Sneaky eBay shopping...

I don't know about you but when you haven't got any money and you know you shouldn't spend the tiny bit you have left, all you can think about is spending it....right?

On top of that my mum knows how little money I have and is therefore watching me like a hawk!

Because of this I have resulted to scouring the internet in my free time. I managed to avoid actual shops as the temptation is far too high, but online I can browse without feeling the fabrics, smelling the lotions and potions and seeing the deals.

That is of course, excluding ebay, whose low prices and bidding excitement gets me every time.

Particularly when I find a good deal on something I want, and THEN finding an even BETTER deal!

Just cannot resist it and the shopaholic inevitably takes over.

Because I'm sure we all know that spending money online just isn't REAL money is it??

Exactly.

Anyhow, enough of my ramblings, here's my random purchases from eBay of the past few weeks.
You can probably see a bit of a theme developing, I hope you enjoy!

Before you think I;m crazy for buying feathers...I've been using them in recent nail designs and they've turned out awesome! Will be posting about them soon.

Whilst I was searching for feathers I came across the ones below and couldn't resist but snap them up for the £1.24 bargain!

Look how beautiful they are!

I was hoping these would also look amazing on my nails too but the dyes seem to react with the nail varnish and run all over the place!

So I will have to do something else with these, if anyone has any ideas??

They're too pretty to hide away.

I also bought some dotting tools in different sizes and cannot wait to use these, I have a normal size one but there are so many designs I wanted to try with smaller and larger dots I couldn't resist the set.

They were £2.59 with postage and are double ended! They're from this seller.

I've also been meaning to get my hands on some nail tape as I've seen some amazing designs with this!

I bought a pack of 12 different colours and finishes from this seller before I realised that actually it didn't include a black or white which was what I wanted most (silly me!) so I ended up buying them separately.

I bought both black and white nail tape from this seller who does a 3 for 2 deal and I also got another colour for free!

The blue glitter polish was from this seller, and the other two were from this seller 

Both were less than £2 each with postage so definitely a bargain!

Lastly I thought I'd buy some nail stickers as they're such an easy way of adding a finishing touch to an otherwise simple nail.

These were £1.49 with postage and you pay for 5 sheets.

I thought I'd increase my chances of getting better sheets by buying two but unfortunately they weren't that great and I had some duplicates which was a little pointless!

There are some nice white flowers and swirls however that will definitely come in handy.

Just the luck of the ebay draw I guess!

What do you think of eBay? Are you a victim of a sneaky purchase on there too?

I love and loathe it.

So many bargains to be had but selling things is a nightmare!

L xxx

(p.s. how ridiculous is my nail art getting?? I've gone from not trying anything to buying it all! Obsessed.)

NOTD: Mermaid Gradient Glitter

Triple whammy NOTD post for you today!

I finally got around to experimenting with gradient nails when I got my hands on some sponges.

As my nails seemed to have grown like crazy and for once not flaked away (thanks to Revlon's Post Trauma nail treatment I believe!) I couldn't resist going for it this time so decided to cover 3 trends in one.

Firstly I painted my nails in this gorgeous turquoise colour from Rimmel 60 seconds, have no idea what the name is but its a metallic turquoise that has been available for a while and the colour is a must have!

(I also applied a top coat before this...my latest one is the calcium gel nail hardener from Revlon...dream!)

Then I nabbed one of my new sponges and used Max Factor's Odyssey Blue to sponge onto the ends to create a gradient effect:

Then I covered the design with a Saffron blue glitter which I bought off ebay (you can find plenty if you search for Saffron glitter!)

Which basically created this beeeeeeeautiful blue green shimmery mermaid tail esque design!

(What a mouthful!)

Here it is in different lights so you can get the full effect.

They are a little messy as these were pre clean up (silly me!)

I also used my favourite top coat (Sally Hansen Insta Dry) and so far, a whole week later and it's just starting to show the ends of my nails but still no chipping or cracking which is amazing!

What do you think of my take on mermaid nails?

Link us to your mermaid nails if you've done them as I love seeing variations!!

L xxx

Bloggers Unite to Loose Weight No2

So 1 week has passed since my First post, found here if you fancy a read.

This week has been up and down for me if I'm honest. I seem to keep having busy weekends (not a bad thing) but I struggle to be good when I'm out with friends and celebrating.

This weekend was a huge one for me. One of my closest friends from home got engaged! I was so excited I spent Friday night making her a wedding planner so I skipped dinner and traded it for a peanut butter corenetto! It was amazing.

For me now I'm trying to be good during the week so at weekends I can let myself relax a bit. This seems to be working for me as I don't excessively over indulged at the weekend.

During the week if I crave something I have it.....But if it's bad for me I make sure I exercise enough to burn it off. On Tuesday I couldn't get fish and chips out of my head. So I went for a run with my debit card in hand and told myself unless I ran for 40 minutes I wasn't having it. I'm quite bad at bribing myself with things to exercise but it works for me.

Exercise

Exercise is now becoming a battle. I'm running further which I love but I'm now finding my hips are so painful it's stopping me going further rather than my fitness. I think a trip to the doctor is needed soon for a check up and maybe some new trainers. I was hoping I could last till Christmas without trainers but I'm not sure that's the case.

Food

Last week I picked up the hairy dieters cook book and for anyone dieting or trying to eat better I can not recommend it enough. It is full of amazing recipes. Most are pretty easy to cook too.

For me food wise the best thing I can do is eat as much food that I cook myself as possible. I tend to do a huge shop then cook a lot for a week and freeze a lot of meals so that when I'm lazy I'm not grabbing a frozen pizza or take away. I used to eat a lot of take away.

The hairy bikers have an amazing sweet and sour chicken meal which comes in around 450 calories with rice but today I wanted to share with you Chinese Yuk Sung. It's such an amazing dish and with the lettuce comes in at under 250 calories!! I've given this recipe to so many people and the hardest thing is chopping some veg. 

I'm finding Chinese a popular food choice to cook as their meals are reasonably low cal when cooked yourself.

Ingredients needed sorry for the blurry photo. I always use white wine vinegar for it as it's what I keep in the house.

To start with spray a non stick pan with fry light and crush the garlic into it. Add the grated ginger and finely chop the spring onions and add. 

Finely chop carrots (I tend to grate them as I like them small) celery and chop the water chestnuts in half.

Turn the heat to medium and gently fry the garlic, and spring onions for a few minutes. Then add the minced pork and cook until the pork is sealed.

Once the pork is sealed add the chopped carrots, celery and water chestnuts and cook for 4 - 5 minutes.

Next add the vinegar, soy sauce, oyster sauce, cornflour and Worcestershire sauce

Cook for a further two minutes until  vegetables are soft and meat is cooked (I forgot to add sweetener today and tasted no difference)

Spoon a quarter of the mixture onto a bed of iceberg lettuce or into little gem lettuce leafs.

Weight loss

This week even with a naughty weekend (yet again) I lost another 1lb. I'm happy with this as I'm still getting to enjoy my food while gradually losing weight and I'm hoping to adopt a healthier life style now more than a diet.

One thing I'm really noticing now is my jeans feeling baggy. I'm pretty sure that only started this week. So far I've found it frustrating that the scales were saying I'd lost the weight but I didn't feel it. Though I still look in the mirror and I'm not seeing much shred from my stomach and bum it's nice to have my jeans feel loser and it's pushing me more.

So that's this weeks update. Hope you liked the recipe in it. Would you like to see more healthy ones? How is your weight loss going if you're trying?

Love M

xxx

Don't forget to check out some of the other lovely bloggers doing this challenge

http://www.fashionfloozy.co.uk/

http://www.hollys-beauty-box.blogspot.co.uk/

Guest Post: Beauty Bird

We have our second guest post here for you today!

Today we have Beauty Bird from Ramblings of a Beauty Bird, hope you enjoy!

First of all thank you so much to the girls at CSI Beauty Blog for asking me to guest post! I’m a regular reader of their blog, so it’s an honour to write for them. This is also my first ever guest post, so pretty exciting! 

In the past few months I seem to have had so much to pay for; my car tax and MOT fall in the same month and me and my boyfriend finally decided to go ahead and get a puppy! So I've needed to cut down in other areas and when it comes to beauty products I've set myself a "go cheaper" challenge. Basically the essence of the challenge is to replace any of my used up products with a dupe, or very similar product, that is cheaper. I've not set myself really strict rules on this otherwise I know I'll never stick to them! Especially as there's a few products that I just love too much to replace with something different. I wish I could do a spending ban but I know it would never happen!!

Here's what I've come up with for my go cheaper challenge! I've primarily shopped around online, with the aim of picking up some discounts here. Where I have found a product online cheaper than RRP, I've made a note of the website afterwards.

Dry Shampoo

Original Product: Batiste Dry Shampoo - £2.99 for 200ml

Go Cheaper Product: Girlz Only Dry Shampoo - £1.50 for 150ml

Saving: Overall £1.49 / £0.50p per 50ml

Concealer

Original  Product: Clinique Airbrush Concealer - £17.00

Go Cheaper Product: Collection 2000 Lasting Perfection Concealer - £4.19

Saving: £12.81

Primer

Original Product: Benefit POREfessional - £23.50 (technically I only have the sample size, but I want the full size!)

Go Cheaper Product: bareMinerals Prime Time Foundation Primer - £16.50 (www.escentual.com)

Saving: £7.00

Blusher

Original Product: Jane Iredale Pure Pressed Mineral Blusher in Parfait - £17.35 (www.mineralbeauty.co.uk)

Go Cheaper Product: Youngblood Cosmetics Pressed Mineral Blush in Petal - £13.50 (uk.strawberrynet.com)

Saving: £3.85

Foundation

Original Product: Cover FX Natural FX Water Based Liquid Foundation - £37.00

Go Cheaper Product: Vichy Dermablend Dermasmooth Corrective Foundation - £13.18 (www.escentual.com)

Saving: £23.82

Exfoliator

Original Product: Dermalogica Skin Prep Scrub - £19.55 (www.jerseybeautycompany.co.uk)

Go Cheaper Product: Vichy Purete Thermale Detoxifying Exfoliating Cream - £9.35 (www.escentual.com)

Saving: £10.20

Have you set yourself any beauty challenges recently? Do you try and "go cheaper" where you can?

Beauty Bird xx

We're really enjoying having different people post on our blog and were so excited when this one came through, think we'll be racing you to the shops for these products!

If you're interested in writing us a guest post, get in touch via twitter or email :)