Estee Lauder advanced night repair serum: review

At Christmas the Boy treated me to a beauty product that has been on my wish list for sometime now – Estee Lauder’s advanced night repair serum.

finally have my mitts on this! 

Why has this been on my wish list for so long?

Well firstly cos it is bloody expensive at about £50 a bottle, so out of my usual beauty product price range,  but also because it claims to reduce the appearance of the key signs of visible aging, revealing smoother, firmer and fresher skin.

Green power smoothie recipe

On Thursday morning I was treated to a green smoothie by my aunt Miriam which combined banana, apple, kale and lettuce leaves. Always willing to try most things at least the once, I was intrigued by this vegetable mix but wasn’t sure if it was going to be for my taste buds. Oh how wrong was I!

I am converted, I love a green smoothie!!!

So at the weekend, I took myself to the local market to stock up on delicious veggies to make some of my own green creations.  

Welcome to my kale, broccoli, banana, apple and pear smoothie!

enjoying my smoothie in my messy kitchen! 

So easy to and quick to make, this is delicious and bursting full of nutrients!!!

Kale is high in fibre, iron, vitamin K, vitamin C and calcium. Plus it is low in calories. Broccoli can help regulate blood pressure and boost your overall immune system health! 

V05’s “give me texture dry texturising spray": review

I have never been one for liking flat hair. For me, the bigger, the messier, the better. Since the explosion of “root boosts” on the hair market, I have tried my fair share (I am currently using Schwarzkopf’s “got 2 be powder’ful volumizing styling powder).

Whilst volume at the roots is great, I have also been looking for a bit of va va voom in the lengths too!

Recently I have started using V05’s “give me texture dry texturising spray” with sea salt for that effortless ‘undone’ look.

give me texture! 

Chunky milk and white chocolate chewy cookies - Millie's cookies style

I love baking, with cupcakes being a personal fav, but if you take a look at the “Sweet Treat Recipes” section of my blog you will notice that I do cupcakes, tarts and the odd tray bakes but there is a distinct lack of cookies and biscuits.

cookies packed up and ready to be taken to work

About 18 months ago, I attempted a “fail safe” recipe from good foods (which usually help me turn into a semi decent cook), which for some reason made my cookies come out tasting of salmon!!! 

Seriously. I don’t know why and I don’t know how but it is something I have been ridiculed with since and haven’t baked another cookie since.

A week ago my house mate Charlie made some chocolate chip cookies that were quite frankly, delicious, I couldn't stop eating them! So naturally I had to get the recipe from her and have a go myself. At the weekend, ready to overcome my fear of baking cookies I got out my pinny and set to work.

a yeti cooking up a treat in the kitchen 

chunky milk chocolate 

Result… two batches of totally delicious cookies! My first batch was milk chocolate, followed by a white chocolate batch. Both without a hint of any fish taste in any of them! Success. 

here's how...

Peanut butter healthy protein balls

As you have probably seen from some of my January blogs, I am on a bid to be mega healthy this year. One thing that I have started incorporating into my diet is protein powder.  I started off by sprinkling a bit into my morning porridge and every now and again, buying the odd protein bar from my local health shop, ideal for a snack on the go or on your way to the gym. But at a couple of quid a bar, they are mighty expensive! So I have had a go at making my own!

I found a recipe on PopSugar (a great website for loads of health and fitness tips) that I have amended to be less sugary, meaning I have now produced these delicious little balls of protein that are healthy yet tasty and sooo easy to make. Plus they are easy to eat on the go!

protein ball snack

Yalla Yalla Lebanese restaurant, Soho, London

The other day, me and my work mate Lianne found ourselves looking for dinner around the Oxford St/ Regent Street area. In my head, all the main restaurants on these roads seem to be of the usual chains – pizza hut, Angus steak house, Garfunkel’s etc. Now don’t get me wrong, these are all fine but personally I like to try to eat out in local, independent or smaller restaurants. We had no idea where to eat but we came out trumps in the end.

After Lianne declared “I could really eat something like a Lebanese”, we took straight to google (what on earth did we do before google, seriously!) and found a place called “Yalla Yalla”, advertising itself as ‘Beirut Street Food’in Soho, just off Brewer Street.

tucking into our feast

every mouthful is delicious! 

Perfect, just a short walk and we were there.  Although, you will need to keep your eyes peeled as we nearly missed it – the shop front is tiny. Actually the whole place is tiny. But my god does it do good food!

Swan Lake - the Ballet

Last night me and the Boy did something a bit different to what we would normally get up to on a Saturday night. We went to the ballet! I know what you are thinking – how sophisticated!

We had said for quite some time now that this was something we wanted to do. He had never been to one and I have only been to the ballet twice – once when I was a little girl and more ‘recently’ when I was in Australia with my now housemate Charlie. But that was way back in 2009 and after consuming far too much cheese and wine beforehand, we got far too comfortable in the bar we were in, meaning that we had to run a mile or so to the theatre. We only just made it time (literally by seconds), nearly threw up the said cheese and wine (dam deep fried camembert) and then spent 20 minutes of the first act panting like an animal trying to recover our breath (dam being so unfit back then).

This ballet experience was much more successful!

Coconut oil - what are the health benefits?

Last summer, as I was preparing for the wedding, I was determined to be as healthy as I possibly could (I had heard horror stories from friends that the stress of planning a wedding caused them to be ill  in the weeks running up to the wedding). One of the things I started incorporating into my diet was good old  coconut oil.

However, post wedding, I foolishly gave up on all the good healthy habits I had acquired and now one of my new year’s resolutions is to be fit and healthy once more. The Boy has made this one of his too, so he has been reading up on his nutrition and fitness.

what the heck do I do with all this coconut oil?!

Last Saturday he came back with the much hyped about coconut oil. Not realising I still have half a massive tub left over from summer, he came back with two jars of it,  so now I have nearly three massive jars of the stuff!!!!

But it has got me thinking about coconut oil again (not in a weird way) and I have decided that I am going to start using it properly again. I am not really a fan of coconut but I actually like this stuff.

Top tips to sleep better – how to get a good night’s sleep

One of my (many) things on the to-do list for 2014 was sleep more. I have always fallen culprit to the “work hard, play hard” mantra meaning that when I go to catch up on sleep at the weekend, I often end up having less than during the week! Not only that, but my body has this irritating habit of ‘waking up’ at night so I end up not being able to get to sleep, ending up milling about at midnight. Same to for my housemate Kris who I often bump into in the corridor at night as if we’re a pair of lost souls!

So I stuck it on the to-do list to make a conscious effort to get more zzz’s in but also for a better quality of sleep all round (after all 7 hours of decent sleep is surely better than 9 hours of broken fidgety sleep, right?).

So far, so good. I did a bit of research about some top tips and I have managed to clock in 7-8 hours of shut eye each night. The recommended amount!

If anyone else is like me, then I want to share with you my top tips I have discovered – they’ve worked for me so I hope they work for you!

Top tip 1: read

This one works well for me. 15 minutes of laying in bed with an easy read or magazine, idly flicking through, really helps me switch off before I doze off. Obviously don’t read anything over stimulating. A few chapters of ‘War and Peace’ probably won’t help.

I have a few stylists on stand by in bed 

Are electronic facial cleansing brushes worth purchasing? (review)

Has anyone else read about electronic facial cleansing brushes?

I keep seeing them featured and advertised in magazines and they sound good but also sound bloody expensive. The ones I have seen in magazines are for make such as Phillips and Clarisonic which come in at £150 - £180!! That’s the cost of a nice weekend away!

I was keen on buying one though as electronic brushes clean skin 6x better than using your hands (according to clarisonic) and it helps the cream sink in further.  I do often feel that my fingers just aren’t the tool for working deep down into clogged pores so was intrigued about these brushes.

So I did a bit of googling to see if I can find cheaper. Turns out you can. A lot cheaper.

my new electronic facial cleansing brush

I got my bad boy from a website called DHgate for a mere £15. And I love it! I 100% recommend this product! Even after one use I felt my skin was thoroughly clean and getting the grime out of my pores. 

In order to see whether this little gadget actually worked, I tested this for three weeks using it on just one side of my face over Christmas and the New Year – a time when my skin usually suffers thanks to all the late nights, over eating of fatty foods and mid week drinking.