Top ten beauty picks

I hardly ever write beauty posts but I've found a few excellent products lately which I just had to share with the blogging world. I do actually own quite a few beauty products, despite not seeing myself as a 'beauty person', so I'm making a conscious effort to use up what I have before buying anything new. I'm not giving up any food for Lent (why on earth would I do that?), but I am giving up buying beauty products which I don't need.

So here goes... here are my top ten beauty products!

1. Max Factor Whipped Creme Foundation

I bought this foundation at half price from Tesco a few weeks ago and it's quite honestly the best foundation I've ever used in my life. It glides on smoothly and flawlessly like nothing I've ever used before and gives a lovely coverage which lasts all day. You only need to use a little bit each time so this pot should last for ages. This is definitely something I'll be purchasing again once it runs out. 

2. Avon Shimmer Block

I'd grown tired of using shimmer blocks as they left my cheeks looking too glitzy and glittery. However, my new shimmer block from Avon is truly beautiful. It leaves a natural sheen which can be as light or as dark as you want it to be, depending on which end of the compact you sweep your brush through. It's very pigmented so I only need to use a few sweeps at a time. This product has restored my faith in shimmer blocks!

3. Rimmel Eyeshadow Quartet

I've had this eyeshadow quartet for a few years but it's still going strong. I don't tend to experiment much with eyeshadow colours so this is always my go-to compact. I don't use the highlighter shade much but the other three shades are very well worn. I have a similar quartet from Max Factor but this one is far superior in terms of pigmentation and durability. 

4. Maybelline Big Eyes Mascara

This mascara has a brush on either end - one mega brush for your upper lashes and a little one for your lower lashes. The little brush is very handy for someone like me who is still very clumsy when applying mascara! This mascara makes my lashes look twice as thick and it's definitely my best mascara purchase of recent years. 

5. Barry M Bold Gun Metal Eyeliner 

I can't use liquid eyeliner (see above... too clumsy!) so this eyeliner pencil is an absolute lifesaver. I love the dark grey shade and it's very easy to apply. It frames my eyes beautifully and I've already stocked up on a few more in case they ever stop making this product. I haven't tried any other colours in this range but I don't think I'll ever stray away from the Gun Metal shade. 

6. No7 Gentle Toner

I can't believe it's taken me this long to discover No7's skincare range. I always used to use a face wash to get rid of my make up but noticed that there were still traces of make up on my towel however long I scrubbed my face for. Enter No7's gentle toner... it soothes and cools my skin and removes every last trace of make up. A must have product!

7. Avon Heat Protection Spray

This is definitely the best heat protection spray I've ever tried (and I've tried a lot!). It smells lovely and I can notice a difference in the quality of my hair after only using it a few times. My hair feels softer, thicker and stronger... I've finally found a heat protection spray which can control my unruly tresses. Happy days. 

8. No7 Eye Make Up Remover

Another fantastic product from the No7 skincare range. This product has had a lot of negative reviews but I really can't understand why as it removes every trace of eye make up like magic after just one application. Also, just as importantly, it looks lovely on my bathroom shelf! 

9. Soap & Glory Dr Spot
Although I fortunately don't get many spots, Dr Spot comes to my aid very swiftly when the worst happens. If I put a dab of Dr Spot on a spot before going to bed, it's already dried out by the time I wake up. I have no idea what on earth they've put in this product as it smells awful, but I'm convinced that it has some kind of magical secret ingredient. 

10. Collection de Paris 

I bought this perfume at Charles de Gaulle airport and it's currently my favourite perfume. I'm really quite rubbish at describing perfume scents... this one is lovely and fruity (I think). I can't seem to find it anywhere else so I think it's exclusive to Paris, or possibly even exclusive to the airport itself. This makes me sad! 

Does anyone else love any of these products? If not, what are your favourite beauty products? 

Birthday haul

It was my birthday a few weeks ago and I was lucky enough to receive lots of money and gift cards as presents from generous family and friends. The money and gift cards were very welcome as I needed to buy lots of new clothes due to going down a clothes size in the last year. Half my wardrobe has been given to charity shops, so my birthday money gave me the perfect excuse to go shopping!

I had lots of New Look gift cards as it's a commonly known fact that it's one of my favourite shops, so here's what I treated myself to from there...

New shorts! You can find them here and here

Black slingback court shoes

Peplum top. So pretty!

Flat white shoes - now out of stock

Lots of dresses! I'm only giving a little preview of these

as I'm saving most of them to wear on my honeymoon

A few people also gave me money for my birthday so I went shopping in Cardiff a few weeks ago... I love a bit of guilt-free shopping. 

I love Superdry tshirts! Coincidentally, mint and pink are my favourite colours

at the moment.

Short Disney onesie from Tesco

I've been waiting for these two DVDs to be re-released for ages... 

they both happened to become available just after my birthday! Thanks, Disney. 

Disney Princess bag from the Disney Store. £2.50! 

New bags from Primark. I couldn't choose between black/white

and coral/stone so had to get both! £6 each

A few make up items

I made the most of various sales and online discounts to make sure I made the most out of my birthday money and got the best value for money I possibly could. I'm really pleased with my haul and think I did quite well!

Do you have any of these items? Have you written a haul post lately? Send me your links, pretty please! 

Celebrating our third anniversary

Neil and I celebrated our third anniversary last weekend. This anniversary was extra significant as it's the last one we'll celebrate before our wedding in August! It definitely doesn't seem as if a year has passed since our second anniversary... time is moving far too quickly these days.

I decided to try out my new Barry M Limited Edition Carousel nail varnish on our anniversary as I'd bought it with my birthday money and it went perfectly with the dress I decided to wear. I love it!

We decided not to buy each other presents this year as we're saving money for the wedding and spending a lot on our new house. Both very expensive things, I think you'll agree. However, we did buy each other a card and, if I'm honest, we do have very good taste in cards. Who doesn't love a card with fluffy teddies/dogs on it?

I usually have Weetabix and semi skimmed milk for breakfast every day, even on weekends, but Neil brought big thick rolls and bacon from the butchers with him as a surprise so I had a bit more of a hearty breakfast on our anniversary. With lashings of ketchup, of course! 

After exchanging cards and eating our rather large breakfast, we headed in to town for our usual Saturday wander. However, we had a bit more of a purpose to our trip this time... we went to choose our wedding rings! I won't be posting a photo of my ring here as I want to keep it a secret until we're married, but I'm so excited about the beautiful wedding ring I've chosen. It'll definitely feature in lots of my post wedding blog posts in September/October, so keep a look out for it. We went for our usual Caffe Nero fix while we mulled over our wedding ring options, and I ordered my customary skinny hot chocolate. 

After deciding on our wedding rings and going to the jewellers to place our order, we popped to the Sidoli's hut in the Hayes for a cheeky ice cream. I've already blogged about my love for Sidoli's ice cream. They have such a wide variety of flavours! I went for Creme Caramel Fudge and Strawberries & Cream on this occasion. 

We continued to wander around town after eating our ice cream and I successfully spent the last of my birthday money... blog post to follow next week on what I bought! Unsurprisingly, the post will involve items from New Look and the Disney Store. 

I mentioned in my last restaurant review blog post that we ate at Prezzo last Saturday for our anniversary meal so I won't elaborate on that here, but our amazing bread board deserves to be featured again!

After finishing our food, we headed to the cinema to see 3 Days to Kill. I'll write about it in more detail in my monthly cinema round up, but I thought it was a great film. I shouldn't enjoy films with lots of shooting and bombing as I'm so paranoid about crime and violence, but I really do for some reason. I'm sure a psychologist would have a field day trying to analyse that. 

There was one more surprise on Sunday... Neil had bought a beautiful lemon cake from Costco! The topping was basically a layer of lemon sugary goodness and the cake itself was lovely and light. Although I do want to bake a cake again soon, Costco is a good alternative when we don't have time to bake! 

So, to sum up, we had a lovely anniversary and ate a lot of food, as is our custom. Next time we celebrate our anniversary, we'll be married! 

My love for Gelly knows no bounds...

I thought it was about time for me to write an update on my growing obsession with Barry M Gelly nail polishes. My last Gelly blog post was written in November when I had 5 shades... I've now managed to acquire another 6 to add to my collection!

Clockwise: Plum, Blackberry, Guava, Pomegranate, Passionfruit,

Mango, Sugar Apple, Prickly Pear, Blueberry, Greenberry, Grapefruit

Although the vast majority of these colours are beautifully summery, I've been happily wearing them throughout the winter too. Some dark and rainy days just need a splash of bright nail varnish!

The new pastel summer shades are the newest additions to my collection - Prickly Pear and Sugar Apple. I love pastels and shiny nails, so these are the perfect combination for me. Prickly Pear does need two coats in order to really bring the colour out and to maximise the glossy finish, but it's well worth the extra effort. Sugar Apple was a little streaky with just one coat, so I added another coat for that too. I love painting my nails in alternate colours as I get to use two lovely polishes at once! 

It's very difficult to choose a favourite as I've never come across a Gelly shade I didn't love. My top 5 shades are probably Guava, Grapefruit, Greenberry, Blackberry and Prickly Pear, in no particular order. Blueberry and Pomegranate also need to be featured somewhere in my list of favourites... look how beautiful they are!

I've already got my eye on a few of the other newly released summer colours... I'll need a bigger nail varnish drawer if Barry M keep releasing new Gelly shades! 

Do you love the Gelly range as much as I do? Which one is your favourite?

Easter in photos

I had a long five day weekend over Easter and took lots of photos of what I got up to, so I thought I'd publish an 'Easter in photos' post just to summarise my weekend. I'll be blogging about some of these activities in more detail over the next week or so, but here's a little taster. 'Taster' is a good choice of wording here... I ate rather a lot!

My weekend started early with a trip to Pizza Express on Thursday

with Edwina and Sarah

Options hot chocolate in my Easter mug

My Easter nails

Bit of gardening...

Carvery at Cedar Tree Farm

A wander to Cardiff Bay

Went to the pub and had a hot chocolate!

Neil cooked dinner one night.

Stuffed peppers, salad and continental meats to start...

...and bacon, leek and asparagus cheesy tagliatelle for the main course!

Toasted hot cross buns for breakfast

We spent a lot of time in IKEA

As a consequence of our visit to IKEA, we built some furniture

Reduced Easter chocolate 

Aldi's Mini Eggs are nicer than the real thing!

Lovely walk around Cosmeston Lakes

Jack Daniel's burger in T.G.I.Friday's

Went to see The Amazing Spiderman 2... it actually was amazing!

More cooking from Neil. Spanish scrambled eggs!

Easter present from Neil

Last hot chocolate of the weekend in Caffe Nero,

with a sneaky Lindt bunny!

What did you get up to over Easter? Did you take as many photos as I did?

Review of Barry M Matte nail polish

Assuming that you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll already have read about my love for Barry M in my first ever nail varnish post. However, I sadly have to admit that I'm disappointed with their latest addition to my collection.

I bought the Vanilla Matte nail polish a few weeks ago as I'd read lots of good reviews about the Matte range on various beauty blogs. I knew it would be vastly different to my beloved Gelly range, but I fancied a change and wanted to try something different. 

The nail varnish is much easier to apply than the Gelly polish, but even with two coats the colour just isn't very striking. I know the Vanilla shade is quite light and understated, but I was hoping the finished result would look more elegant and a lot less dull. I'm also definitely not a fan of the 'matte' look after trying this nail varnish... the shinier the better! 

It just looks a bit dull...

On the plus side, I've had this nail varnish on for five days now and it hasn't chipped at all, so it does seem to be more robust and less susceptible to wear-and-tear than the Gelly shades. I'm sure I will use this polish again as this is a good understated look for more serious occasions, but I don't think I'll be buying any more polishes from the Matte range unfortunately. 

This just means I'll have to keep buying from the Gelly range! Has anyone else tried Barry M's Matte range? What did you think?

200 posts!

Newsflash... I've reached the very exciting (for me) 200 post landmark! I'm very pleased with this achievement as I've only been blogging properly for just over a year, and last year was an extremely busy one where I sometimes struggled to fit everything in.

When I first decided to start blogging regularly, I was worried that I'd constantly struggle to fit it in with my hectic schedule. However, I've found that writing is a good way to relax and to make sure I put aside some time in the evenings to do something I'm interested in, even if it's only for fifteen minutes.

When I reached my 100th post a few months ago, I wrote a blog post about my ten most read posts up to that point. I've decided to do the same for my 200th post... not very imaginative, I know.

So here are my top ten most read posts so far...

Film review: The Great Gatsby
Frantic about Florida #2
Cineworld Unlimited Card
There's no surprise quite like a McFly surprise
Duffy the Disney Bear
Hollister Addison... best perfume ever?
Costa, Nero or Starbucks?
New York #4: Rockefeller Center
Barry M's Gelly Range
Marks & Spencer's £10 Dine in for two

Apparently the people who stumble upon my blog are interested in films and the cinema, Florida, McFly, Duffy the Disney Bear, perfume, hot chocolate, New York, nail varnish and food! I am genuinely curious about the reading trends on my blog so it's good to have a rough idea about what posts people are most interested in.

Have you read the posts above? Which posts would you like to see more of in 2014?

Christmas presents... the toiletry edition

This is the second post in my 'What I got for Christmas' series (read the first post here), and it's a bit of a bumper category. I love toiletries of any kind so I was really pleased when I had so many for Christmas. Edwina bought me a huge variety with lovely explanatory gift tags on each one, and I also had some from my parents, Neil, Phillipa, Siân and Amy. You can just never have too many! I'm now nicely stocked up so I technically shouldn't need to buy anything for myself for ages... I'll see how long I last before I crack. I have a slight addiction to buying toiletries!

My favourites from the pile above are the Peaches & Clean face wash, Iced Strawberry Dream shower gel (smells good enough to eat!), the Minnie Mouse toiletry bag and the Palmolive shampoo for coloured hair. I can't wait to start using all these and they're already all standing neatly in line ready for when my existing bottles/packets run out. 

Moving on to the gift sets I received, I especially love the set of mini Body Shop body butters from Neil as well as the giant Strawberry shower gel. He bought me big bottles of Satsuma and Lemon shower gels from the Body Shop last Christmas and they're both amazing, so I'm expecting great things from the Strawberry edition. I also love the Soap & Glory set from Phillipa and am excited about trying The Scrub of Your Life for the first time as it's been on my wishlist for ages. I had the very pretty Guess Girl gift set from Siân and I'm already obsessed with the perfume scent. I'll definitely be buying more when this bottle runs out! While we're on the subject of perfume, Britney Spears' Curious perfume is an old favourite so I was very pleased when I found a bottle of Curious under the Christmas tree from my parents. I'll definitely be smelling lovely for the next few months!

Lastly, Neil bought me four bottles of Barry M nail varnish for Christmas... he knows me well! I love the limited edition glitter polish, and I always jump at the chance to extend my Gelly collection. These shades are called Blackberry, Blueberry and Plum and they all look really striking. I'll have to write another update on my Gelly collection soon... it's growing rapidly!

What toiletries did you have for Christmas? Do you love the Body Shop, Soap & Glory and Barry M products as much as I do?

Barry M's Gelly range - part 2!

I first blogged about Barry M Gelly's range in August. Back then, I only had the Greenberry nail varnish from the range. Seeing as that one was such a success, I've purchased another 4 in the last few months...

Left to right: Passionfruit, Greenberry, Grapefruit, Mango and Guava

These nail varnishes are just so bright and vibrant. I can't resist them! They also last a few days longer than normal nail polishes as long as they're applied properly. I found that they chipped very quickly if the polish was applied too thickly but looked streaky if it was applied too thinly, so I've pretty much perfected my technique now. 

It's a difficult choice, but I think the Guava polish is my favourite.

The other four colours are very summery, but Guava is more suited to autumn/winter. This means I'll be using it a lot during the next few months! 

The Grapefruit colour (right) comes a close second, and I love wearing it on alternate nails with Greenberry. This was my nail varnish combo for my recent holiday to Florida... perfect summer colours. 

I probably won't use Passionfruit and Mango as much as the other colours just because I hardly ever wear red or orange (clashing issues with my red hair). However, they're lovely bright colours which really stand out and will definitely be noticed. I like wearing these shades with an all black outfit as they create a great contrast and look even more vibrant. 

Which Gelly shade shall I buy next?