My Favourite Bright Summer Lipsticks

Happy National Lipstick Day! I hope you've all been taking advantage of the Debenhams offer today - I know I have! One of my favourite makeup looks during the summer is to wear a very simple eye and team it with a bright lipstick. So, to celebrate this wonderful day (for beauty lovers anyway!), I thought I'd share with you my five favourite bright lipsticks to wear in the summer.

You Can Only Pick One - Beauty Tag

My house is currently resembling a rubbish tip at the moment, as we are having a huge clear out to make room for a dressing table and new makeup storage (eek!). Due to lack to blogging time, and space, that I have this weekend, I thought I'd share with you a tag post that I started writing a couple of weeks ago, but didn't get round to finishing. This tag was made by the lovely Rebecca at Autumn Leaves. If you don't follow her already, go and check her out - she's one of my favourite bloggers! I think this has to be one of the most challenging tag posts out there for a beauty addict to do - I found it so difficult to narrow down my collection to just one thing per category.

My Favourite Dry Shampoo

For around 10 years, I committed one of the big beauty sins - washing my hair virtually every day! I was always paranoid that my hair was greasy and, obviously, after a while of daily washing, it did become greasy very quickly. It got to the stage where I couldn't go out for the day without washing my hair, as it would be a hot greasy mess! I'd tried weaning off my daily wash before, using Batiste dry shampoo, but, although it did the job of absorbing the oil, more often than not it would look & feel like someone had emptied a bottle of talcum powder on my head - I hated the way my hair felt wearing it! When I went for my wedding hair trial, the hairdresser said to me I would need to avoid washing my hair the day of the wedding, so that my curls would hold in place better. I didn't want my hair to look awful and greasy on my big day, so I knew I had to try something to stop me needing to wash my hair every day - and this is where this little beauty stepped in!

Nuxe Reve de Miel Lip Balm

Now this is one product which had certainly received a lot of blogger hype over the years. I remember reading a lot of my favourite bloggers raving about this at one point or another, so it's been on my wishlist for a very long time thanks to them! I suffer from dry lips throughout the year, no matter what season we are in and, whilst my Elizabeth Arden Eight Hour Cream was doing a good job, I found it to be quite gloopy after a while and I was still having to reapply some sort of lip balm quite often throughout the day. I finally gave into the hype a few weeks ago, and picked up a pot of Nuxe Reve de Miel from Space NK. Now I'm just gutted I didn't buy it sooner!

Hydraluron Moisture Boosting Masks

I'm a huge fan of the Hydraluron serum by Indeed Labs, and it's been a staple in my skincare routine for around a year now. Ever since the release of its sheet mask counterpart I've been tempted to give them a go, but the price tag was putting me off. After reading on Zoe's blog that Indeed Labs products were 1/3 off in Boots plus, if you pick up a copy of the latest Boots magazine, you can get an extra fiver off too, I was straight down to my nearest store, and managed to get these for less than half price!

Mini Haul - The Body Shop

There have been a couple of new products released by The Body Shop in recent weeks that I've been wanting to get my hands on. After scrolling through my O2 Priority Moments app, I saw that there was a £20 off a £40 spend offer on. Since I was planning on spending £20 on the new releases anyway, I thought why not get a few freebies to go with them?!

Too Faced Natural Eyes Palette

Oh my, I think I may have found my new favourite eyeshadow palette! I don't own much Too Faced makeup, it's not really a brand I tend to gravitate towards, but this little palette caught my eye a couple of months ago. I first saw Fleur mention this as her new go-to palette and thought it look stunning and, after seeing so many more reviews crop up with beautiful swatches, I had to have it. I don't really like ordering makeup online - I always worry it will come smashed up or leaking - but I couldn't find this in stores anywhere, the stand was always empty! Luckily mine arrived in tact!

Essence Pure Skin Anti-Spot Moisturizing Makeup

You may remember when I wrote my essence launch post that I was going to be doing a full review of the Anti Spot Moisturizing Makeup* once I'd given it a thorough testing. This product couldn't have arrived at my door at a better time, as I'd just suffered a pretty bad hormonal breakout all over my chin, so I was interested to see if this would do a good job of clearing it up for me.

Makeup Revolution Lipsticks

It's been a while since I posted a review from my Makeup Revolution haul *slaps wrist*, but today I'm back with another, and this time it's the turn of their £1 lipsticks. There's so many different shades to choose from, so making my decision on which to buy was quite tricky. Though, to be honest, it wouldn't cost that much to buy the whole collection!

Birchbox - July 2014

Last month's Birchbox was a major let-down so I was hoping that they would be redeeming themselves this month. Although this one is slightly better, there's not really anything in the box that excited me much. Saying that, there are at least a few products that I will use this time.

What I Got For My Birthday - Fashion

So now we have part two of my birthday "haul", featuring all of the fashion items I bought and received. I didn't intend on buying many items of clothing, I had few things on my wishlist I wanted to pick up but other than that I wanted to try and spend as little as possible - until I set foot in New Look! I can never go in that shop and buy just one or two things - I have to have a giant bag full! And since going shopping I've received another New Look gift card from my sister in law, so more damage will be done soon!

What I Got For My Birthday - Beauty

Since I entered my teens, I've always mainly just received money for my birthdays, so that I can go shopping and spend it on whatever catches my eye. Not too many people in my family enjoy shopping, but I love it, so I think it was win win for everyone this way! This year was no different, and I saw it as the perfect opportunity to cross a few things off my wishlist, which seems to be getting bigger every week thanks to Twitter chats! Whilst I was very restrained during a little shopping trip on my birthday, I went a little bit mad in Birmingham the next day, and decided to throw a little bit of my own money in to treat myself (which went towards rather a lot of clothes from New Look!). As a result, I ended up with quite a few shopping bags, so I've decided to split the haul into two posts - beauty & fashion. As you can see, first up is beauty.

A Birthday Day Out in Stratford-Upon-Avon

 

Some of you may know it was my birthday on Sunday. After discovering there was a Space nk in Stratford Upon Avon (who knew?!), which is only 30 minutes drive from where I live, I decided that was where I was going to spend some of my birthday money (look out for a "What I got for my birthday" post later this week!). Stratford is a really beautiful place, which I would definitely recommend visiting for a day out. Unfortunately, I didn't get to spend as much time as I'd hoped there, as I also had plans in the evening which I had to get home for, but I did manage to take a few snaps whilst I was there.

 

It's My Birthday & 300 Follower Giveaway!

Image from weheartit.com

Today is my birthday yippee! This is also my 100th blog post - that was good timing wasn't it?! I'm currently off having a lovely time with my husband & family (probably spending too much money) but thought, since I'm having a double celebration at the moment, it was a great time to run another giveaway for my lovely readers.

Essence Launches Across the UK!

Budget beauty seems to be taking the UK by storm at the moment, with the likes of MUA and Makeup Revolution being firm favourites, and now Essence are getting in on the act! Essence is Europe's No1 budget beauty brand, and have been around for a long time, but are very new to us here in the UK. They launched last year in just a few stores, so were still very hard to get hold of for the majority of us. But I'm pleased to say Essence will be available all across the UK as of this month, and I can't wait to stock on some more budget beauty buys!

Completing My MAC Palette

I've had three empty spaces in my MAC eyeshadow palette, begging to be filled, for quite a while now. After much trawling through blogs and YouTube, and asking for your advice on Twitter, I ordered my final three shades last week and I am pleased to say my MAC palette is now complete! I don't even want to think about how much this palette is worth - building your own MAC palette is most definitely a very expensive thing to do, but all the shades are then tailored to your specific tastes (and let's face it, collecting them is fun!). The only problem is, I've seen so many other shades I want, I may have to start building another palette soon.

June Beauty Favourites

On the whole, June has been a pretty good month weather wise (admittedly I spent almost half of it abroad!), so a lot of my favourites this month are with the warmer weather in mind. Most of these products are those that I took away with me on holiday, plus a sneaky little purchase I made once I returned home.

Life in June

Life is good again! After a pretty crappy month during May, we finished off the month by getting married on Saturday 31st! It was the most incredible day and, considering the weather we had leading up to it, the sun was shining down on us. And married life since has been pretty damn good!