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.