Megawhite = Megafail

A few weeks ago I went to the Ideal Home Christmas Exhibition in Manchester with my mum, which for the record was just furniture with the odd Christmas tree on it rather than christmassy home decorations which I was expecting. One of the stalls, Megawhite, was offering express teeth whitening. Now I've never tried to whiten my teeth before but I've definitely thought about it, however the sensitivity and pain that it apparently causes has always put me off. I don't think I need it that badly!

However, as an early present my mum offered to pay for me to have it done as a treat since the price they were offering was reasonable. I'm not an impulse kind of person, I'll read reviews on almost anything before I try/buy. So I thought it would be good for me to just go for it. They promised no sensitivity or pain because there was no ammonia involved. Which in fairness was true, but I think that was because it didn't do anything.

Actually that's unfair, for a few hours my teeth were patchy and the small calcium spots I did have on my teeth were now extremely noticeable. I chose the cheaper option of the two gels they offer, and after 20 minutes they handed me a mirror, my reaction when asked what I thought was 'they look awful' which was clearly not what the staff were expecting, and so offered me the 'Blue Fusion' treatment for a further 20 minutes and was equally unimpressed, looking back I should have asked for a refund, but I was so upset with how horrible my teeth looked I wanted to leave. They said if I just drank some water after a short time the patchiness would go, by this point saying anything to reassure me. The next morning I woke up and my teeth looked exactly the same as before the treatment, which I was actually relieved about! Sorry I don't have any before and after picks to share, like I said it was on impulse and I tried to hide the after as much as possible! I'm sure you can imagine though...

Before I had this treatment I checked the packaging and saw the leaping bunny logo, which was the final tipping point to make me go for it. Since then I've searched the leaping bunny website and there seems to be no sign of the company, so whether they have a very similar logo on their packaging they can get away with using, or if it is a recent change that they are/are not registered with the leaping bunny organisation I'm not entirely sure.

Either way I'm so disappointed and after looking up some reviews of this company it didn't take me long to find so many calling it a scam. A quick Google always pays off!

Cruelty-Free Fragrances

So chances are many people will revert to the classic gift of fragrances for Christmas this year. Simple and successful. So I've been doing my research again and come up with a list full of innocent brands to get you smelling sweet this year, both men and women. As usual there are so many more available online I've just tried to pick a few well known and easily accessible brands in the UK:

• Abercrombie & Fitch
• Clean (only available at Beautybay.com but I wanted to include it, similar to Jo Malone its all about layering and creating your own fragrance) 
• Crabtree & Evelyn
• Elemis
• Floris London 
• H&M  
• Jack Black
• Liz Earle
• LUSH
• Marks & Spencers
• Molton Brown
• Neal's Yard (home fragrances and essential oils that can be used for perfumes) 
• Pacifica (available at Holland & Barret) 
• Penhaligon's
• Ted Baker
• The Body Shop

PS: Lots of these do some great candles too!
I'll keep updating the list as I find more :) If you have any brands you'd like me to look into just comment below and I'd be happy to help

Naughty List - Youtuber Brands

So in a previous post I mentioned I'd be looking into the cruelty-free status of youtube's beauty guru brands. The results are not what I wanted, or expected considering they all seem to be avid animal lovers.

Nevertheless, I contacted feelunique only to be redirected to thir website. So I ventured onto their website and changed the country setting to be in China and was sad to discover that Tanya Burr Beauty, Zoella Beauty, and FleurdeForce's beauty range currently all ship to China (as do Bioderma which I was gutted about but clarifies the question left from my Cruelty-Free Cosmetics post). I did the same for Ruth Crilly's dry shampoo range Co-Lab which is also available for delivery in China. I tweeted all four asking about this but obviously did not receive a response. I was so disappointed because I would loved to have supported them. I'm afraid more bad news as Eylure also ship to China so FleurdeForce's lashes are off limits too!
When will people realise what they're supporting.

Sorry for the depressing post, I'm really disappointed as I'm sure you are too. 

Household Products - A Step in the Right Direction

So in October the British Government introduced the ban on animal testing for finished products, and some ingredients, of household products. This is a big step forward in the battle for cruelty-free products, but the fight for animal welfare is definitely not over. The ban will include all 'detergents, polishes and cleaning products, laundry products, air fresheners, deodorants, paints and other decorating materials', which is a great success. This means that from now on the any of these products you buy will not have been tested on animals. For some that might be enough. But I still am not happy that some components of these products are still needlessly tested on animals.

Cruelty-Free Hair Products

I have to start by apologising for my lack of posts the last few weeks, they've been pretty tough and last weekend my mum came up to Glasgow for a visit and so I wanted to spend the whole 4 days she was here with her.

Whilst I was shopping with my mum we popped into boots because I needed a new conditioner and she began asking me which hair companies were cruelty-free. I'm very lucky that my family are completely on board with trying to become cruelty-free and spread the word. A few other people have asked me the same thing, and so I decided this post would be all about hair products! Similar to my cosmetics post, listing companies that I deem cruelty-free or not based on whether they test on animals. If you want to see my full criteria on how I categorise the two, check back to the Cruelty-Free Cosmetics post.

Going The Distance

No this is not a film review (although I do bloody love that film).

I have quite a lot of experience with long distance relationships. At one point or another I've been away from my family, friends and boyfriend, so I feel I'm fairly qualified to talk about this area.

Apart from holidays away, moving to university was obviously my first big step because I left my family and friends to move somewhere I'd only visited for a few hours on the open day. Luckily, I was so ready and excited to leave that it didn't hit me straight away. Although there were obvious down times, like my first birthday away from home, I made a great group of friends in freshers week that I'm still close to now. In fact I live with most of them. However after having known these friends only a year, I then left to do a year abroad in Canada, leaving behind family, old friends, new friends and now a boyfriend that I'd met in my first year in Glasgow. 

Freshers Friends Last

Not So Super Toothpaste

So like I mentioned last week I've been transitioning my non-beauty cosmetics to be cruelty-free and one that I've really struggled with was toothpaste!

Non-Beauty Cruelty Free Update

So this week I thought I'd just share some products that I've been using since going cruelty-free. I think with make up there are so many options, but with other hygeine and cosemetics it's been a lot harder. If anyone has any recommendations I'd love to hear them, but at the moment this is what I've been using:

• Toothpaste - Superdrug own brand whitening (really struggled with toothpaste! I've heard about Lush's toothy tabs but just not sure how effective the solid alternative is)
• Deodorant - Lush T'eo solid deodorant which I mentioned in a previous post, still loving it!
• Hand Soap - Imperial Leather classic cleansing handwash, I've used this for years so was glad to learn I could keep it
• Body Wash - Original Source Lemon and Tea Tree smells incredible, if you have morning showers it will definitely wake you up!
• Shampoo - Soap and Glory Glad Hair Day has an amazing scent and leaves my hair feeling clean but not stripped
• Conditioner - Lush Retread is still the one I'm reaching for, my hair has never felt so soft!
• Moisturiser - Smoothie Star deep moisturising body milk from Soap and Glory, I like that you can smell the oats in this scent, its not too overpowering or sweet which I think is hard to find. 

Hope this little post was helpful if you live in the UK because some things I found really difficult! I'd love it if you let me know what you've been using

Home Is Where The Heart Is

This post is a little bit more personal but I felt the need to address it.

When I first moved to university I could not have been more excited. I was looking forward to having independence, cooking and shopping for myself, meeting new people and just experiencing the next stage in my life. Of course there were a good few tears when my parents left me at my accommodation but in general I was happy to be there. After speaking to all of my friends from home, the same seemed to be applying to them too. Now I was a little unfortunate in that the building I moved into wasn't actually finished, and so this meant no Internet for what (was supposed to be a week maximum) ended up being months before we had a semi-reliable connection. I was also in a studio room consisting of two bunk beds which I had to share with a complete stranger (that it turned out I didn't get on with that well). After fresher's week died down I began to feel really homesick, especially with not being able to facetime my family. I found this incredibly difficult. The worst part would be eating alone some nights, staring at a blank wall because I couldn't even watch youtube or netflix! This was the disadvantage of not being in a traditional uni flat with a kitchen/living area shared between at least 6 people.

Exploring Ireland

A few weeks ago I went on a little tour of Ireland with my mum. We got the ferry with our car to Dublin and left 8 days later from Belfast, stopping in Galway and Donegal on the way. Every night we stayed in places found through Airbnb and had such an amazing time! We finished in my boyfriend's home town in County Down. These are a few photos from a lovely mother-daughter bonding trip.

 Dublin
We got there pretty late so our hosts recommended we go just round the corner to The Oarsmen for dinner, such a great meal! The next day was mainly for shopping and a little bit of site seeing. That night we did an organised 'Musical Pub Crawl' that involved two local musicians providing an insight into traditional Irish music with information on the history and instruments of which they played at each venue. They took us to three pubs that apparently 'even Irish people still go to... not your typical Irish theme pubs' -The Oliver St John Gogarty, The Ha'penny Bridge, and Brannigans (a little outside of the Temple Bar area). This was honeslty the best night! It was so much fun everyone was really up for it (especially after a few Guinesses) and with around 50 people from all over the world there was a great atmosphere. They even taught us a song or two! Needless to say the CD became our soundtrack for the rest of the road trip.
The only thing I would recommend against is parking in St.Stephens Green multistory... €19 for 4 hours!

Pub Crawl, Alchemy Juice Co., Powerscourt Centre - Dublin

Trinity College & Molly Malone

Cruelty-Free Cosmetics UPDATE

I recently finished a book called 'We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves' by Karen Joy Fowler. I loved it. It's so different to anything else I have ever read with a great plot twist. But the main reason I'm mentioning this book is the strong theme of animal rights/animal testing.

I'm ashamed to admit that, despite being an animal lover, I've always turned a little bit of a blind eye towards cosmetic companies that test either their ingredients or final products on animals. I'd also like to mention that I can sort of understand why historically lots of ingredients were tested on animals, but I really don't think it's necessary anymore. But then are cosmetics ever necessary?

Discovering Bioderma

When I was living in Canada it didn't take me long to find Bioderma in Shoppers Drug Mart. I had heard so much about the Sensibio H20, it was EVERYWHERE online but hard to find in the UK at the time (this was also before other micellar waters were accessible), and with the GBP-CAD$ exchange rate I was definitely making the most of it! So I purchased a bottle and fell in love. It's just so refreshing. There's so many reviews on this I don't think it's necessary for me to ramble on, but I will say, it removes my makeup so easily and I'm no longer tugging at my skin with a wipe.

The Beauty Blogger Tag

Since I'm just starting out I thought it would be a good idea to do a post that will let you get to know me a little better.
This one is pretty long so I'll just get straight into it!

1. Is your hair naturally curly or straight?

Somewhere in between, wavy!

2. What is your natural hair colour?

  Brown 

3. Do you dye it yourself or go to a salon?

I don't dye it. Although it was purple for a while last year, currently natural

4. How often do you wash your hair?

Every other day unfortunately. Although I stretch to three days if on the third I don't have to go out

5. Do you wear the same style every day or change it?

I don't think anyone would describe me as having a set style so I suppose I change it

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Lush Haul and Review

  So I’m finally starting a blog!

For my first ever post, I decided to start with a classic haul… LUSH!

Recently I purchased three products from Lush based purely on recommendations by the lovely staff in store, and I love them all! So I thought it only fair to share them.