Weekly Book Round Up #56 and a Blogging Hiatus...

After really enjoying Eleanor and Park, I couldn't resist downloading another Rainbow Rowell book for my Kindle! Fangirl is the story of Cath, a girl who has recently left home to go to college with her twin sister. Cath is incredibly shy and writes fan fiction, while her sister is outgoing and sociable. This book is very much a coming of age story, with Cath realising that real life can be just as good as her fictional worlds. Rainbow Rowell's novels have a very distinct writing style which I absolutely love, I just wish her endings were a bit more rounded. I was quite surprised that this ended where it did, but it did tie in nicely with what Cath says about fan fiction, the ending is up to the reader!

Nicola's rating: 4/5



Also, you read correctly, I am taking a blogging hiatus! Next week Luke and I are off to Norfolk and the week after I will be starting my degree with the Open University, so now seems like as good a time as any to make my announcement. I will be sporadically posting in the week before I start studying, but after that there probably won't be any new content for a while. I'm really sad to be leaving my blog, I started it up not really knowing what I was doing and I feel like I've learned a lot! 

See you around, internets!

Memebox Superbox #43 2014 F/W Colors

I spent pretty much all of last week desperately waiting for my latest Memebox to arrive, and when it did finally get here I was super excited! This is the first make up based box that I have ordered from Memebox, all the others have been skincare.

The theme of this box is 2014 fall/winter colours, and the box contains a mix of gorgeous berry shades and shimmery greens. Not the easiest colours to wear, but I'll definitely be experimenting!

One of the first items I picked out was this gorgeous blush ($14) from Witch's Pouch. This blush was listed on the website as a spoiler, but I was still pretty excited to try it out. I love a good blush, and this shade (which is called Sexy Swan by the way...) is great for my skintone. The blush pan lifts up to reveal a cute brush underneath as well which I always appreciate.

 Below I've swatched it twice, to show you what the colour looks like when it's been built up. It's a lovely shimmery coral pink.

We also received a second Witch's Pouch product in the form of a super creamy lipstick ($12). I can't remember the name of the shade I received, but it's a very deep burgundy colour. I'm not entirely sure that it suits me, but It's definitely a gorgeous colour for winter.

Also, how cute is the packaging? It's so Tim Burton, I love it!

Everyone knows I'm a sucker for a shimmery eye, but green isn't the easiest colour to wear! Having swatched this though, I am definitely going to have to find a way to wear this gorgeous colour. This is the first of three items from DD'ell in this box and is worth $11.

Below, we have a lighter swatch on the bottom, and the top swatch is more built up. As you can see, even the lighter swatch is super pigmented!

We also received two of the Stay Forever Gel Eye Pencils (£14 each) from DD'ell. Initially, I was super impressed with these. They apply incredibly easily and softly, and have a gorgeous shimmer to them. They also really do last forever. The only way I could remove the swatches from my hand was by scrubbing at them in the shower. All very impressive. However, I had thought that these would twist up at the ends to reveal more product but they don't. Either my eye liners are broken, or these are a total rip off!

Beautiful colours though, I'm sure you'll agree!

This cute Angel Liptint ($8) is such a perfect addition to the box. Nothing says autumn like a berry red lip but I do tend to find tints very drying. This one is also quite difficult to work with. You end up with a lot of product on the wand so I had to try and blot a lot of the excess away. It also tastes terrible! The remaining colour is really nice though, it's just whether you're prepared to go through the faff of applying it in the first place!

I am absolutely in love with this ridiculous nail polish! I've never seen a polish with a lid like this before, but I actually found that it made the application much easier. The colour is a sort of muted glittery purple, it's lovely! At $4, it's not the most expensive item in the box but I still think it's great.

Overall, the value of this box is $77. I paid $29.99 for it (including postage) so it's another fantastic value for money box from Memebox. I'm definitely going to be keeping my eye out for more make up based boxes in the future, even though some of products in this box weren't for me.

Have you tried Memebox yet?

August Empties

Once again, I can't believe that another month has flown by! August has been a busy one for me, and as a result I haven't managed to get through as many products as I would normally, but there's still some lovely things to talk about!
 

This Vineyard peach shower gel has been so lovely to use! It's such a gorgeous summery scent and my skin has loved using it. Body Shop shower gels are a bit of a treat for me, I don't tend to buy them very often but I've loved this one so much I can easily see myself buying it again!

Urban Veda are one of my favourite skincare brands, and I loved using this exfoliating face wash. It has tiny exfoliating particles in it that gently buffed my skin so that it was silky smooth. I can definitely see myself purchasing a full size tube of this at some point.

I also finished up this tube of Embryolisse Lait-Creme Concentre. This was such a fantastic moisturiser to use. It felt really light on my skin and was a dream to apply make up over. I have a lot of moisturisers to use up at the moment but I will definitely consider repurchasing this when I eventually get through them all!

This sample of the Vasanti exfoliating cleanser came with this month's Birchbox, and I was really excited to try it out. I did find that this was a bit rougher on my skin than the Urban Veda face wash, and much thicker too. I also didn't find that it was fantastic at removing my make up so it's unlikely that I'll be buying this in the near future!

Have you tried any of my August empties before? What did you think to them?