Nair Brazilian Spa Clay Shower Power Cream Review

Posted on December 29, 2013 by Catherine Balavage

I hate waxing. I just don’t understand it. Why go through the pain? You have to grow out the hair before you can wax it, and your skin ends up looking like a plucked chicken.

Which is why I love cream hair remover. It is so easy to use and leaves your skin super smooth. so I was excited to review Nair Brazilian Spa Clay Shower Power Cream. I had never tried it before and had high expectations. It says on the packaging that it gives you smooth legs for up to seven days and only take five minutes to remove all visible hair. Big promises.

You apply the cream with the spatula provided in a thick, even, layer and then get into the shower and leave it on for three minutes, avoiding excessive exposure to water and then rinse off. After you have rinsed, your skin is incredibly soft and moisturised with no hairs. I am very impressed.

The cream is gentle and kind to skin. It has a natural blend of key ingredients: mineral rich clay, mango butter and acai palm. I use it on my legs and bikini line. My skin looks amazing afterwards and it lasts for the promised week.

This cream is one of my favourite products of 2013. It is easy-to-use and it works. Which is what every women wants in a beauty product: convenience, reasonable price and a great product. This is the best way to remove unwanted hair. A must buy.

Nair Brazilian Spa Clay Shower Power Cream is available from Boots.com

Managing MIL: You And Your Mother-in-Law – For Better, Or For Worse? Book Review

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Catherine Balavage

This book starts off with a joke: “My mother-in-law fell down a wishing well. I was amazed; I never knew they worked.” Les Dawson, this joke highlights that, traditionally, it is men that have problems with their mother-in-law. However there has been a rise in women clashing with theirs, and a number of my friends like to have a moan about their husbands mother. Marriage is hard, but even harder when there are three people in it.

Some of the real-life stories in this book are horrendous and shocking, and a few are nice. In fact the real-life stories are what I like most about the book. Learning about other peoples experience always make you feel less alone and helps to get through a rough spot. The best way to learn is from other people.

The book has rules and even suggests you start your own DIL (daughter-in-law) Club to unlock the secrets of a good mother-in-law/daughter-in-law relationship. Where you get a group of like-minded women together and all vent anger, or share experiences: good and bad.

This is a good book. A lot of the advice is common sense: be polite, decorum goes a long way, see things her way. The book is also intelligent enough to see things from the mother-in-laws view; sometimes she cannot do anything right. All in all I thought the book was great. There is also top advice from leading relationship experts.

The top tips for managing your mother-in-law are good and this is a helpful book. It takes the view of both the daughter-in-law and the mother-in-law to make it fair. Full of good advice and highly recommended.

Managing MIL: You and your Mother-in-Law – for better, or for worse? will be released by Peridot Press. You can buy it in e-book form or as a proper book.

Does your mother-in-law drive you to distraction? Are you a desperate daughter-in-law? Who is to blame? It’s hard to know when you’re stuck on the inside.

Journalist Katy Rink looks at the best and worst of this frequently tricky relationship and provides smart advice for keeping your cool, your sanity and your family intact.

How do you survive a weekend with the in-laws? Should you ever go on holiday together? How do you manage a new baby and MIL? What are the dangers of accepting that friend request on Facebook? These are just some of the tricky topics tackled.

The author calls upon the experiences of fellow daughters-in-law in her home town – at secretive get-togethers that came to be known as DIL Club – to illustrate the highs and lows of dealing with his mother.

There are plenty of anecdotes to amuse and entertain, including the DILs who received engine oil, chin hair removal cream and paper knickers as Christmas presents from their MILs; the MIL who provided itemised receipts for ice creams and charged for petrol; and the MIL who greeted news of a pregnancy with “I can’t believe you haven’t had her sterilised yet”.

You can also try and recognise your MIL from a cast of hilarious caricatures including The Apologist, The Snob, The Manipulator and The Social Climber.

But amid the horror stories there are heart-warming tales of when (and how) it all goes right, and when peace breaks out.

Calm: Secrets To Serenity From The Cultures Of The World

Posted on December 24, 2013 by Catherine Balavage

In the run up to Christmas we got sent a lot of books about being calm. Rather aptly when you think of the stress and craziness of Christmas. Calm: Secrets To Serenity From The Cultures Of The World is a different type of book, it takes inspiration from cultures around the world to add to your life. A smart and great idea. The book has fifty calming cultural secrets as well as the methods for applying them at home. Each one brings a new idea to bring to your life. Unlike other books on being calm, this one is actually calming to read. You just have to relax and learn, then implement what you learn into your life.

The book is easy-to-read and fun. Each cultural calming secret comes with the secret, the tradition, the date to try it and the country it originated from.

For example, Reap What You Sow has the secret: Be self-reliant, the Tradition: gardening for self-sufficiency, Date: Any time, Originated in: Chartreuse Monastery, France. It then goes into detail.

Calm: Secrets To Serenity From The Cultures Of The World is a very good book, a great buy that is a step up from most of the self-help books out there: one with real, helpful advice and great cultural secrets: self help whilst learning about travel and culture? Enlightening and entertaining. I loved it.

Calm: Secrets To Serenity From The Cultures Of The World can be bought here.

Fattoria La Vialla Christmas Advent Calendar

Posted on December 23, 2013 by Catherine Balavage

It will be hard for any of the Christmas presents we get this year to top this wonderful advent calendar from Fattoria La Vialla. It is certainly the biggest advent calendar we have ever seen, and behind every window is a delicious product from the organic family-run Fattoria La Vialla. Organic wine, pasta, sauce, olives, biscotti…every day is so exciting you will feel like a child again. A book is included and we were also delighted to have a beautiful Christmas card.

A selection of some of the products in the advent calendar (below), does not include them all as we went day-by-day. All of the products are delicious and healthy, the salami was also amazing. Nothing like it tastes in supermarkets. You just cannot compare. In fact every product is of the highest quality. For a more detailed review of their food click here.

What do you think? Will you be buying a Fattoria La Vialla Advent Calendar for someone?

Cune Barrel Fermented 2012 Wine Review

Posted on December 22, 2013 by Catherine Balavage

We have been lucky enough to review a lot of wine and this Cune Barrel Fermented 2012 is one of our favourites. A fresh and balanced wine which doesn’t have the terrible acidity that lesser white wines tend to have. Although this is a young wine it still had the class and refinement of an older wine. A lot of effort has been put into this wine and you can tell.

A manual selection of grapes are picked at their optimum point of ripeness. Once in the winery, the grapes are cold macerated for 6-8 hours to creature more structure and flavour to finish the wine. The grapes are then lightly pressed and the juice transferred to new American oak casks for fermentation for between 15 to 20 days at cellar temperature, between 16 and 20 Celsius. The wine is tasted until it is at it’s optimum moment to rack and bottle.

100% Viura, the dry white wine has a toasty richness and is balanced by crisp, fresh, citrus characters. A soft, aromatic wine that goes beautifully with poultry dishes, smoked fish and makes a particularly good partner to paella.

This wine is now a favourite of mine and I will be buying it again. It is fresh, crisp, dry and has a wonderful citrus character. Great flavour.

RRP £9.49, Waitrose, Christopher Piper Wines, Eynsham Cellars, Luvians

OCÓO The Beauty Drink Review

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Catherine Balavage

I had heard about the new beauty drink, OCÓO, before we were asked to review it, and it really caught my attention. Being your best self usually requires time, effort, and money. So something you can just drink which makes you more beautiful? I’ll take it.

Now the review. The packaging is beautiful as I would expect, the colour looks like cola and the smell is not awful like a lot of drinks. It tastes nice too.

I did feel healthy after I drank it as it is fulll of vitamins, however, just being sent one bottle to review means I cannot know whether or not the drink has a real impact on my ‘beauty’.

OCÓO Left a good impression on me. I think it could be a quick and easy way to get the nutrients you need. It is certainly a good idea.

OCÓO The Beauty Drink is based on scientific proof that beauty care is more effective from inside the body, rather than from outside. Bringing together natural and beauty boosting ingredients, OCÓO contains 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vitamins and vital substances to boost the appearance and health of skin, hair and nails.

The goodness inside

A renowned team of leading dieticians and dermatologists played a key role in OCÓO’s three-year development. OCÓO’s active ingredient complex contains anti-oxidative power from vitamin-rich Power Berries (pomegranate, açaí, aronia, blackcurrants, red grapes and cranberries), extracts of green and white tea, ten essential vitamins and traces of zinc, selenium, copper, iodine, essential B-vitamins (B1, B2, B3, B6, B12) and vitamins C & E.

· Pomegranate: Powerful antioxidant and supports the immune system

· Acai Berry: Contains omega fatty acids and anthocyanin to help boost healthy collagen

· Aronia Berry: Contains the highest oxygen-radical absorbance capacity value of all the ‘super food’ berries

· Red Grapes: Harness anti-oxidative potential that is 20 to 50 times higher than Vitamin C or E

Why it works

With its active ingredient complex, OCÓO works from the inside out. Synergetic effects make the ingredients work even better together than if they were to stand alone. Because the ingredients come as a delicious fruit juice – as opposed to tablets – they reach the body in the form of a solution, which enables greater absorption. Unlike traditional beauty products, such as creams and lotions that do not penetrate deep into the skin, OCÓO supplies even the deepest layers of the skin with important nutrients, precisely where these vital nutrients are needed!

Key beauty benefits*

· Anti-Aging: Zinc and Selenium contribute to the protection of cells from oxidative, environmental damage.

· Skin Care: Niacin, Biotin and Iodine contribute to the maintenance of normal skin.

· Collagen Formation: Vitamin C contributes to increased collagen production in the skin improving function and increasing skin’s elasticity and firmness.

· Hair: Copper contributes to normal hair pigmentation; while Biotin contributes to the maintenance of normal hair.

* Permitted Health Claims, see EU Commission Regulation (EU) No 432/2012 of 16 May 2012, published in UR-Lex Journal, Volume 55 (2012). www.ec.europa.eu

OCÓO is available from Harvey Nichols and Amazon

Color Wow Review: Root Cover Up, Brass Banned Mousse & Raise The Root Thicken + Lift Spray

Posted on December 17, 2013 by Catherine Balavage

First of all I want to point out that I don’t dye my hair. Luckily I have testers who do and you can still use Color Wow’s products on hair that is not dyed.

We have a review special of Color Wow. A hair brand that kept catching our eye. Their packaging is simplistic but sophisticated and they are the people who make the ingenious Root Cover Up which is basically eye-shadow for your hair which covers up your roots. Color Wow is the latest innovation from Gail Federici, co-founder of John Frieda’s hair care company.

We tried their Root Cover Up For Blonde & Brunette Hair and both testers absolutely loved it, it really works; saving money and time.

The Brass Banned Correct & Perfect Mousse For Blonde Hair & For Dark Hair stops your hair looking brassy, you cannot feel it in your hair after you use it and it really holds your style. It will fast become a favourite, it makes your colour ‘wow’.

Their Raise The Root Thicken + Lift Spray is another favourite as it has UV protection in it. Perfect for people who dye their hair as it stops the sun fading the colour but also great for people who don’t too as the hair and scalp is an often overlooked area when it comes to sun protection. The spray holds the style while being flexible, creating a lift all day. Another great product.

We highly recommend Color Wow. Available at feelunique.com and QVC

[Note, being British we spell ‘colour’ as ‘colour’, the American spelling is ‘color’. The brand is American and we have kept their spelling]

Beyoncé and Chanel Iman in Hervé Léger by Max Azria

Posted on December 16, 2013 by Catherine Balavage

Last week, Beyoncé stunned the world by unexpectedly releasing a self-titled album with 14 new songs and 17 new music videos. In her video titled “Yoncé”- Beyoncé enlisted help from super model friends- Chanel Iman, Jourdan Dunn and Joan Smalls.

Who: Beyoncé

What: Hervé Léger by Max Azria One-Piece Swimsuit (HUV9B480-Peach Blush)

Who: Chanel Iman

What: Hervé Léger by Max Azria Skyler One-Piece Swimsuit (HUV9C391-Grey)

Where: Beyoncé’s “Yoncé” Music Video

Released: Thursday, December 12, 2013

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Author Archives: Catherine Balavage