March & April Empties

I know I’m a little behind on my empties post… By a month! The reason for this is because at the end of March I had all of one empty product in my empties bag and I thought it would be somewhat pointless writing up a post about it, so I left it and throughout April my empties bag has piled up high full of empty products!

So in the future if there isn’t an empties post at the start of each month, then don’t expect one until the month after as chances are there aren’t enough products for me to talk about.

In two months I’ve managed to gather eight products, which isn’t bad considering that I only had one to talk about last month!

• Oral-B Complete Mouthwash.

This mouthwash wasn’t one I had tried before and was a random but much-needed purchase I made whilst food shopping. It was on offer at £2, which aside from ASDA’s own branded mouthwashes, this was the cheapest one there! I’m quite a fan of Oral-B so I thought this was well worth the money and it really was! This is also an alcohol-free mouthwash which is what I always look for as it means it won’t be strong and pretty much burn the inside of my mouth away! I was going to pick this up again after it ran out but it was nearly £3 and as I’m quite poor, as well as trying to save up for my weekend away in June, I decided to opt for a mouthwash a little more in my price range. I’d recommend this mouthwash for sure and I can see me picking it up again in the future.

• N Spa Lime Hair & Body Wash.

I’ve only mentioned this in a favourites post once, which I’m really shocked by as quite frankly I LOVE this body wash and the more my boyfriend came over to my house, he soon discovered he loved it too. This is a gorgeous gel style body and hair wash that leaves you smelling like juicy limes, as well as waking you up that little bit too. The smell of it reminds me of the lime green fruit pastilles you get in the tubes, they’re my favourite! I used to love using this in the mornings and whilst I only used this as a body wash, my boyfriend used it to wash his hair and boy did his hair smell gorgeous all day long. I will be repurchasing this in the near future but for now I haven’t due to the fact I have so many shower gels to use up, as well as start using and also the fact I haven’t seen this for sale in ASDA for quite some time, which is a shame.

• The Body Shop Strawberry Shower Gel.

This is by far, of all time one of my favourite shower gels and since rediscovering it before Christmas just gone, I’m never letting it go out of my life EVER again! When I was a little girl my Mom would take me to The Body Shop once a month to have a sniff of all the yummy products and one day I stumbled across this shower gel, pleading with her to let me have a bottle and from that day on every month my Mom would take me to the shop so that I could pick up another bottle. This continued for quite a long time until suddenly, we stopped going and I soon forgot about the shower gel, until Christmas 2013. I got myself a £3 gift card from Glamour magazine and decided to pick up this shower gel to try out again and the smell is still the same as it was all those years ago when I was little. This shower gel is amazing and not long after buying this bottle I picked up a HUGE 750ml bottle for under £8! It’s a lovely fresh strawberry scent that is perfect for spring and summer, but of course I would use it all year around. Once again this has become another one of my shower gels that my boyfriend has fallen in love with and for his birthday in April I too bought him a huge 750ml bottle! He loves it (I hope anyway!) and I know I can steal a little when I stay over at his too. 😛 I wrote about this shower gel here if you wish to check it out BUT I’ve mentioned this shower gel so much that I recommend you just go and type it into the search bar if you wish to find anymore posts about it.

• Gillette Satin Care Sensitive Shave Gel with Olay.

I’ve mentioned this in a previous empties post, as well as one or two favourites posts too and I will say the same here as I will have said before, this shave gel is amazing! Especially if you have sensitive skin and very dry skin too. With an average, cheap shave gel/foam I find that my legs become irritated during and after shaving, as well as flakey and dry. But with this shave gel my legs look and feel gorgeous, with no irritation! If you wish to read about this shave gel more in-depth check out this post and this post. 🙂

• The Body Shop Seaweed Clarifying Night Treatment.

I bought this night treatment back in October/November 2013 and at first I didn’t get on with it too well, but over time I began to enjoy using it in the evenings more and more, eventually using it in the morning too before work. It was a lovely light gel that sunk straight into the skin upon making contact with it. This was also refreshing to use as due to it being it gel it left my face feeling cooled down after a hot shower, as well as moisturised. I would buy this again for sure, but not just yet. I’m trying out some products at the moment and until I need to stock up on something new, this will remain a firm favourite to try once more in the future. This is for combination/oily skin but if you suffer from sensitive skin that I’d advice you stay away or be wary that this may irritate your skin at first or if you use often. At one point they wouldn’t irritate my sensitive skin, but then at another time it was kill me to apply this to my face! Just be wary before you buy, The Body Shop staff are lovely and if you ask them for some advice on skin care they’ll be more than happy to help you out!

• Sure Maximum Protection Anti-Perspirant Deodorant Cream in Sensitive.

This is by far the best deodorant I have ever used and I can’t see me EVER replacing what I use with something else. I suffer from sweat quite badly and even in the cold winter months I’ll swear terribly! One of my best friends suffers with the same issue and told me about this deodorant last summer after she had and told me to get some ASAP! So on a shopping trip I picked up my first tube and since then I’ve used nothing else. It’s not cheap at £5.50 a tube but this lasts me ages and at that price it’s well worth it! I don’t sweat half as much as I used to now and that’s just a huge weight lifted off of my mind. If you sweat badly like myself I recommend this to you! I’ve written about it in more detail on a post here.

• Easy Nails Fast & Fruity Nail Polish Remover.

I don’t know who this nail polish is by (other than Easy Nails) but this is by far the best nail polish remover pot I have ever tried and that includes Bourjois too. For under a £1.00 you can pick up this little pot from Body Care and Home Bargains and it should last you a good 3-6 months, depending how often you wear and remove nail polish. This nail polish remover is acetone free and also has a light peach fragrance, which is lovely! Like all nail polish remover pots it contains the remover inside a thick lining of sponge and with a couple of twists of your finger the polish will be removed. Glitter polish isn’t as easy to remove as I find it is when I use the foil technique but that doesn’t bother me either way. If you want a remover that will take off your polish quick and easy, pick this bad boy up!

• Chapstick Lip Balm in Apple.

I love this lip balm so much that I’m surprised at myself as to why I haven’t picked up a replacement yet! It not only leaves you  lips lovely and hydrated but it also makes them smell and taste of yummy fresh apples, which I love. Whenever I applied this to my lips I would often get asked, “Can you smell something? I can smell apples!” and it’s usually me and my lip balm that has caused this in the first place! Weird huh?! I can see me picking up another one of these later on today if not tomorrow as I just can’t live without this lip balm in my life anymore! I always make sure to have 2 of these, one to have in my handbag and one to keep at home on my bedside table. Some may think that’s a bit drastic, it’s just the norm to me.

So those were my empties for this month, what products did you use up? Let me know in the comments!

Until next time take care all and have a good weekend!

February Favourites 2014

First of all I want to apologise for the fact that this post is 3 days late! I always try and post my favourites posts on the 1st of each month but alas I was super busy the weekend just gone and only yesterday I got to write-up this post and schedule it for today.

I’m sure next month my favourites posts will be back on schedule and live on my blog for the 1st!

Anyhoo… I really can’t believe it’s March already! 2014 isn’t just going by quickly but it’s also seeming to have its ups and downs too.

My spending ban took a turn for the worst towards the end of February and I ended up spending more money than I was meant to… Oh dear… BUT I’m going to be good for the rest of my spending ban now, which comes to an end in May! Thanks to my spending ban I have saved quite a bit of money and I’m really pleased with myself.

So this post has waited long enough to be written, let’s get it done! I apologise now for one of the images, my camera died just after I snapped the picture and sadly one of the items on it is blurred. 😦

• Guerlain La Petite Robe Noire EDP (mentioned here).

Back at the start of November 2013 my Mom bought me this after she came back home from her holiday away and it was a lovely present! I had asked her to pick this up for me, but I was going to give her the money for it, which she wouldn’t let me give her! I absolutely adore the La Petite Robe Noire perfumes, including the EDT and the newest edition La Petite Robe Noire Couture, which smells beautiful! This perfume is definitely one for colder months in my opinion as it contains warming scents such as black cherry, black rose, liquorice, etc. I wore it a lot for work as well as on my days off during February as I was in the mood for a sweet and warming scent. This one is rather strong is you spray a lot of it and I find that a couple of sprays on my neck does the job if I don’t mind anything strong, or I’ll spray on the backs of my knees and my wrists if I don’t want it to be too strong. It’s a gorgeous perfume and I know in the future I’m going to get the EDT version of this too, which I nearly bought last Wednesday as it was only £27.00 for a 30ml bottle!

• Elemis Collagen Cleansing Balm.

This was something my Mom gave to me after purchasing a huge Elemis gift set and not wanting another cleanser, offered this to me to try. At first I was rather skeptical about it as it’s rather greasy, but once you get it wet it turns into a moisturising cream. I was worried for a couple of days after starting to use this that it wouldn’t work with my skin and if anything would break me out or cause rashes due to my sensitive skin. When it comes to skin care, Elemis products don’t work with my skin and cause allergic reactions but this one has been amazing and I love it a lot! This product is for all skin types and the balm is said to help remove make-up, as well as dirt and grime that could/will have been picked up throughout the day. It absorbs excess oils on the skin and remove impurities without leaving your skin feeling dry and stripped of any nourishment. It leaves the skin on my face feeling lovely and soft and it makes a nice change to what my cleansers usually do to my skin! A little of this goes a long way too, which is great!

• bareMinerals Perfect Light Mineral Veil & Flawless Application Face Brush.

I’d said for ages how I wanted to get some sort of face powder that could prevent any oily patches on my nose and forehead, as whilst at work whenever I looked in the mirror in the toilets it would bother me to the point where I felt I looked greasy and dirty. My Mom knew of my paranoia and that I wanted a powder and recommended that she had seen this one on QVC so bless her she ordered herself the huge set that this came in and gave me this. I didn’t think I would like it at first as I worried it would give a tone to my skin, which I didn’t want and as this is a light powder not a translucent powder, it worried me even more! However when this was applied to my face it didn’t leave any sort of shade or colouring at all! Since then I’ve been using this and it’s a lovely product! The only flaw I have with it is that it really does show off the dry patches on my chin and the skin by the sides of my mouth, which annoys me as then I need to apply aqueous cream afterwards. Like I said though, this doesn’t happen all the time and I know it’s just the rash/dry skin I have on my face affecting the Mineral Veil. The little Brush that this came with is super soft and picks up plenty of the Mineral Veil as well as feeling soft and applying the product well and evenly all over my face. It’s such a cute brush and I love it!

• The Body Shop Strawberry Shower Gel (mentioned here).

I’ve expressed before on my blog about how much I LOVE this shower gel! When I was little my Mom would buy me a bottle of this once a month for me to use before school and due to that it left behind some fond memories. Whenever I smell this shower gel now it just reminds me of when I was little and because of that it’ll always be a smell I’ll love. I’m currently (as you can see!) getting through this bottle, but I have a huge bottle to start using soon! I really like using this shower gel alongside my Soap & Glory Butter Yourself Ultra Nourishing Fruity Liquid Moisture Lotion as they’re both fruity and sweet, I really can’t wait for the summer to use these two hand in hand! A little of this shower gel does go a long way and with a couple of squibs on a sponge you can get a lovely lather which will leave you smelling beautiful, as well as having soft skin. My boyfriend has grown to be a huge fan of this shower gel and whenever he comes over to mine he uses this in the shower. I bought him a little sample size of this as well as the hand sanitizer in Strawberry too, which smells exactly the same as the shower gel! I love The Body Shop’s shower gels but this one will always be my favourite.

• MAC Lipstick in Lady Bug.

My friend Mali over at maliberrymakeup recently (and still is) had a blog sale and as usual I had a look at what bargains I could snap up and when I noticed she had a MAC lipstick up there I got rather excited for it, but within a few hours it was down as “on hold” and I forgot about it. Days later it was still the same so I asked if it was available to buy, which it was! So I snapped it up and days later it was at mine and I wore it out for the afternoon. I prefer to wear this with a lip liner as not only does it show off the colour better, but it helps it last all day! I’ve been wearing this loads for work as it just looks gorgeous and it feels lovely too, plus the fact it lasts ages means I don’t need to keep topping it up on busy days. I’ll be writing a huge review for this really soon, I’m rather excited about it as I love this lipstick so much, it’s fast turned into one of my favourite MAC lipsticks.

• Barry M Lip Liner in Shade 3.

I bought this lip liner months ago to accompany my MUA liquid lipstick but this has pretty much began to be used with anything and everything red that I own! I’d never wear this alone, but I recently discovered that with a red lip gloss over the top this works wonders and lasts ages! I use this with Lady Bug the most, alongside Lush’s Santa Baby. I like to use a lip balm first, rub away any excess and then apply the lip liner. I do this because it gives a creamier application for the lip liner, instead of it dragging along the lips, which I hate! I’m thinking of reviewing this in the near future as I just love it so much and I really can see me picking up more of Barry M’s lip liners as they’re gorgeous and for £2.99 each, worth every penny!

• Collection 2000 (or Collection as they’re now called) Lock N Hold Lip Gloss in Break Dance.

As I wear a lot of lipsticks for work, sometimes I like to just give my lips a lot, especially if they’re a little dry so I usually opt for a lip gloss to give me a pop of colour and this is the one I reached for the most. I love this lip gloss and I’d love to try more of the Lock N Hold glosses as they have some nice pale shades, perfect for spring and summer! Break Dance is a peach colour and it smells of yummy sweets, which is a bonus! This lip gloss is said to last 6 hours, but this is total rubbish and doesn’t even last an hour on the lips, whether you’re drinking or eating, or anything like that. This isn’t a sticky lip gloss either, which makes is even better for wearing whilst I’m busy at work. The wand is a strange shape and not like the usual doe foot applicator, which makes a lovely change. These are only £2.99 each and well worth the money! I bought mine yonks ago and at one point used it every day and whenever I went out in the summer time, so it lasts ages as you don’t need a whole lot.

• Chapstick in Apple (mentioned here).

I thought I had mentioned this more than once, but alas I have not and for that I’m really surprised! I LOVE this lip balm! It’s like a petroleum texture that not only smells but tastes of green apples, which I love. It doesn’t take long to apply to the lips and is therefore perfect for on the go. I use this loads at work and soon enough I’m probably going to need to pick up another one as I just can’t NOT have this lip balm in my bag or even by my bed on my bedside table. It works great underneath and on top of lipsticks too, which is always a bonus. Whenever I apply this someone will usually ask me, “What’s that smell? Did you spray something?” because the smell of this is just so strong. It won’t break the bank to buy and probably costs a £1.00, if not less than this.

• T-Zone Rapid Action Spot Zapping Gel.

This is one of T-Zone’s newest products and has replaced their Spot Zapping Stick. When I couldn’t find that in store I picked the gel up instead and I LOVE it! It cost me 99p and so far is lasting me a long time. As soon as I feel a spot coming up or if one of recovering from being popped I put some of this on and within a day the spot redness has reduced or even dried up and near enough vanished. I’ve already picked up another tube as I was worrying that my current tube (one in the picture) was close to running out, but it turns out I was wrong and it seems like there is loads left! I have contemplated trying out more of the T-Zone range, as for years I have loved their products and they’ve always done me good. Any recommendations would be lovely by the way.

• L’Occitane Cherry Blossom Hand Cream (mentioned here).

In January I received some free sample hand creams from L’Occitane, like many L’Occitane fans did! In the little knitted pouch I was given I received their Cherry Blossom hand cream and I used it quite frequently throughout February. It smells subtly sweet and isn’t super thick, but a nice gel like cream that doesn’t leave my hands feeling greasy. It leaves them feeling and looking really soft, as well as smelling fresh and beautiful which is always a bonus. I have smelt L’Occitane’s Cherry Blossom range before, including their EDT and it’s one of my favourite ranges by them, alongside the Almond one. I would definitely pick up the travel size, maybe even the full size version of this as it’s just lovely! I love the cute little sizes of this as it means I can chuck it into my hand bag and it won’t take up much room, as well as this I can keep it in my pocket of my jacket or even my jeans.

So those were my favourites from February! I apologise once again for how long it took for me to write and publish this on my blog, but finally it’s here and my empties post will follow tomorrow… I hope!

What were your favourites in February? Let me know in the comments below and as usual if you have any questions in relation to any of the products mentioned, feel free to leave any questions in the comments about those too.

Until next time all take care and see you next time.