Retail Therapy

As a break from all the clearing I have been doing (yep it's still ongoing and I have bags of recycling stuff waiting for the right week to go out) I decided to have a trip to Bluewater on Saturday after I finished work. Predominently it was to go to Holland & Barrett, but I thought it would be nice to have a mooch, maybe look at some clothes, get a mini makeover etc. and something different from the usual weekend routine of working then going home to housework

I had a lovely makeover at the Benefit counter in House of Fraser and ended up buying their new foundation, 'Some Kind-a Gorgeous' which gives lovely light sheer coverage, evening out the skin tones without looking heavily made up. It's a lighter shade than 'You Rebel' so fits my skin tone better. I was also tempted by the '10' bronzer/highlighter, but managed to resist buying that, although I am now looking on e-bay. I do love their new packaging.

I also bought another new mascara. I have been on the quest for the perfect mascara for as long as I've been wearing make up. I don't want much, just a mascara that is easy to apply, that makes my pale, stubby lashes look long, dark & sumptuous, but doesn't clump leaving all my eyelashes nicely separated and preferably beautifully curled. Now over the years I have found mascaras to give me extra long lashes (Bourgois Coup de Theatre), ones with a good curl (Mister Mascara's Japanese Curling Formula) and OK everyday coverage (Mister Mascara's Classic Lash and Benefit's rose scented mascara). However, I still find that they all go clumpy and make my lashes stick together rather than beautifully separated, with the exception of the Mister Mascara Classic Lash and that is no longer available or I wouldn't still be trying to get the last out of my 4 year old tube (yes I kow you're supposed to change it every 3 months but in reality who does?) Of course the best ones for everyday do nothing to make my lashes look longer. Enter the latest contender - L'Oreal's Telescopic Clean Definition mascara. According to the blurb (and the fantastic picture of Penelope Cruz with the most amazing lashes) the special new brush coats each lash individually and spreads them out giving amazing definition and good length, and luckily it was on special offer at Boots. Obviously as soon as I got home I just had to try it out. The verdict? Not entirely impressed on first application. It did make them seem a bit longer but that may just have been because they were dark enough to be seen. The outside lashes stuck together (although this may be the way I applied it rather than the mascara). Also the coverage wasn't clumpy but not as even as it could be - not the worst mascara I've ever had, but certainly my eyes looked nothing like Penelope's. They looked even worse when 30 minutes later I chopped an onion and ended up with big panda eyes!

Clothes wise the range was just as disappointing as the last time I went shopping and I was horrified to see that a basic black jersey mock wrap top (the only thing I could find that I'd even consider looking at) was £35 in Evans. Instead I've done some bidding on e-bay and managed to get half a dozen tops from there at about the same price as the one top would have cost me. If they fit, great, I have some nice new cheap clothes for a while (until they get too big), if they don't I'll stick them back on e-bay and get something else instead.

Oh I also bought a new handbag. I wasn't going to buy any more, but as soon as I saw this on QVC I fell completely in love with it and knew I just had to have it. Unfortunately I got outbid on e-bay for one, but then someone else offered me theirs. I ended up getting it for over 25% less than I would have paid for it in the shop or on QVC, so that officially counts as a bargain.

All I need to do now is get my act together with sorting out my books and cds and actually get some stuff onto ebay myself!

Chelsea Flower Show

Well didn't we get lucky with the weather this year? Rain on Monday, overcast on Tuesday, fantastic bright sunshine on Wednesday (the day we went) and progressively worse weather as the week ended. It was so hot that I ended up getting quite badly sunburnt (and got some interesting white marks as well!) but we had a fantastic time and did all the usual Chelsea 'stuff' - ice creams, fish & chips & bucketloads of Pimm's.

And of course we took photos ... hundreds of 'em. The link to my photo gallery is below, I will add a link to Lynne's gallery once I get it:

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2007

Expect yet more Flower Show inspired LO's soon!

This year's predominent theme was country garden, with almost all the gardens showing this sort of planting. The best of these was Chris Beardshaw's garden - Hidcote, which in parallel with Julian Dowle's 'From Darkness to Light' (2004 and still my favourite garden of all time), received only a Silver Gilt from the judges but won the people's award vote by over 10 times the vote of any other garden. No idea why the judges didn't give it the Gold and 'Best in Show' award that it so obviously deserved, but they obviously work to different criteria than those of us who just go along to look at and enjoy the gardens. Having said that, the garden that did win 'Best in Show' - '600 Days by Bradstone' was a stunning garden, and made a nice change from all the cottage garden planting, depicting as it did an astronauts life on Mars.

In the small garden category I think my favourite this year was the AOA Corporation's 'Garden of Clouds' featuring walls of moss. Very unusual and quite exquisite.

This year we were lucky enough to get to meet Chris Beardshaw (and his mum & dad) and Lorraine Kelly. We also saw Alan Titchmarsh getting ready for one of his pieces to camera (always a treat).

So roll on RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2008!

It's that time again already

Yep Chelsea Flower Show is here again. Tomorrow Lynne and I will be spending a luxurious day, enjoying the beautiful weather (hurrah! so glad it's not going to rain like last year), enjoying the beautiful gardens and enjoying the Pimms. Expect a link to another couple of hundred pictures here soon!

Useless Fact No 1

Did you know an empty crisp box holds approximately 250 cds? Well, you do now. Told you it was a useless fact and one that I found out this weekend as I've been tranferring my cd singles onto the computer in readiness for getting rid of them (yep they're going as well if I can find enough cases - stupidly years ago I decided to save space by putting them in lots of discgear cases and discarding the boxes and now I need to reassemble but have nowhere near enough cases - in fact i suspect I shall have at least 1 more crisp box full by the time I've finished. I keep looking at the lounge and thinking it must be getting tidier, but it doesn't seem to be - surely at some point it must start looking better musn't it?

I was supposed to be treating myself to a pamper evening tonight, but have been too busy getting my food ready for tomorrow and now seems a bit late to start with all that. So I've settled down to watch the fantastic Derren Brown torturing some poor soul instead. Maybe tomorrow instead.

Camp but Fun!

I've just spent an exciting evening (okay maybe not that exciting) watching the Eurovision Song Contest - a bit novel for me as it was the first one for about 20 odd years that I've seen without the benefit of alcohol! I am a big fan of this programme and feel it provides the sort of quality entertainment all too often lacking on the TV these days. Of course the UK entry was absolutely dire and came second to last which was about what was deserved, as the Irish entry was considerably worse than ours and an eastern european country won, swamped as it was with entries from there, but good fun nonetheless with Terry Wogan totally on form. I was personally a little disappointed with the winner - it was quite dull and worthy, I preferred the Swedish entry which was camp 70s cod rock or the more gothic Finnish entry. I was supposed to be sorting through my cd singles while it was on, but instead ended up chatting with other people watching and then a conversation with Jo so no sorting completed. Why does clearing always seem like a good idea until you start doing it? *LOL*

CC Pre-crop LO

Finally, here's the LO that I did for the pre-crop challenge.

See I was cute once!