Tuesday Review: Lily Lolo Cosmetics

You'll have seen that I decided to go cruelty free with my beauty regimen, I've also decided to go natural. This means no harsh chemicals or synthetic fragrances, only nature's own wonders. With skin-care that seems pretty easy, there's loads of home-made recipes and tonnes of companies selling natural products.

Make-up is a whole different kettle of fish though and I struggled to find anything natural which didn't cost a fortune. I was really excited when @BEskincareful tweeted me to recommend Lily Lolo mineral cosmetics and eagerly browsed their beautiful site for products.

My first surprise was the really reasonable prices. As far as I can tell about half the price of other mineral make-up brands. The great thing is that you can get the foundations in little tester pots if you're not sure about what colour to get so you don't fork out for a full size which makes you look like an Oompa-Loompa.

I've only ever used cream based foundations before but there's a great video on the website which teaches you how to apply Lily Lolo so even I ended up looking pretty flawless on my first attempt. I used the Warm Peach foundation over most of my face and the slightly pinker Candy Cane on my cheeks. I also used the Translucent Silk finishing powder too but still my skin looked really natural. It really doesn't look like make-up,  you just look like you have naturally flawless skin. (OK, so I'm sounding a bit like an infomercial, but it really is good!)

I also got a couple of eyeshadows - Bronze Sparkle and Moonlight - which blend together beautifully and the Bitten PInk lip gloss (which is almost identical to my natural lip colour but gives a lovely subtle sheen!). On top of that I got a super smudgey black eye-liner and they chucked in a blue one for free!

All the make-up has amazing coverage, even the tester pots should last a while. I am a total convert to mineral make-up and the Lily Lolo range is beautifully packaged, beautifully made in the UK, natural and  also cruelty free. I'll definitely be buying more and I really wish they did a mascara too!

Cruel Cosmetics

I recently made the decision to go cruelty free with my cosmetics. This is everything I own and below is a breakdown of what I will be keeping and what I will be throwing away.

Linky Saturday: Feeling Stylish

Another great blog for you today, Feeling Stylish guides those of us with no taste through the treacherous world of fashion, beauty and style.

Tasty Friday: Celeriac Soup

In an effort to be healthy and save money I've been taking soup to work in my flask every day, but I realised that tinned soups are just horrible. We got a celeriac recently in our Riverford veg box and after seeing a recipe for celeriac soup on the River Cottage site I thought I'd give my own version a go!

An apple a day

It's a family trait - we hate going to the Doctor's. I get a panicky about the fact they're only practising medicine.

How I wish I had gone to the Doctor's when my asthma first kicked in again, or when we moved house and I lost my old inhaler. Yesterday I was so excited about going for a run. I'd gone about half a mile and was on a bit of an uphill journey (literally and metaphorically) and was getting to that black spots in front of the eyes stage. That's normally when I'd start walking but I powered on to the top of the hill. Where I nearly fainted.

I could not breathe at all, then the panic started to set in because a) I did not have an inhaler and b) if I did faint there was a big pile of dog poo I was sure to land in. After a minute or so of crouching with my head in between my knees (and still not breathing properly) I took a short cut home.

I felt crushed. When I got in I lay down for a good 5 minutes before I could breathe properly. I've never quit a run before. The Mr has taken our forms to the new Doctor's today and so hopefully I can get a new inhaler on Wednesday.

I'm a sad panda.

Sew a Laptop Sleeve

I stumbled across this tutorial to sew a laptop sleeve earlier and can't wait to try it out! I'll probably do one for me in a dark swirly pattern and one for the Kid for her little VTech laptop - I'm sure she'll pick an appropriate pattern!

Kid Stuff: Roller Skating

Roller skating - much scarier the older you get. I've been going recently with the kid and actually, once you get over the fear and embarrassment, it's quite fun! Anyway, I've done a guest post over at Love Norfolk all about it. Go and have yourselves a read of it.

Review: Palm & Sole

Those of you who follow me on twitter may know that I recently won a pot of Palm & Sole's intense balm. I'm not usually a skincare fanatic but I have been suffering from a bit of wintry dry skin recently so was pretty darn happy about trying out something new!

A Long Week...

Unfortunately the first fitness challenge did not go brilliantly for me.

On Monday and Tuesday I managed to do my 30 minutes of daily exercise with no trouble and felt pretty good. On Wednesday I went for a run, it was really tough but I managed 5k in just under 37 minutes and felt pretty good about myself. Thursday came and I was cream crackered. I fell asleep before getting to do anything. On Friday I was feeling even worse (especially because my phone got stolen) and again didn't do anything more than walking to the bus stop. Friday night was sleepless and sicky which meant no work and no exercise on Saturday. On Sunday I managed another 5k run (in just under 35 minutes!) but by the evening I was feeling pretty terrible again.

My stats for the week are pretty disappointing too.

• Weight no change
• Chest + 1 inch
• Waist + 1 inch
• Hips  + 1.5 inches

So I've got bigger, lost no weight, been ill and not done all the exercise I planned to. All-in-all I feel pretty rubbish about fitness challenge 1!

So I've decided that, rather than call it a failure, I shall re-do the challenge! This means fitness challenge 2 (I'll be giving the Activia TLC Plan a go) will be delayed, but that's OK, I've not had a chance to go to the shops to buy all the yoghurt yet.

I won't miss you!

Today I took the final step, I deactivated my Facebook account. Of course I downloaded all my photos first, then I deleted said photos from Facebook, then I unfriended all my friends, then I clicked the deactivate button. It felt good.