Wednesday's Waffle & Bloggers Award

Hi everyone.. remember me??

Sorry I've been MIA. Seven days worth of shifts in a row and an ill Kate do not go hand in hand with blogging.

I have awarded myself with the award of 'Crap Blogger' so don't get too jealous everyone..

- Current mood; most definitely could be a lot better.

-Work is just a bit of a sick joke at the mo. I swear someone up above is having a laugh at ruining my life! But don't fret I still have plenty of posts I need to type up for you dolls, It'll just be finding the time!

-I mentioned earlier that I've been ill, as some of you know I've been on the Cambridge Diet. It's been going really well but my Mum and I figured out that it's the diet that has been making me really ill and run down. Because of my shift pattern I do at work it just wasn't healthy for me to be on my feet at work, running around like a mad woman for 10hours of the day with 9hours between shifts. But I still managed to lose 14lbs in the three weeks I was on the diet! I'm absolutely chuffed! I would have much preferred to lose a little more but ya'no I can't go complaining!

I've got 8days off of work as of Friday and I've got a manic schedule ahead.. Saturday I'm going wedding dress shopping with my big sister (for her wedding), Sunday I have to have promo pictures taken for a film I'm taking part in and Monday-Thursday I'm visting a friend in Surrey.

I will try my best to schedule some posts for you all on Friday but please bare with me! When I have returned to full health I'll be back on this blogging thing!

Sorry for this longggg post!

Have a silly picture to make up for it

Hope you're all good dolls

Kate x

Product Rave !!!

So it's official I have the driest skin known to god (but only on my face :s) and I'm pretty sure I've tried most of what is to offer to sort my face out and yet everything has failed!

Exfoliants, masks, hot cloth cleansers.. you name it I've most likely tried it. Everything always temporarily fixed the problem but after two days it'd be back again.

Anyway, I was walking around Wilkinsons the other day and needed some more make up wipes and it was then I came across these..

At first I was dubious.. exfoliating facial wipes. dry, sensitive skin. eye make up. delicate eye area. Doesn't sound like a great combination huh? But seeing as I could get 2 packs for 97p I thought I may as well try it!

I'm so glad I did! I have been using these babies for about 2 weeks now and my skin has never felt so smooth. I literally don't get anymore dry skin on face! 

The wipe is a waffle texture so it's not too harsh on the skin but it really does do the job! As with all face wipes you have to be careful with how you remove your mascara but especially with these as you don't want to damage the delicate skin.

I find that sandwiching your eyelashes between the wipe and rubbing lightly that you aren't pulling the skin and therefore not damaging it. Because of the waffle texture on these wipes mascara removal is a dream!

My skin feels extremely clean after I used them, it removes foundation really well and I'm sure my skin tone is even balancing out now..

I literally can't rave about these enough! If you have a Wilkinsons local to you go ahead and pick some up!

Perfect for all skin types but especially those with dry sensitive skin.. who'd have thought it :) 

I'll most definitely be stocking up on these!

Found any products worth raving about lately?

Kate x

MAC Dupe Alert

I'm pretty sure everyone is familiar with MACs Saint Germain lipstick.. if not you should be as it's a beautiful vibrant pastel pink with blue undertones. I lurrrve it so much!

Anyway! I've recently reorganised my make up storage and as I was sorting through my lippies I discovered literally an exact dupe for Saint Germain.

It's the closest I have found. A lot of people say Barry M 100 (Baby Pink) & NYX Narcissus are dupes but when you compare them to the dupe I'm about to show you, you'll realise they aren't that great a dupe.

 

Natural Daylight

Collection 2000 Lasting Colour 'Bubblegum' £2.99 & MAC Saint Germain £13.50

With flash

Side by side in natural daylight

(poor focus, thanks camera)

MAC Saint Germain on the left & Collection 2000 'Bubblegum' on the right

In this picture of the swatches it's apparent that Bubblegum is ever so slightly darker than Saint Germain but to be fair it's pretty hard to tell!

In both pictures of my lips I am wearing Bubblegum on the left half of my lip (top & bottom) and Saint Germain on the right half of my lip.

It's pretty hard to tell I'm wearing two different lippies!

I just had to let people know as I'm sure this isn't a very well known dupe!

Even though the Collection 2000 lippy is almost £11 cheaper it doesn't compromise on colour or longevity of wear.

It's perfect if you have always wanted to try out Saint Germain as you won't break the bank, or if you're like me and get through this shade ridiculously quick!

So I hope you all enjoyed this post :)

Kate x

Wednesday's Waffle

- Current mood; Exhausted

- For the past four days I have been working the late shifts at work. I basically start at 4pm and then will finish around 1am [2:30am on a Saturday] and these shifts take all my energy! By the time I have got home and unwound it's around 4am. So I end up sleeping during the day and by the time I get up it's time to do it all again. I HATE these shifts with a passion cause I pretty much have no time for a life for four days and I dont get time to write some posts for you lovely ladies.

- I was hoping to get a Valentines post up for you lucky ladies that have someone to spend it with on Monday but to be quite honest I don't know whether I have the time now :( I'm so tired today, the light has gone and I'm back to work tomorrow! But if people are still interested in seeing a nice make up look for Valentines then I shall try my best to get it up in time!

- For those of you who follow me on Twitter you will have seen the results of my Week One Weigh In! I had my weigh in on Monday and technically it was a 6day weigh in as I started the Cambridge Diet last Tuesday.. BUT in the first six days of the diet I lost 8lbs!!! I'm so so happy! It's the motivation I need to keep sticking to it.

I feel so much more confident and my skin is clearing up like a dream!

 [The trick to weight loss ^ ;)]

- Definitely have to thank Hannah for her help! She's doing so well on the Cambridge Diet and if it wasn't for her success I wouldn't have got off my bum and started myself!

If you aren't following her then you must do so now, she has a great blog which can be found here.

Haven't really got much to say this week seeing as my life has been ruled by work!

Hopefully I shall have another post up in a couple of days :)

Follow me on Twitter for more regular updates if you're interested in following my little weight loss journey!

Hope you dolls are well!

Kate x

FOTD - Fresh Faced

 Donations for a nose job made payable to lashesandlashes@live.co.uk.. thanks ;)

So I thought it was about time I done a FOTD. I hate doing them because I literally can't stand how my nose looks..

This is what I like to do when I don't have much time to get ready or I can't be bothered to do everything. It's definitely one of my favorite looks. Having bright lips makes a plain face less boring :)

My eyes look quite plain but I'm a fan of the 'No mascara & bright lips' look. Miranda Kerr pulls it off beautifully!

Products used;

Revlon Colorstay Foundation 'Buff'

MAC Mineralize Skinfinish 'Soft & Gentle'

Lancome Fatale Mascara 'Noir' [discontinued :(]

Barry M Lip paint 'Touch of Magic'

Kate x

Wednesday's Waffle

So this is basically going to be my version of 'Someday Summary' where I can let off steam, rave about products & keep you all updated on my daily going ons..

- Current Mood; Suprisingly good.

- As some of you may, or may not, know.. I started the Cambridge Diet yesterday (Tuesday). There are six different steps to the diet & I've chosen the hardcore one living off around 400 calories a day. It's all nutritionally balanced so you're not starving yourself of anything you need. So far, so good. It's not easy when you work in a pub/restaurant & you're running around all day but it's easier to stick to than I first thought!

- I did really want to take part in Frugal Febuary (where you don't buy any products, apart from necessities, for the whole month) But I don't want to commit to something I can't stick to, so I will be cutting down my spending to almost nothing.. well, I'll try!

- I've never been one to get hyped up about MAC collections, but I am kinda looking forward to the 'Jeanius Collection'. It's due for release in March '11. I will be treating myself to a few bits in March to [hopefully] celebrate weight loss and I've definitely got my eyes on some of this collection :)

 L-R 'Acid Washed' LE, 'Pretty Please' Permanent & 'Riveting Rose' LE.

LOVE Riveting Rose! I have one deep plum lippy already, but I think I shall be adding this to my collection! Acid Wash looks like one of them shades that will either be beautiful or absolutely vile.. only time will tell!

'Motorhead' LE

I won't be purchasing any of the shadows but the pressed design for this collection is really nice I think! Definitely much better than the Tartan Tale shadows anyway!

- Anyone else not impressed with the Peacocky collection? Yeah there is a ton of shadows & glosses.. but really.. who wants a bright blue gloss?! They could've released a beautiful cool tone MSF with that collection & think of the polishes you could create with that brief! The possibilities were endless with that collection, so in my eyes it was kind of a fail!

- On Monday I have my first weigh in after a week of being on the diet. I will keep you all posted! 

So I hope you enjoyed my first Wednesday Waffles! Keep your eyes peeled for more updates :)

If anyone has any questions or even tips for me about the Cambridge diet then please comment below!

Kate x

Collective Haul - PART 2 Beauty Items

Ok, so here's part 2 of this extensive haul haha :)

Vaseline Cocoa Butter £1.99 & Vaseline Healthy Hand & Nail cream £1.19 - Wilkinsons

The Cocoa Butter was reduced from £5! I thought it would be a nice prep for when I fake tan. The Hand & Nail cream is an old faithful, I've used this for as long as I can remember and I'll always go back to it!

Eyeko Toffee Fat Balm £3.90, S&G 'Fab Pore Hot Cloth Cleanser' £5.50, New cid Eyes, Lips & Cheeks palette £12 - All ASOS

All these products were in the sale, the best saving has to be the palette though! The RRP is £24. I have heard so many good things about it so I had to snap it up (it's still available now). For a palette you get absolutely huge amounts of product in there. Each eyeshadow is 5.4gm, each lip colour is 2.25gm & the blusher is 7.2gm!

Eyeko Big Eyes mascara & Graffiti Eyeliner set £5 - ASOS. Sleek Blush 'Pixie Pink' £4.29, MUA lipsticks Shade 1 & 7, MUA blush Shade 1 & MUA eyeshadow shade 11 all £1 each, GOSH Velvet Touch Lipsticl 'Darling' £6.49 & GOSH Soft'N Shine Lip Balm 'Barbie' £3.67 - All Superdrug

So I totally picked up the wrong MUA lipstick, I didn't mean to get Shade 1 but I'll work with it! You get 3.8g of lipstick which is fairly typical. The Eyeshadow is lovelyyy! You get 2g of shadow which is .5g more than MAC ;) MUA blush you get 2.4g as opposed to Sleek which is 8g.. so it kinda works out the same price for amount of product! At the moment some of the GOSH items are half priced so I picked up one of their lip balms & GOSH darling is just an old faithful :)

SWATCHES!!!

 

(L-R) MUA 'shade 7' (LOVE THIS), 'shade 1', GOSH 'Darling' lipstick (slightly washed out by flash), GOSH 'Barbie' Lip Balm & Eyeko 'Toffee' Fat Balm

(L-R) Eyeko Graffiti Liner 'Purple', MUA eyeshadow 'shade 11', MUA blush 'shade 1' & Sleek blush 'Pixie Pink'

 New cid palette. (L-R) 3 Lip shades, 4 eyeshadows & the blush

Next up are some palettes I bought back in December, but I've only just received them. I got these from ebay, the delivery time was no fault of the seller. They ship internationally so if you're interested they're great for my international readers :)

Alltogether (including P&P) they cost me £11.96. I bought an 88 matte eyeshadow palette & a 15 camouflage concealer palette.

As you can see even though it is a matte palette there are some shimmer shades in there, I don't mind this so much though as they aren't overly shimmery! The colour range is so good and the shadows are nicely pigmented. I tried this out the other day and the shadows are lovely to work with & blend really nicely which is great! I seriously recommend this to everyone.. this is great if you're starting out with make up or if you are experienced with make up. The seller can be found here. This palette was £7.99 with free shipping! 

 Quite a lot of the shades have been bleached out by my flash, but in this palette you get 1 highlighter shade, 3 correcter shades - lilac, green & yellow & 11 concealers. I have used this everyday since I received it! The highlighter is one of the most beautiful highlighters I have ever used & I've used a lot! I've mainly used this palette for under my eyes.. I haven't had any blemishes since I received it so I'm yet to try it out on that but I'm sure it'll be great. If you want full coverage foundation then you can mix a tiny bit of fix + with the concealers and use them. I sprayed fix + on a flat foundation brush & dipped it in the concealer pan. I obviously won't be using the darker shades too much, but with a light hand and a stippling brush they can be used as bronzers :) 

The seller can be found here

 

This beauty was £3.97. I honestly wasn't expecting a whole lot from these palettes but the quality is so good!

Even if you just want to try these out they are cheap enough to but I would definitely recommend investing in these palettes!

 I'm SO impressed with them!

So that is the end of my collective haul! Well done if you stayed with me during it ;)

If you would like me to swatch the 88 palette & review the concealer palette a bit more then just drop a comment below and I will be more than happy to :)

Hope you're all good dolls!

Kate x