How To Get Addicted To Lush

Meow, so I thought that I would do a new post.. My friends and family all know how addicted to Lush I am... I mean there's a new store/shrine in White Rose which I have been wanting to go to because well its a Lush store. They did have a bloggers event but I couldn't go as I was surprised with ARTRAVE tickets but the store is amazing so you should go and check it out... It's going to be amazing and its going to smell lovely.. It will also have wonderful lovely staff and have sparkly vegan products.... Ugh, it's just heaven... The one in Trinity Leeds is my shrine at the moment. I love the shop and the staff and everything.. Back on topic, my friends ask me whats the best Lush product to try? How did you get addicted to Lush? What makes them different? Should I go into a shop and see what it's like? I say yes to all of these but this blog post will explain it more in detail...

So, how did I get addicted to Lush?
Well, it all started thanks to these two girls.. Emma Blackery and Zoella/Zoe Sugg... They did videos on a Lush Christmas Haul.. This opened my eyes. Even though this was over a year ago, I still fell in love with the products. I wanted to go in store and smell them. I wanted to see what they meant by Snow Fairy. What a silver star smelt like when a girl says it's citrusy? What a melting snowman smelt like? I know this sounds really silly but I loved the gimmicky festiveness of it all... I loved the fact that you could drown a melting snowman in your bath or crush a star up or let the childhood of Snow White fizzle away in your bath..

What was the first product you ever bought?
I got things at the Boxing Day sale thing and I just loved it all.. I got a Dragons Egg, Twilight, a few festive ones and other things. Everyone raved about the Dragons Egg... Lush are very comical of their product names and concepts.. We don't test on animals and create Vegan products but lets make the consumer seem like they're murdering unborn dragons via a bath bomb... The Dragons Egg bath bomb is amazing! This marvellous bath bomb turns your bath water to a mixture of an orange-y/gold colour... It literally looks like a dragon is breathing out fire into your bath. Whilst the bath bomb unfurls and creates a scaly foam on top of a amber bath, it also reveals vegan popping candy which literally makes you feel like you're at the side of a fire. The smell reminds you of sherbet. It is very Autumnal. Priced at £3.35 (https://www.lush.co.uk/products/dragons-egg .) Twilight is also a bath bomb. This one is based on sleeping and lavender. The bath bomb smells of lavender and Tonka. As the bath bomb unravels under water, it turns from a dark orange to a deep purple which makes the bath even more calming. As the Dragons Egg has popping candy, the Twilight bath bomb has glitter in which makes your bath look like the epitomy of Edward Cullen but also replicates twinkling stars in the night sky. This one is also £3.35 (https://www.lush.co.uk/products/twilight)

Why Do I Love Lush?:
I love Lush for various reasons. The first reason is that their ethics are amazing. They don't test on animals which is great for cosmetics which doesn't harm animals like other well known brands. They raise money for charity. They sell Charity Pot which the money sold from them (except VAT) goes to charity which is amazing. They also raise awareness to said charities. They have done this in ways such as the #SaveTheBadgers bath bomb. They also believe on only using natural ingredients to create Vegan/Vegetarian products which is amazing for the skin, body, environment and other things. Lush also try to keep the environment clean via not using packaging unless needed. If packaging is used then it is recycled. For example, the shower gel bottles and recycling 5 black pots to get a free face mask. The staff are always amazing. They are lovely and if you need any advice then they will happily give you it. They greet you amazingly and they are just so nice. The products are amazing as they contain natural ingredients therefore they are gorgeous for the skin and body. They are Vegan so you can literally feel holy as they are all amazing.

What Products Do You Recommend?:

Christmas/Seasonal:
The Gold FUN is a must.. Even though it is £5, it is amazing! You can use it and mould it into anything. It has the expected Lush Christmas sparkle and it smells like honey and toffee.. It's just divine! The Golden Wonder is amazing too! It smells of lime, cognac and lime (check the What's In My Lush Box review for details on pricing and a more in depth description...) The Magic Wand is also great for Snow Fairy addicts (check what I just said...) Also, get Snow Fairy shower gel if you can or just go and smell it! Santa's Lip Scrub is also so divine as it tastes of cherry cola and is amazing for your lips... Star Light Star Bright is also very amazing! It is mainly a Bath Melt not a bath bomb. It is very citrusy as it has orange, lemon and lime oils in. It is also very festive as it is glittery. These are just a few of my seasonal recommendations. If you like the spicier things, try Hot Toddy, The Melting Snowman or the Luxury Lush Pud

All Year Round:
As I have mentioned, Twilight and Dragons Egg. Try the Space Girl, Sex Bomb and Honeybee bath bomb! Also try the Catastrophe Cosmetic face mask as it contains blueberries which calms down break outs. Try the Honey I Washed The Kids soap as it smells of honey and toffee and does amazing things to your skin. The Comforter bubble bar (check review blog) is amazing and so is the Dorothy Bubble Bar. The shower jellies are amazing, vegan and different. It's Raining Men (yay for a LGBT catchphrase) shower gel is amazing.. It is literally the soap in liquid form. The shampoo bars are great but ask the staff depending on your hair type. The massage bars.. The Strawberry Feels Forever? Wiccy Magic Muscles is amazing. They work on couples or as a moisturiser for one or just for fun. Lush also do make up which is amazing but slightly expensive.

How Can I Become Addicted?
Just go into a Lush store. If you live near the outskirts of Leeds then go to the White Rose one as it has just opened up. It is a modern store. It's amazing. It is friendly within and just so beautiful or if you live in Leeds City centre or can get there then go to the Yorkshire Flagship store on Commercial Street with amazing members of staff, stunning architecture, wonderful bright walls, cute organised stations for certain products and much more. Buy some of the stuff that I've recommended or go into a store and talk to a lovely member of staff and they will sort you out. Another tip is to buy a lot of stuff and then just turn your bedroom into a mini lush store and just hibernate and use the products.. If you like the smell or a feature eg texture or colour of a product then you may want to get it again or just buy everything that catches your eye/has lustre/glitter on.

So as I said, this was for Lush newbies and I recommend for you to go into a shop and try something and purchase something that's new and that interests you. I hope you have a wonderful week and I hope to see you soon.
*meows and disappears*

Cabana VIP Event (#CabanaLeeds) | Trinity Leeds/Trinity Kitchen

Meow, so its time for another blog post.. I didn't know my SD card wasn't in my camera because my family like to use my camera and not tell me they still have the SD card... Anyways, Aaron may have filmed a bit but I'm not sure if that's going up... Basically, I got an email from a friend that works at Trinity Leeds asking if I wanted to go to an event for Cabana so I said yeah and went... I'm going to tell you about the night and what Cabana is and what they are all about and their delicious food and drinks...

Outside Cabana 

So I brought Aaron as he can do photography well and I also thought that it would be a good idea that he got to know about different cultures of food rather than letting him just live off the generic pizza student lifestyle. We walked through Trinity Leeds and made our way to Trinity Kitchen where we could see Cabana as soon as you came up from the escalators as its bright font gleamed above its door. We were met by Katie who works for PR and had emailed me to make sure I had everything sorted out for the event. She was lovely when emailing me about everything and even more public when I met her at the beginning of the event. We talked and finally shook hands and found out me and Aaron were Digital Marketing. Katie then wished us that we had a great time. We said thank you and then went in to be greeted by another person who I'm guessing were the front of house.

#CabanaLeeds
Use this if you tweet or talk about them on social media!

 We went in and were asked if #CabanaLeeds could be written on my hand which I obviously said yeah.. This was the moment when the event truly kicked off.. So the whole concept of #CabanaLeeds was so other people could see the tweets and that they saw what you thought of Cabana... Every one of my tweets with #CabanaLeeds was good feedback.. I shall tell you why below. Cabana loves social media! Once this happened, we made our way down to the bar.. A very handsome member of staff asked if we wanted a Caipirinha. What's a Caipirinha, you ask? It is a focktail mainly made up of a South American spirit called Cachaca. This particular cocktail comes in a variety of flavours such as pineapple, passionfruit, mint and strawberry... As we wandered around after, I shall next tell you a bit about Cabana... 

Me drinking a Caipirihna

So what is Cabana? Well for all of you newbies, it is a Brasilian (Brazilian? Brasilian?) barbecue restaurant that has mainly had restaurants within down south but as the new Trinity Kitchen boasts great cuisine (which is so damn true) they thought, "great students, great places, great food... Let's create a restaurant there!" The restaurant outside and in is vibrant and enthuastic with colour, sounds and patterns. The founders (Jamie Barber and David Ponte) wanted to bring Brazil to the UK and that's what they did!

Table pieces on each table showing bright colours on every table.

Walls of Cabana bring Brazil to Leeds

When we were 'networking' (being socially awkward and just wandered around) a member of staff (I'm going to see if I can get the names of anyone I mention after as I don't remember names well at first) came up to us and asked us if we had any questions.. Aaron asked if the pattern of the steps was based on either a road in Rio or Selaron's Stairs in Rio which they were which showed how much of Brazil Cabana wanted to bring to Leeds. The member of the staff also said that all of the chairs were recycled. Basically, Cabana works closely with communities in Brazil such as Recicla Jeans who make the recycled furniture then Cabana pay the communities for the seats and bring them over which shows how dedicated they are to help Brazil be more recognised and loved within the UK.

Mosaic steps based on Sebaron's Steps in Brazil

Recycled Chairs from Brazil to Leeds.

We took some more pictures (if they're not in the blog post then they will be in an album on my Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1r66ESi) and met Music and Eyeliner for a few minutes... Her blog is here: http://www.musicandeyeliner.co.uk/) Once we had taken the photos, we wandered back near to the bar drinking our mint Caipirihna's. We were offered some corn nuts which were crispy, crunchy, slightly sweet but slightly salty with a hint of spice. They were absolutely lovely.. Forget the innuendos but I genuinely would be able to eat these nuts all night long.. I had to prise myself away from them.

Toasted Corn Nuts (£1.95)

After this, we were complimented with cheesy dough balls (yes, bring on the innuendos...) Even though me and lactose don't get along, I still wanted to try them... They were absolutely gorgeous! They were fluffy on the inside and doughy and slightly crispy on the outside.. Coeliacs, don't be alarmed... They are gluten free so you can get in on the action of cheesy dough ball action instead of the usual watching everyone eating glorious gluten based products whilst you sit there feeling left out.. We were next offered Pulled Pork Sliders.. These were in the same dough balls but cut in half, filled with succulent pork then sandwiched back together. A slider is literally a new contemporary dish which are usually in the form of a mini burger. As I just said, the pulled pork was very succulent and juicy which means you could tell that the chef/chefs behind it had put effort into slow roasting it for a long time to make sure it could be pulled off the bone for the sliders.. The pork was slightly spicy with mainly spice and not heat and melted in the mouth. They were absolutely delicious. They were that delicious that we didn't take pictures of them and just ate them... Sorry... We couldn't help it!

We had another wander and took some pictures of the candles and lighting as we thought that it was good that Cabana had different lighting and candles on tables compared to other restaurants. Candles give off the fact that Cabana would be a great place for a first date as street food and getting to know someone is a great mix! The lights above in the restaurant give off a great sort of zumba/ballroom/funky club vibe which sounds weird but you'll understand when you see the pictures...

Romantic candles on each table

More casual yet quirky tealights

Slightly out of focus lights from sbove

Lights from above

Fairy light-esque lighting

Festive photography skills

Party inspired lights from above near the bar & grill

After many more photos were took, we were greeted by a waiter with Chicken Coxhinas... These are croquettes of shredded chicken.. So good! Crispy morsels of goodness! (Wow, Jamie,.. You're great with words...) These were crispy yet succulent. The chicken was on point and had quite a bit of spice but it was nice against the croquette! Next we had Spicy Malagueta Prawns.. Cabana is very well known for their Spicy Malagueta food but I shall talk about that later on... These were sticky but soft.. The prawns were cooked but not rubbery.. The sauce was slightly spicy hence the name but they were sticky and slightly sweet... They are the sort of food where you either need to get dug in and get napkins or lick your fingers afterwards or you stay away from them and regret it when you miss out on them but its your call... They also do other street food such as ceviche (I may have had this but im not sure if i did but it was remnant of this but ah well...) Ceviche is fish cooked in lime juice... We didn't have all of the menu but if you want to be exotic then I suggest you going in to try it.

After this me and Aaron went to go get a drink from the bar as Aaron was filming certain bits for a film and I was kinda vlogging on his camera. This bit will probably sound so cringy to me but so funny to you... Basically, the very handsome bar member of staff asked what drink I wanted and I thought, "I'll try a cider" therefore I asked if I could have a cider and then got me a glass. So basically he poured the kiwi and lime drink into the glass then apologised for it dribbling at the top then I replied, "Its okay... Worse things have happened..." Did I flirt with a member of staff? That's right I did... Ugh.. Oh god..

The infamous cider..

.

The bottles behind the bar.

The infamous bar

So this is when the main event kicked in... The above was just a start food wise.. The grill and the chefs finally kicked into full swing! The following may not be order as lots of food was coming around and its all from memory... It was just such a good night! So there was the Zingy Lime and Garlic Chicken... This is mainly for people who can't handle a lot of spice. It was so nice.. The chicken was succulent. You could taste the citrus notes of lime and then you got a bit of a hint of garlic. Then skewers came round... Oh the skewers.. I cant exactly remember what they were called but they were absolutely gorgeous...The skewers came in three flavours. Chicken, Beef and Pork (I'm pretty sure there was a lamb thing which was absolutely gorgeous yet punched with spice but I can't remember...) More Chicken came through my fingertips and into my stomach until the infamous Spicy Malagueta Chicken happened..

 

Spicy Malagueta Chicken (£8.95)



A piece of meat from the skewers...

So, earlier on I was on about the prawns but this is a whole other story. So Cabana are very well known for this sauce as the Malagueta Chillies are close to Cabana's heart. These go into their marinade which creates their Spicy Malagueta products. So the chillies go into a sauce with a lot of other ingredients to create the sauce which it is marinated in. The sauce I am on about is available to buy in store. The chicken is then marinated overnight. It's then skewered with delicious crisp cooling bell peppers.to accentuate the fact that it has Chilli Pepper in the dish. After this, the dish is brushed with a Honey Mustard glaze then cooked on open coals which gives it such a smoky flavour. It was succulent but spicy. It was slighty crispy but coated in sauce. It was just wonderful.. Too wonderful to put into words.

Sweet Potato Fries (£3.95)

Sweet Potato Fries

 So once we had eaten our weight in Chicken which was somehow possible, a waiter came round and we tried Cassava chips. Cassava is a vegetable in South America which if eaten raw it can kill you so it is cooked so it can be edible. The taste of them reminded me of a parsnip crossed with a sweet potato which sounds weird but you have to go and try them to understand what I mean. As I had tried the deadly vegetable if raw, we were then offered some Sweet Potato Fries. Now, I was about to grab one when they said, "you can take the tin if you want.." Hmm... CHALLENGE ACCEPTED! Me and Aaron started eating these lovely crispy fries that are flavoured with rosemary which just makes them more gorgeous taste wise but slightly gives an exotic scent to them at the same time. After a while well after the food wall hit us, a waiter came and cleared our table, then we instantly drunk a bit of our ciders and went,"y'know what would be amazing? Desserts!" at the same time.. What are friends for, eh? Once we had said that, we took some photos... Well, selfies.. At an event, you have to create a memento of the night so thats what i did... It was probably unprofessional of me but hey ho...

Cute Brazilian Influenced Selfie

So, this is the final bit of the night.. Awh... It's been such a fun night I thought to myself... Dessert came around.. We were given little plastic bowls with delicious frozen yoghurt in... The flavour in question ended up to be peanut butter.. The flavour was strong but it was needed against the canvas of the frozen yoghurt. The flavour was strong but sweet and salty at the same time which was great after some spicy filling food.. The yoghurt would calm down any spice you had and yet had a thick texture which was great for a dessert... It had everything it needed..

Now we thought.. That's it.. Nope. There was 2 more desserts to come around.. The second dessert was a chocolate cake.. Yes one for all you chocoholics... Coeliacs, come and get some as this cake had no gluten in... Just like the dough balls! This cake was dense, fudgy and moist.. What else do you want from a cake?! I've had a few chocolate cakes in my lifetime and even if I've felt sore from it afterwards because my body has a love/hate relationship with lactose then it has not been worth it whereas this cake was just unbelievable.. I kind of had three pieces which sounds greedy but if you're going to be handed cake then you might as well as have it and eat it all!

The last dessert was amazing.. They saved the best until the last.. It was all the best but still... It was Snowball Doughballs.. I had heard of these but never had them. Oh my god, they were heavenly! Little gluten free doughballs with nutella secretly hidden on the inside dusted with icing sugar... I could eat these all day! They were small but so nice. They were doughy and oozy on the inside... I can't sum this up in words but they were just so gorgeous!

We were drinking still but we were waiting to be kicked out at some point when all of a sudden, the founders that we had bumped into earlier came round with bags.. This was amazing.. We were given bottles of the Spicy Malagueta Sauce with vouchers on top for when we next to come. A perfect end to a perfect evening,.. I will be definitely going to Cabana again and telling everyone how good it is because it was just amazing! If you live near Leeds or London then I urge you to go to Cabana as soon as possible
Thank you for Cabana for having me, its staff, Katie Hayes and the founders.
Please go to Cabana and try it if you can because its amazing.
Thank you to my friend Aaron for photographing (http://www.youtube.com/user/lesmiserableone
I'm going to be doing a video with the sauce at some point so check out my channel for that and maybe the vlog (if possible) going up soon.. http://www.youtube.com/user/TheJamesSowden
Have a great week and I shall see you soon!

What's In My Lush Box? (Review)

Meow, so this blog post is going to be about the What's In My Box video that I did a few weeks ago... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY8Ci_aQ_QU&list=UUZV6mQGhkORoc5XjoZ0APWQ)  (I'll put a link to it at the end as well..) I still can not thank Lush Leeds Spa enough for the Bloggers Event and for giving me the gift box.. It is serving as a very pre seasonal/Christmas gift to myself... If you want the box set/any of the products then I shall put links throughout the post.)

So the first product is The Comforter.. This is a bubble bar therefore you crumble a bit of the product under running water and it creates bubbles in front of your very eyes.. This product has a white and purple/fuchsia marbled look.. The white bit is bergamot whilst the fuchsia bit is cassis absolute. The bubble bar smells like blackcurrant which is mainly from the cassis absolute. The Blackcurrant smells gives the bath the comforting smell which you sometimes need hence the name The Comforter. The bar is absolutely massive therefore you can get a good 8 baths out of this with a lot of lovely scented bubbles. They are £4.75 each which sounds expensive but it is massive so you get what you get for your money.. (https://uk.lush.com/products/comforter-0) 

My The Comforter Bubble Bar



The Comforter in the bath

The next product that I'm going to talk about is Magic Wand. This is yet another Bubble Bar. With this bubble bar, you don't crumble it, you swish it under running water as it is attached to a stick which you use to swish it.. It is pink and very bright. You can get around 8 baths with this bar. The scent of it is very recognisable to regular Lush customers and regular Christmas customers as the scent is Snow Fairy. Snow Fairy is a limited edition Christmas scent which remarks candy/candyfloss or sweets. It is very sweet but the only way to describe it is if pink had a fragrance.. The product is priced at £5.25 (https://www.lush.co.uk/products/bubble-bars/magic-wand)

Magic Wand Bubble Bar

Magic Wand in the bath

At this time, my Lush Box kinda had a bad moment.. My brother knocked it over without realising until after therefore the next product had crumbled a bit so I only got a picture of it going into the bath.. This product is the Luxury Lush Pud. This product is a regular at Christmas but this year it has been revamped as instead of it being the colour of the Blackcurrant bit of The Comforter, it became more of pink colour. This one is a bomb therefore you just run your bath and then drop it in before you get in yourself. The Luxury Lush Pud has little buttons on the side of it which are little pockets of colour which explode when you drop it in. The smell of it is literally like a Christmas Pudding.. It is quite spicy but at the same time it has lavender and ylang ylang in which kinda tones down the spiciness and the quirkiness of Tonka absolute.. If you love the Twilight bath bomb then you will love this one or vice versa.. The products costs £3.50

Luxury Lush Pud

Luxury Lush Pud exploding in the bath

One of the spots exploding

The colour of the bath

Back to the bubble bars... This one is called Drummers Drumming.. Y'know because of the 12 Days Of Christmas song/carol? This bubble bar is a first in the history of Lush as it isn't just a bubble bar but its a musical bubble bar.  YOU CAN CREATE A MUSICAL BATH! It has two bells therefore when you swish it the bells jingle.. Now one side of the bar is yellow and the other is pink which obviously means that they have different scents. The yellow side smells of bergamot whereas the pink side smells of strawberries and cream... Mmm... Strawberries and cream scented bubbles.. This one is priced at the same price as the Magic Wand (£5.25) *screams* BUBBLES. MY BUBBLES!
(https://www.lush.co.uk/products/new-products/drummers-drumming)

Drummers Drumming

Drummers Drumming in the bath

Wow, the last of bubble bars.. So you get the point of how to use them by now... You crumble them and put said crumbles (its not really crumbs as its more pieces so crumbles felt right) and put them under running water. So the last bubble bar is The Christmas Hedgehog.. Okay, this is going to sound weird but Lush is a Vegan based company but consciously its not right to crumble up a cute hedgehog.. This product looks kinda like a hedgehog.. It is silvery blue.. Silver at the front.. Blue at the back.. It is literally too cute to put into words... It has blue shimmer beads, snowflake lustre and white edible stars which make it extraordinary from within. It is mainly made from Cocoa Butter and Shea Butter which means that it is very prone to melting once it has been touched by warm human hands.. The butters give your skin such a soft feeling once you have been in the bath.. It creates a lot of bubbles and it makes the bath go a silvery blue colour which is just so soothing and great.. The hedgehog also has ylang ylang and rose absolute which keeps the bath soothing and gives a great aroma for when its absolutely freezing outside.. This absolutely adorable animal is £3,25
(https://www.lush.co.uk/products/new-products/christmas-hedgehog)

The Christmas Hedgehog

Crumbled Hedgehog in bath

Wow... This is the last Lush product that I was given... The bad thing with this one for you guys is that I haven't used it yet because it looks too good and smells too good to use just to review for you guys... The final product in my box is called Golden Wonder.. Now as you can tell by the name that it is going to be very gold... You are right! Now, Golden Wonder is a bath bomb but it's not like any other ordinary bath bomb... Golden Wonder is a bath bomb in a bath bomb in a bath bomb which means that it takes a long time to make.. 10 days in fact.. It takes 10 days just to make one of these. This is one of the reasons why I don't just want to use it for a review of it.. I did get shown a demonstration of it though therefore I can talk about that. The design of it is a present shaped bomb with a golden colour outer layer with a cream bow on top to represent a present as there is a bell in the middle of the second bomb which acts as a surprise... There is other surprises within this bomb but if you want to know what they are then you should go buy one to find out... (*HINT* gold) This bath product smells mainly of cognac and lime with a hint of clementine which gives it an all round boozy citrus scent. The scent smells absolutely divine and luxurious! When you drop this present into the bath, it turns the water a lovely dark blue/green colour with a gold glitter trail (and the other surprises) swirling around in the water.. It's literally one of the best presents you could buy for yourself this Christmas. Priced at £3.75 which isn't that bad for a bath bomb especially when it contains so much gorgeous things..  (https://www.lush.co.uk/products/bath-bombs/golden-wonder)

Golden Wonder

Golden Wonder in the bath

Birds eye view of Golden Wonder

So this is the end of my blog post on What's In My Lush Box.. I hope that you've liked it.. As I've said the links to buy them.. The link to the full gift set is https://www.lush.co.uk/products/15-30/jingle-bells . The link to the video is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY8Ci_aQ_QU&list=UUZV6mQGhkORoc5XjoZ0APWQ

PS: The links have been taken out due to them being not sold as Lush updates their links to their products every year so even if there's a new version of the same product then the link will have been changed.


I still can not thank Lush Leeds Spa enough for putting the #LushChristmas Bloggers Event on and for giving me the gift box. If you live near Leeds then I urge you to go into their new big store in Leeds and buy something as all of the products are amazing!
Thank you for reading this far
I hope that you have a great week and I hope to see you next time I write a blog post.
*meows and disappears*