Birchbox August

Hello Everyone,

It’s this time of the month again – Birchbox is here 🙂 Well, this month it’s a bag and not a box. I love how pretty and re-usable are the boxes but I like that it’s a bag this time.

First item from the bag is anatomicals the buff stuff citrus body scrub. I never tried this brand before but I will be trying it really soon. I nearly finished my scrub from Body Shop so once it’s all used I’ll give this one a go. So far I really like the packaging design and that it’s a citrus one. I don’t like sweetly scented things.

I received my little package yesterday morning just before having a shower. Then I saw amie Morning Dew Matte Finish Moisturiser I had to try it same day. I have oily skin and most of moisturisers feel quite greasy on my skin even when they are supposed to be used on oily skin. I can already say that I like this one because my skin absorbed it so quickly and easily and my skin doesn’t feel greasy at all 🙂

Another great product I found in the bag was Philip Kingsley One More Day Dry Shampoo. So far I’ve been using Batiste one and I really like it but why not try something new 🙂 I’ll be trying this tomorrow morning as I’m working until late this evening and then I have morning shift.

Next product from the bag wasn’t very exciting thing for me. It’s Merci Handy Antibacterial Hand Cleansing Gel. I never use these kind of antibacterial things because I just hate how they always smell and I’d rather wash my hands than use this. I’ll probably take it with me on the plane while travelling in September.

This one was so hard to take a photo – it just kept rolling away. Marcelle Waterproof Eyeliner and mine is in shade Expresso. I don’t use much eye make-up but why not to start using more when I have a product already 🙂

Last but not least is English Laundry Notting Hill Eau de Parfum. It’s really nice to receive such a sample but I will not be using it. Any spray-able perfumed products (perfume, deodorants, air fresheners, etc.) make me feel like I cannot breathe or make me start sneezing non-stop.

I really like my August Birchbag and I can’t wait to try them out 🙂

If you want to have some fun trying new products, you can subscribe here and join me in this fun adventure

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My July Faves

I can’t believe that July is already gone. I feel like I hardly managed to do anything for myself and spent most of my energy at work. Oh well, I’d better look for the ways to change it in the future and for now let me show some of my faves from July.

 

Biore Deep Pore Charcoal Cleanser. I can’t say that it’s specifically just July fave. I’ve been using it for some time now and I really like it. I tried many different cleansers and they always made my skin feeling very dry on my cheeks and this cleanser doesn’t give this unpleasant feeling.

 

Loreal Nude Magique Cushion Foundation. I’ve seen a lot of positive reviews on blogs and Youtube about cushion foundations. After a long struggle with liquid foundations to make them look nice and smooth on my skin I decided to give a try to cushion foundation. I love it! It’s so easy to use, not messy at all and looks really nice on my skin. I picked shade 4 this time but I think it’s a bit too dark and next time I would buy one shade lighter.

Tupperware Eco Bottle 500ml. My friend gave this to me last year as an exchange for a teddy bear fur (she sews collectible teddy bears and I had some leftover fur after trying it myself). At that time I didn’t think anything special about it and it was collecting dust for quite a long time but I started liking it a lot. After putting a lot of plastic water bottles for recycling I decided to give this a try. It’s so good and I’ve been carrying it with me everywhere this month. What I like about it so much: 1. I don’t have to waste money to buy bottled water anymore. 2. It’s re-usable so I throw away less plastic. 3. Wide bottleneck makes it easy to refill. 4. Bottle cap is made the way that it’s so easy to unscrew (I have a habit to screw water bottles so tight that I have hard to unscrew them later).

The Man Who Risked It All by Laurent Gounelle. I finished reading this book in July and I really love it. I did a full review earlier this month so if you want to read why it is so great, check it out.

Charmed. These are old TV series. I watched them years ago but for some reason I’ve never seen all the seasons so this summer I’m re-watching it. I really like books and movies which are magic related so it should not surprise anyone why I like Charmed 🙂 There are 8 seasons and I’m on season 7 at the moment.

So these are my July faves. What are your faves from this month?

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The Man Who Risked It All by Laurent Gounelle

A few months ago my sister recommended me a book The Man Who Risked It All by Laurent Gounelle. I got a book on my Kindle really quickly after our conversation about it. I was reading it since then and finished just this month.

I really like the story, unexpected elements and lessons it teaches. In my opinion it’s not a light summer read to bring on the beach. Even if it’s a novel and really interesting one but what is between the lines requires some thinking through.

While reading it’s so easy to put myself in the situations which Alan (the main character) went through. What would I do? What do I actually do in similar situations? Why?

It’s amazing how much people are really capable of. Sometimes all we need is just a good push out of our comfort zones and putting us in situations where there are only two choices – sink or swim.

The Man Who Risked It All is going to be a book which I would recommend to anyone and I’ll be re-reading in the future.

Have you read this book? What did you think?

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iPhone Lenses

I’ve been taking quite a lot of pictures with my iPhone so I thought it would be nice to get some external lenses to give myself more variety of the pictures I can take.

I went on Amazon and chose one of the cheapest (paid £6.99) because I haven’t tried them before and I had no clue how often I would use them. I received them couple days ago and of course I had to test them right away 🙂

The set includes 3 lenses: macro, wide angle and fish eye. It also has clip, lens covers and a bag to keep them all in.

First impressions before even taking any pictures:

• It’s beautiful red colour 🙂 I love red so it’s a plus.
• Clip is kind of cushioned where it would touch the phone screen. It’s very important to me as I was a bit worried to scratch it.
• Everything packs very neatly in a little bag and it fits even in my smallest handbag. It means I can carry it with me all the time and I don’t need to have a moment “Oh, I wish I had this lens with me”.
• It’s quite tricky to attach wide angle lens to the clip. Wide angle lens is not a lens by itself but it needs to be attached to macro lens. I have some trouble as I unscrew macro lens from clip or wide angle lens from macro lens due to directions how they are screwed to each other. (That sounds so complicated. It probably would be easier to show than to explain)

Lenses set

Lens on clip

Lens covers and bag

 

I always wanted to have a macro lens for my camera (which (the lens) I still need to buy someday) so I was very excited to try it out first. It’s harder then I expected. I need to get really really close to the object that it would get focused and sometimes it’s just too small detail of an object than what I wanted to photograph.

Dried pepper

Flower

But it is really handy when it comes to really tiny things like the flower below. The first picture is the closest I can get without any lens and the other 2 were taken using macro lens so even if it is not perfect I’m sure that I will use it and I just need to get use to it.

No lens

Macro lens

Macro lens

Next I decided to compare how it what’s the difference between taking photo without any lens, with wide angle lens and fish eye lens. I tested them by taking pictures of my housemate’s tomatoes 🙂

Wide angle lens – it is able to fit wider area in the picture.

Fish eye lens – I thought that this lens would be the least used out of 3 but I really like the effect it gives. The main thing I did not like was that I can see edges of the lens itself in the photos.

No lens

Wide angle lens

Fish eye lens

 

Oh, and it also works on FaceTime camera too. First picture is without a lens and the second one with fish eye lens.

No lens

Fish eye lens

Final conclusions:

• Small and convenient to carry with me all the time.
• Easy to use (except wide angle lens)
• The edges of the photos are a bit distorted.
• I might invest in better quality lenses if I find that I use them a lot.

I hope you find this post useful. If you have any advice or tricks how to use such lenses, please share them in the comments.