Saturday 24 December 2011

Merry Christmas!

Just a quick post to wish you all a wonderful Christmas. I shall be mainly spending Christmas Day eating these cupcakes and will spend Boxing Day feeling bad about the overindulgence.

Louboulush x

Monday 19 December 2011

Shoes Storage - Ikea Billy Bookcase/Olsbo

FINALLY I have pretty shoe storage. It took a while, Ikea, £94, a van and two men and I now have one of these

























Louboulush xx

NOTD - Deborah Lippmann - Boom Boom Pow

I'll keep this simple. Mr L bought me this after much lusting on my part. It was £18 from House of Fraser


I was torn between the gold and the silver of "Today was a Fairytale" but went for the gold as it's a bit different for me.







Good


Applied easily


Dried quickly


Liked the various glitter sizes and shapes




Bad


Needs a lot of coats to build the glitter


A bit too yellow toned for my taste


Like most glitters, tough to remove


Expensive




Would I repurchase? Probably not. It is nice but not nice enough for £18. It lasted well - these photos were from day 6 so pretty impressive though I find glitters hard wearing in general. I possibly would purchase the Today was a Fairytale but still at that pricepoint I'm not sure, sorry.


Still, it's nice and festive at this time of the year! Anyone else tried this or anything similar?



LoubouLush x

Monday 5 December 2011

Nicky Clarke 'Desired' Super Professional Salon 230 Straighteners

If you follow me on Twitter you might have noticed me moaning about misplacing my GHDs during a weekend break in Belfast. Now I'm not a hair straightening addict or so I thought but I use them maybe 3-4 times a week. I'm lucky that my hair is fairly straight but I like the poker straight look and the smoothing effect good straighteners give me. so a week without my GHDs passed and after much reading of online reviews, pondering about whether buying a "cheap" GHDalike would be a false economy I had resigned myself to the fact I was going to have to splash out on GHDs when I could gather together the pennies and pounds to do so.

That was until my lovely Dad surprised me with the Nicky Clarke "Desired" Super Professional Salon 230 Straighteners after he'd had a wee shopping spree to himself in Asda. As someone who has had GHDs for ooh about 6 years, my first thoughts were "please let these be decent as I don't want to pretend to be using something that is rubbish". Before my GHD years I had tried and failed with other cheaper makes and was left with that feeling that nothing would beat a GHD, at least nothing in a lower price range.

So let's get down to business. Some key features:

High temperature 230°C for maximum results
Nano silver and tourmaline coated plates help to prevent frizz & advanced ceramic floating plates leave hair ultra straight
Rounded plate edges allow you to create a multitude of styles from poker straight to voluptuous bouncy curls
Auto shut off for enhanced safety
Automatic worldwide voltage


Some pics (excuse the rubbish quality here I'm having trouble uploading from my "good" camera but hopefully it gives you some idea of how they look)





I don't know exactly how much mine cost as they were a gift but I do know they were on offer and a quick Google suggests they are on offer in lots of places including Amazon who have them at £32.90 reduced from the RRP of £79.99. Now you might think old Nicky hasn't quite got the catchy name of the GHD there and I would agree, it is quite the mouthful. The packaging is quite nice - nothing really to write home or on a blog about. The straighteners themselves are pretty sleek looking in a rich shade of shade of red, the cord is a good length and there are 4 heat settings - fine, medium, thick and maximum. There is also an auto shut off which m old GHDs didn't have and I would have loved (as would my poor husband as we've been on our way to nights out before and I've made us turn back to check I'd turned my GHDs off).

It might be my imagination but I find they heat up slightly more quickly than my GHDs did, the finish they give me is just as good, the heat settings could be handy for offering more protection for my hair, the auto shut off should be a Godsend and the price is amazing for the quality. There is nothing I don't like about them! Whether they will have the longevity of my GHDs (RIP) or not remains to be seen but for now I am in love with these and would recommend anyone who is in a similar position to I was - worried about cheaper straighteners being a false economy - to give these a go as I am super impressed.

Anyone else out there who has tried these?I'd love to hear from you :)

LoubouLush x

Friday 2 December 2011

RIP Kevin




I know I've been a shocking blogger lately and I'm not even sure if anyone else will read this but I thought I should nip on and do a little post about Kevin the Kitten who was the subject of my 100th post back in June.

Unfortunately she got hit by a car last night and passed away. I wasn't a big cat fan before she literally dropped in with us but she really changed my outlook. She was a vibrant and fun little thing and embraced life as a cat - hunting for birds and mice and even a rat last week.

RIP little one x