Treats from my mam ...

My mam went into M&S a couple of weeks ago to pick up some new PJs for her, turns out they had this offer on where if you spent so much you got a free box of cosmetic treats. When we went over to see her today she gave me some of the freebees that she didn't want. 

I have to hand it to M&S these are all full size and after checking them out on the website they were very generous, the items mam gave me retail at over £50 combined with the face cream alone £27. 

I'm really looking forward to trying the hair treatment as my hair is being very fuzzy at the minute and looks in quite bad condition. I will also be trying out some coconut oil in a later post to see if that can help restore my hair, I would love to be able to reduce the amount of washes I need a week but when we go to the gym and sweat I have to wash my hair afterwards. 

The mascara looks really nice to, I like the addition of argan oil as this should hopefully keep moisture in my lashes. As I am sure most of you will know sometimes your mascara can leave lashes quite dry and the best way to keep them healthy and looking full is to keep them conditioned like you would with your hair. 

I am thinking of trying out the nail colour later on tonight so keep an eye on my Instagram feed, ema_jane47 for the results.  Also keep an eye out for my reviews as I try these products, but for the minute I just want to say well done to M&S for actually giving away full size full price goodies. 

xXx

Technology is great but it cant change time

So if you've read my hiatus post you will know there were a couple of big changes in recently, marriage, new house and the topic of this post ... one of my best friends moving. 

Now usually this wouldn't be a very big deal I mean with phones and social media it's never been easier to stay in contact with people. Except my friend moved to a foreign country... 

Cue time differences and excessive service charges for texting. The service charges are easy to get around as there are loads of free internet messaging apps you can download onto a smart phone. 

Personally I use Viber which you can download free from the AppStore for iPhone but there are loads of others. I like viber as its easy to navigate and has a desktop platform for Mac like iMessage does. 

So that's the service charges gone but what about time difference. Like my title stays technology is great but it can't change time. My friend is 8 hours ahead that means when I get up at 6am it's 2pm over there, say he goes to bed about 10pm here it's 2pm and I'm still at work, then when I go to bed at 10pm it's 6am there. This makes instant messaging nigh on impossible as I'm at work in his evenings and he's asleep during mine. 

It's a real pain because sometimes you just want to have a chat with your friend. Instead we are mainly going with longer messages or delayed messages. It's ok but if you're like me you feel bad not being able to reply to people straight away so it's taking some getting used to. 

Today however we were both free, 8-3 me UK him 4-10pm so we got to actually Skype. 

It was great, technology cant change time but when you can actually see the person your talking to it makes them feel a lot closer than they might actually be. 

My friend is 3500 miles away but just for a while today he could have been round the corner.

xXx

Life happens when you are busy doing other things ......

Sorry for the hiatus ... Life took over for a while. It's been a hectic few months, we got married, moved into a brand new house and one of my best friends moved countries.

Cue lots of DIY and organising for us these last few months. Life has been a bit hectic following the move, we have moved to the other side of the city so it's necessitated shift changes for the hubby & I am now playing taxi. It's not a bad thing as we can get up together and they are more routine than his old shifts but it's still a big change.

Moving also meant we have missed out on going to the gym a lot in the weeks just after the move as we had deliveries and needed to go out to get things after work. We are getting back into it now but it's a bit harder then before due to the later shifts. Hopefully now things have calmed down we can get get into a rhythm again.

The house itself is now 95% sorted, there are just little random bits to sort like getting some shelves in our landing cupboard to make use of the large overhead space for linens. Asking the family builder about expanding our under stair cupboard and sorting through some bits that seem to be currently stored in the garage so I can get the car in. So like you see these are fairly unimportant but just bits we would like to do. Only real thing we need to do soon is tiling the splash back in the kitchen.

In terms of my friend moving the cliff notes is that as of august one of my closest friends is currently residing in South Korea. It's an amazing opportunity and I am so thrilled for all the experiences he's going to get, but it's hard. We've gone from talking to nearly daily whenever something popped up to an eight hour time difference. There is a very small window where we are both awake to IM so trying to embrace delayed longer messaging.

I've got some experience with long distance friendships as another of my best friends lives in LA so that's an 8 hour time difference too. If she wasn't actually American I might start to take it personal that my friends live so far away. Really glad my last best friend is just round the corner... Well sort of she lives in Cumbria so that's an easy drive away for visiting. 

So anyway that's a cliff notes version of the last few months and now hopefully I will have some more time to read, blog, relax and go to the gym. 

                                                                           xXx