23- James Jean

I love his work.

He's a Taiwanese American artist and illustrator situated in Los Angeles.

His clients include Time Magazine, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, ESPN, Atlantic Records, Target, Playboy, Knopf , Prada among others.

Vivid. Organic. Fairytales. Mythology.

His work with Prada and Aids awareness are the most memorable for me.

Check it.

http://www.jamesjean.com/

22- Red Hot Buffet

Me and my sister are quite the fan of Leeds Grub, and if you don't know, you should.

Leeds Grub is a blog that reviews places to eat in the Leeds area, and since me and my sister were wanting to go out for a meal, we picked something out from her blog.

We chose the Red Hot Buffet.

Red hot buffet is situated in The Light, when we first stepped in we waited for a few seconds and then were shown down the stairs. The interior was quite humorous, being a world buffet they themed parts of the interior airport plane style.

The layout of the buffet was a bit like The spice quarter but on a larger fancier scale.

Everything were in cuisine order and stations.

Pizza, Grill, Stir fry, Noodles, Indian Biryani, Salsa and Tex Mex bar.

[Starters]

I had a bit of everything from spring rolls, prawn crackers, onion bhaji, calamari rings, katsu fried prawn.

[Mains]

A selection of different types of lamb, squid, chicken curries, tacos, a few fries, potato wedges, ric e etc

[Dessert]

Pretty much just had the things on the plate. I felt quite bad leaving most of the desserts hardly touched, but they were frankly 'quite bad'.

As good as the colourful the ice cream looked tasted sickly with artificial cream, the same with the sorbet with a very fake artificial flavour. Most of the dessert were like that, they tastes as if they were made to be preserved, to be long lasting.

Personally as great as all the food looked and exciting how much there was of it, the standards of most dishes were mediocre. Nothing really stood out. Me and my sister have concluded the best out of the good hundred were the Bombay potatoes, Potato wedges and Chocolate walnut brownies.

After 2 rounds of mains, dessert and a final round of mains again they bill came to £35.23 with the 5% service charge due to the festive season.

Red hot buffet is for you if you can't decide on what cuisine to have and just fancy a bit of everything. I personally would probably give it a pass next time, but never say never.

http://leedsgrub.blogspot.com/

http://www.redhot-worldbuffet.com/

22- Dough Bistro

With deadlines being over and done with and Christmas coming, me and my friends went to have a nice little meal to treat ourselves.

The Christmas menu was what we opted for, being £26.95 for 4 courses.

This is what I had.

[Confit of Yorkshire free-range duck topped with Yorkshire blue cheese served on creamed leek in a filo basket with plum sauce]

Not being such a great fan of blue cheese, the combination of everything together balanced well. The cheese with the sweet plum sauce and the tender duck with the crispy filo pastry, a very flavour full start.

[2nd course being Cranberry sauce and Drambuie sorbet]

A scoop of cranberry flavour sorbet to cleanse the palette for the main course, it was quite flavoursome, light and refreshing.

['Old Spot' Loin of pork served on warm mango, onion and chorizo salad, black pudding, whole-grain mustard crème & crayfish tails.

Served with roast potatoes, carrots, sprouts and spring beans]

I preferred the main out of the courses, this meal really hit the spot for me. The pork wasn't dry or chewy, with the mix of the salad, black pudding and mustard creme it was a very successful pick.

[Lemon & black pepper crème brule cheesecake on cookie biscuit base served with blueberry coulis and white chocolate crisp]

A lemon cheesecake with essentially slightly burned sugar on the top, it was slightly too soft for my liking but I still gobbled it up! Also I couldn't detect the black pepper, maybe that was a good thing?

Overall the food was very nice and was presented well. The little bistro is situated quite at an usual place with a quiet atmosphere and average interior.

I'd definitely go again as I'd like to see what they have to offer during the none Christmas period. The food was definitely worth the money, go go go!

http://doughleeds.com/

21

Being Chinese, Christmas isn't a very important event for us. Yes we have presents to unwrap and have a tree up to put them under but quite frankly it's just another normal day with the exception of having to rip open a few layers of paper, revealing a mystery object and heading back into bed.

After a long, long, hiatus which lasted around a good half a year, I can say now that I'm back.

Maybe it's a temporary spur of 'nothing better to do so lets start blogging' but we shall see!

I don't really know why I blog (not that I'm doing a swell job of it), I don't think I intend for anyone to even take interest in any of the things I post.

If anything I think I do it for myself. It's nice to see and read back on past events, little snippets of time, it's probably more of diary to me.

So maybe this will be one of my New years resolutions.

It's like a more less personal Live Journal.

20- Nagi Noda

I came across this quite a long time ago but I thought I'd share instead of saving images onto my computer and keeping them to myself.

It is Christmas after all.

Merry Christmas!

Such fairytale fantasy. Love it.

19- Elf order

Ordered from E.L.F several weeks ago, mainly to cure the curiosity of what their Studio stippling brush would be like.

At the moment, I apply my foundation (a mix between Mac face & body and Revlon colour stay) with my Ruby & Millie stippling brush. It's doing an okay job but it's getting quite flared and less dense so I thought I'd venture on the look out for new foundation brushes.

~~

My order consisted of:

Studio stippling brush

Complexion perfection

Nail varnish - Lilac and Desert haze

Mineral lipstick - Runway pink

All Over Color Stick- Lilac petal

Studio mist & set

Studio powder brush

~~

Complexion perfection is a powder that neutralises the imperfecting colours on your face. The redness around the nose and on the cheecks, the blues and purples under our eyes.

It's a very nice powder to set your foundation with. Light and does its job.

~

The nail varnishes take quite a while to dry and according to the colour, the colour pay off is slightly different from one another.

Lilac is quite a thin formula with very little colour payoff, takes around 3 coats.

Desert Haze on the other hand is quite thin but thicker in consistency and requires the one, two is desired.

~

Mineral lipstick- Love this. It's a pink but not the crazily pale sort. I like to mute all my lipsticks down by dabbing them on my lips or putting it on and then rubbing it over with my ring finger. The colour is very nice, good colour pay off and is quite moisturising.

~

The Studio powder brush is one of my favourites, I'm so glad I got this brush.

It's very well made, dense, feels nice and also doesn't shed!

The brush makes applying foundation twice as fast, buffers right into the skin for a flawless finish. £3.50 too! You can't buy decent brushes for this price these days.

~

The stippling brushes I bought two off, they're okay for the price, not as bad as I thought they might be. They're great for powder but not too sure for liquid foundation, as the bristles aren't very dense and is quite sparse and flimsy. Ideal application for powder, bronzer and blushers for a light and build-able finish.

~

Studio mist & set is basically like Fix+ for those of you who are familiar with MAC cosmetics. It's £3.50 for 6omls and it's supposed to be used to add a finish to your makeup and holds it in place. The liquid doesn't smell much of anything and it works well when mixed with your concealer and foundation, does definitely make your face makeup last. Non-sticky and lightweight.

~

The all over colour stick is a nice pretty colour, it's shimmery and has the smell of slightly over powering oranges. The scent I don't mind but some people may find it just a bit too much. The product is nice to put on the eyes as a inner corner highlighter or overall eyeshadow, but in my opinion too shimmery for the cheeks.

Overall it was a cheap and cheerful purchase from Elf. This is probably my 3rd order with them and nothing has gone wrong just yet. They definitely have some amazing products especially from their Studio line. Check them out.