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L’Occitaine dance into the new season
Every Christmas day I look forward to opening the special present chosen for me by my sister-in-law. I know exactly what it will be, but that doesn’t make it any less welcome or exciting. In fact, it couldn’t be more perfect, because Lina takes a trip to luxurious bath and beauty brand L’Occitaine, and always gets me one of their beautiful gift boxes. And who, frankly, wouldn’t want to find one of those in their stocking on Christmas morning? L’Occitaine, the world renowned natural beauty bran, is famous for a whole range of incredible products, from the traditional Marseille soaps, to the fragrant lavender that is the essential part…
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Currently Loving: Sew Lomax
Every so often, the postman delivers something to your door that makes you smile and smile. Something other than endless bills, or junk mail, or take-away menus. This is what happened to me the day a totally unexpected gift dropped onto my mat from Sew Lomax. Sew Lomax is the brainchild of gifted British designer Emma Lomax. Emma has designed a beautiful, hand crafted range of cosmetics bags, purses and baby accessories that can be personalised with hand embroidered names. Each item is hand finished, which means every single bag, purse or bib is unique. I have long since been a fan of Emma’s designs, which are gloriously girlie and…
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Turning a Dangerous Corner at Birmingham Rep
A chance remark about a musical cigarette box is the premise for a series of life changing revelations to be revealed in JB Priestley’s Dangerous Corner, which opened at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre last night. What then follows is an exciting, multi-layered drama that challenges the concept of whether it is always better to tell the truth, or whether you should sometimes let sleeping dogs lie. Dangerous Corner was Priestley’s first foray into the idea of time slips and deja vu as a plot device, something he later used to such amazing effect in the masterpiece ‘An Inspector Calls’. The play starts with a gunshot, which turns out to be…
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Reviewed: Super Loop Bands
I hate loom bands! There’s a simple reason for this hatred which has nothing to do with finding them all over the floor, or clogging up the Hoover, or just appearing everywhere. The reason is I can’t actually make them. I tried with the loom, and failed miserably. I tried without the loom and kept snapping the band. With a five-year old boy who seemed to want a band in the colours of every premiership team, I was a total failure and a big disappointment. So thank goodness for the Super Loop bands set available from Interplay. These are bands that I can actually make. They don’t require a loom,…
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Fashion Focus on Jumpers from Dorothy Perkins
I’ve just returned from the first school run of the new term, and all I can say is brrrrr! My little boy Joe described it best this morning, calling the day ‘Sunny cold’, with a bit of frost, bright blue skies and sun, but a definite chill in the air. We are now in the midst of jumper season. Jumper season means those lovely, chunky knits now take centre stage, and as jumper season blends into Christmas jumper season in just a month’s time (just 27 days until you start opening that advent calendar), now is a perfect time to stock up on all those knits, and maybe add a…
