365 days of blogging

Well, this counts as my anniversary post, after one whole year I’m still here (what where the odds on that happening?). 

First of all thank you to everyone who has encouraged me over the last twelve months and thank you for taking the time to read my little corner of the web. I honestly never thought I would still be writing or that people would actually come and take a look. 

Taken after one or two drinks in Amsterdam

Stranger still was the reaction of the people who knew me. I made a few subtle hints about the blog before just coming out and telling both my friends and people I worked closely with - there was a little ribbing but that stopped almost immediately. Bizarrely the worst reaction came from my family who teased about being doing something constructive with my time (me being constructive is completely and utterly out of character).

So, what changes have I experienced after blogging for a year?

STEP AWAY FROM THE PHONE
This is something that I used to find irritating as hell before I started blogging. Rachel (BeautyqueenUK) would sit on her phone for hours, would take random photographs and would never touch a plate of food in a restaurant without taking pictures from three angles (using three different filters).

This is what awaited me when I attended my first bloggers event - gorgeous ilumi food

Dirty Burger in Kentish Town, Camden - the best burger ever

Honest Burger in Camden Market

I confess I now do this, I take random photographs of aftershaves when out and about, take pictures of my food (usually burgers that are making me drool - you‘re welcome for that lovely mental image) and have now even started taking pictures of my hair after styling it in the morning so that I can do a #HOTD hashtag! 

PETS WIN PRIZES
Your pets suddenly become a marketing opportunity and a way of attracting people to your social media feeds. I’m guilty of this, mainly because I have three of the best cats ever, Dude, ASBO and Dexter. 

Cats rule #thatisall

Dude shows off his climbing skills

What? More aftershave?

Dexter stands guard over the aftershave

They frequently pop up in my posts (usually when trying to take pictures they photobomb me or the product) or on my Instagram.

Weirdly, whenever they appear in posts they tend to overshadow everything else. Cute cats, they are the future.

In the words of Mr Tinkles from the film Cats and Dogs….'Cats Rule'.

DON’T TOUCH THAT YET

I was never allowed to open or use anything until it had been photographed more times than a dead body at a crime scene. 

While I find myself doing this more and more I still get shouted at for throwing the wrong bath bomb into the bath, taking the packaging off the wrong product or eating the wrong thing. Ooops!

This Clarins Eye Revive sat in it's box for months until pictures could be taken!

While I struggle to take a photograph (I work on the basis that if I take a hundred a few might be usable!) I find that more and more, I can be walking in the park and thinking ’this would make a great spot to take some photographs of x or y product‘. 

Domain and Hosting Site

Before blogging you might as well have spoken to be in riddles about hastags, alt-tagging, domain names, web hosting, SEO, labels and keywords.  Now, while I am not as up to scratch as I possible should be, I know what each of these things mean and do my best, but definitely an area upon which I can improve!

CAN I BLOG ABOUT THIS?
Yes, that’s right, you start to make purchasing decisions based upon whether you think something would be of interest to your readers, you search out products you haven’t tried before so that you can write about them and in my case buy, buy, buy.

I have found myself doing this more and more, particularly when looking at aftershaves or beauty products. Where once I had two or three of a product, now I have nine or ten.

So, one year down - what next? It looks like my addiction to aftershave is going to continue, as will my love of trying new hair styling products but it is more likely that I’ll post more about fashion (my fashion sense so expect dark), places to eat out and maybe a regular spot for my friend to write about cocktail and dive bars.

Thank you for reading, the support and encouragement.


Stephen


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Soap & Glory Giveaway

This may be my last post of 2014, I’m guessing that Christmas will be a busy so as a thank you to those have read my blog throughout the year, and for those future readers I thought I would add a bit of festive cheer by giving away not just one, but two gift sets from Soap & Glory.

Unfortunately, due to postal restrictions this giveaway is only open to those with a postal address in the United Kingdom. Don’t worry though, in the New Year, and when I reach 1,000 Twitter followers I will run a global giveaway.

So what am I offering to you lucky, lucky readers?

VAVA GROOM

A Soap & Glory gift set for guys which includes:

• Soap’er Man - Hair and Body wash
• Eau Man - Body Spray
• A Man’s Gotta Dew - Facial Moisture Balm
• A Shave to Lov - Shave gel plus a barbershop striped comb
• A black Soap & Glory toiletries bag 

YOUR OWN SWEET LIME

A take anywhere sized collection featuring popular Soap & Glory products such as:

• Sugar Crush Body Wash
• Sugar Crush Body Scrub
• Sugar Crush Body Buttercream
• Sugar Crush Hand Food
• Super Smoothing Body Polisher 

All you have to do to enter the giveaway is fill out the entries in the Rafflecopter bar below.

The giveaway will be open for a month and the winner will be notified by e-mail by 21 January 2015 - so a nice start to the New Year.  This is a UK only giveaway and some of the entries are mandatory, so please ensure you enter correctly or your entry will become null and void.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck and to everyone who reads and comments, have a Happy Christmas and a wonderful 2015.

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Ickle Baby Bot Bath Bomb by Lush

I’m not a child, well not in body but I make up for this by having the mental age of an eight year old and constantly mess around. I’m also a bit of a fidget, especially when it comes to settling down and sleeping at night. If it isn’t my chest making me cough, the voices in my head making me laugh or just general unease, in the words of the band Faithless - “I can’t get no sleep”.

Enter various products containing menthol to clear my chest and lavender to try and knock me out. The first of the products used to try and help ease me to sleep was the Ickle Baby Bot Bath Bomb by Lush.

This is what Lush have to say about their Ickle Baby Bot Bath Bomb:

‘A gentle lavender bath bomb to relax children before bedtime. This is a bath bomb designed to look after young children’s delicate skin, and is so gentle it’s suitable for babies over six months. Its aromatherapy oils also work to soothe irritable cherubs before bedtime. Lavender is a calming aromatherapy oil, used in traditional medicine to treat skin irritations, sunburn and insect bites.’ 

Unlike most bath bombs that look like and are the same size as a softball the Ickle Baby Bot actually is moulded to look like a robot. The child inside my head screams, that is soooo cool.

Source

At this point I would add photographs of it fizzing away in the bath but *cough* someone in their infinite wisdom decided to re-format the laptop and all of my images have been wiped. You’ll have to trust me on this one people. 

After being lobbed into the bath there is in my opinion a distinct lack of aroma - with other bath bombs its like a fragrance haze wafting from the water but Ickle Baby Bot is far more subtle. It doesn’t belt you in the face thankfully but you can pick up hints of lavender. My first thoughts were that this didn’t stand a chance of relaxing me and on further inspection of the water I couldn’t see any of the oils floating on the surface. Had I just lobbed the proverbial lemon into my bath?!?

Well yes and no. While the fragrance is subtle the longer you soak into the water the more you recognise it. Normally after exposure to a smell for a prolonged period I become used to it, but as this continuously alters you can tell its there but it is no way overpowering.

I soaked for an hour and again didn’t feel any of the oils in the water. After washing again my skin wasn’t that soft or smooth to the touch. It took about another hour after bathing for the full effects to come to the fore. Even though only mid afternoon I started to feel very relaxed and drowsy even after having a good nights sleep the night before. The following day my skin was very soft to the touch, so much more than usual.

Designed for small children and big adults with small brains (me) this ticks all of the boxes bar one. At £1.95 per bath I just think it’s a little too much when you can hardly ask a toddler for their feedback on the relaxing properties of the product.

I would recommend this for occasional use (if I had kids) but personally will veer away from this in future opting for the Lord of Misrule Bath Bomb. It has a stronger, more full bodied fragrance, can be broken in two to increase the value for money element and leaves my skin super silky soft.  

RECOMMENDED for kids....

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Fudge Fat Hed

My stylist recommended Fudge Fat Hed to me after I complained that my hair grew too quickly and most gels or waxes wouldn’t hold the spikes in style for an entire day without reapplication.

Although he could have palmed a number of products off on me at an over-inflated price his recommendation was taken a touch more seriously because he wasn’t trying to sell me any!

At that time I walked out of the salon with the thought in mind and within 10 minutes completely forgot about it until I came across a website selling it.

Source

The price initially had reeling, just under £10 for a 75ml tub, some four times the cost of  Shockwaves gel. However, as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Originally a product released for the Australian market, Fudge have only really hit the mainstream in Europe over the past 10 years. 

The product itself can only be described as a paste, as it has neither the consistency of a gel or wax and comes in a very unique grey tub with bright orange lid. 

As far as products like this go I quite like the packaging as the tub is very easy to grip thanks to the ridges in the sides and if I was looking for it in a supermarket or salon wholesalers it would be very easy indeed to spot amongst the other brands.

I was very keen to give the paste a try and so dutifully went and washed my hair, dried it and unscrewed the lid to the tub to be greeted with an absolutely delightful sickly sweet smell of caramel, an aroma I adore, so much so I spent 5 minutes with the tub to my nose inhaling deeply and imagining large vats of liquid fudge and caramel in a sweet factory. 

If I personally had to rate the smell in comparison to other haircare products it would get a 10 for being so original whilst other brands such as Shockwaves, L’Oreal and Brylcreem would score five or below as they all just tend to have clean and clinical fragrances. 

If you are not a big fan of the smell of caramel with faint hints of fudge, this product certainly is not for you.

After finally deciding it wasn’t right for a grown man to be sat around sniffing a haircare product I scooped the paste out of the tub using two fingers, only removing enough to cover both fingertips and massaged it between my palms before running my hands through my hair and gently working it into each strand. 

The consistency when removed from the tub is as I say like a paste but as soon as it is rubbed between the palms it seems to take on more of a gel like form making a little really go a long way. 

Application could not have been easier thanks to the change in consistency and it was simple to get even coverage and my fears that bits of the paste would be stuck to my hair were unfounded. 

Once it has been worked into dry hair it is just a case of styling and as a note of caution, don’t hang around to start doing this as it dries very quickly. For me, the fact that it completely dries within 4-5 minutes means that I don’t have to wait around to make sure that there has been no movement in the spikes I have styled. As soon as the paste is totally dry my hair is left with a textured feeling and looks remarkably shiny, something I hadn’t expected from a paste. I was expecting it to look similar to how wax leaves my hair but was impressed that it has more of a gel effect.

Once dried my hair felt rock solid and my hair didn’t move an inch, even if I jumped up and down. At that point in time the spikes in my hair were about 1.5 inches long but even with spikes up to 3.5 inches long there is still no movement once the paste has set and this for me is fantastic. 

I no longer get to work and look in the mirror to find my spikes have blown out of place or have just not set properly. As for longevity again I could not be more pleased. I have an annoying habit for messing with my hair which when using gels results in dry flakes of gel and the style wearing off quickly, a problem I no longer have. A style created at home at 8 in the morning is exactly the same at 8 at night. Fantastic.

When it comes to removing the paste from hair you will not experience any problems, something I have had issues with in the past with a number of waxes. A good massage of the hair under a warm shower and the paste is washed out completely. I say warm, as I’m sure most readers would be concerned by the fact that rain may wash this out, it doesn’t. It will damage the style and result in the need to restyle but it will set as soon as you are in a dry environment.

Overall I was a little upset by the price but find that as it lasts for at least 6 months, a period in which I would probably use 3-4 tubes of normal gel it isn’t that expensive and only works out at around £2 more expensive than the brands that I used to use. 

So, when you take the economics into account, the fact that it smells lovely and performs to such a high standard without leaving you self-conscious of those flakes from dried gel this is a product I would heartily recommend.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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L’Oreal Men Expert Hydra Energetic Anti-Fatigue Moisturising Lotion

As I get older I become increasingly vain and desperate to keep the boyish good looks that broke so many hearts in my early twenties. Some would say this has become something of an obsession or borderline paranoia. As I bat back to those who poke fun, there really is nothing wrong with a healthy dose of OCD! 

When a new or interesting product that promises to recharge my skin with energy and leave it moisturised appears I just can’t help myself. L’Oreal Men Expert Hydra Energetic Anti-Fatigue moisturising lotion crossed my path after I had run out of Dead Sea facial scrub. I was desperate to try and find something that would invigorate my skin and leave it feeling smooth and moisturised. 

The product is now a firm favourite and I have at least three tubes at any one given time. 

The moisturising lotion forms part of the L’Oreal Men Expert range of facial products, designed as a daily active defence system used to help nourish, moisturise and refresh the skin. 

The leaflet that comes with the lotion goes to great lengths to explain that using the anti-fatigue lotion will increase softness, form a layer of resistance to pollutants (which is good as I work in an office on one of the most polluted roads in Europe!) while leaving skin feeling refreshed, smooth and looking totally refreshed. 

I’ve lived in London now for 10 years and I have to say that the air quality does impact on my skin (and lungs but they haven‘t come up with a cream for that yet). 

When I first tried this I was having a daily commute that involved filthy air on the Underground and being blasted by exhaust fumes when I surfaced up to street level. It really was a case of nothing ventured, nothing gained. 

Using the lotion is easy and thanks to the pump dispenser you are unlikely to end up with a hand full of the lotion or not enough to cover your own nose. This serves two purposes that add to the positives. One press of the pump and a pea sized amount of the blue/green lotion is dispensed. The strange colour and strong fragrance are the first things to hit home. Once it has been dispensed the lotion has a quite thick consistency and remarkably doesn’t soak into the palm of your hand. It doesn’t start to be absorbed until you actually rub it onto your face meaning none of it is lost during the application process. 

As it is rubbed onto the face the smell of the lotion increases in strength and the crisp, clean fragrance lingers for a while. If asked to sum up the actual smell I would have to say that it has an almost clinical edge to it, but thankfully I am a big fan.

After rubbing between my palms and then gently massaging the lotion into my face a quick glance in the mirror showed that indeed only a pea sized amount is needed to cover every inch, including my Tefal sized forehead! As soon as it touches an area it seems to be absorbed as quickly as it is applied. As it is a moisturiser the first few minutes after applying do leave your face looking a touch wet, if not greasy but as it completely dries in this appearance fades in no longer than 2-3 minutes. 

Once it has been applied there was no irritation but a slight tingly sensation as though a cold wind had just blown in my face which I can only describe as refreshing. This it seems is due to the caffeine.

My daily facial routine starts with shaving, then the use of a Dead Sea Mineral facial peel followed by using the L’Oreal Men Expert Hydra Energetic anti-fatigue moisturizing lotion and I have found this to produce the best results for me personally. 

Since my stocks of the facial peel have been depleted I just use the lotion and whilst the results are not as good as previously, my face and condition of my skin is still ten times better than prior to using it.

In terms of results regardless of my facial routine I could not be happier. 

Immediately after applying my skin feels incredibly soft and smooth. Over the longer term I’ve noticed that I don’t suffer as much from the patchy, dry or blotchy skin that has plagued me since I moved to London and best of all, the lines of my forehead do not appear as pronounced as they did prior to using this lotion. That’s right those Gordon Ramsey forehead trenches are reduced in size.

The lotion is widely available both online and from most large supermarkets and is priced between £5 and £7 for a 50ml tube. Personally I paid £6.49 for my last tube. While I think this is expensive for a moisturiser it does live up to its billing and the claims made.

It’s money well spent. Not only does it smell pleasant, it also leaves my face looking moisturised, visibly less tired and lasts for at least 4 weeks when used on a daily basis making it in real terms very good value for money.

I have now found a product that does everything it claims to do and I won’t be switching to any other brand.

In the world of male grooming products, L’Oreal Men Expert Hydra Energetic anti-fatigue moisturising lotion is king.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

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