Book Review (Lady Oracle)

In my holidays, I managed to finish Margaret Atwood's Lady Oracle. Here is a picture of it in the grass besides my sun cream:

The book was a good and entertaining read. I enjoyed reading it. It is about a woman called Joan who has just faked her death and ran away from her life in Canada to Italy where her past haunts her and she hence spends some time thinking about her life in general and what had happened to her that lead to faking her death. It starts really captivating and continues to be funny and lovely and I like the main character as she is described as being a very interesting and likeable woman but in the end the story becomes a bit weird and it also ends with some kind of a cliffhanger because it is left to the reader to sort out the end properly. More specifically, it ends at some point where I personally would have wanted to know what happens next. I felt left alone in the chaos and in the end the incidents had been overturning. However, except for the last quarter of the book and especially the end I enjoyed reading this book and Margaret Atwood has done a great job in describing the life of Joan and her personality as well as her fears and her thoughts. She comes across very coherent and likeable and thanks to the great writing style of Margaret Atwood I was able to relate to her although we are very different from each other (but we also have made different experiences in life ;-)).

Sephora France Online Shop Review

Do you know a German beauty addict that does not dream of Sephora? It seems to be typical human to dream of things that are really hard to get or completely unavailable. Unfortunately, we Germans don't have a Sephora store here in Germany. However, Sephora is a really cool brand (I love e.g. the Sephora #45 brush I bought in May via eBay) and I've been lurking around the US online shop a lot. Ordering from the US is very expensive though. This is why I haven't bought many products from Sephora up to now. I have rather kept a wishlist which grew with time. From time to time, however, when blog posts pop up on German blogs where holiday shopping at Sephora stores is shown, I catch myself making up some holiday plans just in order to get near to a Sephora shop. Do recognize yourself in this behaviour as well?

Well, in August I stumbled upon the Sephora France online shop and found out that they ship to Germany. What a great discovery! Although I had a couple of years of french classes at school, my french is not that good anymore. I should really practice it more often as it seems to be of high value in the beauty world obviously. I had to scramble up all my little left knowledge of french but, fortunately, this was enough to place a proper order. I even found a 15% coupon for the french online shop which I was able to use.

The shipping costs are pretty high with 13.90 Euro, but Sephora France ships with UPS and the shipping was really fast. Although it is written on their page that shipping takes 5 to 7 days, my order arrived on the 4th day after submitting it (including the day on which I ordered). And with the 15% coupon I was able to shrink the shipping costs a bit. As I did not order that much I was not able to cover the shipping costs completely with the coupon. This order was a test purchase. As I don't have any experiences with the products I ordered, I ordered only few products and mainly small sizes. In case I like the products, I might repurchase them in bigger versions, however.

This is how my order looked upon arrival (the black box is the present box of Sephora which I took because it was free and I wanted to see how it looks like :-)):

Seize every advantage

I'm a bit obsessed with women's soccer at the moment - well, actually since last year when the women's soccer world championship took place in Germany. The games were shown on german TV like men's soccer usually does and the men I know that usually watch men's soccer watched them too. I got hooked as well and in the end I had to watch every game. I especially fell in love with the american team as the members of the american team performed much better and some also looked much better than the members of the german team. ;-) (Isn't Hope Solo a really good looking woman? See her e.g. here, here, here, here and here (there she is the third person from the left))

New in: Catrice Nail Polishes

Recently there was a Catrice Sale as the new collection came out. Here are my bargains (I got each nail polish for half of the regular price):

The four nail polishes I bought are:

• 330 Absolutely Chinchilly (a muddy brownish taupe)
• 630 Sing: Hey, Dirty-Lilah! (a bright lilac)
• 610 ASHley (a grey)
• 210 Just Married (a nude french pink with blue shimmer)

Nonique Haul (Ihr Platz closes)

I've just been at the train main station to buy the tickets for my vacation and took the chance to go into an "Ihr Platz". This is a german drug store that you can find in nearly each main station in Germany. It is related with the "Schlecker" drug store which recently went bankrupt. While the staff at the "Ihr Platz" told me a couple of weeks ago that the "Ihr Platz" will survive, it obviously will be closed as well. Today everything was available for the half price and the shelves were nearly empty.

At "Ihr Platz" the brand Nonique is available. Nonique is a southern-german brand offering organic skin care products. As the half prices were very tempting and I like Nonique a lot, I just had to buy a couple of Nonique products. Up to now I haven't been able to find Nonique anywhere else in Germany than at "Schlecker" and at "Ihr Platz". According to their webpage they indeed seem to not have any other trading partners in Germany. Hence, it really is a pitty that both drug store companies have disappeared or will disappear soon. Fortunately, Nonique has opened an online shop for their products, recently, and therefore, ordering their products online is now an option. I really hope that this company will survive although they soon won't have any trading partners in Germany anymore. However, they apparently still have a trading partner in Austria and I really hope that they will soon find other retailers in Germany as well. It would be a pitty if the Nonique products would disappear from the market.