Beauty Buys - Fragrance Direct

Hello all!

I was reading some beauty blogs the other day, and one person mentioned this wonderful site named Fragrance Direct where there are thousands of beauty products for really cheap prices. Not wanting to believe it until I looked myself I had a browse on the site. Oh the wonders I discovered. Minus £18 later, I had a few bits and pieces arriving in a few days along with some ebay purchases.

Friday rolled around and I was greeted by the Postman with a big package - no innuendo intended. The large box was my Fragrance Direct things, and the two smaller packages are additional bits from ebay. Opening them all up, it felt a little bit like an early Christmas for me, as I rarely buy beauty bits all year as I get lots as presents through the year. I immediately loved all the nail polishes and the little quad eye shadows caught my eye. Of course I documented the whole thing for my blog.

First I had a good look at all the polishes as I normally only seem to buy red ones, so this was nice to have different colours! My favourite so far has to be the Caramel Cupcake one, as it is so close to my skin tone that I can wear it to work, and have yet to be caught! All from the Rimmel 60 Second range, which is my all time fave brand for my nails, and they only cost 99p. Up at work, they are about £2 each, so quite the bargain. Colours, left to right: 650 - Magnetise / 850 - Aye Aye Sailor / 620 - How Do You Lilac It? / 500 - Caramel Cupcake / 805 - Grey Matter. I loved the prices of these so much that I've ordered another few in other colours available on the site.

Another polish I discovered for another 99p, was NYC Quick Dry nail polish. I've never heard of this brand before so thought I would give it a try with 266 Battery Park Purple. I LOVE this colour. It's very gothic glam, so I will be wearing this for Halloween this week. I might have to get more from this brand, as I love how dark it is, but it stands out so well against my slightly pale skin!

Alongside this NYC product, I wanted to see what else they had on offer, and came across these NYC Quartet Eye Shadow pallettes. Oh my goodness these are perfect. They are tiny enough to fit into any handbags as they are no bigger than the palms of my hands. The reason for buying these two was that they tell you where to apply each colour on your eye to create a smoky eye effect. If you've been with my blog and videos for a while, you'll know I am useless at makeup application, and had no idea how to do such a look on myself. These tiny little pallettes have worked wonders for me and they made my eyes look pretty good! I bought them in a nude and purple colour, as I wanted a day time and a night time look. The nude shade is called 815A The Best Of Broadway, and the purple one is called 792 Hot Couture. For 99p, you cannot go wrong with these, so much so, that I might have purchases the other colours available on the site. Oops.

The other two things I bought from the site are these little pocket nail files which are handy for me to take to work with me. I am forever snapping and chipping my nails on the tills and products at work, so these are just the right size to have in my pocket to take onto the till with me, instead of my huge nail file which is a bit big! For only 75p, I will probably end up buying more of these once I have used up all of the ones I now own, as these are perfect for me. 

The last item I found was my all time favourite perfume. As it is called Playboy Play It Rock. I decided to see if they had this for a cheaper price that the drugstores and supermarkets as it usual retails in at about £13. I happily pay that price for this as I love the scent of it. However this wonderful site had it like I had hoped. I managed to snag this for £5.99! Bargain! The bottle I currently have is almost empty, so this find came at the perfect moment so I just had to buy it. I've tried many perfumes over the years, and being an asthmatic, some scents are so strong I can't wear them at all, but this one gives off a nice smell and isn't so strong that I suffocate. 

My final two purchases are from ebay, as I had seen these on beauty blogs a lot and after buying all these new polishes, I decided I had to get them.  First I found some of these acrylic nail wheels for me to test out colours and nail art on. How had I not bought some of these earlier I don't know, as these are quite handy for me to show my mum what colours I have when she wants to borrow them! I've used one up already from playing about with colours and designs, so it is quite the mess! They cost £2.75 for 10 wheels which wasn't too bad compared to other prices.

The other thing from ebay are these beautiful purple marble nail art pens. These are the most common ones that you can find, and for 99p you can't complain about it. There are some blue versions as well for about £2, but my favourite colour is purple, so had to get them! Already tested them out on the nail wheel and they work great, though I need a little more practice with them before I try them out on myself for designs!

So there are all my recent beauty purchases for this week! Hopefully the other bits and pieces I ordered will be here by the weekend so I might have another post up soon for you all! If you haven't already, go and check out the Fragrance Direct website as it has saved me so much money this month already. P&P charges are reasonable too.

Hope you liked this post and leave any comments about the products below if you like them. Keep safe everyone and have a great week :)

Tania xxx

My Life ~ The Online Dating Mistake | Part 2

Hello Everyone!

It's time for part two of the bad dating saga; aka my life. As I said before, I'm not mentioning names unless I know the people mentioned are okay with it, so to save some people's identities, they are marked with a * and the name is fake :)

Click here for >Part 1<

Episode Two - Online Guy In Real Life

Well from that title you can guess what I went and done. I'd been talking to one guy, Chris* on the app for three days, pretty much 10 hours a day. We swapped Facebooks and he seemed like a nice guy to hang out with and be friends with. Then he gave me his number and I thought 'What the hell? He seems fine!' So we swapped numbers and began texting. Chris had a pretty good job, drove a car, had a seemingly nice family and had been single for three months. Peachy. We spoke a lot about different things and I managed to learn a lot about him in a matter of five days, via many texts and Facebook messages.

As I write this I am mentally slapping myself. I'm not someone who steps out of the comfort zone easily, so for me to swap numbers with a stranger is weird to me. Then he asked if I wanted to meet up with him. It took me about three hours to decide, plus roping my friend Jodie into this situation to come with me, as there was no way I was meeting a stranger all by myself. SAFETY FIRST. She said she would come with me, and we decided on meeting in my town to go bowling and he would bring a friend so Jodie wouldn't feel like a third wheel. Jodie is engaged so this was fine with her as she would be there for me. I got excited about meeting a new friend and he seemed excited too. The day before the meet up I saw on the dating app he had changed his motto from 'wants to chat' to 'wants to date'. Literally no alarm bells went off at that point.

So the day of the meet up arrives. I didn't make much effort with my outfit as to me, I was just meeting up with a new friend. He then texts me saying how excited he is to meet me. Jodie and I arrive at the bowling alley location and wait inside to meet him. It was a ridiculously hot day so I was in shorts, and I hate my legs. I wouldn't have worn this for a date I can assure you. I really still thought at this point that it was just a friendly meet up. ~Internal deep, deep sigh.~ I am quite naive, I see that now.

So he walks in, looks like he did in his pictures. Great. Then we see he is alone as his friend didn't come after Chris told him that Jodie was engaged. Okay, fine now my friend feels third wheeled! Anyhow, we start the bowling game and we sit and talk more about each other and he asked me about my hand which is strapped up in so much microporous tape it resembled the Michelin man. (I'd hurt my hand a few weeks previously so it was taped up to stop any further injuries.) As we had been talking I suddenly noticed his arm was around me... Now I panicked a little and didn't say anything and then thankfully it was my turn to bowl. No more awkward arm hugs.

Next we were all hungry so went to the restaurant at the bowling place and got burgers. While ordering his arm was around me again, but I didn't notice this until we went to walk back to our seats. Don't get me wrong, Chris was a pretty nice guy and good looking, but I was like 'what the hell?' I mean, I thought it was just a friendly meet up! We eat and then go to the arcade. He has now taken to holding my hand. I honestly didn't know what to do so I just went with it and then tried to let go as often as possible by playing some of the games in the arcade. Then... HE KISSED MY FOREHEAD, (I'm quite short compared to him). The alarm bells in my head were going wild now. I've not really done the dating thing a lot, considering I was with my last boyfriend for almost five years. So I insisted on playing air hockey to stop this as my heart was thumping like a jackhammer at this point. I like being single.

So we then go to leave, so I walk out the building with Chris and we are waiting for Jodie to come out and then he said he'd had a great day and loved meeting me and wanted to do it again. I nodded and couldn't reply as his mouth was upon mine now. Short and quick kiss and I just blinked a few times and then glanced at the doors like 'WHERE THERE HELL IS JODIE'. Don't get me wrong, it was good kiss and that, but I was in some sort of shock and denial. I've never thought myself to be all that um... fanciable? Then we were talking about possible meeting dates again and I said maybe the following Monday as it was before my birthday. We agreed and I thought it will just be as friends next time as I would tell him later, as I'd have felt bad saying it to his face. Jodie then appeared and began to walk to the car, and then he freaking kissed me again. I cannot explain my face, heart rate or what was going around in my head other than: I like being single.

We parted and we were going to meet up the following Monday. This is where I end this post until the final installment of this saga next week! There is much more to this story I can promise you. It is still going on a whole month later. Any awkward dating experiences of your own, may it be an actual date or an accidental one like mine, please let me know!

Until part three, keep safe, everyone!
Tania xxx

Style Up ~ #1 Wine Skirt

Hello all!

Here is an outfit I styled together around a wine coloured dipped hem skirt I own. I like it with the top and shoes, though I am looking for a top that goes with it a lot better. I also own this skirt in black so I can style that a dozen ways with a variety of colours, but I think the wine one is so much better for this season! I know the possibility of cold legs with this outfit is quite high, but I just love this all pieced together.

Skirt - £7 (on sale)

Top - £8

Shoes - £16

All items from Select.

I've had the shoes for a while and worn then a lot as you can tell from their fragile state, but I love wedges so these are perfect for this outfit. And here I am wearing my new get up. Sorry the pictures are a bit blurry, my phone didn't wish to cooperate today.

Let me know what you think of this styling below!

Hope you're all having a great week so far, and keep safe :)

Tania x

My Life ~ The Online Dating Mistake | Part 1

Hello everyone!

Starting up with some more personal posts for the 'life' part of my blog, I'm going to start up a series of stories about my life, some funny, some maybe not, and others are there just for me to get things off my chest! I'll not mention names unless I know the people involved will be okay with me mentioning them, so all names marked with an * are names I have changed to save someone's identity!

Episode One ~ The Online Date Scenario

I had the bright idea one evening in September to find some chat apps for my iTouch just so I could chat to people and maybe make new friends. I had been single for a little under two months at this point so thought I could do with some people to bug in my spare time! I found one app called Badoo, and it was free to download so I downloaded it and began to set up a profile. I specifically put 'wants to chat/make new friends' as my options, not selecting the 'wants to date' option as quite frankly I was (and still am), loving being single.

As you can imagine there were a lot of people on there eager to chat and make friends, but then there are the crowd on there who wanted to date. ~Internal sigh~ I'd like to say a handful of them were nice and okay, and fine with the fact I wasn't up for dating and then they left me alone.

The others... Well...

I was inundated with offers of booty calls, dates, money, and even a car at one point, and I had 8 phone numbers thrown at me, in the first five minutes of me signing up onto the app. I'd only put up one picture at this point and not even a flattering one at that. I met a few nice people on there and though nothing came of some of them, I've actually made two friends off of the site. Yay!

Then the following day I woke up to a dozen app notifications and clicked on the messages and holy crow one of them nearly killed me from laughing. Many of them were like this, but this was the first message I saw that morning. Alex* hadn't even said the word hello in the first message he sent me. In fact here is the messages exchanged:

Alex: Will you dominate me?

Me: What the...?

Alex: Please. Take my virginity?

Alex: I'll even marry you and treat you like a princess.

Me: ... Um no sorry

Alex: Please. Don't you like to dominate people?

Me: No, not really...

Me: Hello would have been nice to start with!

Alex: Hello! < Changed your mind now?

Me: Oh god no.

This carried on for about ten minutes as I had yet to figure out how to block people, but the worse part is the guy was real as his account was verified by Facebook and mobile number... I cannot even begin to explain how much I was laughing and wondering if he was joking or being serious. That was until it happened a few more times with other guys. Really, the word hello would be nice before you ask me to jump into bed with you, or tie you to the damn thing. I've also seen far too many guys using their um... manhood as profile pictures. LET ME SEE YOUR FACE.

PLEASE.

I've come across two old friends from school and a guy I worked with on there so far. He is another story completely, along with the guy who I actually met up with and well that didn't go quite as well as I was hoping!

I've since steered well clear of the app as I fear for my sanity if I get asked to dominate one more person.

Anyway, until part 2, keep safe and have a great weekend!
Tania xxx