in her videos.

Lastly, Karissa Pukas (saturdaynightsalrite). She's a Canadian living in Australia. She's great friends with Shaaanxo and they've even done a few videos together. Karissa is very boho and chic and awesome. Not only is she amazing at makeup, but she also has an awesome style. I not only like her for her makeup videos, which tend to be quite natural, but for her TMI Tuesday videos, which are basically Q&A videos. She treats her subscribers just like her real life friends.

YouTube feels like a big family, and the Youtuber's I watch make me feel super included and like I'm really their friend, or something like that. It sounds weird, but once you start watching these girls, you'l' understand. 

I hope you guys check them out. They're all awesome. 

Shannen xx

follow me on youtube, instagram, twitter and facebook!

How To Get Curls That Stay: A Modern Interpretation of Pin Curls

Left: Curls pinned and cooling, Middle: Curls out and brushed, Right: Back view of curls

If you guys have hair that struggles to curl, or hold its curl then this tutorial is for you. This can also helps girls with shorter hair too.
When my hair was longer, it held curls amazingly. So well in fact, I didn't need hairspray and they held for a couple of days. Now that my hair is almost shoulder length, they don't stay if I curl my hair like I used to.

I have seen this method a lot on The Cherry Dollface's YouTube account, as it's a curling method she uses a lot called "pin-curls". Named so because once you curl the hair, you pin it with a bobby pin to retain the shape until the hair has completely cooled down.

I think this style of curl looks great on shorter hair. I also know it looks amazing on longer hair too.

There are two methods you can use when curling your hair in this fashion. One is with a clipless curling wand and the other is with a curling wand that has a clip.

In this tutorial I'm using a curling wand with a clip, but I'm not using the clip. If you want to see how it's done with a clip, let me know and I will film another tutorial to go along with this one.

Now to do this, you need a curling wand, heat protectant, a brush, hair spray, and tons of bobby pins.

I find leaving the pins in as long as possible helps the curls last longer, so I recommend doing this first, before doing your makeup, but do get dressed first in case you accidentally pull the pins out while trying to get a top on.

Curl the piece of hair as you normally would, then drop the curl in your hand.

Pin the curl in place so it retains its shape.

Repeat this all over your head, hair spraying every couple of curls.

Once you've finished, hair spray lightly all over your head.

Continue on your routine, taking the pins out just before you leave, and then run your fingers through the curls to break them apart.

Here's the video I filmed to go along with this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WosgLQvO1BQ&spfreload=10 , hopefully this helps explain it a bit better.

Talk to you guys later xx
Shannen
Photos taken on a Canon 600D
18-55mm lens used
Photos edited on fotor.com

Toning Platinum Blonde Hair

When I tone my hair, I mix a little bit of toner, I use Fudge's Clean Blonde Purple Shampoo, with a conditioner, preferably a white one. I make a pale purple mixture and apply it to dry hair. If I have some on hand, I will add a dollop of pink hair dye to warm up the mixture a bit. I leave this on for like 15 minutes, enough to just take away any brassy tones.

Today I used a pre made purple mixture of Manic Panic's Cotton Candy Pink, Manic Panic Shocking Blue and conditioner (Organic Care's Colour Shield). I put that all over my hair, but I ran out halfway through doing my hair, so I super DIYed it and mixed my toner with my conditioner to make a similar version of the pre made mix. I smooshed this into my hair, blending it as much as possible so the two colours don't turn out too different. I then leave this mixture on for about 45 minutes. I'm aiming for a lilac look so I don't have to tone my hair for a while.

To maintain the toned look,  I use Fudge's Clean Blonde Purple Shampoo once a week, in the shower. I wet my hair, and then use a little bit and smother it over my hair. I wash my face then rinse it out. I always do it in between washing my hair and conditioning. I don't know why I do it in this order, it's just the way it's always been.

That's basically all there is to how I maintain white blonde hair. To make it easier I do all my hair care/maintenance the same day. So on Tuesday night, I soak my hair in coconut oil (sleep on it) then wash it out the next morning. I then tone and condition and carry on with my day.

Shannen xx
Photos of products: stock images off google.com
Other photos taken on Canon 600D
18-55mm lens used
Edited on fotor.com

How to repair very damaged hair

If you guys read my post about my big hair change then you might be wondering why my hair isn't damaged at all. If you haven't, you can read it here: http://kaleidocolours.blogspot.co.nz/2014/09/ch-ch-changes.html . Or if any of you have damaged hair from heat or colouring it then hopefully this post can help you.

Whenever I colour or bleach my hair, I always use the little conditioner it comes with. In my opinion, the Napro Pallette one is the best because it contains 7 different oils that are good for restoring the strength and shine to your hair. An added bonus is that it smells amazing because of the apricot oils it contains. I've had a few of these lying around recently, so every second or third day I've put these in my hair for about 5 minutes. 

Every other day that  I don't use those, I use a hair mask. I have been using the Schwarzkopf Kertain one for very damaged hair. I leave this on for about 5 minutes, even though the instructions say to only leave it on for about a minute. 

About once every two weeks, I use my purple shampoo. Now this is for a number of reasons. Mainly it's to tone my hair and remove any yellowness from my hair. But Fudge's Violet Toning Shampoo also helps to cleanse, restore strength and moisture as well as shine to your hair, so it does a number of things in order to restore it to it's healthier state. I leave this on generally for my whole shower as I like my hair very ashy, bordering on silver.

I always rinse out conditioners with cold water. It seals the cuticle and keeps the moisture in. You will also end up with shinier locks once your hair is dry!

When I get out the shower, if I've wet my hair, I will apply a few drops of macadamia oil to my hair. I'll also apply a pump of anti-frizz serum to my hair, because when my hair is dry it gets really frizzy at the ends. Sometime, if I don't use the anti-frizz serum, I'll spray some of this Schwarskopf spray into my hair. It's from the same line as the hair mask. I normally shower at night so my hair has all night to soak in the beautiful smelling oils and moisture from the products I use.

Something to keep in mind if your hair is damaged is to wash it up to 2 times a week. If you are normally a 'wash my hair everyday' type of person, you can train your hair into only needing to be washed once or twice. I used to wash my hair every second day, but even that is bad so I trained my hair into only needing to be washed once a week. I've saved heaps of money doing this because I don't go through shampoo and conditioner as fast. After one to two days after washing my hair I sometimes use dry shampoo. My favourite brand is Batiste and you can get this from Farmers.

Another thing to avoid when you have damaged hair is heat tools. I have a post on one way to do no heat curls, with more coming. But the simplest way to do it is to put your hair into braids and sleep on it. When you wake up you'll have beachy waves. If you must use heat tools, always use a heat protectant. Once i've styled my hair, I use Lush's Shine So Bright split end balm. It helps seal the split ends so they don't travel further up your hair. Split ends take about 3-4 months to form so this is when you should aim to have your trims, not every 4-6 weeks. Unless you aren't bothered about your hair growing that is. 

Once you've got those split ends though, the best thing to do is just cut them off before it gets worse, which is what I did. I'm quite lucky and have hair that grows fast though, so it won't be long before my hair is back to the length it was before I got a cute bob.

I hope this helps with your damaged hair problems. If you have any questions or feedback, hit me up and I'll get back to you!

Shannen xx

Photos taken on a Canon 600D

18-55mm lens used

Photos edited on fotor.com

DIY: Vitamin C Hair Stripper Treatment Thing?

Remember when I had red hair? Remember how I stripped it? Remember how I tried to lighten it a little bit more and it went mauve? This is how I lifted the ugly mauve colour to bleach it platinum.

After I lightened it (FAIL), I did some searching on Pinterest. I didn't want to bleach it straight away in case my hair went even darker. I found a few different methods that said they could lighten a few shades. I found one that seems really promising so I youtubed tutorials and reviews and whatnot. The vitamin c method seemed to be the best bet.

The vitamin c method had a few different variances on the ingredients aside from the vitamin c. You could use clarifying shampoo, baby shampoo or dish soap. I used clarifying shampoo because I'd had a good experience with it when I was trying to get green out of my hair.

So once you've got those 2 ingredients, what you do is, get a bunch of vitamin c pills and smash them up into a powder. Again the recipes varied. Some only used a couple while others used a whole jar. I suppose it depends on how much hair you have. I used 10 pills. I also got Blake to smash up the pills for me because they were tough little buggers. Once you've smashed all the pills ups, mix it with your choice of lather. Like I said, I used clarifying shampoo. You want to use enough to make a paste with the powder. Then once its all mixed, you smoosh it into your hair, covering everywhere that needs to be covered. Once its all lathered in, chuck a shower cap on and leave in for an hour. Or longer if you want, that also varied on the instructions. After an hour, I got in the shower and rinsed it out with my clarifying shampoo. 

The outcome of this was  so much more better than what I was expecting. Once my hair dried, it was a light peach colour, similar to what I had when I bleached Manic Panic's Shocking Blue. I kept it like that for a couple of days before I bleached it properly blonde. 

I definitely recommend this method if you just want to get rid of a semi permanent dye if you don't want to bleach your hair. I think it will work amazing. It won't lift all the colour out, but it will probably get most of it out. 

I do recommend conditioning afterwards, as it does dry the hair out a tiny bit. 

Let me know how you go if you try this!

Shannen xx

Photos taken on my iPhone and Canon 600D

Edited on fotor.com

Review: JoBaz Hair Colour Remover

Do you ever dye your hair and hate the outcome? Or maybe you wish you could get rid of the colour buildup in your hair to start all over again, nice and fresh? Hate bleach, but want to go from dark to light?

I've found the product for you!

JoBaz Hair Colour Remover is a miracle sent straight from heaven itself. As you all might know, I had bright red hair. I even had some buildup from dying over the red with more red. 

When I was thinking about going back blonde, I did a lot of research on this product. I read reviews, i watched youtube videos. I did everything I could. I bought it from Countdown. It's a pricey product, I got it for $35 on sale. Normally it's $40. I haven't seen this product anywhere else, just at Countdown.  They also have a chemical straightener type product by the same brand. 

There wasn't too much reviews on people who had used this on red hair, so I wasn't completely sure if it would work as red is a stubborn colour to remove, and my hair being so porous, it could have stained. So I bought it. And I followed the instructions to the t. I didn't want anything to go wrong with this at all. I needed this to work. 

The great thing about this product is that it doesn't damage your hair like bleach. It dries your hair out a bit, but nothing that leaving your conditioner on for an extra couple of minutes won't fix. 

I was completely blown away by the outcome of this product.

It left my hair a orange blonde, where I only needed to lift it a few more shades to get it to yellow so I could tone it to an ash blonde. It removed all of the red, except for one tiny strip that I missed. It was all gone. All of it. And I was pretty much a blonde again in one easy step.

I highly recommend this product. For anyone. But do follow the instructions or you might not get the outcome that you desire.

By the way, this stuff stinks, so do it in a ventilated room.

Five out of five stars from me!

Let me know how you went with it if you've tried it.

Shannen xx

Photos of myself taken on either my iPhone or Canon 600D

Edited on fotor.com

Photo of the JoBaz product taken from Google

Ch-ch-changes

Ch-ch-changes

Just gonna have to be a different man

Time may change me

But I can't trace time

Yes, hello. I am blonde. Yes, yes. I also cut all my hair off. 

Now I don't know if you guys know this, but I get really bored with my hair colour. Very quickly.

Also, I have always wanted to cut it into a longish bob thing. SO I DID. 

I stripped my hair using JoBaz's Hair Colour Remover, review coming soon. Then the next day I used an ultra light ash blonde. Then the next day I used a Vitamin C treatment, DIY coming soon. Then I bleached my hair, twice (not very good of me at all). This is why I chose now to cut all my hair off. My ends were quite damaged as you would expect. 

I'll let you all know now. DO NOT TRY THIS IS AT HOME. If you have red hair and want to remove it, go to a professional. Red is the hardest colour to remove, and I could have done it in a less damaging manner, but I am way to impatient for my own good. In saying that, it did give me the best excuse to cut all my hair off. 

I love my new haircut, thanks Harmony! It's something completely different and I'm glad I did it. Also, I'm always much happier with lighter hair, why did I ever go red? Brunette is not my thing. 

Since bleaching my hair, to restore it I have been alternating between a keratin hair mask, coconut oil and almond oil. All have helped wonders. Now that my hair is all cut off, I am only using coconut oil. Mainly because I don't have either almond oil or a hair mask to use at them moment, but coconut oil is enough for the time being. 

I will post a 'how to' on short hair in the next few days if anyone is interested! Although, do keep in mind I am still learning myself, so any tips and tricks will be much appreciated!

Shannen xx

All photos taken on a Canon 600D

18-55mm lens used

Photos edited on fotor.com

MOVING HOUSE

Sorry about the lack of posting lately but me and Blake moved house! Things have been quite hectic with having to pack and move from one house to the next.

But today I'm going to tell you about our move. We moved from a one bedroom flat into a sleepout in order to start saving money. I plan on going back to study next year so we need to do some serious saving in order to be able to afford to do that.

Now, having a whole house full of furniture and moving into a single room caused a bit of a conundrum. What were we going to do with all our furniture? I had a room still at my dad's that we could store it all in, which definitely came in handy. We sold a few bits and pieces that were too big for my room, or that we didn't need whatsoever. I also sold some shoes to free up some space for when we moved.

In our new place, we have our room, a bathroom and a little kitchenette in the corner. Blake built us a new bed with drawers underneath so we didn't have to bring our dressers. They went to dad's and to Blake's sister. Our old bed also went to dad's.

So in our new room we have our new bed, our tv on a small tv stand, my rack, two small bookshelves and one large bookshelf. With all this furniture we still have plenty of space to move around. It's also great having our own bathroom. We have our two shelves in there from our old bathroom too.

Since we don't have any use for our fridge we had to eat as much frozens and fridge food as we could before we left our old flat. Whatever was left went into the house. We now only keep snack foods in our little kitchenette.

I love our sleepout. Its so much more warmer and cosier than our old flat, and we have the added bonus of having pets now too. Dora the cat stays with us the most, probably to avoid the puppy.

Talk to you guys soon!
Shannen xx

All photos taken on a Canon 600D
18-55mm lens used
Photos edited on fotor.com

Unexpected Twist

If any of you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, you would have seen my hair getting less and less blue. I was fading it out as much as possible before I bleached it for my next hair change. It was patchy blue, pink and lilac. Which was kinda cool but I was completely bored of blue and ready for a new colour.

Now I have a few colours sitting around at home and I had settled on a colour to go to next. So I get my bleach and wait for my next day off so I have the whole day ahead of me to do my hair. Saturday rolls around and around lunchtime I decided it was time to get my ass into gear and do my hair. I follow the instructions on the box of bleach and continue on my merry way. I always leave my bleach in for about the length of an episode of whatever I am watching at the moment, currently the eleventh season of CSI. So now comes the time to wash my hair out. And the biggest but best accident happened.

Turns out when you bleach Manic Panic Shocking Blue, it goes pink. I'm assuming the more vibrant the colour, the more vibrant the pink will be when you bleach it out. As my hair was super faded and washed out, it went a beautiful peachy pink that I probably would never be able to get otherwise. I am stoked with this, so much so that I'm gonna wait a while before I actually go to the previously chosen colour. I still have a small patch of faded blue but that's due to me only using one box of bleach versus my usual two.

Who knew that I was gonna get two amazing colours out of one? This is the type of beautiful mistake I would love to happen again. Kinda like that one time I left purple shampoo on for too long (I was super engrossed in House and forgot it was in my hair) and ended up lilac for a while.

Good things can come out of accidents. Even accidentally on purpose.

Shannen xx
Photos taken on Canon 600D
18-55mm lens used
Photos edited on fotor.com

Manic Panic Shocking Blue $29.90
Schwarzkopf Nordic Blonde L101 Cool Metallic Lightener $14

Imported Candy VS Homeland Candy

Just a warning, none of the food mentioned in this post is healthy whatsoever, except maybe the chocolate drink. That only has 60 calories in it.

Today is a post about my third love. No makeup, no clothes, all food. I love food. Food is my friend. I am always eating. I have more of a taste for savoury food than sweet, but I still have a very big sweet tooth.

I have a strong aversion to all candy native to New Zealand. Pineapple lumps, bleurgh. L&P, yuck. New Zealand marmite is alright, but no way near as good as the UK version, which by the way can't have it's label on display in this country. We went to the Brit shop today and UK marmite has had its label covered, same with Weetabix, the UK equivalent to Weetbix. Which is stupid because the UK has been around for so much more longer than New Zealand, who cares if they have the same name?

Anyways, a short trip to Milson and we come home with some Tea Cakes (equivalent to MallowPuffs for all you kiwi folk), 3 cans of Dr Pepper (although these came from the Pie Factory for only 99c a can!), Fox's Party Rings (childrens biscuts), NikNaks (crisps), a bag of M&S Percy Pigs (BEST CANDY EVER) and one sachet of Options Indulgence hot drink in Chocolate Fudge.

I find myself way more attracted to foods from the UK or America. It has a much better taste than food developed in the land of the long white cloud, imho. It may be more artificial and full of preservatives than the food here, but darn heck does it taste good.

Dr Pepper will be hands down my favourite 'exotic' beverage. Next up would have to be Kool-Aid Jammers in Cherry. These taste so artificial and great. I also like all things Reese's. Reese's Cups, Reese's Pieces.

I will always be willing to pay that extra amount to get candy I actually enjoy, and also because my beloved who is from the UK, gets excited when we find more food he's grown up with. The market in New Zealand is slowly getting bigger, with United Sweets opening up all over the country as well as their online site, along with British food shops.

Also, quick story, Blake and I are currently eating the pack of NikNaks and he grabbed one out of the bag thinking it was just a small one, turns out it was a solid lump of flavouring. These are the Nice 'N' Spicy flavour. He said it hurt.

Shannen xx
All photos taken on a Canon 600D
18-55mm lens used 
Photos edited on fotor.com