Maxfactor Skin Luminizer Foundation

Well, finally the day has come... I've found my favourite affordable foundation! After trying NARS Sheerglow (shade Fiji) and falling in love, I wasn't sure that I'd ever find a foundation that I enjoyed using just as much, with a smaller price tag. I always like to have a bottle of the NARS foundation (£29) in my make up collection to use for special occasions, but for me, it's just a little bit on the pricey side for every day use. I've tried a few other good foundations from Boots such as the likes of L'oreal True Match, Rimmel Wake Me Up or Maxfactor Whipped Creme- all of which I have actually really liked, but I've never been 100% satisfied. This, is Maxfactor's new Skin Luminizer foundation. I seen it advertised on TV, and I've always been very pleasantly surprised by Maxfactor; pretty much everything I've ever tried from them has worked really well. So, I decided to give it a go and picked up two shades: Natural and Beige (buy one get one half price in Boots)! After using it for the past five days, I can already say that I am more than happy with it! So happy, that this post was indeed necessary! It's light enough for it not to sink into lines in the skin (around the eyes and forehead are typical areas for make up to sit thickly on my face and potentially crease) and it lasts really well on my skin! Another job I find it to be extremely good for, is evening out areas of large pores (around the nose and cheeks). It has a very similar glowy, candlelit-skin effect (but not too shiny) to NARS Sheerglow, but it's less than half the price! I'd definitely recommend giving this a try if you're looking for a new foundation- I'm so impressed!

Shake Shack | Dream Burgers

 

Ok, so it's currently midnight, and I've been looking at pictures of burgers and ice cream for about 10 minutes... think it's safe to say cooking for myself at uni really isn't working out well! 

These are a few photos from our time at Shake Shack in Covent Garden, London. Located in the big town hall, it's surrounded by lots of little quirky shops and restaurants so it had a nice 'different' 'cool' kind of feel. Inside, there's fairly long queues (definitely worth the wait) in which you have chance to see the menu and pick out what you want to eat- this isn't an easy task as everything sounds delicious! We went for the Smoke Shack burger (bacon one) and the Shack Burger (cheesy one) with two lots of cheesy chips and two "fifty fifties" (half lemonade, half ice tea- yup... genius!!). I also ordered a pot of frozen custard ice cream with salted caramel sauce on top to go and collect when we'd finished our meal- this turned out to be the best ice cream I've ever had! After we had ordered, we were given a small, black, remote-like device that would vibrate and flash when our food was ready to pick up at the collection desk. I really liked this system as it meant we could have a wander around until our food was ready which saved a lot of waiting time! It didn't take too long, and we sat right in the centre of the town hall to eat our sought-after burgers! Now, it's pretty difficult to describe tastes other than the fact that it was utterly, DELICIOUS. Literally, I'm not usually a burger fan but this was one of the best meals out that we've ever had! Definitely worth visiting... my advice... go, go, goooo! 

Sass & Belle | The Cutest Little Shop

When visiting Covent Garden in London, we stumbled across the most "Laura" shop I could imagine! I seen it and without even speaking Matthew said "bet you want to go in there!?" haha... it just looked so girly and full of little special things for your home. There were lots of little signs and love heart baubles littered across the walls, above an army of gorgeous wooden jewellery boxes, photo frames and wrapping papers. I especially loved this little hot air balloon tin which I couldn't leave without... along with a few other bits and pieces that have come in so handy in making my new uni room feel like home- coming soon in a future post!

I think it's definitely worth going there if you're ever in London, but if not they do have a website- www.sassandbelle.co.uk :)

A Special Day in London

As an anniversary present, I thought I would book some train tickets for Matthew and I to have a day out in London! After having such a lovely day, it's clear that we should definitely do this much more often, as it only took us just over an hour on the train and it's true, you could never be bored in London! With so much to see and so much to do, we tried not to cram too much in and allow time to just relax and explore together! However, we did make about a thousand "we should definitely come back here and do this" mental notes! 

Yay! We mastered the London Underground and managed to make it to our first stop... Covent Garden! About 30 seconds after leaving the tube station, our eyes met a gorgeous little shop called Sass& Belle. It was filled with so many beautiful ornaments, signs and other home furnishings (right up my street!) so I had a wander around inside- safe to say, I wish Matthew had brought a bigger backpack as I could have bought the entire shop!

Now for one of the main reasons we came to Covent Garden... to visit Shake Shack! We've always thought that America was home to all Shake Shack restaurants, but when I found there was one here I thought it was a must for us to go! I think it actually deserves its very own blog post- yup... that good!

Matthew found it funny to keep doing stereotypical poses in front of every picture he could manage hahaha!

We probably could have spent all day in Covent Garden, but that would have meant we'd be spending our entire bank accounts there too haha! It was such a nice place to enjoy both the designer shops with the likes of Dior, Chanel and a HUGE Apple store... and some cute, quirky stores that sell really different bits and pieces. The restaurants there all look pretty amazing too... if we could have managed to eat 4 lunches, we would have!

Next, we visited Camden town and market. Going there on a Saturday probably wasn't the best of choices for us as it was a lot busier than we expected- as in 'can't really move' kind of busy! However, the atmosphere was really cool with the sounds of bongos playing and the smell of some yummy food being sold around every corner of the market! We went to Cyberdog (entire shop that glows in the dark with loads of loud music playing) and had a browse around the stalls, before taking the tube over to China Town for our dinner!

China Town looked so beautiful at night with hundreds of pretty lanterns lighting up the street tops! We went to a few of the bakeries and stocked up on Chinese Egg Tarts (if you haven't tried some... definitely do so... DELICIOUS) and a few other nibbles before going out for dinner to a restaurant we'd visited the year before with Matthew's family. It's clear to see here that Matthew really did go to town when ordering our food haha... it was so nice! 

After such a memorable day, we rushed (yup, ended up running for the tube haha) to catch our train. I absolutely loved all the places we visited that day, and we came back with some cool purchases too! We actually took more videos than photographs as London is just so 'buzzing' that it's difficult to capture in a still photo! There are so many other things we'd love to do there, and now we've cracked the code to using the tube system properly (use the map haha) I can't wait to go back and explore again (and again, and again)!

*WARNING: online display of affection (mushy words alert!)* I hope Matthew knows just how much I LOVE doing exciting things together, me and him. He always makes every day perfect, wherever we go, whatever we do :) Our adventures are my favourite things in the world- big or small... i'll treasure them, always :) 

Sea Life Birmingham

A couple of weeks ago, we took a trip over to the Sea Life centre in Birmingham! Me, Matthew and our two friends Zarril and Emma drove down to the aquarium for the day and we had such a lovely time! Emma showed me a few tips on how to make the most of the manual setting on my camera so it was really cool to experiment with it- however, we soon found that fish weren't the easiest of things to photograph haha!

On arrival we passed lots of cool tanks filled with the most amazing animals from penguins, to clown fish (nemos!) but my favourite of the bunch was this gorgeous little blue-eyed puffer fish! It's eyes really did look as though they were made from glass with lots of blue sparkles- I wanted to take him home with us!

To finish, we seen the most amazing (and huge!) sea turtle in the 360 degree tunnel! I said to the others "I wonder where the turtle is!?" at which point a shadow flew over my head and I turned to the side to see this giant beauty! It was so cool to see one up close!