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Showing posts from 2018

Five (ish) products I’m loving from the The Body Shop

Entering your teens in the nineties basically meant you were obsessed with three things: Glitter hair mascara, Adidas poppers, and The Body Shop White Musk perfume. Honestly, if you added a Fruit of the loom t-shirt, an elastic swirly arm band tattoo, a bhindi - no one knew the meaning of the phrase 'cultural appropriation' back then but I was very in to spiritualism and the third eye - and a dozen teeny tiny multicoloured butterfly clips you would have an actual picture of me. Sitting here, days before we enter 2019 where I will turn THIRTY FOUR, all of these trends are vengefully back with the exception of the t-shirts - poor Fruit of the Loom - but theres only one that I will be partaking of and that is rediscovering my love for The Body Shop . Although if you handed me some glittery butterfly clips I would absolutely wear those. With my rediscovered love of TBS I have thrown myself in to building up a collection. I love that I can buy, guilt free, knowing that they

Winter Skin Survival For Dry and Dehydrated Skin

Every now and again I branch out from my tried and tested favourites in search of something new for my skin.  I don’t mind admitting that I’ve been doing this for a lot of years now, I’ve mostly found what works for my skin and I’ve settled on a routine that works for my budget and my schedule - cheap and quick if you’re wondering. But that doesn’t mean that I will end the search for new products. I’m just very careful how I do it. I live by samples and testers, I opt for the occasional beauty box or calendar, and I love love love finding miniatures and gift sets on offer after the holidays - I tend to stock up on products around this time and drag them out through the next year. Which leads to my recent purchase of the Marks & Spencer beauty advent calendar. It’s my 4th year in a row buying this calendar and I very much doubt I’ll miss it next year. Some of my absolute favourite products have come out of these calendars, the Formula Absolute Ultimate Sleep Cream being one

Lunch on the go when you’re Coeliac in Belfast City Centre

Cafe Nero's recently discontinued Ham & Egg bap. RIP my delicious GF breakfast beauty. I will miss you.  It may sound weird but there’s never a better time to be diagnosed with an illness than today. We live in a world where medicine is changing daily and, when it comes to dietary requirements, the options available in restaurants and food retailers is growing beyond anything we ever imagined. That being said it can still be tricky to know where to go if you're a Coeliac in a rush, or trying to keep to a budget. One of the key things I have found since having to switch to a gluten free diet is that lunch times are the hardest. Especially when you’re disorganised like me and have a low key hatred of cheese and ham sambos and tinned soup. Luckily I have recently started working in belfast city centre and it turns out that an hour over lunch is just the perfect amount of time to go exploring to find new lunchy destinations. I’ll miss the likes of Greggs for

A Star Is Born

Lady Gaga is an absolute star.  Before, during, and I dare say after, A Star Is Born I have loved Gaga. There’s a narrative going about during their press junket that Bradley Cooper had to push hard to get film execs on board with casting Gaga as Ally in the latest adaption and, if true, that bugs me because having seen it I genuinely feel that there is no one else that could have played her. Ally’s character has clearly been moulded around her talents - as with Barbara we have abandoned the movie star goals focussing solely on music - and I would love to know exactly how much was changed or added after casting. Bradley Coopers’ Jackson Maine cuts more of a sympathetic character than we’ve seen in previous versions of A Star Is Born, right back to the original 1937 film which inspires some of the more selfless themes in the 2018 reboot, so much so that it makes you wonder who the film is really about.  The women of A Star Is Born have always been iconic and Lady Gaga’s

Monday mane-tenance

You may roll your eyes at the, painfully, alliterative title but I was really proud of that when I thought it up at stupid o’clock last night. After close to a decade of blogging in some form or another it gets hard to come up with these things! As you might have guessed we’re here today today to talk about my Monday night hair ritual. You’ve heard of Skincare Sunday, well this Monday Mane-tenance. Every week - pretty much - I give my hair a loving boost with some form of deep treatment. My current favourite combo - in an effort to try and keep my colour between hairdresser appointments - is the Clairol Colour Booster in copper and the infamous £1 Argan Oil hair mask available from Poundland.  There are a number of colour boosters on the market at the minute. I had been toying with buying the Maria Nila luminous colour masques on the Sally’s website when I came across the Clairol version in store in Superdrug. Half the price and right in front of my face. Just how I like it.

Crazy Rich Asians

Based on the novel of the same name, Crazy Rich Asians has some crazy expectations to meet and you’d be forgiven for writing it off as a diversity quota flick. Here’s why you shouldn’t.  I was so excited to hear about the release of Crazy Rich Asians, finally I would be able to watch my favourite Netflix sub genre - Korean Romcoms - on the big screen and give myself a night off from the subtitles. Some might be thinking that this film was going to be full of ‘smack you in the face’ wokeness and weighted down by the pressure to perform well internationally due to its entire Asian cast. In reality Crazy Rich Asians is like all good romcoms…  good! The romance is front and centre, the comedy is paced well, with with a delightful wink to the audience when needed, and the stereotypes are kept to a bare minimum even then only being  used to subvert your expectations. Oh I do love a bit of subversion.   In fact most of the familiarity in Crazy Rich Asians come from the genre rather th

Image therapy from Therapie Belfast

  A few months ago I was offered a course of treatments of my choice from Therapie Clinic in Belfast.  I initially wanted to go for their laser hair removal but I was contraindicated out of this choice - I’m hoping that now I’m off medications this is something I can revisit - so I went with a course of prescriptive facials using Image Skincare.  Spoiler alert: I loved them.  The course was three treatments over three months -  slightly longer in my case thanks to my bonkers schedule   and their packed out books - and in that time I've noticed a vast improvement in the texture of my skin, a drop in pigmentation and redness, and a suppleness that I just haven’t received from other products or facials. In my  first Therapie post  I wrote about their Ormedic facial, an all natural service using botanical extracts; great for those who have never had a proper heavy duty facial before - like me - and those who don’t have huge problem areas but still need a bit of love.  It’s im

Creamy Delights and Disapointing Discoveries

It's been almost a year since I was privileged to spend the afternoon in Pamela Smyth's makeup studio and in that time not only has she won, yet more, awards for her work but I have taken her words to heart. One of the pieces of advice she gave us was to match product types when trying to achieve a natural look. Cream on cream. Powder on powder. It's so simple when you think about it. Sticking with similar product types reduces the risk of your make up caking and allows for a more perfect blend, all allowing for that perfect 'no makeup' makeup. With my skin leaning towards the drier side, although recently I have notice that changing as age and diet changes kick in, I stick to using cream products but I've struggled to find the perfect shades of cream blush. Yes, there are plenty of premium cream blushes out there, but not that many high street options. I do have an excellent palette from Make Up Revolution , but none of the shades give me the 'barely

Lush Belfast Gets a Glowup!

Stop everything you're doing right now. Lush Belfast have opened their new store in castle lane and it is everything and more and you need to go to it now. Ok maybe not now - it's quite late at night while I'm writing this - but you know what I mean.  To give you an idea of size, the new giant sized shop is split in to 5 main sections - face, body, bath, scent, hair - each of which could have taken up the old shop on their own; gone are the days of claustrophobia whilst queuing for a sniff of the latest product, now you can take a seat and relax while you try them out. Speaking of products there are a tonne of new ones to choose from, with quite a few having previously been Oxford street exclusives. Now, I'm a die hard fan of the bubble bars and bath bombs but I think my new favourite section is the wall of bath oils. Designed to looks like tiny hand made chocolates, you may want to keep an eye on the kids if you're bring them with you, according to my sou