Our Visit to Portmeirion - part 1.

If one post from me today just isn't filling your Porcelain Agaric appetite then pop over to By The Lock where the lovely Chloe has posted my vegan Peanut Butter Sundae Hair Mask recipe. Her blog is an ecclectic mix of crafting, cooking and wonderfulness in which you will find plenty to make your eyes happy.

Back to our camping adventures, it turned out that our campsite was right opposite the estuary to Portmeirion. This amazingly, strange place was designed and built by Clough Williams-Ellis in 1925-1975. He bought the site in 1925 for around £5000 and based it on a typical Italian city. I loved visiting here so close to finishing Elijah's Mermaid because some of that was based in Italy so it really immersed me in the feeling of it all.

 

This place is just so strange to walk around, its all so contrary in a way, very beautiful and quirky though. If you are in North Wales it is definitely worth a look around, you can easily while away most of a day there immersed in all the candy colours and fresco-esque buildings. We even caught up with my aunty and uncle there and spent a lovely few hours wondering around and drinking tea. I took a lot of photos here so I will be sharing more of these when I need a camping fix in the week. 

Hope you have had a fantastic bank holiday Monday <3 

Much Love

xkx   

Kitchen Glamour - Coconut Oil.

Coconut oil doesn't seem to that popular in the UK but I would not want to be without it in my kitchen/ bathroom cupboard. You can use this for both cooking and beauty, it is delicious on crumpets and you can even fry chips with it (I have never tried this but it does sound super yummy). I mainly use coconut oil for beauty bits and bobs though...  

I have found coconut oil invaluable when it comes to keeping my hair in good condition. It may not come as a surprise to you that my hair is not naturally bright red. I pre-lighten the roots then dye it red, so I find that I constantly battle with split ends and dry hair. You can  use coconut oil as a deep conditioner by melting it (you can do this by putting it into a cup, in a bowl of hot water) then smothering you hair with it and leave it in for 20 mins. It is best to wrap your hair in a warm towel because this helps your hair to soak in all the goodness. Then wash out, shampoo it first before you wet your hair because of the simple science that oil repels water. I'm not too keen on doing this though, I'm not always patient enough to wait and then to wash it out properly. The lazy way is to wash your hair as normal, towel dry then melt a little bit in your hands (about the size of of a 5p coin), make sure your hands are really oily then just scrunch it into your hair, especially the ends. You really don't want to put too much on because it will make your hair look greasy! You can then either let your hair air dry or blow dry it, I have found both works well. Doing this every time I wash my hair has really made a difference to the condition of it, which has meant the colour stays more vibrant longer and when I re-dye it it looks even redder. 

I also use coconut oil as make up remover. I used to use sensitive skin make up wipes but I found that they would flare up my eczema around my eyes and make them really puffy. So I started to use coconut oil instead. I melt a bit in my hands then I massage it around my eyes and wipe with cotton wool pads, then I rub the rest around my face. I wet my face with some water then just wipe my whole face with another cotton wool pad. Whatever oil is left on my face I leave there overnight and it is absorbed in the morning. It leaves my skin in wonderful condition and you don't have to worry about what chemicals are in your make up remover either. If I have a spot coming I dab a little extra on it at night and I find after a couple of days it will have disappeared (hopefully). It is also fabulous for any dry skin on the body and pesky dry cuticles, I just rub some around any problem areas at night and by the morning there is a great improvement. 

The last way I use it is to oil pull. I will probably do a whole post on oil pulling at a later date because it is a pretty amazing process that I only recently found out about. Basically you swoosh this in your mouth for 15-20mins twice a day and the oil pulls the bacteria from your mouth which means that your immune system is freed up to fight illness etc. 

The pot pictured above cost me under £10 from Amazon and it has lasted me 6months to a year. So it has probably saved me money for all the things I have replaced with it. 

I hope you found this helpful and I hope you have some rather lovely plans for the bank holiday weekend. Ed and I are going to a spa this evening for a bit of R&R.

xkx

Book Review - The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar.

I picked up this book in a wonderful little bookstore that stocked an eclectic mix of sic-fi, fantasy and graphic novels in Edinburgh. it was up a little cobbled street and the book shop owner was very quiet and book-wormish, I am a confessed bibliophile so I rationed myself to just one book! After a couple of laps around this little shop this caught my eye. I love anything to do with fairies and when I spied that the introduction was my Neil Gaiman my excitement grew. The deal was clinched when I read on the back that "It is a book for every girl with home-dyed hair and fairy wings...". Well for anyone who doesn't know I have fairy wings tattooed on my back and well this may be a shock but I am not a natural red head.

I picked up this book this morning and didn't put it down until I had finished it this afternoon. This book is a real gem, it characters are a mix of fairies and humans that are loveably flawed. The book is set in New York to a backdrop of run down apartments and the main human characters trying to make ends meet. I loved the juxtaposition of the grimy surroundings and the touching goodness of the fairies, even though the kindness is very well hidden at times under lashings of whiskey and bad language. I really enjoyed the hint of dark smut that was sprinkled throughout the pages as well as it gave it a real delicious edge. 

I am going to give this book 4 stars out of 5. This is because I loved this book and I thought the little details that helped to thread the plot together were really well thought out. The Fairies of New York is a surprising book and at times I was left thinking that Martin Millar must have had help from the fairies to manage to entwine all of the characters and events together in such a satisfying and diverse way. The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was because, even though I enjoyed all the characters and their relationships I didn't feel too sad to leave them behind, when I closed the last page of that book. But maybe that is down to Martin Millar tying everything up beautifully. So you'll just have to read it and decide for yourself.

Pre-Wedding Day to do List!

So today is the day before my wedding! Eeek. So this is my picture to do list that I have had to get sorted before the big day.

7:30am - Get up to dye my roots back to Ariel red. This takes a good few hours as I have to pre-lighten my hair first.

10:30am - Make sure all the paper work is sorted for tomorrow and sort out all the music that we need for the ceremony.

11:00am - Check the rings are somewhere safe!

11:05am - Watch a cheeky episode of Buffy, as Ed has gone to get his hair cut.

11:30am - Finish my vows whilst watching Buffy.

2:30pm - Get back from shopping and give my bouquet a once over.

4:00pm - Make a little fascinator for tomorrow.

6:00pm - Have gluten free fish and chips *YUM*.

8:30pm - Finish last minute food shopping for our little wedding lunch tomorrow, then chill out with my gorgeous husband to be and my lovely parents.

Tomorrow is the big day!! Can't wait <3