It's a Lush Life

After missing my usual Sunday post last week, I am back! I'd had a really tough week back at work and wanted to spend my weekend relaxing and escaping from my usual routine. However in usual Jenny fashion I have bounced back to my positive and slightly mental self again.

This week I wanted to talk about LUSH. Last Saturday I went into the Harrogate shop and had a great chat with the girl who works in there about different products that would suit me. I even walked away with a free sample of their skin tint! I've liked LUSH cosmetics ever since my uni housemate Leah introduced them to me in first year, but I could never afford to buy much on a student budget.

Now that I'm earning a fair whack and have a shop only five minutes away, my collection and love for their products is growing. Not only is their stuff AWESOME, they also have fantastic VALUES such as sourcing 100% recycled packaging, being against animal testing and removing Palm oil from their products. 

In this post I'd like to share some of the products that I've tried and loved. 

My current collection.

Face

Catastrophe cosmetic £5.95
This is a blueberry based face mask for skin that is prone to breakouts and problems. My skin is sensitive and reacts to a lot of things. One day it's oily, the next it's dry so this face mask was great for calming my skin. LUSH do a range of fresh face masks for all sorts of skin types so it's worth going in and asking.





Imperialis £12.75
Celestial £11.95
As well as face masks, LUSH also have lots of different face creams because everyone's skin is different! I actually own two different moisturisers for when my skin is playing different games. Imperialis is packed full of plant infusions and is great for combination skin. Celestial is a thicker, more nourishing cream for drier days.



Light Pink Skin Supplement  £8.95
This is a new find for me. I went into LUSH last weekend to buy another pot of imperialis and happened to mention my love of tinted moisturiser. Lo and behold, they have a small selection of skin tints which are much better than choosing between light and dark (I'm talking about you Garnier and Nivea). I managed to get a freebie sample that lasted me all week and was lovely to use! Being the sucker that I am, I went and bought a tub yesterday.

Lips

Popcorn Lip scrub £5.50
I have already convinced a few friends to buy a lip scrub. It basically exfoliates the dead skin off your lips and leaves them feeling soft. It is edible too so you can enjoy whichever flavour you choose.







Honey Trap £5.75
This one is just a super lip balm for using on it's own or after your scrub :)

Hair

Sea Spray £9.95

I bought this way back in the Summer of 2013. I used it a lot on holiday after I'd been in the pool or the sea to give my hair that scrunchy-wave beach look. It smells gorgeous, leaves hair wavy but not crunchy or sticky and it seems to last forever. I now use it on lazy mornings to give my naturally slightly wavy hair some oomph.

Despite all the love I give them, I do NOT recommend buying the henna hair dye from LUSH. Leah tried it during second year of uni and I can only say it resembled elephant poop.

Body

Vanillary Solid Perfume £6.50
The fact that this is so much lighter than carrying round a glass bottle of perfume should make it a winner. I have a vanilla natural collection spray from Boots that I spritz on my clothes each day so this vanilla perfume is a perfect match. I quickly dab a little on my neck and wrists as I'm rushing to work in this morning. It's great for an easy top-up during the day too. I've had compliments about how lovey I smell while wearing this too ;)



I have also tried their shower gel, shower jelly, soaps and bath bombs. Some are amazing and smell gorgeous while others haven't been my thing at all. I just like to go in, have a sniff of everything and just try stuff out.

For the full range of products visit www.lush.co.uk or your local LUSH shop.

Becoming Human

After two months of monotonous eat, sleep, teach, repeat (thank you Fatboy Slim for inspiring that depressing motto) it is FINALLY the Christmas holidays for us teachers. I must say that I am NOT sorry that I have a blissful 16 days off from work for Christmas. I have worked hard and most definitely deserve every second of holiday us teachers are offered! I'm going to spend my two weeks actually having a life as a human being once again :)

I haven't been back to Wolverhampton since July when we jetted off to Spain for our family holiday. Currently I am sat in my parents living room, in my spot, as if I'd never even left. It's not very often that the whole family is together nowadays since both me and Nikki left for Uni. It's nice to know that we all just slot back into life as a family unit and we are still all as mental as always.

Sisters at Christmas Dinner.

Padre passing out the pressies!

Even though my Graduation was over a month ago now, I finally decided that I'd like to buy myself an ipad mini with the money I was given. In my typical ditsy fashion, I decided this on Christmas Eve. Luckily the shops weren't too busy and I was in and out of Argos in under 15 minutes! It's not going to make me the most sociable person to be around but I am excited to start face-timing friends and keeping up with social media! The main purpose of buying it was just for chilling out :) listening to music, playing games reading blogs and magazines in the evenings after school. I am an apple/tablet/any kind of technology novice so please send app recommendations this way!!!

I'm not a massive Boxing Day sales lover to be quite honest. You will never catch me setting my alarm for ridiculous o'clock to try and nab a bargain... that I will most likely not even wear. However when I saw that Surf Dome had up to 60% off, I had to check it out. As well as selling awesome stuff, they also offer free delivery and returns in the UK, which always makes them a winner in my book. I ordered my self two lovely cardigans that should have been £80 each! I need some new knitwear so obviously made some sensible sale choices. I love Roxy clothing so the black, chunky knit from Quicksilver was instantly added to the basket! Sitka was a brand I'd not heard of but their slouchy, green cardigan was right up my street. After some googling I found out that Sitka is a Canadian surf/skate shop with a pretty cool website. Who'd have known eh?

Sitka - £30.38

Quicksilver - £35.98

As well as all these lovely treats I was buying for myself, I'm not sure if you noticed but it was Christmas yesterday! I thoroughly enjoyed using the new ipad to check out all the presents my friends had received and all the yummy food they were scoffing!! Every year me and Nikki make little piles of our gifts down the sides of the sofa and take a picture. Here is my little stash of goodies...

My Christmas haul included the traditional Jenny presents: plenty of chocolate, socks, perfume, DVDs, a calendar for next year and some girly smellies (this year from Lush). My big presents this year were some cosy reindeer pyjama bottoms and  purple gillet from Fat Face. I also got these beautiful Blowfish boots that I've had my eye on since October half term! Ryan wouldn't let me buy them then because I couldn't really afford them. He was right though :)

My favourite surprise presents were a Merry Marshmallow Yankee Candle and a gorgeous Elephant teapot from my friend Sam. Usually I would opt for the Christmas cookie scented candle but I'm glad my sister discovered this one. I'd actually forgotten to put this on my list this year so it was really nice to open this and inhale the creamy scented goodness on Christmas morning! I must have talked a lot about elephants and tea this year, or perhaps Sam just knows me really well :) I didn't even know elephant teapots existed. I also got some lovely wintery-spice teapigs tea bags to go in it, amazing!!

 

Right. Let's take a MASSIVE step away from all things Christmassy now as you have most probably had enough. As part of my 'becoming an actual human being' plan over the holidays, I really want to get back into yoga. I have neglected my practice a LOT since I started teaching. That's a lie, it's actually none-existent nowadays. I must admit I have been awful at doing anything outside work apart from the odd plans on a weekend and that needs to change in the new year! I got a bit excited (and very geeky) looking at yoga apps on my ipad. I decided to download the Yoga Studio app for £1.99 because it has ready made classes, hundreds of poses and you can custom make the classes to suit you as well. I also used the schedule section to timetable in classes for myself until the end of February!!

While I'm not at work I don't just intend to be glued to the ipad. I'm just talking about it a lot because it's my new toy... promise! I do actually want to go outside, do stuff and talk to people. I'm meeting Dally for a drink tomorrow after months apart; we will certainly have a lot to catch up on! Then for new year I'm off to spend New Year with Ryan's family in Chelmsford :)

OMG, totes going to have an awesome time in Essex ;)

Happy December!

The countdown has begun! I dug into my first dairy free chocolate from my advent calendar this morning; well, half of it because Ryan hasn't bought himself a calendar, doh! Being a teacher, my countdown to Christmas started long before December 1st. We have been practicing our Christmas play since early November! 'Gabriel's Big Break' is a re-telling of the classic nativity story but from Gabriel's perspective. It is quite good actually once you get past the cheesy songs that need to be practiced. Feel free to listen to the snippet of the songs below. I just sang them to Ryan while he was cooking breakfast... he was less than impressed haha :P

Even though we have only dipped our big toe into December, I have pretty much bought all of my Christmas presents. Largely thanks to my Mum who is ridiculously organised... and has time to peruse the shops in Chester with my sister on a Monday afternoon! However my Mum can't help me buy presents for my Secret Santa selections, friends and Ryan's parents. Yesterday I managed to get a few little presents....

Lush Father Christmas Bath Bomb - £3.25

Yankee Candle Christmas Cookie Sampler - £1.80 in Clintons

M&S Sugar Plum Cookies Tin - £4

As hard as I tried not to I also got a few treats for myself ;) With Christmas and a Birthday coming up in December it's iffy territory going shopping for things I like. With the big 22 coming up in just two weeks I should be keeping my spending at a minimum. I really don't think a Big Knit Innocent Smoothie and a Salted Caramel Yankee Sampler will really ruin my Birthday/Christmas surprises though!

To appease my inner shopoholic, I did buy some really cute Christmas wrapping paper from Paperchase. I love making my presents look pretty, even if it just to get ripped off and thrown away. My choices this year however are made from recycled paper so that does make me feel slightly better about the amount of waste paper at Christmas time. Look how cute the trees are!! 

Some of the shop displays this year are so awesome! I love this iced sprout in the window of White Stuff, it makes me chuckle every time I pass it in Harrogate and York. You can actually win a trip to Brussels by entering a sprout competition on their website.. go on, click the link! I took the photo of the advent display a couple of weeks ago and now I can't remember the name of the shop. I thought I'd share it with you anyway because it's so darn cute. I definitely haven't captured how good it actually is with my phone camera! I hope you are all enjoying the festive season, decorating trees and eating mountains of mince pies. I know I am :D

Harrogate Christmas Lights