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Tuesday, 5 May 2015

A crap tonne of food from Berlin

Errmm it's been a while huh!

So back in February, Mr Alien took me to Berlin for our first Valentines Day together (what, it's only taken 3 months to blog about it!).  There'll be 3 posts because Berlin is freaking epic for vegan food and we went to a couple of places that quite frankly deserved their own post.

So this post is the best of the rest, if you like.

Starting with our first meal. We wanted some fast junk and decided on the Vego Foodworld Cafe for burgers.

We started with almond milk hot chocolates, sooo yummy.

Then we both ordered burgers.  I got the cheeseburger and fries


Mr. A got the Chili cheese burgers.

These burgers were insanely good.  Probably the best vegan burger I've ever had. Mr A isn't vegan and he said that it was in his top 10 burger EVER. So high praise indeed.

Dessert was a vego bar of course; because it would have been rude not to!

Back at the hotel, we grabbed a couple of cocktails in the bar. Mr A went for a breaking bad mojito, which had blue rocks in it, hehehe.

I had a bellini, always a wise choice!

They also gave us fancy bar snacks!

 I also got pretty excited to find Manner Wafers in the vending machine! I freakin love these things.

The next day was V-Day and we went to Veganz supermarket. I was sooo excited to go to this place and it didn't disappoint.  So much awesome stuff, I so wish I had one of these near me.

Mr A queued up at the baker counter to buy us some cakes for valentine's day dessert and he also picked me up this super cute unicorn sugar cookie; he gets me! :)

errrrrm I may have gone a wee bit nuts in Veganz!

We had tried to get into Lucky Leek for vday dinner but it was full so we booked it for Sunday and instead decided to go low-key and grabbed falafels!

It was just a little place round the corner from Chaostheorie, where we had been for cocktails first (look out for my Chaostheorie post later this week).


Then we went back to the hotel and ate the cake we bought at veganz

This chocolate cake was freakin incredible. That frosting was delightful, chocolatey mousse and I was pretty in love with it. I didn't even care that we had no cutlery, I could've just smooshed my face into and been fine. SO. GOOD!

This one was a raspberry cheesecake; I wasn't so into this one but Mr A liked it!

Saturday morning, we busted out the google maps, jumped on the s-bahn and headed to Viasko for brunch.

Weekend brunch at Viasko is a buffet and we started with caramel lattes.

Here's a pic of the buffet, it's 100% vegan and 100% awesome!

That bread!! OMG, awesome. Like a pretzel. This must be a german thing because all the bakeries have similar bread and holy crapholes it's delicious.

This buffet had sooo much awesome stuff, tofu, spring rolls, salads, fried potatoes, seitan, little fried savoury cake this. It was epic.

There was also cake! This was a fruity little pastry / custard number that both of us enjoyed.

 There was also these super fluffy pancakes with apple in and this fruity / spiced cake. Also amazing!


I really really LOVED Viasko, I would've gone back for sure if we'd been there longer than a couple of days.  It was brilliant and definitely worth the trip to find it!

I absolutely loved Berlin and two of my favourite places I've ever eaten were Lucky Leek & Chaostheorie. Please look out for those posts later this week. So for now, here's a dumb selfie of Mr A & I whilst out sightseeing.

Laterz
xXx

Monday, 4 May 2015

A Post about LUSH!

Hello everyone, how was everyone's bank holiday weekend?  Good? Excellent.

I decided to talk today about a couple of things I've tried lately from Lush. Who doesn't love Lush? They're awesome, they're super vegan friendly, their vegan products are clearly labelled and they're not just cruelty free; they're actively fighting against animal testing.

Well the other week I started a new job and on my first day, my boyfriend came home with a bag of Lush treats for me (yeah, he's the bestest!).  He got me 3 bath bombs and a None of Your Beeswax lip balm.  I didn't picture that here but I like it well enough.  It's a bit grainy, like it was last time I bought it, but a look at the ingredients list tells me that the culprit is likely the shea butter.  Despite the graininess, it does still melt onto your lips nicely and does what it says on the tin; it's never gonna be my favourite though.

Onto the bath bombs, because these I LOVE. I usually buy bubble bars; I like the bubbles and I like that you can break them up and use them in 2 or 3 baths, depending on the size.  So it was a nice change to try these.

The first one he got me was the fluffy egg bath bomb. I didn't take a pic of it and the UK site no longer has it but you can see a pic of it HERE.  Basically this had so much pink colourant in it that it dyed my bathtub (and my fingers) pink! EEK.  It came off but I was panicking for a wee minute there.  It smelt really really good too.

Then was the Dragon's Egg, which is a citrusy scented bomb that starts off white but changes to yellow in the middle. It's very very cool watching it change.


The downside is that when it's done it kinda looks like you're sitting in a bath tub full of pee! Albeit, glittery, sweet-smelling pee (like I imagine a unicorn would produce!), but.... yeah, pee!

He also got me the Big Blue, which I haven't tried yet but apparently it has seaweed in the middle, so I'm looking forward to that one. It smells really good.

 Something else I bought recently (at VegFest actually) was the Sweetie Pie shower jelly.  This stuff smells REALLY good but erm, it's weird.

It kinda has the texture of that green goo you used to get in a pot that made fart noises and slid down the wall when you chucked it! (Anyone else remember that?)

It's also kinda hard to use.  I struggled to get much lather with it.  So it smells nice, fun gimmick but not something I'd repurchase.

While I'm talking about Lush I thought I'd mentions some of their other products, that are staples in my beauty stash.

Godmother Soap
This smells like Snow Fairy (I'll get to that in a minute) but you can get it all year round - win!  I mainly use this to wash my beauty blender and for deep cleaning some of my more dense makeup brushes (like foundation brushes).

Vanillary Solid Perfume
I don't know if they still make it, but Lush used to sell a solid handcream that smelt gorgeous from afar but had this weird nasty herbal smell up close. Smelt a bit like wee! Blarr.  But this has the lovely vanillary (dur) smell of that handcream without the nasty herbal wee smell.  YAY.  Also, this lasts all day!

it's even got real vanilla seeds it... so cool!

Silky Underwear Dusting Powder
I think I've mentioned this before but I love this powder, it smells gorgeous and it's talc free. I use it as I would talc.

T for Toes
This stuff is magical. It really really does work. Sprinkle in your shoes and it stops sweaty smelly shoes later that day!!

Snow Fairy
This bottle's old, I stockpiled it a couple of years ago and technically I should've used it by now! But yeah, I used to buy 3 big bottles every year when it was released and make it last as long as possible, as you can only buy it between October and December. Then I discovered Soap & Glory's Sugar Crush shower gel and this kind of got put in a cupboard and forgotten about. Til a few weeks ago when I discovered it (my S&G one ran out). Oh man I love it, it smells AMAZING! I have probably enough as well to last me til they re-release it again. YAY.

I wanted to also mention the latest Charity Pot body lotion/cream, but I couldn't find it to take a pic.  I liked the old version but picked up one of the £1 samples when they changed the recipe/scent. I really loved it so I asked for one for Christmas; they do two sizes as well which is great because last time I got the larger jar and it went off before I could finish it. It smells like Turkish Delight and I love it.


Lastly ... does anyone else find they end up with something like this: a bag of half used bath bombs / soaps / bubble bars? heheh

What's your favourite Lush product? I need ideas of what to try next! ;o)

Love & Stuff
Sal xXx

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON LOVE-LIPSTICK.BLOGSPOT.COM

Monday, 20 April 2015

Revolution Lip Lava Liquid Lipsticks

Last week I talked about the Revolution Radiant Lights Palette. This week I wanna talk to you about the Lip Lava liquid lipsticks (AV).  I think these are supposed to be a dupe for the Too Faced ones, but those are hella pricey so I don't have any of those yet to compare.  

I love these though.  

There are 5 shades available at £2.99 each, or if you buy all 5 together, you get all 5 for £11.96, so one free! Win.  Obviously I bought them all.

They are very pigmented and easy to apply with the applicator and they are great for mixing.  Some of them went onto my hand a bit chunky but I haven't found that when applying to the lips.
  


Here's a pic of the applicator, a kind of doe-foot applicator but the product is dispensed through the centre rather than it being a wand.

As such...

Hand swatch: these swatches are mostly a bit more true to life than the lip swatches, which got a bit more washed out.  They look super opaque, right? They are.  And you can see below how much I used to get each lipswatch.

Shades L-R: Unleash, Firestorm, Forgiven, Tremor, Shockwave

Bit of a crap blurry pic but just to demonstrate how much I used for each lip swatch, a diddy amount!

Lip Swatches

Unleash
This shade I was nervous of when I swatched it on my hand as it's quite orange, but it's a gorgeous peachy coral. It's bright though so not one for the timid. I love it.

Firestorm
Gorgeous, blue-based red. Crap rushed application, sorry. I love this colour, it's gorgeous. It needs a bit more work and is not as opaque as the other shades but it's worth it.

Forgiven
OK I totally expected to hate this one; it's really brown! I don't like brown lipsticks (flashback of terrible teenage makeup blunders in the mid-late 90s!) but I actually like this on. It's a lovely browny nude and I have surprised myself by wearing it and liking it!

Tremor
This is my favourite; not because the colour is anything mind-blowing, it's just a nice pink, rather because it's the most wearable. Also, it's brilliant for mixing with any of the other shades to tone them down. 


Shockwave
This is the crappest lip swatch (think the light was fading at this point), it's much more vibrant and true to the hand-swatch than this. If you love purple and are not afraid to rock it, go for this one. 

The first thing I thought of when I swatched this colour was OCC's Hoochie Lip Tar. So I swatched them together for ya! Shockwave is more pinky than Hoochie so if Hoochie is a bit too grey/blue for you, then this might be a good alternative. They are quite similar in texture too.

Left OCC's Hoochie, Right Revolution's Shockwave

That's all for today. Have a fab week all!

Love & Stuff
Sal xXx

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON LOVE-LIPSTICK.BLOGSPOT.COM

Wednesday, 15 April 2015

SEVENTEEN: Cheek Stamp Blush

I bought this cute little Cheek Stamp a while ago from SEVENTEEN (CV); it's a big gimmicky and the applicator stamp is a bit pants but it does go on with it (although you'll need to blend it out afterwards) and it's actually a pretty nice, very subtle blush.

I got the colour Blushin' which is a very pale baby pink with a bit of shimmer  This just shows up on my pale skin as a nice flush of pink but deeper skin tones might want to go for one of the darker ones. 

(*SEVENTEEN confirmed to me by email that this product is vegan.)

Outer packaging

Inner packaging


Applicator with some product on

the product itself

I wasn't going to post the swatch because to be honest you can't see the product that well, if at all! I swear it shows up on the cheek, although as I said it's very subtle.

I wouldn't class this as a fail product at all, although it's nothing spectacular. But it's a good shade for days when I'm doing either minimal makeup, or when I don't want much on the cheeks.

There's a few different shades of this available and I will probably pick up a couple more next time I'm in town because Boots are running a 3 for 2 right now! :)

Happy humpday all.

Love & Stuff
Sal xXx

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON LOVE-LIPSTICK.BLOGSPOT.COM

Monday, 13 April 2015

Revolution Radiance: Radiant Lights Palette

I swear I'm not employed by Revolution, but I did an order a while back and I love a lot of things I got from them and felt like I didn't want to lump them all into one post. So you're going to see a few Revolution posts over the next couple of weeks.

Here's one of their products that I bought recently; the Radiant Lights Palette (AV).

I bought the single of Breathe (the shade on the far left) thinking it was the lightest shade (it's hard to tell from the pics on the website) but it's not. It's a touch too dark to be a highlighter for me, but I absolutely love it as a glowy bronzer to warm up my super pale skin. It looks really lovely. Since I love that one such much I decided to buy the full palette.

Packaging

Inside - prettttyyyy!
Shades, L-R: Breathe, Exhale & Glow

Daylight swatches, these do not begin to show the beautiful glowiness, so....

I took some artificial light pics too, which shows this a bit better.

This palette gets a big thumbs up from me.  Breathe is the one I use most days, but I love Exhale too - it's the perfect highlighter for pale gals like me; I use it as a cheekbone highlight but also on the inner corner of the eyes. Glow is a beautiful gold which I have used as eyeshadow but also, it looks gorgeous alone or over bronzer too. Breathe & Glow would be great highlighters on deeper skintones too.

Hope you all have a great week.

Love & Stuff
Sal xXx

THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY POSTED ON LOVE-LIPSTICK.BLOGSPOT.COM