In a bleak month, I’m getting cheered up by nudes and silly shows.
Nude lipsticks
Beige Kalahari by Hermès
I’m having a nude kind of month. Maybe because I’ve been testing eye makeup all month, and all I could think pairing that with was nude. I got a Hermès lipstick refill for Christmas, which I promptly popped into the case of the balm I had finished in 2023. And clearly, I never learn – the cases are just so damn pleasing that I do forget that I actually don’t like the actual formula that much: Beige Kalahari has a satin finish, like Rose Oasis I own from their initial release, and like that, it has silver sparkles. In this iteration, it doesn’t bother me that much, because the base colour is much lighter and the contrast between base color and sparkles isn’t huge. But why. Just why.
Same with the absolutely over-the-top scent those lipstick have. WHYYYYYYYYY. Still, the finish is nice, the color good on me.
Hug Me by MAC
It took me the whole of 2023 to try the new(ish) Lustreglass formula from MAC. And honestly, what held me off (mostly) was that MAC thought it wise to hike up their lipstick prices with this one, making it a cool 26€ FOR A MAC LIPSTICK. I’m sorry, but no. (Also, I can remember the good ole days when MAC’s lippies cost 16€. Yeah.) Anyways, I bought Hug Me on Black Friday, got my head around exchanging the case with my old Alluring Aqua one, and here we are: Hug Me in the prettiest packaging MAC has ever done. And it’s – fine. Really, fine, but I expected more from a hydrating formula, and can’t but help me to compare them to other MAC formulas of yore: the Huggables. MUCH better color payoff, a more substantial formula, and hydrating like heck. All of which the Lustreglasses can only dream about.
You know what? In the end, I love the packaging on both a bit more than the actual lipstick.
Silly TV shows
So, I had a bit of a challenging month that culminated in a medical procedure that I wasn’t really that keen on. And I needed to still my ever-worrying mind. What really worked was distraction, but no one can clean windows, read or write the whole day. And that’s where really silly TV shows came in. I’m sure that people are riveted by true crime or the newest acclaimed novel of our age – I needed something funny.
And what do you know, nobody does silly fun like the Brits.
Taskmaster and QI
I love Taskmaster (five contestants have to fulfill silly tasks and are being judged by, you guessed it, the taskmaster) and I love QI (five contestants have to answer silly questions about quite interesting stuff while nobody understands the rules) with a burning passion.
Taskmaster, with its banter, manages often to be hilariously filthy with the most innocent tasks: eat an egg the quickest! Make a music video for a nursery rhyme! Create the biggest chaos! QI, meanwhile, gives you great tidbits for pub quizzes (Dundee United is Nigerian slang for idiot?!) – but what both shows really do is celebrating creativity and being hilariously funny. Just what the doctor ordered. (I watch both with a VPN, but some seasons of both shows are easily available via YouTube.)
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