Feeling Flush With Tarte - A Review Of The Tarte Amazonian Clay 12 Hour Blush In Flush And The Bamboo Blush / Cheek Brush

When it comes to beauty brands, I think that we're very lucky in the UK. Not only do we have free and easy access to some of the biggest brands in the world but we also have so many amazing budget brands right on our doorstep.

It doesn't stop us wanting though, and unfortunately for us, some brands just aren't that easy to get a hold of. The ability to shop online though has made all the difference, and through the magic of the internet we can now get out hands on brand as varied as Wet and Wild, Lorac and Milani from the USA, Tony Moly and Holika Holkia from Asia, and Annabelle from Canada.

For years and years one of the brands that I lusted after above all others was US brand Tarte. Alas all the sites that sold it didn't ship to the UK, and ebay prices were quite frankly ridiculous. I lusted though, and years ago I even mentioned the brand in a Sephora lust list post from way back in 2010.

Although the beautiful Louis Vuitton Vernis Fleur esq palette is long gone, this year British beauty junkies prayers were answered and Tarte became a little bit easier to access. Sephora started shipping to the UK, stores like Rose's Beauty Store, and Amazon started selling the odd bit all be it at  often slightly inflated prices, and the biggie for me QVC UK became the only official stockist of Tarte in Europe.

The selection isn't huge but it's ever changing, and shows seem to pop up now every couple of months. Whilst I want to try everything from the brand, I started small and Mummy Lou got me probably one of their most famous products for my birthday way back in May.

Mention Tarte nowadays and more often then not now people think blusher!!! There are a few types blusher and cheek colour in the Tarte range but by far the most famous has to be the Amazonian Clay 12 Hour Blush. These blushers are crammed full of real natural clays, harvested from the banks of the Amazon River. The blushers are baked and are full of vitamins and nutrients. The ingredients benefit all skintones and skin types, minimising oil production in oily skins, and providing hydration moisture to dry skins, all of which helps the blusher to stay in place and look better for longer.

The colour selection on Sephora ranges well into double figures, but currently I believe QVC only stock about 5 shades. I'd already made a wishlist and thankfully one of my most wanted was and still is available on the QVC website - Flush.

Describe by the Sephora website Flush as pink, berry, all of the Amazonian Clay blushers come packaged in tonal packaging, similar too but not identical to the colour inside.

The compact contains a mirror and the blusher itself it embossed with the Tarte logo, and an almost, rain forest type design. Although I love the look of embossing on blushes and eyeshadows, it isn't always conducive to pigmentation, not in this case though. Yes you need a couple of swirls with a brush to loosen it up a bit but after that the payoff is amazing, in fact I would even go as far as to say that you need a really light hand, to avoid overdoing it, and creating a Aunt Sally type look.

The pinkish, berry description is probably about right, it a very neutral pink tone, that I think would work well on a lot of people. I've taken a few picture both with and without flash to give you an idea of what it looks like on me. First here are a couple of with the flash,

and a couple without the flash.

These photos aren't the best, and whilst part of that could be down to my not so good photography skill, I'm not sure that's why. I think the reason why it's so hard to pick up on my skin is because it's exactly the shade that I would blush naturally, and it's the colour that my skin goes when I'm feeling a little bit overheated. Despite all the pretty colours that blusher now comes in, the original purpose of blusher or rouge, was to enhance that sort of coy, natural youthful flush, and this product does exactly that on my skin.

Flush really is the perfect colour for me, it's the perfect colour for my skin tone, and used lightly gives that perfect flushed cheek look. This blusher lived completely up to my all be it very high, expectations,  and the pigmentation and wear time on my combination skin was excellent. Just a small swirl with a blusher brush was enough to create a pretty, pinched cheek look. Of course you can use any blush or cheek brush that you have, but the blusher I received came with one of Tarte's bamboo handled brushes.

Unfortunately the blush no longer comes with a brush on QVC, and I can't find this particular one from any other Tarte retailer but I believe it's just their normal, domed cheek brush.

Like the majority of brushes in their range it come with a sustainably, harvested bamboo handle, a gold tone ferrule embossed with the Tarte logo, and the softest, synthetic hairs, you will ever feel.

Again I have to say I'm impressed, it felt super soft on the skin, picked up the product easily and it washed well with minimal, if any shedding.

Tarte products aren't cheap by means, but based on my first two products I've tried. I'm impressed. The philosophy, and ethics behind the company are excellent and the two products that I've tried are great quality and deliver great results. I definitely want to try more Amazonian Clay Blushers and I already have my heart set on Dollface, and Exposed, and I certainly wouldn't be frightened to try their brushes again. QVC is probably the easiest place to buy some of these shades from at the moment especially with their 30 day money back guarantee, but for some of the other shades I may have to pay a little bit more from Rose's Beauty Store, or even consider a Sephora order, and their scary taxes and duty - eek. This experience has only just whetted my Tarte love and I can't wait to try some things from the brand, in fact thanks to Mummy Lou I already have a few more products to try, but more on that next week, with my September haul. Thanks for reading and if you have any Tarte recommendations I'd love to hear them xx

Foodie Friday - What I Ate In September

Ah September and food, where do we start? Well for at least a quarter of the month food was the farthest thing from my memory but we've been through that enough already, but I didn't cook as much as I hoped and I certainly didn't try any new dishes, well apart from the epic cake I made for Mummy Lou's birthday.

It was an epic birthday meal all round, the main course was my immense Gluten Free Mushroom And Basil Lasagne, made with some of my homemade easy pesto sauce.

This is probably the most drawn out, excuse the use of the word again, but epic recipe ever. It's time consuming but so worth the effort for a special occasion.

The lasagne was hard work, but in typical LouLou style, I don't do things be halves and made an even more time consuming dessert.

Yes, it was a cake, a 6 tiered gluten free sponge cake to be precise (I used this recipe 3 times replacing the lemon with a splash of vanilla extract and some food colouring). It was supposed to be blue, yellow, and pink but as you can see the pink food colouring (Asda's) was erm, useless! I sandwiched the layers together with butter cream, and Carnation Caramel, and cut a hole in the middle of the middle 4 cakes to make...

a Pinata Cake! I then filled the hole in the centre with Peanut M&M's and Galaxy Caramel Bits, Before covering it in literally a mountain of vanilla butter cream, and white chocolate jazzies.

OMG it was the most stressful thing I've ever done, first of all there was the problem with cakes, would they turn out? and would they crumble when I tried to cut them? Then there was the food colouring issue - it kind of ruined the look with an insipid beige colour rather than the pretty pink I anticipated. Then of course it was slightly too high so I had to hold it steady with skewers because I thought it might tip over arghhhh. Yeah so by the time it came to cutting the cake I was a nervous wreck, thankfully though the look on my mums face made it worth while and it tasted amazing, but never again - this was a one off - lol

So the birthday meal was by far my September highlight but what else did I eat? Well the rest of the month was mainly spent trying to get my head around food again. I ate a lot of plain stuff for a week or so, a lot of plain pasta, lots of potatoes, and lots of eggs and toast. I'm lucky to have relatives with chickens so over the last month I've probably ate more than I have done in a long time. I'm a huge scrambled egg fan, and this was a version using some leftovers, mainly spring onion, a spare slice of cheddar and some cream cheese, all on top of an Udi's Gluten Free Bagel.

As well as the chickens, I think I've told you before, but both my uncles have a lot of land and last month we received some more bagfuls of homegrown produce.

Onions, parsnips, apples, green beans, beetroot, you name it we got it, things are now either blanched, or stewed and frozen or in a cool dark place for use later in the year. One of my uncles had also been blackberry picking and provided us with this mountain of berries that my mum swiftly converted into several zillion jars of jam.

When I want comfort food nothing hits the spot more than a bowl of soup. Despite the still relatively fine weather in September I've started on the soup early this year. First up probably my favourite, my mum's Leek and Potato.

This was the soup of my childhood, and the warmth and creaminess really takes me back. A newer favourite of mine is of course Broccoli and Stilton, well it would be a newer favourite, up until about 5 years ago I detested blue cheese, it's funny how your tastes change.

Stilton obviously isn't very popular is my little part of Co Durham as my local Tesco nearly always has some in the reduced section. We love it though and in September I also made a variant of my Broccoli, Stilton And Walnut Pasta, only this time I threw in a little bit of vegan chorizo, for a bit more of a kick.

Treats weren't high on the agenda in September but I must include the vanilla cheesecake shots, and the Glo Worm from the recent Candy Rocks Jewellery Event (read my post here to find out more).

Oh and I guess I could count this as treat too - I finally broke my Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte duck. I'm not a huge cinnamon fan but I give in, it is as nice as everyone says and I may have even had another one today :). If you do have one though I would  definitely recommend you get them to use the Guatemala Antigua origin espresso, it's about 25p extra but it has a sweet, warm, spicy taste that really takes a PSL to the next level.

So that was my September food highlights. I was worried that I wouldn't have a lot to show you but I think I managed to make a post out of it. In October I'm going to try and get back on the healthy eating bandwagon, and I'm going to try and experiment a bit more. I've got a few, new recipe ideas that I want to try and I want to play about with some old favourites, so hopefully I'll have some new things to show you soon. Thanks for reading and don't forget to let my know your September food highlights x

400 Bloglovin Followers Winner Revealed

Hi Guys x First of all I want to say a huge, huge thank you to everyone that entered my 400 Bloglovin giveaway and everyone that followed because of it. I appreciate everyone that even taken 5 minutes out of their busy lives to take a peek at my blog.

As I've said before I've really enjoyed reading all your comments and I will be definitely be taking on board some of your post suggestions and I'm definitely going to try and do more of the posts you want to see.

Alas they can only be one winner this time round, and thankfully rafflecopter did the hard part for me and randomly picked out one winner. The winner entered by being a fan of my facebook page and that winner is....

Abigail Daniel

a Rafflecopter giveaway


Congratulations Abigail, I'll be sending you an email tonight, and if you can reply within 48 hours if possible, otherwise in the interests of fairness I'll pick another winner x

I'm so sorry that so many of you are going to be left disappointed, but seriously, don't be! Over the course of this giveaway I've hit several more follower milestones, so I have some more giveaways to come, both on here and on some of my other social media channels. The first mini one "may" be up on the blog on either Sunday or Monday ;)

Thanks again for following and entering and please stick around, for more reviews, recipes, and much, much more x

Trimming My Stash - September 2014 Edition - Empties And Mini Reviews

It's a scary thought but there are now only 3 months left of 2014. Where on earth has this year gone! I was looking at some pics on instagram yesterday that I remember taking and they were taken 18 weeks ago arghhh, well I guess it shows my memories decent lol but seriously where does time go? Another month means another empties post, and like everything else in September, Trimming My Stash was affected by my illness. Despite having a few make up items that are just about done, I ended September with them still alive and kicking, and I didn't finish anywhere near as many products as I'd hoped.

Primark Beauty Oil Balancing Cleansing Wipes With Tea Tree - 25 Wipes
Primark Beauty Oil Balancing Cleansing Wipes With Tea Tree - 25 Wipes
Liz Earle Eyebright Soothing Eye Lotion - 150ml
House Of Holland Glamour And Glitz All In A Spritz Signature Spritz - 75m
Clarins Gentle Exfoliator Brightening Toner - 125ml
The Body Shop Sweet Lemon Shower Gel - 250ml

Total - 6 Items

Okay 6 items are better than nothing but I'm still a little bit disappointed. The majority of products that I finished in September, were surprise, surprise illness related. Face wipes instead of proper cleansing, refreshing shower gels, eye compresses to deal with headaches, and body spray to reduce the nasty niff's. 

1. Primark Beauty Oil Balancing Cleansing Wipes With Tea Tree - 25 Wipes

2. Primark Beauty Oil Balancing Cleansing Wipes With Tea Tree - 25 Wipes

My old favourite face wipes, and last month I found a stash in the original packaging. I normally use these for the odd refresh and for cleaning up swatches, but in September I used them for at least a week, at least twice a day to refresh and cleanse. My skin as a result was a little bit drier but that could have been down to illness and general dehydration. These are now under a slightly different name and in different packaging but there still the same, for a £1 for 2 packets you can't go wrong, just don't use them all the time

3. Liz Earle Eyebright Soothing Eye Lotion - 150ml

I've had a little look through my blog and I honestly thought that I'd already reviewed this for you. I haven't it but I definitely will. This product is amazing, and I honestly don't think there is anything else like this out there. I bought this in a duo but I will definitely repurchase, it makes such a difference to my eyes, and my mood. Expect a review soon x 

4. House Of Holland Glamour And Glitz All In A Spritz Signature Spritz - 75ml

This came from a House Of Holland Christmas gift set from Boots a few years ago. Like everything else in the range, it had a fresh, almost unisex fragrance. This range hasn't been available for a year or so now, so it must have been a one off.

5. Clarins Gentle Exfoliator Brightening Toner - 125ml

Eek me bad! I did promise you a review of this but like a lot of things I never got round to it. This is a toner that's full of fruit acids, which help to brighten the complexion and smooth the skin. This in my opinion isn't quite as zingy as say Alpha H Liquid Gold but it smells nicer. I really think this has made a difference in my skin with regards to breakouts, blemishes and skin texture, and I actually had a few comments about the improvement in my skin. I will definitely consider repurchasing but the £25 price tag is a bit off putting.

6. The Body Shop Sweet Lemon Shower Gel - 250ml

This was my favourite product in the now discontinued Sweet Lemon range. It wasn't quite as zesty as some of the lemon shower and bath products on the market but it had a bit of a sweet, herb hit which worked equally well in the bath or shower.

So they were my monthly empties for September. I'm hoping to do a little bit better in October and I'm hoping to get at least one or two make up items finished, and hopefully some more toiletries - fingers crossed. Do you do a monthly empties post on your blog? Leave me a comment and let me know x 

Yes To Carrots Nourishing Shampoo - A Review For My Pure*

Last week for the first time since Christmas I braved my local hair salon. I wasn't brave enough for colour but I had a long, long overdue haircut. The cut had done me the world of good and at last (fingers crossed) I feel as though I'm turning the poorly hair corner. As I said in a previous post though I'm doing my best to take care of it and I'm trying to stick to a more natural, SLS free shampoo and conditioner routine. The current communal, bathroom shampoo, although decent isn't SLS free, so I thought for one of this months My Pure reviews I'd try out one that was.

There are lots and lots of shampoos on the My Pure site, and there are quite a few that I haven't tried yet, but I decided to go for one from a brand that I'm already familiar with - Yes To Carrots.

Yes To Carrots Nourishing Shampoo is free from SLS, SLES and a new one on me, ALES, Ammonium Laureth Sulfate. It's specially designed for normal to dry hair, and contains both carrot extract, for nourishment and pomegranate, which is a natural anti oxidant.

The product comes packaged in the familiar chunky, Yes To bottle. Personally I found this one a little hard to squeeze at first, but the plastic does seem to be softening a bit with continued use, if it's a bit hard for you though, you can always screw the flip top cap off.

The shampoo itself is clear, but slightly opaque in colour, and is of a medium consistency, and it has an almost silky feel on the skin.

It smells like every other product that I've tried in the Yes To Carrots, and I have to say it's a smell that I love. It's a bit fresh, a bit floral and a bit fruity, I'm useless at describing fragrances but Mummy Lou says it definitely has a bit of parma violet about and do you know what? I think she's right.

A little goes a long way so the huge 500ml bottle will last for ages. As with most sulfate free shampoos, add more water than shampoo to help it foam. There is always a temptation to use more shampoo, but usually adding a little bit of water does the trick.

It was easy to use and rinsed out with no problem. I have to say on a few occasions I used this shampoo without any form of conditioner, purely for blogging reasons, and I have to say I was really impressed. Unusually for me lately my hair felt and looked pretty smooth, and pretty free from tangles. I'm stroking my hair now, after another conditioner free wash and I'm surprised at how hydrated and moisturised it feels.

This shampoo has actually really impressed me. Usually shampoos for dry hair, have a thicker almost creamy texture, but whilst they moisturise, they can often weigh the hair down. When I saw the texture I didn't hold out much hope but I have to say I'm happy. My hair doesn't feel stripped, or dry, and it certainly doesn't feel, heavy or weighed down, and it didn't make my often oily roots worse. Another Yes To thumbs up from me and I will definitely enjoy using the rest of this shampoo up. The Yes To Carrots Nourishing Shampoo normally retails at £8.99 for a 500ml bottle from My Pure. Any questions please leave me a comment x  Thanks for reading x

*Sample

Weight Loss Update - 9 Months In - 27lbs Down

I've had one of those months guys x The month started off with a maintain, fine I can deal with that, but then came the big test - Mummy Lou's birthday! For 4 days solid I ate nothing but bad things, cake cheese, chocolate, ice cream - lots of naughtiness. I was to scared to do an official weigh in but a sneaky look at the hospital scales showed at least a 3lb gain - ouch!

My body though had other ideas and almost as soon as the weight gain registered, my body said no, no, no, that ain't happening! and struck me down with a weeks worth of gastroenteritis! I could barely eat or drink and nothing stayed in my stomach for more than an hour! Sorry if that's a little to much information but there is no way I would wish that on anyone, I haven't felt so ill for a long, long time but when I did manage to step on the scales again, I'd officially lost 2lbs, on a star week but in reality I'd probably lost nearer 6. A great weight loss trick but not something I would recommend :( Losing weight that quickly isn't healthy believe me!

I've spent the last two weeks trying to get my appetite back, and just trying to get my strength back so I haven't really been too careful about counting the calories, hence two maintains but again I can live with that. I'm still 2lbs down for the month so I'm looking at the positives of a pretty bad month in every sense of the word.

So what are my plans for October? Well I'm going to try and get back on the healthy eating bandwagon. It's not going to be easy, the onset of winter and  the cold dark nights always makes me want to hole and eat comfort food, but moderation is key and hopefully I can find some healthy winter warmers to help me through. I've been referred back to physiotherapy starting from this week, so activity could either be increased or decreased depending on how my assessment appointment goes but whatever the outcome I'll make the best of it. I've been slacking a bit of my Slimpod too so in October I'm determined to get listening again and to get Thinking Slimmer.

Thanks again for all your support especially when I was poorly and don't forget you can keep updated with my weight loss journey via my weight tracker page, and on instagram, where I will be starting to update my weekly weight loss again from next week x Thanks for reading x

(Various Thinking Slimmer Slim Pods Have Been Provided For Review / Promotional Purposes)

Getting Sparkly With Candy Rocks Jewellery

I love jewellery and I love blogger events, and this week I had the opportunity to combine the two courtesy of a local North East based company Candy Rocks Jewellery.

So on Thursday night along with several other lovely bloggers, I headed to The Town Wall, a pub not to far away from the Central Station in Newcastle city centre. The event took place in the Secret Cinema Room, an intimate, and cosy below ground room, with a bar and lined with sofas, and tables and chairs. 

Upon arrival we were greeted with sparkly fruity, drinks from one of the event sponsors, Glo Worm, who produce a range of fruity, caffinated drinks, that are ideal for use as mixers, we had the raspberry one which I would thoroughly recommend! 

The main purpose of the event was to showcase Candy Rocks, newest range of jewellery. Unlike a lot of jewellery brands they just focus on necklaces, and in particular statement necklace. Huge, statement pieces are everywhere at the moment and as you've probably already realised I'm a big fan, so this really was a match made in heaven. 

Excuse the ridiculous amount of pictures but I can honestly say I wanted everything, they had everything from huge, heavy sparkly in your face pieces, to slightly more delicate brights, with just a touch of sparkle.

After having a chance to have a look at some of the pieces, and a welcome from Lisa, it was time to kick back and have some fun. Some of the girls from local salon Glitz N Glamour Hair And Beauty, were on hand to show off their hairdressing skills and quite a few ladies got their hair done -  Chloe from New Girl In Toon, had some gorgeous curls and waves put in

and Becca from Polka Dot Notebook Blog, had the most fabulous up do done, it was stunning, and would be a perfect bridal do .

Talk about sods law though I'd only had my hair done on the Thursday morning so it seemed a bit pointless to get it done after I'd already paid for a blow dry, after seeing Becca's though I was really tempted to change my mind.

As well as having sweeties and lollipops on the tables, we were also treated to some vanilla cheesecake shots courtesy of local company Simply Cheesecake, they were so nice and I'm ashamed to say I ate the crumb too, they weren't that big honestly ;)

After the cheesecakes it was quiz time, I don't think we did particularly well on my table but it was a good laugh. We also had the opportunity to name and win a necklace and of course there was the raffle.

There was a small charge for the event but all the proceeds went to a fabulous charity Head Start For Babies, which raises awareness of plagiocephaly and brachycephaly. A raffle ticket was included in the ticket price, but once everyone saw the prizes, we nearly all bought more. The fabulous prizes included items from Tare, Marc Jacobs Beauty, Benefit and more.  I wasn't lucky enough to win anything this time but lots of ladies went away with some lovely goodies x 

10% of all jewellery sales on the night were also donated to the charity so it would have been wrong not to pick a few things up. It was so hard to choose, and I'm still longing for one of my rejects but I'm really happy with the two necklaces that I got. They are both in exactly the same design but in a different colour. These are probably the most delicate pieces that they had, but that doesn't make them any the less statement or eye catching.

I love the gunmetal chain and setting on both of these necklaces, it's really unusual and not something that you see a lot in jewellery. The first necklace is almost orange / red in colour, and is scattered through with sparkly crystals.

The second necklace is almost rainbow / neon in colour, and contains lots of multi coloured acrylic stones, and crystals again set in the gunmetal effect finish. This is much brighter than it's showing here, my camera has really washed this one out. 

All of there jewellery would be great for evening wear, or even for a special occasion, but I also think that they would work with a shirt, t-shirt or something plain. I love how people seem to style necklaces like this, even with a plain white, t-shirt and pair of jeans, you can create a stunning, individual look in minutes.

Like all good events the lovely people at Candy Rocks made sure that we didn't leave empty handed. We each got a lovely goodie bag crammed full of sweeties, beauty samples, and more Glo Worm drinks. The samples were largely from US and high end brands, and I was lucky enough to get some Make Up Forever, NARS, and Peter Thomas Roth goodies to play with. You'll definitely see some of these bits popping up in a new series I have starting soon on the blog Sample Saturday x 

As well as the goodie bags, we could also chose a necklace to take home, there were four different options to choose from and I went for this one.

It was very different to anything else that I bought, and again I love the gunmetal chain and setting, and I love the combination of the purple/ lilac, the yellow and the pale blue, with the almost champagne coloured crystal. Again the colours are a bit more vibrant irl x 

I would like to say a huge thank you to the ladies at Candy Rocks, and everyone else involved for having me. I had a really nice evening, and got to indulge in one my favourite things, no not cheesecake - jewellery! You can find out more about Candy Rocks, and purchase from either their facebook page, or their instagram page and you can also find them on twitter. If you like something though go for it, the pieces are often available in quite limited quantities. Are you a fan of the statement necklace? Leave me a comment and let me know x