Tea Tree Pore Minimiser

I love The Body Shop skin care ranges, they have something for everything from extremely dry skin to acne prone blemished skin. The Tea Tree range was one of the first items I tried, my mum bought them home from a Body Shop party (eh remember them!) once and I loved the cooling feeling they had on my acne ridden skin. They were perhaps a bit too drying for my skin but I still slathered them on in the hope of perfect skin.

Fast forward 10 years and the range has also moved on a bit, they ahem everything from day creams to night lotions. The newest member of the family is the Pore Minimiser, promising to make pores smaller and at the same time instantly mattifying skin with the added benefits of tea tree oil. 

Now firstly it does nothing to the size of my pores, especially compared to something like Benefit's pore minimising POREfessional. For a product that promises as to minimise pores this is pretty crap. It's second promise is to leave skin feeling fresh and pore, it does this. There are better products that leave a perfect base for makeup. That said it is nice to smooth on if my skin is feeling particularly warm and oily.

Mainly though this is a big fail from me, sorry Body Shop.

London

A month ago when I was feeling rubbish and poorly my sister and I booked a little trip to London. She had never been before so wanted to do all the touristy things like visiting the Queen. We stayed in Greenwich and managed to work out London transport every day to get to where we wanted to go. My sister loved the tube and the DLR after mastering which side of the escalator to stand on and how to tap in and out successfully. The forever country girl is already planning her next trip back.

We ate lots of lovely food, Wahaca was as lovely as everyone said and as instagram-able (that is a word, promise) as I imagined. Our feet hurt, we ate too much food and got lost trying to find Hyde Park but all in all two northerners did just fine in London. Even if we didn't really know where we were about 100% of the time.

We stupidly decided to go in the Easter Holidays which made everything about 100 times busier, the queues for the museum's were ridiculous so we didn't get to see the Dinosaurs as we really didn't want to stand in a queue for over an hour. How very un-British of us.

The weather was beautiful, we even had a picnic in Hyde Park. We are basically the people all Londoners hate but we had a wonderful time

x

Chester Zoo

We decided to go to Chester Zoo on Good Friday, it was ridiculously busy (thank you fast track tickets!) and full of awfully behaved children but we still had a lovely time. The meerkats are always my favourite, I can watch them for hours on their little perches! It was beautiful weather, it was so sunny the rhino was intend in having a mud bath in the tiniest puddle of water. It was lovely to see lots of baby animals, just look at that tiny elephant! There are some penguin babies but we didn't get a chance to see them. 

Hopefully blogging will resume shortly, I've been off sick from uni / placement for almost three months now. My life gets back to normal this week and with that hopefully a routine!

xx

Tangle Teezer Obsession

Tangle Teezer Compact - Tangle Teezer Original - Tangle Teezer Aqua Splash 

(cheapest I could find was Amazon, all under a tenner)

As a child I had out of control hair, always in a plait and I hated washing my hair. I remember the tears and pain as my mum tried to untangle it. To this day I have no idea why she didn't just cut all my hair off. A few years ago I discovered Tangle Teezer, I thought they would never work on my tresses but how wrong I was! It really does work. They were developed by colourist Shaun Pulfrey and was even turned down by the Dragon's Den in 2007. Now they are a global brand and constantly growing, 

I originally bought the Compact Styler, mainly because it was leopard print. Even the smaller version managed to untangle the dreaded knots in my hair. (Mine has since been dyed slightly red due to my permanently dyed red hair) In the Selfridge's Beauty Box a while ago the Aqua Splash version was included, perfect for the shower. It doesn't slip out of your hand, doesn't have any holes for water to build up going manky and horrible. The hollow middle allows it to be really light weight, no dropping it on your toes in the shower (other people do this, right?)

This past weekend there was a lovely discount code for ASOS so I caved and bought the full size beauty. It is perfect. Especially for only £6 ;) Somehow the lovely soft teeth manage to glide through my hair without hurting too much and untangling knots and snags from wearing my hair in a top knot for far too much of my life.

I just wish the Magic Flower Pot had been around for my child hood years! 

Nail Polish Organisation

Nail Varnish is one of my biggest obsessions and even though I try to avoid buying more sometimes they are so easy to pop into your basket when nipping into Boots for something or even the Supermarket. After a big clear out of the gloopy nail varnishes and the multiples as well as the shades I just never wear here we are. The wonderful A Thrifty Mrs posted about how she organised nail varnish with little stickers on top and I haven't looked back. 

I ordered these circle stickers from Amazon which were perfect and painted each colour onto them. I found this wonderful box in Ikea, unfortunately can't find it on the website but it is very new and was only a few pounds. Perfect for my little collection of polishes along with nail files, top coats and other manicure bits and pieces!

I would love to have my nail varnish on display on little shelves but living in a small cottage with a man means I can't completely take over. This is compact enough to pop on top of my chest of drawers and is a lovely hot pink.