Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! 

Hopefully you all had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year. Mine was actually really laid back and chilled out, spent playing computer games with the family. 

Now it's the 1st Jan and I am putting those resolutions into action. I'm not back at work until the 4th and I'm not really going anywhere until then but this morning I got up and put some make up on even though nobody will see me but my husband and son (and they couldn't care less what I look like). Nothing special just some concealer and mascara plus a bit of lip balm, and some Body Shop coconut body spray, but I felt nice. I also put on a bracelet because I'm trying to get used to wearing more jewellery.

I also weighed myself. Once the scales had finished shrieking in alarm and I'd got over the shock I recorded it on my apps - I'm going to be using the Fitbit app and MyFitnessPal. I weigh 9 stone and 12 pounds. This isn't a whole lot considering there's people on the TV who weigh over 600 pounds and can't even get out of bed, whereas here I am still technically within the normal BMI range, but it's quite a lot for me as my best healthy weight is 8 stone and 7 pounds and my current weight is the heaviest I've been in years. 8 stone 7 is the weight where my joints stop playing me up so that's what I will be aiming for: a loss of 19 pounds. I've also taken my measurements and recorded those on another app; this is the first time I've done this so it will be interesting to see how my measurements change as I get healthier.

Luckily one side effect of all the junk I've been eating over the festive season is that I'm actually pretty sick of junk and my body is craving something healthier, so today was day 1 of eating decent food.

I started by having this for lunch:

'Mediterranean Quinoa' from Aldi, with some tomatoes and cucumber.

I've decided to start using the Happy Herbivore plant based meal plans again; I've used them a few times in the past and always found them pretty easy and tasty, filling enough that I'm not left feeling deprived, and, importantly, not expensive!! They work really well for me because I'm the only plant based eater in our family and it takes all the thought and most of the effort out of what to cook for myself, and all the meals can be cooked in advance at the weekend and just reheated later. Normally by the time I've cooked other stuff for the other 3 people I can't be bothered to do something fancy for myself so I usually end up getting a sandwich or some quick oven-junk food instead, but this way if I batch cook at the weekend I can guarantee a zero effort meal for myself all week long. You can get them in a 4 person menu, or a smaller 2 person version which is ideal for me as I can use one portion for dinner and use the second portion for lunch the next day. This is a 'Buffalodilla' which I had for dinner today and it was delicious. Excuse the presentation, I was starving and couldn't wait to eat!

In addition to quinoa it contains wheatberries, olives and some other stuff and because it cooks in the microwave in 1 minute it's my usual fallback for 'quick and easy whilst still reasonably healthy' lunch food. I often have this for work lunches but I am going to try and start having something a bit cheaper and home made. This was just to tide me over a bit whilst I got cooking on the other things I had planned...

The Body Shop: Shea Body Mist

Are you all enjoying the nice weather that's finally starting to appear? Though it's a bit hit and miss at the moment, with rain one minute and sun the next, hopefully it'll settle down soon and I can finally stop wearing so many layers of clothes! One thing I like to do once the weather gets warmer is break out all the body mists and lighter perfumes that have languished in my drawer all winter; I tend to wear stronger scents while it's cold since there's all that thick knitwear keeping the fragrance from reaching people's noses!

In honour of the impending spring, and because I had such a good experience with the Coconut and Moringa scents I reviewed here, I decided to treat myself to another of the Body Shop's lovely body mists: Shea. Like the others in this range, you get 100ml of product in a glass bottle, though they seem to have gone up in price since the last time I was there; they used to be £7, now they're £7.50. Still not a bad price considering how much you get, though.
Scent wise this is really, really lovely. It's sweet, nutty, earthy and creamy, a little bit like coconut, but fresher and more subtle. It's a lot weaker than the Moringa and Coconut scents, though - this may be a good thing or a bad thing depending on your own personal tastes, for me it's a bad thing as ten squirts usually wears off in about three hours for me, whereas the same amount of sprays of the Moringa and Coconut would last me pretty much all day. This wouldn't be a problem if it came in a plastic bottle, as I could just throw it in my bag and top it up during the day, but I'm reluctant to do that with glass.

What I liked:
It smells GORGEOUS.
The packaging is understated, but attractive. The glass makes it feel and look more luxurious than it would do if it were plastic, plus I like the way each bottle has the central image (nut, flower, fruit, whatever) with the Body Shop logo superimposed over it - simple but pretty. I have all three of my Body Shop mists out on my dressing table as they're too nice to hide away!

What I didn't like:
It doesn't last as long as I'd like, and while for many people the more subtle scent will be a plus, I would prefer it to be a little stronger. I'm thinking of getting the Eau de Toilette in the same scent and layering the two for a longer lasting and stronger effect.
The bottle is too large and fragile to carry in a handbag.

Body Shop Body Butter : Wild Cherry

Happy Friday! Today's review is for another Body Shop product, their ever-popular Body Butter in Wild Cherry.

 When I was a teenager Body Butters were really popular and I remember slathering myself in Mango body butter like there was no tomorrow. Almost 20 years on and the shop is still full of body butter, still in the familiar large round pots, but now with prettier labels and available in a lot more varieties than there used to be. As well as Wild Cherry, there's Olive, Cocoa Butter, Chocomania, Hemp, Moroccan Rose, Pink Grapefruit, Japanese Cherry Blossom, Sweet Pea, Vanilla, Floral Acai, Macademia, Shea, Coconut, Moringa, Satsuma, Mango, Sweet Lemon, Peach, Brazil Nut, Vitamin E, Almond, Aloe, Mango, Papaya, Blueberry and Strawberry! At £12.50 they're a little pricier than I'd normally pay for a body moisturiser but you get 200ml of product for your cash and a little bit goes a very long way, so I guess it's not too bad.

As soon as I opened the pot I noticed two things: one, it smells absolutely gorgeous. I was actually expecting an artifical, 'cherry coke' kind of black cherry scent, and that isn't the case. It smells strongly of real cherries. The scent is strong enough that you can definitely smell it on your skin long after it's applied, but not strong enough to be annoying or give you a headache. This is a plus for me. I like skin products to smell nice, but not knock out passers-by.

The other thing that I noticed was that it's a lot runnier than I'd been expecting. The Body Butters I used as a teenager were so thick as to be almost solid, and a quick squizz at some of the other varieties revealed they mostly have that same thick texture too. However, the jar does say 'for normal skin' whereas a lot of the other ones are intended for drier skin, so I figured normal=runnier.

The butter, or shall we say cream (it just doesn't seem like a butter to me when it's this fluid) has a pale pink colour, applies easily and sinks in fast. I was a little worried it wouldn't be that moisturising but my horribly dry skin on my legs slurped it up and felt wonderfully smooth afterwards. The butter leaves a slight residue on the skin which makes it feel extra moisturised, but it's not enough to feel greasy or leave marks on your clothes. It lasted a long time, too: despite my dry skin I am terrible at remembering to moisturise, yet two days later my legs still felt pleasantly nice and smooth.

What I liked:

Smells gorgeous

Lasts a long time

Absorbs quickly, yet is still very moisturising, even on very dry skin.

What I didn't like:

The price (although not appallingly expensive it's still more than I'd like to spend on a single body product)

The thickness. It wasn't buttery enough for me to think of it as an actual body butter. More like a moisturising cream in a jar.

Some people might think the scent is just a little bit too strong. I like strongly scented creams but if you prefer   less fragrant offerings, try one of the other butters as this is one of the more aromatic varieties the Body Shop sell. Some of them are strong, others a lot more subtle.

Would I use it again? Most certainly. I loved this so much that it even made me remember to moisturise my legs more often than the measly once a week or so that I normally achieve.

The Body Shop: Coconut and Moringa Body Mists

Last weekend I went into the Body Shop for the first time since I was a teenager: it was both a blast from the past and a big shock! I went to an all girls' school and we were all pretty much obsessed with the Body Shop: it was a fairly cheap, brightly coloured, scented haven of bath pearls and body butter, mini gift sets of shower gel, body lotion and the like. Back then, Dewberry and White Musk were the Latest Thing, and no self respecting teenager would be caught dead without at least one of their infamous little round pots of fruity lip balm in their bag. Fast forward.... um... a few years, and it seems the Body Shop has changed. It's become a lot more up market (along with, sadly, the prices), the packaging and products are more luxurious, and whilst many of the things I remember are still there, there's a wealth of new and exotic things to explore. I saw many things that I'd have loved to bring home, but I'm *supposed* to be on a no buy at the moment; in the end I limited myself to two items and consigned the rest to a wish list for another day!

One of the things that caught my eye the most was their new range of body mists. I was impressed by the selection of scents they've included in this range: there's mango, coconut, moringa, pink grapefruit, satsuma, shea, strawberry and vanilla. I'm pretty sure I also saw a chocolate one, although the Body Shop website doesn't have it listed; maybe I imagined that one? They cost £7 each; more than I'd normally pay for a body spray, but then again these are 100ml each - much bigger than the regular, Impulse-type aerosol sprays.

The first one I picked up was Coconut. I am addicted to anything that smells of coconut, so I'd have probably bought this one no matter what. I was a bit concerned that it would be one of those fake, overly strong, cloying 'sun cream' type coconut smells, but I'm pleased to report this is much nicer. It's a warm, summery, tropical coconut scent, not overpowering, but strong enough that it lasts a good long time: 5 or 6 squirts lasts about half a day on me, maybe a bit longer. You can still smell it on the skin after that, but not so noticeably. I absolutely love this one!

The second mist I chose was Moringa. I have to admit I'd never even heard of Moringa trees before; apparently they grow in India and throughout the tropics and are used for all sorts of purposes including food and medicine. They also have very strongly scented flowers! This spray is richly floral and in the same sort of family as jasmine, gardenia and freesia. It's stronger than the coconut one; three squirts is enough to last all day and I could still smell it a little the next morning too. Some people might find it a bit cloying, but I love it; it's quite a luxurious scent and as long as you use it sparingly, it's the sort of scent that turns people's heads and has them asking what that lovely perfume is that you're wearing.

Overall, I'm really happy with both these mists: they smell great, last a long time, and they look pretty too. The only thing I don't like about them is they're not very portable - when I wear a body spray I quite like to take it with me in my bag and top it up after a few hours, but with these, I'd be worried they would get smashed. Also, at 100ml they're a bit big to fit in my make up bag. It'd be nice if they had smaller, non-glass versions to pop in your handbag as well.