Three Ways to Say, 'Yes' to Giorgio Armani's New Fragrance 'Sì'. #SaySi

Giorgio fragrances have played a big part in my life. One fateful Saturday afternoon in my teens, out shopping with my Mum & my best friend at the time Gemma, we were spritzed in Debenhams with the Giorgio Beverly Hills perfume 'Ocean Dream'. I instantly fell in love & it became my signature fragrance for years to come.  

Around 2002 it became increasingly difficult to buy, as the scent must have been discontinued. Besides the odd bottle my Mum would track down on her Saturday afternoon trips to towns all over NI with my Dad for shopping adventures, I had to accept my favourite scent was now a goner.

Since then I've tried many a perfume, but never fallen in love with any of them as much as I loved my Ocean Dream. 

So in the last couple of years I've had a few perfumes I've bounced back and forth between. I like the freshness of Clarins' 'Eau des Jardins', the sweetie-esque scent of Benefit's 'Something About Sofia', and for on the go I like the tiny price tag of M&S's fruity 'Butterfly' (it totally smells like Marc Jacobs 'Daisy').

So given my history with Ocean Dream, I was pretty hopefully I would love the new Giorgio Armani fragrance 'Sì'. 

Mr Armani drew inspiration from the strength of his mother, and designed a scent to represent modern femininity. 

Sì comes in three incarnations. The Eau de Toilette is playful & free-spirited. It's my favourite of the three as the pear, blackcurrant and vanilla tones remind me most of the lightness of Ocean Dream. It's £42 for 30ml and works as a perfect daily wear fragrance. I'm immediately swapping it in as my daily scent.

The Eau de Parfum has extracts of cassis nectar, with darker fruit tones lifted with freesia and rich rose. It takes Sì from day to night and stays stronger for longer.  It's priced at £47 for 30ml.

Finally the richest version of Sì, the Eau de Parfum Intense. It's £72 for 50ml but with its more condensed scent you don't need to apply much to carry off the elegant fragrance all evening. It's a more sensual, heavy scent with blackcurrant, for balsam and golden benzoin. 

My favourite Sì is the light Eau de Toilette, which I will be wearing for the foreseeable future. Could it be I've finally found a perfume to live up to my first love, Ocean Dream? I say, "sì ".

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!

Katy Perry's Royal Revolution- the Revolution Will Be Smellivised

This week I've spied fellow Northern Irish bloggers receive super snazzy personalised note books along with the new Royal Revolution scent from Katy Perry. I contacted he lovely Fiona, the friendliest PR in all of Ireland, but sadly I was too late for my own book.

Fiona being wonderful though, poster me the perfume and some fresh, new shades of nail polish from NYC Cosmetics. 

I love the Katy Perry crest. Cats! The perfume itself is very light, young and fresh. It's girly and reminds me of a perfume or smell from my teenage years. I'm going to wear it over the summer, as it's a really nice 'fit' for the season.

It's available from Gordon's Chemist in NI, and all other good perfume stores in the UK. 

Now... which colour for my nails first?