Recent Fashion Purchases

I've been trying to watch how much I'm spending recently, so it's taken me a while to get together enough fashion items for one haul post. Usually I'd have more than this to show you from just one trip to one single shop, but it has taken a fair few weeks to accumulate the goodies I'm about to show you. But if there's on thing this spending cut has taught me, it's to be more selective and really think about what I'm buying, rather than just putting anything in my basket because I thought it looked pretty, so I'm really pleased with the items I've been picking up recently.

My High-End Makeup Must-Haves

As much as we'd all love to have a collection full of high-end makeup goodies, most of our bank balances aren't going to stretch that far, but it is nice to treat ourselves to a little bit of luxury every now and again. Whilst I do love a lot of my high-end products, the high street has been producing a lot of good dupes recently, so I feel lots of them could easily be replaced at a fraction of the cost if need be. These products however, if my entire makeup collection was to ever disappear (god forbid!), are the five high-end products in my collection that I would save up to replace first.

My Spring Lip Picks

Over the last month I've been switching up my makeup for spring/summer and swapping my plum & red lipsticks for pinks & corals. Spring shades are probably my favourites when it comes to lippies, and I've noticed that my collection is pretty vast, but I've narrowed it down to my five favourites, which I'm going to share with you today.

Bourjois 123 Perfect CC Cream Review

I'm a bit of a sucker for hyped up products, but the whole BB/CC cream craze had never really grabbed my attention until now. Bourjois' new CC cream release had been sat on my beauty wishlist for a while but, to me, it seemed like such a small amount of product for it's £9.99 price tag, I wasn't quite sure how long it would last me. After being assured that only the tiniest amount is needed on each application, I gave into temptation and decided to give CC creams a whirl. And I think I may have found my perfect summer base.

Orange Biscuit Recipe

I know most of you are probably sick of the sight of food by this time on Easter Sunday, but I wanted to share with you my wedding favours recipe. I've been really busy with lots of wedding prep this Easter weekend, including a test run of baking the favours. We had a couple of recipes in the running, so we prepared a batch of each to try. The recipe that triumphed on the day was the orange flavour.

Benefit Gimme Brow Review

Considering I'm meant to be imposing a spending cut on myself, I seem to be ticking off the items on my spring beauty wishlist pretty swiftly. To be fair, I did manage to get a £10 discount on this item, thanks to some Debenhams card rewards, so this was a real bargain for me. I have a number of brow products in my stash - some fill, some shape and some set. This little beauty does them all in one sweep of a brush. It's safe to say I'm completely in love with the Benefit Gimme Brow.

My First Chanel Lipstick!

 

Those of you that follow me on Instagram will probably already know that Saturday was a pretty exciting day for me - I got my first Chanel lipstick! I've browsed and swatched many a shade at the Chanel counter for a very long time but, with money being a little tight for the next few months, I thought I was going to have to wait quite a while longer to get my hands on one. Whilst browsing with my friend in House of Fraser this weekend, she suddenly remembered that she owed me some money (perfect timing Natalie, well done!). As I had completely forgotten about it, I was going to let it slide but she was insistent on paying me back. It was there, at the Chanel counter, I had a lightbulb moment - buy me a Chanel lipstick and call it quits! My friend saved herself some money and I got something I'd been longing for for months - win, win!

 

Birchbox - April 2014

I have had a pretty bad week this week (and to top it all off my laptop has gone to laptop-hospital today - boohoo) but my latest Birchbox arriving earlier than I was expecting on Friday did cheer me up a little - small things, eh? Although I was pretty happy with most of the items I received this month, I have had a little grumble over the sizes of some of the products, namely the makeup products.

Recent Non-Beauty Favourites

I've never done a favourites post that wasn't beauty related, but there's been a few things I've been loving recently, so I thought it was about time I got round to doing a "non beauty favourites" so I can share them with you.

The "Oh no, not another tag!" Tag

I was recently tagged by Ellie from misellyre to do this tag, created by Hayley from Tea Party Beauty. Actually, I think it was quite a while ago now, so apologies for taking some time to get my answers up.

The "I accidentally pressed the checkout button" Haul

I've decided that signing up to email newletters is a very dangerous thing! You know when you get those emails from various companies notifying you of a sale or discount code, and you think "Ooo there's an offer on, I must shop!" Well that was me last weekend. My spending cut has well and truly gone out of the window with this little lot. But, to be fair, some of it was bought with my honeymoon in mind, so surely it was better to get it now whilst I can get it at a good price, rather than in a months time for full price?! That's how I'm justifying it anyway.

Seventeen Cheek Stamp Review

I hate falling for gimmicky products, but when I saw this blush appearing on a few blogs, I was intrigued by the design, so it quickly made it's way onto my wishlist. I popped into Boots last weekend to pick up a couple more of Seventeen's Stay Pout lipsticks, which I raved about here, and Boots still had their 3 for 2 offer on Seventeen products, so it seemed the perfect time to test one of these out.

March Beauty Favourites

March has marked the start of Spring, so I've been switching a lot of things up in my makeup bag. As a result, most of my favourites this month have turned out to be makeup items, but I've thrown in a recent skincare discovery in there for good measure too.

Life in March

March has been such a busy month for me but has also been very enjoyable. If you saw a blog post I wrote at the start of the month, you'll know I've been trying to make a few changes this month, which has had varying success!