Avant Gentle Rose Beautifying Face Exfoliant

Today I want to talk to you about the most expensive skincare product that has ever graced my bathroom. That product is the Avant Gentle Rose Beautifying Face Exfoliant.

This product set tongues wagging amongst the GlossyBox community when it arrived in the April Box with an astonishing RRP of £92! Yes I know it’s a crazy prize for a 50ml product, I have looked around online and as you can see below it’s really is available to buy from the Avant website for £92.00!

I would never spend this much on a single beauty product so if it hadn’t arrived with my subscription, I would never have tried it. So let’s take a look at it.

The packaging is sleek and simple, combining a black and white exterior with simple text to create a very plain product that doesn’t exactly jump out at you from the shelf. Upon closer inspection I also noticed that on the outer packaging they have printed the word papaya twice. I’m not sure exactly why that is, I might be missing the point but to the untrained eye it looks like a mis print to me and thats not what you expect on a £92.00 product!

Combining rose, papaya, vitamin B 5, proline it has some serious top level ingredients with properties including intensive hydrating, soothing and anti-oxidants, Rose to help calm redness, skin irritation and the appearance of wrinkles whilst Vitamin B5 helps retain the moisture in the skin.

Avant claim that the product has the following attributes

- Aims to hydrate intensively

- Works to smooth wrinkles

- Helps soften skin

- Contributes to lessen redness

I tried out this product over the short term to see if I could notice an instant change in the texture of my skin and I’m pleased to say that it did. It’s pearlescent texture is silky smooth and the very fine beads are gentle on the skin whilst effectively lifting the dead skin, dirt and grime without causing irritation.

It’s an absolutely beautiful product which leaves my skin feeling soft and clear. The

scent is soothing and not overpowering. I really love this product and I am not looking forward to it running out. I can’t justify the hefty cost of this product so I won’t be in a position to repurchase it when it runs out. However if you have £92.00 to spend on your skin then this is a worthy contender for your hard earned cash!

GET NAKED Bath Mats

I have recently found myself swooning over what feels like thousands of Instagram accounts looking for some bathroom inspiration. I would really love to make some changes to the accessories in our family bathroom. Hubz wont let me completely redecorate as he says there is actually nothing wrong with the basic decor in the bathroom, I don't agree but he cant stop me changing the accessories. 

There is one item that pops up in what feels like every single influencer's bathrooms are the GET NAKED bath mats, and the more I see them the more I love them so I went searching for one. 

Urban Outfitters

As a result of my search I have found that there are a tonne of these on the market with the largest selection hailing from Urban Outfitters. These are a tad on the pricy side ranging from £25.00-£29.00 and this is more than I was looking to spend on what is essentially 'just' a bath mat. As these cost more than I was looking to spend, I decided to start a search for something a little cheaper and there are plenty of other options on the market so I want to share a selection of the lower cost options with you.

  Next £14.00                        B and M £6.99                                 Albert and Moo £12.00

There is no doubt that the mats from Urban Outfitters are stunning however these are some alternative options for you. 

I can't get over how similar the bath mat from B and M is to the Urban Outfitters version. I have decided that I am going to search for this mat when we can go shopping freely again. This one isn't available to purchase online and I think this option will suit the look I am going for. I just wanted to show you that you are able to achieve similar looks in you own home and you dont have to spend a fortune to get the look either!

C x 

Ritual Of Sakura Softening Rice Scrub

I am a big lover of Rituals products, so when this shower scrub from their Ritual of Sakura range arrived in the April Glossybox I did a little happy dance, I was particularly pleased as it was from a scent range that I hadn’t sampled before. 

The rituals mantra printed on the packaging is ‘celebrate each day as a new beginning’ and that has never felt more poignant than in current times. So I thought it was the perfect product for a pick me up today.

I was pretty eager to jump in the shower and give this a try and see how it stacked up against products from Rituals ranges that I had used before. 

Infused with cherry blossom and rice milk this is highly scented product with flowery and feminine tones. If you are sensitive to strongly scented products then this might be one range that you want to stay away from.

The very fine beads are made form volcanic particles and gently glide across the skin exfoliating perfectly without the need to apply too much pressure. Working the product in circular motions it removes any dry or flakey skin with ease and without causing irritation to the skin underneath.

The Rituals website explains that this product that transforms from an exfoliant to a cleanser. I however didn’t experience this. It definitely felt like an exfoliant and it worked pretty effectively as just that. 

In my haste to get out of the shower I didn’t rinse around the bathtub as I would normally following any normal pampering sessions. Queue an eager husband ready to jump in the shower and he fell flat on his arse, he slipped on the exfoliant residue that had left a film on the base of the bath. 

I definitely recommend this product, it smells delicious and the scent stay on the skin so you keep getting subtle whiffs of the product throughout the day. It leaves your skin soft without causing irritation, my only comment would be don’t be lazy like I was and make sure you clean your showers out after you use this so you don’t have a shouty, bruised husband. 

The full size version of this product has a RRP of £9.90 You can purchase this product for yourself from 

the Rituals website HERE

C x

Shop From Your OWN Store: SKINCARE

Do any of us really know how many products we buy, use once (or don't even open) and then throw in a drawer never for them to see the light of day again? I do this far too much and I am sure I can't be the only person that is guilty of this bad habit, so I have decided to set myself a little challenge. Aside from my subscription boxes that are delivered to my door safely each month (Birchbox and GlossyBox), I am not going to buy any beauty or skincare products until I have used up the items I already have in my stash. I'm treating this like it my very own store and I don't even need to leave the house to shop from it!

I have emptied my skincare products out of storage and you can see I have a fair few unopened products, they are all from different brands and some that I didn't even realise that I had in my stash! Sometimes they arrive in a beauty box and then I tidy them away, shame on me. There is also a fair number of samples in this collection so I think I will get through these relatively quickly.

I will review anything new as I am sure there are items that I've never used before and let you know what I think of them. Why don't you have a look and see what you can use to save you spending a few pennies during lockdown.

C x

The Beer Garden @ No 48

The Beer Garden @ No 48 sounds like a pretty impressive hipster roof top bar right? Unfortunately it is nothing of the sort, in reality it's just my very own backyard and garden.

I would give anything to head out to our local and much loved pub for a drink in their gorgeous pub garden today as the weather is absolutely stunning. As the UK is still in lockdown thats not possible and doesn't look like we will be able to go out and about freely for a while, so I decided to bring a little bit of beer garden chic to my own garden.

I made this a few days ago out of some old scaffold boards secured together with baton that we had leftover from some previous renovations, however you could use anything scrap wood you have lying around in your shed or garage.

It was super simple and easy to make although I did have a little help from my power tool obsessed husband for the cutting. We secured the three lengths of scaffold board together by screwing some baton to the back horizontally across all the boards. Once you have your plank you can then get to work on the really fun part, the design.

I chose to paint the planks with my absolute favourite brand of paint that will be mentioned here a lot, I use it for pretty much all of my DIY projects and I absolutely LOVE it. Frenchic Paint 

I used some paint I had from their Alfresco Inside/Outside range that is designed specifically to be used on outside furniture, which made it perfect for this little project. I used two colours from the range Dusky Blush for the background and BlackJack for the script. 

I decided what I wanted the sign to say, sketched it out and then painted the script. It was that simple!

We really enjoyed tinkering and making something for the garden using items that we already had in the house. It was so easy, filled a couple of lockdown hours and really adds a splash of pastel perfection to the corner of our yard. 

C x 

🌿This post is in no way affiliated with Frenchic Paint, All items were purchased by myself and I am a huge fan of their products.

Day One

So this is all a bit new and incredibly daunting.

I didn’t think I would ever find the energy to be able to write again, but here I am sat in front of the screen with words pouring out of me as if nothing has changed.

Well things have definitely changed.
We are currently in the midst of a worldwide Covid-19 (Coronavirus) outbreak and the world we live in is not what it used to be. Our lives have stopped functioning in the usual way, we are unable to leave the house, perform normal daily tasks outside of the home or see friends and family. We are relying on technology for everything and I’ve never been more thankful to be so well equipped for keeping in touch. It does however highlight how bad most of us are at communication in the modern age. I mean considering that we have everything we need at our fingertips 24 hours a day to enable us to check in with the people we love and care about and we just don’t do it. We should all be a little ashamed at ourselves for that!

So why am I here?
Well my Dad sent a message on our family WhatsApp group yesterday to say that he had started writing a list of what he wants to achieve with when the world returns to a state of normality. We joked that it was a bucket list, but he described it as a new beginning, which I thought was quite poignant. He asked my Brother and I if we would do the same and share with him what we would like to achieve post pandemic. The first thing that was on my list was to rediscover my passion for writing. So here I am.

I used to love writing. It used to bring me joy like nothing else could. Being able to pour out the inner workings of your mind on to a page was like a form of therapy to me. I used to write a fairly successful beauty and lifestyle blog, but one day I just stopped, put a stop to my relationships with companies and didn’t make the time to come back to it. I’ve decided that now is the time for that to change.

I logged into my old blog this morning and immediately cringed at the 21 year old self obsessed young woman that wrote those words. So I decided that space wasn’t the correct platform for today’s words and decided to find a new home for my musings.

I’m not really sure what I’m going to write about here. I suppose a little bit of everything I love is a good place to start. You will find a bit of DIY, beauty, travel (when we can safely do that again), music and even a bit of talk about films and TV here to begin with and then we will see how this evolves and what feels natural. I’m excited to try and get back into writing so let’s see where this goes.

Welcome to The Flick and thank you for being here on day one.

C x