Meadowhall Illamasqua Vegan Event.

When I got invited to the Illamasqua Vegan event in Meadowhall, I was quite excited to learn about some more cruelty free products. I'd heard of Illamasqua before but I've never tried any of their products, so it was a good chance to get to know the products and the brand a little better. They have recently been approved by PETA and the event was to highlight the products that were fully vegan.

Around a year ago, not long after starting my blog I decided to go cruelty free. This is something I thought would be a really hard transition but it actually turned out to be a pretty easy swap over. There are so many amazing cruelty free brands around that I've discovered and so many amazing products, it's good to know you can still look incredible and animals haven't suffered for the privilege.

Upon arrival we were welcomed with strawberries and marshmallows and then we were offered some elder flower juice, I love all three of these things so it was lovely to have a little snack and of course they were all vegan.

We were then shown two make up looks with the vegan products. The first was a more toned down natural look for everyday and second was a bunny inspired look, for those that don't know a bunny is the logo for PETA, so it fitted the theme of the event nicely.

Thank you to Aimee - for letting me use her image as mine didn't come out great!

I really loved this second look, obviously it's not an everyday look unless you are into something a little out there but I really really liked the flick of white at the end of the eyelashes, I thought it was really cute and really made the eye area stand out more. I also loved the white freckles, I'm a big lover of freckles and I thought this was such a lovely little twist. I just really enjoyed the whole look in general, it was really fun and nothing i'd seen before. Maybe it'll inspire me to try something new!

After the demo's I had a look around the products because like I said previously I've never actually seen any of the ranges before. I'm always drawn to the foundations and the lipsticks and I accidentally fell in love with two lipsticks called Climax and Scandal. I think after the wedding and the spending ban is lifted I'm going to head back and try a few things out.

Until then though we were all lucky enough to get given a little goodie bag with a black eyeliner and a primer which I can't wait to try out, I swatched the eyeliner on my hand and it's a really thin and precise line and very waterproof, I had to use cleanser to get it off because it wouldn't budge! So keep an eye out for a review of those soon!

I love going to events, especially for cruelty free brands so I can add them to my list of brands to try. Please let me know if you've tried Illamasqua , what your thoughts are or your favourite products as I would love to know!

The Forum: Bloggers Cocktail Masterclass.

When The Forum in Sheffield invited me along to the Bloggers Cocktail Masterclass event being excited was an understatement, learning to make cocktails with my blogger chums, whats not to love! 

I've been to a menu tasting event at The Forum before and it was a really good night, lovely hosts and great food and drink, so I knew it was going to be a good one!

Upon arrival we were greeted with a Gin & Elderflower Fizz which was really light and tasty, I love elderflower, so this was a great little start to the evening, I like the little spring of rosemary on the top, it added a little something extra smelling that as you drank it!



Then the first cocktail we were shown from the new menu was the Polish Espresso Martini, this is Polish vodka with coffee. For someone who isn't a massive coffee drinker this was quite strong on the coffee front, although I did enjoy it in small doses, I can imagine some people will love this at the start of a drinking session after work to perk them up a little!

After having a taste of this one we were taken for a little tour of the brewery they had next door. Firstly, I had no idea they actually had a brewery, I think it's pretty cool that they brew their own beer quite literally next door. Secondly, I think it was pretty cool getting to try some of the beer in the brewing stage, I'm not a fan of beer but I enjoyed tasting something that was brewing right in front of me. For any beer lover this is quite cool to know that something is being brewed so locally and can be purchased meer feet away.

After our little tour we were taken behind the bar to make our own Polish Espresso Martini, it was really fun getting to make some cocktails, I haven't made any since back in my uni days! I forgot how much you need to shake them at the end ha!



The professionals!

My attempt!

Then the next cocktail we were shown was the Candy Martini, this is definitely my favourite, it's very sweet but quite light and fruity. This has Licor 43 in it which is a Spanish Liqueur made from fruits and spices, then has fresh raspberries and pineapple added to it! This is such a good cocktail for summer, I can imagine drinking this out in the beer garden. I also think the added edible flower is so pretty, perfect instagrammable cocktails!

Then the final cocktail we were shown was the Lemon Cheesecake, I've got such a sweet tooth even when it comes to alcohol so this was also right up my street. This has Amaretto, Vodka, cream, lemon juice and Limoncello, which is a lemon liqueur, then to garnish they crumbled a digestive biscuit on the top. This is also really nice, my absolute favourite dessert is cheesecake so this was always going to be something that I love! The lemon was quite balanced with the sweet so it wasn't really bitter or anything like that. I also managed to nab a cheeky biscuit!



Then to make this evening pretty much perfect, Amber one of the event organiser came around with a Polaroid camera to take some snaps for us to take home, anyone that has read my blog for awhile knows Polaroid photography is my jam, so this was a perfect little addition to the night!

It was really fun tasting some of the new cocktails and getting to make them all! It was fun pairing up .and having a laugh spilling booze everywhere! I do have to say that the Candy Martini is my favourite and I might be heading back one date night to have another tasting..or three.

I absolutely love cocktails, so let me know what cocktails you enjoy for the summer months!





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Sunday Sitdown #9

I almost forgot to do a Sunday sit-down post this month because time truly has whizzed on by. I know I say this is every Sunday sit down post but the past month seems to have gone by really quickly even though I haven't seem to have done anything interesting, ha!

As always I'm going to talk about a few things that have been going on with my blog and in real life, so lets grab a cup of tea and have a catch up!

Twisted Burger Company Menu Tasting

When I was invited to try some tasty burgers by Twisted Burger Company at the Harley pub in Sheffield, I was very excited. I do love a good burger but I must admit I'm fussy about burgers and quite hard to please, so Nick came along with me to give a second opinion from a big burger fan!

Nick and I used to drink in the Harley and to be honest I had no idea they even did food, so it was quite nice to head there late afternoon and see the place in quite literally, a whole new light. 

Sunday Sitdown #6

Once again, its time for a little Sunday Sitdown and have a little catch up. Is it me or has the past 3 months just absolutely flown by? I can't believe we're 2 weeks away from April...seesh.

The past months I've been super busy on both the blogging and personal front. So this month I'll certainly be splitting this post into two!

LUSH Spring Event, Sheffield.

Spring is coming and with every new season, Lush bring out some gorgeous seasonal products. I was once again a very lucky lady to be invited along to the Lush spring event and I couldn't wait to get in there!

After a little introduction from the lovely Becki I headed around the shop to look at all the products, some of the spring stuff is super cute, I love the carrots, easter eggs and the adorable lady bird! There was plenty of mothers day products too with lovely gift boxes such as the one pictured below, they are still available in store until stocks run out :)

After looking around I headed over to the skin care area which is my favourite bit! After speaking through a few different products I added two new things to my basket, I'll be writing up an updated Lush skincare routine very soon, so keep your eyes open for that one.

I then headed over to play area! Today we were making the peoples favourite, The comforter, which I've never actually used before, so I was very excited. We were asked to take 2 handfuls, one of each colour and make them into sausages, you then twist the two around each other and then squash them down so it makes a swirled pattern. I had so much fun doing this and it smelt amazing the entire time!

Mine is on the right ^_^

Mine didn't exactly have the most amazing swirl in it but it would do, all we had to do was leave them 24 hours to set and then use them!

After this I headed over to the 'shower' station. Here I watched a couple of people have a consultation about some lovely body scrubs, shower gels and moisturisers! I saw and smelt the Yuzu and Cocoa shower gel which smelt just like chocolate orange and I couldn't help but add it to my basket, it also helps that my favourite colour is yellow!

After having a little chin wag over a drink and some snacks it was time to pay and head home, we were once again given the most generous goodie bag and I couldn't wait to have a play!



After waiting 24 hours for my the comforter bubble bar to set, the next evening I had a lovely soak in the bath, the comforter smelt amazing, even Nick commented on how nice it smelt. I used my new gifted face mask Cosmetic Warrior which smells like garlic, so not the most relaxing thing to smell in the bath but worked great on my skin. I can't wait to try the rest of the products I was gifted and let you know what I think of them, I think I'm going to use the Ladybird bubble bar next because she smells and looks great!

Let me know what products you are loving at the minute, as I would love to know!
I'm always up for some Lush suggestions!




If you interested in seeing what we made at the last Lush event please click here :)

Revolucion De Cuba Menu Tasting, Sheffield.

Last week I was very excited to get invited along to taste the menu at Revolucion de Cuba in Sheffield. I've been in here to drink a couple of times with Nick back in the early days of dating and haven't been back since. When they kindly said I could invite along a friend, I thought it would be lovely to go back with Nick and have a date night and try the food together.

When we arrived we were immediately asked if we wanted a cocktail, for those that don't know they specialise in Rum at Revolucion de Cuba, so Mojito's were on the menu immediately, it would be rude to say no, right? We were seated, waited for everyone to arrive and before long they started bringing out some tasty food.

The first course they bought out was a sharing tray with a very strange combination of  Pork Crackling, Dried Sweet Banana Flakes and Spicy Mixed Nuts, but it worked and they all got devoured pretty quickly, my favourite had to be the spicy nuts...followed closely by the banana flakes.

Shortly after we were presented with 4 main dishes, the first of which was my favourite, Beef Fillet Skewers with Sweet potato wedges and Home-made Black Beans. The beef was really tasty with the peppers, wasn't tough at all and worked really well with the the sweetness of the potato. I didn't try the black beans because I'm not a use fan of them but people seemed to like them when trying!

Next was Sardines with Smokey Tomato Salsa, I didn't try this as I'm not a huge sardines fan, but Nick tried these and enjoyed it, the bones were soft so you don't need to spend ages picking them out!

The next dish was Roasted Butternut squash with peppers, smoked chilli jam and goat's cheese and honey sauce. I didn't try this either because I really can't stand goat's cheese but again, people were saying it was nice! It's a pity because I love squash, chilli jam and honey, just the goat's cheese really put me off with this one.

Then the last thing I tried was this dish, that I can't for the life of me figure out what it is, it appears to be chicken but when I tried it, it tasted like fish? so I'm not really sure and browsing the menu hasn't helped at all. but it tasted alright haha.

We were given another cocktail from the specials menu, which means unfortunately I can't remember the name of it, but trust me when I say it was amazing, very tasty and easy to drink (so watch out for that rum!), this was so nice it was the choice of drink for the rest of the night! It tasted like fruit juice, sweet with pineapple and of course, rum.

Then began the fun part of the evening...the burrito making class from the chef's themselves. We were all given the same ingredients and taught how to roll the perfect burrito, which was really fun and interesting to learn how to properly roll one! We were all given a flag to write our name on so they could all be taken back into the kitchen and judged on which they felt was the best burrito! and whoever won, won a lovely dinner for 2!

Everyone had fun putting these together and unsurprisingly every single one looked different! Nick's actually looked pretty good in the end and mine fell apart because my wrap was a little dry and hard, so harder to roll, but we all had fun trying! :)

After the burrito's were taken off to be warmed up and judged, we were greeted by a lovely man who was their 'Rum Expert'. He spoke to us about the history of rum, what it's made out of, where it's usually made and some of the varieties.  He bought out 3 different bottles of rum which we of course got to try! I have to say I found this really fun and really interesting! I could certainly taste the difference in the 3 types of rum, the first and cheapest of the three, burnt more, the second one didn't burn as much but tasted of dark chocolate as it was soaked with cocoa beans and the third burnt less but was really tasty and was my favourite, Nick and I clearly have expensive taste!

I did learn that rum should be used only in equal part with coca cola, which is interesting! Cola is used because it compliments the flavour, so those that drown the rum in coke are doing it all wrong! I mixed in a tiny bit of coke with my rum and it tasted so much better!

I have to say I really enjoyed this evening and it certainly opened up a new option for date nights! I'm never normally a spirits drinker but I really enjoyed every single drink I had. The burrito was pretty amazing and I quite literally inhaled it. It was really nice to be able to bring Nick along to a blogger event, so he can see what I get up to when I leave him for the evenings! He had a lovely time!

Oh and we didn't win the burrito competition, much to Nick's disappointment.

Really recommend you head here for a fun date night, especially as there was a cool live band as well which I had no idea they did!

Let me know if you head here and what your thoughts were on the place!

Nourish Spring Menu Event, Sheffield.

Last week I was invited along to an independent food place in Sheffield called Nourish. This is a super healthy restaurant that I've popped into before and I couldn't wait to taste their new spring menu!

Before I delve into the tasty stuff, I want to talk a little about how inspiring I found this event. David the owner spoke a little about the company and his aims after we tasted the food and his passion for nutrition, health and tasty food really left me inspired. So much so that I went home and bought a Spiralizer, Quinoa, Buckwheat and a new passion for cooking some healthy and tasty food.

I can't wait to share some new discovered recipes and tips with you :)

Right, so onto the good stuff! When we arrived we were greeted with two very tasty smoothies!
The first, pictured below is the Strawberry Rhubarb Pie smoothie which was very refreshing and light. Then next (which was my favourite) we were given the Berry Kombucha smoothie, this was much sweeter (I have a serious sweet tooth) and thicker with a little more flavour in it, I liked it so much I had two!

Strawberry and Rhubarb pie smoothie

Soon after the food courses started to arrive, we were given 3 cold and 3 hot dishes to try. I'm going to be honest here, although I love a good salad, I wasn't blown away by the choices. We had a nice duck salad but I wasn't keen on the sauce that came on the noodles and the salmon was lovely but nothing that blew my mind.



However out of the 3 hot dishes I liked pretty much all of them.The first one I really liked was a baked sweet potato with turkey meatballs, I'd never had turkey meatballs before but this dish was lovely and gave me reason to use the sweet potato's I had knocking around in the fridge at home!
I was too busy scoffing this one down I didn't take any photo's!

Then possibly my favourite dish was the chicken tagine with lentils and red pepper. I've never had tagine before but this was lovely, lots of veg and very tasty, I did have to scoop out the hot sauce though because I'm a wuss! I suspect this is quite easy to make at home so this is a recipe I need to write down on the list of healthy things to try!

After trying all of the dishes we had a little Q&A with the owner David, who spoke about all the work he is doing in the local community, how he uses and buys local produce so he is putting money back into the local areas, which personally I think is amazing.

We were given some goodie bags to go on our merry way, which included a voucher for a dessert, which I can't wait to go back in and try, when I've finally decided what I want! We also got given a very tasty cranberry drink that started lovely, an orange and a little bag of yogurt covered bit of fruit, which tastes amazing and help with my sweet tooth cravings!

I can't wait to go on my healthier eating adventure and share with you all how it goes, all thanks to this event!

If you've tried Nourish let me know what your favourite dish is? or your favourite healthy snack? As I'd love to hear about it!


'Tasty' word count: 5

LUSH Sheffield Event.

A couple of weeks ago I was very kindly invited to the LUSH store on Fargate in Sheffield city centre to learn more about LUSH products, have a chance for a one on one chat about hair and skin with the staff and finally make some of the products ourselves, which is very very exciting!

The Village Screen: Home Alone Screening.

Last Sunday I was invited to a pop up cinema screening of Home Alone in a warehouse at Kelham Island in Sheffield by the lovely people at The Village Screen.

I'm all for Christmas things and a pop up cinema sounded so fun and different, so I couldn't say no!