I took some (very amateur) snippets of travel footage while myself, John, my mam and my brother were in Malta. It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, right? As you’ve probably seen me mention a couple of times on Instagram stories, my mam isn’t very well, so we’re trying to make some lasting memories with her. She’s been to Malta a few times over the years and loved it. I thought it would be fun for us all to go together on a little family trip.
I booked the flights for next to nothing on Ryanair a couple of weeks before we went. It’s off season so they we super cheap.
So was the Airbnb, although as I say in the vlog, I wouldn’t recommend where we stayed, so I didn’t show much of it. It was grand for how we used it and how much it cost in January. The location was great too. We stayed in St Julian, the apartment was close to lots of bus stops and had plenty of amenities close by.
As I mentioned this holiday was more for my mam, and she loves shopping. We spent most of it waiting outside of shops for her 🙂 We did do a little exploring and lots of eating and drinking in between though.
Malta is a beautiful place. We managed to travel to Valletta, Sliema and Gozo, (which is an Island), within our week there. It’s a reasonably small country so it doesn’t take too long to get from one place to another.
The architecture is beautiful and the cathedrals in particular will blow your mind. I never thought I would get up close to masterpieces from the artist Caravaggio. I actually studied some of his paintings in school, so it was amazing to learn more about him and see some of his works in real life.
Overall, our trip to Malta was a memorable one. The food, the views and the people are all brilliant. It is pretty chilly there if you travel in January, that’s something to be mindful of. You automatically think of it as a warm country. We will 100% will be back, to do even more exploring.
Let me know what you think of the travel vlog. Is it worth me doing more of them in the future?
https://i1.wp.com/beautynook.ie/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/travel-vlog-malta.jpg?fit=2200%2C2200&ssl=122002200Gemhttps://beautynook.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Logo.pngGem2019-02-06 19:42:332019-02-06 19:42:33Travel Vlog Malta
Edinburgh definitely wasn’t supposed to be a shopping holiday. We were only there for two days. Myself, John and my Mam went. We explored the city (which is awesome by the way). We did some of the tourist attractions. Camera Obscura is definitely something to do if you go, and ate and drank ourselves silly. On the last day our flight was in the evening so we pottered into the city and the shopping just happened. My mother is a professional shopping in fairness so she took us all along for the ride 🙂 I ended up getting some fashion bits, beauty and homeware bits too. Compiling it all together I realised I had enough to compile a haul 🙂
Also myself and John casually got married in Camera Obscura.
My brother paid for the very intimate ceremony. £2 to be exact. Don’t worry it wasn’t official, if we ever do get married I probably would’t wear a veil…or a denim jacket 🙂
Edinburgh city is really great place to shop as well as sightsee. It’s not too big so you can get around pretty easy by foot and there’s lots of great stores to peruse.
I was particularly excited to see Anthropologie. I’ve never been inside one of their stores, although I have lusted after their products online. I have seen UK YouTubers I follow with their amazing Slivered Geode Coasters. I knew I wanted at one strictly for Instagram purposes 🙂 They are 14 quid a pop! I ended up with two. My brother bought me one (wedding present ha), and then John kindly bought me one too.
I also got the prettiest monogrammed mug which was on special for £8.
Primark aka Penneys got hit a little as well. They seem to do a thing where you can buy some stuff in certain stores but not in others so it’s always good to have a little looksy.
Apologies, I have no idea if any of these are available in Ireland.
I picked up two pairs of trousers.
I have a really similar black pair from New Look and get a lot of wear out of them so I thought I would pick up a couple more.
This super cute t shirt was £8.
Definitely more for Spring, but you have to act fast in Penneys so this went into the basket too 🙂
I chose two of the cream eyeshadows from their newly released In The Nude Collection.
I actually went to the launch of this collection here in Dublin a couple of weeks ago and these were one of the products I was impressed with. They were only £2!
The last thing fashion related thing I bought is probably my favourite.
Yes, they are Disney themed!!! I just fell in love with them, they’re so cute right? They have Mickey and Minnie AND lipstick kisses on them! And they were only £10. I am a child at heart for sure.
A quick look around Superdrug just to see if they had anything different than in Dublin made me leave with two things.
Although I’ve tried a fair few items from Makeup Revolution, I’ve never tried anything from their I Heart Makeup Range. Now I’m fully aware that these are a complete rip off of Too Faced, but sure look they were cheap 🙂
I will keep you posted about how I get on with them.
I decided on this trip that I was going to keep a look out for a baker boy cap. How fashion forward of me. Initially I had bought this one before Christmas from ASOS. I bloody love it but unfortunately my giant head is too big for it as it’s made from quite a ridged material.
I put it on and although I liked it it’s not as universal as just a plain black one. I was about to put it back the mammy whipped it off my head and bought it. It stayed on my head for the whole day after that and I love it. Although the boys kept calling me a train conductor 🙂
I was still on a quest for a plain black one, and ended up spotting this corduroy one in Topshop.
Because of my big mallet, I didn’t want one that was too puffy and if it had hardware I wanted it to be gold, this fit the bill perfectly.
The Mammy then spotted the same cap in pink and insisted on buying that one for me too. It’s not on the website so I can’t link it sorry.
Yes, she is a shopaholic. So now I am the proud owner of THREE baker boy hats! There’s a grey one too that she wanted to get as well, I had to reel her in at that point 🙂
The last thing I got was this little gold star and moon pendant from Topshop also.
It was on sale for £3 and I absolutely love it.
And that’s it for my Edinburgh fashion, beauty and makeup haul. We had the best time there. Myself and John are already planning to go back. Have you been? Click here to check out our Brussels vlog.
This is definitely a bit repetitive. My last blogpost here was a makeup haul from Brown Thomas. Forgive me. I had a voucher for BT. And we are just back from a couple of days away in Brussels where we had the best time. Belgium also have Kiko Cosmetics though, so I couldn’t resist picking up a few bits in store.
Kiko have a pretty decent sale on at the minute online and in store. A lot of their stock have 30% off. Also, they are selling off a lot of their limited edition collections aswell.
The first thing I got was the Smart Cult Eyeshadow Palette in Matte Revolution.
I would have picked up the Shocking Sparkle Shades one also, only they didn’t have it in stock in store. These are pretty new palettes, but they are currently 30% off here.
I had actually shared a pic of these on my social media a couple of weeks ago eyeing them up so I was delighted to get at least one and with the 30% off it only set me back €11.85, which I thought was pretty damn decent.
Like any brand, Kiko Cosmetics for me, can be great and not so great. I’ve picked up some things over the years and they’ve ended up in the bin. I think that happens with most brands though, not everything is going to suit. Not everything is going to be good. One thing they do very well though is cream eyeshadow sticks.
I already have a fair few of these. They come in an abundance of colours. I was restrained, mostly because I’m poor, and just picked up two shades 🙂
Both of these are actually quite cool toned. That wasn’t on purpose but I am definitely venturing into the more cool toned shadow world again at the moment.
Another pencil buy was their Ever Lasting Colour Precision Lip Liner in 402.
I’ve never tried these before, they were on sale, (again 30% off here), and I thought 402 looked like a good everyday lip colour.
These are retractable and have a sharpener built in which is always super handy too.
My last two Kiko Cosmetics purchases were of the shimmery variety. I definitely do not need another highlighter but sure look, do I really NEED any of this?
I swatched their Glow Fusion Highlighters and decided on 02 rather than getting the lightest shade 01.
It’s a little more golden (it is called Heavenly Golden after all), and all three shades are currently 30% off in store and online here.
The packaging is also very swish, so I thought it was well worth €6.95 just for the magnetic closure 🙂
My very last buy was a Metal Eyeshadow from their Arctic Holiday Collection.
I bought this completely based off swatching it just before I got to the till.
I liked the reflective shimmer in it and it was €5.45 and limited edition, so need I say more really? Looking at it now, it’s super similar to the highlighter it just has a bit more chunkier shimmer running through it, but sure look 🙂
And that is my Kiko Cosmetics haul done. Now I’m excited to get stuck in and play with these bad boys! Anything tickle your fancy?
I put myself on a bit of spending ban for a bit. It didn’t go great, I still managed to spend money. And I use the blog as a reason to buy makeup too, don’t judge me 🙂 But, we have a little holiday coming up and the season is changing so that’s a good excuse to go shopping for both beauty and fashion stuff, right?
We’re only going on holidays for five days and we’re going to spend most of it chilling by the pool, so I didn’t need much for that. But an excuse is an excuse.
I ended up getting some beauty stuff from Penneys and Boots. I still haven’t let myself into Harvey Nicks to check out the Fenty stand. I know I’ll end up spending a fortune 🙂 Alot of the beauty stuff consists of mini products to bring away with us, but I did pick up a few other bits.
For clothes, I didn’t go too crazy. I picked up some bits in Penneys and H&M in store. I went into Zara thinking I was going to spend a fortune, but they had feck all here in Dublin. Some online shopping happened on ASOS and Boohoo aswell for some holiday bits.
I am going through a bit of a weird time with clothes at the moment. I’ve been trying to go to the gym a good bit lately. I haven’t lost tonnes of weight or anything. I still enjoy eating too much. But my body shape is changing every so slightly. So, I feel like I don’t want to spend a fortune on stuff that might end up not fitting in the near future.
Anyways, I shall stop rambling here. I do enough of it in the video :). As always you can click above to watch or click here to go directly to my YouTube channel.
If you follow me on social media you know I went to Oslo this past weekend. I didn’t do much shopping, but as we were walking around the shops having a browse, I realised their H&M had a huge beauty hall! It not only stocked their own brand but the likes of Maybelline and Revlon aswell. I know we have the H&M beauty range here in Dublin (in Liffey Valley, I believe), but since I live closer to town I tend not to be up that way too often. So, when I saw the array of H&M makeup I had to try some. I am gong to split my H&M makeup haul into two posts. This one will be the eye products and then the next one will be face products.
Oslo is known to be expensive, so I could have well been ripped off with prices for these products, but sure I was on holliers so I won’t complain 🙂 I’ll link to the prices on the English site here to give you some sort of a gauge.
I only ended up getting 5 things for the eyes. They have a full range though from liners to lashes. I stuck with things I knew I would actually use rather than just buying for the sake of it (I do that alot too 🙂 )
I got one of their eyeshadow palettes.
I am in love with the sleek packaging of the H&M makeup may I add. It feels really nice and luxurious as well as looking the part too.
You get nine shadows in the palettes which I think is a pretty good deal. I went with a somewhat neutral choice called Smoky Nudes. I think there’s four palettes to choose from though.
Here they are swatched from left to right.
You can see there is a good mixture of matte and shimmers in the Smoky Neutrals palette. I think the shimmers have more of a punch than the mattes on first swatch. Not always a bad thing because it means they can be built up as you go.
The cream to shadow eye shadows were another product to catch my eye. I had a quick swatch of a couple of them and then ended up grabbing 3 colours because I couldn’t choose just one colour.
First up we have ‘Khaki Brocade’. This is a gorgeous sparkly olive green colour.
Next up is the aptly named ‘Champers’.
And the last one I chose is called ‘Gentlewoman’ which is a lovely dark again shimmery berry colour.
They have a mousse like consistency and go onto the skin really smoothly. I have yet to wear these on my eyelids yet, but upon swatching them on my arm, I think if you have oily lids like me, not a hope these will last on their own. I will be personally use them as shadow bases rather then stand alone shadows.
Overall, I am really impressed with the H&M beauty range. The packaging, the quality and the amount of products they stock is really impressive. The price point is not bad at all either which makes things very much sweeter. I am now off to fill my lids to the brim 🙂
If you follow me on social media, you’ll know instead of giving big gifts this year myself and my family went to Spain for the week of Christmas. We had a really great time. The weather was so good to us and we spent most of Christmas day in the ocean, so I ain’t complaining 🙂 I did by myself some goodies throughout the week though so I thought I would compile them into a holiday haul if you fancy a rummage.
Time ran away with me in the airport and I was gutted I didn’t get to shop in the Loop, I’ll just have to be sure I make up for it next time I fly.
We went to Lanzarote which is a tax free Canary Island. There’s not a whole load to be buying there, it’s a very holiday orientated town, so lots of tourist shops and the likes. Perfume is a good chunk cheaper there though, so I made sure to stock up on a few.
Don’t laugh, but I bought Britney Spears Fantasy.
This is the only celebrity perfume that I’ve ever really bothered with throughout the years. It smells like sweets, I was feeling nostalgic and it was only €15 🙂
My brother and John (the other half) know I love Lady Million from Paco Rabanne, so I got a couple of bottles to keep me going ha!
I bought another nostalgic perfume for myself. I use to wear this so much when I was younger. It’s Gucci Rush.
Luckily it was cheap, because I think I’ve grown out of the scent now…typical.
My fanciest pressie to myself was a bottle of Tom Ford Velvet Orchid. Well in Dublin this would be the fanciest, this set me back less than 40 euro over there which I don’t think is bad at all.
This is a cologne. And it would be classed as a unisex fragrance. John has Black Orchid, and I adore it, Velvet Orchid would be a ever so slightly sweeter version in my opinion, but still a very musky night time fragrance.
Of course there’s a big Zara where we were, it’s a Spanish company, so I had to have a look. I ended up only picking up two things. A dark green faux leather over the shoulder handbag, with gold hardware. Very Chloe-esque I thought?
And a long sleeved wool jumper of all things! I couldn’t leave this behind though 🙂
From one of the little boutique shops on the strip, I bought this really cute delicate rose gold plated bracelet.
If you’ve been to Lanzarote, you will know they have a stand alone Flormar store there, which is pretty cool. The brand has just been reintroduced here in Ireland, so I had to take a look and pick up a few bits. On a side note, they had different more seasonal products within the store, but the price point was the same as Ireland.
I got their Matte Velvet Mattifying Foundation. This is in Vanilla, but it’s a good bit darker than my skin tone (my fault), so I’ll have to keep it for when I have tan on.
I got one of their nail polishes, this colour is just unusual and caught my eye. it has a duochrome effect.
I get searches everyday here on beautynook for the Flormar Lip Primer, so I had to pick one up and give it a try.
I bought one of their eye primers too.
I liked this one because it has a concealing effect on the eyelid, so it will cover imperfections.
This eyeshadow stick was from their Christmas collection and I just thought the colour was so pretty. The formula is really nice too.
This twist up lipstick in the colour raspberry and I have 20 lippies in the same colour but I couldn’t resist. Love the packaging too.
The last thing I bought was a baked eyeshadow which they call a Diamonds Terracotta Eyeshadow.
Upon swatching it, I see it as more of glitter to apply over other shadows to add a bit of sparkle. I’d like to mix it with a bit of Inglot’s Duraline too and see what happens (I have a review of Duraline here 🙂
I bought a couple of random things on the strip too which we can get here easily, but sure I was on a spending roll so I just kept going 🙂
I had just run out of primer so I thought I would give the Catrice Prime and Fine one a trial.
I also got a Catrice Beautyifying Lip Smoother. This is really similar to the Clarins Lip Perfector and a quarter of the price. There’s a few shades to choose from too.
The one I picked up is in the shade Coffee To Go.
I got a couple of Essence Longlasting Lipliners in the same place. The formula of these is actually pretty great!
The pink shade is called Sweetheart and the peachy one is called Peach Beauty.
The last thing I got is from a brand I’ve never used before. This is the Palladio Crushed Metallic Eyeshadow.
I swatched all the colours of these and I really regret now not picking up more, but I settled on this burnt bronze colour in Eclipse.
There you have it, my holiday haul. All of the goodies I crammed into my suitcase and brought home to Ireland 🙂
Hope you had a brilliant Christmas (and new year). Hope 2016 is the most exciting year yet 🙂
This is definitely a bit repetitive. My last blogpost 
