Shopping & Sadness

Christmas is over, the new year is just around the corner and I don't know about you but I'm feeling rather deflated. After the build up to Christmas being so glittering and exciting it seems like a shambolic comedown now the shops are filled with hoards of angry post-Christmas shoppers all garbling for the last season's sale buys and the weather isn't the best with the amount of storms we've been having these past few days. Naturally, to cheer myself up a little I went shopping today and while I didn't pick up everything I would have liked to thanks to two under 6's, a stroppy grown man and not enough notes in my purse as I would have liked, I persevered.

Firstly, I'm a little sad because my skin is awful. I'm not full of blemishes or scars but I do have a lot of red pigmentation beneath my skin, more dryness than I have ever experienced and a general dull feel and overall look so I reached out to my favourite guru's Sophia of The Tattooed Tea Lady and Georgina of Makeup-Pixi3 to ask for some advice. Now I have an arms length list of products I must try but today I popped into John Lewis and bought a new bottle of my favourite Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish cleanser to see me through. I've shaken up my serum, exfoliator, day cream and night cream to see if it would make a difference and hopefully I'll be able to get a few reviews up in the next month or two of using them. One of the day creams I picked up was the L'Oreal Revitalift and while I'm only twenty five and don't necessarily need to start using anti-ageing creams just yet I thought prevention is definitely a good thing and I've heard great things. Of course, it was a substitute as one member of the shopping party (note: not one of the under 6's) threw a strop and I had to leave before visiting Origins but I do have hope.

In the final dregs of the Lush Christmas sale I ended up popping a Melting Snowman, Christmas Eve bubble bar and a Father Christmas bath bomb into my little basket and was thrilled that the total price was under £5. I'm a huge fan of Lush all year round but picking up wintery treats half price is fantastic. The Body Shop had their almond body butter down to a mere £5 so I snapped one up to use with my new pot of Soap & Glory's Breakfast Scrub which smells like golden syrup and porridge. Delicious, especially in the morning and I find the two go well together while still dying down enough to apply a more mature perfume after an hour or so. Their coconut shower cream is something I've never tried so for £2 I couldn't resist a little impulse buy for a slight scent of summer amongst all the cinnamon and pine around me.

Tomorrow I'm venturing back out with my last £20 to snap up a pair of high waisted skinny jeans from New Look and a pair of lace up daps (general black trainer type casual shoes) for dry walks with the dogs and to pair with my growing collection of ankle boots. After wearing so many dresses and skirts with tights I'm really feeling a classic pair of blue denim jeans wouldn't go amiss in my now sparse wardrobe to see me into the new year.

What have you been buying in the sales?