Now, my title is slightly deceiving. I actually bought the products I want to show you today from the 99p store. So I saved a WHOLE 2p by not going to Poundland. Amazing.

I am blessed to live in a town with plenty of 99p/Poundland/£ or 2 Plus type shops. these can be beauty product goldmines. All sorts of end of line stock ends up there, along with deadstock from places like Boots (their Botanics range in particular), or such like. I'm a big fan of pound shops, and I always end up picking up lots of things in them, beauty products or otherwise.

One day my work buddies tasked me with going out in search of biscuits. It was a 'we NEED biscuits' sort of day. So I trotted off to the 99p store in search of Maryland cookies. I got them. But I also got these:


I'd like to point out first I didn't buy my beauty products with work petty cash or anything like that! No sir!

On the left we have NYC liquid eyeliner in a plummy-brown colour. I had been looking for a brown liquid liner because, thanks to MUA's incredible Heaven and Earth Palette, I've been wearing a lot of brown shades on my eyes. The NYC one has a thin paintbrush style applicator, which is my preferred applicator for eyeliner (the felt tip pen types just don't work for me). Its not the best quality eyeliner in the world and by the end of the day, it tends to have flaked off, but it lasts enough for me to wear it to work, or put it on before going out and have it last, and its a lovely colour. For 99p, I ain't complaining!

On the right we have Wet n Wild double action mascara. I really love Wet n Wild products. It was reading in a teen magazine that Rachel Bilson from the OC loved their eyeliner that led me to buy one and start drawing my first mini-Amy Winehouse-esque flicks around my eyes. Ahhh, all those years ago. Wet n Wild is harder and harder to find in the UK, which is a shame. It was always very well priced and decent enough quality, especially as a first foray into makeup. The double action mascara is what we have been long used to. The white end is a primer, the black end is the mascara. I'm blessed with lashes that look super long no matter what I put on them, and this works really nicely for me. It lasts the distance as well, staying put all day.

I will regularly tour my local Pound Shops in search of great buys. If I have any luck, I will blog about them here!

Going to TK Maxx is always an adventure for me (or a total chore for my poor other half, who seriously regrets inviting me to go with him the other weekend!). There's always something in there I get squeaky and squeal-ey about.

This wasn't the only thing I bought in TK Maxx on this particular trip but it was the most notable at the moment. I had never heard of Korres until the Beauty Boxes hit the internet and the blogging world went crazy. Thanks to the 'Farewell to Boudoir Prive' box and one of the Carmine boxes I have sampled the wild rose 24hr face cream and the citrus body milk, the latter being one of my favourite products ever and I'm hoping someone notices its on my Amazon wishlist, what with my birthday coming up and all :) I was looking for an opportunity to sample some more Korres products. Imagine my delight when I discovered this in TK Maxx:


£5.99 instead of £12.50 was enough of a discount that I could consider purchasing it to try it. It doesn't smell quite how I imagined something with Thyme and Sage would smell, it almost smells like fresh raspberries to me (although I might have fatigue-induced craziness going on...) I must confess I have rather a lot of skincare products to try out but hey, what's one more?! I might even shove this one to the front of the queue so I can use it along with the 24hr cream before I use my samples of it up! I was that excited to be picking up a Korres product I didn't even notice that it is specifically for oily skin with imperfections, which is exactly the sort of skin I have. Ahhh TK Maxx, you have done me proud.

Hopefully I shall be back in a few week's time with my verdict!

I love crafting in all different guises. As I said the other week, it has taken a bit of a back seat in my life over the last 6 months or so, due to work being so very hectic. So these are a few bits I did a very long time ago that I've never blogged about.

I never did post a picture of the final pair of curtains I made for this house, which I've lived in for over a year now. They shouldn't be the final pair, I have £65 worth of fabric to make some for the front room, but the curtain pole in there is flimsy and would fall down under the weight of a decent pair of lined curtains. We bought a heavyweight curtain track to put up, but the wall above the window is, scarily enough, hollow. How did we find this out? We drilled holes into it. Gah. We're too scared to replace the pole with another pole, or add a centre bracket for stability, because its drilled into the UPVC window frame and the plastic might crack. Its all a bit devastating really, the front room would look miles better with decent, lined curtains.

Anyway. The curtains I never blogged about are the ones in our second bedroom, which is actually a home office cum dressing room! These curtains are my favourites by a mile. They were done in no time at all, they have less flaws in them, and despite not being my first fabric choice are really nice and really made that room look ten times better (when we moved in there wasn't even a curtain pole up...but it's a bedroom?! Huh?!



Not the best picture, I always seem to take them in poor light. The fabric is from Ikea and was about £6 a metre. It wasn't my first choice of fabric but was better quality than the fabric I had wanted and actually, I really like it, it fits in very well!

I overdid the amount of fabric I needed so I had rather a lot left over. So I made doorstops for the dining room and the second bedroom. We have a bookcase behind the door between the dining room and the kitchen and everytime the door knocked it, it wobbled. I had visions of our bookcase toppling over and everything being destroyed, so a doorstop was essential here. The door into the second bedroom had a tendancy to hit my OH's desk, so I decided a doorstop would be good in there to prevent his desk and monitor getting battered all the time. I used the same trusty book as I used for the dog print cushions. I struggled with how to weight them down. I didn't really want to use rice and whilst I was happy to use sand, getting sand was proving hard as I don't drive and its hard to buy in small quantities. Then I went to Ikea and found bags of sand used for...I don't even know actually. Putting in vases to look cool? Anyway. It was an ideal weight, came in a thick strong bag, was a perfect size and was cheap to boot. Hooray!
This was everything cut out and ready to go, along with an essential cup of coffee which is always necessary for me when undertaking any task!


And this was how they ended up!



There was a bit of a gap in them being started and finished as I ran out of wadding and had to buy more! Obviously, the fabric of these co-ordinates with the curtains. Pretty simple to make, I'd definitely make them again if I had a need to!

Next on my list, which in fairness has been on my to-do list for the year we've lived here, is to make a draught excluded for the living room door. We have a teeny tiny vestibule so that the front door doesn't open directly into our living room, but the front door is old and gappy and despite there being a step up into our front room it does get draughty. I have the fabric, I have what I'm going to stuff it with. I just haven't made it yet. Whoopsies.

Now, before you all start sending hate mail to the fantastic Latest in Beauty, I have to point out that really, its all me being bad!

Latest in Beauty does my favourite beauty boxes, in all honesty. Unfortunately I missed out on the You magazine box and the Red Carpet box they did recently, but I loved their fragrance box and the Refresh and Recover box. I've also ordered luxury samples from them before. I love their prices, I love that you don't have to sign up to monthly payments and I love that you know exactly what's in the box before you buy it. Latest in Beauty don't even know I exist, so I'm not being paid to offer my opinion.

They e-mailed me the other day to tell me that, in time for Mothers Day, they were offering people the chance to create their own beauty boxes with their luxury samples and if you ordered 5 or more products, you entered code MUM50 at the checkout for 50% off the total price. This would make a brilliant Mothers Day present. You can tell where this is going, can't you?



I'm my defence, my Mum is allergic to a lot of the major things in beauty products (including all parabens, but lots and lots of other things too), and I don't think beauty products would interest her at all. I would like to assure you all (and also my Mum if she is reading this) that I have bought her a MUCH nicer Mother's Day present that I think she will appreciate a lot more. I was about to write 'she'd have wanted me to take advantage of this offer', but then I realised I was taking this justification too far.

This is the first Latest in Beauty box where I've been sent proper box, previously I've received my goods in cardboard mailing boxes. I don't mind that at all though, to be honest. I chose 7 products :

Balance Me Daily Essentials Skincare Duo. I really like their lip balm and shower gels, I like how they're stuffed full of natural ingredients. Sorry about the terrible quality photo, I had to photograph this when I got home from work and there was ZERO light!

Louise Galvin Sacred Locks Intensive Treatment for Thick or Curly Hair. My hair is not especially thick and its definitely not curly, but it does get very dry from hair dye and straighteners. I'm excited to try this.

Batiste Dry Shampoo. This was the only non-luxury looking item I chose, but I really like Batiste dry shampoo and this size is brilliant for on the go. Dry shampoo helps me tame my fringe!

Neom Organic Body Wash. I've heard lots of good things about Neom and I am really excited to try this out. I hope to purchase one of their candles soon as well!

Richard Ward Overnight Hair & Scalp Therapy Masque. I am quite lazy in my beauty routine but the idea of slapping something on overnight is something I can do.

Cowshed Lavender Gentle Cleanser & Chamomile Toner. I've heard great things about Cowshed as well. These are great travel size products, and offer enough in them that I can get a good feel for whether they're the products for me.

This cost only slightly more than the average beauty box and I got to hand-select which products I wanted, allowing me to try brands that I wanted to try and select new items from brands I was already aware of. I really can't rave enough about Latest in Beauty, if nothing else, please go check them out!

You'll need to hurry if you want to take advantage of this offer, as its only on till the end of March 15th, which is tomorrow! I hope I manage to exercise some self-control and not order another...

For those of you who know me in real life, you'll know that work has been challenging in the last 6 months. There is little I can do to make things better, but baking cakes can't hurt!

For a recent team meeting I took in these cakes:


Please forgive the poor lighting, we get very little good natural light in the evenings at the moment!

This cupcake holder was a present from my wonderful Mum and I just really wanted to show off my cupcakes on it! The cupcakes are mocha with mocha frosting and vanilla with vanilla frosting. I coloured the vanilla frosting slightly to make a peachy colour. I used my lovely new silicone piping bag fromLakeland to pipe the mocha frosting (I didn't do a particularly brilliant job!) and I decorated the mocha cupcakes with some chocolate covered coffee beans I bought on a recent trip to Bath.

Suffice to say, my cupcakes went down a treat with most people taking some of the spares home for their kids! I used to have the time to bake a little something for every single team meeting. See the pink cupcake storage tins behind the stand? My colleagues at work know these tins mean goodies have been baked for them and seeing the tins gets them rather excited! Recently, I've been so busy and stressed I hadn't baked anything, but I really enjoyed making these the weekend before our meeting, it's really therapeutic for me.

My work colleagues and I will soon be heading our seperate ways, and that makes me really sad to think about. I'll be making sure that, cake-wise at least, we all go out on a bang.

I want to take this blog in a slightly different direction. Well actually, I want to take it in several directions all at the same time. I still cook, sew, bake and make, but lately I've been very busy and the only things keeping me sane are beauty products, fashion magazines, trips out etc, where once I'd devote a whole weekend to making a pair of curtains and baking bread, I'm at a point where I'm lucky if I get out of my pyjamas on the weekend. But I miss blogging. So I want to diversify a little. This is whatlozziedid, after all, and sometimes what I did of a weekend or evening is spend a load of money on shoes on Ebay or try out new foundation or what not. I'm not a fashionista and I'm not a beauty blogger. But there is more to me than my sewing machine (which I haven't used all year!).

So, with that in mind, on with my first beauty post!

I was a bit late to the beauty box party. Probably because I don't get sent them for free! I purchased the 'Farewell to Boudoir Prive' box as a one-off and I have ordered the Harrods limited edition GlossyBox but I do not regularly subscribe. But I remember seeing the January Carmine Beauty Box reviewed by a blogger I follow and I thought 'yep, I'll have one of them! I'm subscribed for now, and I do like Carmine a lot, but my financial situation will determine whether or not I continue, more than anything else.


I like the black exterior of the box and the shocking green interior is rather fun as well. I can take or leave the red sizzle but at least I can recycle it I suppose! I'm really glad I didn't get the rose shower gel as I already have a sample from Latest in Beauty so I'm glad to try another scent. Steam Cream sounds interesting definitely. I am sad enough to like trialling toothpaste and I received a very interesting coral-coloured sample of the Diego Dalla Palma lipstick, and I'm on a mission to get into lipsticks more so it'll be fun to try. Yardley's Royal English Daisy is my go-to scent at the moment so the Peony sample was very welcome. A little old fashioned when you first sample it but once its settled on the skin its rather nice! The Andrea Fullerton nail colour I got really isn't me but you can't have everything. I'll be sticking with Carmine until my bank balance tells me I have to stop for sure!

Now, onto my winnings! I should start by saying I rarely win anything. I should also start by saying I have a long-time online friend in the shape of Bee who has recently started up her own beauty blog, Bee Loves Beauty which I started following straight away and you all should too. Bee had her first giveaway of a gorgeous Clarins blush (Blush Prodige in 03 Miami Pink) and I entered because a) I'd have been MAD not to b)I don't own any high end make-up and every girl deserves some in her collection. And thanks to the power of a random generator, I won! This blush arrived ages ago but I only just got around to photographing it. Its LOVELY.

It comes in a fancy red Clarins box. The simplest things, like having goods that are boxed, are what pleases me the most!

Inside the box is a velvety pouch for keeping the gorgeous gold metallic compact in pristine condition! I rarely travel with makeup but at least if I do travel with this, it will be safe and well protected!

Here is the compact in all its glory. Its a mosaic of 2 shades from which you can select one colour or swirl your blusher brush around all four for a lovely effect.

Here is a sub-standard macro shot where you can see the colour in a little more detail.

I have to shockingly confess I haven't used this blush yet. In my defence, I wanted to photograph it in all its gorgeous untouched glory (I just know that I will get grubby fingerprints all over the amazing gold compact case as I'm just one of those people!). But I know its going to look amazing on me and suit my skin tone, eye colour and hair colour beautifully. Once I've used it I will post a review. I promise! I'm ridiculously excited that I've photographed it as now I get to go use it!

Would you like to own your own Clarins Blush Prodige? Head on over here to Escentual.com where they sell the entire collection. Bee bought my blush from here and it shipped extremely quickly and safely and I got a free emery board thrown in, hooray!

I'm not a very good blogger. This is evident by two key things. 1. I haven't blogged in months. 2. I go somewhere, do something, make something and only when I've finished do I think 'oh, I should have taken some photos and blogged about it...'.

So my return to blogging is half-hearted because I have come to share a recipe with you for a dinner I have just prepared and eaten. All without a single photograph. So, pictureless for now but as I make this dinner fairly regularly, hopefully I can snap the pictures at some point. Unless I forget again.

I'm here to share my recipe for BBQ lamb. Really, there's little about it that is BBQ-ey. I used to work in a student hall of residence and they made the dish there and it was always delicious. I managed to wangle the recipe out of the head chef. I've never been able to make it like he makes it, but that is probably because he is a brilliant chef and I am a sometime-cook and he adapted the recipe down from feeding hundreds to feeding 2-3, so I think some of the glory got lost in deduction. But if you can excuse the fact that its name is a bit misleading, I know you'll enjoy this dinner. This is my ultimate comfort food, and it reminds me of how far I've come from spending a year working in that kitchen, finally getting to be a food preparation assistant and soaking up as much food knowledge as I possibly could. Ok, I've not come far in culinary terms, but I've come a long way from the girl I was then. Anyway. You're here to snare a recipe, not here to hear me sound like a 75 year old.

I've adapted this recipe to suit myself, so the quantities etc are my own.

BBQ Lamb

Lamb neck fillet (fillet size depends on how many you'll need. At least 300g for two I reckon)
Butter
1 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, finely chopped or crushed
1 small bottle of red wine (those individual sized ones)
1 tsp brown sugar (I like to use molasses sugar or dark muscovado, but anything will do)
1/2 tsp mild chilli powder
a few splashes Tobasco sauce
2 tbsps Worcestershire Sauce
2 tbsps tomato puree (original recipe calls for tomato ketchup and I reckon using ketchup would make it taste much more BBQ-ey. But my OH cannot stand tomato ketchup, so we use puree. You can use either, I won't tell anyone)
salt and pepper
1 red pepper, chopped into chunks

To serve:
Brown rice
Green beans

Pre-heat your oven to approx 180 degrees or the gas mark equivalent.

1. Melt a decent chunk of butter in a saucepan (I use a cast iron casserole dish that can go on the hob and in the oven, but if you don't have one you can use a saucepan for hob top and an ovenproof dish for the oven). Add the onion and garlic and cook gently until soft but not brown.
2. Pour your bottle of wine into a measuring jug and top up with cold water so it reaches 350ml in the jug. Pour this on top of the onions and garlic.
3. Add the brown sugar, chilli powder, tobasco, worcestershire and tomato puree (or ketchup) to the pan. Season well with salt and pepper and give the whole lot a good mix. Throw your pepper chunks into the sauce. Leaving any lids off, bring the sauce to the boil and let it simmer and reduce a bit.
4. Whilst the sauce is coming up to the boil and reducing, slice your lamb fillet into 1.5cm thick slices, discarding any really fatty bits that you can cut off. Dip each slice into some seasoned flour. Heat up some ground nut oil in a frying pan and seal your slices of lamb, adding them into the sauce when they are beginning to brown.
5. Give everything a final stir. If necessary, transfer your lamb and sauce into an oven proof dish with a lid, or else put the lid onto your casserole dish and put it into the over for an hour (the longer the better).
6. At the appropriate time before serving, cook your brown rice and your green beans.
7. Serve and enjoy.

BBQ-ey it is not, but it is warming, comforting, soothing. The butter makes the sauce rich and a little oily, which generally I would hate, but in this instance I really like it. This is the only dish I eat with brown rice, I can't even remember why I ever tried it with brown rice but it works for me, its delicious. The lamb should be really soft from slow cooking in the sauce and the sauce should have thickened up nicely. Yum Yum!

Please let me know if you try this recipe, I'd love to hear what you think of it! For me, its a perfect Sunday dinner if you're suffering from the Sunday Blues, as I frequently am!

I truly hope this marks my return to blogging here more regularly. I have a number of ideas of things I want to post about, I just need to start being a bit more organised.