Daiso LipStick Lip Cream Review

My craze over lip balms striked again! Over the weekend I picked up two lip balms at Daiso out of curiosity. Both of them was under the Daiso LipStick brand and I chose the Sweet Sour Peach and Menthol balms.

 Unopened packs.

Opened from the packs (Left: Sweet Sour Peach, Right: Menthol). No safety seal attached to the lip balm's caps.

The lip balms were packaged inside standard plastic tubes with a twister mechanism at the bottom. Both the tubes were slightly bigger than the average tubes of lip balms. The Menthol balm weighed 5g and the Sweet Sour Peach weighed a little bit more at 5.1g. The label for the Menthol balm was simply printed words whereas the Sweet Sour Peach's label was printed with a few four sided pink stars and some letterings which made the tube looked simple and sweet. I really liked the play of colours on the Sweet and Sour Peach balm with the cap and the twister being pink in contra to the white tube. Both labels were printed directly onto the body of the tubes. There were also some descriptions printed on the tube in Japanese.

The description printed on the back of the pack said: "Protects lips and prevents drying. Prevents rough lips and makes lip skin smooth". We'll see about the making lips smooth part later on.

Ingredients for Sweet Sour Peach: Mineral oil, Microcrystalline wax, Paraffin, Petrolatum, Ceresin, Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil, Isopropyl Palmitate, Euphorbia Cerifera (Candelilla) Wax, Pyridoxine Dipalmitate, Tocopheryl Acetate, Fragrance.

Ingredients for the Menthol balm: Mineral oil, Paraffin, Lanolin, Petrolatum, Beeswax, Isopropyl Myristate, Ceresin, Menthol, Camphor, Eucalyptus Oil (E), Methyl Salicylate, Turpentine.

Both of these lip balms are obviously not natural nor vegan and both of them contains Paraffin.

This is how the balm looked like opened:

The Menthol balm had a slightly off-whitish colour to the texture whereas the Sweet Sour Peach is more to transluscent white. The Menthol balm felt a little bit heavier when twisted out of the tube compared to the Sweet Sour Peach. Both balms felt thick and compact when twisted in and out of their tubes.

The Menthol lip balm had this very menthol smell almost like nasal inhalers. The texture of the Mentol balm was quite thick and hard. I had to tug the lip balm across my lips a couple of times to break it in and after it had warmed up to my body temperature a little bit, I did get quite a decent glide. It goes on clear and the shine was very subtle. I find the texture a little bit waxy. The initial tingle of the mint might catch some people off guard because it was very minty. The minty/menthol feeling lasted quite for some time and for someone who likes minty stuff, I guess it's okay but for some people who don't, this might become a put off factor.

The Sweet Sour Peach trully smelled like yummy sweet peach. The tangy but subtle sourness kind off crept on after some time completing the whole scent description. The scent was so spot on it made me want to eat peach! The glide was a tad smoother compared to the Menthol balm. The balm goes on clear and doesn't have any taste which I thought was quite disappointing because a little bit of sweetness would have made the balm completely peachy!

Both the balm had the same not-so-moisturizing effect and the same subtle shine (almost matte). Both of them also didn't have any taste. Only the Menthol balm had a tingling effect when applied to the lips. The lasting power of both balms is a couple of hours, tops.

Here's what both balm looked like on my skin:

Left: Sweet Sour Peach lip balm swatch, Right: Menthol lip balm swatch.

My verdict: The balms were surprisingly not bad considering the price of RM5 for each tube. The glide was only so-so to me and they didn't really leave my lips feeling moisturized as MLS' or Crazy Rumors' lip balms did. At least I thought these balms fared better than Carmex's. Would I repurchase? No, I really don't think I would.

Ellefar Candy Lip Gloss Review

Apart from ocasionally wearing sheer coloured lipsticks (on very rare occasions), I do sometimes wear lip gloss too. So on my shopping trip with my husband last weekend, we stopped at Daiso IOI Puchong Mall  for some laundry nets for my sister and I picked up a couple of lip balms and an Ellefar Candy Lip Gloss Set as well.

The gloss colours on the palette did not attract me that much but I was more attracted to the cute packaging of the whole thing! I actually heard a voice of reason not to pick it up somewhere nagging at the back of my head but alas, I didn't listen to it (as always!). The lip gloss set is packaged in a long and rounded plastic case.  The nett weight for the lip gloss is 4 g. The palettes were lined up looking like balls of milk chocolates ready to be eaten. Very yummy looking!

The Ellefar Candy Lip Gloss - unopened.

At the back of the itty bitty cardboard label is the description and ingredient list. Can you spot any funny words on the label? I'll give you a hint.. ekhem! ***the name of the gloss*** ekhem!

Can you spot anything funny?

Yup! I'm sure you spotted it. It's at the end of the lip gloss's brand name printed in brackets where the lip gloss is actually printed as Lip Gross! Ewww.. I am not going to put anything gross on my lips! Hehe.. well, let's hope it's an honest typo.

The instruction on the card is to apply the lip gloss with the lip brush provided to bare lips or over lipstick. The texture of the lip gloss is quite soft and is easy to pick up by the brush or finger for application.

Ingredients: Mineral oil, petrolatum, caprylic/capric trigyceride, dipentaerythrityl pentahydroxystearate/isostearate, beeswax, microcrystalline wax, dimethicone, ceresin, euphorbia cerifera (candelilla) wax, coperinicia cerofera (carnauba) wax, squalene, butylparaben, methylparaben, (+/-) titanium dioxide, mica, iron oxides, manganese violet, CJ 45410, CJ15850, CJ 12085, CJ 15985 (red 6, red 7), CJ 47005, laminated powder of epoxy resin coated polyethleneterephthalate aluminium, polyethlene terepthalat polymethyl methacrylate.

The list of ingredients kind of freaked me out a little bit because there is way too many ingredients that I can't even pronounce. Plus there is paraben listed in the ingredient as well. So obviously this product is not natural or vegan.

When  opened, the plastic casing revealed a mirror on the inside with an applicator brush. There was no holder to keep the brush in place so the chances that it would roll around and fall when the casing is opened is very high.

The gloss palettes were protected with a plastic protector cover.

The plastic protector cover taken off.

To use the gloss, you would have to swab the desired amount of your colour choice with your finger or the lip brush. This actually dissapointed me because I was hoping the method of applying the gloss would be a little bit different and quirky (maybe like having to take the ball of gloss out of the casing and rubbing them on the lips perhaps?), but this is just an ordinary way of applying lipstick/lip gloss from lip palettes.

The gloss came in four colours (milky white, coral red, milky chocolate and dark chocolate). 

The colour of the dark chocolate is actually less darker in real life.

The texture of the gloss is soft and felt a little bit like lip balm. It did glide quite smoothly over my lips. There was a bit of a waxy feeling to the texture. There was no scent nor taste to the gloss. The colours were very true to what you see in the casing. The gloss gave a nice subtle shine with a little hint of glitter. The only wearable colours for me are the clear and the coral red. The coral red left a natural nude pinkish shade on my lips but the milky white had a little bit too much glitter in it. Both the milky and dark chocolate looked nice on my skin but looked weird on my lips making me looked like I just ate a whole bar of melting chocolate and had forgotten to wipe my mouth clean. Maybe if the colours were mixed and matched then it would be more wearable.

Here are the swatches of each palette on my skin:

Dark chocolate, milky chocolate, coral red followed by milky white.

My verdict: There's nothing gross about this lip gloss, that I am assured of (well, except for the looking like a greedy kid who ate chocolate and forgot to wipe the mouth part). The packaging is nice and cute. I liked the coral red gloss the most because it gave a natural pinkish shade. My gripe is that the gloss contains glitter which I try to avoid if I can. All in all, this would be an interesting gift to girls who wants to try different colours. Would I repurchase? Nope, I guess not since there's only one colour that I liked from the whole package. I really should have listened to my nagging voice of reason.

Where to buy: Any Daiso outlets for RM5

Saba Restaurant @ Cyberjaya Review

A few weeks back, my husband and I went for a drive around Putrajaya just looking at sceneries and houses. It was quite late when we ended up in Cyberjaya and decided to have our dinner there. There were a lot of restaurants offering Arabic food in Cyberjaya and we decided to dine at Saba Restaurant (mainly because there were a lot of customers there and so we thought the food must be great to make the restaurant flocked with hungry people).

 

The Saba Restaurant at night. 

The restaurant's name and logo is on the long fluorescent-lighted signboard,

couldn't be captured with my lil' old camera phone.

The ambience of the restaurant from outside looked promising and warm. Inside the restaurant was just like any other food court with the tables and chairs arranged quite close together. We chose to sit at a table nearest to the counter. We had to wait for quite a while to get the attention of a waiter so that he could give us the menus (already a sore point for me as I was quite hungry). The waiter also had some trouble understanding my questions about the cuisines offered in the menu making me quite frustrated being deprived of sufficient information prior to ordering. I wanted to try something like naan and gravy but the breads in Saba Restaurant are only sold as breads without any gravy or dip together with it. So, in the end I decided to order the Rashush Bread and Fool Medammas for dipping. My husband ordered Chicken Kebab. For drinks we weren't feeling too adventurous so we just ordered Teh Tarik and Iced Horlicks.

After the waiter had taken our order, it was another waiting game that we had to play since our orders came quite late (another sore point!). As we wait, we could see that quite a number of patrons were still waiting to get their food as well.. Hmm.. not a very good sign.. Our drinks arrived first so we just sat there, sipping our drinks moderately as not to finish them before our food came. The dishes did arrive some time later but in stages.

Our drinks. The top is Teh Tarik, bottom is Iced Horlicks.

The first dish to arrive was the Fool Medammas which is actually an Egyptian bean stew. It tasted not like the usual dhall curry complimenting naan bread but more to herbal and a little bit salty with a hint of spiciness (not too spicy, just a hint) and sourness to it. It was quite all right to dip the bread with.

 Fool Medammas.

Next to arrive was the bread in plastic wrapping. The waiter just plopped the bread on our table and left without any explanation whatsoever. We assumed it was the Rashush Bread. I was quite perplexed as of why was the bread not served on a plate? It was quite troublesome to eat out of the plastic wrapping. The bread was actually just plain ol' pitta bread. We ate it with the Fool Medammas.

My husband's Chicken Kebab came next. It was served with half a slice of pitta bread (so much pitta bread!), a stalk of green chilly, half a slice of tomato, a slice of lemon and dollop of mayonnaise and chilli sauce on the side. I think there was capsicum too under the spoon. The chicken was more like chicken fried fritters than a kebab. It tasted just okay and nothing to shout about.

Chicken Kebab is hidden under the fries. 

My husband is showing the billing card.

So, all in all, our dinner looked like this:

Whoopss.. my hubby is trying to leave the table.

Since there was pitta bread aplenty on the table, we tried our best to finish at least one serving of the plastic-wrapped bread. It was quite a challenge because I am a very light eater and the bread is quite filling. After we had had enough and threw in the towel, suddenly the waiter came and brought us a plate of a very large bread. We questioned the waiter and he told us that this is the Rashush Bread we ordered. What?!

The real Rashush Bread that came too late.

We looked at each other with blank faces. The Fool Medammas we used for dipping sauce was finished and there was this whole lot of bread sitting in front of us waiting to be eaten. In the end we called the waiter again and told him to just pack the bread in a doggy bag to go. 

The total for the whole fiasco was: RM34.00.

We pondered upon the whole dining experience and on why we were given two sets of pitta bread in the first place and why the Rashush bread came so late at the end of our dinner. We actually left the unopened pitta bread because with the real Rashush bread, there was too many bread to go around. 

All in all, the dining experience at Saba Restaurant was quite a let down because of the slow service, uncooperative waiters, so-so tasting food and sloooow serving of food (hence the Rashush Bread). The only interesting thing about the restaurant was their billing method which involved the card with the number. The card is needed to be presented to the cashier and all our orders are automatically calculated making it easier to be tracked and paid for. I don't think we are going back there unless there's a tremendous change in their service and food and somebody convinces us to do so.