Snowy Days in Derbyshire

Hi lovelies!

Just a quick mid-week photo post ahead of a rather big and exciting post this Sunday.

I travelled home to Derbyshire to see family last week and woke up on Wednesday morning to this view:

Living on the Southern coast for the last few years means that every time it snows I try to make the most of it, so me and my mom had a ride out into the country to Chatsworth House. Although there wasn't actually much snow on the grounds around the house, the views were still pretty spectacular.

I love driving out into the country when I'm at home, and as much as I love living by the sea, the rolling hills of the Peak District always make me feel at home. We stopped off at the farm shop in Chatsworth to have a look at the views and came across a group of sheep and these spectacular view at the back of the café.

Even driving down all the little country lanes was pretty as all the trees looked so wintery and lovely. Although not being able to see very far ahead because of the fog was a little scary!

And, of course I had to get a selfie in the (sort of) snow!

What are your favourite things to do when it snows?

Fido's Kitchen: Paco's Peanut Butter Cups

As you all know, I love my four legged friend and love even more to spoil him with homemade yummy treats.

Today I have been trying out a new recipe from a very special cooking book...

Home Cooking for Your Dog

Thats right a whole cooking book dedicated to dog friendly dinners and treats. I received this as a gift for Christmas and I am already using the dinner recipes to feed my dog with. The idea of the book is that by cooking your dogs meals, you can control what is in it and adjust the nutrition to suit your animals needs. This is something I know from experience can have a huge effect on your dogs health and wellbeing. 

At the start of the book, there is clear and well explained information about why you might want to consider a more holistic approach to your dogs care as well as heaps of helpful charts about nutrition, good foods and foods that dogs should not be eating. 

The author of the book, Christine M Filardi not only had professional credentials but more than ten years of experience in feeding her own animals raw and cooked diets. The thing that I really enjoy about this book is the mix of everyday recipes and the special occasion ones that are a bit more out there and one of in the back of the book.

I thoroughly recommend checking this book out, even if you are just thinking of swapping your dogs diet, this book has plenty of information to allow you to make an informed decision.

Here's a quick little recipe from the treat section of the book... Paco's Peanut Butter Cups....

Paco's Peanut Butter Cups- Home Cooking for your Dog

For this recipe you will need:

2 cups porridge oats,

2 eggs,

1 cup shredded mozzarella,

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup hot water.

1) First step is to preheat your oven to 170C. 

2) Measure out all of your ingredients into a mixing bowl and then thoroughly combine... It's really as easy as that!

Paco's Peanut Butter Cups- Homemade Cooking for your Dog

3)When you have finished mixing everything together you should have a dough that is similar to cookie dough consistency.

4) Line a baking tray and lightly grease to prevent the treats from sticking. As you can see from the image bellow I used a layer of tinfoil dusted with flour. You could also use some baking paper or grease the pan directly.

 5) Collect a heaped teaspoon of the mixture and let it fall off onto the tray. You will then want to bake these for around 18 minutes or until they harden ever so slightly.

Let them cool completely before storing them. It is recommended to keep them in the fridge for up to three days, or in the freezer they will last 3 months.

Space Leggings OOTD

I don't think I have ever done a style related post on the blog, as lets face it, I spend most of my time in my comfy snuggle clothes or if I am getting dressed, I usually just throw on whatever is closest to me so I can get the pup out and walked.


I love easy comfy clothing! And this is an outfit that I have been going back to so much recently I had to share it with you. For me it's practical because you can layer lots under the jumper to keep you nice and warm on these cold winter days and because I feel that the space leggings amp it up enough for me to look like I have made the effort when really I am just going to be spending all my day running errands.

I kept my top and trainers more neutral so that the outfit isn't to out there for day to day wear.

I am wearing:

Sweatshirt- Zara

Leggings- Etsy- Green Galaxy Leggings

Trainers- New Balance 410

For a fun little touch I used similar colours in my eye makeup to the leggings. I have used my new LUSH liquid liner in motivation layered over the cream eyeshadow in intuitive.

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Sleek Makeup Brow Kit Tutorial

So I am back today with a really quick tutorial on the Sleek Makeup Brow Kit and how I use it to do my brows.

I am obsessed with the brow kit and have been using it for a long while now. With this product you can get anything from just a nice touch of colour to help to define your brow, to a really perfected drawn in brow.

For my personal taste, I like a defined brow but I do like to accentuate the hair that I do have there, so I feel it lies somewhere between the two.

For this tutorial I have used the brow kit in the shade dark and then to finish my brows at the end I use my Eyes Right mascara from LUSH as a substitute for a brow gel that you would run through your brows, a bit like the Gimme Brow by Benefit. Using the mascara is great because it is one less product I have to keep in my makeup bag as it doubles up for two. I have very dark hair naturally so I feel I can get away with a black mascara. The downside to doing this though is that mascara comes in a lot less shades then the products designed to do this with. So if you have anything from a medium brown to very fair eyebrows this probably wouldn't work for you.

As always I really hope that you enjoyed this little tutorial and that it maybe helped a little bit. If you have any questions please feel free to leave us a comment.

Also we are now on Bloglovin' so you can click the button in the side bar to easily follow us along with all your other blogs :)

Making The Move To Cruelty Free For The New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Typically I don't do a lot to see in the New Year and it is even less often that I set myself New Years resolutions. This year however I have set myself a few resolutions.

1) PASS MY DRIVING TEST. By the end of the year I would love to have my full driving license. I start taking practical lessons when I was in college as I was working two jobs and had a fair amount of disposable income. It did not go well to say the least. Driving just didn't click for me and I ended up spending a lot and never got round to taking my test. But I finish university in the summer of this year, and hopefully myself and/ or Jacob will be able to find some work, this will probably mean moving out of Cornwall and/ or having to commute. It would just be so much easier for both of us if I am not so reliant on Jacob for transport.

2) SAVE ENOUGH MONEY TO GO ON HOLIDAY NEXT CHRISTMAS. The driving one plays into this again. Myself and Jacob have been wanting to go away together for as long as we have known each other. Going away now is harder as we do not want to have to rely on anyone to look after Red or put him in a kennel (I'm not sure he would adjust well), but if we are both able to drive then we can drive and take ferry's to loss of different places in Europe and the benefit of this is we can travel WITH RED! 

3) TO ONLY USE CRUELTY FREE MAKEUP AND BEAUTY PRODUCTS. So by this I mean anything that I will be putting on my hair, skin and nails. I have already started my cruelty free journey and have been researching and trying products... And thats what I am going to share with you today.

There are a lot of things to consider when making the choice to go cruelty free. A lot of cruelty free bloggers use a similar set of questions when directly contacting companies to determine whether they are truly cruelty free. They are as follows:

1) Do you test on animals?

2) Do you use third party companies to test on animals?

3) Do you have any parent or sister companies that test on animals?

4) Have any of your ingredient, or any of your finished products been tested on animals?

5) Do you distribute in China?

BODY SHOP

When I first started transitioning my products I hadn't done a whole lot of research. I ended up purchasing a few product to try from the Body Shop under the impression they are a cruelty free company. Some time after I bought the products I found out some really disappointing news. Whilst the Body Shop does not test ingredients or finished products on animals, they were bought out in 2006 by L'oreal, who DO test on animals. This does make me uncomfortable because a percentage of my money still would have gone to a company who does test on animals. I therefore will not be purchasing any Body Shop products from now on and when the products I do own get used up, I will be looking for different products to replace them

LUSH

For myself right now I am really enjoying exploring LUSH products with the piece of mind that they are a truly cruelty free company who are an active figure in fighting against animal testing. I strongly urge you to follow this link and read up on their amazing policy on animal testing Lush animal testing policy

SLEEK MAKEUP 

I have been using and loving Sleek Makeup for a long time, and I can carry on enjoying them as they are a cruelty free brand! They have some amazing products that a really affordable so they are winning in all areas for me at the moment. Here is a link to a great blogger who first hand contacted them to get them to confirm there cruelty free status: Sleek Makeup animal testing policy.

Some other brands I am currently researching and hope to try out in the future include:

Barry M

Superdrug own brand

Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics

Sugar Pill

Lime Crime

Elf

Ben Nye

Pixi

There are so many great resources and bloggers out there that are dedicating their time to listing and researching cruelty free brands and products. It's really as simple as googling cruelty free blogs, doing your own research and looking for multiple sources and doing first hand research by contacting companies yourself with questions and concerns. As my journey continues and I learn more about different brands and products, I will be sharing all of my finding with you!

Since this has been a pretty lengthy post today I thought it would be fun to do a little makeup tutorial using some of the new cruelty free products I am trying. This isn't a completely cruelty free makeup look as I am still transitioning a lot of my collection, however I will clearly label what is cruelty free and what is not cruelty free!

For this look I used:

LUSH Colour Supplement in Dark Pink

LUSH Colour Supplement in Dark Pink. CRUELTY FREE.

Sleek Makeup Contour Kit

SLEEK MAKEUP Bronzer from the Contour Kit in Medium. CRUELTY FREE.

Sleek Makeup Highlighter Palette

SLEEK MAKEUP Highlighter Palette in Precious Metals. CRUELTY FREE.

Sleek Makeup I-Devine Storm Palette

SLEEK MAKEUP I-Devine Storm Palette, I used the colour Firestorm. CRUELTY FREE.

Lush Eyes Right, Motivation, Happiness and Intuitive. The Body Shop Liquid Liner.

LUSH Eyes Right, Motivation, Happiness and Intuitive. CRUELTY FREE.

THE BODY SHOP Liquid Eyeliner. HAS A PARENT COMPANY WHO IS NOT CRUELTY FREE.

Sleek Makeup Brow Kit in Dark.

SLEEK MAKEUP Brow Kit in Dark. CRUELTY FREE.

Maybelline Hollywood Red Lipstick.

MAYBELLINE 540 Hollywood Red Lipstick. NOT CRUELTY FREE.

The Body Shop All In One Face Base.

THE BODY SHOP All In One Face Base 06. HAS A PARENT COMPANY WHO IS NOT CRUELTY FREE.

And here is how I put these products together:

I really enjoyed wearing this makeup look, and those Lush eye products are amazing, they just do not budge all day and the colours are just beautiful.

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