My essentials

Due to Puppy having had an operation last week I have found myself down at my parents house for probably the longest time since I moved out almost ten years ago. It's a very strange experience to say the least! I don't visit here too often (and when I do it tends to just be for an overnight visit) so I don't have anything more than the very, very basics of deodourant, toothbrush and toothpaste stored here. Due to the fact that I was travelling in a Yaris with an ill dog, all her acessories (beds, blankets, food, treats, crate etc), a large amount of clothes and a boot that I hadn't managed to clear out for a number of reasons I had to be pretty selective in what toiletries I brought with me - bringing my entire stash was not an option! This forced me to examine what my essentials, rather than wants, were!

The items I deemed absolutely necessary for my 10 night stay were:
Lush Products:

• Rehab shampoo
• Coolaulin conditioner
• American Cream conditioner
• Flying Fox shower gel
• Olive Branch shower gel
• Ocean Salt
• Lemony Flutter
• Ultrabland cleanser
• Eau Roma toner water
• BB Seaweed & A Crashcourse in Skincare fresh facemasks (they would have gone off otherwise!)
• A small tub of Angels on Bare Skin mixed with Ocean Salt

Soap & Glory products:

• Catch A Wrinkle In Time Age Avoiding Day Moisturiser
• Some Like It Hot Body Softening Thermal Scrub

I also had a Lush Mail Order delivery coming to my parents house which contained mainly bath stuff as gifts for others, but also my Full of Grace face serum bar which I had really been looking forward to trying and has far exceeded my expectations! A review will follow!!

Lush facemask night

I was in Lush for the 'Spring Fling' and had been in the week previously too and bought a fresh facemask each time... The first week I bought A Crash Course in Skincare as they were out of my beloved BB Seaweed; so when that was in the next week I just had to buy it!!

A Crash Course in Skincare is described on the Lush.co.uk site as: "the kind of blend your mum would create if she could. It has rich, nutritious, organic avocado, freshly squeezed lemon juice to brighten and tone the skin and soothing natural yoghurt." It's a very smooth blend with no 'pieces' in it (BB Seaweed contains pieces of seaweed) and maybe because of this I have myself convinced that you get an extra use out of it. I've used it three times already and there is still some left in the pot.



BB Seaweed is described on the website as; "Relaxing and reviving, mineral-rich mask to cleanse, soften and beautify all skins. This blend, inspired by the sea, contains fresh and nutritious seaweed and seaweed absolute. Cleansing kaolin, antiseptic honey, calming aloe vera and rose absolute make this a great mask for everyone." It's the one facemask that I come back to again and again. It seems to calm my skin. I have very sensitive skin but I am very lucky in that I rarely suffer breakouts. I do however, like many females, get the occasional very painful spot on my jawline. (You know that one lone spot that has you in agony but 90% of the time no one else can see it?? That one!!) This mask is a godsend at those times as it seems to just clear it up in no time! A few times this mask has gone past it's best before date before I got to finish it. I won't use it on my face if this happens but have used it on other parts of my body to great effect so don't feel you have to throw it out immediately!




As the Crash Course in Skincare facemask was due to go out of date (expires 18th March) I decided to give my skin some TLC tonight. I cleansed with UltraBland, used my Angels on Bare Skin/Ocean Salt combo for an exfoliator, and then used my BB Seaweed mask. It is due to expire on 30th March and despite having bought it over a week ago I hadn't used it yet!! I then cleaned off the mask, used some of the Eau Roma Toner water to take off any residue off my skin and went on to apply A Crash Course in Skincare facemask. When that was done I again cleaned off the mask, used toner to take off the residue, used a Biore Pore Perfect strip on my nose (it was the last one left in the box and annoying me if I'm being honest!) and when that was done used toner again to remove residue before lathering my face with Skin Drink moisturiser. I got this sample in a grab bag the last day I was in Lush. It's definitely not a moisturiser that I could use during the day as it puts a really oily film on my skin but I have used it at night twice lately and found that it gave a good boost to my skin so I may as well use up the samples!!

So now, its time for me to head to bed, making sure I have enough time for a nice long shower in the morning (Flying Fox / Olive Branch here I come!) and time to cleanse, tone and moisturise. Really can't skip this tomorrow as the excess Skin Drink will need to be removed. I will use Catch a Wrinkle from Soap and Glory as usual for my daytime moisturiser. Trying to get into a better routine as I can be very lax about it given that apart from dry skin I don't really have problem skin at all!

My pampering night

Work is really hectic at the moment and I've had more 12 hour days than I care to remember since Christmas despite having had a crippling chest infection... Added to that my beloved Boards.ie was hacked today and as a result I had no excuse to sit at the laptop tonight! (We know all the lovely people at Boards HQ will sort it as soon as they can though!) So, as so many of my fellow Boardsies asked the people of Twitter today "What can I do when Boards is down?" (Internet obsessed?? Us?? Never!!) The answer for me was simple - a pampering night and a blog post!! It's all in the name of research my lovelies!! Hope ye appreciate it!!



We have air-conditioning in the office in work. For some reason it never seems to work the way we want it to but it still manages to dry my skin out something dreadful! So first stop this evening was to deal with the fact that the skin on my face needed some tlc!

I started with a facemask made up of two Lush products: Angels on Bare Skin and Ocean salt. This both cleansed and exfoliated my face. Then after washing that off I did a 10 minute Fab Pore treatment from Soap & Glory. I followed this up with some Bright Here Bright Now™ from Soap & Glory. It was my first time to use it and I have to say it felt quite nice on my skin. Not so sure about the brightening claims though as I didn't really give it a chance. I'll have to give it another try!

Following this I hopped into the shower with the intentions of fully pampering myself from head to toe!! Or was it the other way around?!?

I started by doing the pampering treat with Lemony Flutter and Ocean Salt on my feet while standing in the shower. Not a plan I had fully thought through! If you missed getting to an ice skating rink this winter, try this! I slipped all over the place as I tried to slather both feet in Lemony Flutter at the one time and then scrub them with Ocean Salt. I somehow mananged to do this without maiming myself, which I was pretty impressed at given I'm not known for good balance at the best of times!!

I then washed my hair with the amazing smelling Godiva solid shampoo bar from Lush and followed this up with a Wella System Professional hair mask as this needed to be left in for 10 minutes which gave me time to use lots of other products!

I started with one of the mini Sugar Scrubs and used this on the areas that could handle a more abrasive scrub. I had divided it into two in advance and still only needed to use half of it. I'm very careful where I use this particular product as I have very dry skin that is easily damaged and it has in the past left scratches on me! :( For the areas that needed something a bit more gentle I used 1/4 of a Sugar Babe scrub. Have to say I really love the smell of this! It's just a pity that they can't get a happy medium between the two scrubs for how quickly they dissolve. I then used You Snap The Whip body butter for the first time. It smells amazing and really comforting but melts a lot quicker than the other body butters I have used. It also turned the water a really horrible grey colour when I was washing it off.

I had used Snow Showers shower jelly a few times and hadn't been overly impressed with it. It didn't seem to later much and it made me wonder if it was actually cleaning me at all. I discovered a tip somewhere recently that suggested putting on exfoliating gloves and placing a small amount of the shower jelly on your palm INSIDE the gloves, rubbing your hands together and lathering it up that way. I gave this a try and it did seem to work but I used a bit too much of the jelly so I still have a lump left in each glove for the next time!

When I had finally gotten around to rinsing out my hair and getting out of the shower I covered my feet in Heel Genius™ foot cream and slipped them into some cotton moisturising socks before covering my body in The Righteous Butter™ Body Butter and my face in Catch A Wrinkle In Time Age Avoiding Day Moisturiser. To finish it all off I sprayed Girligo™ Body Moisturising Mist all over me and used some Endless Glove™ Dry Hand Cream.

So there you go! SIXTEEN products later you have a nicely relaxed and fabulous smelling Girl Friday. High maintenance, moi??!

Lush on Youtube

Part of what prompted this blog was the fact that I recently purchased Angels on Bare Skin and wasn't sure what to do with it as I had forgotten to ask in the shop! One of the joys of being such a regular in my local Lush store is that the staff there no longer bombard me with offers of help. Unfortunately this also means I sometimes miss out on the demos that everyone else seems to get if they so much as glance at a product!

Anyway, off to the website I trotted to find that the overhaul there has seen many of the demo videos vanish, so I searched Youtube instead. What an eye opener!! There are about a gazillion Lush videos on there uploaded by various Lushies worldwide... You can find everything from demos, to reviews, to people just coming home from the shops and putting up videos showing the products they got (their 'haul') and giving their opinions on them - often without having tried them!

If you want to check some of these out try: juicystar07, AllThatGlitters21, or SayAnythingBr00ke

Enjoy!