Clean Makeup + Lashes


Jacket by Kith, skirt by The Line By K, cardigan, top & hat- H&M, Gabrielle bag- Chanel, boots- Balenciaga

Bryant Park was predictably packed on a Saturday but I still loved the vibe thanks to warm hot vegan cocoa (lucky for us, the only stall with no wait time LOL) and their blue Christmas tree! 

Mink lashes in Celestial c/o Esqido 

This style has varying curls for an ultra voluminous yet natural look! 

My no-foundation look, just with falsies. For my brows I just used some MAC brow gel with a few strokes of K-Palette Real Lasting Eyebrow in grayish brown. On work days I stick to brow gel only since I've been trying to rock a more natural look these days- perfect when I'm in a hurry on weekdays. 

Holding up a reflector under my face so excuse the arms :))


Riz and I planned a trip to Bryant Park to check out the food stalls and cute Christmas items for sale today and I got a chance to rock these Esqido Mink Lashes in the style "Celestial". I love that they are full yet lightweight, plus with the thin band I didn't have to line my eyes or hide it with some eyeshadow! My face has this tendency to look overdone as soon as I put on some eyeliner or eye shadow and I feel like it makes me look older than I am so it's great that these lashes were super high quality and looked soft paired with natural makeup. Esqido also sent me some eyelash glue which didn't sting and didn't wear off the entire night. I absolutely hate it when fake lashes start peeling off (it happened during my wedding makeup disaster) so thankfully their lash glue was reliable. It was SO easy to peel off, which was a bonus! 

Unlike the Philippines, where Christmas season starts on September, I've really only started feeling the holiday cheer this month. I can't wait for the holidays this year since we're having my entire family plus cousins over at our home. It's going to be a busy month for us! After almost a year we're still putting in work on the house- painting, installing lights and cleaning up just to name a few. I'm also starting another job this week at another interior design + furniture company. I've freelanced for them and I really like the office, everyone's friendly and super helpful! I'm lucky my sister is here to help me watch over Pablo while I'm at work. My mother's also coming this week so she's helping me out with the house. I feel blessed that my family can come over every time I need their help with things. I haven't really been homesick thanks to them visiting + my biannual visits to the Philippines.  

I can't wait for Christmas!!!

Sidenote- I'm so glad I can finally blog about skin care and makeup again since my cystic acne's cleared up (no thanks to PCOS). Still deciding whether or not it's worth blogging about- my journey to clear skin over these past few months has been tough. 
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Art piece by Max Hooper Schneider entitled Section of Intertidal Landscape (Hair Metastasis). 
This was a super cool glass aquarium with natural and synthetic human hair (moving thanks to a wave machine) flowing beautifully on a modeled landform & painted steel stand 


My sister and I met with Christine (her high school batch mate) at the Chelsea Market and proceeded to do a mini photo walk on the High Line as I wanted to capture the colors of fall before it got too cold. I always meet up with friends on this side of Manhattan since I love the shops, visiting the Whitney and catching up while strolling along these converted train tracks- it's an interesting park with all the cool industrial elements expected of NYC, plus there are always new sculptures around. Sometimes Central Park is just too overwhelming and the rest of the parks are always too noisy and crowded, so seeing empty seats and uncrowded photo-worthy backdrops on the High Line is a better option. 

As I've said in the previous post, my new camera is really making me want to take photos again even if it is extremely heavy to lug around and makes me look like a total tourist. I have 3 years' worth of unpublished photos from my Sony A5100 and Lumix GM5 just because I was never happy with the quality, framing (small cameras made me lazy) and color quality. My A5100 was great but my lens and the crop was just so limiting. Being accustomed to a DSLR for studio/portrait work, a full-frame camera just forces me to really use a viewfinder to frame things well & encourages me to fix settings manually. I could go on, but in the end my camera doesn't matter and I would still tell people that the best camera to use is the one you have. It just feels great to shoot RAW again, getting crisp images that I can eventually apply a grain to on post, haha!!


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