Moroccan Bath

Yesterday I went for my first ever Moroccan bath! I had been checking out the voucher websites, Groupon and Cobone when I saw a voucher for a Moroccan Bath at a good price in a lush salon. I love these voucher sites as they always have brilliant offers and you can save the vouchers for when your a bit skint, thats me right now! (even having to start using a bit of money from my British account, always a sign of a tight month) So I had purchased this voucher and off I went yesterday. And I found myself at a Salon based in a Villa down in the posh part of Dubai which was completely pink inside!

 Loved the salon straight away and will defo be going back. I'd never had a moroccan bath before but my moroccan boy had always sang loudly about how amazing they were. First thing I had to do was put on a very embarassingly small pair of disposable knickers, which were fine at the front but hid nothing at the back and a disposable bikini top. Later I found that there was really no need for these as the therapist soon whipped them off!

Next thing was to have a shower and clean off any deodrant etc. Then I was a little surprised to see the therapist in her bikini standing in the room ( Im sure this is normal for this treatment but surprised I was nonetheless!)
Next she rubbed me with Moroccan soap and left me to steam for a while. This is the type of room I was in with loads of steam.
Once I had steamed clean for a while next thing was to have a shower, so off I went down the steps and she washed me clean. Oh she did put a treatment in my hair aswell which has made it silky soft. Your in your own room the whole time that has the steam part and the shower, I was really quite impressed by the whole thing and the cleanliness. Once I had the soap washed off next thing was the scrubbing. I had to lay down and basically she scrubbed every part of my body! and I mean every where and the amount of skin that came off was quite a surprise. This is definitely not for someone who doesn't like being touched as they move you around alot and like I said by this point I did wonder what the point was of the disposable underwear as she had moved most of it by now. To be fair I kept thinking to myself how she must do this all the time and see more wobbly bits then  my own. She was slightly fascinated by my tattoos tho!
After copious amounts of exfoliating I was done and I am so pleased with the result. My skin is super soft!! I will definitely be returning to the salon and will definitely be getting another one of these.

I have another voucher for a spa in a hotel which includes a massage, Moroccan bath and oil treatment....think it may even have a few extras added on so I will be looking forward to trying all that out next month.

Hope your all treating yourself this weekend :)

POST!

Yesterday at work I was sitting with my class when someone came in with this small little envelope and straight away a huge smile went across my face. For anyone who lives away from family and friends you'll know how lovely it is to receive something that makes you know someone is thinking of you. For Christmas I got my mum and Auntie a letter from Santa and I didnt admit that it was me who had arranged it till late Christmas day. They were so pleased with it and it had kept them entertained for ages. 

My Auntie wrote a thank you card for that and her Christmas gifts. I'm still quite old fashioned with sending thank you notes and trying to take a gift to a friends when visiting. Even today while walking around Dubai Mall, trying to not spend money, I found a few little things that I can send home to my mum and a friend to show that I am thinking of them. I also got a big enveloped from my mum but it just had boring white enveloped letters about car insurance and my bank! but post is post I guess. 

I hope that everyone receives something nice in the post this week

Ma salama again xxx

Perfumes I'm loving!

Before Christmas on a gift giving day at work I got loads of perfume, 9 bottles to be exact! Some of them I took home with me at Christmas to give to my Mum as there was no way I was going to get through that many bottles!
Some of them I didn't know the brands particularly well but was really surprised by some favourites. One of which is Always Shine by Entity.
Its got a lovely sweet smell and I spray it every time I walk past my dressing table. The smell doesn't last long which is bit of a bummer but I'm quite happy to keep reapplying :) I have different perfumes that I use for work and the evenings, especially as some of the more designer scents can rock up to £60!!! But this perfume has been swaying between work and evening.

Another little perfume that I was given the year before was Flowerparty by Yves Rocher, another brand that I wasn't familiar with but again really like! I have the small bottle so it is perfect for handbags. This one I do use for work but think I would happily use this in the evenings aswell.Another very floral perfume and the scent lasts a bit longer on this one.



I do also have some more of the higher end perfumes including an YSL that was I am now onto my second bottle which was also kindly a gift ( maybe I should start to worry about all these perfumes....maybe people are hinting.....jokes!) I love perfumes as gifts as it is quite often the item that we prefer to have as gifts especially if you have a partner with a sensitive nose to some smells. And I'm also slowly working my way through quite a large bottle of Hugo Boss (can't remember the name of that one.) I do find it quite rewarding when you have got to the bottom of a bottle of perfume and I like moving onto a new perfume. Very rarely do I go back to the same bottle again.
I do remember Sarah Jessica Parkers perfumes always being nice and thinking to myself that I should repurchase a bottle but there are just too many to choose from!
Hope that you all have lots of lovely bottles of perfumes adorning your dressing tables.

Ma Salama

Everything Pink

I am a massive fan of everything PINK! Even now sitting next to me is a bright pink notebook with white spots that I use for work and my Blackberry cover at the moment is even a bright pink. I don't personally like wearing pink as I feel it doesn't go with my red hair, although, I say that, in Confessions of a Shopaholic Rebecca wears pink quite a lot!

My hairdryer and curling irons are pink as well. What made me think of writing this blog was my new pink Cath Kidston shopper which I used for work on Thursday as I had loads to carry with me. Its so pretty and girlie and just makes me feel happier when I'm using it. I couldn't find the exact pic of my bag as its actually a copy that a purchased from an area in Dubai that sells all copies ( if you ever visit here you must go there). So this is the closest I could find 
Mine has more of a pale pink background but similar enough!

When I'm having to carry lots or bring work home with me its always nicer and cheers me up more when I'm carrying it in a nice bag . (Maybe thats just me)

When I was about 16 my cousin who is 14years older than me had her Aura read and her future. At the time my cousin was going through a bad part of her life and the woman said that her aura was very orange and needed more pink to equal it out and make her happier in her life. My cousin was not a fan of pink at all but thought it would be worth a shot. After that day pink has totally engulfed her life and definitely made a difference to how she was feeling. And I've just spotted that I even have pink stripy bed socks on as my feet were getting cold. For me it does make me feel happier and just more content. I know lots of people would disagree that a colour can help change how your feeling, but I appreciate that not everyone is going to agree with me.

Hope that whatever your favourite colour is or whatever you use to cheer yourself up with that your happy and content with it.

Ma salama from the UAE

Loving Bath and Body works

I haven't written a post for a while and mainly due to the fact I haven't done a shop, other than to my locals spinneys (food shop). But since being in the UAE I have fallen in love with bath and body works. They have such amazing products and always have great deals on. After Christmas most of their stock was half price which is soooo tempting!

I bought a large 3wick Frosted cupcake candle, which no longer seems to be on their website, but is so sickly sweet but I love it. The larger candle seems to be lasting quite well, so far. Also I bought this Twilight woods candle. It's quite an understated smell but lush all the same. 
They have this scent in lots of products including body lotions, shower gels, scents and wall flowers.
Wallflowers are a new contraption that I've only been using the last year. They are basically a wall plug in and you can change the scents. 
This is the wall plug in and you just screw in your desired scent underneath, They come in lots of different designs and colours.


I like this one, quite funky and reminds me of a Marc Jacobs bottle.

I went a little crazy in this store at Christmas as they had such amazing deals, including buying these shea butter lounge socks for both my mum and auntie. They have shea butter infused into the socks which can be washed up to 40 times before they lose their sheaness.


These are now in the sale and are half price.

Here is the link to their great sale page Amazing Sale page!!!

Sorry if this post is a bit disjointed. Its basically a ramble about the greatness of bath and body!
I'd love to have a yankee candle but they are very hard to find over here, not sure why! We're quite lucky as we have a great mixture of American and British brands.

If I could get my little hands on a Yankee candle it would definitely be the vanilla cupcake ! I know at Christmas they did Christmas cookie and Christmas cupcake which are deadly sweet and beautiful but I didn't really want to bring a christmas candle back with me. Whilst seeing a friend over Christmas I saw that they had 2 of these beauts burning in their house. Now this friend is the cause for my desire to have vanilla scented candles around me as it reminds me of this particular person and I always thought how nice it was to have the same scent burning throughout the house.


Oh yes, I want this bad boy in my appartment! The bath and body works candle is definitely a similar smell but there is something special about Yankee candles.
They have lots of new fresh scents being released and they do seem to be moving away from the sickly sweet scents. Here's their British website if anyone fancies perusing,
http://www.yankeecandle.co.uk/default.asp

I find it so annoying that smells are so strongly connected to memories and thoughts for me, gets bloody hard when you need to cut a smell out of your life. Oh well........

Take care and Ma salama for now

LUSH !!!

Today after work I thought I'd treat myself to a visit to lush. Now over here in the U.A.E Lush costs double and a bit more than it did in the UK :( sad times. I treated myself to 3bath bombs which cost 85dhs altogether , which at the current exchange rate works out at over £14!!!! thats like £4.50 per bath bomb. Definitely an extravagance when you live on a budget. But hey, I felt like I deserved to have these little treasures hidden away for when I was having a bad day and needed some loveliness in my life.

I treated myself to a dragon egg 


and a space girl 


and a swirly little number that I can't seem to find a pic of. All of them smell lush ( hee hee) and I am thoroughly looking forward to breaking them out of their packages. It was after reading a Sprinkle of Glitters recent blog (http://sprinkleofglitter.blogspot.com/) about how lovely Space girl is that I thought I would try it out. Normally in the UK space girl would cost a mere £1.45 ish price bracket which is a bit of a bargain for some indulgent bath time.

The dragon egg apparently has something inside so that when you put it in the bath all the loveliness will come out....on the gumph on the website it says that of hoard of treasures will be waiting when you open this den. Oh Er missus!!! sounds exciting stuff.

Last week after my hectic return I tried out the butterball bomb after FashionFilth Lexi said about how amazing it was, and it was pretty lovely. This is a sudden return to Lush after a long, long break, which Im not sure why ......Probably moved onto other treats.

I use to have lots of baths when I had my flat in England as it gave me lots of thinking time and i use to take my laptop in and carefully manoeuvre it so that I could multi-task., chatting to friends or just finding simply researching different things. Nothing better than chatting in the bath, although I find boys are not fans of glittery smelly things!!!! Hee hee

Anyway, this is a time when I feel I need to look after me and a simple pleasure of a smelly bath bomb is currently quite sufficient! oh that and candles!

So I will be away now to go have a lovely bath with one of my newly acquired bath bombs.

Ma Salama from the U.A,E

Gel nails- which ones are best

Hey everyone

Hope everyone has had a great start to 2012. I've been thrown straight back into work after flying back to the U.A.E and now enjoying my weekend, which is Friday and Saturdays in the Middle East as Friday is the Holy day here.

Anyway, so, other than spending most of my day asleep and catching up on many a lost hour of sleep due to the time difference and getting back into work I spent the afternoon getting my gel nail polish re done on some of my fingers as it had started to chip and I had only had it done on Monday. Most salons say that gel nails should be chip free for 10 days so off I trotted to Nail Moda which is my nail salon of choice here to get them redone. It only cost 20dhs which is £3 to have them re-done and If I had really pushed the point I probably could have got it for free but I wasn't too worried.

I've currently got shellac gel polish on in a muted pinky colour. I do love gel polish as it last for a good 2weeks and quite often I have stretched to 3 weeks but I find my nails grow quickly so I do have a gap at the base of my nails where the new polish grows through. I don't mind this too much.

There are lots of different brands of gel polish available and I've tried four different brands so far and I do have a slight preference. Gel nail polish is basically normal polish but its set under a UV light. I'm sure scientifically there are many differences but for most of us who aren't worried about the science that is the main difference, oh and it lasts a hell of a lot longer than normal polish!! I'm not one of these fortunate people who have the amazing skill of painting there own nails at the standard that a salon can and tbh I really enjoy going to get my nails done as it gives me an opportunity to pamper myself, relax, sit in a lush vibrating, massaging chair and watch a film. I go so often now the girls in the salon all come and say hi and see what polish I'm having done so its a nice chance to chat with different people too.

The four different types that I have tried are Gelish , Shellac, Jessica gel range and Bio sculpture gel.





So far my favourite has to be gelish as I find that it chips less on my hands. I have been told that I have soft nails and that this may be the cause of Shellac chipping on me more. But Shellac doesn't have a coating that is put on first which makes the rest of the coats to stick more as in Gelish. ( being all scientific again there hee hee)
The Jessica polish was also good aswell, but I've only had it the once so would need to try it more to give a fairer review really. Different salons hold different gel polishes and all have their own preferences. Bio sculpture gel was nice and felt differently on my nails but took a lot longer to remove.

Removing the gel needs to be done by the salon really as even though they do suggest that you can do it yourself , I find that they know what they are doing and removal is usually included in the price of having gel reapplied. They have to sometimes buff the polish, which I find a slightly weird sensation and I'm not a fan of this part of the process, then your nails have bits of cotton wool applied with nail polish remover which has acetone( think thats right) in it and then your fingers are snuggly wrapped in tin foil!!!!



Usually your left in these sexy little foils for 5-10 mins which allows the polish to weaken and once your time is up the foil is removed and then the polish is gently removed with a cuticle stick. ( scrapped off basically) I know lots of people worry about the nail being damaged but I've happily been getting gel polish for 7 months and my nails are happy little campers. I have to admit that as with any polish nails do need 'breathing' time so I do give them a break every now and then. Even with my toes, which I feel suffer more when constantly polished, have a break every now and again. Even if it's just a few days. I also use solar oil on my nails every day on both hands and toes as this adds extra conditioner to your nails.


This shape pot is about 100 dhs so £18 . Not cheap but the pot will last a year at least. I had a smaller pot that cost £3 from my friends salon ( BeautyBoutique in Chelmsford) and that lasted 3months!!! Even the girls that do my nails said that they can see when I have been using it as there is varying degrees of condition on my nails.


So to sum up my rant on nails, which is a popular topic with me and my friends, nails and waxing commonly is discussed at brunches, Gel nails are brilliant. Lasts SOOO much longer than normal polish and well worth the money!!!

Hope this helps anyone whose not sure whether to try them or not and let me know if there are any other nail products to try.

Oh, that reminds me, I have also tried Minx nails



These are basically stickers. On toes they can last 4-6 weeks but on hands only a few days as the glue can become less sticky quite quickly. I haven't had these bad boys on my toes as quite frankly my toes are too small to host such spectacular beauties as these and just wouldn't be worth the pennies.

Anyway

Im off to finish my tea and christmas cake that my mum smuggled into my suitcase

Ma salama for now

Microdermabrasion

Hey
wishing everyone a Happy New year to start this blog . I have now returned to Dubai and my hectic work life but feeling just a little bit tired from having to go straight from London to Dubai with only a few hours sleep but I'm sure after some much needed beauty sleep I will regain full power.

Before I left for the middle East I treated myself to a Microdermabrasion facial with my friend Gina who has her own salon...http://www.beauty-boutique-chelmsford.co.uk/   Which is a brilliant salon :)

I wasn't sure what to expect but had heard great things about this new procedure. How it works is fine crystals are blown onto your face via a small wand and then sucked back up by the hoover. The idea is that it takes off all dried skin and clears blocked pores leaving your skin looking cleaner and clearer. The idea is that gradually you build up the strength so that the suction becomes stronger.

Here's what the professionals say about this treatment :

Microdermabrasion is a system of intense exfoliation and resurfacing using ultra fine crystals that rejuvenate the skin. The crystals work as a gentle yet effective abrasive on the skin to remove dead skin cells layer by layer. The irregular shape of the crystals help to work on hard to reach areas, without any damage to the skin.

The vacuum action of the machine stimulates circulation and promotes increased blood flow to the area whilst drawing away dead skin cells and used crystals. The production of collagen and elastin is stimulated which results in firmer, more youthful skin.

The treatment gives instant visible results and you will leave the salon with a brighter, smoother, complexion.

I was at first a little anxious about the treatment being uncomfortable and the redness that can be left after but it was absolutely painless... ticklish at times around the hairline but overall well worth the money!! I have only had one treatment as I had to return to the great big sand pit but I will be sure to follow up when I return in the spring with more treatments. It's great on scars also. 

Overall a massive thumbs up