Pineapple Express from Bomb Cosmetics

A few months ago I was lucky enough to win a package from Bomb Cosmetics which you can see HERE and within that package was a Bomb Blaster called Pineapple Express and tonight I got round to using it for the very first time.

With the following description:

"Everybody's laughing on the Pineapple Expressed! Juicy fun and freedom with pure bergamot and grapefruit essential oils to pick you up and post you happy!Sweet & zesty pineapple with hints of Lemon & Orange. Creamy Vanilla comes through the base notes to close"

All I can tell you is that it smells exactly like that and if like me you love fruity scented products for your bath, then this would be perfect and it is only £2.09 - worth every penny.

When it comes to using this Bath Blaster, all you need to do is ensure there are a good few inches of water within the bath and then drop your Bath Blaster in to a bath of warm water and watch as it fizzes, releasing its perfume and essential oils, while the Bicarbonate of Soda softens the water.  Once you do place it into your bath, this is what happen:

This Bath Creamer is full of lovely ingredients and I always like to look at what is something before I use it, it fascinated me for years and this particular product includes: 

• Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter - both know for their ability to moisturise the skin,
• Bergamot Oil - has an uplifting effect on the mood and can also help deal with stress, tension and that fed up feeling,
• Grapefruit Peel Oil - has an uplifting effect on the mood and helps with stress and depression. It is used with great success to combat muscle fatigue and stiffness while stimulating the lymphatic system and thereby clearing the body of toxins. It helps to clear congested oily skin and also assists with acne, while toning the skin and tissues.

There are other ingredients included within this Bath Blaster which are listed on the Bomb Cosmetics website.

The water that you immerse yourself into feels really soft on the skin, that is the best way for me to describe it, the Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter are incedibly moisutirsing and I almost felt no need to add anything else to my skin because it is all there in the water. However with this cold weather, my skin is quite dry on my legs, so I did exfoliate, but then rather than use anything else, I used what was in my water and once out of the bath, my skin was soft and smooth to the touch and it smelt totally amazing.

It is worth nothing that within this products the little stars, silver balls and the fruit pieces all float about your bath, mainly to add some decoration and fun, but there is a warning to always rinse them away from the bath after use to avoid and prevent any staining.

All of the products from Bomb Cosmetics are formulated to be free from Parabens, or Paraben based preservatives.

Have you tried anything from Bomb Cosmetics? Do you have a favourite product?

Ruby Red Cosmetics Natural Skincare

Ruby Red is a company I came by after an opportunity arose in an email and I have to say, if you want a product to make you go "Wow" then read on.

The brand Ruby Red is a combination of Mike’s surname (Ruby), the owner and Red for their London roots. Ruby Red as a company believe that healthy, radiant skin needs vital nutrients from the outside as well as the inside. Their Skin and Body care ranges are full of plant nourishment combined with distinctive pampering aromas made from oils without SLS, parabens, sulphates, petrochemicals and dyes as well as never tested on Animals.  

I was sent two products in the form of a Reviving Body Cleanser** and a Renewal Shea Skin Cream** which as you can see below arrived really well packaged and inside two very different containers.  

The Body Cleanser, which was a finalist in the Best Shower Gel category at the 2014 Beauty Shortlist Awards is described as follows:

"Botanical glucosides found in sugar and coconut makes an effective cleansing agent which does not irritate the skin; botanical extract of Aloe Vera soften and soothe the skin. A warm, invigorating, citrus aroma of Lime, Red Mandarin, Coriander and Cedarwood boost circulation while toning and refreshing the skin"

The first thing about this cleanser is the scent, it is absolutely phenomenal, one of those scents you need on a morning when you feel really sluggish, annoyed that you have had to leave your bed and a morning when no amount of caffeine is going to wake up - well this product will! To use you simply apply a generous amount onto your hands or onto a cloth and then massage over your damp skin whilst in the shower, as soon as the clear looking gel leaves the bottle the scent wakes you, but when it hits the steam you become more alert than you probably have done in a long time, after wahsing you simply wash it off, again using a damp cloth and it leaves your skin not only squeaky clean but smelling so good and the scent lasts pretty much all day, even as it fades it is still wonderful. it is also worth noting that this Reviving Body Cleanser can also be used as hand cleanser, something I am yet to try.

The second product is the Renewal Shea Skin Cream which is in this 60ml glass jar and when I first removed the jar, I didnt find what I was expecting. I was expecting to find a runny cream not a solid, so I was very much intrigued to use this. It comes with the following description:

"The healing enzymes in Lemon and Honey work together to improve cell renewal while Vitamins A, E, & F in our pure, hand processed organic Shea butter help to restore the skin’s elasticity lost through dryness or sun-exposure. A small of cream amount will moisturise, softening and smoothing the skin".

Even though this skin cream contains lemon and honey, the scent isn't as strong as the body cleanser, but it is subtle enough for me to absolutely love it. To use you simply warm a really small amount in your hands and on the Ruby Red site they make a point of stating that by small they mean no bigger than a raindrop, the reason being that as soon as it comes into contact with your skin it begins to melt, so it literally absorbs without no amount of effort on your part and as you massage it into the skin, the lemony scent comes to life and reminds me of sherbet lemons, a scent I happen to adore. Once massaged onto the skin, within a matter of minutes there is no trace that anything was actually there, instead you have soft, smooth skin. If like me you spend a lot of your working life, days and sometimes evening dealing with paper, I find it dries my hands out, hence my love of hand cream, well I have been using this for the last 2 months and it is a perfect remedy for my dry hands, not to mention I use it on my shins, elbows and feet as well.

These products I cannot rate highly enough, they have caused no adverse reactions to my skin, they smell more wonderful than I can give them credit for and I absolutely love using them.  You can find more information about Ruby Red on their website which is HERE and their products can be bought online through the Ruby Red shop or from places like Amazon, Fortnum and Mason and soon to launch in Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge.

Beluah-home - one to look out for!

One thing I always remember from my childhood is my mums passion for knitting, show her any pattern and she can copy it in its entirety, just before Christmas she handed me a king-size blanket for my bed which she had knitted and created herself and I absolutely adore it. 

Knitting is once again fashionable, the number of people that I know who are learning, taking lessons or rediscovering their love of knitting is constantly growing and when you come across sites like Beulah-Home, I am almost tempted to pick up my knitting needles to see if I can remember how it is done, yes my mum also taught me to knit too.

Beulah-Home state that the are  

“geared to meet all our customer’s needs for fashionable knitted homewares for the living space and everything is made is Britain”. 

Just one look at the site and you can see for yourself that it is fashionable, contemporary and even traditional. The use of colour, textures, styles and patterns are one thing that jumps out to me and these are just a few of my favourite things

Beulah-Home has one desire and that is to meet every household’s needs.  Their product base is quite extensive and it includes luxury knitted cushions and throws, fashionable knitted pet blankets and stylish yet soft knitted kids’ blankets and cushions, something for everyone and something for everywhere and everything is 100% crafted by hand, so when you do buy something, you know that someone has put a lot of love, care and effort into making that particular item. 

Beulah-Home is definitely a new designer to watch out for and you can find more about them online via their homepage, Twitter  or Facebook.




**This is a sponsored post

The Haagen-Dazs Easter Master-class

Whenever an email pops into my inbox and mentions chocolate I get excited! I am a huge chocoholic and I also love ice-cream so there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity to attend this masterclass.

When Kimberley and I turned up in Leicester Square we were greeted really warmly and handed some champagne (how perfect) and told how the evening would go and what we would be doing, you can only imagine the size of the grin on my face when I was handed an apron incase things got messy!

The blurb in the email read:

"Join us for an evening of discovery with acclaimed food stylist, writer and presenter, Phil Munday.  Experience the passion, craft and inspiration behind his latest ice-cream creation, the limited edition Haagen-Dazs Easter Egg, exclusive to the Leicester Square store from 22nd March"

We saw how Phil created the chocolate Easter egg using chocolate and a mould and then how he transformed it into something I just wanted to frame rather than eat.  Using ice-cream, some sorbet and one or two toppings, Phil managed to create this amazing, perfect work of art, talking us through how he did it.  Then it was our turn!

We had a menu of 8 different ice-creams and sorbets to choose from, the menu of which you will see above and the idea being you choose an ice-cream to fill the chocolate egg, naturally all of the ice-cream was Haagen-Dazs and then you needed to choose something to go with it to make it look decorative.  Before all of that we got to decorate our plates, which is easier said then done when you are not very artistic, but I managed it as the photos show.

So I choose salted caramel ice-cream to fill my mould and then I made a hole within which to place my chosen sorbet, I opted for Raspberry and boy do those two flavours go well together and then we had an endless choice of extra toppings to choose from to get really creative and my effort is shown below.

Obviously after all that hard work there is only one thing left to do - eat it!  yes we got to eat our very own creations after they had been photographed and boy did I enjoy it.

If you want to try out this delicious Haagen-Dazs Easter creation it will be available until 25th April 2014 at the Leicester Square restaurant. 

What do you think of my Haagen-Dazs Easter Egg creation? What would you have chosen?