#1 Too Faced – Sweet Peach (Eyeshadow Palette).
I saw a video from my friend Bunny a few weeks back, and I remember having to pause almost immediately after clicking because I just knew I needed this in my makeup bag. It has ALL the colours I search for into a single palette, which means this is my absolute favourite at the moment. I ordered it on eBay, since anywhere else was sold out, and it arrived a few weeks later. Now it’s in my hands, and I’ve been loving using it. It’s mostly warm tones, lots of orangey/rusty ones as well as gold, pink and darker shades… as I said, it has everything, at least for me. Having dark hair and eyes, and an olive skin tone, this is just perfect, and I love it. I was also pleasantly surprised by the lovely peach scent it has; I own their chocolate palette, which I’m not going to lie, I licked a few times because it smells too delicious, but those colours appears to be cooler, so I’m very glad they came out with this palette!
I apologise for the swatches, I realise they are terrible but with so many colours I didn’t know where to fit them all. I went from line to line, horizontally, and probably my favourite is the second one: the pigmentation seems to be higher, and the shades are gorgeous.
#2 Leon – Fast Vegetarian (Recipe Book).
Now, I’m not going to lie. I used to think recipe books only made a nice decor when displayed in the kitchen. I never felt the need to reach out to one and follow a recipe, but things started to change at the end of last year: I started to be interested in baking, and so I found myself having to look up more and more recipes online, in order to make proper desserts. Overtime I became pretty good at baking, and I do want to get myself a good cookbook full of sweet recipes, but for now, this vegetarian one was needed.
In fact, I’m vegetarian. Lots of people always wondered if I was, because both in my videos and Instagram pictures, my love for veggies is clear. It wasn’t until recently that I finally made the decision to go vegetarian: my main concern was how my parents would react, having been brought up by a family that would cook meat given to us by farmers in our family, as well as other animal products. I feel like, especially for Italians, being vegetarian is madness. So my fear was that people around me wouldn’t understand my choice.
Luckily, I was wrong: I told some of my friends, which totally understood, and most importantly, I told my family, who was actually really supportive!
So now that I made this choice (and I feel so much happier) I can go crazy and experiment with lots of different recipes. I find it quite fun and creative having to come up with my meals now, and this book has been helpful.
Also, it still looks really great displayed in the kitchen, which is a bonus!
On a side note, I would like to just ask people to behave in the comments. I’m sure you, the people reading my blog regularly, will support my choice, but I’m aware that the internet is a very opinionated place and any time somebody makes a statement, inevitably gets attacked. I have been wanting to be vegetarian for a while now, and I’m very happy with my choice, so please don’t try to tell me to go back to eat meat or even push me to go vegan. I would really appreciate that.
#3 A Joyful New Year – Postcard.
This is the star of this post, and the main reason why I decided to write it. I know it might seem weird, but let me explain what’s so special about this…
As you know, not only my parents, but even some of my relatives came to visit me during the weekend. I decided to bring them all to Snoopers Paradise, a shop I’ve talked about plenty of times before: this is the place where I find amazing old items and vintage clothing.
While I was looking through old photos, I saw this postcard. I turned it and read it: the first thing that got my attention was the beautiful calligraphy, but then what really interested me was the message itself.
I found it to be so warm. I couldn’t let it down.
My aunt saw that I liked it, so she offered to buy it for me – grazie Resi!
So when I got home, I had it all for myself. I wanted to know more about it, and the first thing I did was to figure out the year it was from: I found an helpful website (oldpostcards.com) that explained how postcards changed through the years. This clearly is from the “divided back era”, which goes from 1907-1915. I was glad I identified the period, but I wanted to know the exact year: I noticed it was printed in Bavaria, Germany, and the series number is 1053. I looked it up, which resulted in finding the exact same postcard from an eBay seller stating is from 1914. This postcard was sent from Germany to England, the 24th of December 1914 (the day and month are stamped on), which meant it was during the war between the two. I was intrigued by this, wondering why two good friends would be in enemy countries, and how they could be writing each other.
I learnt about the Christmas truce, which was the week before the holidays which allowed soldiers to cross trenches and exchange greetings. I believe this postcard was allowed to be sent because of it, but I was still wondering about the two people appearing in the message.
Dora, the sender, spoke perfect English, so she could have been British, but we know she was in Germany at the time. Then again, this isn’t so strange, considering that before the war started, Germany and UK weren’t in a bad relationship. So maybe she moved for work? Or maybe the two women met on holiday?
Unfortunately she doesn’t state her surname, and I looked up if this correspondence could have been between suffragettes, but only 2 Doras are reported to be part of the movement and both were from or moved to Australia, no mention to England. So I’m pretty sure this friendship was much stronger than just that (as the “xxxx” suggests) and I’m not too sure how I could find more about her, if not by figuring out who Edith is.
Now, we know a lot more about Edith herself. Her surname is Cordery, and she is from Hampshire (Lyndhurst is a large village situated there). I looked up her name on Google and found out many matched, both by name, year and location: because of this, I have a chance to find out who this woman is exactly, but at the same time, having even too many options, it might still be very difficult.
So I have decided to end it there, happy to know that these two women had a great friendship, although I was a bit sad being aware of the fact that the war was just at the beginning when this postcard was sent out, and things only got worse from there. I would love to know that they met again, or kept this correspondence alive, but what I really am happy about, is that I at least know that Edith most likely received this letter, because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to find it here, in Brighton. And now I got to be a part of this, even if for just an afternoon, and I get to keep it safe for them both.
I BET YOU DIDN’T EXPECT THIS POST TO TURN THIS WAY, DID YOU? Okay sorry, haha.
I hope you enjoyed reading about this, I probably get waaaaay too into these things, but that’s the way I am, and now that I have a blog, I can write about it and hopefully somebody finds it as interesting as I do.
I want to write some letters to my friends now. There is something so special about it, that a simple text will never be able to capture.
Marzia.
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