When I have a mom who dresses other ladies up for a living and a younger sister who will never wear the same outfit twice to different events, it’s hard not to care about how I look.
I ‘allowed’ myself 6 months of looking like a frumpy mom. Those 6 months included my last trimester of pregnancy, and 3 months post pregnancy. I made the effort to dress and look presentable whenever I had to leave the house, not only to avoid comments from my mom, but it was something I deemed important to my self-esteem.
Most of us tend to use motherhood as a valid excuse not to have the time to dress up or to apply make-up. So when Flo shared with me about her business, Style Essence, I thought “Why not have this as an activity for SMB’s 1st birthday bash?” It will be an enriching and fun session for us to learn some finer points on style and make-up.
We had two separate sessions at Style Essence, one in the day for the SAHMs and WAHMs, and one more in the evening for the FTWMs.
L to R – Trainer Florinda, Samantha, Natasha, Adora and Calla, James and Irene (still looking gorgeous sans makeup)
Flo who was our trainer for both sessions, started with a quick color analysis of our skin tone, to determine if we had ‘warm’ or ‘cool’ undertones.
Evelyn’s a ‘warm’ and I think Dominique likely is a ‘warm’ color as well
She shared this tip on how to determine if you are a ‘warm’ or ‘cool’ color; look at the veins on the underside of your wrist. If the veins are more blue / purple, you have cool undertones. If you see green tones, then you are a ‘warm’ undertone. Turned out have both warm and cool undertones, so I will rock any shade 
We learned about how to dress for our body shape before we dived straight into hands-on for our skin.
This is the way we washed our faces with a 3-in-1 cleanser,
L to R – PC, Wacky Liza, Pamela, Adeline and Gila Regina
and applied exfoliating mask on the half of our faces.
L to R; Evelyn, Jenn, Me, Dominique, Rachel, Irene
L to R; Estella, Madeline, Jiahui, Adora, Pamela, Adeline, Regina
After deep cleansing and exfoliating one half of our faces with Marykay’s Botanical Effects Mask, it was time to ‘paint’ our faces!
L to R; Pauline, Pamela, Adeline and Sandra
It’s hard not to feel like the centre of attention when you are in a room full of bloggers pointing their cameras at you, when you are being made-up by the pro.
And the outcome of the workshop? Glamour Mamas!
L to R; PC, Liza, me and Pauline
You know a make-over workshop is successful, when you have Sarah, who hardly ever uses makeup on her face, doing her own makeup and looking this good post make-over.
With an informative session from an engaging trainer, great company from the ladies from SMB, looking fabulous was a great way to celebrate SMB’s 1st Birthday Bash!
From bottom L to R; Natasha, Sarah, Calla, Me, Pauline, Dominique, Trainer Florinda, Rachel, Edlyn, James, Irene, Evelyn, Samantha and Trainer Bernadette
Bottom L to R; Jiahui, Estella, Liza, Pamela, Adora, Trainer Florinda, PC, Madeline, Adeline, Regina, Sandra, Susan and Trainer Bernadette.
Thanks to sponsors Style Essence and dinner by The Shepherd’s pie, in collaboration with SMB’s 1st Birthday Bash 2013.
The red and blue thing on the chocolate banana cake is a $9.90 plastic spiderman topper. Not fondant, the kid doesn’t care for it. Who eats fondant anyway?
Tadah!
Oh look! The mess has shrunk!
So gamed to put on the apron
Making an effort to watch Chef Judy’s demonstration
Chef Judy of Creative Culinaire working on her demo
Creaming the butter with the mixer
K’s turn to toss the chocolate chips, grated zucchini, walnuts and some flour.
I am certain that this mixer was partly responsible in sustaining his long attention span through the whole session.
Zucchini’s not so bad when there’s lots of chocolate chips in the mix!
(L to R) 
A playful yet chic weekend romper, yet it maintains a classic look. My sister is in her 20s, with no kids and work in advertising, so her style tends to be more chic casual.
