Had a FANTASTIC time with Em at the Trafford Centre, although it is like shopping in hell - I have never shopped anywhere that is hotter, its bloody ridiculous.
Warning - photo heavy post! Got the "grown up" camera out, had great fun and took millions!
Got suede boots - Next microfibre stretchy, giant calf accommodation ones with a wedge heel, MAC Lillicent Blushcreme, having wavered on the Uncommon and than let the SA loose with Lillicent and her foundation/creme blush brush. Loved the colour and the application so I bought the brush too - fck me £25, oops! Does make my very old face look flawless though so it could be worth its weight in gold! But you are all sworn to secrecy, Steve must never know!
(embarrassed cough! - thats the brush, right there! shhhhh!)
business end
Em got a fab handbag, although there was a moment when she thought they hadn't got them and the bottom lip was coming out! Luckily I asked the SA on the MAC counter and she pointed us in the right direction, Em was so relieved she hugged her!
and a lush lip gloss, although secretly think she was happier with the huge yellow Selfridges bag than anything that was in it!
Nice top from Next too that I hadn't planned, Barry M Nail Art crackle from Superdrug and 2 new MUA eyeshadows, a pale green for me and a vivid purple for Em. She bought us tapas for lunch - lush!
I mean please, for a quid, how fab is this?
And then we hit Boots; an hygienic nose and ear trimmer (for Steve, honest injun!) and decided that as a straighten my hair every day now I needed a heat protecting spray, rather than spend a fortune (kept remembering that MAC brush lurking in my bag and breaking out in a cold sweat!) I opted for the Boots Expert heat protection spray and got one of their clarifying shampoos too as once a week I like to lather my hair in something containing masses of SLS and other toxic crap just to make sure its really clean! And with my £5 voucher I got myself the Boots No 7 eye shadow brush, having read this just before I left, great recommendation Fee, thanks!
Em spotted a stand with Britney Spears Circus on it for £10 instead of £20 with one bottle left, not for long though ...... yoink....!
I love spending time with my baby girl, how lucky am I that she is a shopping maniac who is more into make up than me, bless her!
I rest my case.
My old ones just upped and died Saturday morning so I have been using Em's hossing great ones, but they dont really work. Didn't bother this morning as knew these were en route - more on that in a mo - Steve eventually said to me "what have you done to your hair, is it those straighteners that have made it look like that?" when I explained that that was my hair sans straighteners and without a £95 emergency purchase Saturday morning this is how I'd always look he looked at me in horror and said "money well spent".
Lookfantastic.com - am I ever impressed, ordered Saturday morning, email last night to say en route, email this morning to confirm en route, email a bit later to say they will be delivered between 9.31 and 10.31am - they arrived at 10am!! Well done Lookfantastic.com!
Get a load of this bad boy.
That is a hairbrush and a half! Having changed shampoo, conditioner, styling product and to a certain extent style - still layered and flicking out but more layers and with a fringe - I was still struggling to get my hair looking how I wanted it and then realised the one thing I had not changed was my brush. Have used the same 3 brushes for the last six years and I wondered if maybe a new brush would do the trick. Basically need a big barrel - want sticking out, not curls, wanted a ceramic body because as it heats up with the hair dryer it speeds up drying time and also helps with smoothing, ionic because it reduces frizz and it needed to be light enough to be weilded about with it feeling like a session in the gym. For £11.99 this seemed like a really good option, what I hand't counted on was that the combination of bristles and the orange rubber spikes means this baby straightens and smooths like you would not believe, it gets right into those frizzy roots and hauls them out straight, I swear my hair is half an inch longer using this brush! Most incredible of all I can sleep on it over night and then spritz and restyle - absolutely unheard of, have washed my hair every single day for the last decade because over night my hair bends and twists and frizzes and I wake up looking as if a cat upped and died on my head. Really, that bad.
Boots have 32 different Goody brushes - they work on the basis that your wet hair has different needs to when it is partially dry and you are starting to style and then you have another brush for finishing. Frankly I pull this through my wet hair so that the roots are already out straight before I start styling. I always rough dry and then section my hair - any moisture left in the roots because they were covered by other hair means a serious bad hair day and we all know what a miserable cow I am when that happens! As I mentioned before I used to use 3 brushes, not any more, this one does everything and whats more has meant that running over the top of my hair with straighteners is optional as opposed to essential, amazing in itself. If you have mid-length hair that you want to blow dry smooth with volume this is the brush for you. They do a range of brushes with different barrel sizes so there will be one for everyone and I cant recommend them strongly enough.
From praise to damnation. I am starting a new regular section called the "Walk of Shame" for beauty products that just don't preform the way they are supposed to. All entrants will receive the TWIHMBL POS (piece of s**t!) award and first up will be the Phillips Ladyshave, probably closely followed by Nails Inc. customer service, although am going to give them a few more days to redeem themselves! If you have bought anything that you think deserving of the POS award please let me know and we can prevent anyone else from wasting their hard earned on it. Hair removal seems to be a particular bug bear and I have already had waxing strips nominated by my hirsute friend Fran!! So will combine all forms of depilatory products into one post very soon - if you have any others to add please let me know. Ooh just remembered those emery board style pads that I bought ages ago, just rub and all your hair falls off. Then shortly afterwards your skin begins to burn and sting and you feel as if you have been flayed alive. They are going on this list too!
Well I'm a convert! Have always been a fan of high end products for my hair, not that its anything fab but its more fab than other parts of me so I hope by trying to make it fabulous the other bits of me that are less so will be overlooked! Once saw something on tv that said that if your shampoo contains Sodium Lauryl Sulphate then you might as well wash you hair in washing up liquid, or something along those lines! So of course when you scan the labels only shampoo's that cost around £10 are SLS free, your off the shelf, £2.99 stuff from Boots is full of it. So that seemed to legitimise my inordinate spending on shampoo and conditioner, until I spent an unexpected £30 odd on UNE cosmetics, see my first post, and thought that I ought to compromise.
Like judging a book by its cover - ALWAYS a good idea - I judge a shampoo by its fragrance. I threw out the last of the Bed Head Control Freak shampoo and conditioner I had because although it worked fantastically it stank, its supposedly pineapple fragance seemed more like parmesan to me and it pretty much made me gag, not an ideal way to start your day. In fact all the Bed Head range have pretty strong fruity fragrances and I'm pretty underwhelmed by the idea of smelling like a mint strawberry or pomegranate smoothy tbh. Charles Worthington Dream hair smells lush, like a luxury perfume rather than a chemical soup with no class. The shampoo doesn't produce masses of bubbles, but in my book thats a good thing because rinsing them out takes ages and actually I have a feeling that all that lather is generated by something toxic that is secretly turning your hair to straw anyway so the less the better. (There is a small chance I am wrong about that!) The conditioner is really thick - so much so I thought the pump was broken the first time I used it, I just had to whack the bottle a couple of times to get the conditioner in underneath the pump so that it would work. The conditioner also smells divine and makes my hair feel incredibly silky and soft.
Thought we were in need of a photo!
I also bought the Vitamin Enriched styling spray just because it was there and at the time Boots were doing 2 products for £7, the usual price is £5.49 per product - although NEWS FLASH: Superdrug are doing each for £3.50 at the moment - the tireless research I do on your behalf is second to none, don't you think!
The styling spray seems to give a reasonable amount of hold, I just get a better finish with it than without. I use in conjunction with Bed Head Control Freak Smoothing gel, just to kill off the last of the frizz.
I had a problem with frizz. You will notice the past tense. Sneak peak time:
I have a new secret weapon. Have to test it for another couple of days but expect a hairbrush related post, chock full of hyperbole, very very soon!
Am usually a salon product only type of person when it comes to my hair. My hair is my crowning glory and where I let my control freak run wild. Getting my arse exercised into shape is waaay too much like hard work so my hair takes the brunt, most fat girls have great hair and nails - check next time you are shopping, the stuff that's easy to fix we fix, unless we are inherently lazy and then that's a different kind of fat. Whole other story.
So salon stuff all the way and had been using Paul Mitchell Super Skinny £10 ish for shampoo and £11 ish for conditioner. It was nice but a bit boring. On Sunday spent a little more than I had envisaged on make up (see UNE post!) so thought I should be a good girl and buy cheap hair stuff. Spent ages scanning all that Boots had to offer and having opened and sniffed so many bottles of shampoo was starting to develop holes in my septum I found the Charles Worthington Dream Hair stuff which quite frankly smells delish. I am Taurean. (hence being "well upholstered". Like a bull.) Taureans are sensuous types, we like taste, texture and smell a whole big lot (see Prada post!)
So I got the Charles Worthington Dream Hair Shampoo, Conditioner and Vitamin styling spray based purely on its smell. Decided there was no way I could post about this til I had used it for a week - you don't care how it smells, you want to know if it works, right? So this is a mid-test round up and so far I am thinking this stuff should come with a good hair day guarantee. Loving it.
