Cocktail Hour!

To be perfectly honest, I should have started off the whole Cocktail Hour series with this one.

This is mine and M's absolute favourite cocktail of all time and whenever we go out its the number 1 that we start off with!

It is off course the wonderfully pink and world famous Cosmopolitan.

Vodka, cointreau and cranberry juice shaken up with ice and a slice of orange peel lit on the side to give it an amazing orange smell.

The main reason this one is so popular is largely due to the girls in Sex and the City bringing it back to the forefront of cocktail menus across the world, but I'm sure I would have tracked it down somehow!

It is quite frankly amazing, super sweet, largely alcoholic and obviously very pink!

Absolute lifetime favourite, I could quite easily drink this at every meal time, including breakfast, for the rest of my life ;)

(I am currently completing my alcohol free month for my 101 in 1001 days, as this is my favourite cocktail it's been a little testing to write without drooling over the pictures ha!)

Do you like Cosmo's?? Did you watch SATC when they were drinking it too?

L xxx

April Freebies!

Just a quick post in case you haven't noticed yet...

Red Magazine have a free gift with their May edition (out now!)

It is the one and only Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish!

You can buy the same size sample online for £5.50 and you'd still have to pay the postage...

How about instead you pop to your local newsagents and pick up the magazine instead (for £3.90), save yourself the postage costs and burn off a few calories (hopefully in the sunshine!) whilst you do it!

Well worth the trip!

We will let you know how we get on with ours...we've been wanting this for ages.

It even comes with an instruction card and a full ingredients list for all skincare products, nice touch!

Working through our collections we've been putting it off, but as it's free it would be rude not to really!

Ready, set, go!

L xxx

Gym Rat Part 2: Help!

I previously wrote a post called Gym Rat where I explained my goals for the gym and what I was doing, eating etc.

And after a long hard slog of almost 4 months, my efforts have still made minimal difference.

I am still the same weight as the last post (having lost 5 lbs from when I first started in January) and I'm still eating as healthily as is humanly possible, attending the gym 3/4 times a week and generally having a more active lifestyle.

My previous goals were:

1. Concentrate my cardio time to the cross trainer and swimming as I enjoy these and they burn the most amount of calories
2. Increase the type of arm weights and number of reps for each type
3. Complete as many crunches as humanly possible! (this is no easy feat for me!)
4. Try out new classes so I don't get bored. First up is Body Combat, an aerobics based class with lots of punching and kicking movements.

I completed tasks 1, 2 and 4, with 3 being the most complicated for me and therefore the one I admittedly slacked off on.

However, having upped my cardio a hideous amount (my body hates me!) to burn off more calories, finding myself working along all of the fixed weights in the gym a few times and attempting new classes such as Body Combat and Abs and Stretch i would have thought this would have made a difference.

I found a list of measurements that I took of myself last March (2011), and compared them to now, and in all honesty I was GUTTED.

I was exactly the same everywhere....apart from my hips and stomach which I was BIGGER on.

Bearing in mind I can't eat bread and dairy foods too much as I'm intolerant, giving me a diet of porridge, salad and a healthy evening meal, you would have thought this amount of exercise would have made a difference wouldn't you??

I've also been walking the dog once a day in addition to what I was doing during the last post.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh!

So looking forward from this and trying to be optimistic...My previous aim was my birthday which has been and gone, so my new aim is my last minute admission onto a university course in the USA during the summer term.

This means i have a reason to wear a bikini that i previously did not....yikes!

The time frame I have is 6 weeks....not an ideal amount of time but I just have to work with it.

I'm going to simplify my aims this time so that i will actually do all of them (hopefully?!)

1. Up the number of repetitions and types of arm weights, arms are out all the time so anything I can do to tone them up at this late stage would be awesome
2. Crunch, plank, side plank, twist etc etc etc my way into having some sort of toned midriff. I'm going to try every damn stomach exercise I can to tighten it up, as anything is better than the current state!

I want to look like this!

Quite simply: Curves and muscle.

Do you have any tips for me? Do you have a similar problem with not being able to lose weight/fat?

Any stomach or arm exercises or weights that you love doing and know work?

It's not that I'm too bothered by the number on the scales...but I'd like to be smaller than I am whether that reduces it or not.

This is my cry for help! Seriously if you're reading this and possibly have a tip, suggestion or even a passing thought....WRITE IT BELOW!!!!

Thanks :)

L xxx

NOTD: No7 Crave Me

A few weeks ago I had a few No7 voucher lying around, so I decided it was time to add a few nail polishes to my collection!

I've heard good things about the No7 polishes, the brushes are supposed to be quite good, the colour range is quite expansive (though nothing too high fashion) and also gives a highly pigmented long lasting colour.

With this in mind, I bought a few! Of course ;)

This one is called 'Crave Me', I absolutely fell in love with the name, I'm always a sucker for them!

But also the colour is a wonderfully bright orange red that almost looks plastic-y (in a good way!)

The effect is so bright and eye catching M instantly had to go and buy it when we met up for drinks!

The colour is shown above with flash and below without, not too much of a difference which is always good as you know what you're getting.

Another good thing about this shade is that it looked equally good with a tan and without!

I was well impressed with this shade, especially with the vouchers as it only cost me £2.

I invested in a few other colours which will be sure to grace the pages of this blog soon, and also a clear top coat that is supposedly fast drying.

I'm always wary of this, as some people's 'fast drying' don't seem to be the same as others which is annoying!

However this top coat is worth every single penny of the £2 it cost me, it really does dry fast (regardless of whether it's a No7 polish or not) and makes any polish underneath looks SUPER SHINY, shinier than any other top coat I have used.

The only negative I can think of is that I'm not sure it's as long lasting as I would like, I'm used to it going for 3 days before having to apply another top coat, whereas this might require an extra coat every day, but I guess it depends what you're used to.

What do you think of the colour? Do you have any No7 polishes you think I should get next??

L xxx