Happy Easter :)

Easter Fun

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With it being the Easter holidays we've been out and about a lot this week. We've been paddling and fishing:

We've also been making Easter nests ready for our Easter party today:

Earlier in the week we went to Snibston Discovery Park and as you can see the kids are thrilled about being miners!!!:

On Monday we headed to Matlock Bath to eat fish 'n' chips alongside the river:

I love Matlock as it reminds me of being a kid at the seaside. We used to go on holiday with my Grandparents every year and spent a lot of time in the amusement arcades gambling away our pennies on the slot machines! Carrying on the fun with my new generation:

Not quite the same as being in Vegas and being on the Starburst-slot.co.uk but still fun nonetheless!! I also seem to have developed a fondness for playing on www.pixiesoftheforestslot.co.uk which I'm pretty sure is a sign that the man should have listened to me and whisked me away to Vegas to get married!!! 

For the next couple of days I'm going to try and relax with them instead of trying to cram every day full of activities but it would appear they have other things in mind such as waterfights and eating their own bodyweight in chocolate....... gotta love Easter!!

Wedding Preparation (with a little help from Clarins and John Lewis)

As I'm sure y'all know by now, the man and I are getting married in August. We have most things booked and sorted and now I'm getting down to the details of what I want to look like on the day. I have my most amazing and gorgeous dress and some accessories already stashed away. One of my biggest problems though is what my make up should look like.

I don't really have a skin care routine apart form water and Aldi moisturiser and I tend to only wear a sweep of black eyeliner which I've done for many a year. Prior to that I was goth girl and wore black lipstick so I guess I've never had much of an idea about make up!!

I was talking to the lovely Chaz who is the marketing manager for John Lewis in Leicester and she invited me in for a consultation with Clarins to see if they could help with some make up ideas but also to give me a decent skin care routine. On Sunday I popped over for a lovely relaxing visit. 

My consultant Helen was a complete Clarins expert having worked for them for a number of years and just by touching my skin could see that I was hugely dehydrated (erm.....yes that would be the vodka!!!)

So I started off looking this hot:

(who knew it was so hard to take a good selfie in the bathroom mirror??! This was about my 20th attempt!!)

The first thing that Helen did was use a very gentle cleanser called water comfort that smelled of delicious peach. It was actually really gentle on my skin and didn't at all feel like anything unnatural was being used, nor did it have that awful gritty texture that some exfoliators feel like.

Next up she used a hydra quench serum and cream that rehydrates, nourishes and rebalances the skin. This feels amazing and doesn't clog up your pores like some moisturisers do. We then had a splash of the flash balm which I'm told is great for Brides as it gives you a radiance and glow and holds your make up in place..... perfect for when I start crying, which is guaranteed to happen at some point during the day!!

The last of the skin care was the BB (beauty balm) cream. This gives you protection and cover and is very natural. I think it was at this point that my skin actually started to glow and look amazing! I discovered whilst I was there that John Lewis also have a Clarins Skin Spa. It looks soooo fab and relaxing that I might have to treat myself next time I'm there:

From there we moved on to the make up and to be honest this was the bit that I was dreading. I've only been to a make up counter once before to get a new look. I was in Vegas on holiday and I came away from that looking very orange and vaguely clown like so I wasn't a massive convert!!

Helen started off with an eye base which intensifies the colour of your eye shadow and keeps everything in place so again hopefully I shan't look like Alice Cooper when I start blubbing!! Some under eye concealer was definitely in order and then eye shadow, eye liner and Be Long mascara. I even had a sweep of the new cream blusher, finished off with a hydraquench lip balm. Soooooo after having my brows done the final effect looked like this:

I look so smooth and silky! I do have some better pictures with much more detail about the colours but I want to save the full effect for the wedding pictures!!! I may have treated myself to a few goodies:

It's like a 'taster' set which at the moment is on offer for £20 which I think is an absolute bargain. I've been using the products for the last couple of days and I have to say that my skin looks and feels so much clearer. I think I'll be treating myself to a full sized set pretty shortly!!

I'd like to say a huge thank you to Chaz for arranging this for me and Helen for spending a good hour talking me through all the lovely products and for giving me the exact look that I was after. My treatment normally costs £30 but this is redeemable from any products that you buy. I paid for the extra products myself and all opinions are mine :-)

Rock Choir at Wembley

So in my last post I said I had something completely awesome planned for the following weekend and I really did.......

I'm not sure that it's something I've talked about much here but I love to sing! It's not something that I'm good at and my daughter and the man tell me that I sound like a strangled cat but it's something that I love to do! Towards the end of last year there was a programme on the TV with Gareth Malone that was called something like 'the choir at work'. Now I love Gareth and made the man watch it with me. One night when we were watching it I was telling the man that I would love to join the choir. After much mirth and wiping of tears on his part, I decided to bite the bullet and go ahead and do it.

My lovely friend Sandy over at Baby Baby is also a member so I got some info from her and the next day went along for my trial! The thing that attracted me to Rock Choir was the fun element and the fact that you don't have to audition unless you are after a solo part.

It is sooooooooo much fun. Each term we learn up to 3 different songs and hold various performances. I've did a couple of low key ones in the run up to Christmas and then when the new term started we were asked if we would like to sing at WEMBLEY during a rugby match!! I ummed and aahed about whether to go or not but as the man pointed out it's not every day you get to sing at Wembley. I took Chick with me and we met up with a friend when we were there.

This is me suddenly remembering just how big Wembley is and doing a quick jazz hands to pretend I'm not petrified:

This is pitch side as we were rehearsing:

I may also have 'met' Austin Healey! (He's very teeny!!):

I had some spectacular cheerleaders:

This is the BIG performance:

If you look very carefully I'm the person on the left hand side right at the back!! Eeeeeek super exciting and so AWESOME that I cannot even begin to tell you! I think I'd enjoy the rock star lifestyle :-)

Can't wait for our next big show which is at the Birmingham Symphony Hall in July with Toyah Wilcox!!!