How to do a Soup diet

What could be better that coming home from the freeeezing cold to find a nice steamy bowl of home made soup, Hannah's very own homemade savoury muffins AND some creme fresh... what a delight.

Whilst most of the time that girl is nothing but horrible... now she has excelled herself. Charlie you picked a baaaad day to be in Bristol my friend, this soup is delish.

This is how to do a soup diet... if I had Hannah to follow me around making exciting soups all day I think I could join all those new year crazies on the famous soup diet that is sweeping our offices at the moment.

Out of pretty much the whole team that started it... one remains. And she has a holiday booked to Florida as motivation for that bikini bod.

That's an idea... maybe I should just get a holiday booked ... that would save Hannah the chef duty.

A Beautiful Ending

So I have found my latest product love.... introducing Herbal Essences Beautiful Ends range.

I am not normally one for believing in the usual rubbish about one type of shampoo being far superior to the rest. As far as I'm concerned, they all do the same job & are basically the same stuff in different packaging. My hair is always a nightmare & I thought that I just needed to accept the curse of the gene pool and move on.

Well... my opinion has changed now that I have discovered one of Herbal Essences latest triumphs.

My hair is well known for being frizzy, wild and generally unmanageable (I was nicknamed bog brush at school). And with such frizz, this comes with its fair share of split ends. Since coming back from travelling this has been a particular problem. Months of sun, sea and sand *sigh* definitely took its toll on my mane & I've not been able to do too much about it since returning to the UK. Han & I resorted to coating our hair in some Thai seaweed potion every night prior to our arrival back in the UK, but it would appear that wandering around looking like Elphaba did little to resolve the issue.

But no more!

I've started using the whole range of this product that focuses on repairing your split ends. It's amazing to find a simple shampoo and conditioner that pretty much does the trick. Whack on an intensive conditioner and leave in conditioner every now and then and Kate Middleton tresses here I come!

And its not even just the split ends that it sorts out... my hairs soft, its shiny, its smooth... Herbal where have you been all my life!?

So a beautiful ending to my years of shampoo & conditioner woes, finally the quest for the perfect product has finished and I will not be turning back!

All the Way from Norway

Last weekend as a celebration of our travelling anniversary, Han & I hopped on a plane to Norway to visit our friend Cecilie that we met with her other Norwegian cronie in Brazil & then proceeded to rendezvous at various other locations across the globe.

More info on this can we found at my other blog that I wrote while we were away...

http://www.laurasayshelloworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/travelly-anniversary.html

So I won't bother boring with repeats of these details.

I will, however share with you an extremely exciting new addition that we have to our house all the way from the land of the vikings.

How my mother is going to kill me when she sees these! Mwah ha ha ha ha

Christmas at the Tardis

Well I'm sorry to say that Christmas seems like a very long time ago now, but its taken me a while to get round to the customary Christmas blog update. My feet have barely touched the ground since Christmas so I haven't had much time for blogging at all. Oh well... new years resolution... try and do one a week!

Anyway, Christmas at the Tardis was by no means a small affair. Not only has the house been decorated since the beginning of December (with co ordinated decorations might I add, victory was mine after all) but we had games, we had dancing, we had party food, ginger bread men, mulled wine and giant crackers. Fabulous.

As we didn't have enough time or will power to complete the arduous task of the Christmas dinner, we took inspiration from the wonderful Miss Solomon and her Iceland extravaganza. What you can't get from Iceland for £1 isn't worth having. And everything is a 'mini'. Well it starts off as a mini until you've eaten so many of them that it may as well be a double a 'biggy', but all that's for January to worry about... calorie is a word that should be banned in December.

So after eating until we were sick it was time for....

THE GIANT CRACKER

DA DA DAAAAA

Oh and what an impressive beast it was. Clearly it would've been a bit sad just to sit round the 3 of us pulling 12 crackers (that is one set of mini's that Iceland doesn't produce). So instead it was decided that one enormous one would be a better idea.

That teamed up with Santa Claus (one of my all time fave Christmas films) went down pretty well. Oh and the pressies... they were pretty cool too :)

Rimmel Primer is my new best friend

Since starting work at Superdrug I have become A LOT more obsessed with trying out the latest new products and have found that I seem to have a greatly expanded range of product knowledge hints and tips (largely thanks to Dare, the in store magazine that I work on).

I thought it might be good to try and share some of these every so often on the blog, so you've already had the very exciting glittery nails from GOSH and now it's Rimmels turn.

Primer is not something that I have ever used before but when you look around the Superdrug office, it's hard not to notice that everybodies make up is still in pristine condition as the clock turns half past 5 and it's time to go home. When I first started this use to frustrate me sooo much, as my face had slid as far as my ankles by this point in the day.

But never fear, primer is here!

Rimmel Fix and perfect is a great new one Rimmel have got out at the moment that's one of those great 'I do 100 things at once' products that are everywhere at the moment. It's not quite as all consuming as the latest BB creams that are dominating the new foundation products, but personally I prefer it.

I've given Garnier's BB cream a go, and yes its great, but personally I like to feel like I've got a bit more make up on than just a moisturiser. The BB cream feels a bit light for me, and while, like my housemate Charlie says this can be a selling point, for me it doesn't quite cut it.

Instead I go for a primer & the new Rimmel Colourmatch foundation which I'm loving at the moment.

The primer mattifies, brightens and moisturises to name a few of its attributes, and really does keep your skin looking fresh all day. Not only that, but your make up does really stick to it.

I've been spreading the word and after one test run with this beaut my mum was converted & if we can get mummy crouch on board I think you should all try it.

So finally no more melting face with eyeliner bags forming even darker circles around my eyes after a day staring at the computer screen. And finally an attempt at looking presentable come half past 5. What a relief.

The search for a Christmas Tree

After a lovely day spent feeling Christmassy and wandering around Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park with the rents, guzzling red wine and soaking up the atmosphere I was all set and ready for The Tardis Christmas decorating session that is scheduled for this evening.

It was my job to hunt down a Christmas tree and get some decorations ready for this evening. Originally I thought that this would be a pretty easy task... go to Asda where they will have everything I need.

How wrong I was.

The Christmas aisles of Asda were in complete carnage. You could picture the sights before my arrival of people warring over decorations, Christmas trees and lights. All that remained was the debris from this battle that I had quite clearly missed. Which meant, to my dismay, that there were no Christmas trees, bar some ugly black ones, and only a very minimal selection of decorations.

Immediately I text the girls to brief them on the situation, but did not give up on my mission straight away. So I trundled off to try my luck on the high street.

Lidle
M&S
Debenhams

All tried to no avail.

And then, who should rescue me but a good old discounter shop. And all these nasty supermarkets are causing them to die out. Well at least they managed to still have a steady flow of trees, lights and all things sparkly.

If the supermarkets are going to try and fend these little guys out, they better sort out their stock levels that's all I'm going to say. AND it was sooo much cheaper. A 5ft tree for £12 ... I should've got two really for that price. I have yet to open the box, so we'll see what it looks like when it's all up, but thank goodness they were there to save our house from any tears.

Watch this space... decorating commences tonight. I'm armed with a couple of bottles of mulled wine.

Comp ON

So the one that I usually claim to be my nearest and dearest has decided that it will be a charming idea to launch a retaliation to my blog in the form of her own site www.bertie-retaliation.blogspot.com.

What a charmer.

She has come to the conclusion that she gets too much grief on my blog and so now needs to start her own in order to reply to my accusations.

So, her first rant is largely down to the disagreement in our house over Christmas that I wrote about the other day.

I think that there is only one fair way that we can judge this, so I'm going to put it up for a poll.

Vote for the co-ordinated christmas of every Miracle on 34th Street lovers dream... picture the shop window of Harrods all nicely themed to the smallest detail of Christmas elegance... or my house. Even Hannah has admitted that this may be a flaw in her arguement as mummy crouch delivers a mean Christmas with coloured themed trees in every room.

or vote Christmas vomit.

It's your choice... I look to you to make the right decision. (Poll on the right)

While your there I've also popped up a little vote on our much loved X Factor judging panel. This is another strong bone of contention amongst our house.

As my previous blog informs you all we have X Factor wars running in the Tardis at the moment. Montana is backing Louis, Charles is behind Kelly and I'm in Gary's camp. Come final day we will be donning our X Factor masks and hoping for the best. Obv due to Louis ridiculous comments Hannah's already out of the competition, but I'm sure Louis will still strive to compare the contestants to "a young Lenny Henry" or whoever he decides to pick on next, and failing that claim that the definitely have the "likeability factor" (even if it is Misha B) and endeavour to get all of Ireland/Manchester/Liverpool behind them.

Anyway, something else for you to all cast your vote on... enjoy.