How to get 20% Off EVERYTHING At Benefit in Menary's & Tempest.

For readers outside Northern Ireland, I'm sorry this post can't help you.  Menary's is your Mum's age group's department store and Tempest curates brands like Miss Selfridge, Topshop, Phase Eight and fashion brands for teenage girls up. My local Menary's/Tempest is in my home town of Bangor and I've been in it quite often recently with Michael as our favourite new coffee chain Bob & Bert's have taken over the cafe concession upstairs.

The small beauty hall in Menary's has a decent sized Benefit counter, and I noticed last week they still had one lone bottle of one of Crescent Row's original trio of scents, 'Something about Sofia'. It's a perfume I've owned before, back when they were new, and a friend Clare told me it had notes of Parma Violets about it. I've tried several violet scent recommended perfumes since, and Sofia still comes closest. As you know I'm rekindling my search for beauty products to make myself into a big Parma Violet, so I wanted a new bottle of this. When I saw it was £29.95, I did what every Internet-savvy lady does, I went home an searched for a cheaper price. eBay had none, the main websites were all sold out, Amazon had a bottle for £100! So I was back down to the only place I saw my one last bottle this week to get my mitts on it.

Menary's always is worth checking for a discount, so I asked one of the beauty hall girls was there a voucher or deal I could us to make this purchase. She helped me right out. Currently if you make ANY purchase you get given a voucher to use throughout this month as often as you wish, on two brands of your choice. There is no minimum spend, but you do have to buy something to get the voucher- as they need a till number etc. before they can issue you one. The beauty girl kindly told me even if I bought a £1 lip balm I could get my hands on this voucher to then get 20% off my Benefit purchases, so I bought a £1.29 Yankee Votive Candle and I was all set. 

The voucher can be used on as many purchases as you want until 4th October, and you pick which two brands you want to use it with. So my bottle of Sofia was just under £24. 

I also asked the Benefit girl for a good sized sample of Porefessional. I had tried a little same I got at the House of Fraser event last week, and was impressed, but I want to try a decent sample of it before I would shell out £24, or whatever it will cost with my voucher. It seems to work well to minimise my open pores around my nose, so it's tentatively on my shopping list. 

Anyway, this face below is the face of a child who has just been told, "okay, you may use my 100 colour eyeshadow palette to paint my face". He used the neon pink eyeshadow on me, and my lipstick looked like Miranda Sings. 

Lighting was bad but I'll maybe make a video next time to show you his skills. Mine are just a little bit better, I shouldn't laugh!

The Next Playground Craze are Stikeez : Where to Get Them & All You Need to Know

Remember trekking round the pound stores trying to get your hands on a pack of loom bands last summer? Well here is a heads up and how you can get ahead with this winter's new craze. 

I heard of Stickeez during the summer in a Lidl leaflet, but I hadn't seen them in store yet. My son came home from school yesterday asking could we go buy some, as they've started being pulled out of pockets in the playground already. 

 They come in separate packs for 29p and my local Bangor store has a stand of hundreds of bags at the till as of this week.

Even the submarine shaped collector box is only £1.99, but I didn't see it available to buy in my store. 

Each bag has a little plastic fish character that can stick onto a table or window. One of my Instagram followers said their children attached them to their wall and it pulled the paint loose, so it may be worth warning kids of that. 

For 29p it's not a bad craze, I'm going to buy a bag of them and use them as rewards for getting spellings, homeworks and things like that done. And until the end of this week you get a free Stikeez bag with every £10 spent! We can all agree though, that like loom bands, this will be hectic for a few months then we will never see them played with again! Good luck, fellow parents! I'll see you in the aisles of Lidl soon! 

Wednesday Round-up: Drop a Jean Size 3/4 Mark, New Revolution Make-up & Readers, Can You Help Recommend Me a Hair Product for Crazy Frizz?

I started my drop a jean size challenge last Monday, with the intentions of sticking to The New You Plan diet a bit longer (see here for their drop a jean size journal should you want to do the same).

M&S Feta & Olive Side Salad : Lidl Salmon with Dill Dressing

I've lots going on at the moment, real life important stuff, so I'm not in the headspace to stick to New You 100%. When you are paying for a special diet, there isn't much point doing it by halves, you waste time and money, so I've bowed out of their Secret Slimmers' Facebook support group for now, but I promise I will be back! 

I was 9 days into my drop a jean size, which finishes this coming Monday, and I think I can still do it. I'm definitely shrinking and even though I tried that M&S pizza last night to review it, I only had one slice and a big salad. 

Lunch today is smoked salmon and dill from Lidl with salad. There's feta in the salad so it isn't mega healthy, but it could be worse. I'll let you know if I can fit my size 12 M&S boot cut jeans on Monday then! 

You saw my post yesterday about the giant Revolution 100 shade, £12 eyeshadow palette. It's class and my shadow I used today is a shimmery nude, a cream light brown and a glittery dark brown. I've been trying out different brushes, and got a Revolution blending brush to try to get the effect below. I still need some practice, don't I??

I also got the Revolution Kajal eyeliner crayon which I've owned before, despite my makeup immaturity! My Ballyholme friend Arlene has posted me one of these a couple of years ago, and I found I was able to apply it easily to my lower eyeliner waterline with ease. It's huge crayoness with soft texture, combined with its £2 price tags makes it a good eyeliner for novices or wobbly handed girlies like I was/am! 

It doesn't claim to be waterproof, but it does say smudge proof and it's never let me down, or bled down into my wrinkles. 

I also got a trio of Revolution Amazing Lipsticks that Superdrug didn't have in stock. I need to try them on properly to see which ones work. Under lightbulb lighting, late last night, the darkest one looked a little bit too gothy, but I'll show you soon.

Lastly, a shout out to my readers, I need some help. I have very thick, long hair, which has been treated with bleach to achieve a lighter effect at the ends. I use John Frieda cream serum, as the oily one I don't like, plus a balm type serum of the same range that I apply AFTER the hair is dry too. I use a good quality shampoo and use Aussie 3 Min Miracle Conditioner on my hair EVERY DAY when I wash it. I also straighten it with GHDs. But it's STILL frizzy. 

Has anyone any secret products they can recommend? Is Mane & Tail worth the price tag? Talk to me on @rudedoodle on Twitter or Instagram and help me out! 

IKEA's #PolitePlacemats : Apple Genuis? Or Are Your Manners Too Far Gone?

This is the IKEA Sittning placemat, and it could be the answer to anti-social dining. 

It's £1.50 and its clever feature is its little phone pouch. I'm as guilty as anyone of Instagramming the heck out of a good 50% of my meals, but this pocket has a place specifically for my anti-social device, to stop me placing it on the table and checking it constantly throughout the meal for those precious 'likes'. 

The thing is, I think it might make me EVEN worse. I usually pop my phone in my pocket and maybe take it out when I've finished eating to check, but if it's sitting inside its little placemat sleeping bag, where I can SEE if it lights up with a notification- surely I'm more likely to use it? 

Anyway, it's a cheap and cheerful IKEA design, and if you don't think the pocket would work well for phones, then it could be a neat way of setting the table with your cutlery tucked in there, or a nice napkin- IKEA napkin designs are always epic. 

What do you think? Give me a tweet #politeplacemats and have your say. I could do with one with a bigger pouch for a certain small someone's Kindle Fire HD! 

I Smell Like a Great Big Parma Violet

A reoccurring theme on The World of Kitsch, since I launched in 2009, is my devotion to finding anything and everything with the scent of the classic Swizzels Matlow sweets, Parma Violets. 

One of my most viewed posts, week in and week out, is a March 2014 post about a range of sugared violet beauty products. I did a bit of backwards search engining and found if you Google search 'Parma Violet perfume' it's one of the top results. This is ironic as I'm STILL asking Twitter even this year for other people's recommendations of perfumes that smell like the sweets.

This week I ebayed for some more Parma items and came across this body butter from  Squeaky Soaps. It was only £2, £3.99 postage mind you, and delivered in two days. It's VERY thick and super whipped. It feels heavy but with it comes a lot of moisturisation. It would be great for dry skin, and if violets aren't your thing there's a marshmallow scent on sale too.

I've ordered a couple of other small, handmade businesses' items with the same scent on eBay, so watch out for them this week. 

If you fancy checking out my really popular Parma Violets' beauty range blog post  you can visit it here!

M&S Pizzas- A Second Chance & New Flavours to Try

Pizzas £4 each : Salads two for £4

I love M&S food, and 99% of the time I'm happy to pay the slightly more than other supermarket prices for their products, because the quality is always there. But, I have a secret. I hate M&S pizzas.

I tried them a few years ago and just didn't like them. I didn't like the base, the toppings, the way they cooked- nothing. So when my lovely PR contact at M&S asked me to pick up the new stone baked varieties from Sprucefield to try, I wasn't as enthusiastic as I usually am about my trip to Lisburn. 

I picked the classics, and the new combinations, all of which cost £4. The new pizza recipes are BBQ Pulled Pork, The Magnificent Meaty and The New Yorker. The latter appealed to me the most with pastrami, gherkins and what looks like American mustard toppings.

Every pizza is totally loaded with toppings, no half measures. But, did I like the M&S pizzas now? A few years on and I can safely score them off my dislikes list. The bases cook really well, the toppings are lovely and I would definitely buy them again. I think I'd still avoid the boxed pizzas which were the ones I didn't care for previously, but this range is everything you'd expect from M&S. Filling, delicious and very tasty.

That's the pepperoni one below, which my son and I shared this evening with their olive and feta salad. He gives it a big thumbs up too. The New Yorker is the one I'm most curious about, so keep an eye on my Instagram (@rudedoodle) and I'll let you know how it goes when we cook it. 

The 100 Colour, £12 Eyeshadow Palette Every Makeup Junkie Needs

I nearly collapsed with excitement when I spied this  100 shade eyeshadow palette from Revolution which is only £12 on both their own site & Superdrug's. I ordered it on Sunday afternoon & it was delivered to my local Superdrug store for pick up today.

It has nudes, mattes, shimmers, neons, the works. All I need to do now I skill up on eyeshadow application, especially with colours. 

The Big Monday Morning Round-up: Clarins Double Serum, Lidl Fashion, & Drop a Jean Size Challenge Midpoint Check-in

I've follow up news on three different topics I've blogged about before, so I'm combining them in one big Monday morning round-up. 

I blogged a few days ago that I was trying  Clarins Double Serum which is the UK's leading serum product with a string of awards to its name.

Its a unique oil AND water product, and Clarins have found a combination so they work together rather than separating as those elements usually would. You can see the bottle above is split in two, oil on one side, water based serum on the other. When you pump to dispense both come out and you combine them before applying to your face. 

I was given a few samples at the House of Fraser 'Beauty Confidential' event, where you can currently pick up Double Serum for £59, saving £10 on their regular price.

I have tried all my samples, one each night and truthfully I haven't noticed much of a difference from my usual Boots No.7 serum. The Clarins rep said that to really get a good idea of the product you need a week's worth of samples, but by the time I reached that concession after my Laura Mercier makeover, they were almost all gone. So perhaps that's why I didn't notice any different YET, I only had four nights' samples.  

Also I thought the samples themselves were a little small. I realise it's an expensive product, so samples will be costly to give out for free, but I found it tricky to get any of the water based side of the serum out of the sachet at all. 

I do want to give Clarins Double Serum another try though. The lady representing them said they get sample sizes in every few weeks, so I will try to see if I can get a seven day supply of samples when I'm up again. 

I'm keen to visit House of Fraser while the Beauty Confidential offer is still running, as the other product they showed us, Instant Smooth, is also £10 off at only £16.50

This stuff is magical. It was their innovative product they shared with us during the talk that night, and what it can do has to be seen to be believed.  

Rubbing a tiny amount on the palm of your hand, then comparing to your other one, will show you just how effective Instant Smooth is. Wrinkles and lines are filled in and simply disappear. I had never seen anything like it.

Of course the effect is temporary, once you take off your makeup at the end of the day your wrinkles are back- but it's a cheaper and less drastic measure than injected fillers. 

So, who managed to get something wonderful from the range of Lidl Fashion that arrived in stores last Thursday? 

I was thrilled to find the striped t-shirt I had wanted at the press event, at only £5.99 in my local Bangor store. I couldn't find the panelled leather look leggings, but I've a feeling they said those will be in store in November. 

Finally, I'm one week into my drop a jean size challenge. My weight is inching down, and those size 12 jeans are looking more like they will fit every day. In fact I was able to buy size 12 leather-look leggings yesterday in Exhibit.

 The New You site has lots of new bundle offers in time for slimming down for Christmas, if you fancy joining me.