This post should probably be over on my pregnancy blog, The Uphill, but I know how many of you follow Caroline and I didn’t want you to miss out! Though please do feel free to skip this one if you have no interest whatsoever in pregnancy. Or birthing. It was just a casual pregnancy chat between friends, really, with the usual eyebrow-raises and sick-making faces that happen when Caroline and I get together…

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On the subject of pregnancy: I have so many posts to write and only ten weeks to go until my due date! Time has just flown. Hopefully once I get my accommodation situation sorted I’ll have the mental and emotional energy to sit down and do some proper writing-up. At the moment, 80% of my time is spent trying to find holiday lets that a) have internet b) accept dogs and c) are within a twenty mile radius of my house. There is nothing. Nothing, I tell you… If anyone ever wants a sound financial investment, buy and then rent out a flat or holiday cottage in the Hertfordshire/Essex area – one that has high-speed broadband and takes dogs. You’d absolutely clean up.

The post Birthing and Pregnancy Chat with Caroline Hirons… appeared first on A Model Recommends.

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1) I was temporarily reunited with Mr Bear this weekend when I went up to visit my parents. He spent much of the time looking incredibly grumpy and the rest of it sleeping. Though when I think back, those are his usual default modes, really, so I mustn’t get paranoid about it! We had a good few cuddles, too, and he jumped on my face at 7am and headbutted me so hard I thought that he might have broken my nose. Happy days – I can’t wait until he’s home for good, though I think that my parents will miss him. They have turned into fully-fledged crazy cat people, carrying him around in shopping bags and “conversing with him” using a little series of squeaks and miaows…

2) I do hope that everyone is doing something nice over the Easter weekend; my idea of nice, at the moment, is lying in a pile of big cushions with a face mask on and my feet raised, reading my Kindle. I’m currently reading The Girl Who Fell From The Sky by Simon Mawer (£4.31 on Amazon here) because my Mum recommended it to me. It’s very good – as is The Glass Room, also by Mawer (find that here). Both set in World War 2, but very different books – The Girl Who Fell follows a spy-in-the-making who parachutes into France to deliver a special message to her ex-crush, and The Glass Room follows the story of a house – built for newlyweds but then occupied by many different people once the Jewish family are forced to flee and the World War takes grip on the country. Great (if poignant and sometimes sad) reads. I must do a big book update soon because I’ve been racing through them recently! Enjoy your long weekend – if you’re bored and stuck for something to do, you can read all of the previous Sunday Tittle Tattle posts here! 

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I’m back with another Beauty Reviews video after a little bit of a gap. I really enjoy making these –  capturing my reaction to new products when I use them for the first time, watching on the little camera screen as the makeup works its magic (or not!) on my face. This video was supposed to be all about YSL’s Fusion Ink foundation which is, quite frankly, a marvel and one of my most-requested reviews ever. But I can’t for the life of me find it; it was on my desk and then it wasn’t. No doubt the cat has pawed it onto the floor and the dog has then picked up the baton for his part of the “let’s hide stuff” relay and deposited it inside a boot, or beneath the sofa, or in one of the waste paper baskets.

So anyway, Plan B was my next most-requested review: the Chanel Vitalumière Aqua Loose Powder Foundation. Now for me, the words “Aqua” and “Powder” don’t really belong in the same sentence – unless this powder foundation is actually made of water. Which it’s not. It’s decidedly dry and…powdery. I don’t actively dislike it, but as you’ll see from the video, it doesn’t hold a candle to my favourite Chanel base (Perfection Lumière Velvet) and although it does give alright coverage, it’s probably not a product that I’d use on its own. I’d layer it over the top of a sheer base, a BB Cream or some kind of complexion enhancer.

Which would all be well and good, this use of the powder as a “supplementary” kind of product, if it didn’t cost a whopping great big £55. With the beautiful, glowy, creamy, velvety Perfection Lumière coming in at £33, it seems rather a tall order. (You can read a full review of Perfection Lumière here, with close-ups of my skin before and after application.) If we were to compare another powder base then Eve Lom’s mineral foundation is, I think, slightly heavier on the coverage than Chanel’s powder and it has more of a “lit from within” glow (read that review here). But it doesn’t come with a cute little marshmallow-soft mini Chanel kabuki brush, so…swings and roundabouts, my friends, swings and roundabouts!

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Take a look at the video, see what you think. The Loose Powder Foundation does appear to give off a lovely sheen, and I didn’t find it particularly drying, but I can’t really imagine a scenario in which I’d be desperate to use it. As a setting powder, I have always thought that Chanel’s Poudre Universelle Libre was one of the best (and used loads backstage) and if I wanted a “top coat” of something, then I think that Chanel’s Les Beiges is simply unbeatable. I use it almost daily to add a bit of life and healthiness to my skin (shade 20) or to give a really pale bronze sheen on my cheeks and temples (shade 30).

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(The other two products in my video are knockout: I really like Benefit’s new blush and Jane BritishBeautyBlogger‘s lip pencils for M&S are juicy, pigmented and a dream to apply!)

Chanel Les Beiges: http://tidd.ly/816257c3

Chanel Loose Powder Foundation: http://tidd.ly/c3293459

Chanel Perfection Lumiere Velvet: http://tidd.ly/7833e124

Benefit Majorette Blush: http://tidd.ly/d1fce33a

British Beauty Blogger Lip Colour Trio: http://tidd.ly/914eaa6

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