Wedding Wednesday: Our pre-wedding pics! (III/V)

This is the most special of all our pre-wedding pics sessions. It is completely J's style. While I love pink and cute, he loves elegant and cool. This whole styling was his idea, and I'm very pleased with the result! Having pics with 5 different dresses, it's nice to have such a different one like this, specially when J loves it that much ^^

I have to admit this might just be my favorite hair and make-up out of all the 5 sessions. It's so elegant and sexy with the red lips, I love it!

This and the beach session were definitely the hottest! There were so many lights in this studio it was terribly hot!!! Plus this dress was really thick... Anyway, I like the final result a lot, some of the pics in black&white are really nice, my favorites are the first and the last one, I think they are full of love mixed with passion and they could very well be in a magazine! :D How do you like this indoor session?

Life Cafe - Vegetarian Lifestyle in Soho

Life Cafe is a two-storey vegetarian restaurant in Soho, where all the ingredients used to prepare the food are organic. The restaurant is pricey, but given the location and the quality of the food, I’d say is worth it. You can also buy organic products and ingredients as if it was a store. I don’t usually go to vegetarian restaurants because J is a meat lover, so vegetarians treats are reserved for my girlfriends. This time I went with Juliana, who loves vegetarian food. 

You might remember I reviewed another vegetarian restaurant a while ago, The Herbivores, at less than 2 minutes walking distance from Life Cafe. I liked the food at Life Cafe way better, specially their “Life Shake”.  The shake is made out of homemade soy yogurt, banana, papaya and spirulina. As you can see from the picture, the shake is totally green, so you can imagine how much spirulina is in there! For those of you who don’t know, Spirulina is a dietary supplement that gives you all the vitamins you can find in green vegetables and fruit. I try to take spirulina every day, because I feel I never eat enough green vegetables! Now that you know the main properties of spirulina, you can imagine how healthy Life Cafe’s “Life Shake” is and, here's the comes the best part, it’s even yummier! This got me thinking I should buy a milkshake machine and start making my own shakes at home. I’m drooling just at the thought of it.

I had the mushroom pizza, which was the most acclaimed dish according to my previous research, and Juliana had the stir fry quinoa. Our mains were a bit expensive, at around HK$120, so a better option might be the lunch set, which comes with a drink, a soup/salad, a main dish and a cookie, all for HK$118 + 10% service charge. The only bad thing about the lunch set is you don’t get to choose the main course, which is fixed and changes every day.

Visited on: July 22, 2013

Overall Quality: 4*

Price: HK$120 for a main dish and HK$50 for a shake. Pricey, pricey…

Value for Money: 4*

Would I recommend it? Yes, definitely. You’re gonna love this place if you enjoy vegetarian cuisine.

Life Cafe

10 Shelley Street, Soho

I was wearing the mini roses ivory skater skirt from my shop Frill Me!

Shiseido - The Skincare

I might have found the perfect set of moisturizers for my skin, and here I am to share all about it with you! I'm talking about Shiseido's The Skincare range: the Day Moisture Protection, the Night Moisture Recharge, and the Hydro-Nourishing Softener.

You might remember I reviewed Sisheido's The Skincare Night Moisture Recharge previously, and mentioned how much I loved it! After having been using the night moisturizer for a while, I decided to jump in all the way and get the day moisturizer, as well as the softener. These moisturizers have proven to be really effective on my combination skin. 

I use the Hydro-Nourishing Softener before using the moisturizer, both at day and night time, and I find it enhances the moisturizer a lot. In other words, it prepares the skin in order to get all the benefits from the moisturizer. I really think it makes a difference, because I had been using the Night Moisture Recharge without the Softener previously, and I find the results are better when both are used together. The way to apply the Hydro-Nourishing Softener is put some on a cotton pad and apply to the skin. What I do, however, is skip the cotton pad all the way and apply it directly with my finger tips. The softener is a bit more dense than water as you may see from my picture, so if you do it fast enough it's perfectly possible to apply it with your bare hands. This way you save a lot of product that doesn't get lost in the cotton pad!

My favorite things about this set are as follows: it provides a good moisture that soaks into the skin easily without being sticky; it has a very nice light scent; it comes in a hygienic and convenient pump bottle; and, finally and most importantly, the results on my skin are obvious: my face is more hydrated and softer, with an overall healthy glow. As I mentioned when I reviewed the Night Moisture Recharge, the price of one of these bottles in Europe is about 50€, crazy! Luckily it's just about 30€ (HK$300 in Hong Kong).

Once again, in Hong Kong I recommend getting yours at Lung Shing, the cosmetics store with the best deals in town, located on 28 Granville Rd, Tsim Sha Tsui. You can get a bottle for a bit more than HK$200 there, so the price is not an issue anymore. They may not have the whole set, in which case you may try in Sasa, where the price is just slightly more expensive than in Lung Shing.

Wedding Wednesday: Our pre-wedding pics! (II/V)

Here is the second round of our pre-wedding pictures! In these ones I'm wearing a wedding dress from the same brand as my "real" wedding dress I'm going to be wearing on my big day. Out of the 5 sessions we took, I took 2 in wedding dresses and 3 in evening dresses. These ones were taken in Interlaken, Switzerland, in the Swiss Alps. Except... this this is the replica of Interlaken in China! You know how amazing Chinese are when it comes to replicating things, fashion, food {did you know fake eggs exist?}, and... cities! Another very crazy replica in China is the UNESCO World Heritage village of Hallstatt, in Austria. The Hallstatt replica is intended to function as a normal city... for people who like the European lifestyle! In our particular case, this Swiss village replica where we took the pictures is inside a theme park {Overseas Chinese Town East 東部華僑城}

I love the fisheye lens :)

This theme park/town complex is huge, it has three different theme parks, three hotels, and some other attractions. China size, you know!

We took pictures all around the town, but my favorites are next to the lake, the view is simply breath taking... It feels exactly as if being in Europe. Pretty amazing!

Feeling like Cinderella in my crystal shoe :D

I hope you enjoyed these pictures! Again, there's just a small selection in here... But I think it will do :)

Valrhona Chocolate Afternoon Tea - The Langham Hong Kong

Last Saturday J and I decided to try the new Valrhona chocolate afternoon tea available at The Langham Hotel exclusively during the month of July. This is a special afternoon tea that differs on their traditional Tiffin afternoon tea on the middle and the top layers of the tea set, which are now filled with Valrhona chocolate treats! J's favorite layer was the middle one, full of Valrhona delicacies, so you can tell the French luxury chocolate manufacturer does have something special! I personally enjoyed the bottom and the middle layers the most. Oh, and the scones, too, which are ones of the best I've tried in Hong Kong! The scones {one plain and one raisin for each of us} were brought to us when we were almost done with the second layer, which I didn't like that much since I usually like having the scones in the beginning of the afternoon tea. Now with this said, the scones were really good! And even better was the clotted cream and the jams that came with them! The clotted cream was really thick and rich, again one of the best I've had in town, and then there was strawberry jam and rose jam. I had never tried rose jam in my life before and LOVED it! I wanted to take a pot of that jam back home <3

My favorite was the Colonel tart, the lime and Opalys white chocolate tart in the middle layer. It was flawless! One of the best lime/lemon tarts I've ever had! I'd say the whole set was very good, and at this price {HK$408 for two}, is one of the molt complete sets I've found in Hong Kong.

Afternoon tea at The Langham is served at Palm Court, in the hotel lobby. The venue is very Victorian, old-style elegant and full of ornamentation. The lighting is totally yellow without no natural sunlight, which made it very difficult for me to take nice pictures unfortunately!

Whenever I go for afternoon tea, I always pay close attention to the tableware because for me it's just as important as the food itself. The Langham Hong Kong was up to my expectations with nice china tea cups and a silver tea pot. The tea selection was nice, The Langham has its own tea blend and I almost went for it, but I finally decided on the Vanilla Black Tea from Germany, which was very strong but good.

Visited on: July 20, 2013
Overall Quality: 4*
Price: HK$408 + 10% service charge for the Valrhona chocolate afternoon tea set for two
Value for Money: 4.5*
Would I recommend it? Definitely! If you like chocolate and afternoon tea, this is a must try! Remember though, only available until July 31st! After that, you can still enjoy their traditional Tiffin afternoon tea.

I was wearing my new ShoeMint Adrienne shoes via Zalora that you saw on my last post. This is my first pair of ShoeMint shoes and it was about time, because I LOVE all their shoes! You probably know ShoeMint is Rachel Bilson's brand, so no wonder all the shoes are so pretty, she's so stylish herself! They don’t ship to HK from their website… but fortunately, there’s Zalora Hong Kong! That's how I got mine :D The t-shirt is from my shop Frill Me, and the peplum skirt is from Zara.

Dear Stockings...

If there's something I miss during summer is wearing stockings. I'm a stockings passionate, I love wearing them from fall to spring, but it's just too much for summer. We're in the middle of July and my inner fashionista can't put up with this anymore. That's why last night I dressed up with three of my favorite shoes and three of my favorite stockings, just to remember how it feels to wear them and, since they look so pretty, take some pictures while I was at it.

Zara (TRF) Black Heels & Nude Stockings with Black Ankle Hearts

Shoe Mint Adrienne Heels & Black Stockings with Black Dots

Carven Light Pink Big Bow Pumps & White Stockings

Is there anything at all you miss during the warm season?