What's In My Overnight Bag

I'm back today with part two of my three post series this week! I really love 'What's In My Bag' posts so I thought I would take a slightly different spin on it and share the contents of my overnight bag from our Nicki Minaj trip!

I tried to pack as light as possible and trust me that was hard to do as I ALWAYS overpack. We were planning on doing quite a bit of shopping and there would be times when we would have to carry our luggage around so I really tried to only take things (I thought) I needed. I took my big Mulberry inspired handbag with me as it is very roomy for storing lots of things! I'd say it looked very similar to their Bayswater handbag and was much cheaper too! I used it as a handbag whilst we were staying in the hotel and transferred my essential items that I needed easy access to into a cross body clutch when I used it for my luggage.

I didn't take much clothes with me as it wasn't really essential to do so. I took two day outfits and one separate outfit for the concert at night. I also had a set of pyjamas, socks, underwear, that kind of thing!

I also packed my Cath Kidston make up bag with the following contents:

Revlon ColorStay Foundation for Normal/Dry Skin, L'Oreal Paris Infallible Primer, Maybelline Fit Me Powder, Collection 2000 Concealer, Maybelline Baby Lips, MUA Blush, Two Midi Rings, Maybelline's Falsies Mascara, Two Tanya Burr Lipglosses, Simple Light Moisturiser, Batiste Dry Shampoo, Simple Cleansing Facial Wipes, Cuticle Stick, Real Techniques Buffing Brush and the Real Techniques Duo Fiber Face/Eye Brush.

Finally, some random other bits and bobs for the bottom of the bag!

Portable USB Charger (fantastic invention), iPhone Charger, Prescription Glasses, Ray-Ban Sunglasses, Marc Jacobs Pouch for medication and such things, Apple Earphones, Sure Invisible Pure Deodorant, Victoria's Secret 'Angels Only' Body Mist, Ralph Lauren 'Big Pony Woman's Collection - Pink' perfume and my Tangle Teezer.

I hope you enjoyed this post, what are your travel essentials for an overnight bag? I'll be back on Sunday with a Fashion Haul from our trip!

Nick Minaj's Pink Print Tour

Hello everyone, I'm back this week with the first of three posts on a recent trip I went on to celebrate my sister's birthday. I was lucky enough to go and see Nicki Minaj's European leg of The Pinkprint Tour this month. I was really excited about this as I kept the concert from my sister as birthday surprise for four months so it was strange when the day finally came around! In all honesty, I am not the biggest fan of Nicki Minaj but I do really like the songs she has had in the charts e.g. Super Bass. We don't really get the opportunity to see many big acts here so I felt like I needed to go!

I absolutely loved the concert and enjoyed it so much more than I expected to. Nicki's vocal is phenomenal live and her rapping skills are insanely impressive in person. She sung both ballads and  rap numbers yet was still consistently good. As far as I remember, the setlist consisted of over 20 tracks so the ticket price was definitely good value for money. We were seated but everyone still stood up and danced which made it a great atmosphere. My favourite song on the night was definitely 'Pound The Alarm' as the crowd were jumping in the air and it was like one giant party really. I would say that I enjoyed the songs that I knew much more than the ones I didn't but I discovered some brilliant new tracks by her. My new favourites are 'Grand Piano', 'Marilyn Monroe' and 'Whip It'. Nicki actually brought fans onto the stage with her to sing Whip It and the guy she chose was literally the most funny and entertaining person to watch. I thought that was such a lovely thought to do that for her fans!

We also saw Ester Dean from Pitch Perfect which was insanely cool. I wouldn't of recognised her if I hadn't googled the support acts before hand! I wasn't overly impressed with Trey Songz as I wasn't familiar with him at all and his set was very long. It would of been fantastic if you were a fan of his though as he performed for the best part of an hour.

Hope you enjoyed this post, if you saw Nicki Minaj recently on her Pink Print Tour I'd love to hear what you thought in the comments. I have plenty of ideas swirling around my head at the moment for new posts so keep checking back this week for more! You can also keep up with me on Instagram @thelittleblogofeverything where I upload every other day normally with entirely different content from the blog!

Hope you enjoy the rest of your day wherever you are :)

Instagram Favourites

I've seen this kind of a post on a few blogs now and I think it's such an interesting and different idea! Therefore for today's post, I am going to share my celebrity Instagram favourites. They are pretty much a mixed bag and I could of picked so many more but I like when I see these people pop up on my timeline.

Bargain Beauty Buys

Over the past few weeks, I've managed to accumulate a rather big amount of new beauty products. I don't usually buy so many different items so close together so I thought it was a nice opportunity for a little haul!

Firstly I finally got my hands on the limited edition Real Techniques brushes. I have wanted these for quite a long time now and put them on my Christmas list etc. but they are quite expensive so I hadn't purchased them yet. I was having a casual browse on Amazon last week and found them for £13.82 which was a brilliant price considering they sell for £23.99 in the shops. I snapped them up straight away and received them the very next day on Prime delivery. This particular set includes a face brush, a contour brush and an eye brush. In all honestly, I don't love them as much as my other Real Techniques brushes as I don't see much noticeable difference when I use them. They are designed to be very light when applying makeup so they are maybe doing a better job than I realise. I love how they look though and the bristles are so soft. I found the eye brush particularly good when I tested it as my eyeshadow wasn't too heavy and looked subtly nice.

I picked up a fair amount of makeup items in Boots as they currently have their 3 for 2 offer across all brands. The only item I actually intended to purchase (oops) was a new foundation as I feel like the one I'm using at the moment (Maybelline's Fit Me) sometimes makes me look a tad orange and doesn't last all day. I purchased Revlon's Colour Stay in their lightest shade (Ivory) and so far so good! I really like how they have two options depending on your skin type as I get patches of dry skin on my face that foundation can make really noticeable. I have only used it a few times so far but it seems to be lasting quite well.

I also picked up Soap and Glory's Supercat eyeliner as this is a particular aspect of makeup I would like to get better at applying. I don't ever wear eyeliner as my efforts to apply it are particularly shocking. I read across various blogs that this one was a favourite and very easy to apply so we'll see!

The absolute bargains of my purchases though were these Ted Baker Body Washes. Boots are currently selling most of the Ted Baker range at 75% off so I can't even stress how much of a great buy these are if you love to pick up designer items. I actually purchased the body wash on the far right on it's own for £1.88 and thought that was a great buy. I visited another Boots store a few days later not even looking for more Ted Baker items and they had so much more stock available. I also purchased the third item for £1.88 and the boxed ones cost £2 so they were also excellent value for money. The boxed items actually came with a pump which will be much easier to use as the bottle on the far right is rather difficult to squeeze the product out of. Boots had all sorts of items available in the Ted Baker sale such as body sprays and lotions. It is definitely worth a look if you get a chance!

My last purchase wasn't a bargain as such but just something I have been trying to find for a couple of months now. I got Soap and Glory's Whipped Clean shower cream as part of a gift set at Christmas and I stupidly used it all up quickly because I loved it so much. I have checked in four different Boots store (I'm not even kidding) for it and never came across it. I suppose I could of ordered it online but I wasn't really in desperate need to buy it again. I finally found it a few days ago in the fifth Boots store I tried so I'm really excited to be able to use it again. It's a pity that it's so overpriced at £7 as it's an excellent product. If I hadn't been looking for it for so long, I probably wouldn't of repurchased at this price.

I hope you enjoyed this post. Have you used any of these products? If so, I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

 

Baking a Cookie Cake!

We celebrated my sister's 15th birthday this week and as I had bought her concert tickets as her main gift, I wanted to find a creative way to give them to her. I think giving someone an envelope as a gift usually means money, vouchers, tickets etc. so I wanted to do something that would take her completely by surprise! I remembered a few years ago that she asked for a Cookie Cake and after realising how expensive it was to buy one (I had already spent way too much than I intended on her birthday), I decided to have a go at making one myself. I was extremely nervous that it was going to backfire but I was so pleased with the finish result!

It took very little ingredients to bake as I only used a standard cookie mix, some strawberry icing and a bag of M & M's! I started off by moulding the cookie mix (milk and white chocolate chips) into the shape of a circular baking tray to achieve the standard Cookie Cake size and shape. I then built the edges up a little to form as much of a circular outline as possible to make it look even.

I literally made this with without  a recipe so I baked it in the oven at 155 degrees until it looked baked (professional or what?). It was probably in the oven about 15-20 minutes, I can't really remember. It didn't bake aswell on the bottom as I had hoped but it was too much of a risk in burning the whole cake in order to achieve this as the top was very golden.

Whilst it was still warm from the oven, I arranged a bunch of a M & M's to spell out '15' in the middle. It looked very simple but effective I thought!

To finish it off, I piped small rosettes around the edge using a tub of strawberry flavoured icing that I pre bought from the supermarket. I didn't have much time as the only time I was able to bake the cake was early in the morning when my sister was asleep! I was kinda on edge that she would appear and catch me!

I presented my finished Cookie Cake in a white box with a huge pink bow on the top! I loved how it turned out and I was so chuffed with it. I put the concert tickets in an envelope and stuck them on the inside of the box which she didn't actually notice straight away like I had hoped! She actually didn't believe I had made it myself and thought I bought it from Millie's Cookies! So mission accomplished right? 

I hope you enjoyed this post. I have a good few ideas for new content over the next week so I'll be back soon! Hope you enjoy the rest of your day wherever you are :)

March Favourites

Another month has passed already! I can't believe it's already April and time for another favourites post. I love reading these and have done even since before I started blogging so this is a post I like to feature every month on my own blog. A bit of a mixed bag of favourites this month (like most months really!) so here it goes:

Pretty Little Liars Season 5

If you aren't a Pretty Little Liars fan, I'd be extremely surprised if you haven't seen anything about it online these past few weeks. Season 5 concluded last week with viewers finally sort of finding out the identity of the show's super villain 'A'. I was slightly disappointed with the finale but I never expected to see the true identity of A  and was prepared for that. I did think it would be a character that we would at least recognise! This show was a favourite of mine this month though as I was very excited about it during the build up to the season finale. Everyone was talking about it and there was generally just a lot of hype surrounding it. We even had a bet going on at home to see who could correctly guess who A was. I actually read the correct theory a few weeks ago so I was extremely annoyed at myself that I didn't think of it as I would of won the money!


Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

I have already done a whole blog post on this show but it was definitely one of my favourite new TV finds last month. If you aren't familiar with it, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is the a new 13 episode Netflix Original starring Ellie Kemper. Kemper plays the lead role as a a young woman who has was held captive in a underground bunker by a man who believed that the apocalypse had happened. She is released 15 years later and decides to embark on a new adventure in New York rather than returning to Ohio. At roughly 20 minutes per episode, this series is truly binge worthy and is so easy to watch one episode after the other. I loved Kimmy's unintentional ignorance in this show from everything from selfies to iPhones. Kemper played her lack of awareness to the current world brilliantly. I wouldn't say it was the best comedy I had ever seen but it's a great little binge watch if you are looking for something new to try.


Bobble Bottle

This was a bit of an impulse purchase after knowing about these for a while. They are a bit on the expensive side as far as water bottles go but I was extremely impressed when I first tried it out. The Bobble Bottle basically filters your regular tap water. I grew up never really liking to drink plain water but I've began to enjoy it more as I've gotten older. I still wouldn't drink tap water really but the Bobble Bottle makes it taste just like bottled water does. I've been taking the bottle with me to work and to my pilates/yoga classes so I've probably made the money I would have spent on drinks back already!


Sia

I've liked Sia's music for a long time now but I've somehow become totally obsessed with her latest hits this month. I absolutely love Chandelier and appreciated so much more when I realised what it was about. I've also watched a bunch of live performances of Sia and Maddie Ziegler performing together and they are so brilliant. Another favourite track of hers this month has been Elastic Heart and Salted Wound which actually featured on the Fifty Shades of Grey soundtrack!


Porridge

I've upped my breakfast game this month by eating porridge most days! I remember eating plain porridge with jam when I was little but it was something I never really tried since then. We had a lot of the Special K porridge pots at home so I decided to give it a try. I don't like Almonds or Honey but I actually really enjoyed it! I went out and bought the packet version that you make with milk as just adding hot water to the porridge probably wasn't the healthiest variety I could be eating. I've still been eating the Almond and Honey kind but with Almond Milk now and it is amazing. I thought it may have been too much Almonds but it tasted even better than I hoped!

I hope you enjoyed this post, what have been your favourites in March?