Blogger Block

Bonjour friends!

God, I haven’t blogged for 10 days!  I have had such bad bloggers block, I don’t even know what to write about anymore :( I have decided to tell you what i’ve been up to in the last week just to get myself back into the swing of writing and hoping this will kick start some other super awesome blog posts that I hopefully have lurking away...

Last Thursday I got invited to an awesome event at my favourite boutique in Essex, I Am So Fly... I had been looking forward to this as they always have such dribble worthy clothes.  I arrived with my friends Charlie and Jo and we were greeted with a glass of champagne and a miniature cupcake from Loughton Cupcakes (absolutely AMAZING, I must have sneakily had about 8 of them, oops!)  We browsed the shop and checked out the clothes they were showcasing.  They had a few lovely girls from Space NK doing makeovers with Lauren Mercier products which I had never used before so Charlie and I both had our make up done. I went for a evening smokey eye while Charlie’s was more understated for a fashionable day time look. 

Cosy DKNY sleepwear // Studding AMAZINGNESS // Jo's hat // FOOD

Charlie getting her makeover // me having my eyes done // PRODUCTS // final verdict?

The store looked amazing, and you could see the amount of effort the girls at So Fly had put in to make the event a success.  If you ever need clothes for a special occasion or just want to treat yourself to a beautiful dress, get yourself down to this shop - I honestly could not recommend it highly enough!  Check out their website HERE to see all the beautiful clothes and accessories you can get you hands on.  Thanks to Emma and the girls for looking after us! 

I had a big one last weekend as it was my friend Julie’s hen party!!!  She’s getting married on 30^th November and she is having all 11 of us as Bridesmaids (yes, she must be totally crazy!).  We went to Alton Towers for the weekend and it was really great.  We met up at Kayley’s house at 11.30am on Saturday morning (feeling slightly jaded from Rejam on Friday night but the excitement soon took over).  We had breakfast and then in true classy Essex girl style, all piled into a minibus to get to ALTON TOWERS!  We arrived about 3pm, chucked our gowns on and headed straight to the spa for a nice pamper.  A few of the girls had ‘mini treatments’ which were mini 15 minute massages for £10 each, and then we had full use of the pool, Jacuzzi, sauna, steam, foot spa, relaxation room and chill out area.  It was lovely and relaxing and just what we needed after a 4 hour journey!   We then headed back to the room to get ready for dinner, which was a lovely buffet based in the Splash Landings hotel next door. 



Cockcakes // me and the hen // dressing the hen up (oblig) // Bano and I enjoying the cock straws on the minibus



Inapproprite spa footwear // being classy ladies at the meal // ALL OF US! // Late night corridor bants



After the meal we went back to the bar for drinks and banter.  By 1am the hen and a few of the girls wanted to go to bed but the idiots of the group (me included) decided to stay up and try to crash a conference going on in one part of the hotel.  We recruited a random man dressed as the Childcatcher (but we decided to call him Clopin), but decided after a while it would be more fun to try and run away from him (for absolutely no reason at all might I add).  This resulted in a full scale sprint from one side of the hotel to another, fully running in heels down emergency exits and back to our normal hotel.  We then went and got changed into more comfortable clothes and decided to wreak havoc and run around the gardens outside.  We managed to find a weird corridor in the hotel that looked like a hospital corridor (or the sort of thing you would see at the end of your life) and dared each other to go down it, but none of us had the balls to apart from our friend Chloe.



Spooky Alton Towers Hotel // the horrific hospital corridor



Easily looking like the living dead // appropriate scare fest weather? // OBLIVION // my hen party goodybag



We then finally got to sleep at 3am and then woke up bright an early for breakfast the next morning.  We were going into the park that day and were dressing Julie up as a Corpse Bride, so the rest of us donned some face paint and tried to make ourselves look like the undead.  We had an awesome day in the park and I took some brave pills and managed to get myself on some rides.  RITA nearly broke my actual neck, it is horrifically fast!  A few of the girls went into the Tower of Terror and said it was the most horrific thing they had ever been in so i’m glad I swerved that one!

Having a relatively chilled one this weekend, looking forward to watching Derren Brown Apocalypse tonight (it looks amazing and I LOVE Derren!).  I got paid yesterday so have been trying my hardest to refrain from buying lots of beauty bits that I don’t need.  I did buy a new heated brush from Tresemme though, as now I have a fringe it’s so much easier to style using one of them... I’ll defo put a review up of it shortly!  Oh yeah, I NOW HAVE A FRINGE!  I did it, I was agonising over it for so long in the end my hairdresser just cut it anyway!  What do you guys think?

I have a guest post going up on the lovely Charlotte’s blog at 12.30, so click the link HERE to check that out too.  I have followed Charlotte's blog for a while and love it, she does such awesome product reviews so it's a real privilege to have a guest blog on her account - thanks again Charlotte!   

Oh one last thing, the scarefest weekend and the fact it is Halloween on Wednesday totally inspired me to create my own Halloween nails!  What do you think?  They look like they took me ages to do and were really time consuming but they totally weren't, the longest thing was waiting for the nail polish to dry!  If anyone wants to know how I did them or would like a tutorial for any of the nails let me know and i'll post one :)

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and hopefully i’ll be out of my blogging rut and back to my best shortly! x

Midnight City

Winter is here and it’s just as depressing as I thought it was going to be...

I am always torn between winter and summer.  Summer is FUN, hot, skimpy, outside and breezy and tanned.  Winter is cold and fatter, inside, full of FAT AND MUSHROOMS AND STEW.  I love the fashion in winter (thick leggings, fur stoles, big chunky boots and wooly hats) but can’t stand the weather.  It’s the exact opposite for Summer.  Spray tans are necessary, as are crash diets so you don’t look like a hippo in denim shorts.  The potential for a fashion disaster is far greater in summer.

I use this transition in seasons to change my hair style more often than not.  In summer I like hair off my face, so it doesn’t get stuck to my head like some sort of sweat blanket on the tube.  In winter I prefer a forehead carpet, a thick fringe covering my head up and stopping my eyebrows from getting frostbite.  This year I am torn.

I had a thick fringe last year and loved it.  I used to get compliments on it, to which I would reply “thanks, I grew it myself” like some retarded David Brent wannabe.  It was a bit of a nightmare for the first few weeks, refusing to sit correctly and parting like the red sea the minute Moses gives it the nod but it grew to do as it was told and I’d stroll around London with a warm forehead and the most hideously overgrown eyebrows (the fringe covered them up so plucking and waxing just became unnecessary, even though it really really WAS necessary).  I decided to grow my fringe out just as spring showed it’s face, deciding that I didn’t want a fringe when I went to Vegas in May as the thought of being in that heat with a load of hair stuck to my face made me want to VOM.  It grew and I have had a spam ever since.

I have now decided that after approx 9 years of having black hair, it’s time for a change.  I have spoken to my trusted hairdresser, who has confirmed that I can change my hair colour to a lighter brown (and therefore have my much longed for ombre) WITHOUT stripping, but I need to grow my roots to a disgustingly long length.  My natural hair colour is a browny (gingery), blondey (gingery) light-ish (gingery) colour, so when my roots grow my hair looks horrific and I am pretty sure Ian Beale in tramp mode would have more chance of pulling than I do.  I cannot BEAR the roots, so my way of thinking is if I had my fringe cut, the roots would be confined to the middle of my head and not visible from the front, therefore saving my dignity for the next 3 months.  m.  I had pretty much decided to go down this route, but stupidly thought I would ask everyone’s opinion.  Cue every male I know telling me they prefer my hair without the fringe as it makes me look prettier.  So now I have 2 options:

1.  Do not have a fringe and have the same colour for the rest of my life, OR have the most horrific roots known to man - teamed with a really boring haircut.

2.  Have the fringe, change the hair colour and end up having the hair I really want, but in the mean time deal with not being remotely attractive to any man in the world AND having a total fit when the fringe takes longer than a month to grow out.

I am in a serious dilemma and I don’t know what to do.  To fringe or not to fringe, that is the question...

SPAM

FRINGE

Anyway, while I suffer with my inner turmoil, I have something to show you that almost made me wet my Victoria’s Secret pants on the train home on Friday night.  I sat on the train, so excited about the fact it was Friday that I fell asleep for 90% of the way, probably with my mouth open and dribbling everywhere.  When I woke up I had a text from my friend Jo that said “LOOK WHAT I’VE GOT (ONE FOR YOU!)” and the picture that appeared before me almost bought me to tears.  She’d only gone and got me a bottle of bladdy THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN OPI SKYFALL JAMES BOND SPESH EXTRAVAGANZA HADN’T SHE!  I spent the next 2 hours in an absolute frenzy, counting down the minutes till I could leave mine to go to our friends house and get it off her with my mucky grabby hands.  It didn’t disappoint and I rushed home and painted my nails with in INSTANTLY.

(In case you have been in a cave somewhere and don’t know what this polish is, it’s limited edition, 18 CARAT GOLD LEAF TOP COAT.  Yes, that’s right, 18 carat gold nails.  Yes.)

As you can see from the pictures it is AMAZINGGGGG!  Am I said because I probably would have paid £10 for the empty bottle alone?  The packaging is lovely, although it's hard to take a decent picture of it when you can see yourself in the bottle!

Anyway when I got down to painting the nails I was a bit dubious about using it for no reason because at £19 a bottle (wholesale price) it’s not the sort of polish i’d be using every day, but I just had to try it.  The pay off with the gold to the actual top coat was relatively good, although I found I had to paint on one layer and then dab extra bits into the gaps that hadn’t filled as much.  It dried relatively quickly and you didn’t have any of the annoying standy up bits of gold that you sometimes get with glitter – it lays perfectly smooth.

I love it, it’s amazing and I feel like a bit of a spaz telling people what it is when they ask – they might be thinking “you paid £20 for some gold to put on your nails?  Are you high?”  BUT Jo understood that it’s just one of those things I had to own.  Have you tried OPI TMWTGG before?  Would you, or would you buy it?  Love to hear your thoughts!

Just before I go, I have discovered a lovely awesome brilliant album called Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming by M83 and I think you should listen to this song and love it as much as I do.  NOW.

OH YEAH AND SOMEONE JUST TELL ME IF I SHOULD HAVE A FRINGE OR NOT, I’M BORED OF THINKING ABOUT IT.

xxx

Morsh in Pictures

Happy Friday ladies (and gentlemen, if there are any that read this!)

I have been AWOL this week, partly because I have been busy and partly because I have just been plugging my giveaway!   To make up for this I have decided to do a little picture post (I know everyone loves being nosy about people’s lives, me included) to show you what I have been up to :)

  

1. Me trying to distract myself from smoking by blowing bubbles instead :/
2.  MUA Lipstick
3.  Nails Inc Belgrave Place
4.  My Beauty Box Giveaway :)





1 & 2.  Baby Shower presents for my friends little bump - just under 4 weeks to go!
3.  Showcasing my new Primark boots in the beautiful English winter weather :(
4.  My LUNCH rules!



1 & 2.  Stupid antics pre Hoxton for Toast Underground's 2nd Birthday
3.  Sweeties and keepsakes from the baby shower!
4.  Mushroom nailssss biatch



1.  Early AM in Numptyville
2.  Oops, didn't mean to purchase these... actually yes I did
3.  The elastic band ball of GREATNESS that I inherited when I started working here
4.  Friday nails, Barry M Gelly Hi Shine in Watermelon with Gold shizzle top coat accent

  

1.  EmmaK_25 - Winner!
2.  My lovely necklace :)
3.  Modelling the necklace - I bet Kate Moss is bricking it!
4.  Friday lunchtime amazingness

 

As you can see from the pictures, the lovely  Emma of www.glossyboutique.blogspot.co.uk won my giveaway!  I was really pleased with how many people entered and a bit sad I didn’t have something to give to each and every one of you!  All the blogs that followed me on GTC have been followed back and I am loving that I have some new reading material and friends!  Congratulations Emma, please let me know what you think of the box when you receive it!  

I also received a really nice gift in the post today!  The lovely people at Nifty Necklaces sent me a voucher code to get a free necklace thanks to a giveaway.  My friend had bought me a ‘Morsh’ necklace at Christmas which I loved but accidentally broke one awesome drunken night in Vegas.  I replaced it but shortly afterwards that one broke too :( As soon as I saw I had won this I was overly chuffed because I knew I would be able to replace my Morsh necklace – the voucher code they gave me even meant I got the delivery free, and the time spent waiting between ordering and delivery was quick (although because I was excited and being super impatient it felt like FOREVER!).  As you can see from the pictures it is really nice and quite big which I like, as the one I had before was slightly harder to read as it was quite small.  I’ll be sure to crack this out at very available opportunity, thanks again Nifty Necklaces!  If you want your own one, check them out on the website here – to be honest now I have seen one in real life I would definitely pay for it, it’s cheap for what you get!

Have a lovely weekend, i’ll be back to my blogging best on Monday (I hope!) xxx

Morsh's First Giveaway!

Hi ladies!

Today is a very special day for me – yes, it’s the day of my first giveaway!  I wanted to give something back to all the lovely bloggers that read my blog and bother to comment etc.  I have been doing my blog for just over a year now and have loved every minute of it!   I wanted to save the giveaway for something special, but I joined in my first #bbloggers chat on Twitter last night and met lots of interesting new bloggers.  I wanted advice on what I should put in my beauty box and the bloggers I gave a sneak preview to really liked it, so I thought i’d start it today!

I think it’s lovely when people do giveaways on blogs for no reason, just to give something back.  As obsessed as I am with make up and nail polish, I actually had a fun time putting the box together and getting all the bits for it!  I wanted to include some of my favourite items (W7 nail polish, Bare Minerals Eye shadow, face mask, nail art decals), some bits that are popular at the moment (Benefit The Pore-fessional, MUA Nail Constellation) and also just some other bits that always come in handy (nail guides, Models Own eyeshadow brush, MUA cream blusher).  I am pleased with this box and thought i’d add a few rings for good measure as they were so pretty!

I’m not going to make you run to the end of the earth and back to be in with a chance of winning.  All I need you to do is follow the steps below and enter on the Rafflecopter widget:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

And that’s it!  I will contact you within 24 hours of the competition closing to let you know you have won.  The cut off point will be midnight on Friday 12th October for entires, if you have any questions feel free to comment below and ask.  Please remember to use the hashtag #morshsbeautygiveaway if you are going to tweet about it, and also remember you can follow my blog account on Twitter, @queenmorsh_blog -get involved and good luck!

Contents of the Beauty Box in full:

1x Leighton Denny Nail Polish in Sex Kitten

1x 17 Fast Finish nail polish in Knockout Red

1x Barry M Limited Edition Silver Sparkle glitter polish

1x W7 Metallic Saturn nail polish

1x MUA Nail Constellation in Leo

1x MUA Blush Perfection Cream Blusher in Yummy

1x Bare Minerals Eye shadow in Water Lily

1x MUA Matte Eye Shadow, Shade 20

1x Benefit The Pore Fessional

1x Cina Neon Nail Art Pen in Shocking Pink

1x GOSH Cosmetics Intense Eyeliner Pen in Dark Green

1x Models Own Eyeshadow Brush

1x Mudd Deep Cleansing Face Mask

1x Hail the Nails nail necal (leopard print crosses)

1x Penny Sage Nail Guides

1x Large silver armour ring with cut out cross

1x Large silver ring with black stone

Miserable Monday :(

This weather is rubbish!  Rubbish Monday!

Aside form thatI am so excited, look what's arrived look what's arrived!  My business cards!  I have been umming and ahhing about getting some for a while but I finally took the plunge and I am glad I did!  I am so happy with them!  I know you are probably wondering why I need business cards (I don't want it to seem totally pretentious), believe me it’s not like that.  I have been invited to a few beauty shows and events in the past and when I have spoken to PRs etc, they have have asked about my blog and asked for my business card.  It’s a bit awkward when I don’t have one to give them as it can make me seem quite unprofessional and like my blog isn’t something I am particularly bothered about so I figured i’d bite the bullet and get some.  I only ordered 50 and I doubt I will be dishing them out often, but it’s nice to know I have a stash if I get invited somewhere I am going to meet people in the business and would like to contact them about my blog.  I think I am a bit weirded out by it because it’s not as if my blog is remotely important – I just talk about what I did at the weekend and what colour I have painted my nails so hardly putting a stop to poverty, but there are people in the industry that like recruiting bloggers for their brands and they do want business cards.  So I did it!

What do you think of my cards?  They do actually have my real name on them as this is quite important for people that want to contact me, but I airbrushed this out as I like to stay I wanted to incorporate the look of my blog by adding my logo, but also to show what my blog is about (ultimately me, make up and nail polish) and I think that’s pretty obvious.  I also like that everything on the front is a picture of my own work – I did the nail art and painted my nails, I did my own make up, I took my own pictures and I went to the events featured too.  I ordered these cards from Moo and I am really pleased with the quality and the print of them – thanks Moo!

Today is a stressful day for me because I am trying to participate in Stoptober, basically not smoking from today until the end of the month.  Right at this very moment I have normally had 2, if not 3 cigarettes by now so I am dying for one, but I am chewing lots of chewing gum and trying to be good.  I have decided if I REALLY REALLY need one then I will allow myself because the more I can’t have one the more I want one – even if I manage to cut out 4 of the ‘habit’ cigarettes I have a day that’s something.  I don’t know if i’ll be able to go cold turkey, but for now I am proud of myself – I know it’s only one morning but it’s one more than I thought I could do!

To any other fellow Stoptobers, good luck and if you need encouraging words or someone to freak out with, you know where I am!

I ordered some MUA cosmetics the other day, as everyone on the blogs always talks about the quality of the products and how good they are for the price and i’ve never tried them before.  I’ll snap some pictures tonight but am going to keep a few things back for my blog giveaway I think, just putting the finishing touches to the beauty box over the next couple of days and then i’ll start banging on about it!  Are there any particular types of products you like to see in a giveaway?  I am trying to include products I like and use, but also want to give the winner something they would want – suggestions welcome! x