Trimming My Stash - November 2017 Edition - Empties And Mini Reviews

Even though I've been opening my advent calendars every day since last Friday, I'm still finding it pretty hard to believe that we are nearly a week into December already. This year has been pretty much blink and you'll miss it for me and the last month of the year seems to have started at a 100 miles an hour.

Waitrose Baby Bottom Butter - 125ml
Primark PS Cuticle Oil - 10ml
AVON Mattifying Foundation - Ivory - 30ml
Beauty Bible Shower Gel - 200ml
Boots Damask Rose Sensual Body Polish - 200ml
Pixi Glow Tonic Exfoliating Toner - 250ml
Primark PS Love Your Skin Oil Balancing Facial Cleansing Wipes x 25 Wipes
Primark PS Love Your Skin Oil Balancing Facial Cleansing Wipes x 25 Wipes

Total - 8 Items

So I'm late again but I'm back and raring to go with my November empties post. I really wanted to hit double figures for only the second time in 2017 but unfortunately I fell just short and I only managed to finish 8 items. Still it was an improvement on October's total of 5 items so I'm not too downhearted. I managed to finish a good variety of items as well with a few skincare body, some body products, and one make up item making the final cut.

1. Waitrose Baby Bottom Butter - 125ml

Apologies that the picture isn't the best but get past that and if you can get your hands on a tub of this fabulous butter then do it! My bestie bought me a tub of this wonder cream after reading about it in a newspaper and it's AMAZING! Officially it's for mini people but this is without a doubt the best foot cream and dry bit cream that I've ever used! Containing olive oil and chamomile you can use this stuff from head to foot. It's sticky and rich but it absorbs eventually and it has a slight vanilla citrus scent. After a shower I've literally been slathering it on my feet and popping on a pair of fluffy socks, and after just a few hours my feet are a lot softer and a lot more moisturised. This product seems to have gone AWOL lately but I'm lead to believe that it's back and that it's just been repackaged as the Waitrose Mini Soothing Baby Bottom Butter which now retails at £3.20 and it is worth every penny! We just need the Waitrose store in Intu Eldon Square to start stocking it again now so I can get some more!

2. Primark PS Cuticle Oil - 10ml

For many years now I've been devoted to OPI's Avoplex Cuticle Oil but after discovering this little bottle of magic in Primark, I pretty much waved it goodbye. At only £1 a bottle this stuff is fabulous is contains Avocado oil, and it does it's thing. It absorbs into the cuticles and nails in an instant and it makes an instant difference to both the look and the condition of the cuticles and the nails. I've bought a few for family members in the past and like me they love it. If something is cheap it doesn't mean that it's awful and this product is a case in point - it's brilliant!

3. AVON Mattifying Foundation - Ivory - 30ml

Now I'm usually a big lover of AVON foundations but for some reason I just didn't get on with this one at all. It was just too thick , and I actually really struggled to squeeze it out of the tube. On the face it looked very mask like and cakey and whilst I do prefer a matte foundation this one was just too heavy. The only positive was the colour match. AVON are always changing their products, lines and formulations and this particular product doesn't appear to be in the current line. One bad experience won't put me off using AVON foundations in the future though and I already have a couple of new ones to try.

4. Beauty Bible Shower Gel - 200ml

Next up another product that I recently tested for Beauty Bible, again due to their restrictions I can't really talk about it on the blog or identify it! It was a shower gel from a largely natural brand and I really liked it but I wasn't a fan of the packaging.

5. Boots Damask Rose Sensual Body Polish - 200ml

I honestly have no idea exactly how old this product is. My mam was sorting through some of her beauty drawers and she gave me this to use up. I've tried and tried to teach her about body scrubs and exfoliating but I've eventually resigned myself to defeat, she doesn't get it and she doesn't see the point - a shower gel and a body mop will as close as she ever gets to giving herself a good scrub - at times I wonder if we're even related!! So I ended up with this pleasant rose scented body scrub which of course I managed to use up in less than a month. It was a cream based scrub with very small exfoliating particles, not my favourite formulation of body scrub by any means but I used it up. This own brand range from Boots seems to be long gone but I'm sure you could easily find something similar.

6. Pixi Glow Tonic Exfoliating Toner - 250ml

Like so many bloggers and online dwellers I bought this product because of Caroline Hirons! It's a cult product and with good reason, from having relatively decent but slightly oily skin over the last 12 months or so, my skin has regained some of it's teenage angst! This stuff though has been a life saver, it's helped my knock some of those horrible hormonal spots on the head and it stopped my skin looking as dull and grey as it can do when it's craving a bit of sunshine. I will definitely buy this product again but at the moment I'm trying out the Superdrug Natural Radiant Glycolic Toner which is supposed to be pretty similar to PIXI Glow but without the price tag. I'll let you know how I got with that in a future post, oh! and if you are a PIXI fan then you might want to make sure your following my blog,  because I may have a giveaway post coming up in the next week or so that you won't want to miss!

7. Primark PS Love Your Skin Oil Balancing Facial Cleansing Wipes x 25 Wipes

8. Primark PS Love Your Skin Oil Balancing Facial Cleansing Wipes x 25 Wipes

Would it really be a monthly empties post on LouLouLand without any mention of these wipes? I think not. I'm hoping upon hope to get a few make up posts up before Christmas and make up pictures mean lots of swatch shooting and that means a lot of wrist and forearm wiping! These wipes are a real must have for me and I'm always finding new uses for them. I was actually in Primark this week though (haul post and video coming soon!), and I couldn't find these tea tree based wipes anywhere! I really hope they haven't discontinued them, I'll definitely be back in before Christmas so I'll have another look then and in the meantime I picked up a couple of packets of their micellar wipes to tide me over and get me through another couple of weeks of swatching and sanitising.

So they were my November empties, I'm planning on making a big push in the next few weeks to try and end my empties year on a high. Given my performance in 2017 as a whole, beating Novembers target of 8 items won't be easy but I'll give it my best shot 

Again I'm sorry that this post is so late - my time doesn't seem to be my own at the minute and my to do list is getting longer by the day but hopefully now that I've seen some friends before Christmas and that I've nearly finished my Christmas shopping. I'll have a bit of time to actually put the Christmas tree up, get some You Tube videos shot, and get some blog posts written - fingers crossed anyways x If you have any questions on any of the products that I finished in November then please leave me a comment below x

Life Lately, Social Media And Trimming My Stash - June 2017 Edition

Hey Guys? Remember Me? It's safe to say that when it comes to blogging, June was a little bit of a fail. I managed to upload quite a few videos to my You Tube channel but the words on the screen thing just didn't really happen for me last month.

I seemed to spend most of June in a weary, Fibro and ME induced foggy haze, I had the best of intentions to get out there and get things done but for most of the month neither my mind nor my my body would play ball.  As I say I managed to upload a few videos to my channel, and I was pretty active on Instagram, but the thanks to a lot of brain fog the words just wouldn't come, so I took a bit of time out, had lot of me time, and as a result I feel a little bit more refreshed.

I firmly believe that sometimes you do need to take a bit of time out, and spend some time concentrating on yourself and your own well being. Like a lot of bloggers I do feel guilty when I can't and don't post as frequently but I'm really trying to teach myself not to. I love my blog, my followers and the little space that I've created for myself online, but my blog is only part of me and my life, and sometimes as much as I love it, I just need to focus on the bits away from the camera and the screen. I've seen a few people saying that they'll stop following a blogger or a You Tuber if they don't post every single week, and I guess what I'm trying to say is for those people, no matter how "big" (I hate that term!) or small a blogger is they deserve to take time out and have some time away from it, we're are all but mere mortals and sometimes you need to say enough is enough, I need some R & R.

So I've had a mini blogging break, and whilst I can't guarantee that I won't be having another one in the near future, I'm back for now and I'm ready to get my blog on again, and since it's the 1st day of a new month, there is no better place to start than with a empties post x

Primark PS Love Your Skin Oil Balancing Facial Cleansing Wipes x 25 Wipes
Philosophy The Gingerbread Man Exfoliating Shower Gel - 473.1ml
Beauty Bible Face And Body Oil - 60ml
Dove Pure Care Dry Oil Non Greasy Conditioner - 50ml
Dove Pure Care Dry Oil Non Greasy Shampoo - 50ml

Total - 5 Items 

Hmm maybe it wasn't just my blogging mojo that disappeared in June! Again I had the best of intentions when it came to trimming my stash last month but it just didn't really happen. For the second month in a row I only managed to finish 5 items, and 5 very uninteresting items at that. 

1. Primark PS Love Your Skin Oil Balancing Facial Cleansing Wipes x 25 Wipes

Yes, another packet of these, and believe me they only slipped into June's total by the skin of their teeth! There is pretty much nothing else that i can say about these that I haven't already said! They're cheap, they do what they say they do, and they are one of my holy grail products even if I don't really use them for their intended purpose, like most of these wipes that I've used up this packet were used mainly for swatch clean up and freshening up x 

2. Philosophy The Gingerbread Man Exfoliating Shower Gel - 473.1ml

Instead of swapping my Christmas shower products for more Spring and Summer themed ones, this year I've decided just to leave them in the shower and try and use them up. I love Philosophy's Gingerbread Man range, it doesn't smell particularly gingery to me, instead I get sugar, and warm spices from it, and even a little bit of cheap cola but I've used it for years and the scent just makes me think about Christmas. That said this isn't my favourite product in the range, I like a gritty, grainy scrubs, and this one is basically just a whole bunch of fine particles surrounded by a runny, brown shower gel. I love the scent but it doesn't look particular pleasant and it's just not scrubby enough for me.

3. Beauty Bible Face And Body Oil - 60ml

Next up a mystery product, and it's a product that I was sent last year from the team at The Beauty Bible. If you don't know what The Beauty Bible is then where have you been? Basically it's a series of books that are crammed full of beauty product reviews that are written by real women. All you need to do to take part is sign up to be a tester on their website, and if you're selected, you pay a small fee to cover postage, and administration (and to prove that you're committed to taking part), and then you'll receive a huge package of goodies to try out and review. I've done it a couple of times now, and I've discovered some really nice products because of it, the only thing is that you aren''t supposed to share the products that you tried on social media so all I can say is that this was a body and face oil, I loved it on the body, but it was a big thumbs down from me as a facial oil.

4. Dove Pure Care Dry Oil Non Greasy Conditioner - 50ml

5. Dove Pure Care Dry Oil Non Greasy Shampoo - 50ml

Finally two products that came in successive Pink Parcel's and they are hair products from Dove. After a period of relative stability my hair problems returned with a vengeance and the only thing that seems to have helped has been to load it up with as much moisture as possible - I've been layering on the Philip Kingsley Elasticizer, and the hair oils, and I've been trying out a few different moisturising shampoos and conditioners. If you look at the Boots website these two Dove products for dull and dry hair have some amazing reviews, and even though these were just travel sizes I can see why. Not only do they smell great, with a fresh and clean scent, but both of these products left my hair feeling smoother, and more manageable, and thanks to the dry oil ingredients, unlike some other oil rich products that I've tried they didn't leave my hair feeling greasy, heavy or lank. I literally have a drawer full of shampoos, conditioners and hair products to use up, but if I was on the lookout for a new shampoo and conditioner I would definitely consider repurchasing both of these products, and if you have hair that needs a little bit of love then this range is definitely worth a try.

So bar a couple of shopping trips, my ongoing weight loss journey, and an afternoon tea, this post has pretty much summed up June in LouLouLand, My aims for July? lots of self care, lots of blogging, a bit of You Tube (check out my channel if you haven't already), a bit of Instagram and hopefully lots more empties x Whatever I do and whatever you do, I hope that July is a good month for all of us x Thanks for reading x