Current Beauty Favourites | Blogmas day 4

Hey again!  Today I thought I would share with you all my current beauty favorites.  I've mentioned a few of these products before, but some are new and I am loving!

Estee Lauder Double Wear Stay-in-place Makeup
I heard a lot of good things about this foundation so once I had saved a bit of money I went and got it and I have to say, it definitely lives up to what others say about it!  The coverage is amazing and a little goes a long way.  I have had this for a few months now and I still have a lot of product left.

Benefit POREfessional Face Primer Balm
Another product you hear a lot about! This is honestly just the best primer. I definitely notice a difference in my makeup from when I wear it to days when I don't.

Benefit Roller Lash Mascara 
I've mentioned this a lot on my blog before and with good reason, I think. I love it so much I just think it wouldn't be right to not include it in my current favourites!

Benefit They're Real Tinted Primer (sample) 
I got this free with Elle Magazine and I am in love with it.  Its SO good.  Using it just by itself gives your eyelashes a really lovely fluttery and natural look.  When I want a bit more, I put a coat of Rollerlash over and my eyelashes have so much volume.

L'Oreal Paris Super Liner Perfect Slim Intense 
This is something new I've tried.  I'm terrible with eyeliner, like, I just can't do it haha.  I tried the Beneft Push Up Liner, and, well lets just say it didn't go to plan so I went and got this.  I've really been enjoying using this.  I'm finding it much easier to apply eyeliner and I think I may finally be getting the hang of it (WOOO)

L'Oreal Pais Glam Bronze Terra Bronzer
As I've mentioned before on my blog, (here) I am not one for bronzer as I always seem to look like I've just spread mud round my face as I can never find a shade to suit me. However, this bronzer just really seems to work for me and it also has a bit of shimmer in as well so even better!

Urban Decay Naked Skin Weightless Complete Coverage Concealer
I always struggle with finding a good concealer.  Everyone always talks about the Collection Lasting Perfection, but I really dislike it. It definitely doesn't work well for me unlike it does others so I decided to try this one!  This is too light for me so I tend to just use it by itself instead of with another foundation.  I really love it, it gives me really good coverage and it doesn't look cakey. I think its quite expensive for the size you get, but a little goes a long way.

What products have you been loving at the moment?

See you tomorrow 

Jessica

xx

Christmas Playlist | Blogmas day 3

As I mentioned in my first Blogmas post, I love Christmas songs.  They're just so catchy and when ever I am in a bad mood, they can always cheer me up.  To be honest, I think everyone loves a good Christmas song. 

Today I thought I'd share with you my top favorites and so its a little Christmas song playlist! They're not in a particular order as there is no way I could pick one to be on top, haha.

1. Wham! - Last Christmas

2. The Pouges - Fairytale of New York

3. Band Aid - Do They Know its Christmas Time

4. Wizard - I Wish it Could Be Christmas Everyday 

5. Coldplay - Christmas Lights (I do love this one) 

6. Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas 

7. Michael Buble - Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas (all of Michael Buble's Christmas album is amazing) 

8. Dean Martin - Let It Snow

9. Slade - Merry Christmas Everybody 

10. Dean Martin - Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer (AW) 

11. From The Snowman - Walking in The Air

12. Jona Lewie - Stop the Cavalry 

13.  Chris Rea - Driving Home for Christmas

14. Elton John - Step into Christmas

15. Shakin Stevens - Snow is Falling

What is your favorite Christmas song?

Jessica 

xx

Christmas Gift Sets | Blogmas Day 2

Hello everyone!

There are a lot of Christmas gift sets that I'm loving this year and think would be the perfect gift for friends and family or to ask for for yourself! I have a list of high end ones and drugstore.

Estee Lauder The Makeup Artist Collection
This is an amazing offer at the moment.  The product is worth £290, but if you buy an Estee Lauder fragrance you can purchase it for £54!! This set contains everything you could need, in my opinion.  I love Estee Lauder as well so this is definitely something I want to try and get!

Soap & Glory Soaper Star 
 I got this as a Christmas present last year and I have used every single thing in this set.  I loved it! I 100% recommend this for a present for someone or even getting it yourself.

Soap & Glory Eyes Box 
Soap and Glory have some really good sets out this year.  I also love this eye box.  All the products are this in full size and for £18 I think that is very good value!

Real Techniques Bold Metals Essentials with a Clutch Bag
Now this is a bit more expensive, but in this set you get an exclusive brush as well as a clutch bag.  I think the clutch bag is a really nice idea as you can use it to store the brushes or even on a night out!

Tanya Burr Candy Glam Beauty Essentials Palette
I really like Tanya Burr's items and I think this is a lovely gift for Christmas.  This features 9 special edition eyeshadows, a mini lipgloss and a bronzer and blush.  It also has a really big mirror which is also a really good idea.  For £12 that is very good value!

Benefit Pump up The Party!
Benefit have got some really good sets out for Christmas this year.  I picked this one because of the Roller Lash and POREfessional which I both love. It also features 4 longwear powder shadows and Rockateur.  There's also a couple of other things and for the price I think its a very good purchase!

So that's my top picks for Christmas gift sets.  There are so many more I could have put in, but then this would have been a very long post!

Hope you enjoyed this post and let me know of any sets your eyeing up! 

Jessica 

xx

A Little Chat | Blogmas Day 1

Hey everyone!

So thanks to Hannah (Twitter, Blog) tweeting about wanting to do Blogmas and being very enthusiastic about it (thanks Hannah, haha) I decided I should try and do it! I'm definitely not promising that there is going to be a post every day, but I am going to try my best and see how it goes. Its good to challenge yourself, right?!

This post is just a bit of a chat really, I hope thats ok.

My blogmas posts aren't going to be constantly around Christmas (I don't know if that means its not really blogmas, but lets go with it anyway.  I'm still posting everyday) as I don't want to push it on to you all, haha.  And if I'm honest, I'm not looking forward to Christmas this year as it will be the first one without my Grandad.  He was a huge part of Christmas in my family and I can't even imagine what its going to be like without him here.  I do love everything that comes with Christmas though, mainly the decorations and songs. There will be a post coming up on my favorite Christmas songs!

Anyway that will be all for this first blogmas post! I really hope you enjoy reading all the posts and can follow it! The posts will be going up at 12pm each day (hopefully)

Happy Blogmas everyone (is that a thing? I don't know, its going to be a thing for me ok)

See you tomorrow where the post will have a bit more of a topic unlike this one! Haha

Jessica 

xx

Funfetti Cupcakes

Hi everyone! Sorry its been a while since the last post. Today I thought I'd post something a bit different than usual.

I love baking, but I just never seem to have the time to do it and if I do I have no one to eat it all so it gets wasted but this weekend I decided to make a smaller recipe! I saw these 'Funfetti Cupcakes' from Zoella's video (you can watch it here) and they looked like they would be good to make.

Ingredients:

• 125g Caster Sugar
• 125g Unsalted Butter
• 2 Large Eggs
• 1/4 Teaspoon of Vanilla Extract 
• 125g Self Raising Flour
• 1/4 Teaspoon of Bicarbonate of Soda
• 1 1/2 Tablespoons of Milk (I only need 1 tablespoon) 
• As many sprinkles as you like! 

Method: 

I didn't follow the exact way that Zoe did, but here is what I did.  

Firstly, I creamed the butter and sugar together.  I made sure the butter was soft before this as it makes things much easier! 

Next I added the Vanilla Extract and the 2 eggs.  I mixed the mixture after I added the first egg and then again after I added the second.  The mixture didn't look great at this point, but they turned out ok so I'm guessing that is what it was meant to look like haha.

I then added the flour and the bicarbonate of soda.  I know sometimes you need to add the flour bit by bit but I didn't do that this time and it all mixed well. At this point I added a tablespoon of milk and found that the consistency of the mixture looked fine without anymore milk. 

Finally, I added sprinkles.  I added quite a few so the mixture looked like it had a lot in (the picture shows what I mean!) 

I forgot to take a picture of them in the cases before putting them in the oven but I put the mixture in about 3/4 of the way up.  This was actually too much as I only got 9 cakes out of it so I'd recommend putting less mixture in than I did! 

For the icing I used this from Dr. Oetker which I really loved so I'd definitely recommend it unless you want to make your own icing, of course!  To finish off the cupcakes, I added a few more sprinkles :) 

The point of putting the sprinkles in the actual mixture was to give the cupcakes pops of colour, but unfortunately mine didn't do that.  I'm not sure why! They tasted really nice though and people enjoyed them, so, oh well! 

Hope you enjoyed this post and let me know if you want to bake these!

Jessica 

xx