Sunday Tittle Tattle: Itchy Travel Feet / Points Mean Prizes

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roksanda ilincic smith get a room gift voucher

This rather funky gift card from Mr & Mrs Smith came through my letterbox the other week – a “dummy” version, sadly, but it did whet my appetite for a spot of overseas travel. I’ve been a member of the Mr & Mrs Smith hotel website for years now – I book nearly all of my holidays through them and most of my business stays too. I’ve had each type of membership (the Gold one is great if you’re a very frequent traveller and can justify the cost) but my default is the entry-level Blacksmith, which is totally free, yet still – amazingly – gets you a free gift or perk at every hotel you book into as well as really nice discounts with lots of luxury brands like NEOM and Oskia.

My friends and family are sick to death of me banging on about the Blacksmith membership, but I can’t stand it when people miss out on perks – it’s like frequent flyers who don’t collect airmiles! What are you doing? Or when Mr AMR fills the car up with petrol at Tesco and doesn’t use the Clubcard! It all adds up – I paid for more than half of his iPad Pro using Clubcard points at Christmas. I’m also a voracious collector of Amex points, but that’s a whole other story and to tell it would reveal the extent of my enthusiastic “online retail adventures”, so we’ll move swiftly on…

If you want to look at the Smith memberships then they are here – I’ve completely gone off piste with this post  and I need to read it again from the start to try and remember what an earth I was going to talk about…

The new “Get a Room!” gift card. Yes. It’s had a complete makeover from womenswear designer Roksanda Ilincic, who has produced something that looks like a cross between a front row invitation for fashion week and a brightly coloured travel wallet. If you are looking for a stylish birthday/anniversary/wedding/engagement present for someone, something pre-loaded with a sense of adventure and opportunity, then this is it. The gift of travel beats a book voucher any day. You can find the revamped Roksanda Get a Room! card here – voucher amounts start at £50.

roksanda ilincic smith get a room gift voucher

I very dangerously made the mistake of browsing hotels in Greece when I was looking up details about the Roksanda card and now I can’t stop thinking about holidays. We’re going to Cornwall for a few days this spring, but I’m starting to get itchy travel feet and am desperate for some heat. We haven’t been away on a proper holiday since September 2014 (Kinsterna, see here) and though I know that lounging on a beach isn’t going to be entirely an option with a baby in tow, it would be nice to just see some sunny weather and float about in a maxi-dress for a few days. Drink some local wine that’ll turn my face inside-out, that kind of thing..

I’m thinking Greece – perhaps Crete – in early or mid-May. What do you reckon? OK temperature-wise, or should I be looking more along the lines of Spain? I don’t want it to be too hot, because I’ll spend all of my time worrying that the baby is overheating, but I don’t want to risk rain. We get enough of that here. I’m usually Mrs Confident when it comes to holidays, because I’m pretty well-travelled, but feeling a bit nervous about the whole “abroad with baby” thing. Good advice readily accepted…

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Makeup Review, Mascara Comparison Photos: Dolce & Gabbana Passion Eyes Mascara: Best Curl & Volumizing 2014 – Black, Brown, Blue

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Scarlett Johansson happens to be an alumni of my children’s school, and I just met her brother last year. Good looks run in the family, and I can easily see why she embodies the new Dolce & Gabanna Passion Eyes Mascara ($32.00). Her eyes are a tool of seduction, carrying off the I’m-only-wearing-mascara look and […]

Light Lunch: The Classic Greek Salad

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healthy lunch recipes

Not really a recipe, more an idea. A passing thought. Namely: how amazing is a Greek salad when you haven’t had one in a while? I get sick of feta cheese very easily, especially when I go to Greece on holiday and have it for virtually every meal, but after a bit of a feta hiatus I do enjoy getting reacquainted with it, and I revel in its saltiness against a heap of juicy tomatoes and bitter olives. It’s such an easy, fresh and summery salad and it requires very little in the way of advance thought; packs of feta cheese last for months in the fridge and the rest of the ingredients are pretty run-of-the-mill.

Here I’ve simply halved a pack of feta and broken it with my hands over a salad of leaves, cherry tomatoes, black olives and finely sliced red onion. For me, the red onion is non-negotiable; it adds the bite and excitement that the salad otherwise cries out for. I soak the fine onion slices for a while in some lemon juice, if I remember, which makes them a bit less acidic and burny on the old gullet. Cucumber? I can take it or leave it – usually I leave it. Unless I remember, at the same time that I do the onions, to slice the cucumber lengthways, remove the watery seedy bit and then salt the pieces. Not too much salt, mind – the feta is a salt-fest enough on its own!

medicinal chef

The dressing here was a quick mixture of red wine vinegar and very good olive oil, some might prefer lemon juice and olive oil – I’ve had loads of variations, both in Greece and elsewhere. I sprinkle a little dried oregano over the feta, just to give things a more authentic touch, and I like to season with a few grinds of black pepper.

Note: go for a quality feta, not those weird cubes-in-oil that are of dubious origin! And if you seriously like feta then there are loads of feta-worshipping recipes in the Medicinal Chef cookbook that I keep banging on about. It really is a good one – you can find it here. If you hate feta (Mr AMR isn’t too keen) then you could swap for goat’s cheese, but I’d personally also alter the dressing and mix the olive oil with balsamic vinegar rather than red wine. It’s no longer anything like a “Greek Salad” but it’s very tasty.

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At Last a Face Oil for Acne Prone Complexions

 
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Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil Review

Did I initially dabble with Sunday Riley products because of the Sunday moniker? Most definitely but after a few applications of certain key products, I quickly became hooked and the seemingly novel-to-me name factor, was no longer a selling point. As much as shilling over close to a hundred pounds for one skincare product leaves me feeling cold, I’d only be lying to myself and you, if I didn’t confess that in certain instances it has been worth it. If you have acne prone skin like myself, you know that finding products that deliver without further irritation is an endless battle, so when one comes along, you do tend to be loyal. Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil makes my skin rejoice and my bank balance weep but despite the mixed emotions, it is something I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone suffering from problematic skin.

I love face oils and have for a long time but I know some fellow oily/blemish prone readers, occasionally avoid such medium through fear of blocked pores and of course further pimples. If this is in any way a concern for you, then Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil may be the product you’ve been crying out for. It has been formulated with problem complexions firmly in mind and is of course non-comedogenic (basically it won’t clog your pores), all the while being an all singing and dancing skincare solution.

Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil Review

Typically, most face oils main purpose and propriety claim are to nourish and moisturise the skin; Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil of course does just this, relying on gentle milk thistle and cucumber seed. Great but like I said not entirely out the norm, what sets Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil aside is that it fully caters to blemish prone complexions: it soothes and calms inflamed and irritated skin (chamomile and liquorice extract to the rescue in this instance), using salicylic acid it gently, clears exfoliates and re-balances, and to heal and prevent both future and existing breakouts there is of course a dash of the natural antiseptic tea tree oil in the mix too. If that is not enough with continued use it can help to soften the appearance of fine lines – a wonder oil if ever there was one.

When I first received my bottle of Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil, I was a little apprehensive at first, it did seem to offer too much of a good thing but I was happily proven wrong. As someone with oily skin, my complexion is easily overwhelmed and sometimes standard oils -and moisturisers for that matter – don’t fully absorb, leading the way to blocked pores and break outs; I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly my skin laps this green concoction up and truly, how instantaneous the results were. I can’t say that I have found Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil to be all that wondrous at preventing breakouts but then again my skin is not exactly predictable, however I have found that when a blemish rears its ugly head it quickly disappears (scar free may I add) after a few uses of the U.F.O oil. In the last few months (I began reaching for this around mid-April), my complexion is more balanced and not at the mercy of excessive sebum – even in the most humid of conditions, which is nothing short of miraculous.

Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil Review

I’ve openly stated before I’m not the best at exfoliating and as such my skin can often look dull; the introduction of Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil to my routine has quickly resolved this issue as it gently (and regularly), removes dead skin cells thanks to the presence of salicylic acid.
Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil is a treatment product and as such not something that requires you to apply it daily or even weekly, which sure takes the sting out of the price. The idea is that you only apply if and when needed, at to prevent skin purging you shouldn’t apply anymore than three times a week when first trailing the oil. I have found that if I use the U.F.O as and when needed (but always at least once a week), in conjunction with the Sunday Riley Martian Melting Toner daily (full review here), my skin is at its best without the need of medical intervention which is all I have ever really wanted.
Sunday Riley U.F.O Ultra-Clarifying Face Oil £68 via Space.NK – link.

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How do you define beauty?

 
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Beauty is a word which can conjure a clean and definitive image in our mind every time we hear it. Whether it’s a Victoria’s Secret model strutting down the catwalk, or a bunch of freshly cut long stemmed roses… beauty is a word which can mean many things, to many people.

I’ve had a love hate relationship with ‘beauty’ my entire life and today I wanted to share my continuing journey with what ‘beauty’ means to me, and hopefully hear your thoughts too.

From the age of around 9 years, there was only really one image in my mind of what a beautiful woman looked like. She was a young sophisticated woman, tall, slim, with long blonde hair and a beautiful face. You could say the epitome of beauty in my childish eyes equaled a cross between a real life barbie doll, and the woman I was reluctantly about to welcome into my family as a ‘step-mother’.

As I grew older, my sense of what ‘beauty’ meant to me changed. I had an accident as a 10 year old child which led to me having my forehead scar, which meant that I would no longer fit into my own ideals of what a beautiful woman looked like, or would grow up to look like. Thus meaning, I’d have to work extra hard to become ‘beautiful’.

As a preteen and teenager, I rebelled against the rules of society and along with that, the rules of ‘beauty’. I was what you’d call misunderstood, and looking back, in bad need of reassurance, therapy and to be quite honest – likely just a hug from my parents.

Fast forward a few years and after cutting my long thick brown hair into a jaw length bob, plastering my eyelids in eyeliner and dressing head to toe in black, I did my best to fight against the very essence of my beauty ideology. I skateboarded, sang in a hardcore punk band and thew a few moves in a ‘mosh pit’ which in itself is a slightly beautiful rebellion in a sort of cliche poetic way.

However, it was pretty much the internet which dragged my sorry sullen ass out of beauty black hole, and helped me become confident in my skin. Continue reading →