How to waterfall braid

I love learning new hair styles and trying them out on people. I have been seeing this hair style cropping up everywhere and I think it looks so beautiful! It is actually quite simple to do as well. It would be great for weddings, proms, parties, festivals and just about any event you can think off. It works best on second or third day hair as this gives the hair texture and helps keep the braid in place.

I have not yet mastered it on myself, so I have been doing this hair style on my little sister. 
First brush the hair through, I use a Tangle Teezer as it helps with knots. Then I sprayed it with Tony and Guy sea salt spray to add even more texture. 

Then starting at the temple start with three pieces of hair, then do a normal plait towards you until it is about an inch long ( this depends on how long your hair is, my sister has a lot of hair do if yours is shorter maybe do it a few centimetres long)

Then drop the piece of the far right, and from underneath pick up another strip of hair to replace the one you drop.

Add a small strip of hair to the piece on the far left and then do the plait as normal crossing the sections until the piece on the far left is on the far right. 

Then drop this and repeat the steps.

When you get the the bottom of the hair you can either plait it normally or go all the way across your head. 

I hope these instructions are easy to follow, and that you enjoy this post. 

Lots of love 

Harriet xxxx

Baking for people who can't bake:Granola bars

Hello so as you can tell from the title of this post I will be attempting to do some baking, stress the word attempting. I have always loved the idea of being a good cook, but lets just say after various fails I just gave up on the idea. Having said that these Granola Bars are so easy to make I bet my dog could make them!

The ingredients you will need are:
225g of porridge oats
75g of black treacle
75g of soft brown sugar
2 table spoons of peanut butter

150g of butter
and a handful of what ever fruits or nuts you want to add, as I have an intense hatred of dead fruit I added brazil nuts and macadamia nuts.

1. First pre heat the oven to 180C Gas mark 5.
2. Then grease a baking tray with butter, just so they don't stick too much.
3. Melt the butter, sugar, treacle in a pan making sure you don't let the mixture boil or the sugar burn, I recommend a low heat for this!
4. Then stir in the oats and the fruit or nuts of  your choice.
5. The add the peanut butter.
6. Stir until it is all combined.
7. Press into a baking tray until it is at the desired thickness, I didn't cover my whole tray as I wanted them to be quite thick.
8. Then bake for 25 min.
9. Wait for them to cool and then cut them up into bars or squares or whatever shape your heart desires.
10. Enjoy!

Another great thing about this recipe is there is minimal washing up! See I really have thought about it.

See that wasn't so difficult, I hope you enjoy them!
Lots of love
Harriet xxxx

Sleek au naturel palette

I am just going to hold my hands up and say that I Harriet am addicted to neutral eye shadows. I can't help it! It's like a comfort blanket, you know that you will look good in them and not end up walking out the house looking like a weird rainbow. I have tried experimenting with different colours, but I get as far as my front door the rush up stairs to take them off. So surprise surprise here is another neutral eye shadow review.... 

This is the Sleek i-Divine au naturel palette. It's just so beautiful! Now this palette retails at £7.99 which isn't bad considering that you get 12 eye shadows! What I will say is that pigmentation isn't that consistent across all of the eye shadows, but having said that I am yet to find a high street eye shadow palette that doesn't have at least one dud. All of the colours are wearable and last really well through the day. Trust me I was scrubbing my arm trying the get the swatches off. I also found that they didn't crease to badly, I saw the first signs of creasing at around 4 hours wear which isn't to bad as I have notoriously oily peepers! 

They are very buttery and smooth which makes them easy to blend. I think it would be really good for taking on holiday as it is thin and you have all the colours you need. You also don't have to think about which colours go well together as they all compliment each other. Something else which I like and think is quite rare from the high street is that this palette actually contains some decent mattes, which is always a bonus in my books. The packaging is not the best, I won't lie. It is like most sleek packaging it is matte black and shows up finger prints, dust and dirt. This is something that really irritates me, but for £7.99 I won't really complain. 

Over all its a good little palette. The colours are all stunning, but none of them really blew me away! 

What do you think?

Lots of love

Harriet

xxxx

Beach Toes Nail Varnish

Hello,
I just want to do a disclaimer before I start this post, I am not being sponsored by the company to talk about this product it was purchased with my own money. Also I am not a chemist, so if I have missed bits out I am really sorry.

Phew now that that's over you must be wondering what the heck this post is going to be about. You know how it with nail polish you are always slightly cautious until you try them out. You have those questions running through your head "will it go opaque?", "will it last" or "will I put the colour on my nails and look like a corpse" this are all very important questions I ask myself when buying a nail polish.

The brand is an Australian brand called "Beach Toes"  by "Sambora" (even though I assure you it is not just reserved for your toes). The range of colours were actually out of this world they have metallic ones, pastels, neons, shimmery ones and basically every colour under the sun. Also they all have cute names which sometimes is the selling point of a nail varnish for me (Oh the shame).

I picked up a gorgeous red with gold/red flecks of glitter running through it called "Devilish Intent". Think Dorothy's ruby red slippers in a bottle. It cost £9.50.  I was intrigued by what the lady said about them so I did some research.

The ethos for the brand is that it is a Australian cosmetic brand that makes UV stabilised nail polishes that are formulated for intense beach activity e.g. surfing. On Kosmetic Kaleidoscope I take claims like that very seriously so I decided to road test it. I spend a day running my hands through the sand, scuffing my toes and I can say that no chips what so ever! The formulation is also pretty good as it went fully opaques in two coats. The bottle is nothing spectacular, but I can look past that!

Here is the bit that really intrigued me on the website it said they are toluene, DBP, camphor, formaldehyde and formaldehyde resin free. Now having not done chemistry since year 10 I had no clue what any of these words meant.
so hear is what I found out...

Toluene-is a water insoluble liquid with a smell of paint thinners that can if inhaled has the potential to cause severe neurological harm.1
DBP-The use of this in cosmetics e.g. nail polishes has been banned in the European Union. 2
Formaldehyde- Has been described as being a human carcinogen and exposure is a significant consideration for human health.3               
This really got me thinking, now I am not saying throw away all your nail varnishes, but what I think I am going to do is paint my nails less and do it in a well ventilated area. I have been seriously impressed with these nail varnishes and I can actually go as far as saying it is the best nail varnish I have every tried and I can't wait to get more!

If you have any other non-toxic nail varnish recommendations I would love to hear them!
Lots of Love
Harriet xxx

1  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toluene
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dibutyl_phthalate
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formaldehyde
Link to the Sambora website http://www.sambora.com.au/about.html





 

Body butters part 2 Shimmery

These are my two absolute ABSOLUTE favourite body butters ever! There is just something about glitter and shimmer that just attracts me, I guess I am a bit like a magpie in that sense. 

Bathina body so fine Benefit 

If I was on a desert island and only aloud to take one beauty item I would take this. This is a solid balm that comes with this adorable little pink sponge puff ball thingy that you use to apply it. It has a beautiful rose gold shimmer running through it that is stunning. I like the put this down the front of my legs as it makes them look slimmer and also on my décolleté area as it highlights it. 

Boux avenue pink taffeta shimmer body creme 

This is another beautiful shimmery body butter. I would say the glitter is a lot more noticeable and I would be careful while I applied this other wise you may look like Edward Cullen if you know what I am saying. The glitter is a champagne colour and it has a lovely fresh perfumed scent to it, I don't really know what taffeta smells like but this smells lovely! I would say that this one isn't as great for travelling as it comes in a large glass pot, having said that though it looks lovely when displayed on your dressing table. 

I love me some sparkles!

 

Lots of love 

Harriet 

Xxxx

Body butters part 1 fruity

I am a very lazy person, especially when it comes to moisturising after a shower or  bath! I just get fed up of waiting for what feels like forever for it to sink in. Having said that though I have a select few that I truly love. This is a little series where I will cover my favourite body butters, from different scents to formulations and day moisturisers and night moisturisers. Starting with fruity. 

Fruity 

I love fruity fresh scents that are light and fresh. My two favourite in this category are the Body Shop Peach body butter and the DKNY be delicious body lotion. Everyone and their mother seems to own a Body Shop body butter, and with good reason they come in loads of different scents and formulas for certain skin types. The peach one is my favourite but there is also a space in my heart for the coconut one. I think the peach one smells like those Spanish peach sweets you would get at pick and mix when you went to the cinema and who doesn't want to smell like a sweet? Unlike many body butters it is quite a solid balm like texture that melts into the skin and doesn't leave you feeling greasy.

The DKNY apple scent it the epitome of spring scents so when I saw they did it in body lotion form I was really happy. I have the perfume of this and I love how I can moisturise with this lotion and then put perfume on without the scents mixing and smelling odd. It is quite runny and a little bit goes along way, as with the Body Shop one it sinks in quickly. 

I like using these scents in the spring time and also in the morning as they both sink in quickly. 

Lots of love

Harriet 

Xxxx

My revision tips and tricks

I thought today I would do a different post to my normal make up beauty posts, so I decided to do a post on a topic that would be hopefully helpful to people. There will always be a time in our lives where we have to revise, just face it there is nothing any of us can do but accept it. As with everything though there are good ways to go about it and bad ways to go about it, and its about knowing what works best for you. I am going to stop now before I start sounding like a teacher, but I have done my GCSE's and am currently doing my AS levels so I have had quite a lot of practise revising in the past few years. I am not saying I am a expert, but these are the things that help get me through revision with as little pain as possible. 

First I decide what I am going to revise, some people make revision time tables but that never really worked for me as I could never stick to them. So I will usually make my decision based on what I feel needs the most work.

Then I will make myself a hot drink, usually coffee as revision takes energy trust me! Also I like to put some comfy clothes on like jumpers or pyjama bottoms, I don't really know why this helps it just does.

I then decide how long I want to revise for. I have quite a short attention span so I can't do more than 1.30hrs at a time, so I set a timer to do focused revision for that amount of time. Also decide what time works best for you to revise, as a rule I never work past 9 o'clock because after that time I am not productive and anything I do doesn't help me. This could be different for everyone though I have one friend who stays up till 2 in the morning revising and she manages to do amazing in exams. If that was me I would be like a zombie and probably fall asleep in my exam! 

What works well for me is to read through a text book, then read it through again only this time saying it out loud. You might want to be careful with this as I have been sat doing revision in my sixth forms learning centre and got weird looks for talking to myself. So maybe I would reserve this one for home. I then write down as much as I can remember from that page, and then check to see if I get it right. 

I also love making posters with loads of coloured pens and displaying then round my room so that I can read them when I am getting ready. 

My last tip is that to truly understand something you have to be able to explain it to someone. Yet again I am going to sound like a freak, but I explain what I have been learning to my dogs. Yes I know, I talk to myself and animals (not really selling myself here!) it works for Dr Dolittle and trust me try it, it really works. 


If you have any tips or if you found this in anyway useful please let me know...

Lots of love
Harriet xxx