Review: Results With Lucy- Upgraded New Beginnings

Im baaaack, miss me? Of course you did! Silly question. I am sorry for my absence from the blogging world but I've been very busy getting married and now eating my body weight in food and drink because I can! Weeeeell I say can....

It's probably pretty obvious by now that I like to eat... ALOT! I literally love food, LOVE. So, because of this I needed to workout to balance out my habit so I could look my best on the big day. My dress fitted perfectly but I felt I needed to tone up mainly my arms and back as it was a strapless dress and also my tummy as everyone wants a flat tummy!

If you have not heard of Results with Lucy, well it is Lucy Meck from TOWIE's fitness website. They have different programs or you can access all the videos and create your own program. I've done RWL a few times before and really enjoyed the previous New Beginnings program. So when I saw they had upgraded it, I thought this would be perfect and just in time for the wedding.

Why I love this program is because, you start off the program with about 3 video playlist to go through, ending the program with around 6 videos per playlist, which are 5 to 10 minute long per video


to do 4 times a week for 13 weeks. I like this because it makes me stick to it and I generally feel bad if I miss a day. The videos vary from yoga, to ballet, to abs, to cardio and all that in between. Lucy and her personal trainer Cecilia do the majority of the videos and have specialist trainers to do some of the videos too. You don't really need any equipment but I did get a few weights but you could use cans or filled bottles if you don't want to splash out.

What you also get with the program is a daily meal plan, which I must admit I didn't do as it can be a bit pricy for the ingredients. It does however give you an insight into nutrition and ideas for what meals you can and can't eat. You can also access all different recipes if you don't like what is on the daily meal plan.

Now that the wedding and program are over I can reveal that it was perfect! I looked and felt my best on the day and in my dress... well as much as you can, nobody is perfect. I had many compliments on how I looked, which made me feel amazing and you know what I felt very proud, I worked hard to look good! I ate hard too... but that's life. You need to have a balance or you will never be happy.

I would defiantly recommend RWL New Beginnings and for the price, £49 it is very reasonable. I have now started Wobble to Model and will let you all know how that goes. It is more advanced and is supposed to tackle cellulite, my enemy! Hopefully there will be no site of it when i'm in my bikini on our Honeymoon. The hard work starts all over again and you know what I'm glad.... Bring it on!

After

Before

For now,

Frances Louise

xoxo

Birthday Beauty Haul

Well hello, its been a while... well like two weeks but that is probably a while in the blogging world. I am sorry I've been quiet but its been my birthday recently so been a little busy. But with a birthday comes presents and with my birthday coming so close after Christmas I have the age old problem of what to ask for. I could ask for money, but I like to have physical presents to open while lying in bed opening my cards. So back to the point what do I want? what do I need?! This year however was different, I wanted and needed thing... actual things! I even had a birthday list with more than two things on. For once I wanted more than just clothes, I wanted beauty products too. Recently I have become quite obsessed with them, with turning another year older (another year closer to 30) I feel I need to be on my game, the beauty game.

I got some day, night and eye cream for Christmas but I felt I needed more... I needed for instance Pixi Glow Tonic. I know its a bit of a clique as every blogger is blogging about it but after reading my good friend Blossom and Bloom Sparkles blog I knew I had to get it. I wasn't content just asking for the tonic but I needed a facial oil to go with it. They have a few but decided upon Rose Oil Blend as it had good reviews. I am not going to review it as I have only been using it a couple of weeks but I must admit I feel good using it, like I am prepping my face for old age and giving it a change to be the best it can be.

What I also wanted was some "proper make up" (what I mean by "proper make up" is that you have to go to Debenhams to purchase it, not just popping into Superdrug, know what I mean?!) And the "proper make up" I wanted was bareMinerals Complexion Rescue Tinted Hydrating Gel Cream. I got the Starter Kit for Christmas but wanted the gel cream to use during the week and I had some free sample before and really liked it. I like how light it is and how you can build upon it. I also wanted some Benefit products and the products I wanted was Roller Lash Mascara and Gimme Brow. I have used both of them before and loved them. Gimme Brow is a brow savour! I sometimes use it on top of Brow Zings but mostly on its own as it looks natural but also gives them definition and fullness. With Roller Lash unlike They're Real Mascara it doesn't make my eye lashes look fake and clumpy it gives them a good coverage on individual lashes and it lasts!

Something I forgot to put on my birthday list but bought on my birthday was Lush Popcorn Lip Scrub. I love it! The taste is amazing and leaves my lips feel lovely and smooth. I definitely feel the difference and you only need a little bit! Very much a good birthday buy.

Well that was my Birthday Beauty Haul, I feel very grown up now... only took 27 years... well almost grown up.

Price list-

Pixi Glow Tonic £18 M&S
Pixi Rose Oil Blend £23 M&S
bareMinerals Complexion Rescue Tinted Hydrating Gel Cream £26 Debenhams
Benefit Roller Lash Mascara £19.50 Debenhams
Benefit Gimme Brow £18.50 Debenhams
Popcorn Lip Scrub £5.50 Lush


Untill next time my lovlies,

frances louise
xoxo

How to make pasta

So I thought I would do a blog about something a little bit different. My fiancé mentioned that I should do one about making pasta as my mum bought us a pasta machine at Christmas. It's taken a few weeks for us to do it (mainly as we were too lazy to buy the correct flour) but this weekend we decided we would and here's how it went....

We found many different ways of doing it, which was very confusing. So we put our trust in Jamie Oliver and followed his recipe. We needed 300g of 00 flour... We just bought pasta flour, guess it's the same, and 3 eggs. After mixing it together in out hands we noticed it was a bit crumbley so I read the back of the flour packet and mentioned to add some oil, once we did, the mixture came together much easier. This also made the kneeding easier. We kneaded for a couple of minutes and popped it into the fridge for around 30 mins.

I feel like I need to add at this point that when I say we I mean my fiancé... As you know I'm lazy.

After resting in the fridge, we (my fiancé) tore a orange size shape off the dough. We then covered the work top in flour and in turn we proceeded to roll it through the machine. Jamie said to do it through the widest setting and fold over the dough in half and repeated 5-6 times. Once we had done this (now I do mean we, I started to get interested as it looked fun) we worked through the settings from 1-9 which made it very... very thin. We had decided that we were going to make tagliatelle so put it through the cutter, this was very exciting!

It made loads and we only used an orange size amount! So decided we would only use that. We put it in a saucepan with boiling water and salted well. We cooked it for a couple of minutes (we were rebels and didn't follow Jamie) it tasted done so took it off the heat and drained it. Once drained it looked a little slimy. We added some meatballs and a tomato sauce to the pasta. I must admit the pasta did taste a little strange but with the sauce you couldn't really tell. Next time we won't be rebels and research how to cook it!

I would recommend making your own pasta, it's really cool especially with the machine and it is pretty easy. Just make sure you follow the recipe and method, otherwise you will just end up with a mess. Also our recipe said it would serve 2-3 more like 2-300! I'd say 100g of pasta flour and 1 egg with a tsp of oil would be enough for two but I'm not a chef so don't blame me if its not!

Enjoy!

france louise
xoxo

Winter saviours

To follow on from my last post, I thought I'd write about some of my winter saviours.. Not literally saviours I'm not a doctor or anything but what I use/wear to make the cosiest season manageable.

I know not everyone does, but I LOVE WINTER!!! A perfect day for me would be a bright crisp sunny day to go for a long walk along the beach/river or in a wood. Wrapped up in a scarf, gloves and a bobble hat with a cosy coat and comfy boots, sipping a hot chocolate. The only thing that would make it better would be to have a dog walking along side us. (I long for a sausage dog!)

As I mentioned in my perfect day above, another reason why I love winter is the fashion. I live in a scarf in winter. My go to outfit would be, a jumper or a long sleeve t shirt, ripped skinny jeans, boots and, of course, a scarf. I also love a good jacket/coat. I usually plan my outfit round one of these items because my love is so strong for them... I'm not even joking...

Here a few piccys of my winter styles.

But I can understand why people don't love it as much as me. It never snows just rains, rarely bright, just grey and windy...very windy. And this is no good for our body and skin. This sort of weather makes you eat comfort food which, in turn makes you a slightly larger version of yourself. It also makes your skin all dry and lips chapped. This makes for a very upset person. Trust me I can get like that too!

But I find winter quite magical. This might be because I am a winter baby but it is defiantly my fav season.

So this is why I thought I'd share with you some of my saviours and I hope this will make you love winter just a little bit more like I do.

As I mentioned, you MUST have a good solid collection of scarfs. I don't even want to count how many I own! You also must have some cosy gloves and a bobble hat for those bad hair days. Invest in a coat that will carry you through the season and last for many many more. You won't regret it!

You need to have a good skin care regime. I must admit I'm pretty lazy but I do feel better when I stick to the regime. Mine includes, daily cleansing with bareMinerals Purifying Facial Cleanser which I use to take my make up off. I also use No7 Early Defence eye cream twice a day along with day and night cream. The day cream has SPF 15 too, bonus! Twice a week I use Lush Mask of Magnaminty face make that exfoliates as well as nourish and helps with those pesky spots. Don't forget to use lip balm! It's a must! I live in Maybelline Baby Lips.

Don't forget to treat yourself, you deserve it! When it's just too chilly to venture outside, run yourself a bath, fill with bubbles, chuck in a bath bomb, sprinkle some bath salts, light a few candles and relax, get out and paint your nails. I find painting my nails very therapeutic and how cute are this mini OPI bottles and such lovely colours!

Embrace Winter and look after yourself.

For now,
Frances Louise
Xoxo

Aussie Winter Miracle | Review

I love a beauty product, but I find it quite terrifying not knowing what to get. There are sooooo many different products for one area. Say the face, there are millions of products, and that is not an exaggeration! From moisturisers to day creams (what is the difference?!) to cleansers to lip balms and so on. So when on the product it tells you exactly what it's for, this calms me down and my breathing returns to normal. 

This is when Aussie came in with a limited edition winter collection. Well it is winter. I've heard Aussie is a good product (I google EVERYTHING before I buy it) therefore I should be using it. What you should know about me is that I am a bit of a sucker for a promo, limited edition, gimmick and so on, so this immediately drew me in and I am so glad it did!

I bought the shampoo, conditioner and 3 minutes miracle mask and the first thing I noticed when I used it was the smell, the smell is devine! Smells like berries and unlike most hair products the smell lasts for days. The next thing was how silky soft my hair was during washing and when dried, this also lasts for days too. My hair feels a billion times better when I use the 3 minute miracle mask and I'm surprised that it actually lived up to the hype, as I find most beauty products don't.... 

I know that when it comes down to beauty products it can be quite subjective as everyone has different skin, hair, nail types but I am a total Aussie convert now and can't wait to try all their other products. Spesh their summer collection but obviously I can't use that till summer, or my OCD will go into overdrive as it's not summer and that is not right... right?! 

I got my Aussies from Superdrug but most supermarkets and chemists sells it. I got 3 for £10 offer but I know many places do different offers for the Aussie products.

Now my lovelies go and get the Aussie Winter Miracle Collection, you will not regret it!

Till next time,

frances louise
xoxo

Sales sales sales

This is my first blog post so I thought I should write about something I know well... Very well...

Ever since I can remember, one of my fav past times is shopping, especially clothes shopping!
It might sound shallow and materialistic but it makes me happy so don't judge me. Anyways, I think majority of people may feel the same way I do... I hope. So if this sounds like you too then you may enjoy my blog as it will probably be mostly about shopping. Not always clothes but also beauty, accessories and even maybe food too! I am also getting married at Easter so may be a few posts about that. I may also do a few about lifestyle and cooking, basically about the things I enjoy and I hope you do too.

So here we go...

One of my favourite things about Christmas is the sales. I absolutely love Christmas! And when Christmas Day is over I (like most people) feel a bit sad, but then I remember the sales. It's like Christmas Day all over again when I go sale shopping especially when I get a few bargains. Most years Topshop is my treasure chest of cheap goodies but this year it was Urban Outfitters. I usually find it too expensive (and ashamedly a little too cool for me) but when they have a sale it's one of my fav places to go. The only sale items I got this year were from Urban Outfitters. I am extremely happy with them especially my boots xD I love them! like... really really love them. They should last me a good few years too.

I also got a denim skirt, a taupe top, two hair clips, a purse, a beautiful scarf and EOS lip balm in vanilla bean (the only one which wasn't in the sale) all very 90s! BTW totes my fav decade mainly because of the Spice Girls and Friends.

Well I think this is the end of my first blog post, keep it short and sweet. I have tipped my toe into the blogging world and am already thinking of my next post, think it will be a beauty one, bit of a teaser.

I am very grateful if you have read this and please look out my next post :)

frances louise
xoxo