London Beauty Haul

Hello lovelies!

As you may know, I spent the September weekend in London with my family and I may have picked up a few beauty treats...

NARS

One counter I knew I just HAD to visit in London was the NARS counter. Their Sheer Glow foundation is raved about in the beauty blogging world and I've been lusting after their dual intensity eyeshadows since their release a few months ago. I was colour matched to Mont Blanc in the foundation and the eyeshadow shades I chose were Callisto and Phoebe. The eyeshadows are freaking GORGEOUS and I can't wait to try them out some more.

The Body Shop

I've heard great things about the Body Shop's new instablur primer and as I'm always on the lookout for products which stop me looking like a melted waxwork by the end of the day, I thought I'd give this a go! I also picked up their honey bronzer in shade 1 (which is the lightest) to give my face a bit of colour.

Benefit

Finally I picked up Benefit's They're Real Mascara. As you've probably noticed, this isn't full size; I was standing in the queue in Boots right next to the tempting little shelves of offers aimed at weak people like myself when I spotted the mini version for £9.99. My old mascara was drying out anyway so I saw this as an opportunity to try a much loved product for almost half the price. 

And there we have it! Everything I bought on my little trip (except from a chocolate frog at the Harry Potter Studio Tour). I plan to review most of these products in the near future but if you're particularly interested in a specific product for a review or swatches then please let me know and I'll try to get on it as quickly as I can. 

Until next time lovelies!

Jen x

I'm Back...

Well hey there! I know it’s been a while. I know practically nobody will have noticed my absence from the blog as I only had around 10 Bloglovin’ followers when I published my last post but I still somehow feel compelled to write an explanation...

Firstly, I realised that starting a blog at the same time as basically beginning a full time job (I was working Mon-Fri 9-5 on placement) was possibly one of the worst things I could have done as I was so freaking exhausted from placement that I couldn’t contemplate anything other than sleep and/or studying.

Secondly, I have just came to the end of undoubtedly the worst summer of my life. It’s been a pretty crappy year to be honest. Last year my Gran was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease (a type of dementia) which took a real toll out of my entire family. She lived alone as we lost my Papa when I was 13 and although she was still coping, this year she really started to go downhill to the point that I was scared for her safety. There was a horrible atmosphere in my home as my dad really was her sole carer (his sister lives abroad) and had a lot of worries and responsibility on his shoulders so was understandably stressed and sometimes took his stress out on us when we tried to help. She became more and more confused, forgot how to cook meals for herself and began wandering out of her own house and getting lost. The one aspect of her character that remained through her illness was that she remained a very stubborn lady and wouldn’t accept any sort of help like meals on wheels and of course we couldn’t force her to do anything she didn’t want to so we were really stuck in a tough place. We were considering plans for the future when things took an unexpected turn. Her friend was helping her to get ready for a routine doctor’s appointment when she noticed a lump on my gran’s back. She pointed this out to the doctor who immediately sent her to A&E at our nearest hospital. She was in the same hospital as I was working in for placement so I would visit her after every shift to see how she was doing. Over the next couple of weeks, her decline was unbelievable. To cut a long story short, she was diagnosed with a rare form of muscle cancer. The doctors decided that treatment would not be beneficial and so a palliative care plan was put in place. Visiting her every week and seeing the gradual decline in her health is the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through. She spent just over 5 weeks in hospital before being moved to a care home where she could be looked after in a nicer and more homely setting where the nurses had more time more one-on-one care. She passed away just over 2 weeks later on the 5^th of September. My entire family were (and still are) absolutely heartbroken. How somebody can go from attending a routine doctor’s appointment to no longer being with us in the space of exactly 8 weeks is just unbelievable and something I still cannot wrap my head around. My only comfort is the fact that she is no longer in pain and that the last time I saw her I hugged and kissed her and told her how much I loved her – and she was able to say it back. I still miss seeing her face light up every time we visited, she really was a true reflection of how the simple things in life can make you so happy. 

I’m not trying to upset anybody with this post and I’m very sorry if I have. I just felt like I had to write these feelings down somewhere. The one thing I want anybody reading to take away from this is how important your family is. We take them for granted far too much but there is nothing more important than family. Please make sure your family know how much you care about them and take the time to visit them when you can. An unexpected visit can really make a grandparent's day.

Anyways, after a tough year and a half, and a truly horrible couple of months I’m hoping that things can only improve. I’m going to London for the September weekend with my family since we never got away for a holiday during the summer and I’m really looking forward to it. I plan to pick up a few beauty bits and they will undoubtedly feature in my next few posts. I’ll plan to have then done in the next couple of weeks. I’m really looking forward to getting back to blogging as I really enjoyed it before life decided to turn crappy and I’m really going to try super hard to work on my blogging skills and content!

Until next time lovelies!

Jen x

Trying the Trend: Orange Lips

I think that we can all agree that orange lips are a huge trend for this Spring/ Summer & being a bright lipstick lover I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon! 

I searched through Boots for AGES looking for a really nice bright orange lip colour but unfortunately every product that claimed to be orange leaned more on the pinky/coral side when swatched. To be fair though, the Boots where I live is pretty rubbish & I'm sure if I'd have been patient enough to wait until I was near a bigger store I would have found something but I have the patience of a toddler so that wasn't an option for me.

I then turned to the internet to find the perfect colour & that's where I stumbled across NARS's Satin Lip Pencil in Timanfaya (don't ask me how to pronounce it, I have no idea!). Luckily I had a discount code for ASOS at this point so I managed to buy it for just under £14 instead of £18 from their site! I'll need to keep ASOS in mind for high end beauty products when they're offering discount codes in the future as I'd never really thought about it before but it really is a great saving considering how expensive these products can be! 

I took these pictures after I'd been out for the day so please excuse the fact that my makeup is slightly melting off my face. I also forgot that the camera angle used in the above pic isn't the most flattering for my tennis ball sized eyes. Ah well.

As you can see from the pictures, Timanfaya really is a bold lip colour & that's why I love it! I wear it with subtle makeup everywhere else of course as I don't want to end up looking like a clown. 

The "satin" aspect of this lip pencil is really nice as it means it just glides on to the lips & doesn't dry them out at all. This product delivers a really opaque coverage after just a couple of layers & it lasts for hours without need for a top up. 

I really am loving the orange trend at the moment & as you can see from the pic above, my lip pencil has been really well loved over the last few weeks! 

What do you think of this colour? Do you have any recommendations? 

Jen x

This Week

Hey lovelies! Hope you all had a great week, here's a few pics of what I've been up to:

MORE studying; I really need to know my stuff for this placement so have been studying almost every night, I'm exhausted!

I got a new car!! I picked it up yesterday & I absolutely love it!

Picked up some Krispy Kreme donuts on the way to get the new car, I couldn't resist! 

So there we have it, a very shot & sweet "this week" post but I really haven't been up to too much to be honest as I'm still trying to get into the swing of the hours for my new placement. 

What have you been up to?

Jen x