Skinny tea

 

Warning! this post will discuss poo, yum.

So for those of you who don’t know, skinny tea is a natural tea designed to aid in weight loss, as far as I’m aware this tea is designed to clean your colon out, shifting any blockages you may have, therefore causing lose stool and basically helping you poo more. Don’t be alarmed, this shouldn’t cause you to be on the toilet all day. This brand of tea suggests you have one cup in the evening every day for no more than 2 weeks, I found by doing just that my morning toilet trip really cleaned me out (gorse I know). Due to the effect it has you do lose weight, but not in the fat sense, just the weight of old waste inside your body. Therefore I feel the branding of these teas to be slightly misleading. However Skinny tea is a great way to cleans out your digestive system, it’s an ideal way to kick start your healthy New years eating and it’s very affordable. I bought this tea for Holland and Barrets for roughly 2 pound odd.

You shouldn’t drink these teas regularly however, as apparently it can cause your colon to become lazy, but using them to detox one every 3 months or so is fine. As for the taste, this tea reminded me of green juice, but hot. It wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t a fantastic taste. Overall I did enjoy drinking them and did feel like they really helped.

Birthday girl

Last week was my 22nd Birthday, so I thought a birthday related post would be fitting.

 

This year I spent the weekend before my Birthday (my Birthday is on a Monday, yuk!) relaxing at a spa with my mum, and my actual Birthday was spent working....BOO! So to try and make my Birthday a little bit more fun I went and treated myself to a manicure and pedicure. 

My mum also bought me a Black Forest Gateau for my Birthday cake, I really love Gateau and don't particularly like Birthday cake, unless is chocolate, layered with chocolate and sprinkled in.... chocolate. But as my Birthday is so close to Christmas, chocolate is pretty much the last thing I want right now. However If you do like chocolate here is possibly the best chocolate cake recipe ever, I made this cake for my Step-Dads Birthday last year and everyone was so impressed. 

1) Preheat oven to gas mark 4 or 180 degrees 

you can either used two or three greased tins to cook your cake in, if using two just make sure your cake is cooked in the middle before removing from the oven. 

2) Now the first step is to melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of hot water on your stove (or even in a microwave), make sure you keep stirring it so it doesn't over cook or burn. set aside.

3) In another bowl whisk together the water and cocoa powder, then add the buttermilk and also set aside. 

4) Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt together into yet another medium bowl, there is a lot of bowls being used here but trust me, its worth the mess. 

5) then whisk the butter, sugar and vanilla together in a different bowl, preferably with an electric whisk, but by hand is fine, until its light and fluffy. Then slowly add the melted chocolate to the mix and once fully combined add a third of the flour mixture, followed by half of the buttermilk mixture, keep repeating this until everything is fully mixed together. 

6) You then separate the mixture into your tins and cook for 25-30 minutes. Once cooked leaved the cakes to stand for at least 10 minutes before attempting to remove them from the tins. 

7) Once the cakes have fully cooled you can decorate them, this is my favourite bit. You can pretty much do whatever you want here, but here is an example of a ganache topping. 


Enjoy!

the cake in the recipe book

 

my cake!

 

Mini review - Lush lip scrub

 

 

 

Lush has always been my guilty pleasure, for students their products are a tad out of price range but I still buy them and spend the rest of the month skint. I suffer from really bad dry lips, I always have. So the lush lip scrub is something I really need in my life, or at least that's how I justify buying it.

I have the popcorn flavoured one, I don't really like the taste of this if I’m honest, but I guess I didn’t buy it for the taste, I find it’s very salty, but I can deal with it.

You basically use this product by pinching a small amount in your fingers and rubbing it onto dry lips. It does say you then lick the product off, I think that's gross, you will be licking the product off yes, but you will also be licking off dead skin, ew. So I just rinse mine off with water, I usually do this before cleansing my face.

This product is essentially sugar and oils, pretty simple to make at home, but I can be lazy. I find the scrub leaves my lips soft and really does help to remove any excess skin. Ideal for winter time when we all suffer from chapped lips. I then follow this step with a lip balm for really soft lips.

New year, New skin

I'm forever fighting a loosing battle with my skin, I'm saying healthy, clear and dewy skin and my body is saying spotty, dully and oily. I'm sure a lot of you know where I am coming from, right? My current skincare routine is clearly not working, I still get break outs and my skin just looks tired and fed up, which is pretty much how I feel about my skin as well, its a mutual thing. So I thought, seen as its the start of a new year, its the perfect opportunity to try some new skin care and in an attempt to tame the beast that is my face haha. I would by lying if I didn't say that these picks were heavily influenced by Caroline Hirons, the skincare godess. I read her blog all the time and pretty much take her opinion as gospel, so when I was trying to decide what to buy, I naturally thought the best place to start was to read her blog.

After hours and probably days of reading her posts, I decided I wanted to try Hydraluron, she raves about this product so I thought its was worth a shot. Hydraluron is a serum you apply before your moisturiser, that is designed to increase the skins hydration from below the surface, increasing the hydration levels in your skin, making it look youthful, dewy and supple. There is a lot more fancy stuff it does but the best place to read about that is Carolines blog, I wouldn't do it justice if I tried to explain it.

I then opted for Eysilix, which is made by Indeed, the same company as Hydraluron. (This is another product Caroline recommends) I have been umming and ahhing about an eye cream for a while, I'm just about to turn 22 and think its probably time to start with some form of  'anti aging' eye cream, to try and prevent wrinkles before its to late. Eysilix claims to reduce the appearance of puffiness, dark circles, crows feet and fine lines. If it does all that I will be beyond impressed, I don't really have super bad crows feet or fine lines yet but even a small difference will make a huge impact I'm sure.

Lastly, I picked up Effaclar Lotion Astringente Micro-Exfoliante by La Roche-Posay. Caroline talks about how much she loves exfoliating toners, though I'm not sure she mentions this one in particular, I thought it looked pretty good, and for the price (roughly £11) it was worth a go.

Iv only been using these products for roughly a week and my first impressions are positive. Once I have test run them for a good amount of time I will update you all on my opinion. Until then, stay tuned.

If you have any skincare recommendations for oily, combination and spot prone skin, I would be delighted if you let me know. I'm always on a quest for new skincare, I feel like a girl can never have to much.....or at least that's how I justify it.

My first ever New Years resolution.

This year is the first time I've ever set a New Years resolution, usually I think they are pointless and doomed to fail within the first week. But this year, for reasons unbeknown to me, I decided it was time to set a few yearly goals. The first of which is to start this blog back up, I really enjoy writing and its a nice alternative way to keep track of my life other than writing a diary. My second goal is to lose my university weight that I have gained over the years and in the process run a 5k. Finally, my beauty related resolution is to keep on top of cleaning my make up brushes, I'm really bad at remembering to clean them, and when I do I''m usually to lazy to do it. 

In regards to this blog, I'm thinking of branching out a bit and writing a variety of different posts, not just beauty related ones, but ones such as cooking, travelling, craft and general life stuff. I'm not 100% sure where I'm going to go with this, but defiantly watch this space. I hope you all had a brilliant Christmas and New Years, and ill be back with a new post very soon!