A Few Bits and Bobs

Hey all :D

Just thought I would do a quick bits and bobs blog as I haven't had chance to do a proper post for a few days.

As much as I don't want this to be a beauty blog I have found a few products that I really love this week. I do have an Avon blog for those sort of things - where I write about all the products I like by Avon, and I found a great neutral polish for summer. If you like nail polishes it is a must to check out - all of which can be brought through me![http://www.avonconnects.co.uk/blogs/riereviews/tags/malyon]

But there is one product I brought from Lush this week that I must rave about!

It is the fresh face mask called..... Love Lettuce.

My boyfriend had a good giggle about the name of this when I first told him, apparently it sounds like a bit of a euphemism.... But I am in love with it!

I went into the shop in Portsmouth on Wednesday - and although the staff are always lovely the lady that helped me was extra helpful and recommended this mask for me.

I have combination skin (a mix of greasy t-zone and dry cheeks) and this mask really helps with both. Despite the name and the crazy green colour it smells lovely, like lavender mostly but also really fresh. It also has ground almond shells in it for ex foliation when you wash it off. They recommend leaving it on for 5-10 minutes but in the end mine stayed on for nearly 20 minutes and the result was amazing!

My skin felt super soft, and my breakouts seem to have died down. Not one part of my face is dry and even now I can feel a difference 4 days after using it. The only downside of it is that it only has an expiry date of 3 weeks and needs to be kept in the fridge. But this is because if contains all natural ingredients and I think it is well worth it.

In this picture I only put a little on to try it out but this time I might put on a bit more of a layer to see how much more it can do for me! Super happy about this product! :D

On a more computer geeky note... I have got back into my Sims.

Those that know me well will know I am a bit of a nerd for all things Simish - and have been stuck in the dark ages of Sims 2 due to my computer and laptop not being up to anything more.

However my boyfriend has just updated his PC - so I am going to be a proud owner of his retired one!!

Many people might jump into Sims 3 - but I am far more excited about Sims Medieval.

It is on a whole new platform and promises to be amazing! There has been so much hype about this game and I do think as soon as I get the new computer I will have to purchase this.

I only hope it can live up to my expectations. I am a little bit of a control freak, and love Sims 2 as I have some much control over each character and love creating my own narrative. Because of this I was not so much of a fan of Sim City, as it was a lot more difficult to control and it was a city - not a sim!

Medieval seems a mix of the two and I am so excited to give it a go!!

Please let me know if you have had a look at this game yet and let me know what you think??

Needless to say as soon as I have a play on it there will be a review coming up. But to keep you going while I get my hands on it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/27/the-sims-medieval-review

I have also had a request from the lovely Sio for a review on the film Letters to Juliet, so expect a review on this in the next few weeks.

Also coming up is a review on the latest book in the True Blood series, which I have now pre-ordered and will be in the post on the 5th of May. It shouldn't take me long to read so I will have a blog post on that super soon!

Thank you all for reading - it means a lot to me!!

Love Rie xxxx

A BIG Thank You!!

This month my modest amount of posts have reached 144 of you lovely people.

I want to say a big thank you for coming back and reading. This small number to some is monumental to me and I am so happy that your coming and having a look.

But this is your time to get involved - tell me what you want to read about? I can blabber away about my whims forever but I would love to hear what you think.

Do you like the blog suggestions and YouTube posts?

Are you more of a fan of my favourites posts about TV programmes?

Would you like more book reviews?

Stand up and be counted.

Love Rie xxx

Post Secret

I always look at this blog every Sunday. It is the highlight of my week. There is something about reading other peoples secrets that is so personal, but with 429,368,852 views it is anything but.

Every week I always save some of my favourites, one week I might save all of them, others just one or two. Some I feel I can relate to, others are ones that I know I never will. Some I don't understand and some I just like the look of.

So, here are some of my favourites that I have saved over time.

Check it out :)

Comment below and let me know what one is your favourite.

www.postsecret.blogspot.com

Thank you for reading,

Rie xxxx

Studying in the Sun!

Hi all :)

Firstly, thank you for coming and reading my blog in just a short amount of time I have had more hits than I could of imagined (just another push and I'll hit 100 this month! Wooo).

I am studying hard atm - being the stress pot that I am I refuse to do anything else until I have done some uni work. Even though I have over a month till hand in, I like to know I have plenty of time to do work, and I sure have plenty to do.

But I don't think I have done work in such a pretty surroundings as today! The sun is shining and I am sat in the back garden at home in shorts, t-shirt and sunglasses typing away on my laptop.

I can't believe how warm it is - I had to move the table in to the shade because my little laptop was getting too hot (oh and me hehe!). It feels just like summer, but there are plenty of pretty daffodils around in the garden to remind me its only spring!!

This double headed daffodil got to heavy and broke :( but it has been a very pretty laptop accessory (until it got in the way to much and was moved to the pile of books) so it did not fall of in vain!

Hope you are all enjoying the weather were you are.

Please don't forget to comment,

Love Rie xxx

My Addiction to Cooking Programmes

I first started watching cooking programmes in college. I had a timetable which meant I was spending some time at home watching television during the day and food programmes were the only ones I could watch without loosing my soul.

My mum, don’t get me wrong is a brilliant cook, but cursed by a fussy family of eaters and very little time we would rotate the same core dishes every week. With my love of all things food developing fast, I started taking over some of the cooking in the house.

By the first year of University I was cooking 3-4 times a week and really enjoying using my family as guinea pigs to test my cooking skills on. I wasn’t cooking anything big or exciting, or really anything new but I really enjoyed it.

Now that I live in halls during term time I use those skills I learnt to feed me, and more importantly the baking skills I learnt from my mum to bribe flatmates.

But I love nothing more than coming home on a Friday afternoon and cooking a big pot of chilli for the family. A recipe given to me by best friend Sam, it never fails to please. And as of yet no one else has learned to make it just like me!

Now if I was to try and condense my favourite cooking programmes to just a list of 3 it would take a lot of time and pain to choose. But most of these shows come from 3 core cooking personalities: Nigella Lawson, Jamie Oliver and Rachel Allen. So instead I will do a quick run down of cooking personalities!

Nigella Lawson

Famous for her curvaceous figure and lavish menus I think she should be a role model for most women. Certain groups may argue she is accepting a role of objectified house wife but I can’t help but feel that it’s completely the opposite. “Its about feeling like a domestic goddess” (Lawson in her book How to be a Domestic Goddess). It’s about enjoying food and enjoying feeding your family and I love the whole idea.

I am a not-so undercover mother hen, and I love to know people are eating well and treating people to the smell of freshly baked cakes when they walk in to a kitchen, and Nigella is the personification of that super woman for me. Who we look up to for doing everything, but accomplishes it all with the least amount of effort, and a lot of style.

Her sensual manner of enjoying food and glamour shots between recipes also means my boyfriend doesn’t mind snuggling up on the sofa with me to watch a double bill on television. Even though many shows are repeated (many if not all of them made by the BBC and now repeated on Good Food Channel) I will still watch them over and over.

Because who doesn’t steal a midnight snack in their silky night wear while the camera men are still looking?

Jamie Oliver

Now this TV chef holds a whole different appeal to me. Although he is not a bad looking chap, he is no sensual Nigella. It is casual chatty style and easy dishes are the real pull for me.

I remember picking up my first copy of a Jamie Oliver book from a charity shop many years ago for just £2.50 and I fell in love! Since then I have received most of his books as gifts from family and friends – with 30 Minute Meals being my favourite.

Since receiving the book as a gift I go on to Channel’s 4 YouTube channel and watch any potential dinner dish being made by the man himself, before jumping into the kitchen with the book for further references. To be fair I have not made 1 full menu out of the book, but many aspects of this dish have made it into my personal cook book.

I still feel the pain of knowing one kitchen he claimed as his own in my favourite series (although the name eludes even my most keen research now) was later passed on as a TV studio to Ching-He Huang. But I like to think he sold her the whole apartment – right….

Rachel Allen

Rachel Allen is another domestic goddess of the Lawson variety, but with a very different style. Think more posh and proper with pretty plates to serve delicately decorated cupcakes on.

But her baking shows have taught me a lot, and although I can’t remember replicating one of her recipes I remember her tips and tricks on how to make the best short crust pastry and how to test a cake to see if it is fully cooked.

Although I have looked at her books with some awe, I have never splashed put and purchased one, as I don’t think any of her recipes are anything that I haven’t seen else where.

But I do watch her as a regular on the Good Food Channel. She has many saying that always make me giggle, for example when tasting for seasoning she often says “mmm perfect”, as there could never be anything wrong with her own cooking!!

Well worth a watch just for that!

Well congratulations for making it to the end! I hope you have enjoyed reading about my TV cooking personality favourites.

Please comment below and let me know what you think of these 3 cooks, and who your favourites are? Can you even watch cooking programmes without getting too hungry??

Love Rie xxxx

My Favourite Crime Dramas

For the second day of my TV favourite’s series, I thought I would look at my favourite specimens of the crime drama genre. I often find that too many of crime shows are from America but there are a few good English examples too. I have chosen these three as not so much the ones I watch the most, but the ones I enjoy watching the most, as some series may overtake them in sheer scale of individual episodes, but not in quality.

Criminal Minds

Yes, the many 1,000’s of episodes of CSI maybe the most popular choice but Criminal Minds has something so much better. Most of these shows do the psychological aspect of the crimes, but I just find that the way the narrative is constructed in this show is so much more satisfying.

It is so predictable, and I think this is what in my opinion makes it so good. I know that the team are going to fly out to an area of America that has had a series of crimes that appear to be linked. I know that before they can stop the killer he tricks them and murders another victim. And I know that they will be able to save the final kidnapped victim as they work out at the last minute the identity of the un-sub.

This predictability flatters me as I guess their next move, or I gasp in horror as they chuck in a red herring. It’s a passive audiences dream!

The characters are also a real pleasure to watch. The awkward attractiveness of Dr. Spencer Reid (Matthew Gray Gubler) and the playful sexual tension between Penelope Garcia (Kirsten Vangsness) and Derek Morgan (Shemar Moore) keep me coming back for more!

Lie To Me

I first heard of this show from my Communication and Culture teacher at college. We were studying body language, in particular the works of Paul Ekman around facial expressions and deception. At the time I was convinced the link between the show and his works was purely coincidental, but I have recently found out the show is based on his works.

On Ekman’s website www.paulekman.com he admits that although the show has its roots in his work, it is a drama and the protagonist Dr. Lightman is a character that jumps a lot quicker into interpreting behaviour than he would. And all the cases he is involved in are of course fictional.

Yet I really indulge in the dramatization of a subject that I studied at college. The way the protagonists are portrayed makes the ability to read micro facial expressions to be a form of super-power that only a limited number of people possess. However I can honestly say I have turned back to Ekman’s research for university

assignments for references because of the show.

Well worth a watch for anyone who love a dramatic crime drama to those who study, or are just interested in body language and facial expressions.

Lewis

Tonight my late post is due to this very show. When I heard that the first of the new series was to be broadcasted tonight I dropped my laptop in a flash and watched in awe.

If anyone was to question the value of my degree from a new university I would reply quite sharply that it is just snobbery and not a matter of intelligence. But that doesn’t mean I do not indulge in the spectacle made of the town in Lewis, especially around the students of the prestigious university.

Mystery, adultery scandal and most of all murder keeps me coming back for more.

Its original form of Inspector Morse, co-written by the sole author of Lewis, Russell Lewis holds much the same content. Yet the updated format with the same actor from the latter half of the Morse series Kevin Whatley performs the role so well.

Undoubtedly it does hold parallels with the American equivalents in terms of predictability, but I think the whole accentuated Englishness of the show attracts me more than any other. I’m sure it has a lot to do with the attractiveness of D S Hathaway (Lawrence Fox) as well.

It holds all the same features of multiple deaths in a short amount of time and dramatic endings – but isn’t this what we love about crime dramas?

Don't forget to comment and let me know about these shows, and what crime dramas are you favourites.

Thanks to you all for reading,

Love Rie

xxx

My TV Guilty Pleasures

Here is the first part of a series of posts on my TV favourites.

This blog is all about my guilty pleasures currently broadcast on the box an why i enjoy them so much.

Emmerdale

Although some people may take pride in watching this soap opera, it is not a programme with a high amount of viewers of my age.

However there must be a part of me that wants to run away and start up a farm in the countryside as I love catching up with what has been going on while I have been away.

I am not a big fan of the ITV Player as I find it so slow compared to the iPlayer, but even if I could stand the site for long enough, I am not sure I would watch Emmerdale online.

I think the biggest part of the pleasure of this show is my Friday night catch-ups with mum on the sofa finding out what has been going on with the town’s residents.

I am particularly fond of the idea of the farm shop, and the Woolpack

gatherings, simply the whole dying concept of village living that I have never really experienced.

For those cynics of my sanity, I do know that it is all created for the show, but I like the added drama and narrative that only a regular soap can provide, and I am sure I will continue to indulge in the show more often now, whilst I am home for Easter.

Snog Marry Avoid

As a media student, I often ponder how this show fits into the BBC’s remit to: educate, inform and entertain. Yes it may inform people on how to be naturally beautiful and certainly entertains those such as myself who bask in its triviality. But how far will this remit bend?

But don’t mistake these thoughts about the BBC’s motivations for the show as criticism. As for escapism TV I couldn’t think of anything better.

An acquired taste, but a must see for those who observe how people have taken ‘fakery’ the extreme, and chuckle to themselves at orange fake tans, clumpy fake lashes and outfits that look like they haven’t yet got dressed.

POD (personal overhaul device) is witty and cutting and such a giggle.

Shown on BBC3, normally in the late evenings it is a show aimed at the teenage audience, but I know that friends into their 40’s still enjoy a bit of a giggle at the state of the people willing to appear on the show.

Another of my core guilty pleasures.

Take Me Out

Oh Paddy McGuinness makes this show for me. That accent, that cheeky smile and wicked sense of humour make me grin every time.

Again I must bore you for a second with my wonderment on its reflection on dating culture in the UK. The objectification of men is really interesting to me. As well as how women perceive different aspects of the contestant’s life and decide so quickly that they do not want to know any more about him.

Whenever I watch it I think of my dad saying “chuck her a sugar lump and send her home” with reference to one of the women looking like a horse, and it makes me think that maybe these cutting observations are best made behind closed doors and not told to the male contestants so openly.

It’s so cruel, it’s so cutting, and so totally my ultimate guilty pleasure.

A class entertainment for those who want nothing more.

Thank you all for reading :)

Please comment and let me know what your TV guilty pleasures are.

Love Rie

xxx

Oh the Wonders of Television!!

As some of you may know, I spend most of my week at university in Southampton. I don’t have a television licence in my place currently, so I rely on YouTube and BBC iPlayer for my entertainment.

But there is nothing like indulging in a bit of good old television when I am home. I have just come home for the Easter break, and as I told you what entertainment I enjoy watching at university I thought I would do a few posts on what television I enjoy watching a home.

Look out for 3 posts in the next 3 days on my guilty pleasures, my crime drama genre favourites and my addiction to cooking programmes.

Don’t forget to comment about what shows you like to watch, what you think of my favourite shows and programmes you think I might like.

Thanks reading,

Love Rie xxxx