Hey Everyone!

Today I'm going to talk about a few products that I have finished off. You will be able to tell that I love all of these products otherwise I wouldn't have finished them and I would definitely re-purchase them all.

1. Garnier Micellar Water: I was a massive lover of Bioderma but it's just a bit too pricey and not accessible enough for me so when Garnier came out with their own micellar water I knew I had to try it. I know there are a lot of mixed reviews but for me personally I really like it, there is no real difference when I compare it to Bioderma apart from how much cheaper it is! I have had a couple of bottles of this and will continue to repurchase it in the future. I love that they have just brought out a mini size as well which is perfect for travelling!

2. Clarins Gentle Exfoliating Brightening Toner: I use this as part of my skincare regime at night as a toner after I have cleansed my skin. I have seen a real difference in how bright and fresh my skin looks after using when compared to not using it. It is on the pricier side however I think it's well worth the price tag and wouldn't be without it in my skin care regime. 

3. Body Shop Vitamin E Moisture Cream: This is my personal moisturiser of choice that I use both in the morning and at night. I love that it doesn't really have a smell and the texture of the moisturiser is so light that it sinks into the skin really easily. I have normal to oily skin and I feel like this gives my skin just enough moisture without leaving me looking like an oily mess.

4. Vitamin E Moisture Serum: I use this after I've toned but before using moisturiser to help the moisturiser sink in better. Again, the texture is lovely and sinks into the skin easily which makes it a lot quicker and easier when completing my skincare regime. I am a big fan of the body shop and if you have one of their loyalty cards you get money off which makes their products a real bargain!

5. Clinique Take The Day Off Cleansing Balm: This is my favourite cleanser ever! As mentioned above my skin can get a little oily at times and other cleansers, especially balm cleansers, just make that worse. However with Clinique I have found my skin looks clearer and my make up just melts away. I know longer dread taking my make up off, if you haven't tried it you definitely should!

6. Kiehls Creamy Eye Treatment: This eye cream is light, hydrating and perfect for people who are just experimenting with eye creams for the first time and don't require anti-aging properties. A little goes a long way with this eye cream and although the pot is small and fairly expensive it does last a long time. 

7. Nars Deep Throat Blusher: I bought this a couple of years ago in the first ever Sephora I went into in France and didn't use it for ages because I didn't want it to run out. However over the past few months it has been my absolute blusher of choice as it is just so easy to wear everyday. It is highly pigmented and blends easily, which is why I will probably repurchase at some point in the future!

8. L'Oreal Telescopic Mascara: Finally I have an old favourite of mine, a mascara that I have purchased again and again for many years and always returned to after trying products from high end brands. I am currently loving Benefit Roller Lash and have others that I would like to try when I have a few extra pennies to spend, however I will return to this one as I know it is reliable.

Well that's everything, I hope you have enjoyed reading about all the products that I have finished and why I have enjoyed using them. Let me know if you decide to try any and I will be back next week with another post.

  

Hey Everyone,

Long time no see! Well a lot has changed over the past few months and I will soon do a blog post that will talk about all of this, however I just wanted to write a short post to say that I am still here and do want to get back into blogging more regularly. I'm not going to set myself up with a schedule because if I don't stick to it I will feel like I'm letting people down and so I shall just post as and when I have the time, however you can expect at least one post a week.

One of the big changes that has happened to me over the last few months is that I have finished university and because of this am no longer a student. This is a very weird feeling for me and one that I did not expect to feel. Therefore I will be posting a few different blogposts to do with this topic and the expectations versus reality of life after university as well as the typical beauty, fashion and lifestyle posts. 

Well I will keep it short and sweet for now but I hope you will look forward to reading my posts as when they come!

Hey Everyone,

I'm back today to talk about my favourite festive drinks! Now I have to admit this is probably going to be a relatively short post from me today as in my opinion, Costa win hands down when it comes to Christmas drinks. Actually they generally win all year round for me as I love their drinks, food and cakes! 

Anyway back to Christmas drinks... I never used to be a lover of hot drinks at all, I actually used to drink cold drinks all year round. However last Christmas everything changed when Costa launched their honeycomb hot chocolate (pretty sure that was it) and my life changed forever. Okay, maybe it wasn't that dramatic... but I learned that I do like hot drinks, they just have to be very sweet! So the anticipation for their 2014 Christmas drinks was very high to see if I would enjoy them as much and I can safely say that it is a definite yes. For me, as I don't like coffee, it's all about the hot chocolate and these are my picks for this year!

White hot chocolate: this is my favourite drink this year, it is just so yummy. There isn't enough good words to say about this drink, it's just delightful. It comes with cream and cherry sauce on the top but I pass on the sauce as I am not a big fan of cherry flavoured things, but I love love love the cream on top! If you haven't had one yet, make sure you do as you definitely won't regret!

Brownie hot chocolate: I tried this one first when the festive menu first came out because I absolutely love the Costa chocolate brownies, they are the best of any brownies I have tried. Anyway the drink was also delicious with the little pieces of brownie on top; I did enjoy this one but I have to say the white hot chocolate wins hands down.

This is all of the drinks I have tried, I told you it would be a short post! I am determined to try the hot chocolate orange but everytime I get distracted by the white hot chocolate. One last thing I wanted to end with is obviously the novelty of enjoying our Christmas drinks comes with the cup that it is served in and this year Costa have had the genius idea of taking their Christmas cup designs and putting them onto the reusable cups. Brilliant! Now we can have a bit of festive cheer all year round! I hope there is one in my stocking!

I hope you have enjoyed this post and I will see you on Monday for post five of #CountdowntoChristmas

Hey Everyone!

I'm back with the third installment of the Countdown To Christmas series and today I have got a gift guide for girls. I have tried to include gifts that range in price so that there is something to suit everyone's budget! Given that this blog is a beauty, fashion and lifestyle blog you may find that a lot of these gifts are more make up related but what else can you expect?! Anyway, I hope you enjoy!


1. Tanya Burr Gift Set £11.99: I absolutely love nail polish, what girl doesn't? Although I have tried Tanya's lipglosses, I have never tried any of her nail polish and I think this little set is just lush. The colours are super cute and you could give yourself a gorgeous, glittery and festive manicure.

2. Soap and Glory Merry Kiss Much Gift £5: I love Soap and Glory, I think it's a guaranteed winner for any girls that are into their beauty products. The packaging is amazing and  I think these little baubles would make cute little stocking fillers, secret santa gifts or if you just needed a little thing to make up the numbers on pressies. I would love to receive this in my stocking and it's fairly cheap if you haven't got a big budget to play with this year.

3. Naked On The Run £37: It wouldn't be a gift guide without including a palette would it and I had to include something from Urban Decay, my favourite! This is a brand new palette that has only just been released and I think it is brilliant. Not only is there six eyeshadows included but also a full sized lipgloss, bronzer, blush and a travel size eye pencil and mascara. It really does have everything you need in one place!

4. Real Techniques Nic's Picks Limited Edition Gift Set £24.99: Real Techniques are in my opinion the best make up brushes as they are such good quality and such cheap prices. This is a limited edition set and so perfect for a present and it comes packaged so nicely (can you tell I am big on packaging?!) This included five brushes for only £25, working out at only £5 per brush. Absolute bargain! You could even buy the set and split up the brushes to give individually.



5. Personalised Notebook £9: I am one of those people that has about five notebooks on the go at once all filled to the brim with different lists. Another big favourite of mine is personalised gifts which is why I think this is the perfect gift. Not only is this really good quality but it's such a good price for a lovely gift. I also think this would appeal to many people as everyone needs somewhere to write things down.

Although I have included five main gifts, I thought I would just write down some other ideas. I really think experience days make a nice gift; things like afternoon tea, spa day or theatre show and dinner packages. Other good presents are perfume or body care gift sets and the only reason why I didn't include these are that I feel like everyone already knows about these gifts. Finally I know there is a lot of hype about Christmas and more often than not you end up spending loads of money but I honestly believe that it is more about the thought than the amount of money spent when it comes to Christmas. If a present is well thought out and you can tell someone has really taken a lot of time over picking out something special then there is not much more you can ask for.

I hope you have enjoyed this gift guide and found it helpful, thanks for reading!

Hey Everyone,

Today's #CountdownToChristmas post is my Christmas Wishlist! I have actually done a list for my family this year as they always say it's easier to have ideas of what I would actually want rather than them try and guess. The only problem is I'm a bit of a control freak so I always want to make sure I know what people are getting and everyone gets annoyed with me, haha!

Anyway for this post I'm just going to include a few items that are on my wishlist for this year!

1. Fujifilm Instax Mini 8 in Pink: I have seen these cameras all over the internet/ social media for the past year or so and I have always been really keen to get one, however I didn't have an actual camera so thought that should be a priority ahead of this which is a bit more fun. However when I went to New York I actually got a camera in the airport on the way out there so I thought that now would be the perfect time to ask for a camera that is a bit different. Plus let's face it, I just wanted it!  

2. Viktor and Rolf Bon Bon Perfume: First of all can we all just appreciate the bottle on this perfume?! This is something else I discovered in the airport whilst in New York, however I was on the way home, had no spending money left and had already bought a perfume on the way there. I'm not very good at describing scents but I can say for certain that it is a sweet fragrance as I always go for sweet scents. It is just lush and something a bit different for me as I always go for Marc Jacobs perfume.

3. Too Faced Under the Mistletoe Gift Set: I think Too Faced have brought out the best gift sets this year, if you haven't already you should definitely check them out as they are all so pretty. Again, sorry to keep banging on about it but whilst in New York I actually picked up the La Belle Carousel gift set in Sephora however I don't have any lip products by them so this gift set is perfect. Not only does it include three gorgeous lipsticks of which I would use all the colours which is perfect but they come in this amazing sparkly pink make up bag, what more could you want?!

4. Pandora Twisted Stacking Ring: I don't know about all of you but I am a massive fan of Pandora jewellery and I always have something from them on any Christmas or birthday wishlist. This year I really would like a thumb ring as I have other rings from Pandora that I wear on other fingers but I don't have a thumb ring. I have chosen this one to put on my wishlist as I think it is a bit edgier than some of my other more girly rings. There's not really much else to say about it, I just think it's lovely and would really love to add it to my collection.

5. Iconic New York Book: Since visiting New York (I didn't intentionally make this a New York heavy blog post, sorry!) I am really keen to actually learn more about the place and this book is something I actually saw when I was out there however I thought that it would be a bit heavy to put in my luggage so I decided to put it on my Christmas wishlist instead. It is filled with wonderful pictures and I think it's a lovely item to have for memories from our trip and also for other people to look at if they are interested.

So those are a few things that are on my Christmas wishlist this year, I hope you have enjoyed this post and in the comments you could let me know what you have on your wishlist. Thanks for reading,

Hey Everyone,

Hey Everyone!

First of all, welcome back! I know it has been forever but I am back, relaunching Cupcakes and Candles at the most wonderful time of the year... Christmas! I'm not going to go into why I haven't been writing posts because it would just be a load of excuses, instead I want to start fresh by joining with a whole host of other bloggers for a Christmas Countdown. 

However before we get into all of that exciting stuff I just wanted to write this short post to let you guys know that I will be back with regular blog posts for definite. In terms of what my schedule will be, for the Christmas Countdown the posts are predetermined so I will stick to those dates set but for the future once the countdown is over I will be aiming for 1-2 posts a week whilst I am still at uni and then once I'm finished who knows where we will be! 

Just thought I'd leave you guys with a little life update... so I'm back in my third and final year of uni so it is rather a stressful time with lots going on. I also got a promotion at work so basically it's just been a bit of a manic time recently. Since I last posted however I had the absolute best Summer, maybe I could do a little post in the future with a round up of everything I got up too. I also turned 21 and went to New York which of course was amazing.

I think that's enough rambling from me, thank you to everyone who will continue to read these posts and join me on Chapter 2 of the adventure that is Cupcakes and Candles starting with Christmas.