Why hello July you sneaky little devil, where on earth did you creep up from! How is it over half way through this year already! Wowsers!

Today since we have marked the end of a new month I thought I would share with you a few favourites which I have been loving recently, some beauty ones, some non beauty ones. Excuse the lack of photos for some of them, at present my phone is out right refusing to upload them.

Benefit Bad Gal Lash Mascara 
Now you will know I have been a fan of benefit for a while now, but this little beauty is defiantly shadowed by the ever popular they are real mascara. When I picked this up a while ago it was in a set with their Bad Gal Waterproof liner. Like a fool I used the eye liner and cast the mascara in to my to use pile. When I came back from Ibiza I grabbed it from my stash and started using it, having taken the They are real one on holiday with me. I have to say this beauty is a gem. It really gives my lashes lift and volume. Plus its really black which I know sounds daft but sometimes you find that a black mascara never quite lives up to the mark. Although this is only £2 cheaper than its sister at £17.50 I know which one I would pick up given the choice of the 2.

Cloud 9 Hair Straighteners 
You may remember this post I did a couple of weeks ago about the death of my beloved GHDs and making the jump over to Cloud 9! I have literally not looked back. These straighteners are AMAZING!
I love how quickly they turn on, the way they turn on (you just click the plates together), the fact that they go off after 30 seconds of being inactive. They glide through my hair without making it static or frizzy, they are just literally the bees knees!

Clarins instant radiance
Don't you hate it when you come back from holiday and the first part of your gorgeous new tan to fade is your face! Step in Clarins radiance plus glow boost. I had read a couple of things about this before I went on holiday and this was actually one of the things I picked up on the plane. What you do is mix a little bit in with your face cream and it gives you an instant glow. The formula contains little particles of self tan, enough to make you glow but not your face look like you just caught the first plane from umpa lumpa land. I love this so much for the first week or so I was back, I didn't even wear any foundation!! Priced at £18 online here I definitely think this is a must have for the summer.

Bobbi Brown Eye Liner Duo
Again another on the plane purchase, I have been so in love with my Bobbi Brown concealer that when I spotted a duo of their gel liners on the duty free plane stuff I was straight in there!

The set as you would expect comes with a black and a brown liner. As you can see the black is more loved than the brown, I am tryinggggg to embrace the brown but I always divulge back to black. The little brush that comes with it isn't half bad either (what is it with brushes they give you free always being crap)! I am not sure if this duo is available to buy as a set but the liners themselves are available from Bobbi Brown at £17.50 - this little beauty was a bargain at £26 on the plane so if your jetting off keep those peepers peeled!

I mentioned here in my write up about the Midlands Blogger Meet up, that Suzie at Xenca had been lovely enough to give us the option of choosing one of their make up products to bring home with us. I was very torn between a red lipstick or an eyeshadow but as soon as I saw the eyeshadow choices and in particularly the one I went with, Cappuccino, my choice was made instantly.


As you can see the Xenca eye shadows come with 2 colours. It retails on the website here for £11.95. I decided on this one because I instantly felt that out of them, this would be the most wearable shadow and would be a great every day shadow particularly for work.

A couple of weeks ago the gorgeous Essie Button blogged this blog post about a new navy blue eye liner she was trying.

If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen me posting this photo.


After seeing Essies post, while perusing the magazines in WHSmiths at work, I noticed that Glamour magazine were giving away an Eyeko eyeliner in no less than Navy, and not only that but the magazine was online £1! I ran to the till (ok not really) and couldn't wait to try it out! As you can see the result is above!


 I have heard fantastic things about Eyeko eyeliners in the past and having never tried one before I was egar to see how it measured up against the others I had tried, in particular the Soap and Glory Supercat liner.

I really love the nib on this liner. As you can see it is very thin which I love as it means you can make the line as thin or as thick as you want. It is also easy to hold which I know sounds weird but I sometimes find that these pencil liquid liners can be hard to hold depending on the thickness of the actually pen.

I can't actually find this online. It looks like the Eyeko Skinny in Black is £15 so I don't know if they haven't got it online yet or if this is a Glamour magazine exclusive. Either way it may be worth nipping to your nearest Glamour stockist and picking up a copy before they run out. I am half tempted for £1 to go and get another one to keep for when this one runs out.

Not only has Essie jumped on the Blue Liner band wagon, the lovely Anna at Vivianna does Make up has done a post here so it seems like maybe the blue liner could be a new thing???

What do you think? Something you fancy trying or are you happy with black liner??

Last month when I headed off to the Midlands Blogger Meet up in Birmingham, a few of us got chatting about blogging and the general blogasphere. It all started because a couple of people said that in their Mid to late 20's they feel quite old in the blogging market.
Now I, like I think most people do, read a lot of blogs written by people my age but on occasions I have come across other blogs, some by bloggers who are a lot younger. Obviously blogging has grown quite a lot over recent years and now there are people of all ages doing it. We got to chatting about age and bloggers and in particular the younger bloggers out there. Now when I say younger bloggers I am talking those in the range of about 13-16.

We all agreed that although obviously there is market for younger bloggers out there, some of the blogs you come across are, for one to a better word, absolutely ridiculous. Sure we all like to do little bits on products we love or have brought, but as a mid 20 something blogger (and I wasn't alone in this) who sees high end products as a luxury, it is absolutely shocking to come across bloggers at the age of 13 or 14 flashing Mac... YSL.. Chanel.
We all said, cast your mind back to that age, I felt the highlight of my beauty days was when I got to buy something from Natural Collection, Collection 2000 or No. 17 (or Seventeen as it is now).

So what happened. Its only *cough* 10 *cough* years ago since high street brands were the norm for teens. I mean as a teen you go to town with your friends, raid the counters of Boots or Superdrugs with your pocket money and come away feeling like you have had a real treat. So what happened? When did it become acceptable for the young girls of today to be thinking the norm is to go out and spend £50 at the Mac counter. Man you could but one of everything from the MUA stand for that!!!

There is such a lot of pressure on the girls of today. They have to have the best clothes, the latest fashions, the most up to date hair, phone, shoes... who is to blame though? Is it just how the world is evolving or it is the magazines, the media, the way that girls can spend hours online reading about fashions, make up trends...

Whats your opinion on this?? Do you think that it is just the way youth of today is growing up too fast or is it the media pressuring young girls into what they think they need...

You can't fail to notice that the World Cup is well and truly in full swing and now that England have been knocked out we all need something to compensate with right???

Now Ive admitted, Im not a massive football fan, I'll be patriotic and watch the England games but thats about as far as it goes. And lets be honest there is something about sitting around together watching the football, complete with beverage of choice in one hand and a few nibbles in the other.