2015 Year in Review

With just the last few hours of 2015 left to go, I thought I'd do a quick wrap-up of this year. It's been a fruitful year with quite a bit of travelling and settling down to life in a small town where there isn't any MAC counter within 100 miles. It's a quiet life but still pretty entertaining thanks to having a hyperactive toddler who is learning to talk and developing in ways that continue to surprise all the time.

January - We had just moved back to Singapore, after 3 years in Geneva. My son also started walking so he was a busy little beaver exploring all the playgrounds in Singapore.


February - Visited my brother in the UK and spent Chinese New Year there.



March - Moved to Urbana, Illinois, and caught the first sakura blooms of spring.


May - One of the nice features of our town is the abundance of parks, so this was our favourite daily activity with my son 'driving' along in his Mini Cooper.


June - Back to the UK to visit my mother and brother before returning to Singapore for the summer.


July - We were supposed to visit Tokyo but had to cancel it at the last minute as my son had a febrile seizure after spiking a fever. The few hours that he spent at the NUH ER were the scariest hours of my life. Fortunately, he recovered within a few days.


August - Returned to Urbana for the new school year.


September - Made our first road trip to Chicago, which is an arduous 3 hour drive away. Discovering the Kinokuniya and Mitsuwa supermarket in Arlington was the highlight of the trip for me.


October - Celebrated the little tyke's second birthday and found out that we were having twins. Think my first words were 'Holy s***'. As they are identical twins, I have to go for scans every two weeks. Thankfully, it's all been smooth sailing so far.


November - Another road trip to Chicago, which coincided with the first snowstorm of the season. In anticipation of the twins, we purchased a Toyota Sienna, which turned out to be awesome as the DVD player keeps my son entertained for hours with his favourite Pocoyo and Paw Patrol cartoons.


December - Enjoying his first Christmas tree, and the abundance of presents from his doting grandmother. He's also become a chatterbox, including often talking in his sleep. Favourite phrases include 'oopsie!', 'no thank you', 'nope', 'oh no!' and 'more biscuit!'.


Blogging-wise, I'm glad that I've managed to keep this little blog humming along, however sporadically. Many of my favourite bloggers have quit or gone on a long hiatus. Instagram is where most people seem to be drawn to these days, and it's certainly the go-to resource for sneak previews of upcoming collections. Nevertheless, I still prefer reading an in-depth thoughtful blogpost over a photo that has been filtered and hashtagged to death. All those artfully arranged flatlays with their random flower petals do nothing for me at all.

My makeup purchases have reduced significantly this year, partly due to the constant moving. The department stores in my town only carry Estee Lauder, Clinique and Lancome, so it's really quite sad but luckily there is Sephora and Ulta. I do most of my shopping at the latter two as most US drugstore brands hold little attraction for me compared to their Japanese and Korean counterparts which are light years ahead in terms of quality and innovation. I've culled a significant amount of old and expired makeup, but my stash is still far from a manageable size. Suqqu has pretty much taken over my daily routine in terms of eyeshadows, while I rotate through a variety of cushion foundations. There is still the constant temptation to try out new products, especially foundations, but I have much less excuse to do so now that I seldom write reviews to justify the purchase. It'll always be a constant struggle to balance it all, but I hope to do better in 2016 by using up more of what I have.

Here's wishing you a wonderful year ahead filled with love, beauty and happiness!