The Halloween Tag

Sorry I've been away for a while I've had lots on and not enough time to fit everything in. There needs to be extra hours in the day!

After being tagged by rach for the stars I decided to do my my Halloween blog post. Halloween is my favourite time of the year, I have currently Halloween nails on, I'm rocking Halloween earrings and Jack Skellington is definitely one of my favourite Disney characters! I tag everyone who wants to do this.

Tag Questions:

1. What's your favourite Halloween movie?

Of course it has to be Nightmare Before Christmas! Some people may call it a Christmas film but to me its a Halloween film! 

2. What game did you enjoy most at Halloween parties?

I loved ducking for apples. I could never do it so when I actually got an apple I was so pleased with myself!

3. Are you dressing up this year and as what?

No I'm not which I'm slightly gutted at, I love dressing up.

4. What is your favourite & funniest childhood memory of Halloween?

I loved when all of our estate used to go trick or treating. We literally had no costumes only black bin bags and homemade witches hat but they were the best times. Then coming home after and seeing your stash of sweets!

5. Do you like monkey nuts?
No but I love walnuts, I hate how you always only get 1 or 2 of them in a mixed nuts bag. I always had to get mum to crack the shell for me when I was younger cause I could never work the nut cracker!

6.Do you decorate the house for Halloween?

No I don't unfortunately, my family don't love Halloween as much as me.

7. What's your favourite Halloween treat?

Toffee apples used to be the best when I was a kid now I love the boo boxes from Hotel Chocolat!

What is the best costume you've ever seen?

My cousin in America dressed as a transformer one year and my nieces customes this year are amazing! They have dressed up as zombie prom queens.

What is your least favourite Halloween costume?

Ones that have no originality in them at all or the super short ones.

Have you ever repeated a costume and what was it?
No I havent, I always try to do bigger & better than the previous year. 

My Halloween nails

Here are some of my favourite costumes 

I don't have a photo of me in my outfit
but I loved this makeup

My two nieces ready to scare

PicStick

A couple of weeks ago I got offered the opportunity to get a sample from PicStick. PicStick is an online company that puts your photos on magnets. PicSticks are high quality glossy photographic magnets, Each photo measures 50x65mm. They come in a grid of 9 photos that can be easily separated by tearing along the perforations or by bending them and they then snap off

You can make these on your computer, tablet or phone. I have so many photos on my phone so I used my phone to do it and it was very user friendly. You can also connect to Facebook and browse friends photos and use them which is great if you are doing them for a present. Once you have your nine photos selected they are added to your basket and you can make another set of nine or go to the checkout.

I thought this was a great way of displaying photos and got straight onto the website to get me some of those little beauties! To order the photos you need to create an account and once that was done I got straight to business and sorted out what photos I wanted to use. You can upload as many photos as you want and then pick which ones you want to use. When selecting the photo you want you can crop it, rotate it and make sure all you want is in the magnet and you're not cutting half a head off in the process. It was so easy to do and the hardest part was picking which photos would look best in their little magnet form! Any photos you upload are stored in your account so when you go to make more will all still be there which is great.

It costs £9.50 and shipping is free, what a bargain! That works out at just over £1 for each magnet. It's a great service and is great for making little presents for people.

You can buy yours from https://www.picstick.com/

Product courtesy of PicStick

Packing Light

I am ashamed to admit I can't pack lightly, no matter how hard I try it never works. The same rule applies when I'm packing up my make up. I decided to show you how much I brought with me for my weekend to Dublin in the hope that someone might share in my over packing problem!!

Everything I brought with me I used except for maybe one of the lipsticks so I wasn't packing for the sake of packing!

Urban Decay foundation primer, eye shadow primer & All Nighter setting spray.

Foundation - MAC Studio Fix for going out and L'Oreal Nude Magique for daytime .

Mascara - Benefit Bad Gal Lash for going out and Seventeen Falsifeye for daytime. I'm so fussy about my mascaras and hate comb wands it has to be the original brush mascaras as there is nothing worse than clumpy eyelashes.

Eye Shadow Palettes - Urban Decay Vice 2, Too Faced Chocolate Bar and Sleek i Divine Original. When going out I used shades out of all of these and couldn't go away with one palette as I like to have different eye make up for during the day and each night.

Lipstick - Revlon Colorburst Elusive & Showy, Maybelline Color Sensational Hot Plum, Sleek True Colour Lipstick Mystic, Lime Crime Airborne Unicorn & Rimmel Kate Matte Lipstick Kiss Of Life. Ok so I mightn't have needed 5 lipsticks for a four day trip but I need to be prepared for all eventualities (really not justifying it at all).

Lip Pencil -2  Mac lip pencils in Cherry & Magenta, and 2 Barry M lip pencils no. 7 & 2. Obviously bringing 5 lipsticks required four lipliners. I definitely have a problem!

Blush - MAC powder blush Pink Swoon & Stila Convertible Colour Peony.

HD Brow palette in Foxy.

Crown Brush Concealer Palette.

Mac Studio Fix Powder.

Benefit Hoola bronzing powder.

Maybelline Eye Studio Lasting Drama Gel Eyeliner in Black.

So there it all is, I defintootly needed to bring it all with me and would have been lost if I only brough half of it. I am definitely a make up junkie especially when it comes to lipsticks (rehab is needed).

Weekend Away To Dublin

So this time last week we were living it up in Dublin's fair city. Me and the girls love our weekends away and this time Dublin was our destination of choice. We had pre booked our train on line and cost us £27 return which is such a bargain as it costs £42 if you pay on the day. We went on Friday afternoon and came home on Monday afternoon which was the perfect amount of time.

I was in charge of booking the hotel and boy did I get us a good one! Because my dad is from Dublin he was able to guide us in the right area and we ended up staying in Double Tree by The Hilton which has been taken over from the Burlington. It's close enough to the centre of the town but not too close that your in the middle of the rowdiness. We also got a choc chip cookie on arrival which was a definite selling point when we were checking out all the different hotels. The hotel itself was so welcoming and after our hairy taxi ride from the train station it was much appreciated. The room was nice and modern and everything possible had been thought of. Because there was three of us we got a triple room so it was a double bed and a single bed which was good because sometimes you get lumbered with a sofa bed and it's never as comfy as an actual bed. It was such a bargain too, for the 3 nights it cost each of us £90, everyone who I've told this to couldn't believe it was so cheap!
I would definitely recommend this hotel, I couldn't fault it in any way. If I'm going down to Dublin any time soon I will be rebooking Double Tree. Have a look at the website and see how amazing the hotel is for yourself.

On the Friday night we went out to Flannery's in Camden Street. Flannery's is a great wee spot and the music is great, although very random. One minute Oasis was being played, then old skool dance songs thrown together with a bit of modern pop! We got chatting to three fella's who were heading over to Whelan's and said it was a great wee spot so off we trotted over there and when we got in we couldn't wait to leave! It would have been grand if we weren't so overdressed, we walked in and everyone looked at us as if to say spot the tourists so we had 1 drink and hotfooted it back to Flannery's. We were having an early night on Friday to save ourselves for the Saturday so left around 1am and went back to the hotel and decided to have a drink in the residents bar where we happened to come across the Cardiff Blues rugby team and ended up sitting with them in the bar to 6am (so much for the early night).

On Saturday we had so many plans, get up early and head into town, have a nosey about before settling down in a pub and watch the hurling final. Well that plan went out the window when we all woke at 10am with severe hangovers! We dozed on and off all day in the hotel at one stage being rudely awoken by the hotel testing the fire alarm 3 times! That didn't help our sore heads at all. We ended up watching the match in bed with our bottles of water at one side and our junk food on the other dozing throughout the match! We finally surfaced around 7pm and we decided we ought to get food if we were ever making it out that night. We walked into town and paid a visit to TGI Fridays which pulled us around and I got a Starbucks on the way back to the hotel which had us ready to go. We got back to the hotel around 10 and got ourselves sorted to go out and were finally leaving the hotel around 12am! It feels so weird going out at that time but Dublin has a completely different way of living and it was great because there was no rushing and we could have a few drinks before going out!

We asked the taxi driver where was good to go and he named us a few places to go before dropping us off at Krystle in Harcourt Street. It was a brilliant wee spot and when we went to buy our second round of 3 Captain Morgan's, 1 Coke & 1 Fanta the bar woman told us you could buy a bottle of Captain Morgan and 5 mixers for €60 which was a great bargain considering our first round was €23. We left there about half three and walked to Camden Street to get food then headed back to the hotel. Unfortunately there was nothing exciting happening in the hotel bar so we headed up to bed.

The next morning we woke with fresh heads and headed into the town for a bit of sight seeing and playing the tourist. We walked around the city for a good 4 hours calling in at Trinity College on our way round. That's my first time inside and the place is amazing, going from the hustle and bustle of the busy streets outside to complete peacefulness and quiet inside is the weirdest sensation. We were going to call in and see the Book Of Kells but it had closed half an hour earlier so we walked around and took in the amazing view

After walking for most of the day our bellies got the better of us and we stopped in at Captain America's for food and it was amazing. It was exactly what we needed and after dinner we headed back to the hotel and cosied up in our pjs with a drink to finish off the weekend.

This building had us asking everyone what it was all weekend. It was the most random wee building in the most random wee spot, every time we walked past it into town we always slowed down so we could have a good nosey at it!

All in all it was an amazing weekend away as it always is when I go away with these girls. There's always so many funny stories that only we will laugh at because we know the story behind it (Balamory) and we will giggle about it for years to come.

September Favourites

I can't believe it's October already, September has flown by! With the start of a new month it's time for my September favourites.

1. Too Faced Chocolate Bar - This has been the best purchase I have made in a long time. When going on weekends away I always bring my Urban Decay Naked palette so made the tough decision to leave it at home and bring this to Dublin with me last weekend. I didn't miss the naked palette at all and used this so much. It has so many colours on it that you can wear day or night which is also what I love about the Naked palette. I couldn't pick a favourite shade in it as they are all amazing but there are four shades I have a definite soft spot for. They are Marzipan, Hazelnut, Creme Brulee and Haute Chocolate. They are all metallic colours and can be blended over the top of other matte shades on the palette to give them more depth. This retails at £45 which quite steep but it definitely worth the buy. I will be posting up a full review of this during the week.

2. Bed Head Totally Baked - This is from Bed Head's Candy Fixations range. I love this product it smells of lemon meringue and it works wonders on my hair. It adds volume without leaving a greasy residue on my hair which is what I need with my hair being quite greasy anyway. You put it on your hair when it is wet and then blow dry your hair as normal. With me having short hair it really helps pad it out and makes styling it much easier. It lasts forever, as a little really does go along way. This is my second bottle of it and the first one lasted me well over a year and that's me using it every time I wash my hair. This retails at around £8 and you can get it from Sally's or on line from different websites.

3. Soap & Glory Sugar Crush Body Scrub - Yet another month where a Soap & Glory product makes it into my favourites. This scrub is amazing. It gets rid of all your flaky skin so you don't look like a flaky old lizard which is definitely not a look you want to be rocking! It contains smashed brown sugar, sweet lime, almond oil and macadamia grains. Any time I use it the bathroom smells of lime for ages after, its so yummy. I use it once a week to get rid of all the leftover tan from the previous week and it moisturises as well as scrubs which is great as some scrubs out there are quite drying on the skin. This body scrub retails at £8 from Boots and is currently on offer at 3 for 2. I also recommend trying the rest of the Sugar Crush range from soap and glory as it smells equally as yummy.

4. Burt's Bees Hand Cream - Anyone who knows me knows that I have a soft spot for banana flavoured/smelling things so when I when I seen this in Holland & Barrett I had to get it! The smell of banana hits you as soon as you open it and lingers on your hands when you use it. Burt's Bees is a great company and I love their lip balms as well. The only problem with it is that it's in a glass jar and if you're as clumsy as me you have to be very careful. Mine dropped out of my handbag on to the floor shortly after I bought it and the jar smashed, which meant I reluctantly had to throw it in the bin and buy a new one. Although it's a hand cream you can use it on your elbows, knees, feet or any other horrid little dry patches you want to banish! Its £10.35 and a little goes a long way so it will last a lifetime.

5. Rimmel Kate Matte Lipstick, 111, Kiss Of Life - If you haven't guessed already I have a slight obsession with lipsticks! I have been looking for the perfect red lipstick for a long time and after buying a lot of pinky reds and berry reds I finally found this little beauty! A few people had told me to try out Ruby Woo by MAC but I've seen a few reviews saying it's hard to apply and it dries out your lips which is never a good look. It's an orange red and teamed with my MAC Cherry lip pencil it is long lasting and doesn't feather or dry out my lips which is perfect. It's true to it's colour and one quick swipe is great coverage.  The packaging is great as it's bright red so it's easy to find in the bottom corner of my handbag. It retails at £5.49 and is a great bargain for anyone wanting to try it out.

That's my favourite products for another month and I look forward to hearing any products you have been loving this month so I can try them out and they might end up in my favourite post next month! Has anyone else noticed that I mention all my favourites this month except my lipstick smell good, I'm such a magpie when it comes to nice smelling products!