REVISIT: The beauty advent calendar

I'm interrupting my normal twice weekly schedule to write a requested post. Requested! From an actual reader! It fills my heart with joy to know that people are reading my little corner of the world - thanks you guys! 

The comment appeared on my post about the Marks and Spencer beauty advent calendar and asked me to do a quick update on my favourite products, so here we go! 

First up I will say the calendar was all kinds of joyous. It was like Christmas started early and carried on every single day throughout December. Opening the box each day, followed by the text to my sister telling her what was inside, was quite simply fab. The products were all wrapped up in either black or purple tissue paper, a bit like pass the parcel, and the majority of them were mighty fine indeed. The stand out products for me were as follows:

• 100ml Cowshed Grumpy Cow Uplifting Body Lotion
• 2.5 fl.oz. L'Occitane Verbena Shower Gel
• 15ml REN Flash Rinse 1 Minute Facial
• 100ml Pixi Glow Tonic*

Out of all of them the Pixi Glow Tonic was the most coveted of all. I'd heard so many amazing things about it and was desperate to try it, but at nearly £20 a bottle it was out of my price range for a toner. The 100ml is half the size of the full price product so for a tenner worth of product to be featured in a £25 calendar...a really rather good deal, and I would imagine was a big attraction for many people who bought the calendar. 

The majority of the products were brilliant. The lipstick shades were mainly of the nude/rose variety, and to get 100ml of many of the products is a pretty decent size for you to really get to try something out and see if you like it for future repurchase. The only disappointment for me was that all of the hair products were focused on creating volume and zero offerings for frizz taming. I think a bit of balance here would have been much more desirable. Then again, my sister lucked out as she received a little goodie bag of the volume control products. Share the love. 

The big question: will I repurchase the calendar next year? If the price is the same I definitely would**, but I think it won't take Marks and Spencer long to realise that they can put it in a much higher price bracket and still move the same amount of stock. That will be a real shame for me as I think the £25 price label was certainly the biggest appeal for me.

*it won't come as much of a surprise to read that I love the glow tonic! I was worried about how my skin would react to the exfoliation but so far so good!

**as before, and to be entirely honest, the calendar was available at £25 for a spend of £25 on beauty products. To qualify I bought the most expensive body lotion I have ever used: REN Rose Otto Body Lotion (£26). I can see why people spend that much money on body lotion. It is quite simply lush. It sinks into the skin in mere seconds, smells divine, and leaves your skin feeling silky smooth. Even if the calendar had been utterly rubbish, the body lotion would have been an enjoyable splurge! 

If you'd like to know anything else about the calendar, comment below. Go on, make my day all over again! 

A Thing of Beauty

My name is Claire and I love lotions and potions. I am very easily 'enabled' as the saying goes by the bloggers and YouTube people that I watch who all have access to some delicious lotions and potions that I covet on an almost daily basis. Just ask Tee and Debs about when we were in Brighton and the only thing that I wanted to buy was a Mac 217 brush that cost £18. Yep, I totally did spend that much money on a makeup brush and it is a delight to use every single day. So soft and dreamy...

Let's talk enabling. In this instance it was a couple of YouTubers who put me on to the beauty advent calendar craze. In the opposite sense of this blog tale, I am generally a cheap as chips, 99p advent calendar kind of girl - somehow that cheap chocolate just tastes so good at this time of year. But this year, I decided to add in a beauty calendar to the mix. In terms of expensive, it's really not that up there compared to some of them that come in at hundreds of pounds. Girl ain't got that kind of spare cash. But girl does have a spare £25, well, okay not really but we're talking small change here people!

Step up the Marks and Spencer Beauty Calendar. For a mere £25 there is a box to open up every single day in the lead up to Christmas that contains some form of lotion or potion - oh me, oh my. The whole thing has the value of £200. £200! For a mere £25*. I mean come on, it's almost rude not to! As you can imagine, to say that I am excited is a bit of an understatement. It's basically going to be like Christmas every single day! With a cheapo advent calendar chocolate thrown in too - does life get any better?!

As I in no way consider myself to be a beauty blogger, I won't go to the trouble of listing all the contents. Instead just picture the excited face of this lotions and potions lover as a pretty box is opened each day. And just think of all the goodies I will have to begin the new year - I won't need to go shopping for ages!

My Christmas countdown is on! And I'm pretty sure this will turn up in my monthly favourites because, like, durrrrrr.

*for the record, to get the beauty advent calendar for £25 you had to spend £25. Which was very easily done by purchasing the most expensive body lotion I will ever use at £26. I don't feel the need to defend my purchasing choice, but even at a £51 spend that is still £149 of savings (quickly checks rubbish mental arithmetic skills)