This week I have mostly been loving....

2012-03-08T01:21:00.000-08:00

http://twitter.com/lipglossiping/goodbye-gfc/members

In support of bloggers who have worked hard to drive their readership figures up and who have lost so many of them since Google got rid of Google Friend Connect - if you have noticed that some of your favourite blogs have disappeared click on the above link so you can find them again and select an alternative way to follow. (I have no clue about how all this works, you'd be much better off reading this post by Charlotte aka Lipglossiping, or her update today)

Don't miss out on your favourite blogs!

No 7 Vitality Eye Roll-on

2012-03-04T05:20:00.000-08:00

Those bloody Boots £5 No 7 Vouchers, I never know what to buy with them as am seriously not a huge fan of No 7 products but it always feels like such a waste to just not use them.

Staring hard in the mirror the other day I realised that my eye's are starting too look very dry and I am aware that its an area that I tend to neglect. Seemed like the perfect opportunity to try a No 7 product and get rid of one of those pesky vouchers!

I opted for Vitality eye roll-on initially because of the 3 little roller balls, in my head they are going to feel lovely and cooling and like a little mini eye massage every day! Then I squeezed some of the product out and it is a pearlised pink so will instantly add some radiance to the eye area, so for £7 (its £12 without the voucher) it seemed like the way to go.

3 little rollerballs

Brightening pearly pink'ness

This is available here on the Boots website. So come on, what do you spend your No 7 £5 vouchers on, please tell me!

I also snagged the one and only bottle of Max Factor Fantasy Fire nail varnish whilst I was in Boots, tempted to use it but have a little giveaway planned so might hang on to it for that!

Of course as I paid for my purchases and was delighted to get rid of one of my £5 vouchers I received another at the till so I definitely need your recommendations!!

UPDATE - have been using this for a week and LOVE it! I can see a difference in how hydrated the skin under my eyes is, whilst I didn't really have dark circles I do think the whole area looks brighter, probably just for not being so dry and dull looking. I love using this, it feels really cooling on my skin and isn't greasy at all - get your £5 vouchers out ladies and go shop!

Estee Lauder Double Wear Light

2012-03-01T01:13:00.000-08:00

Just to finish off my EL related blog posts! I mentioned in my last post that as well as getting a sample of Invisible Fluid I also got one of Double Wear Light.

I have never sought out long lasting foundation, primarily because I assumed it would be too drying for my dry, 45 year old skin. It wasn't until I tried ELDWL, as it will henceforth be known on this blog, that I realised what I was missing. This stuff is teflon for your face! Seriously, this morning I went to the gym for an hour and came home with my make up intact, which is amazing, a little disconcerting - it can't be good for you to sweat through your make up? - but amazing nonetheless. I have been using ELDWL for 4 days now, initially I was being too heavy handed and slapping on loads, then I tried applying it with my brush - serious cake face, not a great look. This morning I decided to apply it with my fingers and to only apply it lightly and that was the winner. In spite of being quite mattifying, not something I need, I have found that I still have a glow, but no shine. I am lightly powdering my nose and chin only and the wear is exceptional - it is now 8.15pm and this has been on my face since 6.15am, including that gym session and it still looks bloody good. What is even more wonderful is that it seems to lend some of its longevity to the other products that I have put on top - my blusher hasn't faded, my eyebrows that are 90% drawn in with a pencil haven't rubbed off and my eye make up is still looking good.

These pics were taken yesterday when I had applied it with a brush and that is why it does look a bit too heavy.

Today applied with a lighter touch it is approaching HG status! One of the other things that I love is that my glasses don't smear this off my nose, it just stays right where I put it.

So decision made on Friday I am buying this and I am also very tempted by an Estee Lauder Idealist serum, rather fancy the pore minimising one - has anyone tried any of the Idealist serums? Please let me know what you thought if you have thanks very much. I am also in need of a Lancome L'Absolu Nu, if I can find one that warrants a £21 spend. I am also very tempted by the Champneys Watermint shower gel, scrub and lotion spritz. Again if anyone has tried either the Lancome lippy or the Watermint range please let me know what you thought, it all helps in the buying decisions!

New lipstick! Estee Lauder Pure Color Gloss stick - Honey Pink

2012-02-28T09:20:00.000-08:00

I love new lipstick! I was on a mission on Friday to come home with something as far away from my usual pinky/browny mlbb shade and had decided I would go as far out of my comfort zone as necessary to get the desired look! A quick shout out on twitter resulted in lots of great suggestions from loads of people - ladies thank you all. The only problem I had was that the brand had to be available in either House of Fraser or Boots, so I was fairly limited - MAC, Laura Mercier and Illamasqua weren't happening!

First off I had a look at the Dior Addict Extreme lipsticks - Ruth had posted some pics of new ones not due out yet and they had set me off on my lemming for something out of the ordinary. Whilst I quite liked the available Dior shades lots of them had glittery bits in them and at 45 I wonder if blingy sparkly lips are just too little girl? It's probably down to the individual but I prefer cream lipstick to anything shimmery or glittery and there weren't any Dior creams that were floating my boat.

Next off I visited the Estee Lauder stand after several recommendations that the Pure Color lipsticks were exactly what I was after. Having had a bit of a play I decided that if I was going out of my comfort zone in terms of colour one way of diffusing the shock would be to go for something sheer rather than too opaque a lipstick. The Pure Color Gloss sticks are pretty much that, gorgeous colour in a glossy finish but in a stick rather than a lip gloss tube - not a fan of sticky lip gloss. As soon as I tested Pink Honey on the tip of my index finger - I have been told its the closest in colour to the skin of your lip so a better indicator than the back of your hand, no idea if its true but it usually works out well for me! - I knew it was The One.

The lady on the Estee Lauder counter in HoF in Huddersfield is fantastic - I have since been googling all things EL and the one recurring theme is that the ladies that work on EL counters can generally be relied upon to be knowledgeable, willing to help, generous with samples and pretty bloody lovely! The one in Huddersfield is all of those things.

I was having a look at the Double Wear Light foundation as the website foundation finder had suggested that one for me and she said had I heard about their new foundation, Invisible Fluid, I said that I had and was hoping to get my hands on a sample at some point. She said "go shop, get a coffee and when you come back past here nip in, I have just taken delivery of all my stuff - the samples are in the bottom box, if you give me a mo when you get back I'll sort you out a sample". She actually offered, I didn't have to beg or feel like some nasty bludger, she actually just up and offered! And before I left she gave me a sample of the Double Wear Light into the bargain! Prior to all this she had handed me a teeny lip brush so I could apply some Pink Honey to my lips, its hard to tell how something works in indoor lighting so I said I was going to see how it felt for a little while and check I was still happy with the colour when I was outside but that if I was I would be back.

When I nipped back 20 minutes later to say yes please to the Pink Honey she had dug out her samples of Invisible Fluid, checked the one she thought would work best for me, 1CN1, and decanted some into a bottle for me to take home.

Corally pink, pinky coral?

Gorgeous and glossy

The top of this swipe of lipstick is the most colour accurate of all!

So pictures. It's bloody hard to take pictures that show off foundation isn't it. In these I am wearing the Invisible Fluid. I wore it to the gym this morning and a group of ladies stopped me as I got off the bike to ask what I was wearing on my face as my foundation looked so lovely! I had been cycling at a fair pace for 20mins so had a bit of a glow on! I can honestly say I have never been complimented by strangers on my foundation before, so that's a pretty huge plus for this one!

You can probably see that it looks nice, but I don't really think the picture does it justice, it has a lovely freshness to it, so my skin looks dewy without shine.

Jesus, now you can probably understand why, as a rule, Steve does as he is asked. Or else.

Please excuse scary facial expressions I was more concerned with the light being right than how my gurning was looking!

And finally, the close up of the lipstick. You'll need a strong stomach for this cracker!

Please ignore crater sized chin pores, fine lines round lip and huge, dark, terrible nostrils. Lippy's nice though, no?!

As I hope you can see the lipstick is a glossy peachy shade and it completely brightens my face, I am really pleased with it!

In my next post I am going to show some pics of me wearing the Double Wear Light foundation, at the moment I am strongly leaning towards purchasing this over the Invisible Fluid. I will explain all in my next post!

Frittata will make you a little less fatta

2012-02-27T23:40:00.000-08:00

Fantastic as a low carb alternative to pizza, quiche or sandwiches! First off, I am not an egg lover, nor am I a huge fan of protein, carb addicted that's me. However yesterday Em was home from work and we were in need of something substantial but syn free for lunch so I decided to give frittata a whirl. Result! We had it warm for lunch with salad. Would have been equally lovely with new potatoes and some veg for dinner. But the absolutely fantastic thing about frittata is that it would make the most perfect packed lunch - I had a slice left that I wrapped and put in the fridge and this morning have had that as breakfast and it was delicious, the ultimate finger food. In fact if you are having drinks and need something tasty and syn free to eat with your drinks it would be perfect as once its cold you can cut it into delicate little bite-sized pieces without it falling apart.

No pics I'm afraid as it's all gone but here's the recipe I used:
1 large onion thinly sliced
frozen peas - I am approaching this from an SW perspective not strict no carbs, so change to suit your needs!
frozen sweetcorn
4 eggs
salt, pepper
smoked paprika
60g of cheese - Em and I shared our cheese allowance, but if you are on your own just eat half one day and half the next using your cheese as your healthy A choice!

Spray a sauce pan with fry light, fry the onion until soft, stir in the peas and sweetcorn. Add the seasoning.

Line a baking dish with greaseproof paper. Pour the onion mix in. In a jug beat 4 eggs and add 3/4 of the cheese. Pour over the onion mix. Sprinkle the remaining cheese on top. Baked in the oven at 200 degrees for around 20 mins - it puffs up and browns, just check the middle is set!

Serve warm or allow to cool and slice. If I was planning in advance I would use spring onion rather than a regular onion which would mean no frying, so even quicker and less washing up! Thinking this would be lovely made with bacon and leek, or smoked salmon and loads of chives, I'd add peppers, courgette and sweet potato too, or cold diced regular potato would be great to bulk it out. Do not stint with the seasoning - 4 eggs need all the help they can get, in my book!
Enjoy.

Aveeno

2012-02-25T03:13:00.001-08:00

Aveeno is one of those ranges that has just never piqued my interest, I knew it existed and apparently delivered but I always overlooked it for something that was less functional. That was until Em had bad eczema on her wrists and a colleague of hers told her to buy Aveeno moisturising cream, which she did, within 2 weeks the eczema had healed. I pinched a dollop of Em's Aveeno cream and was very impressed, the difference in my skin was visible and lasting.

I have been using an inexpensive shower gel recently, I like the smell but had really noticed that my skin was feeling much drier post shower than it did when I was using the Korres shower gels that I bought on holiday in Crete (am definitely going to purchase more Korres shower gels!). I decided that perhaps my skin could use a bit of a hand so headed off to Boots with Aveeno on my list.

All the Aveeno products were 20% off so I decided to pick up a few things. I was particularly interested in the shower oil.

As you can see it's a nice thick oil, it emulsifies with the water and feels great on your skin, leaving it feeling very comfortable but with no greasy residue. It doesn't really have a fragrance, sort of an odd biscuity smell really, so I tend to use my fragranced shower gel for washing and then use a dollop of this as a final skin rinse. You can also squirt some of the oil into a bath and I think it would be fantastic used in this way - I have no bath so can't try it sadly. I think this would be ideal to add to baths for babies and little people with eczema - I wish I had had it back when Em was little and really suffering.

The Daily Moisturising Lotion is also fragrance free and doesn't have the biscuity smell of the oil either. It feels very cooling and soothing and it really does improve the appearance of my skin. It does feel a little sticky when I put it on my legs, not so much on the rest of my body and it's not a deal breaker but I'd like it more if it didn't!

The hand cream is very very effective. The body lotion and the hand cream both claim to moisturise for 24 hours and I really feel that they do, the hand cream also claims to last through hand washing and I would also agree that it does. Again no fragrance and I do prefer my hand cream to smell nice, but it is incredibly effective, it instantly makes my hands feel soft but leaves no residue.

I would definitely recommend Aveeno if you have little people with eczema, or have it yourself, or if you are looking for something that actually works. Bit of a dull post, back to lipstick and nail varnish for the next one!

NOTD - L'Oreal Color Riche Beige Countess

2012-02-22T03:17:00.000-08:00

This is one classy manicure! Super work appropriate for anyone that's important to, one of the benefits of being self employed is that I can wear any colour nail varnish I like! Some nudes can be pull out any of the pink tones in your skin, this one doesn't seem to do that on me and I completely love it. There is a chance that I like this one most of all in fact.

Em and I are heading back to Boots on Friday, I have a fancy for a pale grey cream now, if anyone has picked up and blogged any of these please let me know, I'd love to see how some of the other colours look.

NOTD - L'Oreal Color Riche Rebel Blue

2012-02-19T05:19:00.000-08:00

I LOVE when this happens, when a nail varnish that looked a bit meh in the bottle looks fantastic on the nail! I mentioned before that I had expected this to be more of a cobalt blue when Em brought it home on Wednesday and was disappointed with it, especially with the shimmer. Which is why I waited until today, Sunday, to try it.

It looks so much darker and brighter on the nail than in the bottle, much nearer the cobalt shade I had in mind, I am really pleased. I am not sure if its because of the shimmer but this one seems less glossy than the creams, not massively but just a tad. I also am less impressed with the brush on this one, it is a bit fatter than the others and I struggled to apply the polish neatly; all my notd pics are without clean up - I have very sensitive skin so avoid using nail varnish remover unless its to actually remove an entire manicure, which is why I need polishes with great brushes. Any polish with a huge brush that spits polish into my cuticles soon falls out of favour and into the bin. Onto the pics:

Still not the dupe for Nails Inc Belgrave Place that I am searching for - I know I could just buy Belgrave Place but I am not really a fan of Nails Inc polish, I have had some very dodgy brushes, which whilst irritating in a £4.99 polish is appalling in something that costs £11.50 or thereabouts, I have a feeling though that I am going to have to cave at some point and buy this one. Hope everyone is having a fab weekend.

More L'Oreal Color Riche Nail Varnish - Blue Reef, Rebel Blue & Beige Countess

2012-02-17T08:45:00.001-08:00

I am obsessed!! sent Emily back to Boots in her lunch break on Wednesday to pick up Rebel Blue and Blue Reef for me. Have taken pics of both and added the Beige Countess that Em bought on Tuesday and has worn since, its a lovely "work appropriate" nude! So enough waffle, on with the pics!

Rebel Blue, Blue Reef, Beige Countess - again all very colour accurate

Numbers and names in same order as above

Rebel Blue has some shimmer to it, which was a disappointment - when I saw it on Tuesday I was convinced it was a cobalt cream but when Em brought it home on Weds it was less cobalt and had this annoying shimmer into the bargain - L'Oreal please please please a bright, gorgeous Cobalt cream the colour of the Hermes Birkin bag would be perfect, thank you!

The shimmer isn't really visible here


The lone bottle pic for this one came out too dark, this is colour accurate.

If you click on this one to enlarge you can see shimmer running up the middle

I wore Rue Monmartre for 3 days with only a very small amount of tip wear, no base, no top coat. I only took it off because I was sooo desperate to try Blue Reef. Which looks like this:

Oops nearly forgot - I got a better pic of the brush which is flat and with a curved end and makes application a breeze.

So gorgeous it hurts! So hope this inspires some weekend nail splurging, please please let me know which you bought and what you thought! And if anyone knows of a the perfect, super glossy cobalt cream pleas let me know - I had the Barry M one, but its not glossy enough and Barry M polish doesn't light my fire, sorry!!

L'Oreal Paris Colour Riche Nail Varnish

2012-02-15T23:34:00.000-08:00

Mooching about in Boots on Tuesday afternoon with Emily when I spotted a fantastic array of nail varnish on the L'Oreal stand. At the time I had no idea these were the long awaited new Colour Riche range, I was just rooted to the spot admiring the most stunning range of colours I had ever seen. Literally from the most delicate nude right through to gorgeous glossy black, via tangerine and purple, 41 incredible shades all in one place - an entire nail varnish wardrobe! I cant tell you the last time I stood in front of a make up display and struggled to limit my choices to just three! I am very, very fussy about my nail varnish, I had gone into Boots on a mission to find the perfect red cream, not too purple, not erring into burgundy, but equally not a bright "look at me" red, I wanted a classic, classy red cream. Plum Addiction ticked that box! I was instantly drawn to Divine Indigo and then because I think a grey cream is even classier than a red cream I had to have Rue Monmartre as well. Emily picked up Beige Contessa, the perfect nude beige. At £4.99 each these were hardly breaking the bank so we felt ok about having a bit of a splurge! I did open each one and check the brush on them - I hate getting a polish home only to find you have bought the one with the ratty bloody brush, these all looked ok to me so off we went to pay. I was even more delighted when I discovered that these are on buy one, get the second at half price - result!

So pictures!

I really like the nice clean lines of these bottles, they do look very nice lined up on your bathroom shelf!

Names and numbers for those that are interested!

The formula of these is perfect in my opinion, nicely opaque in two coats but I did a third and that seems to maximise the gorgeous glossy finish. I applied Rue Monmartre with no base coat or top - any top coat would have dulled the shine. The brush is curved and wider than many but not as wide as the Rimmel pro wide brush, which is ideal for me as my nails are very small. The brush seems to hold the perfect amount of polish and I had no pooling or dragging. The polish dries really quickly. I am wearing Rue Monmartre for the second day and so far no tip wear, no chips. I will update this when I see how long I get out of this. It feels smooth on the nail. I did try and get a close up of the brush, this was the best I could manage, when I blog about the other 2 colours I bought yesterday I'll get my other camera out and see if I can get a better brush shot.

You might need to enlarge these to see the curve of the brush properly.

I should also say that these pics were all taken in daylight on a cold, clear day - hence the blue tinge. They are colour accurate on the shades though!

Colour accurate and showing off that incredible gloss!

Rue Monmartre is the perfect dark grey cream, almost blue toned. I like my polish to gleam and this looks like a well polished car on a Sunday afternoon!

The pics of Plum Addiction aren't brilliant - I whacked on 2 coats on Tuesday evening and it definitely would have benefitted from a third.

I have only had these for 2 days so haven't got round to trying Divine Indigo, that will be a NOTD post soon. I should also say that I removed Plum Addiction to apply Rue Monmartre yesterday morning I used an acetone free polish and removal was a breeze with none of that hateful bleeding that dark polish can do when it comes into contact with remover, so no stained cuticles. I was so impressed I sent Em back to Boots yesterday to buy me Rebel Blue and Blue Reef, there will be a post on those very soon - they are gorgeous! Rebel Blue is a lovely bright blue with some subtle shimmer and Blue Reef a stunning dark aqua/light teal, if that makes any sense! I will also photograph Beige Contessa for that post so don't forget to nip back for a look!

As I said these are buy one, get 2nd half price in Boots at the moment and I seriously recommend that you try them, I think they are fab! Has anyone else tried them, what do you think?

Finally NYX v Tom Ford!

2012-02-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

I don't think a post on this blog has ever had a bigger build up! I was so excited to try the NYX eye shadows that they arrived, were photographed in pristine condition with 2 different cameras, swatched on my freshly shaven arm, then my hand twice; once without UDPP and once with and applied to my freshly cleansed eyes all within an hour of delivery! I am going to keep the words to a minimum as there are a tonne of photos.

Top is with flash, bottom is without. Seriously, aren't these beautiful? The shades clockwise from the left are Golden, Rust, Walnut and Red Bean Pie.

All are described as shimmer and/or metallic.


Golden

Rust - a dupe for MAC Cranberry too apparently!

Walnut

Red Bean Pie - poss dupe for MAC Trax or Sketch?? Similar gilded purple shade.

Beautiful. In terms of texture they are all soft and smooth, Red Bean Pie is the only one that was a bit dusty and you can see that in the swatch pics.

Rust, Golden, Red Bean Pie, Walnut both pics in natural light.

The longer swatch is without UDPP and the smaller dot below is with it

Hope this isn't too many pics? I am always disappointed with blog posts with 2 or 3 pics, hope you feel the same way!

Dear God, I have sent myself to sleep with all these pics!

I decided to apply them to my eyes without using UDPP, just to see how they lasted without and also because as the swatches looked so intense with it I thought using the shadows first without might be a bit less scary!

Initially I put Golden all over my lower lid - it was very golden indeed! I then put Walnut on the outer corner of my eye and then Rust into the crease, at this point I was wondering if this was all going to come together or not! I decided to spread Walnut over the whole lower lid to take down some of the brassy'ness. I then felt the whole thing really needed grounding so I applied Urban Decay Whisky pencil on upper and lower lash and water line, which seemed to suddenly pull everything together. I then ran a bit of Hustle from the Naked palette over the lower lash line and then smudged a bit into the crease to take down Rust which was dominating. It was only after blending that I realised that Red Bean Pie might just have been perfect instead of Hustle - next time!

Now all I need is some one to buy me the Tom Ford Burnished Amber Quad and I can do a proper comparison! But here are the pics, what do you think:

Thanks again Klara for the pics of the real deal!

Not a dupe, of course, but not totally wide of the mark either! Hope you enjoyed this marathon of a post!

NYX v Tom Ford - UPDATE!

2012-02-13T09:53:00.000-08:00

Just to let you know I have had an email from NYX to say the 4 eye shadows I ordered have been dispatched, fantastic service as I only ordered them yesterday! Blog post coming soon. Weirdly enough since I have ordered these I have been a bit meh about my Naked Palette - am expecting a bolt of lightening as I type that - hopefully having some additional warmer shadows will help me to mix things up a bit.

EOTN & fancy dress.

2012-02-06T00:33:00.000-08:00

18th Birthday of a friends' son on Saturday eve and it was fancy dress. The words that strike fear into the heart of anyone that abhors attracting any more attention than is absolutely necessary, I hate it. Anyway needs must, I settled on Puss in Boots on basis that I had black leggings and black boots and could hire a shirt and a hat with a feather in it and once I removed the hat I would be dressed in "normal" clothes! I have nothing but admiration for people that go all out for fancy dress, I just have no desire to go out looking any worse than I need to! Anyway having settled on the outfit on Saturday eve I decided to do a pretty full on eye make up, with no time to spare I suddenly realised that it might have been an idea to have had a bit of a practice. Initially I thought I'd go for a full on black smoky eye but decided that could look a bit hard so I thought I'd add some silver and then I had a flash of inspiration and thought "cat"! Which meant green, in my head at least. So this is what I came up with:

I use black pencil to do the flick out at the side first (still not happy with that I am not sure it works on me and on one eye it went up and out and the other along and out which took some sorting!) then on the lash line top and bottom. I filled in the outer triangle with Creep from the Naked palette, then decided to put Gunmetal the same palette on my mobile lid. Then added a dash of GOSH Golden Green next to that and finally Halfbaked into the corner and taken underneath my eye on the inner corner as well. Blended like a demon.

I was really pleased with how it turned out and if I am being honest I didn't think I looked too bad in the full Puss in Boots costume, so here's a couple of pics!

Bloody hell! So come on then, fancy dress - love it or loathe it?

Tom Ford Burnished Amber v NYX Singles

2012-02-02T12:58:00.000-08:00

After Karla suggested that I might get on quite well with Tom Ford Burnished Amber quad I decided to have a look at Google images. Of course pretty much the first site I ended up on was this one, weird that! Having just discovered an absolute love of warm eye shadows I was instantly smitten and Karla's gorgeous photos were just making things worse tbh. Did a big more googling, found some more images, lust turned to love and I knew then that the Tom Ford quad had to be mine.

Then I Googled it with a view to purchase. Sixty Two quid!!! Seriously, 62 fine English pounds. Dear Mr Ford are you having a laugh? I know that quality costs and that the aspirational value of your products knows no bounds but sweet baby Jesus there is no way on god's green earth I am parting with £62 for four eye shadows, even if you licked each one yourself.

But I am a half full kind of a girl and what do half full girls do when faced with an impossible purchase? Why they find a dupe of course! Even if it takes them hours and hours. And hours and hours.

Lots of lovely ladies suggested that MAC Cranberry would be just the shade I needed to bring out the red in Chanel Ebloui. I had no idea what that looked like so I googled it and interestingly enough found several blog posts that compared MAC Cranberry to NYX Rust. A bit of further reading and it seemed that NYX gets a lot of love. Having decided that NYX Rust would be a suitable replacement for MAC Cranberry and having realised that NYX has getting on for seven trillion eye shadows I wondered if perhaps I could put together four eye shadows that would match in colour, if not in quality, the Burnished Amber quad.


Top Row - thank you Klara for letting me use this.


NYX Rust

Bottom Row - again thanks to Klara

NYX - Red Bean Pie

NYX - Walnut Bronze

Now we all know the quality isn't likely to be close and the colours might not be exact but, but, but - it's pretty darn close!

Whilst I was doing this I did notice that there is a trio from NYX that has Rust, Golden and Walnut Bronze in it and this costs £7 so with the addition of Red Bean Pie for £4.50 you could get the whole lot for £11.50!! That said looking at the fantastic NYX swatches here I think Walnut is warmer than Walnut Bronze and might be closer - what do you think? Again on these swatches Red Bean Pie looks closer than it does in the image above, where it looks a little too purple.

There is no way round this, I am going to have to do an NYX order and see what I get. If you look at the swatches and come up with something you think might be closer to any of these please let me know!!

Many, many thanks to Klara for kind permission to use her wonderful images.

Completely forgot to put the NYX on line store link on this post so here it is - have spent many a happy lunch break browsing since I found this!

Chanel Illusion d'ombre - Ebloui

2012-02-01T04:32:00.000-08:00

Or, my antidote to Spring! Have been discussing on twitter how I feel the Spring collections are best left to those in the first flush of youth, rather than those whose flushes are an indication of imminent decrepitude. Pastel anything leaves me cold to be honest. Some of you may also have seen my tweets re Chanel Illusiore d'ombre in Ebloui, I fell and I fell hard! I googled every blog that had ever blogged a photo of it, google imaged it til my eyes bled and still wanted it. In the end I convinced Steve that buying it for me would unleash a wanton (one ton?) sex goddess and frankly if after 23 years of marriage he's still stupid enough to buy that line who am I to feel sorry for him?

Of course when it arrived my CId'o *rolls eyes at stupid length of name of gorgeous product* was showing signs of being a bit dried and shrunken.

Instant gratification girl that I am it took me six hours to think sod it and stick my fingers into it anyway! In all honesty I think there have only ever been a couple of things in my life that I wanted to touch, and yet was afraid to touch in case it spoilt them, as much as this and neither of them make for suitable subjects on a beauty blog.

Its a sort of pouffy mushroom of loveliness in its pristine condition, see I bet the people at Chanel would have loved that "mais qui, c'est en pouffy champignon d'amour". Bear with me my porridge is wearing off. And then when you touch it it sort of turns into a gel/cream type texture. I have long shunned cream eye shadow as I rather like the ceremony involved when applying shadow with a brush; sweep, tap, apply, repeat - lovely. The whole dob your finger in the pot, smear the colour on your lids thing is a bit lacking in elegance, to my mind. But this was Chanel, so I was prepared to make an exception - dobbing and smearing anything from a pot with those interlinked "C's" could never be other than elegant.

This describes itself as "long wear, luminous eye shadow" I took the pics below after 5 hours of wear and I think the evident creasing belies the claim of "long wear". I deliberately didn't apply a primer, well I've lost my udpp so I don't actually have a primer at the moment, to see how this would fair on my dry, crepe'y eye lids and it's a little disappointing on the wear front. Everything else about it is to die for though. Oh my god the colour, I love it! It pulls a little more bronze on me than I had hoped, I was really wanting it to look more red and initially was disappointed but in daylight the colour is beautiful enough that the fact is more brown than reddy isn't a major issue, am thinking that a careful purchase of something to put in the crease to pull the red/berry tone out of it will help. I am also considering purchasing an eye liner pencil in a berry shade. Possibly a Chanel one...... thanks to this particular blog post - thanks Klara! I am having a bit of a love affair with eye liner pencils having applied my UD 24/7 in Whisky recently and been impressed by how much more "made up" it makes me look, something new to add to the lust list!

So how does it look on?

Gorgeous! Even in the sub-par environment that is "the context of my face". I did just apply Ebloui all over my lid and well into my crease, Whisky on lash line and water line, top and bottom and mascara. Still loving my MAC Tenderling blush which I think works really well with this and Bobbi Brown lip pencil in Cocoa which sort of browned down my Benefit lipstick which is pink but I can't remember name of!

You can see the creasing quite clearly - this was applied at 6.15am and I was taking the pics at about 11.15am.

Whilst I hate the pic it does show this off nicely! I am really glad I opted for Ebloui and I think I might go down the route of a Chanel pencil rather than buying Illusoire, although then again, I might not - will need to see it in the flesh to make a final decision. If anyone can recommend an eye shadow I could apply in the crease to pull out the red tones in this please let me know.

Running things up the flag pole & blue sky thinking, from outside the box.

2012-01-27T04:55:00.000-08:00

I went on a sales training course yesterday, could you tell? I can do the 3 f's on you and you won't even notice, although you might end up with an unexpected warm glow. I am of course talking Feel, Felt, Found not the 5 F's much loved by school boys everywhere! I learnt that in the colour quadrant by which personality is measured I am a red. This means I am pushy, loud and like pushy and loud people and my motto is "get out of my way". Or I could spin it the other way and say this makes me a dynamic leader with little time for small talk. More importantly I learnt that my boss is a yellow. He wants to be my friend. Allegedly.

I was beyond scathing at the idea of sales training, not because I thought I knew it all (well, ok I sort of did a bit - I have been doing freelance sales for 16 yrs) but also because I felt that having had the misfortune to have been spoken to by some spivvy wide boy in pointy shoes in the past, who could put positive spin on his entire family being wiped out by a hideous plague, I would rather cut out, grill and then eat with ketchup, my own tongue than speak in "sales speak".

But I am here to say I was wrong. I have been floundering around a bit lately with my job and in spite of being exhorted by the cast of Glee to do otherwise had stopped believing in the product and my ability to sell it. I was bored and spent most of my time online reading blogs and tweeting rather than picking up the phone and chasing business. Today I have a renewed enthusiasm for the day job, which is why this post is short and to the point. That and because I am a red person, remember - no time for small talk! Sadly its a little indicative of the real crux of the issue that the sales training came a week after one of our biggest sales opportunities of the year and months before the next for those engaged in the subscriptions side of our business, bit of a re-jig from those further up the food chain and who knows what might have been achieved last week!

Anyway I just wanted to say that I feel that you had missed my posting, I knew you felt I had abandoned my blog and that I hope you have found this post interesting. Tell me you saw what I did there?!

Illamasqua Fatal

2012-01-11T03:24:00.000-08:00

Spot of post Christmas Shopping in Leeds with a lovely friend, Hi Anna! and high on my list of must visit was the new Illamasqua shop in Leeds Victorian Quarter, beautiful location for a beautiful shop tbh. Everyone knows about Illamsaqua SA's already don't they? The girls from the MAC counters without the MAC attitude, they are friendly, helpful and don't look at someone over the age of 40 with pity and insist that the blusher the purchaser knows they want and need is the wrong colour (MAC Selfridges Trafford Centre, I'm looking at you).

So after Anna and I had had a peruse of all that was on offer downstairs the lovely SA asked if we wanted to see the sales section upstairs? Illamasqua make up at discount prices, nah we'll leave it thanks love. Not.

Ooh the pretty. Instantly purchased Em some amazing blue false eye lashes (must take pic) for £5. Then decided I needed a £7.50 eye shadow. I was really taken with an amazing bright blue (googles Illamasqua site - it was Victim and its still on sale on their site and I waaaaaant it now) but chickened out and opted for a safer bright purple, Fatal. I had reservations about wearing colour and asked the SA what she thought, God she was brilliant! Her advice is to do my usual neutral eye and then add a pop of the colour just on the corner of the mobile eye, so that initially you don't look as if you are really wearing colour, until you blink and then "pow" there it is!


Usual purple photo nightmare - it is brighter than this really

Of course I couldn't wait to give this a whirl and I was really pleased with how well it turned out.

I used Virgin from my beloved UD Naked all over my lid just to give an even base and to help with blending. Then put Naked into the crease and finally Fatal onto the mobile lid, up to but not into crease. I used Fatal with my flat eye liner brush to push it into the top lash line and then on a small round brush to smudge into lower lashes.

Having tried this with Fatal I decided to dig out my MAC Fig. to see if I would now be able to use this as well, after craving it before my holiday and then being really disappointed in it when I got it. This is the same look but using Fig. instead.

If anything Fig. works better as it is a bit more pigmented. Close ups for comparison:

Illamasqua Fatal

MAC Fig.

Here's how they compare in the pan and swatched

Fatal and Fig.

Fig has more redness to it that Fatal in the pan and swatched but on the eye I don't think there's much in it. I like both but am not blown away by either, neither are as opaque as I would like, they take some building up although I guess thats a benefit if you are trying to be subtle! If I had one wish for 2012 it would be that Urban Decay would bring out a matte palette of colour and nudes! Do you need both Fatal and Fig.? Personally I'd say not.

I had a play last night and this technique worked really well with some of the other colour shadows I have but am scared to use and I discovered that if I layer the bright blue from the UD Peacock palette, Pain Killer, over my Revlon matte navy I am getting close to the bright blue of Victim, although that worked better with the darker Buck on the crease than Naked. Then I put Creep in the crease and that was fantastic with the bright turquoise! So lots more to try out and lots more photos to be taken.

Boy to man

2012-01-08T04:32:00.000-08:00

This time 18 years ago I was sat in a hospital ward feeling euphoric. After the trauma of Em's birth 18 months earlier I had delivered Tom with the help of a fantastic midwife and the support of my husband, no medical intervention, no ventouse delivery, just me, 3 minute contractions and a bit of a sting; at one point, when delivering my 9lb 2oz son and being urged to push by the midwife I said "I can't, it stings" understatement, much? Tom arrived after a mercifully short 6 hour labour and a ten minute third stage - the hard bit where you have to push an elephant through the eye of a needle. My first thought on seeing Tom sat at the other end of the bed was "dear god, is there a child attached to those testicles?" Man-sized balls on a baby is something to behold! He was utterly silent as the midwife lifted him into my arms and as I moved him up onto my chest he let out the most massive roar and then snuggled in and lay there looking at me, eek am welling up typing this, I remember it so well! I had made a boy! I was quite convinced that Emily Louise was going to be joined by Laura Jane, not Thomas Oliver - thank god it was a boy as Laura Jane looks painfully twee now with the benefit of hindsight! Tom was born at 5.57am on Sunday 9th January 1994 and we took him home later that afternoon and began life as a family of four.

Sweet jesus, check out my hair! This would have been around 6-8 weeks before he arrived.

Today Tom turns 18, my little blond boy is a man. Watching your daughter turn into a woman is easy, you know all the stages, you can plot when each change is happening and you know what the outcome looks like. As a woman seeing your son turn into a man is quite odd. One minute he's a warm, squishy bundle of boy that wants to sit on your lap and have cuddles and the next he's taller than you and in need of a shave. That said I did once ask Tom how old he thought he would be when he would decide he was too old to hug his mum, he replied that he would never be too old to hug me and I said "I want that in writing". Half an hour later Tom handed me this:

Bless him! And he's been as good as his word, I still get hugged!

This is Tom and I on the Tuesday after he was born, so he would be 2 days old. Note to new mums, shopping trips with a toddler & a 2 day old are never going to end well!

I look so young!


Emily was very proud of her baby brother.

Tom was possibly slightly less enamoured of his big sister.

In the PeterRabbit outfit his grandma and grandad bought him, aged about 11 days.

And that boy is his daddy!

Oh he was gorgeous, those chubby little cheeks!

With his big sister.


Matching chubby cheeks and gormless expressions!

Oh god, I can feel this smooth little head, which was prefectly hand sized, oh I miss him this small!

These melt my heart, his 2nd Birthday when the Thomas the Tank Engine craze was at its height!

With his friend Joel, making good use of my new tea towels in the playgroup nativity!

My favourite ever photo of Tom, taken when he was about 3 at playgroup, bless him he had cried and cried and the photographer was getting to the end of his patience and I decided to say the one thing that at the time that could make Tom laugh without fail "Donald, where's your trewsers?" in a very poor Scottish accent - I said it, he smiled and the photographer got the pic, if you look close up you can still see the remains of a tear in his eye!

The blond curls from his first hair cut, clearly making sure he was looking nice for our trip to Cornwall for his first Christmas. The next day he knocked one of his first teeth out and we had an emergency trip to the dentist to try and cement it back in, it didnt work and you can see the gap in his smile in the pic above!

And now my baby looks like this:

My gorgeous baby has become a handsome man.

Happy Birthday Tom! xx

Huge thanks to Grandma for scanning loads of photos from her very precious family photo albums so I could include them in this post, thank you mum xxx

UPDATE - few pics from the Birthday cake and card session. Thank you for all your lovely tweets and comments xx

NOTD - China Glaze Stella

2012-01-05T05:41:00.000-08:00

Quick NOTD, last night filed my nails to the minimum length possible as part of my January "assume it's broken and darn well fix it" programme of self improvement. My nails are pretty ok at the moment, even the hideous full length flake on my right index finger is pretty much grown out (tempting fate or what?) but they are still getting lots of attention. My regime of Nailactan nightly after an application of Mavala Cuticle oil, hand cream all day long and twice weekly applications of Scientifique is still ensuring that my nails are looking good, I might not be the biggest fan of Mavala polishes but I have yet to find nail care products that deliver other than these. If you have flaking, peeling, weak nails you need this trinity of nail care in your life imo.

So China Glaze Stella vibrant purple with red shimmer to give a high gloss magenta finish. Application is all you would expect, perfect formula, fantastic brush that whilst long is still easy to use even on my very small nails. Wear is brilliant with this and whilst I was hankering after a burgundy cream polish this morning this one caught my eye instead. I am definitely going to apply a coat of Nails Inc London Bridge before I take this off just to see how it looks!

Nails Inc Glitterati

2012-01-02T08:05:00.000-08:00

Whilst I am sure none of you doubted it for a moment the following post is proof of my fabulty as a mother. My sister and I swop cheques and purchase presents for our kids that we know they will love and there are occasions when that has massive benefits. Like when you buy your daughter a collection of nail varnish you know she will adore and will also of course be obliged to SHARE!!

Ladies I give you Nails Inc Glitterati collection:

Are they not 3 of the most glorious glitters? This post is seriously picture heavy (see previous post re new camera)

London Bridge

Chelsea Embankment

Hatton Garden

So good it gets another pic!

In spite of reservations regarding the removal of glitter polish and because I am a martry to my blog I decided I would swatch all three in a glitter ball, nail bling marathon.

First up Chelsea Embankment. This is a gold base with a mass of tiny bits of gold glitter so much so that it looks like a metallic foil when you get to 3 coats.

1 coat

2 coats

3 coats

I love this and the whole metallic nail finish it creates. I wore it out recently as an accent nail on both ring fingers with a deep blue polish on the rest of my nails and loved how it looked.

Next up Hatton Garden.

Oh dear Lord. Is that not to die for? I think this really is my absolute favourite, a real walk into walls and crash your car cos you cant stop looking at it winner. This is a clear polish with large holographic and silver glitter, its chunky and clunky and still I refuse to hate. I ~~rarely~~ would never wear a sheer polish but I actually rather like this with just one coat to give bare nails a bit of sparkle.

Every collection has its problem child. Meet London Bridge.

Blue polish with the most gorgeous fuschia glitter, the glitter is larger and less dense than the gold and smaller than the silver.It is beautiful but it's a total mare. I was swatching and didnt want to let the coats dry completely as was hoping to get these off with minimal nail damage so maybe if I had let each coat dry really well I might have been able to even out the glitter better on the 3rd coat. No glitter post is complete without some layering. I decided to layer these on top of Illamasqua Eclipse, a recent sale purchase that I will blog soon.

Index - gold, middle - silver, ring - purple

I think had I been a bit more sparing with the gold this might have looked really good, as it was I was too heavy handed and the layering thing went out the window. Of course the silver layers like a dream, a clunky chunky dream but guessing a good top coat would smooth things out - although your polish would be mm thick. London Bridge is killing me, it could look so nice but it just refuses to play ball.

Removal of these was not the trauma I had feared. Admittedly I didn't let them dry completely and went at them with a litre of polish remover and its possible that left to dry fully I would have needed to go down the tin foil glitter polish route, I will update this post when I next wear them properly to let you know.

I paid £25 for this collection but it is on sale for £21.25 with free delivery at www.feelunique.com or £18 from the Nails Inc website, delivery extra. I know the season for glitter is now behind us but maybe a bit of sparkle is just what we need to get us through the dull old months of January and February, what do you think?

UPDATE: It is with great sadness that I have to report the untimely demise of hatton garden. Not 2 hrs after completing this post our smallest dog, who will be henceforth known as "that bastard dog" knocked it off my desk and broke it. Allegedly. There is a conspiracy theory kicking around (Emily saying it like it probably is!) that my husband, actually broke the polish and blamed "that bastard dog" (which is far more likely in my opinion) but sadly that cannot be proven. That said "that bastard dog" has no money and OH does, so it will be OH that pays to replace hatton garden and not tbd anyway!

2012, a new camera & my beauty blogging mojo back

2012-01-02T03:17:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year lovely people! New Years Eve was a quiet one for Steve and I, we stayed in, we drank some wine and we watched the fireworks on tv, it was bliss and Em more than made up for us - she went out at 4pm and got in at 7am, she's her father's daughter for sure! Steve and I went to York on NYD. Not a total success in that the weather was pants and 90% of the shops were shut, Jessops wasn't so we did come home with a fab new point and shoot so there will be blogging and there will be photos! My fab "proper" camera takes amazing pics but I get completely precious about it and spend hours striving for perfect and of course without a macro lens there is no chance of good close up pics. My new point and shoot remedies all of this so I am looking forward to getting back into beauty blogging in 2012.

I have a few things planned, I am working on a facial oil comparison post as I now have the Sanctuary Oil, Clarins Santal and Liz Earle Superskin Concentrate - this year I am going to concentrate on posts about stuff that I would like to have been able to find but couldn't, facial oil comparisons was one of them. I am also going to compare Aveda and Kerastase hair care soon. There will be pics of the 2 perfumes I got for xmas (Miller Harris La Fumee and Penhaligon's Juniper Sling - I know spoilt rotten) and a review of sorts as I am crap at describing scents!

But for now a teaser from the new camera! I bought Em the Nails Inc Glitterati collection. To. Die. For. Even if you have to have your nails sandblasted to remove it! Check this out - this pic is missing the purple glitter the proper post will include it.

If insane nail bling is your thing this is a post you wont want to miss!
x

The Office Christmas Party

2011-12-14T05:08:00.000-08:00

You don't remember getting in, you can tell by the way your eyes are stuck together that you didn't remove your false lashes, let alone your make up, you are definitely going to spontaneously combust if you attempt to move and yet at the same time if you don't get a drink right now you are going to start sipping your nail varnish remover. So far so bad. And then. And then you remember. You are going to have to hand in your notice, move house and have plastic surgery. Yep, it's the morning after the Office Christmas Party. Dun Dun Dun (dramatic music, work with me here). As a warning to you all I am going to share my most shameful Office Christmas Party story. Christ, I am blushing already!!

Now as you would appreciate this sordid affair happened a very very long time ago, right back when I was 19. 1985 to be exact, yea yea laugh it up. So starting at the very beginning I was doing a Youth Training Scheme - basically I worked 40 hrs a week for our Local Authority for the princely sum of £25 a week. The benefit to me was that I gained "experience" (and then some, but not quite what the Government had in mind I suspect) and the benefit to them was, well manifold to be fair - cheap labour being the least of it. My boss was a rather terrifying lady who when she liked you was your best mate and when she did not was the scariest fricken woman I have ever met. She never really liked me. At the time I really didn't understand why. Now, I do. A (as we shall call her cos I can't be arsed typing Annette continually) would have been in her mid to late 30's I think, she might even have been older, I never really bothered to think about it at the time. One day about a week before the xmas party I was summoned to her office. She was holding a black dress that had thin, widely spaced, straps from the shoulder down the sleeve - an early version of the much admired Liz Hurley safety pin number, but from Dorothy Perkins. She asked me if I was wearing exactly the same dress to the office party and I confirmed that I was. She then stared at my chest. My beautiful, bountiful, super perky chest. "And are you wearing a bra with it?" she demanded. Had I been a smidge more savvy my response might have included the words "sexual harassment" but as it was I replied that it would be a crime to encumber such natural exuberance, or something similar. (I really did have fab boobs back in the day!) She sort of grunted at me and I considered myself dismissed. It was only many many years later that I realised that in that moment I was the most hated woman ever. Can you imagine being late 30's and frankly rather past your prime (she was, I'm not saying it goes with the territory) and knowing that you are going to front up at the office Christmas party in THE SAME DRESS as the 19yr old work experience girl with the fantastic tits? I can actually feel her pain tbh!

This is not the worst of it. So the fateful evening arrives, I have added a pair of silk french knickers, fishnet stockings and killer heels to the dress. You know what, my mum was convinced I was a virgin til the day I married, reading back that sentence her naivety almost beggars belief doesn't it!! A is wearing a strapless bra that has squished what bust she has into an unattractive bolster shape and she is wearing pants, tights, pants on top to hold her tights up and some nice low heeled comfortable shoes (of course I have no idea about the pants/tights/pants combo but its highly likely). I was single and ready to mingle. A had brought her fiance. You may have some idea where this is going round about now! Sooooo having danced away to Saving All My Love For You, The Sun Always Shines on TV and The Power of Love, having drunk more malibu than anyone sane ever should I find myself being pressed into a dark corner for a long, and as I recall very very VERY nice snog by someone who was quite clearly thoroughly enjoying the experience, if you get my drift. And when we came up for air my boss, his Fiancee was standing behind us with a face like thunder. She'it. Luckily I left the Country 6 months later although the two were unrelated! (In my defence I suspect with hindsight that she probably did rather well out of it, as Tom Jones once said - I pumped up the tyres, but she got to ride the bike.)

So let that be a warning to you, Office Party's are inherently fraught with danger! I can't be the only one though, surely? I would LOVE to hear your most shameful office party experience - are you brave enough to share, oh and if you want to go anon please do!!

Christmas Tree Friday

2011-12-09T00:22:00.001-08:00

Since Emily and Tom were really little Christmas Tree Friday has been a big family tradition in our house. Nineteen years since we had our first child and now our entire Christmas is chock full of strongly upheld family traditions to be honest.

Back in the day daddy would load the car with 2 littles and a wodge of cash and the warning not to come home with anything too big and away they'd go the three of them giggling in their collusion. I'd stay at home and vacuum the lounge ready for our new arrival, get the wrapped presents out of hiding and on our bed ready to be ceremoniously carried through and put under the tree and in charge of refreshments; a beer for daddy and hot chocolate for the littles. Often an hour later they'd return with some behemoth of a tree lashed to the roof, bright red cheeks, runny noses and shiny eyes - and that was just daddy. Then there'd be the song and dance of getting the ruddy great tree into the house followed by yet more vacuuming to get up the pine needles that someone was already crying about having stood on. In the very early years Em and Tom were allowed to hand me the decorations and I would apply them to the tree, which would remain tastefully tinsel free. I decided that each year the kids would be able to buy one bauble each so that by the time they were grown ups with kids of their own the tree would be decorated in baubles that had some history and meaning, I even planned to buy a note book and write down who picked which bauble and in which year, I bitterly regret not doing that now, how lovely would that have been? That said the majority of the baubles are still the ones that they have picked over the years. As the kids got older they were allowed to decorate the tree, so we had 37 baubles at 3' and 37 more at 2' and I had to go into the garage and swig sherry and scream into a pillow. Then once they had gone to bed I'd "fix" the tree. Control freak.

Usually the tree would go up on the last Friday before Christmas, this year due to having a million and one things to do in the run up to Christmas we have decided that it has to be a week earlier. It's such a big deal to Em that she has taken the day off! This year Tom wont be going along to purchase the tree as he is in college and I have to stay here because we have guests due to arrive throughout the day so Steve and Em will go off for a bit of father daughter bonding and tree purchasing. One of our other family traditions is that each year I would decorate the table for Christmas dinner with a different colour theme, always a secret that wasn't revealed until they all came through for dinner. Some years this worked better than others. One year I went for jewel colours on a white cloth, bought fantastic jewel toned napkins and crackers, filled little glass jars with colour glass dragees and scattered more glass dragees over the table. In real life, by candlelight it was magical and very opulent looking. On Boxing day when we sat down to watch our Christmas day video my beautiful scattered dragees looked exactly as if the table was swarming with cockroaches - not quite the look I had been going for! Now that Em is grown up she joins in with the table planning and as we have decided on this years colour theme she is in charge of sourcing anything she can for the table today too whilst she is out with her dad. Two years ago Christmas Tree Friday was a very drunken affair, Em and I did the tree along with a bottle of prosecco and moved onto the amaretto all the while singing carols at the top of our voices, Steve and Tom were delighted.

(the ultimate bokeh pic? apart from the fact that there is no focal point!)

Last year our Christmas was a very low key affair, we had hoped to be out of the guest house and in our new home for Christmas, until the purchasers pulled out on 6th December, I was beyond heart broken at the realisation that I wasn't finally going to live a normal life only sharing my home with my immediate family rather than a procession of strangers and that we would be working 7 days a week for several more years and we were going to a wedding in Ireland on Boxing Day so there didn't seem much point in spending a great deal of time decorating the house. We did have Christmas Tree Friday and the tree looked beautiful but the joy was missing. This year we have picked ourselves up, come to terms with staying at the guest house and are determined that this is going to be our best Christmas ever!

Thats better!

This post will get photos later this weekend, I'll tweet when I've added them!

The shitest of weeks

2011-12-02T05:53:00.001-08:00

Bloody hell am I glad to see the back of this week.

I started off on a major high, Monday evening at Slimming World I got my 1 stone award, won slimmer of the week and slimmer of the month. I was of course delighted even though that 1st stone is the first of at least several that I could do with losing!

From there on it has all been down hill. The company I work for is based in Kent, where we lived until 10 years ago. Because I freelance when we moved up here from Kent I brought my work with me, lucky me. I have made friends for life with some of the people that I work with and whilst I see some of them a couple of times a year there are others that I only ever see at out xmas part and I really really miss them. The Christmas party last year didnt happen because of the snow and given the whole guest house sale falling through on 6th December and me thinking my life had ended I was in no mood to party anyway. This year I was super excited about the party. OH and I always make a real treat of it seeing as we get so little time off. We set off at about 10am, take a bottle of fizz for the room and generally are in Kent by 2pm. We have a bit of alone time, an absolute rarity, open our fizz and enjoy one anothers company, quick nap, long bath and then all the fun of getting dressed up and ready for a terrific night with our friends. I love it.

Spent Tuesday and Wednesday really looking forward to heading down to Kent on Friday. On Weds eve had a fight with OH. Its not unusual tbh. On Thursday morning he announced that he wasn't going to go to Kent to go to the party. You can imagine how pissed off I was. Instantly messaged Em to see if she had enough leave to be able to come with me, she messaged straight back that she would love to come - she knows most of the people I work with as they were friends outside work when we lived in Kent though most of them remember her as a 10 yr old not the gorgeous nearly 20 yr old she is now! I was made up, quality time away with my girl, still get the whole hotel pampering thing without the threat of gratuitous sex, fantastic.

And then. Emily got up this morning and could barely breathe. She has really severe asthma and things have taken a real turn for the worse this year, it was quickly apparent that instead of belting down the A1 we were going to be spending our day in A&E. Initially it was really worrying, all her usual asthma symptoms were fine and there was some concern that the problem was with her heart, after some monitoring her heart was given the all clear, so then they decided to do chest x rays and blood test to check she didnt have a chest infection. Chest x ray was fine, bloods not so much. Em has crap veins. The nurse tried her left elbow and got nowhere, the Dr came in and he decided that her veins were so awful that he would need to use a butterfly - a lovely comfortable name for a very long, very thin needle that goes in a very long way, nice work who ever came up with that one. Initially he tried her wrist, but stopped when he still wasn't hitting a vein and she was pretty much in tears, he then said the only other option was her foot - agony. I asked him if he would have another go this time on her other elbow, basically on the put it in and wiggle it about and hope to hit a vein approach, anything being better than having a needle put into your foot. Em was a star and the Dr did his bit and although it took a while he managed to snag a vein and get the bloods he needed. I think its safe to say that Em is now over her needle phobia. So the xray and the bloods came back clear and they decided that quite possibly coughing from a recent cold had meant that Em had damaged some ligaments in her chest and these were causing the pain which was causing the rapid, shallow breathing. So all's well that ends well, Em is home and although she is knackered and full of holes she is fine. Thank god. We came close to losing her when she was 11 and I NEVER want to go there again.

And I am sat at my desk typing this. Right now even some gratuitous sex would be ok as an alternative. On the upside the rest of December really only can get better*.

*Why do I think I am going to regret typing that?

Creative Writing

2011-11-16T08:38:00.001-08:00

Last night in creative writing we were given a list of titles to pick from and had 45 minutes to write a short story. This is mine.

Shopping with Mary.

‘Milk, tea, bread, eggs. I fancy a nice pork chop for lunch, would you like that love?’ Bill sat at the kitchen table writing the shopping list. Thursday morning the routine is always the same, bus into town, post office to collect pension, do the shopping and then get the bus home to make lunch. Bill pushed his chair back from the table and it squeaked on the faded lino

‘sorry love’ he says, Mary hates that he slides his chair rather than lifting it. He clears the breakfast things from the table and puts them into the sink

‘we can do the dishes later, can’t we princess?’ he says and smiles at Mary. Mary doesn’t say much these days, although she was never much of a one for chatter. That’s why Bill fell in love with her. That friend of hers, Marjorie, was courting his friend Harry and they suggested a double date. Marjorie never stopped talking all evening and when Bill walked Mary home she had said

‘you must think I’m awfully dull compared to Marjorie’ and Bill had confessed that he found Marjorie’s chatter annoying. Mary had smiled then, a beautiful smile that made her eyes twinkle. Six months later they married and had celebrated their 55^th wedding anniversary in August.

Bill stood at the sink as he rinsed the tea pot, Mary always liked a cuppa as soon as they got back with the shopping – kettle on even before taking her hat off.

‘looks like a cold one today, dry though, but I’ll make sure to get our gloves’ Bill dries the tea pot and puts it onto the work top next to the tea caddy for later.

He went into the hall and reached their coats down, he picked Marys hat off the shelf above and paused. He looked down at her worn, plum, felt hat and smiled ‘shan’t be needing that today old chap’ he said to himself.

The bus journey into town was uneventful, 15 minutes all told if the traffic was good. Bill and Mary always kept themselves to themselves, not like some of them mind. Some days it was like a trip to the seaside with the laughing and chatting that went on. Today it was quiet though, Mary preferred it that way. She liked to look out of the window and watch the fields roll by. As Autumn had faded into Winter the countryside had been leached of colour, the sky, the fields and the hedgerows blended together in varying shades of grey. Bill hated this time of year, he loved Spring and watching for lambs, green shoots and the first day the sun warmed his face through the window of the bus.

‘roll on Spring’ he said to Mary.

The Post Office was only a short walk from the bus station, uphill, but as Mary liked to point out better to be walking down hill with the shopping than up. She’d always been a half full sort of girl and practical with it.

‘looks like there’s not much of a queue today Mary love, not like last week. Tax disc week, do you remember? Had to stand outside in the cold didn’t we?’ said Bill as he pushed the door open. The queue moved quickly and once Bill had the pension safely in his wallet it was time to do the shopping.

The supermarket stood where the old Fine Fare had been. Bill used to like Fine Fare, for one thing they didn’t move everything around at every whip and flip. He could be in and out in ten minutes on a good day. This place though, bread went from one end of the shop to the other without warning, he spent more time hunting for stuff than actually putting things into the trolley. Sometimes it was enough to make him swear, but only quietly under his breath: Mary didn’t like language.

‘eggs, bread, milk’ Bill read from the list ‘tea, musn’t forget your tea now lovely. And how about a nice bit of batenburg for this afternoon?’ Bill put the tea and cake into the trolley.

‘pork chops! I nearly forgot the pork chops, losing my marbles I reckon.’ Said Bill as he doubled back to pick up a tray of chops.

‘right then girl, I think we are done here, let’s get this lot aid for and get home for a nice cup of tea.’

The bus home was noisy. Young girls with babies and push chairs, some of them didn’t look old enough, and the language! A couple of times Bill heard Mary tut and he wanted to tell the girls that they didn’t ought to use language like that round other people, but he didn’t Mary wouldn’t like a scene.

Bill pushed the door open with the shopping bag and, with a groan, lifted the bags onto the table. He reached over and flicked the kettle on.

‘nice cup of tea before I put the chops on’ he said as he unbuttoned his coat. He went into the hall and hung his coat next to Mary’s. He stopped and ran his hand over the familiar grey wool of Mary’s coat. He resisted the urge to lift the coat down and bury his face in the collar. The last of her perfume was long gone. The wool now smelt old and slightly damp.

Bill walked back into the kitchen and looked at Mary’s chair. Mary’s empty chair. He sighed.

‘pot of tea for one’ he said.