So its that time once again... First of all where did February go? Wasn't I just celebrating my birthday like 2 minutes ago??

And so, with that I thought I would share with you my February Favourites. I have been trying a couple of new products over the past couple of weeks and the past few months and a few have firmly make themselves into my favourites :)


Can we just take a moment to appreciate the beautifulness that is this palette! I think I have worn this pretty much every day since I got it just before christmas! These colours are absolutely stunning! Unlike the other palettes this one contains beautiful purple and rose gold shades. It is so wearable but can be smoked for a night time look too!


This was a product I picked up just after it was released this month. I am a massive fan of the Benefit Hello Oxygen foundation as you know, and when I spotted this new No 7 offering out on the shelves of Boots I figured I would give it a go. The thing I love about the Benefit one is that although it is really light and a little bit goes a long way, it has great coverage so I wanted to see how this one measured up to it. This foundation in my opinion is a great dupe of the Benefit one. Available in 14 shades as part of the No7 match made service it has a great coverage for such a light and 'thin' fountain.

 This is a bit of an odd one to include in a favourites video considering I have only worn it for about a week in the month. Well I did my nails in the first picture with the Rimmel Gold Top Coat Glitter a couple of weeks ago and it rekindled my love for it. I had it in my Boots Advent Calendar at christmas but it was a mini one so when I went to Nottingham last week I picked up a full sized one. The nails on the right are the ones I did last night and I used the Nails inc as a base coat for my Cath Kidston inspired nails so technically I suppose you could say I used it twice in February. This is such a nice neutral shade.

So as promised I thought I would share with you all of the goodies that I picked up on my trip to Nottingham on Saturday. Have you got a cup of tea? If not go and get one... Im not going to lie we may be here a while!

First up when the meet up finished the Make up Mafia headed over to the Body shop to spend the lovely voucher we were given. I went with the girls because to be honest I had NO clue where I was going. We were greeted at the shop by the lovely Sophie and Autumn who were the lovely ladies who had been at the Meet up.
I was glad they were there as it gave me chance to chat to them a bit more about the products we had seen.

Sophie had mentioned a few of the products which I was keen to pick up so I got chance to discuss a little bit more about these. I was keen to chat about their Vitamin C Microdermabrasion scrub. Sophie has said how much she loved this scrub and I was keen to have a look at it because I am always on the hunt for a good scrub. When Sophie tried this on the back of my hand I was amazed by how it felt! Definitely something I needed as part of my routine. The scrub itself was £12 (although the website says £13) and then I spotted this set was £16 which contained a skin reviver from their Vitamin C range. According to the website this is £14 so I got myself a good bargain here. I also picked up another set which was from their Vitamin E range. I know there were a lot of us at the event who were excited about this Facial oil. I have been looking for something like this for a while. My mum uses the sanctuary one but it didn't agree with my skin so to pick this up for £16 (again for the set) was a bargain. The set should have contained a moisturiser but they were all out so the lovely Sophie put together a set with the night cream instead.
The final thing I wanted to pick up was their Camomille Cleansing Butter. I have read lots about cleansing butters recently and I was interested to try them. A lot of the ones I had read about were high end in the market so when I saw this was £12 it fell straight into my basket!


When I got to the till, Sophie told me about the Rewards card. She explained that it was £5 for the year to join and that I would get 10% off my purchases for 12 months. I signed up and was greeted by the added bonus that because it was still the month of my birthday I would get £5 off so in effect I paid nothing for the card. Also I got a few free gifts for signing up too which is always a lovely bonus!



Next stop was the Mac shop. I knew I wanted to head to the Mac shop and pick myself up a Pro Palette in the 15 size. I also wanted to get a few new shades - I had my eye on Cranberry for a while so I picked up that. I also wanted a nice neutral shade so I picked up Phloof and Vanilla.



Next I was drawn in by Cath Kidston. I try and be restrained when I go there but I just cannnnnt! Everything is so pretty and my birthday money was burning a whole in my purse! I fell in love with this bag as soon as I saw it, I had wanted one of their satchel bags for a while and this is perfect as it fits my filofax and all my things in I lug about with me everyday.


On my way to the till I noticed this gorgeous purse. I love my red Cath Kidston purse but when I spotted this and how many card pockets (why do purses never seem to have enough for all the reward cards you have - just me??). This one has a flap with card slots and also the inside part has card slots too.


I then spotted some lovely make up bags which popped together! Cute!!



I then hot footed off to John Lewis. I wanted to pick up Nails Inc in Porchester Square in a full size. I got this in the Boots Advent Calendar and fell in love. While there I also wanted to head to the Bobbi Brown stand as I wanted to have a look at their Corrector. I know this is loved by a lot of beauty bloggers around. The lovely beauty assistant sat me down and matched my shade and then she tested it on me. She also showed me their Concealer on top. Again I had heard fantastic things about it So decided to pick up the both of them.




 Finally on my way back to the station I spotted H&M and I love to have a mooch as we don't have one in Stoke.

I picked up this gorgeous spotty top and this peach star scarf.

Ok, so look outside, I know technically now it is probably more like Winter but its a bit of a tradition to share with you my favourite nail colours from the season! You know how much I love nail polish and so here are my top picks for Autumn/winter 2013 - Usually when I do these posts I stick to my top 10 but I thought hey, its only 4 weeks until christmas so a little early present for you! I am treating you to my Top 18 polishes instead! (Be warned I am hopeless at describing polishes)

 This has been one of my newest additions to my collection and is part of the Fall duo which Essie currently has on offer. I think it was around £12.99. I really love this colour. It is a beautiful dark raspberry purple colour! Great for Winter!

 This colour is absolutely GORGEOUS! It is the perfect colour for the party season. The best way to describe it is probably a rose gold colour. It catches the light beautifully.

 This is the other shade available in the Essie Fall Duo - This is a gorgeous grey/brown colour which I absolutely love.

 This is one I picked up when I was subscribed to Glossy box. It isnt a shade I reach for very often but I love teaming it with other colours, like over the top of a darker red at this time of year to glitter it up a bit. I think if memory serves me correctly these polishes are around the £14 mark which I wouldnt pay as the bottle is quite small and when you consider other high end brands such as OPI are not that much I am sure you could find a similar colour in another brand.

 This is one of my go to glitter polishes and has been a firm favourite of mine for a long time. Its name 'disco ball' serves it perfectly as that is exactly what it looks like when it is on your finger. It has small flecks of Blue and Purple as well as silver which means it goes perfectly with lots of different colours.

 To me this is the perfect red colour. When you think of double decker bus or phone box in London red, its like Rimmel has bottled that in a this bottle. This is just the perfect red shade without being too far on the orange or pinky part of the spectrum.

 Small chucks of gold goodness packed into a beautiful polish - Barry M sure now how to do a good glitter polish and this one is no exception! I love Barry M polishes and when you think of the quality and the price - you really cant go wrong! This one is perfect for teaming over the top of your favourite colour for a quick flash of sparkle.

 You cant do christmas without a bit of gold polish and if you have read my blog a while you will know that this is my all time favourite gold nail polish! To me this really is like gold in a bottle! It does take a few coats to get completely opaque but it is definately worth it when you do.

Again this one has had a lot of press on my blog over the years. This is my favourite all time glitter polish! I think this is probably one of the few polishes that I have had to repurchase! It is perfect for christmas time because it is just so darn glittery!! If you are looking for some serious glitter to bling up your nails over the festive period then this is defiantly the one to go for!

This is a shade I picked up in this months Glamour magazine (which I assume is still on sale) - £2 for a nails inc polish - certainly cant complain. Again with the gold - silver is another must have polish for the festive season. I always think silver (and gold) seem to be quite hard to get right in a nail polish but nails inc seem to have nailed it here (haha see what i did there)

Another favourite from Barry M. I know this is a well loved Autumn winter shade across the blogging community (as you can see my bottle is a little worn). This shade always gets me compliments when I wear it on my nails. It is the perfect raspberry colour which is brilliant for the cold months!

Not a colour you usually see knocking around at Christmas time but I wanted to include this blue polish from OPI because there seems to be a lot of Navy party wear knocking about on the high street at the moment and this would go perfectly with a little navy dress. The swatch here is one coat but it goes darker if you add another coat.

This is my most recent nail polish purchase that I picked up from TK Max (seriously in love with that place for beauty bargains) I swatched this and wanted to include it because the colour is gorgeous for christmas time when there always seems to be a lot of purple knocking around. The liquid sand effect makes the polish a bit grainy - as I havent worn it on my fingers yet I cant really pass comment but I love the colour!

This along with the Rimmel one is my favourite red - this being my slightly darker more glittery favourite. The picture really does do this one justice as it has a really gorgeous ever so slight glittery shimmer in it without being glittery - if that makes sense.

The swatch of this actually does not do anything for this at all. This is more of a dusky pink colour rather than the brighter colour it looks here. Perfect for wearing with those autumn nudes and pinks.

And that sums up my top colours for Autumn/Winter 2013. Which of these are your favourites? Any you will be rushing out to pick up??

If you read quite a lot of blogs on the blogging community you will know how popular Essie nail polishes are! And if you have read my blog a while you will know how much I am obsessed with nail varnish. However I had actually never tried Essie Polishes. It is only recently that Essie made its way into Boots and Superdrug stores. I have seen the stand in my local Boots every time I have gone in, is it weird that it looks so much brighter that the other stands. It just seems to shine. At £7.99 a polish I have never given in to the temptation of buying any.

That is until my mum received some vouchers from Boots, one of which was £2 any Essie Nail Polish. She knows how much I have lusted over these polishes so she said I could have the voucher.

When I was in town yesterday I nipped into Boots to have a look what they had. I knew a couple of popular shades which I had read about online, so I took to looking at these first. There were some lovely shades, lights, pastels, darks - they had it all.

Essie fans amongst you will notice that this is indeed the popular Essie shade, Mint Candy Apple. I couldnt decide between this one and lilacism but I went for this one. I also picked up another couple of items which I spotted. The 2 save the nail products are by nails inc. These were £3 and £4ish and the pro file was £2.05. I really like this file, it is really course one side and then less so  the other side. It really files my nails well and doesnt feel like it will lose its coating easily.

Keep your eyes peeled tomorrow for a NOTD using Essie Mint Candy Apple.