Imagine my delight when my good friend Bee awarded me the One Lovely Blog award the other day!



Im very honoured to receive my very first blogging award. Thank you Bee!

Award recipients post 7 facts about themselves and then pass on the award to 15 blogs they follow that they love.

1. I was born in Dundee in Scotland and lived in St Andrews for 18 years before skipping off to Bangor in North Wales for uni. After graduation I moved home again to St Andrews, moving down to Hertfordshire one day before my 24th birthday. Despite living in Scotland longer than anywhere else and indeed being Scottish, I have little or no Scottish accent. It really perplexes people.
2. I have a Psychology degree and my primary interests are in forensics/offending and autism. I used to work in the latter field, now I work in the former. I'd love to talk more about my job on this blog, because its such a hugely emotive subject and generally makes people recoil in horror when I tell them about it (which is somewhat unfair in all honesty). But, this isn't really the place to talk about it, is it? Plus, I devote most of my life to my work, this blog is supposed to be for the other parts of my life! 
3. I've always loved fashion. In particular handbags and shoes. My favourite handbags are by the amazing Lulu Guinness and my favourite shoes would have to be Christian Louboutin. I don't own any CL shoes, but I do have a purse, clutch bag and bag from Lulu Guinness, which I adore.
4. My 'if I won the lottery' dream would be to open a lovely cafe/tearoom and serve nice food and cakes to people. St Andrews has several little cafes like that which I think is what inspired me. Growing up there, there was always so many places to choose from to get good food.
5. I'm not really an adventurous sort, I'm a total homebody. But if I had the opportunity, I would love to live in New York and then Toronto. I love those cities.
6. Its only recently that I've gotten into makeup and beauty products. Once upon a time all I ever did was wear eyeliner and mascara. Now I have an exploding makeup collection! Beauty boxes and the like has definitely increased my interest in beauty products.
7. I rarely eat breakfast, and never on week days, but breakfast dishes are probably some of my favourite foods! Pancakes, french toast, scrambled egg with smoked salmon on toasted bagels and the good old fashioned fry up. To die for!

And here is my list of 15 blogs that I tag:

Chills, Thrills & Spills - A great blog mixing fashion, art and creativity
Apropos of Nothing - A wonderful friend of mine and her fatshion blog
Essiebutton! - Essie's very fun and funny makeup, beauty and fashion blog
French For Cupcake - Claire's baking posts never fail to make me hungry, but there's lovely fashion posts and instagram pictures thrown into the mix too!
Kitschy Coo - A hilarious blog from an extremely talented children's clothing creator. She also makes grown up clothes too and posts tutorials and excellent pictures/diagram representations of real life stories. Brilliant.
Handbags and Fashion Rags - An excellent fashion, beauty and lifestyle blog.
Every Yesterday - A longtime online friend of mine who is documenting what must surely be the world's most amazing tattoo that she's getting done.
An American Cupcake in London - An amazing food blog. Om nom nom!
Diamonds 'n' Pearls - A gorgeous lady with her gorgeous plus sized fashion blog.
Failure of Imagination - A fabulous art blog.
Messy Carla - An excellent blog from a girl who isn't afraid to be expressive with fashion.
Miss Lucy Loves... - Another excellent fashion and beauty blog
All The Girly Things - This blog accompanies this very talented lady's youtube channel where she does lots of excellent hair tutorials, amongst other things. I have major hair envy here!
Friday is Forever - Another brilliant fashion, beauty and lifestyle blog with brilliant photographs.
Pearls, lace and ruffles - A gorgous fatshion blog. I love her style.

And again, a huge thanks to Bee for giving me this award, I'm delighted! (and you should all follow her, naturally.)

Those who know me know I am a total Lulu Guinness girl. I love her, I love her designs. Classic with just the right amount of quirky. My wonderful OH bought me the black patent leather large frame purse a few years ago for Christmas, and then this Christmas just gone he spoiled me utterly rotten with my dream bag, the perfect black patent leather Pollyanna. Yes, I'm the luckiest girl alive. No, I never want to be parted from my OH so I'm afraid you can't have him!

Imagine my total excitement to discover (rather late to the party as well I might add), that Lulu was releasing a t-shirt collection with Uniqlo. They launched yesterday and I managed through the skin of my teeth to pick up 4 t-shirts from the collection. I wasn't able to shop at 9am online so I didn't get all the t-shirts I wanted in the colours I wanted, but that's ok. I'm still totally delighted to have managed to pick up something. If I ever wanted to get involved in a capsule collection, THIS was it.

These are the t-shirts I bought yesterday, they've been dispatched already, I literally can't wait!









If you check out the Lulu Guinness website there is a chance to win a t-shirt, if you missed out. 

What do you think? Did any of you buy from the collection? Yesterday was a blooming awful day for me at work, this was pretty much the only thing that got me through it, the knowledge that these amazing t-shirts will soon be mine!

Apologies, I haven't blogged in a while. Work is pretty crazy, and I took some well-deserved annual leave from April 2nd (my birthday, I'm officially in my late 20s now...shudder) until Tuesday, where I endured nightmare trains to and from Scotland, had a wonderful time with my Mum, and caught a horrible virus that has left me battling to go through the motions this weep. Yes, that is indeed the soun of the world's smallest violin that you can now hear in the background!!

Anyhoo, I'm back, and I do have some good posts lined up, I promise.

Today I want to talk about two beauty boxes from last month. The enormously hyped Harrods Glossy Box and the Anti-Ageing box from Latest in Beauty in collaboration with You magazine. The reason I wanted the Harrods Glossy Box was I was hoping to get a sample of Fan de Fendi, a perfume I really really like the smell of. I was all caught up in the hype and excitement when they announced on Twitter, Facebook and by e-mail that the boxes had been dispatched. Then 10 days went by and mine still hadn't arrived. Devastated doesn't come close. Tweeting the Glossy Box team got a super speedy response and the lovely Kayleigh from Glossy Box put up with my wild wailing e-mails. Turns out good old Royal Mail (Royal Fail, more like) didn't deliver my box because 'they couldn't find the address'. REALLY?! I had my GB sent to my in-laws house, as FIL is retired and can take in packages and also the postie in that area is *usually* kind enough to hide a package somewhere or knock on the doors of the neighbours rather than leave that irritating red card of fail. That house has been there for over a hundred years. My FIL used to BE a postman for goodness sake. Anyhoo. After wailing at lovely Kayleigh some more, Glossy Box dispatched me a whole new Harrods box so I didn't have to wait for Royal Fail to return mine. Cannot fault Glossy Box at all there, they did everything they could for me. So, after all that waiting, after all the hype... of course I didn't get a Fan de Fendi sample. Hah! But actually, my lovely OH bought me a proper, full-sized bottle for my birthday, so I'm happy as a clam.




Here's the box. I liked the white box (this was my first GB though), and I really liked the Harrods ribbon and sticker inside!




Here's my card. Please ignore my stumpy little thumbnail. I'm desperately trying to grow my nails, my left hand is struggling whilst my right hand is doing fine. What gives??




And here are my products! The Clarins cream is lovely, I'm going to use it on my decolletage to pep that area up a bit. It smells really nice and is really thick and creamy. I haven't tried the YSL serum much yet but I'm very curious about it, seems good anyway. I love Molton Brown products and whilst the Vitamin A B + C is my favourite scent, Heavenly Gingerlily is very nice. This is a great travel sized product. Narcisco Rodriquez For Her is a lovely scent and I'll be looking to purchase a proper sized bottle in the near future. Last, but by no means least, I was lucky enough to receive a mini Burberry Lipstick, no 202 Copper Mist I think its called. Its such a cute little lipstick and whilst I would never have chosen the colour for myself, I absolutely love it. I wore it on my birthdy to The Dorchester for afternoon tea and felt suitably posh! The Glossy Box is £10.00 a month plus £2.95 postage.

Next up is the Latest in Beauty Anti-Ageing box. I missed out on two prevous boxes, including the previous collaboration with You Magazine. So my wonderful OH bought me this box to make sure I didn't miss out again! He's definitely a keeper. I'm probably not quite in the right age group for anti-ageing products but I do already have rather a lot of signed of ageing particularly on my face, and I reckon you're probably never too young to get started on these products. If I find something good now, I'll be set up for the next 50 years of skincare, won't I?!




Here is the box. Again, its nothing fancy but then, I don't tend to keep the boxes, I tend to recycle them.




Inside was a whopping 8 products!





A Decleor cleanser with a muslin cloth, packaged up in an organza drawstring bag.




Emma Hardie serum. Not a brand I've ever heard of but I'm really keen to try this out.




Cosmetofruit elixir. I received one of these in the first Latest in Beauty box of 2012, and I liked that one, so I'm sure I'll like this one. I do think supplements play a part in skincare. I just wish the full-sized bottles weren't a whopping £50 each!




Perricone MD advanced face firming activator. This sounds brilliant, I think I'd like to use this possibly in place of or underneath primer in the day, and the Emma Hardie one at night. I've been wanting to try out Perricone MD products for an age.




Eve Lom rescue mask. Ahhh, Eve Lom. Another brand I've been dying to try out. Can't wait to use this!




This Works multi-tasking lotion. I don't think I'll use this on my face, but I am looking forward to using it on my body.




Fushi organic anti-wrinkle lip balm. No idea if it'll be anti-ageing or not, but its a very nice lip balm to use none the less!




L'Occitane Divine cream. I've heard really good things about this, I'll look forward to seeing if it works for me. Its such a cute teeny tiny pot!

The Latest in Beauty box was £8.95 and £2.95 P+P.

So, which one did I prefer? For me, it had to be the Latest in Beauty box. The poor Glossy Box was so over-hyped and I had to wait so long for it that it probably never stood a chance! Carmine was my favourite subscription box, and now that they have passed over to Glossy Box, I'm going to stay subscribed to see what the future boxes are like. Glossy Box's customer service was ace and receiving the Harrods Glossy Box was so exciting, I just feel I'll get more out of my Latest in Beauty box. Since getting these boxes I've ordered two more from Latest in Beauty, one was a 'build your own' and one was the Editor's Choice box.

Did you get either of these boxes? What did you think? Which beauty box is your favourite?

I paid for both boxes and as ever, my opinions are my own :)

Now, my title is slightly deceiving. I actually bought the products I want to show you today from the 99p store. So I saved a WHOLE 2p by not going to Poundland. Amazing.

I am blessed to live in a town with plenty of 99p/Poundland/£ or 2 Plus type shops. these can be beauty product goldmines. All sorts of end of line stock ends up there, along with deadstock from places like Boots (their Botanics range in particular), or such like. I'm a big fan of pound shops, and I always end up picking up lots of things in them, beauty products or otherwise.

One day my work buddies tasked me with going out in search of biscuits. It was a 'we NEED biscuits' sort of day. So I trotted off to the 99p store in search of Maryland cookies. I got them. But I also got these:


I'd like to point out first I didn't buy my beauty products with work petty cash or anything like that! No sir!

On the left we have NYC liquid eyeliner in a plummy-brown colour. I had been looking for a brown liquid liner because, thanks to MUA's incredible Heaven and Earth Palette, I've been wearing a lot of brown shades on my eyes. The NYC one has a thin paintbrush style applicator, which is my preferred applicator for eyeliner (the felt tip pen types just don't work for me). Its not the best quality eyeliner in the world and by the end of the day, it tends to have flaked off, but it lasts enough for me to wear it to work, or put it on before going out and have it last, and its a lovely colour. For 99p, I ain't complaining!

On the right we have Wet n Wild double action mascara. I really love Wet n Wild products. It was reading in a teen magazine that Rachel Bilson from the OC loved their eyeliner that led me to buy one and start drawing my first mini-Amy Winehouse-esque flicks around my eyes. Ahhh, all those years ago. Wet n Wild is harder and harder to find in the UK, which is a shame. It was always very well priced and decent enough quality, especially as a first foray into makeup. The double action mascara is what we have been long used to. The white end is a primer, the black end is the mascara. I'm blessed with lashes that look super long no matter what I put on them, and this works really nicely for me. It lasts the distance as well, staying put all day.

I will regularly tour my local Pound Shops in search of great buys. If I have any luck, I will blog about them here!

Going to TK Maxx is always an adventure for me (or a total chore for my poor other half, who seriously regrets inviting me to go with him the other weekend!). There's always something in there I get squeaky and squeal-ey about.

This wasn't the only thing I bought in TK Maxx on this particular trip but it was the most notable at the moment. I had never heard of Korres until the Beauty Boxes hit the internet and the blogging world went crazy. Thanks to the 'Farewell to Boudoir Prive' box and one of the Carmine boxes I have sampled the wild rose 24hr face cream and the citrus body milk, the latter being one of my favourite products ever and I'm hoping someone notices its on my Amazon wishlist, what with my birthday coming up and all :) I was looking for an opportunity to sample some more Korres products. Imagine my delight when I discovered this in TK Maxx:


£5.99 instead of £12.50 was enough of a discount that I could consider purchasing it to try it. It doesn't smell quite how I imagined something with Thyme and Sage would smell, it almost smells like fresh raspberries to me (although I might have fatigue-induced craziness going on...) I must confess I have rather a lot of skincare products to try out but hey, what's one more?! I might even shove this one to the front of the queue so I can use it along with the 24hr cream before I use my samples of it up! I was that excited to be picking up a Korres product I didn't even notice that it is specifically for oily skin with imperfections, which is exactly the sort of skin I have. Ahhh TK Maxx, you have done me proud.

Hopefully I shall be back in a few week's time with my verdict!