'Tis the final day of April, and I am very sad to see it go. It was a bloody good month, and you can see all my favourite moments and highlights in my Instagram Round Up. It was also a good month for beauty; I acquired some beautiful makeup items from Tarte and MAC (thanks to my lovely parents) and a few other discoveries that I have been using non-stop this April.

This Nail of the Day seems rather fitting with the wintery weather we are having in Christchurch at the moment, although there is no snow it is definitely getting very cold! OPI's Alpine Snow is probably one of their classic polishes and is likely one that is over looked most of the time, purely due to all the other amazing shades and colours available. If you get beyond the 'twink on the nails' look, I think white nails are super classy, look very fresh and obviously go with everything.

 Say farewell to April because May is just around the corner, so that means I need to round up all my Instagram's from the month [warning: there is a lot of cake]. April was a great month, it was my birthday at the start, my Dad's birthday in the middle, we had Easter, my sister was home and it just generally was great!

I am no stranger to the Color Whisper line of lipsticks from Maybelline; Lust For Blush (which I have a review on, here) is a lip colour I reach for on the daily, so it is no surprise that I brought another couple. And I obviously have to share their greatness on Cassandra Myee today!

Now this is an exciting post - a new beauty subscription box has hit NZ shores in the form of Violet Box. Originally started in Australia, Violet Box has extended over to NZ and I was beyond excited when I heard the news it was coming. After Sample Bar closed down a couple of months ago, I was missing getting a cute packaged box filled with beauty goodies in it each month, obviously there is Goodie Box but I had mixed feelings about it. I signed up for Violet Box as soon as I could; it promised at least 5 beauty samples or full sized products that would be over $60 in retail value. The box each months costs $25 with $4.95 postage on top of that. Sample Bar was a flat $25, and Goodie Box is the same price as Violet Box I believe.

If you are new to Cassandra Myee, basically with every Sample Bar box I received, I would do an unboxing and initial thoughts post as soon as I received it and then take the month to trail and use the products and at the end of each month/cycle I did a full review of each item - for Violet Box I will be doing the exact same!

Let's all just give New Zealand a round of applause for finally bringing us some international makeup brands to our shores; first it was e.l.f. at Kmart and now Collection UK have launched in Countdown Supermarkets across the country. I had heard a rumour it was coming a few months ago, but really didn't want to get my hopes up, but two weeks ago the Collection stands started cropping up around the country. I think we have all heard of the infamous Lasting Perfection Concealer from the UK bloggers and vloggers, with it being a 'holy grail' for many people, so I was pretty desperate to get my hands on it!

At the end of last year MUA (Makeup Academy) came out with a brand new LUXE line that included new eyeshadow palettes, brow products, eye liners and some nail foils (you can see a haul of the LUXE items I brought a while back here). Along with those great products came the Velvet Matte Lip Lacquers, following the makeup trends of the moment. I am a huge fan of the MUA brand (do a quick search on my blog to see all the posts I've done about a bunch of their products!), so when I saw this new line I was ordering them right away. I initially started with just the two pink ones, but then couldn't resist getting the other three to complete my collection  - best part is they are so cheap, £3 - so less than NZD $6.

Kmart here in New Zealand (and also in Australia) have had a beauty revamp, adding new brands like e.l.f. (!!!) and also their own line of lipsticks and nail polishes. I was very excited to see these and the best part was they are only $4 each! I wasn't sure what to expect but grabbed a few items to try them out and they have really impressed.

With all the chocolate and Easter goodies, you definitely need some nails that would be fitting. I saw MissJenFabulous (a blogger + vlogger on Youtube) post this nail combo on her Instagram - I had the exact nail polishes in my collection and absolutely loved the colour together. It turned out so nice and I love having the two accent nails instead of my normal one.

At the beginning of April Maybelline launched their #getalittlelippy campaign aimed at promoting their lipsticks and also getting the nation into wearing lipsticks no matter how bright or bold. At most stockists (Farmers, The Warehouse, pharmacies etc.) they are offering Buy 1, Get 1 Free on all lipsticks. When I heard this I rushed into my closest Farmers and grabbed two. I'm a huge fan of their lipstick offering, if you are an avid reader of my blog you will know I love the Color Whispers, but I decided to grab a couple from two of their different lines.

I've now had this for a number of months, I actually bought it way back in December when it first got released and have been using it on and off since then, until the past few weeks when I have been reaching for it nearly every day. I think at first I wasn't sure how to get along with it and the packaging seemed a little gimmicky but I got past all that and the actual powder works very well and I've come to love it.

Featuring this on my blog may just be a very mean thing... Why? Because I just can't find it on any website and I have a feeling it may be sold out. But it is just too beautiful not to share, so if in some miraculous circumstance you can find this online somewhere - buy it! I was lucky enough to have a friend travelling to the States so she nipped into one of the Sephora and brought this for me; it was love at first sight!

Now that the weather is turning colder, I am instantly attracted to really bright shades. This follows a phase of neutral nails, and this couldn't be more opposite! I wear so many neutral colours, I feel I can get away with very loud nails, so I reached for American Apparel Neon Violet and to add a bit of glitter, I used Orly Be Brave as an accent.

It is hard to walk past a Jordana stand and not pick up a few products, my local mall has a really good stand at one of the 2Cheap shops (don't be fooled if you think it is all crap!), it's not always fully stocked but I like to check it out now and again to see what they have. I go into a bit more detail about the brand in this post here and also have a few more Jordana products featured in this haul from Cherry Culture with some good swatches and info on them if you are keen to see more from the brand.

I only grabbed three things in this trip, one blush and two lipsticks, they were $4 each and are pretty damn impressive for that price! I've added links to the products on Beauty Joint, which ships worldwide (price is in USD).

BB Creams are being offered by every brand now days and now they even have CC Creams and DD creams coming out- when will it end!? I've tried a few different brands of BB Creams and currently I am loving this Garnier BB Cream Miracle Skin Perfector, specifically aimed at oily/combination skin.

Last month I blogged about the amazing Manuka Honey Gel from Living Nature (see it here). Manuka honey has amazing healing properties (I go into it a bit more on the previous post and the website has a lot of great information on), so when it is put into a lip balm, you know it's going to be good for your lips!

The liquid lipstick trend has been taking off over the past year, and Chi Chi, an Australian brand, have their spin on it with their Creamy Matte Liquid Lipsticks. They have a great range of colours but I was drawn to this shade in Socialite (all of the names are so great as well, others include Man Eater, Flirt, Drama Queen etc).

Makeup sponges were a bit of uncommon territory for me; they'd been used on me for school productions etc but I have never used one myself. The Beauty Blender seemed to be everywhere for a while there but I just couldn't justify paying $20 for a sponge that I didn't know if I would like slash get the use out of. When Real Techniques came out with their Miracle Complexion Sponge and for only USD $6.00 on iHerb I had to give it a go. I watched quite a few tutorials on Youtube to get tips and tricks on how to use it, and I have finally found a way to use it that works great for me!

March has gone and taken a whole lot of empty products with it! It's time to show you my trash and also give you my thoughts on these items and if I would (or already have) purchased them again.

The month of March treated me pretty well, there were a total of 26 new posts on the blog, lots of hauls (#sorrynotsorry) and a bunch of product reviews - check out my blog archive for a full list of all the posts. Most of my Most Loved from this month are products that I got in March and used pretty much everyday since I got each product, so let's hop to it!