Birthday Garden Party

Last weekend my mum & I threw a little garden party for our friends & family. It was partly for my birthday & just to have everyone round. The lovely Lea from SincerelyShug & Sarah from SRFTaylor joined the party, armed with presents & wine for me & my mum.

My mum & I baked lots of treats. I made my chocolate cookies that everyone loves & my mum made lots of little cupcakes & all of them have different flavored icing.

My drink of choice at the party was LBD (Little Black Dress) Lime & Watermelon vodka. This stuff is amazing, I picked this up in Asda for just under £10 & it’s a low calorie vodka. It has half the amount of calories compared to normal vodka but LBD has a great fruit taste. I paired this vodka with diet lemonade for the perfect guilt free drink. An of course I had to use my mason jar & cute pink paper straw.

I also made a small sweet station at the side of the table as I’m a big sweet tooth & so are the rest of my family. I picked some of my favourite wrapped sweets. I picked wrapped sweets as this made it easier for everyone to grab them & also meant no germs.

To finish the table off we had lots of food & drink an of course some pretty flowers. It wouldn’t be a garden party without a big bunch of flowers. 

What I Ate Today #1

I thought I would start doing a new segment on my blog. I’m trying to eat a lot better & I know a lot of others are to so I thought a weekly/bi weekly What I Ate Today post would be great to inspire others & also keep me on track of eating well.

Breakfast

I call this The Healthy Apple Crumble. This is basically a crumble but with no sugar or flour. I cut up about two small apples; I like to leave the skin on. I also added strawberries to this, you can add any other fruit you think works in a crumble. To the fruit I added mixed spice & baled in the oven until the apples went soft. For the crumble topping I took oats, mixed spice, flaked almonds & a dash of almond milk. I mixed all this together & baked this on a separate tray. When everything is ready I place the fruit in a bowl & top with the crumble, I sometimes add a little honey for some sweetness.

Lunch

If I’m doing stuff for my blog or youtube channel I forget about lunch quite a bit, so when I do remember I try & make something that’s quick, easy & tasty. The easiest thing I make which also is super tasty is wholegrain ryvitas with extra mature cheese topped with parma ham. I also like to have some fruit on the side & my go to at the moment is a big pink lady apple.

Dinner

Dinner is one of my favourite meals of the day. I love to play around with food & create new dinners. I decided to give courgette spaghetti ago; I bought a cheap spiralizer off eBay & used one courgette for my spaghetti. I cooked this in a pan with a little bit of oil. The topping for my spaghetti was passata with a mixture of herbs & chunks of red & yellow peppers. I also had quorn meatballs as I don’t eat meat at home much. This dish was low in calories & really tasty. 

SkinCare | New In

I’m not one to change up my skincare much especially if I’ve found some that works well for me but after I came back from my holiday in June I revamped part of my skincare & fell more in love with a few old newbies from a few months before.

Let’s start off with the products I’ve had for the longest. This have to be my Mario Badescu products, I picked these up back in May after I start to run out of my then loved Pixi Glow tonic. I want another exfoliating toner but that was easier for me to get & with a better price tag. I found about Mario Badescu quite a long time ago when my acne was still bad but I never braved trying anything. I was only reminded of the brand when I was doing an online search for an exfoliating toner.

The Glycolic Acid Toner only has 4 ingredients compared to the Pixi Glow Tonic which has 19 ingredients.  The ingredients in the Glycolic Acid Toner are water, aloe gel, grapefruit extract & glycolic acid. This toner is great for anyone that suffers from scarring as it helps reduce the discolouration of scars & it’s also helps to keep the looking more vibrant an less congested. This product cost £15.50 for 236ml or £26.50 for 455ml.

The next Mario Badescu product is the Facial Spray with Aloe, Herbs & Rose Water. This is a great product to add moisture back into the skin. I like to use this during the day when I’m wearing no makeup to give my skin a little boost & to feel refreshed. It’s also great to use after your face cream & it states that you can use this as a makeup setter & a hair mist, I haven’t tried either of these but I can imagine your hair smelling great if this was misted over your hair. Onto the smell because the spray has rose water this really reminds me of turkish delight, I love this smell. This product cost £5.95 for 4oz or £10.25 for 8oz.

Let’s move onto the products I bought after my holiday, firstly I bought these as I need more soothing & hydrating products as I got a little burnt on holiday, I clearly didn’t listen to my Sun Protection 101 tips. I’ve always heard good things are the Super Facialist by Una Brennan range, so I thought that would be my best bet to try & find some new products that I know will work with my skin. The first thing I picked up was the Vitamin C+ Brighten Cleansing Oil. I had never used cleansing oil till I went on holiday & picked up a mini of the Mac Cleanse Off Oil (Which is amazing). Since I loved the Mac cleanser so much I thought I would try a more purse friendly cleansing oil.

The Skin Renew Cleansing Oil is infused with Vitamin C, Olive, Grapeseed & Rosehip oils. This cleansing oil also has Rosemary oil, Vitamin E & Cucumber oil in it. This starts off as an oil but once water makes contact with it, it turns into a milky cleanser. I find this removes my makeup a lot faster & easier than my previous cleanser. This product cost£10.99 for 200ml.

The Rose Hydrate Mask is a great 5 minute intense moisture mask. I like to use this ever week or so to add moisture back into my skin especially when it gets really dry or I’ve worn quite a bit of makeup that week.  This mask has White Willow which enhances skin cell turn over, it also has Vitamin E & Urea with soothing marshmallow extract to hydrate, plump & replenish the skin. You use this for only 5 minutes & then wash off; you are left with incredibly soft skin. This product cost£9.99 for 125ml. 

Vichy Press Event

Tuesday evening I was lucky enough to be invited to the Vichy press launch that was hosted at Rook + Raven. On arrival I was greeted by a lovely member of the Vichy staff & met up with Lea from SincerelyShug & Sarah from SRFTaylor. We got a walk through of all the products that Vichy has to offer, I’m already a big fan of their Normaderm range as this helped clear all my acne up in the past.

After having our little tour of all the products we walked around & tested quite a few out. I must say my hand felt amazing at the end of the night.

We got speaking to Dr Anjali Mahto who is Vichy’s Dermatologist on their expert panel. She was telling us about the benefits of starting a good anti-aging skincare routine in your early 20’s. She spoke about the LiftActiv range, this range is targeted at people with deep wrinkles & loss of firmness but I personally think someone my age could benefit from at least two the of products DR Anjali Mahto told us about. The first product she recommended us to try was the Serum 10 for eyes & lashes, this serum is meant to illuminate & lift the eyes. You can also you this on your eyelashes to help strength them. The other product see recommended was Advanced Filler night cream; this has a high amount of retinol which is great to help smooth wrinkles. Serum 10 cost £24.50 for 15ml & Advanced Filler cost £31 for 30ml.

Along with all the great products Vichy already has to offer they have launched a new product to their Idealia line. The idealia line already gets rave reviews especially for the Life Serum. They have launched their Skin Sleep night gel balm. This is a gel balm instead of a cream; it’s designed to give you the richness of a balm but with the freshness of a gel. So what is this Skin Sleep you ask, Skin Sleep is a night cream designed to give your skin the look of having a full night’s sleep. So if you suffer with sleep or someone that works nights this will be great for you. This was tested on 50 new mums, night nurses & cabin crew, they all noticed a difference in their skin & how much smoother its felt with less signs of fatigue. Now I’m not saying you can go out on the town then pop some of this on & look like you’ve had a full 8 hours sleep, this is more designed to work while you sleep even if you only get a few hours with your busy life. Skin Sleep cost £26.50 for 50ml

After a great evening of trying new products we popped to get coloured matched for Vichy’s well known foundation DermaBlend. Vichy has brought out three new shades for the DermaBlend range, we now have Porcelain which is the lightest shade in the range & we also have Coffee & Espresso which are the two darkest shades on the range. This is great that Vichy has brought out three new shades as this range now caters to more skin colours. I’ve always been a fan of the foundation; it’s a great high coverage foundation that’s very build able. I used this a lot when I suffered from acne. DermaBlend ranges costs from £15 to £29.50.

Before we left the event I was lucky enough to pop to Vichy’s little pop up pharmacy where they had all the products for us to pick from. I was allowed to pick two products I wanted to try out as well as take home the Idealia Skin Sleep night cream & the perfect shade of the DermaBlend foundation. With the help from one of the lovely Vichy staff members I picked the LiftActiv Serum 10 & the Idealia Smoothing & Illuminating day cream.

I will be testing all the product’s I was lucky enough to take home & will do a full review on everything.

I would like to say thank you to Vichy for having me at their press event.

Vichy’s Website | www.vichy.co.uk 

Vichy’s Twitter | @VichyUk