Guess Where I'm Going...

 

NEW YORK!

Bit of a last minute idea, but I'm super, super excited. I booked this last week at some point, but I'm only sharing it now so sorry! I spoke to one of my friends about it to see if she was on board and now we're both going together. Found a pretty cheap flight from Belfast for only £342 to go for 4 days so I had to snap it up! However, this isn't the best part because when we're going it's....

THANKSGIVING!

Yes, we got a flight that cheap on Thanksgiving day itself, which I find absolutely crazy as the prices are supposed to be so expensive at that time of year!

I spent last Thanksgiving with family in San Diego which was lovely, and I'd been wanting to go back all year, but this is just as good, if not better for me! I've never been to New York, and if you've been following me for a while you'll know already it's on my places to visit list. Although are flight doesn't land until around 2pm and we're missing the Macy's Day Parade we're both super excited to get Thanksgiving dinner and just be there to enjoy it all, and also for the ultimate sale shopping day of the year, Black Friday! Shopping galore.

We're both America obsessed so this is an ultimate holiday for us, especially going at that time of the year as a lot of the holiday decorations will be up, and we're both also obsessed with Christmas, so we may end up in hospital from being over excited.

So to all my USA followers out there, what kind of bargains have you had on Black Friday? Is it really worth all the madness?



MAC - Neo Nebula Mineralize Eye Shadow

I bought this eyeshadow a few weeks ago and have been meaning to blog about it for ages. I had been looking at the new mineralize eye shadows from MAC for a while so I decided to finally purchase one.

There's three different colours swirled into this one. The first one is a nice pale shimmery colour that's great for the inner corner. Next is a dusty pink, although looks darker in the pot. Finally, there's a darker plum colour, perfect for this season.

When I went to the counter I had a look around, with a few shadows already in mind. I decided however, to ask the woman who worked there which one she thought would work  best with my eye colour. My eyes are green, sometimes with a bit of blue in them, and once even a hazel colour. They like to change! She picked out Neo Nebula for me, which I was very happy with as this had been one of the ones I had been eyeing.

The photograph shown above is from my very first time using it, when I just swirled all the colours together into one. It came out this lovely dusty pink colour. I've used it pretty much everyday since (sorry Naked palette!) and now I use each colour individually as I love that it's three colours in one.

This is a lovely eyeshadow for everyday use, and that's what I love about it. When I asked at the counter I said I wanted it to wear everyday, and that's exactly what it's been used for. It's not too bright, and has a nice shimmer to it.

Has anyone used any of the other mineralize eye shadows from MAC that they would like to recommend? They're my favourites!

Lush - Fair Trade Honey Shampoo Review

As promised, here's a review of the Fair Trade Honey Shampoo that I purchased at the launch night of the new range. If you want to know how that went you can check it out here.

So if you read my post on this you'll know that when I bought this I didn't exactly have the highest of expectations on what it would be like, and I bought it because the honey as an ingredient appealed to me. However, I was actually pleasantly surprised and since I bought this I haven't used any of my shampoo bars!

Very easy to use, but I'll explain anyway. Just put a small amount in your hand (you really don't need that much), massage through your hair, and then rinse.

When I explain the scent a lot of you are probably going to think I'm crazy, as I'm starting to believe that I'm the only one that can smell all these different scents. Firstly, I can smell honey, of course. Then when I sniffed more I could start to smell Turkish Delight, actual Turkish Delight, not the one that's covered in chocolate. Finally, I think it smells like cold tea! This was from using it and massaging through my hair, not from just smelling the bottle. As insane as these three scents sound together, I actually like the scent it leaves on my hair! I'm also going to accept the fact that I'm probably just crazy and no one else is going to notice any of these things...

As with a few other Lush hair products I've tried, I wasn't really convinced that this was anything fantastic when I washed my hair with it. However, once I dried my hair it felt amazing. My hair was so soft and smooth, and I'd actually describe it as feeling like silk. I have quite dry hair from having my hair dyed and highlighted so many times over the years, so it's not in the best condition. This however, made my hair feel amazing from the first use, and after using it a good few times now, I can definitely tell that it's really helping the condition of my hair.

Pros :

• Leaves a lovely perfumed scent in hair with honey without being overpowering.
• Great for those with dry, coloured hair.
• Leaves hair feeling silky smooth.
• All bottles can be returned to Lush to be recycled.

Cons :

• I really want to say nothing, because honestly I adore this shampoo, but I can see the price being too much for some people as it is £7.00 for a 110g bottle, compared to the £5.25 shampoo bars.

Overall, I can't recommend this shampoo enough. I can see my shampoo bars being set aside for a good while now because I love this product so much, and if you've followed my blog for a while, you'll know how much I love my shampoo bars! Trust me on this, you should definitely check this shampoo out if you get a chance.

Have you tried this Lush product? If yes, what did you think of it? Am I the only one being crazy with the scents?!

Lush - Celestial Moisturiser Review

Recently I tried the Celestial moisturiser from Lush, and I have to say, I'm in love. This is such a good moisturiser and I highly recommend you try this product. I've only used this for first time last night, and it's been such a winner with me that I wanted to write the review right away!

I've always loved my Full of Grace moisturiser (which I've been promising a review on for ages and is coming up, sorry!) so I was quite settled and thought I'd no need for anything else. This is now being replaced by Celestial.

It's so light and easy to apply, and I really only needed the smallest amount to cover my whole face. I couldn't really smell anything from the pot, but once I put it on my face I could smell the lovely vanilla scent it contains. At first, I couldn't quite put my finger on what the scent was, but when I asked my sister she said it smells like vanilla extract, and this is exactly what it reminds me of. It just reminds me of when I'm baking and I put in the small amount of extract into the mixture. This is not an overpowering scent however, so don't worry if you don't like vanilla.

After putting it on my face, it sinks in straight away, and leaves me with a lovely silky smooth face. As bad as it is, I couldn't stop stroking my face just to feel how soft it was. I definitely think this would be a great base for applying foundation as it just evened out my skin and made it so smooth that I know it would be great.

Pros :

• Gorgeous vanilla scent, but not overpowering.
• Leaves face feeling silky smooth.
• Excellent base for applying makeup.
• Great for those with sensitive skin, which I have (extremely).

Cons :

• Surprise, surprise, none!

Overall, a great moisturiser. I have so many problems finding a good one which isn't too heavy, causing me to break out, but is actually moisturising. I know already that this is perfect for me and I won't have any problems. Highly recommend that you check this out next time you're in store, or you can have a look online by clicking here.

If you've tried this product already, what did you think of it? If not, is there any other moisturisers you would recommend me to try?

Tomorrow, fingers crossed, I should have a review on their new Fairtrade Honey Shampoo for anyone interested!

Lush - Big Solid Conditioner Review

As you may remember, I recently attended the launch of Lush's new haircare range, and I got a few samples to take home with me to try. I went on the Friday night and received a sample of their new Big solid conditioner bar. I tried it once at the weekend and loved it so much that I bought it on the Tuesday.

As a lot of you may not have used one of their solid conditioner bars, I should explain first how to use them. This may not be how everyone uses them, but this is what I do. With this bar I have found it easier to break off a small piece, then rub it between my hands until it melts, and also press it down with my fingers into my palm so that it turns into more of a paste. Then I run it through the ends of my hair, and then the excess through the rest. For me, a piece the size of the finger nail on my thumb is about enough, just to give you a rough idea! It depends really on how much you want to use, I'd say some days when I feel like my hair needs a bit more I'll use extra. I've also heard that it's good to break a piece of and put it in a small bowl of hot water and let it melt into a liquid. I haven't tried this but feel free to see which works best for you!

I really love this bar as I find it is a lot different to the Jungle solid conditioner bar which I normally use. When you first lift the bar it starts to melt into your hands straight away, which reminds me a lot of one of their body butters. This makes it a lot easier to use with your hair. Scent wise, to me I smell a mixture of vanilla and coconut, and it's not too strong which is nice. Although my sister says she can smell it on my hair when I use it, whereas I can't really notice it! I never really believe products which say they'll give me more volume, as I've tried a few non Lush products and they've done nothing. However, when I used this and dried my hair, I could already see a slight lift in my hair, and I have very fine, flat hair. I haven't used it before, but I think this paired with the Big Shampoo would give lots of volume for those who love that in their hair products. The shampoo is definitely on my 'to buy' list now!

Pros :

• Lovely creamy texture. A lot easier to massage into hair than the Jungle solid conditioner bar.
• Fresh scent, not too overpowering.
• Environmentally friendly. No packaging, which I love about the Lush products!
• Gives added volume

Cons :

• Zero!

Overall, I love this conditioner bar. At £9.00 for those who live in the UK, some might find it a bit pricey, but I think it's worth it. Although I'm used to paying only £2.95 for the Jungle solid conditioner bar, this is almost twice the size (if you buy 100g), so you're getting more for only a little bit less, and it'll last longer depending on how much you use. From my sample pot alone which is very tiny, I got 5 uses because I feel I only need a small amount. If you'd like to check it out, click here to have a look online.

Have you used this conditioner before? If so, what were your thoughts?

Update!

Hi everyone, just a quick little post to say that I've been really busy with work at the minute and that's why you haven't seen me! I don't even know how many days it's been, and I'd say it hasn't even been a week, but I'm used to coming on everyday and posting comments and putting up posts so it feels like months to me! I'm off tomorrow so I'll try and get some posts prepared for the rest of the week, I have a few Lush reviews for you all! Hope you're all having a great day.

OOTD - Shopping Trip

Just a little post on the go of an outfit of the day. On the bus into town to meet my friend so I thought I'd share what I wore today!

Jumper - Wildfox Couture
Jeans - River Island
Pumps - Office
Bag - Guess
Ring - Stray Jewellery, Belfast

Hope you're all having a great day!

FAIRYDROPS - Scandal Queen Mascara Review

I've been promising this review for a while, so it's finally here! This has been my favourite mascara this year. I got the trial size from the LashStash collection from Sephora at Christmas time and haven't wanted another mascara since. As we don't have a Sephora in my country, I had to buy this last time I was away, so unfortunately, this isn't available to my UK readers! (unless you try eBay)

The colour of my mascara is 'Deep Glossy Black'. As far as I'm aware, there isn't another colour available, but this isn't a problem for me as I only wear black mascara, and I love one that's really dark.

I love the brush on this. The wand itself is really long which I love as I have a habit of getting mascara on my face when it's a really short. The brush itself is curved with three little bumps in it, which is great for making sure you catch every lash and get the inner corner of your eye.

This is a photograph of my eyelashes with absolutely nothing on them. I naturally have very, very short, straight eyelashes which are very light. As you can see, it actually looks like I have no bottom eyelashes they're that light. Please ignore my eyebrows in all of these photos!

This is my eyes with just one coat of mascara on. As you can see, my eyelashes look so much longer, and you can actually see the ones on the bottom! This may not look that long to some people, but if you compare it the photograph above, they're much longer!

The mascara has really good staying power and stays on all day until I'm ready to take it off at night. The mascara is also water and sweat resistant, which is what I look for in a mascara. My eyes constantly water all the time as soon as I go outside so my mascara just runs off, and they don't budge with this.

At $24, it's quite a pricey mascara, but it's one of those products where I'm willing to pay extra for if it's good. To anyone with eyelashes similar to mine, I highly recommend this.

You can look at the FAIRYDROPS mascara on Sephora here.

If you have any questions on anything I haven't covered above, please comment below and let me know!

Lush - New Haircare Range Launch Night

I got a little invite in my inbox this week to the VIP launch night of Lush's new haircare range. Having already heard all about it as I spend too much time on their website, I was very interested to see what they'd be like in person.

Honestly, from looking at them online I wasn't sure if I really wanted to buy anything from this range as it sounded like they were focused mainly around perfumed scents, which isn't really top of my priorities in haircare. Don't get me wrong, I love for them to smell nice, I would just rather they made my hair super clean the most.

Roots was designed for people with thin, fine hair and promises to revitalise and bring some life back to your hair. This is something I could see myself buying as I have quite fine hair that could do with some lift.

Fair Trade Honey  is a gorgeous, honey scented shampoo. The texture and appearance looks exactly like it's name, and although I've never used any hair products with honey in them before, I can imagine this to work really well.

Sea Spray is a hair mist that adds texture to your hair, and helps to add definition to hair with a natural wave. It would be a very good product to add to your collection if you like to scrunch your hair. As said before, I have very fine hair, so I'm not sure how well it would work with mine, but I really want to try it anyway and see if it works!

Blousey is a banana scented shampoo, and even if you don't like banana (which I don't) it actually smells so good! It promises to help restore coloured, damaged hair. This again, is something I could definitely use!

The final product that I took a little snap of was Big, and this was the first product I looked at upon entering the store. It is the solid conditioner for the very popular Big shampoo. I've never used the shampoo, so I can't comment on this, but I love the look of the conditioner bar and the girl who worked there was very kind and gave me a little sample to try, so I'm very excited to see how it works out.

I ended up buying the Fair Trade Honey shampoo, even though I really don't need anymore shampoo. I know I said above that I wasn't really attracted to hair products that were all about scent, but this just looks so good that I can't wait to try it. I'll probably have a review after about a week of trying it so I'll let you all know how I got on.

At the end of the night we all got a little goodie bag with some samples of their new products to try so I can't wait to see how they all work for me so I can go and buy the full sized products.

I definitely recommend going into your local Lush store to try out some of these new products, or if you don't have one close by, you can shop online. You can look at all their new products if you click right here!

Essie Fun In The Gondola & Barry M Pink Silver Glitter Polish

I'm off work for a few days which means, I can finally paint my nails!

I decided to use Essie 'Fun in the Gondola' and Barry M 'Pink Silver Glitter' nail polishes together and do a little alternative french manicure. This Essie nail polish is my new absolute favourite nail polish. It's a really gorgeous rosey pink colour, and as mentioned in my August Favourites post which you can read here, I think it's very very similar to MAC's Creme Cup.

Firstly I applied some of my Sally Hansen Advanced Hard as Nails as a sort of base coat, and also because my nails are in terrible condition and I'm trying to help them! Once this was dry, I applied my Essie nail polish and left it to dry.

For the tip I applied my Barry M nail polish which is such a gorgeous colour, and reminds me of the OPI nail polish, Sugar Daddy, which I've used in a few other nail posts. I just kept my hand steady and applied it freely, but if you don't have a steady hand, I'm sure you could use some nail tips as a guide.

It's not very season appropriate since it's coming into Fall/Autumn, but I love these colours and really wanted to get some use out of them.

September Wishlist

September Wishlist by melissajones13 featuring skinny leg jeans

Heart dress
£55 - topshop.com

Short coat
£75 - topshop.com

Skinny leg jeans
£38 - topshop.com

Black shoes
£68 - office.co.uk

Juicy Couture pyramid jewelry
£30 - juicycouture.com

Office Euro bow black pu silver studs
£32 - office.co.uk

August Favourites

Hi everyone! Finally, it's time for my August favourites. I wanted to upload this at the weekend but I didn't have time to take the photographs and then upload them. I still don't really tonight as I should be in bed since I'm up at 5am for work, but I didn't want to leave this too long!

Firstly we'll start with my make up favourites. There's been a few things I've been really loving this month.

I would say my top favourite has been my MAC Pro Longwear Concealer (I wear NC15), paired with my Real Techniques Stippling Brush. This has been my favourite face product in such a long time. It does an amazing job with coverage, and I love the finish the brush leaves. I have a review on the brush itself if you click here. Does anyone want one on the Pro Longwear Concealer? Whether you do or not, I'd highly, highly recommend this!

Lip-wise, I decided to choose just one and I've decided to go with my Revlon Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stain in Lovesick. I got this for my birthday and I love it. It feels like you're putting a marker on your lips, and it has very good staying power. It's also very, very similar to Passionate from the Lush Emotional Brilliance line, but half the price.

My choice of nail polish this month has been from Essie and it's called 'Fun in the Gondola'. I got it in a set of 3 from TKMaxx and I choose the set because of this colour alone. It really doesn't look that pretty in the photograph, but it's a gorgeous pale rose colour. I'm going to post a review of it this week so you can see better photographs, but it looks almost exactly the same colour as the MAC lipstick Creme Cup (the actual lipstick, not when it's on your lips). I didn't even notice this until I was taking photographs of the lipstick to upload a review on and I was wearing the polish.

I've been using Aveeno moisturiser this month and I'd read good things about it. I have pretty dry skin so I need to use a moisturiser on my face at night. If you decide to use this, you only need the tiniest amount or else your face will end up too greasy. It can also be used anywhere else, not just your face!

Another birthday present I got was Angel by Thierry Mugler. I had been wanting this for such a long time, but as it's so expensive I never actually bought it. I was absolutely delighted to receive it from my nanny in a refillable bottle with a lotion and shower gel with it. I used to spray myself with this every single time I went into Debenhams and now I don't have to (but I probably still will anyway!).

Some random favourites now, and again, more birthday presents! I had both of these on my Amazon wish lists so I was so happy to get them. I haven't finished the book yet, but White Girl Problems by Babe Walker is absolutely hilarious so far. I've laughed out loud a few times whilst reading it. If you don't know what it is, it's based on the life of Babe Walker, a rich, spoilt, white girl who lives in LA and believes her life is full of problems. It all started on her twitter page, which I'll link here.

I also got the complete collection so far of The Big Bang Theory. I started watching this on the plane in June and got a bit hooked, so I'm happy that one of my friends bought them all for me, and so excited to start watching it!

I can't even believe it's September already! Not long until Christmas now! My favourite time of year. These are my favourites for the month, and I know it won't be long until I'm doing my September favourites. Is there anything you think I should try? Or is there anything you want to know more about?