BLOGMAS Day 9: Beauty For The Festive Season...

As the winter sets in and Christmas draws nearer, I tend to reach for the darker nail polishes and lip colours. I've purchased a few new products recently, which I'll be using a lot this season, so I thought I'd share them with you...

1 - This is Barry M Nail Paint in Red Wine. I tend to think that darker shades suit me more than bright or pastel shades and this stood out to me straight away. It takes two coats to get it to the bottle shade, but one coat will give you a lighter shade of red, still deep but not as dark as it looks in the bottle. Both are nice to be honest, the only reason I put another coat on, after the first, is for more coverage, otherwise I probably would have left it as one coat. When I first applied this, I did so with a top coat and it lasted four days. You can get this for £2.99 from Superdrug.

Excuse the feet, but I thought you might like to see what the nail colour looks like on.

2 - I wanted to get a plum lip colour, so thought I'd get a similar colour lip liner. I've started to use lip liners more recently to line and fill the lips before applying a lipstick, which makes the lip colour last even longer. I didn't have a lot of choice in terms of plum coloured lip liners, but I found this Maybelline Color Sensational Lip Liner in Midnight Plum that I liked when I swatched it on my hand, so I decided to go for it. The packaging almost looks brown, hence why I swatched it before I bought it, but it's actually the perfect plum colour, especially to go with the next product I picked up :). This was £3.99 from Superdrug.

3 - I seem to have accumulated a lot of matte lip products (which I love!), so I wanted a plum colour that was a bit glossy. I picked up this Revlon Colorstay Moisture Stain in Parisian Passion. It feels really cooling and moisturising when you apply it and it has a lovely gloss to it. It isn't sticky at all and this is probably a weird word to describe a lip stain, but it feels really fresh on your lips. It is a dark, vampy, purple colour and this is my first lip product of this colour. I have other purple shades, but none as dark as this one. Even though it is described as a stain, I wouldn't say that it sets onto your lips. As it is glossy, if you're eating, you'll probably have to reapply this straight after. However, putting a lip liner underneath really does help it to last longer and if you do want a 'stain', you can achieve this by applying the product as normal and then dabbing/patting a tissue over the whole of your lips a couple of times. A subtle colour will then be left underneath, which isn't as dark or transferable. You can get this for £7.99 from Superdrug.

Left: Revlon Colorstay Moisture Stain in Parisian Passion.

Right: Maybelline Color Sensational Lip Liner in Midnight Plum.

Have you bought any new beauty items recently?

Don't forget to like, comment and follow to keep up to date with the rest of my Blogmas posts :).

Thanks for reading lovelies!

Gem XxOo

BLOGMAS Day 8: Shopping For New Christmas Decorations...

During the past few weeks, me and Si have picked up some new Christmas decorations. Last Christmas was our first one in our new flat, so we started from scratch with our decorations, but this year we just added to our collection. Some of the items we picked up we were specifically looking for and others just caught our eye, but I thought I'd share with you what we've picked up this year...

1 - These two lanterns were from Home Sense. We picked up a white/cream one (£5.99) that opens at the top and has reindeers around the sides and a red one (£7.99), which is shaped like a house and opens by a door on one of the sides. I've put tea light holders inside both of them with tea lights in and it's so cosy in the evening, when they are lit. When I reveal our Christmas decorations in a later blogmas post, you'll see these amongst a window sill snow scene we have set up :).

2 - I had some vouchers for Boots that I kept until the Christmas Yankee Candles were in-store. I don't normally buy the jar Yankee Candles, I normally stick to the melts, tea lights and the samplers but as I had vouchers I wanted to treat myself to some nice jar candles for over the Christmas season. Boots had a 3 for 2 offer on their candle range but I was a bit disappointed as they didn't have a huge range of Christmas scents. I picked up this Yankee Candle 2 Small Jar Gift Collection for £15.99. The set contains Red Apple Wreath, which smells like a tart, red apple with a touch of cinnamon and Sugared Apple, which smells like a sweet, vanilla, apple pie. They are gorgeous scents which fill the room!

3 - This 'Christmas Tree Candle Holder' was from Dobbies and it was £12.99. I love how rustic it looks and it's also hand-made and hand-painted, which adds that special touch. It holds 8 tea lights and has hearts, Christmas trees, stars and bells hanging off of it. It also has a sturdy base so isn't likely to topple over. In our living room, the window sill is quite wide and deep, so this fits nicely in one of the corners.

4 - I was looking for some unique Christmas string lights this year and these 'White Wooden Pre-Lit Christmas Lantern String Lights' from The Range (£14.99) really caught my eye. There are 10 little lanterns and each one has cute Christmas scenic designs on each side. They require 3 AAA batteries and give out a warm, white light. We have these draped round the front of our TV unit in the living room and they really stand out. Last year we just had white, fairy lights there, so they're a bit different and we love them!

5 - These Yankee Candle Christmas Garland Tea Lights are my favourite Yankee Candle Christmas scent and I picked these up to go with the 'Christmas Tree Candle Holder' that we got from Dobbies. I've explained in previous posts that this scent smells just like fresh, real, pine trees in a jar! If you're buying your first Christmas scented Yankee Candle, I'd recommend this one. You can get 12 of these tea lights for £6.99 from Clinton Cards.

6 - I've been looking for some light up parcel decorations like this for a while now, but some that I've seen have been so over priced. We spotted these '3 Light-up Parcels' in Discount UK the other day for £19.99, so we decided to treat ourselves and add to our Christmas decoration collection :). They come in a set of three and each one has a plug, so we've had to try and tuck the wires away to one side. I think it'd be good if they were battery operated as you could just tuck each battery pack under each present, meaning you could hide any wires. I'm really glad we got them though because they look so lovely lit up on our window sill.

7 - I wanted to add a touch of Christmas to our hallway this year and brighten it up a bit. I found these '10 Non-Shatter Bauble String Lights' in Discount UK for £2.99. We have two windows in our hallway, so I picked up two boxes. They fit perfectly and are draped across each window pane. I was struggling to find any nice 'novelty' string lights to be honest, but we found these on the same day we put our decorations up. I did want some Christmas mitten string lights that Home Sense were selling, but when I went to buy some at our local store, they didn't have any, typical!

Apologies that I couldn't provide all of the purchase links, but some of the exact items aren't online. If you're interested in anything, I hope you have some luck finding them in your local stores :).

Have you picked up any new decorations this year?

Don't forget to like, comment and follow to keep up to date with the rest of my Blogmas posts :).

Thanks so much for reading lovelies!

Gem XxOo

Some images are courtesy of Boots, Clinton Cards and Ebay.