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Happy Halloween and end-of-October, folks!

Are you celebrating Halloween? I don’t celebrate it but just for the occasion, I’ll have a piece of chocolate or two today, how about that? 🙂

Anyway, when it comes to the end of the month, it means that it’s Hit and Miss List time! This is when I share some of the products I’ve been using, loving or disliking all month. There are a couple of unexpected misses this month too, which was a surprise to me.

Alrighty, let’s get started and see what made the Hit and Miss List of October!

The Hit List

Jo Malone Wood Sage and Sea Salt Cologne
I’ll be reviewing this very soon but for now, I’ll say that I was surprised at how much I really enjoyed this scent. It’s certainly atypical of the fragrances I usually go for. If there’s a Jo Malone counter/store where you are, give this scent a whiff and let me know what you think!

Hermes Un Jardin Sur le Toit
I reviewed this fragrance a few weeks ago and it’s still the perfume I use on an almost daily basis. What a lovely scent it has. I never thought I’d enjoy such a grassy fragrance but this turns out to be absolutely lovely.

nSpa Mango Shower & Bath Gel
I raved a lot about this on Instagram and in my weekly newsletter (come join in the fun!) lately. I love mango scents next to orange ones and this gem is right up my alley. I love the mango shower gel from The Body Shop but it’s quite expensive so when I saw this at my local Coles, I snapped it up right away. It smells very similar to the one by The Body Shop; heck, even the bottle is similar. Price-wise, it’s about $7 for 500ml which is a bargain for a dupe of The Body Shop’s mango shower gel.

The Body Shop Large Drench Sponge
I don’t usually use body sponges in the shower, only body meshes. I stumbled upon the drench sponge when I was at The Body Shop last month picking up the Raspberry body scrub. I decided to give it a go and I love it! When it’s wet, it’s not as scratchy as regular foam sponges and it scrubs the skin very well without being abrasive. It hardens like the Konjac sponge when it’s dry, which helps to prevent bacteria from growing. I was told that while you’ll need to replace a regular foam sponge every 1-3 months, you’ll only need to replace this sponge annually.

The Miss List

Freshel by Kanebo CC Cream
I picked this up in Japan months ago when I was there on holiday. It was a completely spur of the moment purchase where I literally just threw this into the shopping basket without even testing it out first. It has very peachy undertones and very light coverage. Unfortunately, it just makes my skin look like a grease ball with barely any coverage. I don’t like this at all.

Sally Hansen Miracle Gel nail polish in #240 B Girl
I love this shade. It’s the sort of icy blue that’s up my alley, which was why when I was sent a few of the Miracle Gel nail polishes to try out, this was the shade I selected immediately. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get this to work for me at all. Each time I applied the Miracle Gel top coat, it messed up this nail polish application. I don’t normally have to wait a long time before applying top coat but even when I did with the B Girl, it still turned out awful. I had no issues with the rest of the Miracle Gel nail polishes, only this one. It makes me wonder if my B Girl was a lemon (which I have a feeling, it was). ‘Tis a pity; if it had applied well, this shade would look really good on the nails.

It’s Not Just About Beauty

The Aromatherapy Co reed diffusers
I have reed diffusers in my bathroom and when my old one ran out, I decided to give the one from The Aromatherapy Co a go. I love how good the one in Wild Rose & Vetiver smells and the gorgeous brown apocathery-like bottle looks very chic in my white bathroom. The scent lasts quite long without needing to turn the reeds upside down often to release fragrance.

Old Hong Kong movies on YouTube
I’ve been having such a blast watching old Hong Kong movies on YouTube. I don’t know how these movies managed to bypass copyright licenses but I’m certainly not complaining 😛 . It was a lot of fun reminiscing 80s and 90s Cantonese movies by Michael Hui, Stephen Chow, Chow Yun Fatt, etc that we used to watch that many years ago.

Sophie Kinsella’s Shopaholic to the Stars
This isn’t actually in the Hit list for non-beauty related items; it’s a miss. In fact, it’s a huge miss in my books. I’ve been reading the Shopaholic series since 2002 when I was still in uni and have really enjoyed the books. They’re easy and funny reads that I enjoy after a long day at work when my brain just couldn’t take any more hard info. The latest book, Shopaholic to the Stars, however, was a disappointment. The main character, Becky, has always been a bit of a flake but she always pulls her weight and there’s still some good sense in her in the rest of the books. However, for some reason, Kinsella portrayed her to be incredibly selfish and shallow in this book, and many a time, an idiot. It was frustrating to read page after page and the book was rushed at the last couple of chapters. There’s even a cliffhanger this time, which there weren’t in any of her Kinsella’s books, but I found it really unnecessary. Sigh, as you can tell, I was disappointed all right.

There you have it, my Hit and Miss List of the month. I’m looking forward to discovering new gems and even rediscovering old ones that I’ve stopped using for a while. Time to do a little rummage and shop in my own stash!

Before I leave, just wanted to give a big shout-out to my brother who’s celebrating his 30th birthday today. It’s hard to believe that my baby brother has now entered the 30s with me. Have a great one, Boy*!

What made your Hit and Miss list for October? What have you been loving all month and what have been real misses?

*Like Chanel, I too have a Boy.