A Body Shop Haul - Gifts, Haircare & Bath Bombs

I've seriously done far too much shopping recently! I've had such a good few months with my blog so I've definitely been in 'treat yourself' mode, there are just so many gorgeous bits out at the moment. Now that Autumn is well and truly here, I've been picking up some new clothes, I bought the most amazing leopard print boots from New Look, I've ordered yet more books and when I spotted the new Christmas range from The Body Shop, I couldn't help myself. It's not all bad, I've been saving too and I've even started Christmas shopping, but I thought I'd share some of the bits I've picked up. I've got a few Body Shop hauls on my blog but I personally love reading them so I thought I'd carry on the tradition and show you what I got this time too.

Festive Sack of Peppermint Candy Cane Delights

So, this is where it all started. I love love love anything minty so when I saw they had brought out some new scents for their festive range this year and peppermint was one of them, it had to be mine. This wasn't cheap at £18 but when ordering they had 35% off so my total really didn't end up being too bad, they also have a smaller set for £9 too. I decided to get this one as it comes with four products and I want all the peppermint goodness this Christmas. It has a shower gel, a body scrub, body butter and hand cream. I'm such a huge fan of their shower gels and body butters, they're so worth the money. I hope they bring out bigger sizes of these so I can stock up before they go.

Strawberry Clearly Glossing Shampoo and Conditioner

I've only tried out shampoo and conditioner from The Body Shop once before and I wasn't actually too impressed, but since then they've brought out several other hair products and I've heard such good things, especially about the Strawberry Clearly Glossing range. I love their strawberry shower gel so I knew the scent of this would be beautiful but I had no idea whether these would be any better than the rainforest range I'd used in the past. I just picked up the mini bottles for £2 each this time so if I don't like them, at least I haven't bought the bigger bottles for them to just go to waste.

Fuji Green Tea Exfoliating Soap

The Fuji Green Tea range is one of my favourites from The Body Shop. I love how fresh the scent is and it makes a nice change from ones I've bought before which tend to be quite sweet. I picked up one of these exfoliating soaps ages ago and I absolutely loved using it. I really felt like I was washing away any dead skin every time I used it and it left my skin feeling so soft afterwards so whilst there was a sale on, I took advantage and picked another up.

Bath Bombs

I couldn't not pick up a few of their bath bombs as they're so cheap! £1.50 for a bath bomb is incredible as it seems other brands are just getting more and more expensive and I can't be doing with spending loads on a product that's going to dissolve in minutes. I reviewed the Pink Grapefruit Bubble Bar and the Candied Plum Bath Bomb a few months ago which you can find here if you want to see what I thought. This time I picked up the Mango bath bomb and the Green Tea bath bomb. Now it's a bit cooler, I'm so excited for lots of pamper nights with hot bubble baths with one of these, a face mask and some of my fave beauty products.

I'm so happy with everything I picked up! I only tend to order from The Body Shop when a sale is on and as it was 35% off I got all of this for about £22 instead of over £30 which is brilliant. I just can't wait to get using the peppermint goodies!

Are you a fan of The Body Shop? Let me know if there are any products I should try in future.

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22 Blog Post Ideas For Autumn Lovers

It's no secret if you're a long time reader of my blog, or even if you've just read some of my posts recently, that I long for Autumn all year round! I have never been a fan of Summer and this year, it was the absolute worst. Those days it was boiling hot and everyone was loving it? I wasn't. All I was thinking about was how excited I was for Autumn to finally arrive. Now it's here I've been thinking about some Autumnal blog posts I want to share and I thought I'd put together a list of some of those in case you are in need of some ideas.

1. Reasons to love Autumn

2. Seasonal fashion/beauty wishlist

3. Seasonal homeware wishlist

4. Autumn bucket list

5. Your perfect cosy night in

6. The Autumn tag

7. Autumnal nail picks

8. An Autumn makeup look

9. Ways you embrace Autumn and the colder months

10. Halloween recipes

11. Warming slow cooker recipes

12. Favourite Halloween/horror movies

13. Plans/goals for the rest of the year

14. The Autumn reading tag

15. Autumn flatlay/photography ideas

16. Pumpkin recipes

17. Outfit of the day

18. Lush wishlist/haul

19. Autumn pamper night routine

20. A Summer roundup

21. Christmas Markets to visit

22. Christmas wishlist

I'm so excited to get writing some of these myself so I hope if you love all things Autumn too, that this is useful for you.

What are you looking forward to most over the next few months?

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Luxury Bouquets From Appleyard London Review*

For me, a bunch of flowers can really make a room. We rent our home and it can mean at times we're quite limited with what we can do. We're lucky that our landlord is relaxed and has so far been happy for us to add pretty much what we want but it's all still very neutral and sometimes it can be difficult to know what to do to make it more of our own and really inject a pop of colour. This is where beautiful bouquets from Appleyard London come in. If someone has a big bunch of flowers on display in their home, I'm always drawn to it so I was thrilled to receive my own bouquet last month and they have been perfect to display in our living room.

We have an open plan living room and kitchen so the flowers I chose have been visible whilst cooking up a tasty meal and also chilling on the sofa watching a film. Before I get on with my thoughts on the bouquet I received though, I'll explain a little bit more about Appleyard London.

Appleyard London are a boutique London florist who specialise in gorgeous fresh flowers online that are available anywhere in the UK. With a team of expert florists, they are dedicated and passionate about only sourcing the finest flowers from trusted British suppliers that stay fresh for at least 7 days. There are a huge range of flowers, plants and gifts available on their website so you really are spoilt for choice! I had the chance to review a bouquet and after much deliberation I went for the Summer Rose & Alstro.

First of all with Appleyard London, there is no need to worry about delivery. All flowers are hand tied into a beautiful arrangement, gift wrapped and then packaged in a large cardboard box. Therefore if you want to send a bouquet as a gift, you can be assured that no damage will be done on it's way.

As soon as I opened the box, I could see straight away just how much care had gone into arranging the bouquet and ensuring it arrived safely. Everything was in perfect condition! Instantly I could see the bright orange roses neatly on the bed of yellow alstromeria and I couldn't wait to put them on display. The great thing about Appleyard London bouquets including the Summer Rose & Alstro is that they come ready for you to assemble into your floral arrangement so you can create it exactly as you wish to suit your home. All I needed to do with this bouquet is trim the stems and put into a vase with the plant food that arrives in the box along with a little booklet advising you on how to properly look after them.

The reason I was drawn to this particular bouquet is because of the stunning orange roses and up close they are only even more beautiful. They really are so bright and they matched so well with our kitchen as I had hoped and like you can slightly see in the photo below. Once in water, it didn't take long for the roses to open up and along with the yellow alstromeria, it really was a gorgeous bouquet that looked perfect in our open plan room.

The one thing I was sceptical about with a delivered bouquet was how long it would actually last and I ended up being pleasantly surprised! As I previously mentioned, the orange roses opened up quite quickly but the yellow astro took a little longer and they both lasted for roughly a week once in bloom which I think is impressive, especially as the flowers weren't directly near sunlight in our flat with them being closer to the kitchen rather than the living room. By 7 days, I did notice that the roses had started to wilt but the astro easily went on for far longer. The colour of the alstro seemed to intensify as they bloomed and I definitely felt they didn't require quite as much attention as the roses. Together though they formed a lovely bouquet and they were a delight to have in our home.

Overall I'm really impressed with Appleyard London and would definitely consider them in the future either as treat to myself or as a gift for someone else. Ordering flowers for another person whether that be for a birthday, anniversary or any other occasion, is such a lovely idea and with Appleyard London and their excellent delivery service you can be assured that a luxury bouquet will arrive safely and be sure to put a smile on someones face. In terms of cost for these bouquets, the Summer Rose and Alstro is £26.99 but each bunch varies. I think for what you get and the high quality service, it's really reasonable and worth it for an extra special gift. They also offer a subscription service so you can have flowers delivered to your home each month for blooming bouquets all year round!

Do you like to have flowers around your home too? Have you tried a flower subscription service before?

*I was provided with a bouquet for the purpose of this review

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September Favourites - Heathers, Homesense & Autumnal Nails

It's October already and I couldn't be more happy about it! These last few months are without a doubt, the best. It's colder, leaves are falling, Christmas is on the way. I just can't wait for the next few weeks!

A thoughtful gift - One of the best things about blogging is all of the wonderful people I've got to know because of it. I definitely don't have that many people outside of blogging so it's been such a pleasure to actually become friends with some other bloggers and people who take the time out to read my blog. One of those people is the lovely Laura who sent me a little present a few weeks ago, a gorgeous London Trinket Dish. She knows my love for London and thought of me when she saw it, and I couldn't have been happier when she said she picked it up for me as a little gift. I've been using it for some of my photos and I just absolutely love it. Thank you so much Laura 💖

Autumnal candles - Autumn is always my favourite time to buy new candles. I'd just finished up some in the living room so when we went to Manchester, it was the perfect opportunity to pop into Homsense and TK Maxx, and luckily they had just started stocking their new seasonal ranges. I picked up 3 in the end, 2 mini ones for the living room which smell perfect for the colder months, and a bigger one for our bathroom and I'm just obsessed with them! They were all such bargains too.

Heathers - I'm a bit weird in that I don't usually like to watch 'old' films but we watched the original Heathers film from 1989 last month and I absolutely loved it. If you've not heard of it before, the only way I can describe it is Mean Girls with murder, but there's much more to it than that. It's a really funny film which stars Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. It's actually been turned into a musical and as it's back for a limited West End run we've booked tickets to see it, for next week actually and I can't wait. I'm incredibly excited to see how it plays out on stage and if it lives up to the film!

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Kinky Boots - I'm quite clearly a massive fan of the musical Kinky Boots, I've mentioned it in several posts over the last year and I've also done a full review of when George and I saw it in London earlier this year. Despite loving the show and soundtrack so much, we'd never actually seen the film. Like with the musical, you might think a story about a factory selling shoes wouldn't be that interesting but it's told so well and the film is absolutely brilliant! I'm so glad we watched it and it only gave me more of an understanding of the true story and how it went from a struggling family business to a place making shoes for drag queens! It's been out a long time now but it's so worth watching if you haven't seen.

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Nails Inc Victoria Nail Polish - The shade Victoria from Nails Inc has been a go to of mine since last year and I'm more obsessed with it than ever before at the moment. It's such a gorgeous deep plum colour, meaning it's so perfect for Autumn and Christmas. It lasts really well, applies very easily and just looks stunning. I've been adding the shade Chelsea Embankment which is a gold glitter on top of one nail too and the colours go perfectly together.

Mean Girls the Musical - I really don't know why I do it to myself. I listen to one or two songs from a new musical and within hours I'm hooked. Mean Girls is the latest musical to get my attention. I'd heard a few songs a couple of months ago but I was fully enthralled with Hamilton still then so nothing else really stood out to me, until now. As I've been getting excited for our trip to London next week and seeing Heathers, I've been listening to that a lot and occasionally a song from the new Mean Girls musical would come on. Well I decided to give it a proper listen and now I can't stop. I absolutely love the film and I really think they've done it justice with the show. I so wish it would come to London now as it's doing so well on broadway.

How was your September? Are you embracing Autumn now too?

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