Beauty Review: Mia 2 Clarisonic

So over the summer, well towards the end really, while I was in Palm Springs, I went on a nice, relaxng Spa day with my mum. Girls day out while the boys and my dad played golf in the punishing sun. During the treatment, the beautician used a Clarisonic on my T zone and therein was the beginning of a very special love affair. Lol.

You see I had always wanted to try out the Clarisonic and see what benefits it would bring to my naturally oily, sensitive and extremely break out prone skin but I was worried about it being too harsh for me. But with the reassurance of the beautician I tried it and my face felt like it had received new life! Haha. There are quite a few different types of clarisonics, and their uses range from the face to the feet and even the whole body. The one I bought is called the Mia 2 and I got it with a 15% discount right after my treatment, the original price for the Mia 2 is $99, minus VAT. So I definitely felt like I had struck a bargain.

The Mia2 and all it's accessories.

So now, on to some before and after shots. I started using the Clarisonic towards the end of August 2014 and my after picture was taken a couple of weeks ago towards the end of October and so that makes two full months of usage. I use it just once a day, every morning while I shower and one cycle lasts for exactly 1 minute. Most people spend much less than a minute washing their faces but I ready that you need to spend a minimum of one minute to really cleanse your pores so the Clarisonic is perfectly timed.

Surely I don't have to say which is before and which is after! The difference is so clear to me! But just incase... Before is on the left, after is on the right :)

I should state as well that this is NOT an exfoliating brush, it's a cleansing brush and not to be used with face washes that have abrasive micro particles like typical exfoliators do. I guess the combination of both could irritate the skin.

Also before I forget, let me add that you are intended to change the brush head every 3 - 4 months and this device is rechargeable but completely waterproof to allow for use in the shower. I adore my Clarisonic and face washing just has never been the same since... Now all I have to do is stop being lazy about washing my face at night and maybe those annoying spots will finally be gone forever.

Have you ever used the Clarisonic? What were your thoughts? Also does anyone have any beauty tips and tricks for clearer skin? Do share, I'm obsessed with making my face flawless now. Haha

Wedding Bells: "All Shades of Pink"

Hey guys, how you doing? Look, it's another post about a wedding! If you live in Lagos you know that there's at one wedding every single weekend that you could attend and so I'm sure you're not surprised that I've been to another one recently! I don't make it a habit of going to weddings where I don't know the couple though, what's the point? It's someone's special day, why be there when I know I really couldn't care less. As sweet as party rice is, is it ever that deep?

Warning: This post is quite picture heavy.

This wedding was the elder sister of one of my best friend's, Tomi. Remember her from Salford and Solita? It was on a Saturday and at drinks on Friday night, I was told I shouldn't dare trying to do my make-up myself *sigh* so I grudgingly got up early in the morning to head to hers and get my make up done professionally. The make-up artists wasn't my all time favourite EEDA this time but another girl called Sara, she seemed very nervous and inexperienced at first but she ended up doing a great job. Here's the only close up I took before I got dressed, it was more out of boredom and waiting than anything else.

I really like that she got my natural eyebrow shape.

The wedding colours were "all shades of pink" and so I opted for this dress from Monsoon that I wore to my mum's 50th a while ago. I didn't get dressed alone though and although the whole house was a complete madhouse with no less than twenty girls getting ready, we all managed to make it out alive and looking fabulous no less. By the time we were all ready we were about 3 hours behind schedule but of course we had to take pictures before we left!

The dress was slightly too big and that made me SO happy, bootcamp has been paying off! Lol

Starring Jen as "The Lady in Red".

Ayo looking flawless in orange!

I love how we all ended up wearing really bold solid colours, it was completely unplanned but really made all the pictures look so bright and colourful!

As the bride came down the stairs I tried to steal a quick snap of her and Tomi who was missing all the photo fun because she had to play the role of Chief Brides slave maid. You can already tell that they both look fab can't you?

I got a slightly better picture of the bride when she was posing with all her adoring bridesmaids. Don't you just love her dress?

The dress and veil were just to die for and I loved that she wore her hair half up, half down not the usual intricate bun that you see. It just made it feel more fun and more 'her'.

I took one last selfie before we all swooped into cars and rode to the venue which was the Grand Ballroom in Oriental Hotel.

You can see the jewellery a little more clearly here

The venue for the Civil Ceremony was beautifully decorated, Oriental is generally a very grand hotel and the decorators played with that and really made everywhere come alive.

I got in a cheeky shot of Tomi when she was finally standing still for more than 30 seconds!

The ceremony was very brief and included the signing of the marriage registry and lighting of unity candles by members of both families and afterwards we were ushered downstairs to the ballroom to be seated and were greeted by this lady whose skirt was giving out champagne! Haha. Rose of course, to keep to theme pink theme.

I know it's blurry but I just couldn't leave it out. I LOVED this idea.

When I walked into the ballroom I was gobsmacked! Like literally had the wind taken out of me by how beautiful it all was but not only that, it looked like the wedding of my dreams! Haha. Whoever knows me knows that pink is my favourite colour but when I want to avoid looking too girly I default to purple. The hall was a pink lover's heaven AND she had incorporated two of my favourite things, candles and butterflies!

The bride and grooms seat for the day. Ignore the pink tutu please..

Some of the centre pieces...

tea lights always add a touch of romance to the room.

A 'sweets' table which literally had everything from candy floss to peppermints to maoms all in pink of course!

But my favourite part of the decor had to be this elevated aisle right in the middle leading up to were the bride and groom were seated. With well over a thousand guests, it divided the room nicely into the agbalagbas and the young ones as well as made sure that whenever the bride and groom were on the move, they were the centre of attention.

Who said the groom can't be funky on the day and still look classy? #redbottoms

After a whole lot of eating and even more dancing and drinking, we defaulted to doing what we do best, taking pictures!

Finally you get to see the full length of Tomi's dress and all the details, isn't it beautiful? She looked so amazing I could cry for joy! Lol. Needless to say, A LOT of people mistook her for the bride.

Tomi and her very good friend, Lila who flew in from Hungary to be here for the wedding.

Tomizzle and I!

Jen, who flew in from London, and I!

Dee and I!

Ayo and I

At the end out of all the things I got to take home that day and the million and one ideas I have for my own wedding now, I was most excited about my sweets box! 

Wishing Ronke and Bode a happy and fulfilled married life, God bless your union.

Exploring Wales: The Llyn Peninsula

So it's been a while since I did one of my "Exploring England" posts... Partly because I haven't really been in England very long and when I'm here in London the weather is just not compelling me to step outside the comfort of my four walls to explore! But alas, I found a reason... My really good friend Koki needed someone to go with her to explore the Welsh coast as part of her site analysis. She does architecture you see so we usually go on these fun trips together. Remember the beautiful sunrise on Barry Island? Yeah that was with her too.

I guess it'd be incorrect to call this post Exploring England then because this time we were in Wales, the Llyn Peninsula to be precise! We set off from London on what was possibly the longest journey I've ever made within the U.K. Our exact destination? I little village near Abersoch, North Wales. The journey doesn't usually have to take such a long time but with the train tracks being completely wrecked by the rains and flooding, ours was an 8-9 hour journey! Nothing is too long with the company of a good friend to chat to and some music to keep you going and eventually we arrived at the long winding hilly roads of Abersoch.

The next morning was our exploration day and the original plan was to walk as much as the pilgrims trail from one end of the peninsula to the other. Going from Abersoch to Aberdaron. It's about 80 miles long or something crazy if I remember correctly so there was no way we were going to complete it in one day. What started off as tidy but windy roads soon evolved to muddy sticky paths but the initial 45 minute walk to the coast was well worth it!

We arrived at Hell's Mouth (Porth Neigwl), a popular destination for surfers and thought we might walk the Llyn coastal path from there. I'm not sure if you can tell from the picture below but the tide was nowhere near far out enough for us to even dream of walking along the beach to far down and so we had to abort the mission, it seems the tour guide we spoke to before starting our walk didn't know as much about the tide times as we'd hoped and neither of us fancied challenging the currents of the sea!

Luckily for us, it was during the school run hours and we managed to stop a guy taking his kids to school to ask him for directions to Aberdaron. He kind of looked at us like we were a bit crazy and pointed us to "a mate of his who has a taxi". You see, I put that in quote because being a city girl I would rather walk the entire length of my journey than walk up the road to a strangers house and ask him if he's "the mate with the taxi". It just sounds like something out of a horror movie, it really does. But alas, we weren't in a city and with nothing but farms around us and no phone signal we had little choice but to venture to "the house with the taxi man".

It turned out to actually be just a guy with his taxi and he was quite happy to take us through the scenic route to Abedaron which meant we stopped loads and took tons of pictures of the views. You can actually see a really prominent part of the peninsula and the coast looked so beautiful! It really was one of those "had-to-be-there" moments because unfortunately I only had my iPhone camera with me to try and capture the beautiful landscape. I think it did an alright job though.

We eventually got to Aberdaron and were greeted by a pretty empty beach and dead town. Apart from the weather not really being decent enough for anyone but the hardcore surfers to be on the beach the whole town is also very seasonal with all their shops and coffee houses opening up much later in the year. It was nice to go when it was quiet though because it felt like we had the whole world to ourselves sometimes. We even saw the chapel that the famous poet R.S Thomas used to preach at right by the coast.

We played on the beach for sometimes, skipping across little rivers and finding all sorts of really interesting rocks before we decided that it would be best not to get carried away and attempt to finish the rest of the trail from where we were. Especially as we had just taxi'd it all the way from one end to the other, essentially cheating!

 

We climbed till we reached the highest point we could get to without feeling like we were about to drop right off the cliff and into the waters below and on the way up we found the remains of a Roman/Celtic house or something.

Welcome to my humble abode!

And right there from the top we had a perfect view of the two islands Ynys Gwylan-fawr and Ynys Gwylan-bach, that marked the end of the pilgrims trail, there used to be a monastery there where they would all congregate at the end of the walk! Please don't ask me how to pronounce those, I spent the whole trip asking different locals how to make the elusive "ll" sound as in "Pwhelli". Apparently you raise the sides of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and blow out... So much more difficult than it sounds!!

Finding the two islands was definitely exciting until we saw these stairs waiting for us to make our descent back towards the beach and the sleepy town of Aberdaron. You see, I'm not exactly scared of heights but I definitely don't like them. This was definitely one of the worst parts of the walk for me, I kept imagining myself slipping and rolling all the way down to the end. Morbid I know. Luckily that never happened.

By the end of this walk it's safe to say we had worked up a decent sized appetite and so we headed to the only open pub and got ourselves some free dinner before heading back by bus to the even more quiet village of Abersoch.

The next day we were up before the sun had a chance to rise fully and commenced our journey back through the farms and trees and all the way to the high rises of London town.

My favourite picture from the trip? Definitely this one! I love all the purple and plum in the picture and couldn't resist taking some of the stones home with me. I'm really considering putting this picture into the blog banner but we'd see what happens...

Whoosh! That was a long post, it feels good to be back to writing again! Hope you enjoyed it guys. See you soon!

Reni xx