Review: TRESemme Platinum Strength Instant Rescue Shot

Even though TRESemme is not normally a brand I gravitate towards, I love the idea behind this little one pop hair mask. There are times when your hair just needs a little extra boost, but you don't necessarily want to invest into a whole big tub of hair treatments and for those times this is just ideal. It's like a face mask in a sachet, just applied to haircare.
The little mini tube has a lid that snaps off, so once it's opened you've got to use the whole thing, but I found the amount to be absolutely perfect for my shoulder length hair. If you've got short hair you would probably be able to get two applications out of it, although it might go a bit dry and crusty at the top if left opened for a long time.

I love a product that does exactly what it says on the tin and that's what this is. I smoothed the silky cream over my hair at the start of my shower, did all my other showery bits, stood under the water aimlessly for a bit (I can't be the only person doing that) and then rinsed it off. The results were smooth and nourished tresses and my hair ends in particular had really benefitted from the extra TLC.
I think this would be a brilliant product to pop into your suitcase when going on holiday and every last millimetre of luggage space is valuable.

The TRESemme Platinum Strength Instant Rescue Shot is an absolute bargain at £1.99 each.

New Look Haul

The warm and sunny weather we've had lately has made me realise that I don't have any nice summer dresses to swish around in, so that problem had to be solved with a quick trip to New Look. I find it so much easier to find clothes I like in summer than in the winter months. Everything is bright and colourful and happy - perfect for somebody like me who doesn't do "muted" or "understated" when it comes to clothes.

I love the loud, bold print on this dress and the cut is also incredibly flattering for my hourglass figure. It ties in at the waist and the foldover V-front gives amazing cleavage. I made it as far as the pub toilet after buying this and had to put it on straight away! The material is nice and feels cool and airy even in hot temperatures.

What do you do if you can't decide between two dresses? You buy them both! I wasn't too sure at first about this because of the longer sleeves, but it looks so much better when worn than it does on the hanger. The material is very stretchy, so it hugs every curve, while the loud print hides any bulges in places we'd rather not have them. When you come out of the changing room and your boyfriend says "This dress makes you look like Lana Del Rey" it would be criminal not to buy it.

I wasn't too sure about this floral headband at first, but now I'm so glad I got it! This is what would be considered a festival essential, but then I like to look every day as if I'm at a festival, haha.

And finally, no summer outfit would be complete without a matching pair of shades. I love the unique yellow colour on these and the amazing palm tree print on the sides of the frame. I feel like I'm instantly being transported to Miami wearing these!

What was the last thing you bought from New Look?

Sample Summary #13

1) Shiseido | Express Soothing Eye Mask and Wrinkle Resist 24 Eye Contour Cream

Full size: £59.00 for the eye mask / £54.00 for the eye cream

Rating: 2.5/5

This was a lovely little set of samples containing one application of a stick-on undereye mask, as well as a sachet of eye cream which lasted me a good week or so. The mask was an absolute pleasure to use and felt very cooling and hydrating while I let it work. Afterwards my eyes seemed a bit perkier and depuffed, but the effect had vanished the following morning. The eye cream was incredibly rich and left a greasy film under my eyes, so I could only use it at night. Otherwise my concealer would literally just slip straight off my skin. While they were both nice products, I don't think that the exorbitant price tag is by any means justified, hence the low rating.

2) Clarins | Moisture Rich Body Lotion

Full size: £30.00

Rating: 3/5

This was really lovely and moisturising without being sticky or greasy at all. While I personally prefer my body lotions to be scented, this might hold a certain appeal to those who don't like their body products to overpower their perfume - or those who simply have a sensitive nose. Just like with the Shiseido sample above, my only problem with this is the price tag. I just wouldn't be able to justify spending £30 on a tube of this when I can get great body lotions or butters for a tenth of the price.

3) Estee Lauder | Advanced Night Repair

Full size: £48.00

Rating: 5/5

Every time I get a sample of this somewhere my eyes immediately light up. This serum is simply magical. It never looks better than when I apply this before my moisturiser every night. It's smoother, softer and skintone is more even. I swear that one day I'll invest in a full size of this, but till then I will relish every last drop of my sample.

4) Neal & Wolf | Super Shine Spray

Full size: £9.50

Rating: 4/5

I wouldn't necessarily call this an essential, but it's a nice little product to have on special occasions. It's shiny without being glittery or sparkly and has an amazing fruity scent that lingers on the hair for a fair bit after application. It doesn't weigh hair down or make it greasy as long as you're not overly generous. I'm not sure I'd purchase the full size, as it's not a product that's missing from my beauty routine, but I'll thoroughly enjoy using up the sample I've got.

5) Redken | Colour Extend Conditioner

Full size: £13.75

Rating: 4.5/5

This was such a joy to use! It instantly restored my damaged, bleached hair and made it incredibly soft. I'd even say my hair felt stronger and a bit thicker after using this, I'm absolutely amazed. I'd say it's probably a touch too intense for daily application, but if used every other wash it works a treat. This is one I want to get my hands on for the full size.

6) Suti | Cleanse Balm, Purity Balm and Foot Balm

Full size: £28 for the Cleanse Balm, £23 for the Purity Balm and £16.50 for the Foot Balm

Rating: 4/5

I didn't expect to be quite as impressed with these little balms as I am, as the samples were quite small. The Cleanse Balm only lasted for four applications, but was coincidentally also my favourite out of the bunch. It dissolved make-up in a flash and left it feeling simultaneously cleansed, soothed and nourished. This is one I'll definitely be looking into purchasing a full size of! The Purity Balm works really great to deeply moisturise the skin. I apply it on my face at night and I'm not going to lie: It turns my face into an oil slick! Come morning, however, everything has been absorbed and my skin is wonderfully plumped and softened, but as it's so rich, one application every 2-3 days is usually enough.

The foot balm is my least favourite, as it takes a little bit of effort to work it in, but it's still a really, really lovely product!

Hello Fresh Food Subscription Box Review

In my April Love Me Beauty box I received a £25 money off voucher for Hello Fresh, a subscription box service that sends you all the ingredients you need to cook 3 or 5 meals a week from scratch. They include absolutely everything, from fresh produce down to little extras, herbs and spices, as well as detailed recipe cards with step by step instructions on how to cook your meals. While I always thought it was a brilliant idea, particularly if you're constantly faced with the trouble of figuring out what to cook, it was always the price that put me off. At £39 a week for three meals for two people, it works out at £6.50 a meal - when I do my regular shops our meals tend to work out at half of that, if not less! Without the voucher, I don't think I would have ever taken the plunge to try this service.

My first initial experience was not a positive one. Sign-up was quick and simple and I liked that you could swap over recipes that you knew you wouldn't like, so I could cater for my boyfriend's tastes, as he is an incredibly fussy eater. I was advised my box would come on Tuesday between 9 and 5 o'clock,  which was great as I was off work for the whole day, so could get my delivery and not have to do a food shop that day. Five o'clock came and no box.... Six o'clock, still no box. Eventually I gave up waiting and phoned customer service, who then told me that my box would be with me on Wednesday, as it was a bank holiday weekend - which wouldn't have been a problem, if someone had bothered to tell me. I was told by the man on the phone that they usually send out a text, but must have the wrong contact details. He didn't, however, bother with taking my contact details to check.

I got off the phone and I was fuming. Nobody messes with my food! I had to, err, make other arrangements for dinner that night (read: order a takeaway), and my box did eventually arrive early Wednesday morning.

Vegetables, baked goods, herbs and spices were packed loosely in the box while all the meat and dairy was wrapped with ice packs in a plastic bag lined with woolcool liners. I already know these from my weekly Abel and Cole deliveries and they work really great at keeping all your produce cool, so I know that even if I wasn't in all my stuff would have been fine till the evening.

These are the recipes I got in my box along with pictures of how it ended up looking when I made the meal.

Swingball Meatballs with Smoked Tomato Linguine

I made this recipe a day after receiving my box and unfortunately by that time the carrots had already managed to go mouldy! Thank goodness that I still had some carrots in my fridge that I could use, but I wasn't overly happy with my delivered vegetables not even being able to make it past the first day.
The actual dish was fairly easy to prepare, although it did require a lot more chopping than I would have liked. I tend to grate my carrot and I don't usually put celery in any of my tomato sauces, as I hate the taste of it. For the sake of following this recipe to a T, I left the celery in there and I admit that once it had cooked into the sauce it wasn't quite so bad. Unfortunately, I found the finished sauce to be quite bland, so I had to add what felt like a ton of salt and a gallon of hot sauce to improve the dish.
To be fair though, that's not something I blame Hello Fresh for, as I always have to add tons of seasoning to any shop bought ready meals and it's not really that much of a problem to add some spice to your food. The actual pasta was absolutely amazing - some of the best I've ever tried and the meatballs were very lovely as well.

Umami Burger with Rustic Chips and Rocket Salad

My boyfriend hates anything that's remotely healthy, so I had to leave out all the salad for him, but still he didn't enjoy his meal. Like I said, he's a fussy eater! I actually thought this was absolutely lovely! Adding garlic salt onto potato wedges is something I am forever going to do from now on. This is the first time I've ever used Umami paste and while it tastes absolutely revolting on its own, it did add a very special flavour to the burger. I've since also added it to mushroom sauce and it tasted absolutely divine! I think this was my favourite meal out of the three.

A Really Special Chicken Fried Rice with Pistachio and Sesame

This is the recipe I made last and by the time I'd gotten round to it (about five days after my box got delivered), the spring onions looked like they were on the brink of death and I had to throw half of them away. To further add to my annoyance, the recipe included way more chopping than I would have liked and I also found the cooking process very unnecessarily long-winded (for example: I would not usually wait for half an hour to cook chicken thighs in the oven before adding them to a stir-fry, but rather chop them up and fry them in a pan for five minutes).
I did really enjoy this dish in the end, although I had to add a lot of salt again to make it a bit less bland. As you can see on the picture above the portions on this one in particular were huge! I really struggled to finish my meal and that's even though I hadn't eaten since breakfast.

You certainly can't fault Hello Fresh on portion sizes. They are very generous and filling and although I had to add extra seasoning to pretty much all of my meals, I found them to be rather tasty in general. My boyfriend didn't enjoy any of them, but as I said, he's an extremely fussy eater who won't touch anything that's not meat, bread or cheese. Overall, the quality of the ingredients was top-notch, apart from the vegetables. For a box that's meant to last all week to include vegetables that go mouldy after a day is really not acceptable.

I think my biggest peeve with the box is the price. £13 a day for two people is just extortionate considering you've still got to do all the cooking yourself. Even if I was shopping in Waitrose or Marks & Spencer's every day I'm pretty sure I could feed us both for less than that. Hello Fresh did include a card with my box detailing how a comparable shop would be more expensive in pretty much every supermarket, but I just find that very hard to believe. Add to that my experience of rather poor customer service and you can see why I cancelled pretty much as soon as I got my box and won't be looking to resubscribe anytime soon. While I still think it's a great idea, the value for money just isn't there with this box.

Book review: The Genius of Dogs by Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods

Title: The Genius of Dogs

Author: Brian Hare & Vanessa Woods

Price: £8.99

Type: Non-fiction, Pop-Science

Pages: 282

It was while browsing a WH Smith before getting on a long train journey that I picked up my very first pop-science book. I'm usually much more drawn to fiction than to non-fiction, but the title just drew me in somehow. Every dog owner in the world will be able to tell you that dogs are lot more clever than what we give them credit for and I was hoping to gain a better insight into what goes on in my little puppy's mind from reading this book.

From the very first page I was hooked. The book is divided into three parts: The first one explores how dogs evolved from wolves, became domesticated and developed the kind of intelligence they are showing today. The second part shows the findings of some experiments that detail exactly in which ways dogs can be considered to be a genius and in which disciplines they can, let's say, be a little silly. Finally, the third part, labelled "Your Dog" delves into different breeds and how to train your genius dog.

I found the first part to be incredibly fascinating. I always wondered what had happened thousands of years ago, for a wild and pretty aggressive animal like the wolf to slowly but surely become man's best friend. Turns out that it's highly likely that it wasn't us domesticating dogs, but more that dogs domesticated themselves, seeing a chance of obtaining easy food and shelter in return for guarding their shared territory and helping humans in hunts. The book is full of facts and figures, but it is written in such a light and entertaining fashion, that it reads like a breeze without being at all overwhelming.

The second part dragged for me a little bit, as it detailed a ton of experiments which to be honest didn't show anything I didn't already know having owned three dogs already. We know that dogs react to pointing gestures and verbal commands, but I guess if you ever needed scientific proof of that, then that's where you get it.

The final part of the book was where I got quite frustrated. From the titles of the chapters I expected some practical insight into how I can best train my dog by tapping into the particular way her mind works. Turns out, it was nothing like that. The authors basically concluded that all races are equally intelligent and that dogs are really great. They did make a reference to their website, which offers exactly what I'd been hoping from the last chapter of this book... for a small fee of $38 a month. Needless to say, I felt cheated and a little scammed. A terrible end to what had started out as a great book.

Because I enjoyed the first part so much, but was a bit annoyed by the other two parts, it's quite difficult to give this book an overall rating. To be fair, my disappointment stems mainly from going into the book expecting some practical advice. As I mentioned above, this is the first pop-science book I've ever bought or read, so if all books in the genre are like this, then it's my expectations that were wrong. I'd probably say that if you're interested in dogs, then this is a book worth borrowing or renting from the library... but not to spend money on.