Thursday, November 12, 2020

Primark £30 Coat is £1665 Cheaper Than its Designer Twin!

Primark has once again had fans excited over their latest designer dupe. 

This time, it's one of their winter coat releases. 


Their new, £30 faux-fur coat is very similar in style to a designer, Claudie Pierlot coat currently being sold in Selfeidges for an eye watering £1695! 


If none of those take your fancy, Claudie Pierlot do have a slightly cheaper offering, at £305 for their Florent faux-fur coat, which also has a hood. 



Personally, between the three designs, I think I prefer the green/khaki Primark one, or the cheaper Claudie Pierlot Florent hooded coat. 

I'm quite surprised by my choices here as I usually seem to unwittingly go for the most expensive option, ha


What do you think though, do any of these float your boat? 


This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

It's National Lash Day!!


Long time no speak! I have been AWOL again due to life being difficult, spending a lot of time in and out of hospital, and trying to get myself on a better path with my failing health (I will be posting about this separately in the near future)... but I've decided that I need to get back into my writing, as frankly, I bloody miss it.

Today is all about lashes, as it's National Lash Day; and I'll be honest, I didn't even know this was a thing until last year... but who's judging?!

So I figured it would be a good time to show you my new favourite ever mascara, which has totally surpassed my previous favourite (Max Factor False Lash Effect) that was my go to for many years!

This mascara is EPIC, like literally... that's its name! But it truly is epic as it instantly transforms my eyes, and gives me long, thick, curled lashes in just one coat (more coats are allowed if you wanna go va-va-vooooom with your lashes); giving me a false lash look, without all the faff, and glue damage!

I mean just look at the difference:


It's 4D fiber infused, so none of this 3 step fiber faffing that I've had with previous fiber mascara products that usually put me off using them in the past, in favour of sticking with regular one step mascaras!

And to celebrate National Lash Day, there's up to 30% off full lash regimes* (growth serum, lash primer and 4D EPIC mascara) until Monday, saving you £18.30 - effectively giving you the primer or serum for FREE!!

Plus, you get 14 days to try it - and if you don't love it, you can return it for your money back. Can't say fairer than that, eh?!

Hurrah for mascara!





*Affiliate link, my views are not affected by this.

This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

Monday, May 22, 2017

Nail Porn: My New Chrome & Holographic Nails!

I’ve always loved having long nails; they’ve always grown strong and long for as long as I can remember. I actually gave up violin aged 9 after playing for just a year, because I was fed up of being told every week to cut my nails, and every week being told that the slither I had filed off wasn’t good enough and so I took up playing the flute instead. Even at that age, I knew my nails were more important to me than a violin. 😉

However, recently I’ve been going through a lot of stress and have noticed the toll it’s taking on them as they’ve been snapping quite low down, so for the first time in my life I’ve had to have them repaired with a few acrylic extensions. I took this opportunity to head to a new salon that I’d seen and been impressed with on Instagram because of the variety of nail colours and designs they showcased on there and these petrol-like, holographic nails are what I came out with, and I couldn’t be more pleased with them. Plus, I think Cobi, the nail technician there made the acrylic tips blend in perfectly with the shape of my natural nails, don’t you think? 😍

I also tried to get a video to show you how holographic they went under a direct light, but my cat wanted in on the action, and she's cute so why not. ;-)




This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

International Fragrance Day Offers From Boots.com!


Just a quickie (that’s what she said ;-) oooh-errrr), but it’s International Fragrance Day today and to celebrate, Boots.com are promoting a few fragrance offers to celebrate. I love fragrance, and I love a bargain so thought I’d pass it on to you lovely guys in case you were interested, and didn’t know. 


There’s actually some decent fragrances included in the offers, with Chanel, Dior, YSL, Lancome, Armani and Gucci all featuring in there, so go take a look here. I’m already spending money I don’t have stocking up on a few… Chanel and YSL, I’m looking at you guys... and Lancome, oh go on then, and you too Armani. ;-)  x


This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Diet & Weight Loss: No Carb Pizza Omelette!

As a female who wasn’t blessed with the ability to lose weight and be toned just by existing, I find myself constantly looking for ways to achieve this but without feeling like I might die of boredom at having to eat bland, tasteless food; or indeed feel like I’m missing out on lots of other delicious foods that I know I enjoy and crave deeply from the exact second that I make the decision to get back on the healthy eating wagon.

And, because I’m a vegetarian, I have always found myself relying perhaps a little too heavily on carbs also, to make a meal feel substantial, filling and obviously tasty. So knowing I needed to lower my carb reliance and increase protein to start seeing further results, I spent the last 4 years forcing myself to find ways to eat eggs so that I could actually enjoy them, which meant that they weren’t too eggy, both in taste and texture; as despite not being vegan, I didn’t eat eggs (unless in cake) for a very, very long time.

I just couldn’t get my head around what they were (let’s not even mention it now as I am still not at ease with it and I don’t want to undo my hard work over these years, ha) so my protein intake was less than impressive. I have now mastered the art of making both omelettes, and scrambled eggs by adding vegetables, cheese, and other flavourings that have enough other textures/tastes to make them actually quite enjoyable to me.

Success… I now have a healthy, low carb meal option that actually leaves me feeling full, and satiated. I still miss carb heavy food, but now look for ways to try and satisfy cravings for them without leaving myself feeling guilty that I’ve fallen off the wagon again. Obviously a treat is fine, but as a lifestyle change that is realistic, I need to enjoy the food I am eating and not just eating it because it’s healthy.

One massive craving for me that I really miss whilst trying to be healthy has to be pizza. I bloody love it! But it doesn’t love my waistline… it’s just not healthy, and that carb-heavy base makes me put on a stone just thinking about it (sympathy please). So how could I find a way to satisfy a regularly recurring craving for the gooey, pizza goodness? Well, with an omelette base, of course.

Luckily, I have been sneaky well informed, and researched enough to have found a ‘diet’ that might suit me as it allows me to eat cheese(!); and not only allows, but encourages (high fat, low carb – keto diet)… yep, I think I might have found ‘the one’ - diet wise, anyway.

And so I decided to do an eggsperiment (geddit? I’ll book my own taxi for that) to see if I could make this omelette taste anything like a passable pizza to me. And by goodness, I think I actually have! Obviously it’s never going to replace your favourite pizza from wherever, but it’s also not going to make you die from diet guilt, or have your buttons popping off your clothes by indulging in it.


Ingredients:


2-3 eggs (or more if you’re making for more than one person, or particularly hungry)
Chopped tomatoes/passata
Herbs (mixed, or fresh basil works)
Chopped onion
Cheese (hurrah, I used cheddar but any melty one that you fancy is all good)
Salt & Pepper to taste

Or whatever toppings you fancy, obviously. I just kept this one very simple, as I didn’t know if it would work or not.

Method: 

 

I cooked the chopped onion in a small amount of oil (I used olive, but any is fine, just don’t use too much as you don’t want a greasy pizza sauce) until translucent, then added the tomatoes, herbs, and seasoning before cooking through so the flavours were developed enough. You could make this in advance and freeze it, or use it as a base for pasta sauce too. You could do this without the onion, and add them at the end, or not at all if you prefer.



Then, I decided to stick to just a plain omelette base as I knew there’d be less chance of it breaking. I whisked the eggs with salt and pepper, then cooked it both sides in a frying pan so that it was golden brown, and feeling fairly sturdy.



I then transferred my omelette to a foil lined tray and spooned enough ‘pizza sauce’ to cover it, sprinkled plenty of cheese over it (and any other ingredients you choose), and then put it under the grill until it was melted (this particular cheese didn't melt as well as I'd hoped, but still tasted good).

Then I ate it, obviously. I really, really enjoyed it too. So I actually do think I have found something I can eat and enjoy regularly that does satisfy that pizza craving I get, until such a day where I can have a real pizza as a treat.

Happy days. I can’t believe I’ve written so much about eggs though, ha.



This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

Thursday, March 2, 2017

Are Our Selfies Really Ourselves? Is Heavily Editing & Filtering Our Photographs Going Too Far?

L: Original to R: Heavily Edited
In recent years there has been widespread reporting, and criticism of the use of excessive airbrushing on models within the film/TV, fashion and beauty world, and rightly so as I think it’s important for us ‘real people’ to know that the perfection that we are all faced with in magazines, on billboards and on TV isn’t real.

The standard of beauty that we’re being made to feel that we have to live up to isn’t even being achieved by the models in these advertising campaigns, as they’re so heavily edited to present this admittedly very beautiful, but wholly unrealistic picture in order to make us desire the products they’re promoting.

It’s important to remember that we’re not all failing in life by not walking around with 24/7 flawless skin, balanced, equal facial features, perfect abs, and large, symmetrical tits.

Yet so many of us feel that we’re not desirable, not pretty, not thin, and not perfect enough even to post a selfie on our own Facebook, or Instagram profiles without being judged and compared against the unrealistic standards set by these people.

This in turn has led to a huge increase of girls uploading photos of themselves that have had heavy filters and editing beforehand. The problem comes when people (girls, usually) edit pictures, and use filters to the point that they not only no longer resemble themselves, but some of them actually look like 2-dimensional cartoon characters.

I’ve seen, and heard so many people saying things like ‘she takes a good photo’, and ‘she looks nothing like her pictures’, even stating that on occasions, people have even failed to recognise the person in real life from their online photographs due to flattering angles, and excessive editing and filter use... with some girls even being called catfish for their 'deceptive' photography practices.

I think it’s sad to see this, as for me a photograph is not only for now, but also to look back on when I get older, and remember what I actually looked like – despite me being constantly told that I actually look a lot better in real life, as I think my face somehow panics when in front of a camera, even if it’s just me, taking a selfie. I’d rather know I probably looked better in real life than in the picture, than have a shit load of hugely edited, filtered to fuckery false images that look nothing like me at all.

Hence why I personally don’t bother with these heavy editing techniques. Well, that and because I can’t be bothered as it would take too much time that I just don’t have… plus I am absolutely rubbish at editing, as I’ve just found out whilst trying to edit pictures of myself for this article; instead opting to use a fully blur tool for one image (idiot-proof, as I obviously wanted it to look fake), and an app to make another image appear more cartoon-like, as I obviously couldn’t use the photographic examples that prompted me to write this. ;-)

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for filters occasionally as a laugh – like the silly Snapchat filters, but I keep seeing girls who look more like a cartoon than a human in every single picture they seem to upload and it just makes me feel a little sad that these girls can’t just be happy to be photographed as they actually are, and know that imperfections are what make us unique.

For me, I’m happy to use a little make-up, and hope for the best where my pictures are concerned… oh, and probably about 44 gigabytes of data for the million selfies that I hated before I took one that I thought was acceptable, ha.

What are your thoughts? Do you see this happening a lot? Do you yourself heavily edit your pictures? x


This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

Friday, February 24, 2017

I'm back! A Little Explanation For My Relative Silence!

So you’ll probably all have noticed that I haven’t been around for a while; or perhaps you hadn’t noticed but now I come to mention it… but I’m going to indulge myself and pretend that you had all most definitely noticed my absence, even if you hadn’t missed my ramblings.

There’s been a lot going on in my life, and in turn I felt hat these things had largely killed off my writing mojo, meaning that whenever I even tried to put fingers to keyboard (since pen to paper doesn’t really happen these days), I doubted that I was writing anything worth reading… and more to the point, that you guys would actually enjoy reading too.

So I'm going to give you an idea of what's been going on that stunted my writing abilities; although I’m not going to go into everything in detail, as I’d be writing for days, and you’d be reading for an equally long time too.

Over the last few years, I’ve obviously been through the breakup of my long term relationship (I wrote about that previously), which I guess is where my writing started to suffer; but then adding things like house moves, being messed around by people I’ve grown to care about who ended up letting me down, and a sexual assault that happened a couple of years ago have added to the 'problem'... and those things in themselves would usually suffice as an explanation.

However, I guess the thing that has affected my desire, and ability to write the most, is the unexpected, sudden and traumatic death of my mum; the most important person in my life.

My mum was a beautiful, amazing, caring, strong, inspiring and unintentionally hilarious woman, and I adored her with every part of my being... she was my everything; and so losing her at the relatively young age of 69 when she had not had any immediately life threatening illnesses, or diseases leading up to her death was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to go through, and that’s really saying something as I’ve been through a lot of horrific experiences in my life.

I’ve always found it enjoyable to write, and have always been able to inject humour and light-hearted, jokey comments in anything I produce… and so whilst I’ve been wondering what the point in most things is, I found it hard to muster up the fun and excitement to write about anything I’d usually write about on here.

That being said, I still have the passion, excitement and love for everything involved, which is why I’m sat here in bed, at 2.45am writing this. Inspiration struck, and I thought it would be a good way to find my mojo if I wrote about something I have massively felt in my heart, which is what allowed me to write my mum’s eulogy whilst I was still reeling from losing her; her eulogy is the last thing I actually managed to write – and I’m going to include that below, because I think it allows you to learn just a very small amount about why she meant so much to me.

I think writing from the heart like this feels easier as it doesn’t really require me to find and inject the fun factor, or humour that I usually include, but didn’t seem to be able to produce at any point of previous attempts to write. It’s also allowed me the chance to explain where I’ve been, so it’s a 2 birds 1 stone kinda thing for me. So, hopefully this is the start of my mojo, and inspiration returning.

P.S, I've changed. :-) Went blonde, got fillers and that. More about that very soon. X



Mum’s Eulogy

The collage I made to be framed for her funeral.

“Usually, words are my thing… although seemingly not when it comes to this; writing words that mean so much to me,  my mum. who I miss so much already. This is honestly the last thing I thought I’d have to write; at least so soon, and so suddenly… which also makes it the hardest thing I’ve ever had to find the words for.


My mum was the most amazing person I have ever known. She wasn’t perfect, for instance with her seemingly selective hearing, which often made for amusing attempts at her trying to convince me that she had actually listened to what I had said, but without being able to reply, nor repeat back to me what I had said… but she wasn’t far off being perfect in my eyes.


Her sense of humour was lavatorial, and that’s putting it politely. Even on her last day with us, she was able to enjoy a laugh and joke, and at her own expense too. Although telling her a joke wasn’t always as straight forward as you might expect; from telling jokes and getting the polite acknowledgement laugh, followed a few minutes later by the belly laugh, signalling the moment that she actually understood, and ‘got’ the joke, to explaining the joke and her still not getting it.
It was like the ongoing onomatopoeia joke that resurfaced every Christmas without fail., as I could not get her to understand what onomatopoeia meant, despite many attempts to explain it simply – in fact the only time she proclaimed to maybe know what it meant, she told me it was ‘a word that sounds like bronchitis’. She was convinced that if she found a dictionary from the 50’s, ‘that word would not be in it’ and only truly believed me that it was a real word when Sally from Coronation Street said it in an episode last year.

We had many, many laughs at my mum’s expense over the years, something she was completely fine about, luckily. Some of my favourites include telling her that they’d taken gullible out of the dictionary, to which she was absolutely disgusted, exclaiming ‘well that’s just stupid, how can they take a word and say it doesn’t mean anything any more?!’ and even when I tried to explain it was a joke, by asking her what gullible meant, she replied ‘well nothing any more, not now they’ve taken it out of the dictionary’, and in a similar way when I told her that if you said gullible really slowly, it sounded like you were saying orange. I had her repeating it for 5 or 10 minutes, desperately trying to get it to sound like orange and not even clicking on when I kept asking her what gullible meant – her reply being ‘that you’ll believe anything’ as she’d accepted that it was still in the dictionary after the previous joke, but that was swiftly followed ‘but I just can’t get it to sound like orange’.

We loved Christmas with mum, there was never a dull moment; be that from her bursting out in song at the only part of each song she actually knew, or thought she knew the words to, bragging about being able to take her tablets with a glass of Baileys and then promptly throwing them back up… or her joining in with some reindeer racing, having picked the computer chair, complete with wheels to sit on at the dining table, before falling off it – cue an awkward silence from us all, waiting to see if she was ok, before bursting out laughing after she herself did.

And the fact that you could actually tell mum exactly what you’d got her for Christmas, even on Christmas Eve, and it would still be a surprise to her when she actually opened them. I’m still not sure if that was her memory failing, or the selective hearing at work though.

In recent years, whilst in possession of a smart phone, she discovered YouTube and funny animal videos, often finding herself stuck for hours wetting herself (probably quite literally) laughing at them. I introduced her to the world of Facebook, which she never truly used (or knew how to), or even understood, but could work her way around enough to see the plethora of animal videos I shared to her wall. I loved her watching them whilst she was with me, seeing her laugh so much, and hearing that wicked, dirty laugh of hers was half of the enjoyment for me.

Her other favourite pastime on her phone was googling line dancing steps. I remember her first few Google searches were so very polite, asking ‘could you tell me the steps to <whichever dance it was> please’. She spent much of her life suffering with arthritis, yet even when she could barely walk, she’d still go off line dancing, even if she could only supervise and direct people how to do the correct steps.

I remember giving her a computer, so she could do some card making on it, and the only time I believe she ever tried to use it, she told me it was broken. So I went to have a look at it, turned it on and there was nothing at all wrong with it. She asked what I’d done, I told her I’d switched it on and then asked what she had done. She had only switched the screen on. When I asked what she thought that big box was, her reply was ‘I don’t know, just a box’ - she was very special, needs.

She loved charity shop shopping, snapping up all the clothes that took her fancy, despite the fact that she only really got dressed 2, or maybe 3 times a week. She loved owning nice things, to the point that they’d get put into a ‘safe place’ and promptly forgotten about, or saved for best… but there was never quite a ‘best’ enough time for her to make use of most of them.

She was a total magpie, always weighed down in her favourite jewellery in a multitude of colours and styles. In fact, she wore earrings to the point that you could see through the bottom piercing, and happily accepted me taking the micky out of her ‘baggy ears’.

She was a very independent lady, and didn’t really like a fuss… which unfortunately is partly why we are all meeting here like this today. She lived life to the fullest of her capabilities, never really complained, and was surrounded by people who adored her; so whilst we all feel her life has been cut too short, I’m sure she’d have chosen this life than a longer, but less fulfilled one.

I just can’t believe I’m never going to see, speak to or hear her again. You were my absolute world, mum. I love you so much, always will… and I will never forget you.

If love could have saved her, she would have lived forever.”



This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk

Thursday, June 2, 2016

Save Money When Shopping Online (Updated) - Cashback Sites & Discount Codes!

If like me, you're a bit too handy online with your debit/credit card and just can't help yourself when it comes to making purchases (that 'confirm order' button is just so much more gratifying to press than the red X, don't you think?) then this little guide to try to help you save money online could be just what you need.


Shopping Around!









This is the first thing you need to do when considering a purchase, as if you don't find the best price for your item then you're already losing out on precious pennies to spend elsewhere (or save in your bank, but primarily for me, it's to spend elsewhere). I tend to visit sites that I think will have the item I'm looking for to find prices out first, and then find the cheapest among them.

I also visit discount sites such as allbeauty.com and Fragrancedirect to see if they stock the product I'm looking for - for beauty related items, obviously. I also use Google searches and the Google Shopping page to find and compare the price on various sites. You'd be surprised how much you can save, just by taking the time to do this.

Cashback Sites!


For many years, I have been using cashback sites whenever I shop online and it has saved/made me more money than you'd think. For example, I have used TopCashback* since November 2008 and in total, I have earned £1,861.39p on purchases I have made and things I have signed up to (such as switching gas/electric, Sky TV and such like), which is pretty good considering it has cost me nothing and taken very little time (I went through a year or so of forgetting to use it after my break up too).

Before I used TopCashBack, I used Quidco* and in the 3 years I used it, I earned £986.52p - plus £15 that I paid to Quidco as they charge £5 per year from any earnings you make - if you earn nothing, you pay nothing! I still do use Quidco occasionally as they sometimes have better rates or offers, but TopCashBack is my main one these days as it is completely free (unless you upgrade to a plus member).

Using a cashback site doesn't affect the price of the goods your buying, or any quote you're being given, nor does it affect your statutory rights - it literally is just an added bonus.
So, if you bought from Debenhams, you'd get 3.03% cashback from your final checkout price (minus VAT and any delivery charges) just for clicking to go to the Debenhams site through TopCashBack (you click the orange button shown in the image above), it's so simple. It does add a small extra step into what you're doing, but literally does only take a moment to do it and you've already seen how it can build up to quite a large sum of money.

Sometimes cashback is offered for free things, like surveys, sign ups to sites, free trials and suchlike - these things will take time to do, but are useful to know about if you have a lot of spare time and fancy earning small amounts of money that could mount up into a larger sum.

Other cashback possibilities that you should look out for are magazine sites that pay you a set amount (say £4) for a subscription as quite often the site has 3 for £1/3 for £3 (and similar) trial offers that can also qualify for cashback too; so you'd basically be being paid £3/£1 (for example) to try 3 issues of a magazine. Some deals match however much you spend, so you could pay £1 to trial a magazine and be paid that much back, so you'd effectively be getting a free trial.

If you want to do more than one magazine on this offer, do them one by one as you should be paid cashback for each purchase. These are gradually being picked up on and some terms changed, so please do read the information before committing to your purchase - and don't forget to cancel the Direct Debit once you've paid the trial subscription, otherwise they will continue the subscription and take the full amount out of your bank.
 
 
The only 'con' I can see for using a cashback site is that sometimes your money/purchase doesn't track and you can 'lose out' on a small amount of cashback. You can appeal this, but it's not guaranteed that you'll get it - although mostly you do, especially if you can prove you went through the cashback site (by matching up a date and time to one of your outgoing clicks for the merchant in the appeal section) and it helps to keep order confirmations etc.

It's such a small downside though, and as long as you think of cashback as a bonus, rather than a given (especially if you're relying on it to take the cost of purchasing something down to an amount you can afford, which is not advisable), you'll be over the moon with it, like I have been.


Discount Codes!
 
Discount codes are another way of saving money when shopping online that can be used in conjunction with cashback sites for most merchants (some say in their terms that orders made using discount codes will automatically get cashback declined, you then just need to work out which one will save you the most money, the code or the cashback - it's usually the code), and are used when checking out your shopping online!

You can find discount codes on the merchant page of cashback sites, on sites like HotUKDeals (just don't click their links if you want the cashback as they will pocket it if you complete your purchase via their link - if you do happen to click their link, just clear your cookies for the site you're buying from and start again - this will empty any cart contents and log you out, if you do this, and you will need to go through your chosen cashback site again), from the cashback websites above, and MoneySavingExpert (also very good for general money saving information and advice) and even on the Facebook and Twitter pages for the retailer that you're intending to buy from.
 
I do all this, each time I'm about to spend money to maximise the amount of money I can save in any given transaction - in fact, it feels weird on the rare occasions that I can't find any cashback or codes.

Have you ever used cashback sites and discount codes? If not, will you be starting?

Sorry for such a long post, I got carried away there!

* This is my referral link, although it doesn't alter anything on your sign up as it is free to join and I would only receive a bonus if you earn yourself some money (and my bonus comes from TopCashBack/Quidco, not you) - plus sometimes they give you a bonus too.

All offer information correct as of time of writing.




This post originated at www.thebeautyscoop.co.uk
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