Mother's Day Recommendations

Hi all!

I've done a quick post to share a few Mother's Day ideas that you can send or arrange as a surprise. These are all local to South Wales so are great if you don't want to travel far or give local!

I have personal experience of each of these places, treatments and products so can fully recommend as a gift for your mum (or any other worthy female in your life!)

Weekend Trip: Amsterdam

Good morning!

Today's post is jam packed with photos! I've just got back from a weekend trip to Amsterdam and had such a lovely time. We were only there for two days but managed to see and do so much.

Here's a few snaps from wandering around:

The canals are just beautiful, so many of them but each have their own highlights. Some have bikes chained all over, some have flower baskets, others have houses straight on the water and some have roads in between.

The buildings are beautiful, I couldn't stop staring at them especially those with huge windows and absolutely massive entrance halls. Trust me, the home decor here is outstanding!

With all the walking around (20k steps a day!) we obviously ate and drank well too!

We went to Bagels and Beans for one lunch and I have a chicken chutney filling on a sesame bagel which was amazing, with an Assam loose leaf tea. I'd definitely recommend visiting here as the food choices were great and very tasty! 

We also went to an Italian restaurant where I had a Gorgonzola pizza which was amazing, I've never had gorgonzola on a pizza before but it was very good - 100% recommended!

Our other lunch on the second day was a random cafe we stopped at whilst walking around. Here I ordered a goat's cheese and walnut sandwich, this was also amazing. I've never had a sandwich with this filling before but boy oh boy was it good! I'm sad I didn't note down where this was because it was lovely but there are so many places to stop for lunch you are spoilt for choice.

We moved on to the infamous tulip market, and this did not disappoint. It's an instagrammers heaven!

There are rows and rows of so many different types of flowers, but particularly tulips which seem to be the favourite!

The selection bags are clearly this biggest and best sellers and you can see why. With this much variety I'm not surprised, there are hundreds of them dotted around with every colour imaginable.

My favourite part in particular was the ceiling of the shops, the photos of this are below so I don't need to explain why:





I also loved the range of cacti that were available - they were so interesting looking and crazy colours. so weird!

On our final morning we went to the Van Gogh museum, this was really interesting too but it wasn't what I thought it was going to be.
There were many painting from Van Gogh but also many many other artists that he was friends with, so this was a little misleading. I also disappointed that there wasn't any photography allowed in the museum....I mean I fully understand that flash photography can affect the paintings and I wouldn't use the flash in this situation but to not be allowed to take any photos at all just felt restrictive and essentially forced you to buy postcards etc from their shop.

I obviously rebelled and took some on my phone when no one was looking!

The Sunflowers painting is infamous and it was good to see it in person as well as the Irises, but this museum was a little underwhelming for me.

After this we wandered around Vondel Park before being picked up for the airport. It was a lovely walk and we spent a lot of the time dodging bikes, it's a lot like Roath Park if you're from Cardiff as there are lakes dotted through it also and its a similar size.

We also had a walk through the red light district which was interesting. We went quite early in the night (9pm ish) so there weren't many actual 'customers' around, just tourists walking through and a few girls available at the windows to view.

It wasn't as seedy as I thought it would be but was interesting none the less, the girls seemed to be happy to be in the windows so I guess that's all that matters!

All in all it was a great weekend, definitely a whirlwind trip but we packed in as much as we could, mostly by walking in a certain direction each time and seeing as much as possible on the way.

I'd definitely go back to see more as there were still a variety of things we missed, but this was a great trip for seeing the essentials associated with Amsterdam.

Have you been to Amsterdam? What did you see and do?

What did you think of the Van Gogh museum and Vondel Park?


If you have any questions about Amsterdam feel free to tweet me!


L xxx

Ted Baker: That's a Wrap Nail Wraps

Good evening!

Hope you're all looking forward to the weekend, even of the weather is dreary and grey. I already posted earlier on my review of Slender Tox Tea but couldn't resist writing up another review of these beautiful nail wraps as I drink my tea and watch Harry Potter. It really is one of those wintery evening already!

We were kindly sent these super cute nail wraps to try.....as a nail wrap virgin I was apprehensive how they would work, how long they would last and if I would get on with them at all!

First off the packaging. I always love nudes and metallics and so this packaging appeals to me a lot, if I saw these on a stand I would definitely be drawn to them. We were sent two different colours to try and so I picked these, and M picked the darker version of the same floral pattern.

There are 14 nail polish strips to use and each one varies in width so you can pick the perfect size for your nails. Like the back of the packaging states; if you've no time for polish this should be perfect for those times when you need super chic nails in super fast times.

I love the floral pattern that is unique to Ted Baker, I'd love to get my hands on their kimonos in a print like this and don't even get me started on the make up bags!

You can see the variety of sizes of the nail wraps in the picture below, they even have the actual measurements on them too.

So once they are taken out of the packaging you are left with a silver foil wrap which keeps the wraps themselves clean, tidy and stops them from drying out.

The instructions are pretty simple; choose your nail size, peel from the bottom where the measurement is and apply to the base your nail in the correct position. After this all you need is to press firmly down onto the nail wrap and use a nail file to remove the excess nail wrap that you don't need. you just need to file downwards at the end of the nail and the excess seems to fall off leaving your nails perfect!

This was the first time I'd used nail wraps and although they really are easy, it does take some practice just to get the application at the base of the nail correct as once that's done the rest is easy. Also i have what some people call 'pianist fingers', which basically means my fingers and nails are really long and narrow. My nails, even when filed down REALLY short seem to be longer than anyone else's when they're fully grown! This meant that they didn't fit my nails 100% perfectly width wise but they still looked pretty good.

i loved how simple they were and they lasted a whole weekend. I doubt on me they'd last much longer with working in labs and they did start to wear. They would be absolutely perfect for a wedding or hen weekend and I'd buy them in future for this, especially the summer ones with floral patterns like this!

I really like how all of the nails are unique; i could never recreate my own version of this with nail polish so i love the flexibility nail wraps give you.

Have you tried Ted Baker nail wraps? What did you think?

You can find them at Boots for £7.50 and there are four different versions available!

L xxx