There was a bit of drama in my life back on May 27 2015.
My heavily discounted Australis AConTour palette came to an untimely end after slipping out of my hands and hitting the floorboards.
Since then, I’ve soldiered on as best I could without a subtly contoured face. The struggle has been real (having to rely on either the sun or ambient light conditions to give me the illusion of defined cheekbones and a slimmer nose).
And then I walked into Priceline yesterday with half a face full of local anaesthetic from the dentist and found this exciting piece of information: AConTour now comes in 2 new colour ways – medium and dark in addition to the original light. And to celebrate the launch, Australis were giving away a double ended contouring and highlighting brush with each palette purchased.
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| Australis’ AConTour in Medium – $16.49 at Priceline. |
So I had to do what I had to do. I bought the medium complexion palette and have given it a test run this morning. The most notable differences to the original, in my opinion, look to be in the top row of highlighters. The original pale pink has been replaced with a light taupe / khaki. Also, the yellow ‘banana’ shade has made way for an apricot. I’ve not used the contour shades yet but they do look a bit more compatible with my skin tone than the shades in the light palette.
It was a quick test run this morning but I’m afraid that the taupe / khaki shade doesn’t really do anything for me. It looks like a muddy brown on my skin. The other two highlighters were better, not too frosty with a subtle colour pay out. The free brush is quite sturdy and the bristles dense. Both ends are relatively ‘short’ in bristle height though so distribution of colour was quite dense for me. I’ll keep going though and update when I’ve had some more practice with both.
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| The festival of baking for the new parents begins with a couple of cupboard doors plastered with some favourite recipes. |
Aunty duty this week has been all about the baking. Apparently baked goods have been key in helping my Sydney nephew and his parents weather the storms of long feeds and short naps with an admirable degree of calm and even temperedness.
I think there is some science behind it, to be honest. How can butter, eggs and sugar not have a favourable effect on your endorphin and energy levels?
I started off with a batch of lactation cookies featuring some flaxseed meal and brewer’s yeast sourced during a sunny walk down the street to About Life, Balmain on my lunch break on Friday.
It was a glorious lunch time walk, actually. The Balmain Bikes mural on Darling Street was a glittering matte gold under the winter sun. The photo doesn’t do it any justice at all.
I’m a bit heavy handed with the chocolate and I also add a whole heap of dried fruit because there’s much to be said for well rounded, all in one, one handed meals when you’re breastfeeding.
Then the slice tins got greased and lined for a range of slices and cake like slices.
I started off with a prune crumble slice.
It always seems like there’s never enough in the crumble section of the recipe to properly line the tin plus to have leftovers for the topping but fortunately, it worked and the slice scored highly in the overall tastiness stakes, with bonus point for not being as tooth achingly sweet as date slice can sometimes be.
When you’re working against the clock to get your baking done before the toddler of the house wakes up for breakfast, you need baking life hacks. And this
CWA Apple and Cinnamon Slice is mine.
I buy the larger tin of pie apple and generously cover the cake base with it. There’s usually enough leftover to be eaten with your muesli and yoghurt.
Last to go into the oven was Celia’s
Tinned Fruit Tea Cake. Did you know that there’s now oven roasted almond meal at the supermarket? It’s a deeper colour than regular almond meal and gives cakes a lovely golden tint. Like contouring kits on human faces, only better. It also gave this tea cake a richer taste than when I made it with plain almond meal.
There was no time for photos of my finished baking because we had the relative calm and order of the mid morning CBD traffic to take advantage of as we crossed the city to deliver both baked goods and groceries to my sister in law. You need nerves of steel to drive through the CBD and I think I might just be finally getting them.
The car was a bit stressed on the drive home, though. Things were moving so slowly and the cars (and deliver trucks illegally parked in car parking spots) were so close to each other that the parking sensors kicked into action with a series of stressed beeps.
I’ll be off the roads for the next few days to recover but not without one last Aldi run before the weekend on my way home tonight. Have a few things to pick up for mum and Toddler SSG. Fortunately, the parking is plentiful at my local even when there’s a line out the front door…
