Reveal: My First Louis Vuitton Bag

I recently purchased my very first Louis Vuitton bag, right after Thanksgiving break. After lusting for one for years, saving for months and debating the merits of new vs pre-loved for weeks, I finally decided on buying this one new. Partly for the experience of it but also partly because, this being my first one, I wanted to be 100% sure it was authentic.

I knew I wanted a Speedy in Damier Azur because I wanted the iconic LV bag. This is quite possibly the most well known one and I feel it will remain timeless and classic. It's also one of the cheaper bags they offer. I was initially debating between the Speedy and the Neverfull. While I don't generally like top handle bags, the straps on the Neverfull were so thin that I felt it would cut into my shoulders. Also, to get more use out of it, I would probably wind up using the Neverfull as a school bag and do I really need to spend $800 on a school bag? No. (Although I did get a new school bag so stay tuned!) I could list all the pros and cons of each bag but ultimately, I chose the Speedy and I'm very happy with my choice.

Nails: OPI Chapel of Love

Hi everyone! I changed up a few things on my blog and I'm hoping to post on here more often. I've been reading a lot of blogs lately and have been inspired to keep up with my own, if only to document the stuff I like and give me an excuse to take pictures of all my pretties!

Today I have on OPI's Chapel of Love. I picked this up about a month ago when Ulta was having a 2 for $10 sale on OPI nail polish from special collections. I also picked up Sitting Under the Apple Tree, Peach-a-Boo and a coral one, which I will take photos and post pictures of later. This was an especially good deal because you can use Ulta's $3.50 off $10 coupon so I got 2 OPI nail polishes for only $7.01 after tax. That comes out to $3.50 per polish!

OPI Chapel of Love
Excuse the edges, I didn't clean them up before taking the pic

OPI Chapel of Love

As you can see, the color is pink with golden shimmer. I tend to be careful with pinks because paler pinks sometime looks weird on me but I'm so in LOVE with this color! Hope you enjoy!

x Jess x

The Hermes Addiction Begins...

I was fortunate enough to receive my very first Hermes item as a gift for my 21st birthday. I realize that I'm very lucky to own Hermes at my age and I probably would not have (aka could not afford to have) gotten into the brand until I finished grad school and had a steady job. However the bracelet was not my style....so off to Chicago I went to exchange it. I thought about whether I should exchange it or not since I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings but I figured in the end, I wouldn't really wear this and it would be better to exchange for something that I really love and would wear a lot. 

Meet Cocoa Puff the Chinchilla :D

What is a chinchilla, you ask? Besides being a ball of furry cuteness, chinchillas are a class of rodent that are native to the Andes. Just a little bit of background courtesy of wikipedia (hey, I found it interesting lol):

Chinchillas are named after the Chincha people of the Andes and are mostly known for their dense, incredibly soft fur. In the wild, they ate mostly fruits, nuts, etc and were prey to a lot of animals. They are often killed for their fur due to the softness. In fact, to make a full length fur coat, it would take 150 chinchillas. Awful, right? As domestic pets, they are very friendly and very easy to take care of. Like most rodents, they need chew toys in order to wear their teeth down since their teeth grow continuously throughout their life. Also, because of their fur, they are very prone to overheating and should not be kept in rooms with temperatures about 80 degrees C. They are very agile and love to run and jump around however they have to be watched since chinchillas are very curious animals and tend to chew anything and everything. If scared, they are capable of urine spraying and fur slipping. They also don't make much noise; just the occasional indignant squeak and sometimes squeaks when they sleep. (chin nightmares?) Oh, and did I mention how fun and cute they are to play with?

Gnawing at his stick

Play with me!

Penny Auctions: Great Deals or Total Scam??

I used to think penny auctions were all scams. Even if they weren't, I never felt like it was worth it to pay money or a bid pack just for a chance to win what you want. That all changed the day I decided to try out luxenotlust.com. I followed a link through twitter and signed up for an account. At that time, I think the site was still pretty new and they were offering 1 free bid when you signed up. I figured, what can it hurt? So when I saw a $50 Tiffany & Co gift card up for auction, I waited until the very last second and used my one free bid. And I won! I think it was by sheer luck because it just to happened that the one other person bidding bid a millisecond before I did. So I paid $5.99 for shipping and $0.07 for the actual auction and the gift card was mine! A part of me still thought it was too good to be true however when I actually received the card in the mail and redeemed it, I was convinced. Ever since, I have visited the site regularly and purchased bid packs.

Printscreen of an email I received saying I won

Now, I'm not at all getting paid or compensated to talk about this website. I was never going to blog about it until an incident happened with another penny auction site. I saw an ad for another website similar to luxenotlust.com, which has high end, luxury items like Bloomingdales, Saks, etc gift cards and LV bags and accessories. This website is called scoreluxe.com and they have similar items, but a wider variety and more items such as Tory Burch flats and iPads. 

Now, I naively bought a bid pack right away, without even doing a google search on reviews of the website like I did when I initially stumbled across luxenotlust. (Even though I didn't find reviews on luxenotlust at the time, because I had won the auction I was convinced of it's validity) With scoreluxe, I saw they had a Tiffany gift card auction coming up so I prepared for it. When the time came, I started bidding. And kept bidding. And bought more bid packs. In total, I spent about $120 because I kept thinking I'd put so much money in that if I just kept bidding and won the gift card, it would be kind of worth it. However after 120 bids and I still hadn't won, I was angry with myself and stopped. Now, you may be thinking that I'm just a disgruntled customer or a sore loser. Call it whatever you want. But let me explain my reasoning:

With luxenotlust, I only spent about $50 tops on bid packs and to date, I've won $200 in Tiffany & Co gift cards (clearly my top choice based on my preference and the fact that not many other people seem to want them so in my opinion, it's fairly easy to win) With scoreluxe, I spent $120 on bids. And still didn't win. Red flags were going off in my head. I'm not saying scoreluxe is a scam. I don't have the proof to say that. However, it's pretty improbably that I placed about half the bids and still did not win, especially since I placed  so many bids. It could just be bad luck. But the way I see it, it would be fairly easy for a penny auction to be a scam . With the anonymity of the bidders, I feel anyone with a decent knowledge of computers would be able to rig a penny auction website. All the owner or admin would have to do is make a fake account and grant bids to that account. I'm not saying this is what scoreluxe is doing, for all I know there could be many regulations for penny auctions websites. (not that I found any info on that end but *shrug*) All I'm saying is that it's pretty fishy. 

I guess all I can do now is chalk that experience up to bad judgement and stubbornness and call it a learning experience. Even with the $120 I spent on scoreluxe, I guess I still came out on top since the gift cards I won from luxenotlust even it out. Kinda. Sorta. At least that's what I will tell myself...

Now I'm going to stop speculating about scoreluxe and just forget that website entirely. All I can say for certain is that I would highly recommend luxenotlust.com based on my own experience. Their customer service always responds quickly and I've had no issues redeeming my gift cards. Again, I have no affiliation with this website, I'm not getting paid or compensated and they don't even know I'm reviewing it. I just wanted to warn people to be careful, particularly with scoreluxe, and with penny auctions in general. 

Now to go cheer myself up by picking out my next piece from Tiffany's!

Image from: http://www.utahburden.com/Blog/Tiffany-Co-is-Opening-in-Market-Street

My First Foray Into Jewelry Making!

After following DSK Jewelry's blog for a while, it got me thinking. How much easier would it be to just make the jewelry I want instead of going to several different stores looking for that perfect piece? Do you ever picture your outfit and try to find all the exact pieces to make that picture come true? I do. I have certain ideas and sometimes I just can't find what I'm looking for. So why not make it?

Turns out, this was NOT a case of "easier said than done". After doing a little bit of research, I was at Wal-Mart picking up some groceries and decided to swing by their crafts section. Had to walk around the whole store to find it -_- but I did eventually find it. I wanted to pick up some cheapie materials first so I could play around with it and make sure it was something I could and was interested in continuing. After a good half hour spent browsing everything, I picked up 3 pliers (came in a pack; only $8 so not the greatest quality but they got the job done), a baggie of headpins and eyepins, a baggie of jump rings (3 different sizes), a baggie of toggles and some "pearls".

My materials

It took a bit of getting used to and a few mistakes but I managed to make a bracelet quite easily. And I'm actually pretty proud of myself for doing it haha :D

LUSH Sale and Haul!

The day I've been waiting for. The day I specifically set aside money for. AFTER CHRISTMAS SALES! :D Mostly I was waiting for the LUSH sale. I don't treat myself to LUSH often because I have so many body lotions I don't use, I prefer shower gels to soaps, it's more expensive than drugstore or BBW stuff, I can go on and on with reasons not to buy LUSH. All I need is one good reason to buy their stuff and I go crazy. Apparently buy 1 get 1 free (on holiday items, wrapped gifts and soap) is a good enough reason ;) Granted, it's not as good as their sale last year, which was buy 1 get 2 free on their holiday items and soaps and buy 1 get 1 free on wrapped gifts. But still, something is better than nothing, right?

Here's a summary of the sales I was interested in, but just about every store is having a sale so the best thing to do is check their website to see what the deals are.
LUSH--buy 1 get 1 free on holiday items, soaps, and wrapped gifts
Abercrombie--50% off jeans (good until 12/127) and 40% off everything in the store except fragrances.
Hollister--same as Abercrombie
Victoria's Secret--buy 1 get one 50% off on their bras. They also are starting to put the clearance ones out so I don't know if their semi-annual sale as started yet or if this is just a precursor.
Bath and Body Works--semi-annual clearance sale

Now onto the goodies!

Revamping My Blog!

After my halfhearted attempt at blogging a year ago, (only 3 real posts. fail -_-) I was inspired to start again. A big reason is because I started reading DSK Steph's blog (check it out: http://stephanie-nguyen.blogspot.com and for her jewelry: http://www.dskjewelry.blogspot.com) and she had so many pictures, from food to makeup, that she was posting up. It seemed like she was having fun sharing parts of her life with people. Another reason is that I started taking a lot of pictures for my LUUUX posts and I figured I may as well put them to good use! But here goes blogging attempt #2!

I'm still playing around with the design and I definitely am changing the name. Hermione9713 (I know, creative right? haha) is just something I came up with when I needed an anonymous email address back in middle school and it's just what I use for just about everything else simply because I'm too lazy to come up with something else. So I'm trying to think of a good name but it may take a while.

In the meantime, I have a few posts planned that I'm really excited about! I tried making jewelry for the first time and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. I also have been doing some major hauling (Hautelook! amiclubwear!) and trying out a bunch of new products (philosophy microdelivery peel=LOVE) so I'm excited to talk about those.

Constructive criticism is welcome :) I'm pretty much a blogging noob :P

PS, I really like my fish :) I first saw it on my friend's blog (http://jessthelander.blogspot.com) and thought she had to do all sorts of tricky computery things to get it. lol but it's actually easy to add to your blog and I had fun customizing it!