Birchbox Review: November

This month's box was a collaboration with Skinnydip London, an awesome accessories company that I’ve known about for a while. It seemed like a bit of a random pairing, and bar the box design and an add-on phone case and voucher (which you had to spend £22 to redeem anyway) there didn’t seem to be much Skinnydip influence. I was disappointed in the phone case design, as Skinnydip do a lot of really cool, quirky cases - such as this one - but the Birchbox offering was the same shell print as was on the box. I didn’t go for it because you also had to pay a small fee to have it included. The brand did take over Birchbox's Instagram page for a day, which was fun, and the box itself was packed!

Christmas Gift Guide

As it’s getting so close to the big day, I wanted to do a last-minute Christmas gift guide! I’m normally the headless chicken running around on December 23rd panic-buying; amazingly, I’ve managed to turn that around this year, but here’s what I’d be pursuing if I still had people to buy for. 

Reviews! The Courtyard Café and 'Carol'

A few weeks ago, I went with my family to the Hartley Whitney Christmas Market. The Christmas festivities in my town get worse yet more crowded every year, and HW is such cute little place full of independent boutiques; much more promising. Ironically, the highlight of the night ended up being the meal we had in a permanent HW fixture: the Courtyard Café - a cafe/restaurant at the back of Hartley Antiques. I’d been there for coffee before, but hadn’t really appreciated how much of a bar/restuarant it was too, and as the burger vans on the street weren’t the most appealing, we decided to give it a proper try while we waited for the fireworks that always end the event. 

Blogs baby!

I actually find blogs to read through Instagram. I am completely addicted to Instagram - I’m forever scrolling through my feed and furiously double-tapping! Even with blogs I’ve known about for a while, I often click through to new content having read an Instagram post about it. So when I was thinking about who I might include in this “fave bloggers” post, I got straight to looking at my Instagram likes. The four lovely ladies below are the ones whose photos I “heart” almost every single time, and I’ve tried to show you why they make my Insta-feed sparkle!