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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