Happy 3rd Birthday to Us!

Hi all!

Just a quick post to say it was our third blog birthday on the 14th of January - we have both been so busy in our new jobs after Christmas that we completely forgot about it!

It's been a great three years and we've had lots of fun writing posts and sharing our lives with you. It seems like 2015 will see some changes in our blog as our lives have changed drastically since we started writing as students in 2012 but fingers crossed you will still find posts and reviews enjoyable to read. I'm sure it won't be changing too much!

Picture from Pinterest - Outsidevoice.net

So thank you so much to all of our readers for coming back again and again, raving about the same products, sharing our frustrations with life and generally working harder to get where we all want to be in life.

Hopefully this next year will be better than ever!

Lots of love

L and M xxx

MAC Brule Eyeshadow

Good morning!

I'm really excited to show you my latest Mac purchase, its been a while since I've picked anything up from Mac so it was a pretty random purchase when I bought the Brulé eye-shadow. I've been building up my palette extremely slowly; I think this year it's definitely going to be a challenge for me to buy a few more shades and build up a palette that I can take anywhere. 

Brulé is described as a soft creamy beige, its another nudey colour that so many people rave over. I absolutely love the eye shadows in the urban decay naked basics palette but I've been using Venus - a shimmery white satin colour - a lot more than the other colours so I know I need a similar colour in my Mac palette too so that I have one in every palette!

You can see the colour with flash above and without flash below. To give Mac their credit this is a really smooth and blendable colour, I use it to cover my whole eyelid and create a good base before adding any further colours for definition. Their eyeshadows are a well respected area of their product range but they really are good and the colour range cannot be competed with.
However this isn't the colour that I thought it would be, it blends perfectly with my skin tone which is surprising as it's so light but just goes to show how pale I really am.

You can see Brulé in my palette below, it fills a gap of a matte light nude colour and I know it will be used a lot I'm just surprised it didn't turn out lighter than it did. It seems my skin tone is even lighter than I thought so I will really need a white ish colour to use as a highlight for the inner corners of my eyes! If anyone has any suggestions of a colour that fits this description please let me know, I have a Debenhams beauty card with £10 on it that is now burning a hole in my pocket!

So here is Brule applied evenly all over my eyelid:

You can see it blends perfectly and creates an even base for any other eyeshadows to be applied on top.

The photo below shows All That Glitters and Sable applied to give my eye a bit more contour; this was for work so I've gone for a lighter look than usual!

I really like this colour and think it fills in a gap in my palette perfectly. It wasn't the colour that i thought it would be on my skin but actually that's ok, it will definitely get used for most eye make up looks. It just means I will need to keep searching for another....

What do you think of Brule? Do you have a MAC palette like this? Do you have any suggestions for the next addition to my palette - preferably a light shimmery off white?

L xxx

Fitness Friday: Food Maths

Good morning!

I've had a really bad 2 weeks of exercising, I've had a bit of a virus that wiped me out for a week or so. I thought I was OK but went to Body Combat and had to leave when the stars came rolling in and I thought I was going to hit the floor!

After a few days without the gym I felt better but work has taken over a session or two so I haven't really got my A game back yet.

Throughout this time I've had to try and reel in my eating habits. I do eat healthily and can't remember the last time I had crisps, biscuits or chocolate but I am constantly hungry so keeping my food and snacks all within a decent calorie range and without overdoing the sugar is important.

There's one thing that always helps me keep my raging food monster from taking over, and that's Food Maths. Bear with me, I'm not about to get some crazy equations out and boggle your brain in a Friday.... This is pretty simple. 

I'm giving you some foods and their equivalent exercises you would need to burn them off. Get ready to be horrified!

To start off, here are images from Pinterest so you understand what I mean:

Image from Pinterest but property of Skinny Mom

I don't know about you but 87 minutes of crunches, 272 burpees or endless running sound horrendous and boring and totally uninspiring!

There are definitely more fun ways of burning these foods off but MY GOD isn't it a wake up call?!

Let's have a browse of the next one.....




I love fried chicken but 65 minutes on a bike? I struggle with a 45 minute spin class!

159 minutes of climbing stairs?! My heart rate would sky rocket doing that, and don't even get me started on the 170 minutes of Pilates.

Wow, doesn't it all make it really hit home what you're eating??

I do find things like this really help but a lot of these snacks aren't what I eat so I've looked up a few of my favourite snacks and treats to see what I'd need to do for those:

1) Starbucks Blueberry Muffin - admittedly I am more likely to eat my mums homemade muffins as I'm a cheap individual and wouldn't fork out the cash (forever a student....) but blueberry muffins rate highly on my treat scale and I would pay for these when I had the cash....These come in at 380 calories which according to My Fitness Pal would take me 40 minutes of running (at 5mph) to burn off or 32 minutes of swimming.

2) Whitworth's Fruit, Nut and Seed mix - this stuff is the best mix I've found. It's an even distribution of fruit and nut as opposed to a game of 'spot the almond amongst the raisins' and all of it tastes great. In my opinion it's healthier than eating chocolate and sweets but it's easy to get out of control. A serving is 25g but I never measure.....going with a 50g helping this would give me 240 calories to burn. This equates to 23 minutes on the elliptical trainer as punishment...just for a few bits of dried fruit and nut!

3) 9 Bars - I can't get enough of these beauties, so many gorgeous flavours and some even have a bit of chocolate on them.....drool! The 50g bars can take you into the 280 calorie region meaning a 33 minute Zumba class is coming my way!

4) Nutella - its a shameful secret that I have a tub of Nutella by my bed (literally with my name on thanks to Selfridges!) that I tend to have a teaspoon out of when I'm feeling low, it does work to cure my chocolate cravings usually so I don't feel guilty about it but the other day I sat and ate quarter of the tub with a spoon straight out of the jar....whoops! That's 520 calories for a few spoons of happiness - I felt seriously better afterwards (long day and feeling run down, you know the drill) but the 65 minute hike with a weighted back pack necessary to burn them off definitely wouldn't!

So even with my seemingly healthier alternatives to a pizza and a family bag of crisps I'd still have to do some serious exercise to burn off my treats.

Have you thought about your snacks as an exercise to complete afterwards? Have you really thought about how much your weekend takeaway chinese food or pizza might be ruining your hard work during the week?

It's a scary thought, but it's all about balance. Being aware of your calorie intake from treats goes a long way to helping you towards your goals!

L xxx

Nip and Fab Body Wash - Energy Boost and Detox Blend

Shower gel can be a bit of a boring topic can't it?

Everyone uses it, most people would just use whatever is on offer during their weekly shop and I'm no different. I have been making my way through my stash and have finally used up the Soap and Glory bottle that seem to last for up to 6 months at a time.

However I couldn't resist picking these up from Nip and Fab, on offer at the moment in Superdrug in a buy one get one free offer. If I'm honest £7.50 is a lot for a shower gel but in a deal like this at £3.75 it didn't seem too bad.

I picked up both the Energy Boost and Detox Blend and have been testing them out.

The Energy Boost Body Wash contains uplifting Lemon, Grapefruit and Sweet Mandarin fragrances. It's a lovely awakening scent which is something to be welcomed in the morning, however it's not as authentic as the Original Source shower gels. I'm a big 'sniffer' of products (if that doesn't sound weird and disgusting) and scents are a big hit or miss for me. This was strangely neither, it had a lot of promise but didn't amount to anything which was a little disappointing.

The packaging is perfect though, colour coded for each scent and just like the rest of the Nip and Fab skincare range which I really like. I also like that all of the info is on the front of the bottles and just on the one sticker. Its funky and draws your eyes to different areas.

The Detox Blend Body Wash contains Tea Tree, Green Tea and Jasmine to purify and detoxify as well as cleanse.
This scent was the same for me, it had lots of promise and whilst I'm grateful that both weren't overpowering (I get headaches from strong smells) they were just a bit too bland and could have had more of a punch, particularly with the lemon.

That said they both lathered up easily courtesy of SLS being the second ingredient in the products. I just feel a bit disappointed with these and can't say I would pay the £3 for them again let alone the full price of £7.50.
I'm a self confessed lover of Nip and Fab but feel like these products have misfired and are a bit 'meh' when compared to other products such as their Viper Venom and Dragon's blood ranges (both of which are fabulous!).

With Original Source recently on offer in Tesco for half price at £1.10 for 250ml or in fact Superdrug who had them for 98p (!) smelling a good ten times better and more authentic than these I know which one I would choose....

I hate to write negative reviews but feel like its necessary sometimes to save another from spending hard earned cash on something that ultimately is a little disappointing - sorry Nip and Fab! It's probably because i have such high expectations from how amazing the skincare range is that this was a bit of a surprise.


Have you tried the body range from Nip and Fab? Are you a fan of authentic scents from real essential oils?

L xxx