Macadamia Natural Oil's Deep Repair Masque

One of the things you do get told about being pregnant is that your body will change, and then they will go on about the 'glow' you will get after your 3 months are over. This can be lie for some people, I didn't really get a glow until about 18 weeks, before then my skin looked dull and my hair looked life had left it.

I had tried this previously from another event I went to (got this one in my goodie bag from London Meet Up), so I knew it would already re-kick the recovery of my poor hair. The hair mask uses a combination of macadamia and argan oil infused with tea tree oil, chamomile oil, aloe and algae extracts. You put onto clean, damp hair for 5-10 minutes and then wash off with warm water, dry and style as normal.

It is a thick pale coloured cream and found that because I know has shorter hair (down to my jaw line), I could split the sachet into two uses in one week to give it a full recovery programme. After the first use it felt significantly softer, that kind of soft where you cannot stop touching your hair. It looked glossy and moisturised. After the second weekly use, it had looked like I had been at a salon and had treatment done, it looked more improved than the beginning.

For 100ml tube it starts from £12.50, which if I have worked this out correctly, for my length hair will give you about 7 uses at £1.79 each (my hairdresser tries to sell me their treatment at £4.79 each time). There is 250ml (£26.95) and 500ml (£36.75) available.

Read more about Macadamia hair range here

Apivita Anti Wrinkle Grape Face Mask

Apivita is a Marks & Spencer exclusive beauty brand, and what brilliant brand for them to have. Apivita started as a pharmacy in Athens in 1979 by husband and wife, Nikos and Niki Koutsianas, following the philosophy of of Hippocrates (a Greek who started the modern medicine movement and believed in treating the body and the mind).

For me the representive that I met at London Meet Up sold the brand for me, sun drenched fields and vineyards, I was already mentally booking my tickets there. However, I will have to settle with my grape in the face mask for now.

The mask has grape and the combination of A and E vitamins which is reported to help reduce the appearance of wrinkles and expression lines while offering skin unique softness and revitalisation. Olive and sunflower natural plant oils have moisturising properties and enhance skin's elasticity and firmness.
You apply to clean skin for 10 minutes and rinse off (as I do with my a majority of my face masks I use a face cloth to wash off).

 

I will warn you know, it is a fluid mask so it can come out quicker than expected. It also has little particles of red in them so I would assume this is parts of the grape as I cannot find any information anywhere on what they are. I did like the softer touch to my skin afterwards, it felt much plumper and look liked I have had a night's rest.

 

Doing my research on the Marks & Spencer's website, they also have 20% off Beauty and Fragrance until 26th August (That's Bank Holiday Monday). The set of two sachets of masks would cost £2.40 instead of £3.00, not the biggest reduction, however if this is a sample of the rest of the range it's well worth a treat (or two).

Entry 200

 

 

"What I love most about rivers is you can't step in the same river twice
The water's always changing, always flowing"
Pocahontas - Disney

What a huge difference a 100 blog posts can make?

Unevenlemming Beauty, I like to think, is entering another phase of evolution, as we never stand still and always change. I, myself are going through the biggest change since I got married, I am creating my own Minilemming to add to the family and as well as to the blog. I realise as my pregnancy progresses that it's going to play a huge influence to my life, people do not joke when they say 'life changing', but also the choices I make for myself and wellbeing.

I love blogging, even in the times that I am stuck in a rut, I still love writing, reading, and eventually planning (I'm still working on this!). I have also made lots of friends from this, who have been a huge support but also the kick up the bum I've needed in the ruts. Many thanks and hugs to them.

Hopefully over the next few weeks you will see some new improvements that will benefit me and give Unevenlemming Beauty a little more of a clear identity, so bear with me during this transition - It will be worth waiting for. Until then thank you for reading and sticking with me, for all the comments, tweets and messages - Some day's it's the best and only thing that keeps me going.

Beauty Swap with Clare (A Bit of This and That)

About late May I signed my name to a Beauty Swap organised but the retro fabulous Kat from Tales of a Pale Face. It is very simple, you get an email to say who you have got as well as contact mail, you send a lot of emails asking about likes/dislikes and arranging when. Clare and I found out that we were both going to London Meet Up at the end of July and decided to save the postage to send more surprises.

 

I mentioned in my emails that the pale person for me struggles to find a bronzer that doesn't turn me orange and I lacked any daytime lipsticks (all of them are mostly red!). Clare said that she kind of liked MAC lipsticks (owns 25 of them , you need help with a MAC lipstick - she's your girl!) and loved premium make up.

 

You can read what I got her here on her blog and see below what appeared in my little bag (beautifully wrapped up may I add, I lasted an hour before I opened them all).

 

Natural Collection lipsticks in Apple Blossom (on the left) and Rose Bud (on the right) - I already have one of the lipsticks and think they're really great value so it was great to see two more for my collection.

Bourjois Powder Bronzer - Smells delicious, have not tried it yet, but the other bloggers around me when I opened it, 'Ohh'd' at it and came with recommendations.

Not Pictured - Montagne Jeunesse peel off face masks - my favourite face mask brand and they have added to the collection. I also gave the exact same ones to Clare!

The one I got most excited about was:

My second ever MAC lipstick in Crème Cup - a beauty bloggers holy grail. I have worn this a few times now and it goes slightly pink on me but looks great for everyday which is what I have been looking for.

Big thank you to Kat for organising and Clare for being really generous.

Minilemming Update - Week 18

Minilemming aged 12 weeks - Look it's waving!

I did say I wouldn't attack with too many baby updates while there wasn't a lot to report.

The morning sickness thankfully went about week 10 and by the time this was taken I was finally getting some energy levels backs. This also meant working started increasing my work load until we found another pair of hands to come and help me. I spent most of my nights coming in from work, eating and then going to sleep on the sofa or going to bed.

No one explains that in the second part that you can still feel like the baby is sucking the life force of you (insert Twilight/Harry Potter reference here). During the heat was the worst bit, you are already feeling warm with everything going on, the heat just made everything unbearable and my ankles swelled to enormous size!

There are plus sides - feeling the first fluttering's of movements cannot be replaced or described, its very strange but amazing at the same time. I also have started to buy bits for them as I've spotted them in the sales and have started 'nesting' (aka cleaning out like a mad woman). My belly is now bigger than my chest, it arrives before I do and is starting to feel very heavy.

The next 20 week scan is the end of August where I get another little look at them, and no I will be finding out th sex. As long as they are doing all great them we're happy. For now its all getting rest as I can and putting my puffy feet up until baby comes along.

Blogsale is still going on!

Dispatches: Celebs, Brands and Fake Fans

I instantly tweeted this last week when I saw the advert for this, as I knew a high majority of the blogger community (regardless of your topic) would be interested in this.

I hate to say that this is nothing new, being able to buy a significant amount of ID's for a few hundred didn't really surprise me. This actually brought up by several other Beauty Bloggers including Really Ree who wrote Twitter Fakes and Twitter Fakes Part 2 which I think has the best writing on the topic.

The most thing that rattled me about Dispatches (as well as making a mountain out of mole hill), is that celebrities only apologise when their hands are caught in the cookie jar. Us bloggers lose respect, followers and can also get named and shamed for doing this.

The Beauty Bloggers I read/follow are honest and will have open discussions on the issue of affiliate links (these are links that if customers purchase they get money from it), gifts, sponsored posts etc. I also like to think that I am also open about what I write on here.

The key tweet that I made tonight on the #fakefans hashtag was this: "Bloggers have a lot more respect for the real followers they have, as we engage more with our readers" We are more clearer than ever before on all of our activates. A large amount of my relationships have actually come through engagement from Twitter.

We are in an age where social media is becoming bigger and bigger, where advertisement and marketing is also getting smarter. Multi million pound sponsorship deals still continue and this is just another branch of advertising.

Channel 4, consumers are not as blind as you think, stop treating us as so.