What's in my Travel Skincare Bag?

If you read my last post, you will know that I'm currently in Italy. This is one of those ever so fancy scheduled posts, I still get confused by them. Today I shall be sharing with you what I've taken with me in my travel skincare bag. I thought whittling down makeup was hard, but then I realised that I had to shrink down my excessive skincare collection to fit into one small bag, what a task that was *wipes brow*.

Cleansers and Face Washes

This was by far the hardest 'category' to cut down. In terms of cleansers I'm only taking one and that is my Simple Kind to Skin Purifying Cleansing Lotion as it does a great job of removing both face and eye makeup and it isn't drying on my skin at all. For face washes I've packed my Soap and Glory Peaches and Clean Purifying Cleanser, as although it's marketed as a cleanser, I use it as a face wash/mask. I've also packed my Simple Kind to Skin Refreshing Facial Wash and my Tea Tree Exfoliating Cream Wash.  

Toner and Moisturisers

In terms of toner I'm taking my good ol' Simple Kind to Skin Soothing Facial Toner as it's what I've used for years, and it does the job perfectly. I'm taking a few moisturisers but I do need them all as the sun does dry out my skin, so I end up with oily skin that is dry at the same time, confusing. I've packed my Simple Kind to Skin Hydrating Light Moisturiser, my mini No7 Protect and Perfect Night Cream and my mini No7 Protect and Perfect Day Cream as it has SPF 25 and I want to keep my skin protected from the sun.

Treatments

Having super duper oily skin means that I do get my fair share of spots and blackheads so I'm taking as many treatments as possible with me to keep my skin healthy and spot free whilst I'm away. The first item that is a must in my bag is the La Roche Posay Effaclar Duo +. This is just a miracle in a tube and if you want to read my full thoughts on it, I have a review here. I'm also taking my beloved Witch Blemish Stick (review here), a bottle of tea tree oil and the Neutrogena Visibly Clear Spot Treatment.

So there you have it, my 'whittled down' skincare that I'm taking with me to Italy. I'll have already taken it by the time this post goes up though, ah the confusion of scheduled posts.

Soap and Glory Peaches and Clean; Review

When someone say's 'Soap and Glory' the first thing that comes to mind is body care. Skincare isn't something that I immediately think of when you mention the name, and if I'm being honest, I haven't really had much interest in trying any of their skincare. That is until this little guy (or maybe it's a girl, who knows?) landed in my hands on Christmas morning inside the Yule Monty gift set.

Can I just ask one question? Why the heck have I not tried this before?

I've heard a few bloggers talking about this, MissBudgetBeauty loves this stuff! As I'd heard her rave so much about this, I used it the night I got it as a simple facial wash. Using it as a wash, I didn't notice any differences to my skin, but I was watching one of her videos, and she said she uses it as an overnight mask to get the best results from it. I was at first very skeptical about using this overnight, but I did, and I woke up with the softest skin ever. My blemishes had reduced MASSIVELY in size and the redness was almost gone. I couldn't believe what a difference it made!

Soap and Glory claim that this is a deep purifying cleanser, and if left on as a mask, it really is! I would however take the 'cleanser' part out of this as it is pretty horrendous at removing makeup, and don't even attempt to take your eye makeup off with this as you are risking the life of your eyes. It burns, a lot. 

In terms of packaging, it comes in a 200ml plastic bottle with a pump which is very handy (no more trying to shut lids with hands covered in cleanser). You can control the amount of product that comes out which is also great if you're only wanting to cover small areas, but one and a half pumps is all it takes to cover my whole face. And lets all just take a moment to appreciate the smell *inhales deeply*, it smells EXACTLY like peaches and oh my, it's fabulous.

I'm so glad I got this little gem at Christmas (thanks mum and dad Santa!)

I'd 100% recommend you pick this up next time you're in Boots! Psst, there's currently 1/3 off selected Soap and Glory at the moment so you can get this for £5.33 instead of £8 here.

I hope you all enjoyed this post, sorry for it being up later than usual, it's been a busy weekend.

Also whilst you're all here, could you all please take 2 minutes (pretty please) to fill in this survey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ZHBCWMS) to help me with my

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Soap and Glory Powder Trip; Review

Sometimes, when scrolling through the Boots website, we find a deal that we quite simply cannot ignore. Whilst scrolling through the website on boxing day, I saw that the Soap & Glory 'Powder Trip' was half price and it was only £10. Considering each powder is £11/£12 each and you get a brush and a mirror with them all, I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head (they didn't though, no one panic). I immediately placed an order and collected it in store a week later. I went straight home and got playing around with it. I was like a 5 year old with a brand new toy.

Unfortunately this isn't available from Boots for the same price I paid anymore, but you can get it here for £21.95 which is still a fab deal for all 3 powders.

Can we all just take a moment and admire the packaging? I absolutely LOVE it. It is made of cardboard but it's so sturdy. The magnet that closes it is really strong, some mornings when I'm half asleep I struggle to get it open.

   

In this set you get 3 of Soap and Glory's best selling powders; the Glow All Out Luminizing Face Powder, the Love At First Blush Blushing Powder and the Solar Powder Bronzer. I have wanted to try these powders for the longest time after seeing Fleur rave about them on her blog a while back.

The Glow All Out powder is a pinky-champagne highlighter with amazing pigmentation. This highlighter adds such a gorgeous glow to your cheekbones without looking over the top (Edward Cullen I'm looking at you). I like to apply this with my 'Contour Brush' from Real Techniques. Before I got this set I was a 'highlighter virgin' as some may say, but as this is so good I really want to try more. Please let me know of any highlighters that you really love in the comments!

Being very pale means that out on the high street, bronzers that work with pale skinned girls like myself, without making us look like tangerines, *David Attenborough voice* are very rare . Well girls, I think I've finally found a bronzer that works for pale skin. Enter, the Solar Powder *dun dun dun*. 

This is a bronzing duo that comes with a light brown shade with a hint of shimmer, and a dark brown shade that is completely matte. Swirl them together and say hello to the perfect contour shade. I also love the fact that this is buildable so you can darken it up if you wish.

The final powder in my little pony (lets just pretend that didn't happen) Powder Trip is the Love at First Blush Multi Shade Shimmer Powder (. Now I'm not usually one for wearing blush, but since getting this I've been trying it out more. 

This is a really glowy blush, all the colours contain shimmer and when you swirl your brush around the amount of shimmer increases massively. For that reason I do recommend being VERY light handed with this blush or you will look like Edward Cullen. This also works really well as a highlighter but you yet again have to be very light handed.

Finally, there is a little brush included that in all honesty, isn't half bad!

Andd that is all from me for today. I hope you've enjoyed this post and have found it helpful in some way. If you have any post requests, please feel free to leave them in the comments. Have a great week.♥ 

The Perfect Pamper Evening

We all love a good ol' pamper evening, and you'd be lying to yourself if you said you didn't! Whether you've had a bad day, or you're just not feeling 100%, a pamper evening is the ticket to turning that frown upside down (cliche alert). Now we all have different ideas of pamper evenings, but I thought I'd share with you all my perfect pamper evening.

The first thing I do, is light a candle. The candle I've been burning recently is one from Primark's Christmas Home range called 'Firewood Fig'. It's a very musky, wintry smells but it doesn't give off much scent at all when you burn it. I mainly use it to create a more relaxed, calming atmosphere.

Once my candle is lit, I run my bath. You could of course take a shower, but I find baths so much more relaxing. If however you find showers more relaxing, have a shower! It's up to you!

It is a must to have bubbles in my bath. I don't know about you, but if I don't have bubbles in my bath, I don't enjoy the bath as much. Bubbles make baths more fun, who doesn't love giving themselves bubble beards? 

The bubble bath I use is the Soap and Glory Calm One Calm All (I always say it as camel for some bizarre reason). This is such a great bubble bath, it smells fantastic and has added moisturising properties, making your skin super duper soft. A little goes a long way with this bubble bath and it foams up really well.

Whilst the bath is running, I slap on my favourite facemask. Well I don't exactly slap it on, that would hurt, but you know what I mean.
The one I most often reach for is the Superdrug Dead Sea Detoxifying Mud Mask (review here). This is such a fantastic mask and I can't recommend it enough. It unclogs my pores and leaves my skin radiant and soft.

Here's me looking like I've just arrived from another planet with out of control hair, nothing new there;)

Once my bath has run, I get in and relax for a good 5-10 minutes, I can't stay still for any longer though as I find baths very stuffy and claustrophobic. I make sure all my electrical devices are switched off as I can't relax when they're all beeping and flashing away. And having your electrical's in the bath is very risky, very risky indeed.

Relaxation time over, I move on to buffing away all the dead skin cells lurking all over my body with the Soap and Glory Scrub of Your Life. This really is a fantastic scrub, it smells amazing and leaves your skin (excuse the cliche) as soft as a baby's bottom. And who doesn't love feeling like a baby's bottom all over? And if you don't know what a baby's bottom feels like (I personally don't), I've been told it feels like your legs when they're freshly shaved, exfoliated and moisturised. Please however take my word for it and don't go feeling any baby's bums, that would be weird. 

After some good ol' scrubbing, I get out, dry myself and move onto moisturising. I don't know about you, but I'm not the biggest fan of moisturising, it's just such a faff, but when I have a pamper night I like to use a thick, super moisturising body butter that goes by the name of 'The Righteous Butter'. 

This is hands down, the most moisturising body butter I've ever used. It's so thick and creamy and it doesn't even take long to sink in. It also smells like heaven, and if you don't know what heaven smells like, go give this a sniff. 

Heavenly moisturising over, I then have to wash off my facemask and exfoliate my face to make sure all the dead skin has gone. This all usually ends in me standing in a pool of water.

The scrub I use is the St Ives Apricot Blemish Scrub. I love this scrub but it's quite rough so I save it just for pamper nights. 
It sort of looks like porridge but it smells like apricot so it's rather confusing, nice all the same though.

I do always notice a difference after using this scrub, and I'd 100% recommend this to anyone with spot prone/oily/combination skin.

Now some people may just end their pamper evenings here, but I like to take it one step further and venture downstairs for a hot chocolate, otherwise known as heaven in a cup.

Oh how I love torturing you all with close up shots of marshmallows, I bet you're all craving hot chocolate now. 
Hot chocolate demolished, I then trek back upstairs to read. The book I'm currently reading is Looking For Alaska by John Green. I'm not far enough into the book to give a full on review but so far, so good!

This is completely off topic, but how cute is my bookmark? His head is kind of falling off though, very sad times.

And finally, the lights go out, my head hits the pillow, I go on twitter for 2 hours, then I fall asleep. 

I hope you all enjoyed this post, I certainly enjoyed writing it! If you'd like to see any similar posts in the future, be sure to let me know! 

As a little end note, I'd like to thank you all for 200 Bloglovin' followers!! It genuinely means the absolute world and I cannot thank you all enough for supporting and following my blog. I never even thought my little blog would get 2 followers, let alone 200!! I'm so grateful, I really am. When I reach 250 followers, I might do a little giveaway so keep your eyes peeled for that! I love you all.♥

Boots Beauty Advent Calendar- Days 16 & 17

There are 7 days left in my advent calendar, and it feels like I've had it for no time at all!

 I've bunched both day's together as day 16 wasn't really worth a whole blog post. The gift I received yesterday was sort of a disappointment, but it was nice all the same.

Let's see what it was...

Yesterday's gift was a cute little nail file. There isn't much to say about this except that it's cute, and nail files are always handy to have nearby as you never know when you may snag a nail. I'm sure I'll get good use out of this as I'm growing my nails long and they always get snagged and go funny shapes. It was a little disappointing but I won't complain too much as today's gift certainly made up for it.

The suspense...

Eeeeeek!!

Today's gift was a mini Soap & Glory Flake Away body scrub. I've heard great things about this scrub and I can't wait to try it! It smells heavenly, I've literally just sat and sniffed it half the night (yeah, I'm weird). It looks like wet sand in a way but it feels very exfoliating and I'm excited to use it!

I'm soooo happy with today's gift as I'm a huge Soap & Glory fan and I love trying new things from them:D My will expand massively on Christmas because I'm getting The Yule Monty gift hamper (ahhhhh!!) so this has made me super excited for that too!!

Boots Beauty Advent Calendar- Day 1

So this year I got the Boots Beauty Advent Calendar and I'm going to be doing a short post every night up until the 24th showing you all what is in each day. 

So as you all probably very well know, today was the first day of advent and I don't think I have ever jumped out of bed so fast. I was sooo excited to find out what was in day 1 and in my opinion, it was well worth the jumping out of bed-ness.

Let's take a look at what's behind the door...

Tah daaah!

The product today was a mini Soap & Glory Clean Girl's body wash, which is in fact my favourite body wash from Soap & Glory. I love it so much and I'm so glad to have a little mini that can come away on holiday's with me. 

This body wash literally makes your skin feel like silk, it's like you're washing yourself with moisturiser. You also only need a tiny amount and it lathers really, really well. And it smells AMAZING. I can't even begin to describe how amazing the smell is. But here is how S&G sort of describe it;

Even though it's only day 1, I'm already really impressed and I cannot wait to open the other 23 doors and see what treats await me!