My Experience with LoveLula

We've seen a couple of beauty subscription boxes around here already but I've been really interested in trying some more recently. (For more info click *here* for my post about LoveMeBeauty and *here*, *here* and *here* for my various posts on Birchbox. I've been toying with GlossyBox and I'm definitely going to try it out one day but, for now, I've gone for LoveLula. For two main reasons:

1. It's a smaller box - I don't see a lot of people hyping it in the beauty community, it's something that needs to be tested and talked about.

and 2. Their values are amazing. They pledge to provide a box full of high quality products that are sustainably sourced, that aren't full of chemicals, that aren't tested on animals and they fully support promoting lesser known brands and small companies. It's just ticking a lot of the "yes please" boxes for me.

I signed up with LoveLula with my first box being the March 2016 box. I've received 2 boxes from them now and it's a nice, clear set up. You can pay monthly (which I chose to do) by direct debit, or can buy 3 or 6 boxes at a time (to be dispatched monthly), I should note that unlike some other box subscription services, there is no discount for ordering multiple boxes at a time. The boxes are always dispatched around the 10th of the month and both boxes were on time, packaged nice and securely and all of the products have arrived 100% in tact.

The stand-outs in the March box were the Skin Blossom Gentle Cleansing Milk (a lovely creamy cleanser that leaves skin soft and hydrated) and the Turbliss Bioactive Peat Mask (which seems to just draw all the impurities out of my skin, love). The March box also contained 3 mini Urban Veda products, the Facial Wash, Exfoliating Facial Polish and the Day Cream from the "Turmeric + Botanics - Radiance" range. They also included sample sachets of the John Masters Organics Blood Orange & Vanilla Body Wash and the Madara Sun Flower Golden Beige Tinting Fluid. So the box was made up of a full sized cleanser, a 3 step skincare routine, a face mask and some extras and everything seemed to have a place.

By comparison, the box I received in April didn't seem so well thought out in terms of the range of products included. The April box contained another 3-step minis collection from Urban Veda (again the Facial Wash, Exfoliating Facial Polish, and the Day Cream, just this time from the "Neem + Botanics - Purifying" range. Another good sized Skin Blossom product - this time the Nourishing Face Moisturiser, a (seemingly) full size of the PHB Ethical Beauty Natural & organic Brightening Eye Gel and a Barefoot SOS Repair + Renew Light Moisturising Lotion. So while the products are still nice, I feel like the Urban Veda stuff is nearing on a repeat (and a month later? So soon!) and then an eye cream and 2 big moisturisers? Even if one had been specifically a night cream it might have worked? I'm not sure.

The boxes are £12.50 including shipping (which seems to be the price that most beauty boxes are) and the boxes seem to contain at least one full sized item and one deluxe sample each month in addition to trial sizes. They also include a 20% off coupon for the brands included in that months box. The boxes 3-6 month subscriptions are also available outside the UK with an additional charge of £5 shipping on each box.

All in all I've decided that I'm going to continue my subscription with them for now and will keep you updated on the products I get and how much I like the boxes going forward.

I’m Back! Some Changes Around Here And The Beginning of My Healthy Living Mission

So... It's been a while. As much as I've been loving the blog and writing I've been investing time into some other things recently and found that my amount of free time was running pretty low. I'd been burning my candles at both ends and ended up crashing pretty hard and decided I needed to take a step back to re-evaluate some things. Which is really just a long winded way of saying I'm going to be switching up my schedule for the foreseeable future and will now be posting on Tuesdays and Fridays.

It's been a tough decision but I realised that I'd been avoiding the blog for a few weeks now because I knew I don't have the time or energy to continue producing 3 good posts a week. I didn't want to start posting sub-par content or become unpredictable with my schedule and thought reducing it down to just 2 posts a week might make things more manageable. I'm not going to sit here and make excuses for myself but I have a full time job outside of blogging and trying to keep up with a relatively demanding schedule on top of my job was taking some of the fun out of it for me.

Anyway, now that all of that is out of the way, what have I been up to lately you might be asking? Trying to get myself back into shape, mainly. (I know that somewhat rounded is a technically a shape, but you know what I mean). For those of you who didn't know; I work in a call centre, which involves a surprising amount of being bribed with junk food and a very non-surprising amount of sitting down all day. That in combination with my range of very active hobbies (blogging and binge-watching TV shows on Netflix) and a diet of Domino's and freezer food resulted in a gradual but substantial weight gain.

Whilst, strictly speaking, I'm currently on a diet, I'm following the Slimming World programme and I'm hoping to use it's "food optimising" mindset to make some long-term healthy lifestyle choices. I've used this healthy-eating model before but fell off the band wagon when a combination of a severe lack of cooking ability and messy shift patterns made proper meal prep something that needed attention. I've also joined a gym and have vowed to go at least 3 times a week (we'll see). I'm planning to do a few posts about how I'm making healthy living work for me which should hopefully be helpful to my fellow shift-rotation friends who are struggling.

So that's it for today, I hope you don't mind that I've had to cut back on my posts a little. Thanks for taking the time out of your days to read my posts. See you on Friday!