Freebie Make-up haul!

It's that time of year when magazines like to give you lots of free stuff and who am I to refuse when there are so many products available at the price of a magazine hey!

Last month (yup, sorry, you're too late for these ones) I got these little gems . . .

3 x Nails inc nail polishes with In-style magazine - The shade names had "in-style" on them so I guess you can't usually get these specific shades.

2 x Body shop lip stain - I think these were from Marie Claire - 01 Rose pink and 02 Bronze glimmer.

These are all full size items, nails inc nail varnishes usually retail for £11 each and those lip stains are £10 each. Feeling a bit smug about the lip stain as I almost bought one the other week but decided against it as there were a few not-so-good reviews on their website about it. In fact I love them both, the rose one is great to add a little colour to your lips which you can build up if you like, the glimmer is more of a colour I will use on holiday or when I have a bit more of a tan.  So that's £53 of make-up as a cost of just under £20 - bargain! Even more so that some magazines are on a 2 for £6 offer at the moment making it even cheaper - unfortunately that ends soon though - June 4th if I recall correctly.

Here are the bits I got today, I am very excited as I paid just over £16 for all these thanks to the above mentioned offer and a small percentage of staff discount. . .I LOVE a bargain! I'm going to give you a brief overview of what is available so you can see what's out there right now (most of these mags only came out yesterday) and then once I get using the products I might go into more detail and review them!

And what do I do with all the duplicate mags? Well, to be honest I give them a quick flick through then give them to my Mum, my Nana, the local Doctors - whoever wants them really! And these ones will be extra useful to my Nana as she's just been taken into hospital today (get well soon Nana!) so she hasn't got much to keep her amused right now!

Anyway - get to the point Ria!!! . . .

Yup - I bought 6 Magazines - the cashier did look at me a bit funny!

Jubilee cake

Every year, in March there is a competition within the Marketing department at work they call the bake-off.

When I moved into the department you could imagine my excitement on hearing such a thing, alas for the first year they had me in Guernsey so I couldn't enter. So, last March came, diary checked, yup, I was going to be there for my first bake-off and the there is 2012, it just had to be a jubilee themed cake.

I spent many hours dreaming this beauty up, it was a little ambitious I must admit as before I made it I had never actually made a 2 tier cake before and it was only the second ever cake I had iced...oh well nothing to loose hey!

4 days (yes 4 actual days - a whole weekend and two evenings) later this is what I came up with....

If it weren't for the fact I had created the top tier first I probably would have left it as it was, as i thought it looked pretty nice as a union jack cake . . 

In case you wanna know how I did it? It was a Victoria sponge with jam and butter cream, covered with white Ready to Roll Icing, I coloured more icing with gel food colour  and rolled into strips and painstakingly  re-created the union jack.For the top tier I printed a picture of a crown on tracing paper, traced over it onto the icing, then painted over the embossed lines that had been created with a mixture of gold lustre dust and rejuvenator spirit - don't mix up too much as once as the alcohol evaporates REALLY quickly! the bunting and little balls were also made of fondant, but in hindsight I think they would have been much nice made of marzipan.  

Oh . . I forgot to mention. . I WON the novelty cake category, very chuffed with myself as I'm not usually a winner!