Four Things: Luxurious Beauty Gifts for New Mothers

In my experience, when you have a baby, you get showered in cards and gifts, but they are usually for the baby (pah!). Just after giving birth, I felt amazed and proud, but also exhausted and not looking my best, to say the least. I received some really lovely beauty products as new mum gifts and I appreciated them so much. It is nice to have treats that are just for you, and things that either help you feel or look better when you are in just about the least glamorous state it is possible to be in (that's how it was for me anyway...). If you have a friend who is just about to have a baby, I would recommend any of these as luxurious beauty treats for her:

1. Garnier Caffeine Eye Roll-On: It's no surprise that new mums are often in need of regular caffeine injections - I have never known tiredness like it - but did you know you can put it on your eyes too? To be honest, I think the thing I really love about this product is the applicator, the cooling and massaging properties of the roller ball are brilliant. The online reviews of this product seem to be a bit mixed, and I don't know if it makes a long term difference to eye bags, but it does give you an instant refreshing lift which can perk you up when you feel like your eyeballs need washing out.

2. YSL Touche Eclat: Almost everyone has heard of this cult beauty product, but the classics are classics for a reason. This is another instant lift product for times when you don't have a lot of time or energy but want to perk yourself up, or just make yourself look a little more presentable. The packaging and satisfying click button operation make this feel like a super-luxurious product and a real treat.

3. Luxurious bath oils: I love a hot bath at the best of times, but it is a super-duper treat in those early weeks when you have a newborn and seem to get very little time to yourself. Ideally, you need to accompany this gift with the promise to take the baby out of earshot for the duration of the bath. I love Aromatherapy Associates bath oils, though they are pretty expensive, but their Deep Relax Bath and Shower Oil always wins awards and gets rave reviews for its almost narcotic relaxing properties.

4. Clarins Beauty Flash Balm: A totally beauty classic, one of those products that is recommended time and again by beauty experts and magazine articles and has one about a million awards. I have no idea how it works, but it makes your skin instantly look and feel tighter and fresher, and it smells delicious - I'm sure the scent is as much part of the treatment as any of the ingredients. I found this a perfect gift for when you have a new baby since it is easy to apply, almost instant and is a great product for those times when you don't have the energy to put on makeup (or wash...) but want to freshen up and smarten up, perhaps when you have guests coming.

Accompany any of these products with a large bar of chocolate and you have a gift that will make a new mum feel special and a little bit more feminine and glamourous. Incidentally, I would be thrilled to get given any of these at any time, new baby or not... : )

A 60th Birthday Surprise

Hello! We made it, another weekend has come round, phew! I hope you've had a great week this week, and you've been busy with interesting things.

This week I have been working really hard on a special project my sisters and I have been working on for our Dad's 60th birthday next week. We are making him a photo book based around music, which has always been one of his greatest loves in life. As long as I can remember my Dad made compilation tapes, for each year's family holiday, for weddings, for birthdays, for each of us girls whenever we went away by ourselves. We asked his friends and family to send us photos of them and dad, and to pick a song that reminds them of him. They also sent us a message to include.

My youngest sister, Rosie, has been responsible for dealing with all the correspondence, and then this last week I have been laying out the book pages, adding extra images and song lyrics. Its been a great project to work on, reading all the wonderful messages for my lovely Dad and seeing all the old photos. As always I should really have started work on it earlier, and I wanted to get it ordered by Friday so it would get here in time (hopefully) so the last few days have been a bit stressful trying to get it done while not neglecting my baby too much! 

I'm so pleased with how it looks and I know it will all be worth it to see his reaction to the book this time next weekend - its so exciting! We are also making a compilation CD of all the tracks that people have chosen and that will be added to the book too. I thought I would also add a CD with all the digital photos that we've used in the book, since there are some that Dad doesn't have. On the last page I added these lyrics from "The End" by The Beatles, his favourite band. I thought this was a great sentiment to sum up the spirit of the whole book, which is just bursting with a lifetime of love and friendship. I hope in another 30 years I will be as well loved and highly regarded as my Dad.

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PS. I got most of the extra images I used on this project from Fuzzimo, an absolute treasure trove of free digital resources.

Mother's Day Stickygrams

Have you remembered? It's Mother's Day (in the UK at least) on 18th March, which is only a couple of weeks away, eeek! This time of year is really busy in our family for birthdays, so it is really hard to keep on top of all the presents and cards.

I ordered some Stickygram magnets for my mum for a Mother's Day gift recently and I am so thrilled at how they have come out. Stickygram are a company that link up to your Instagram account. Do you already use Instagram already? It is one of my absolute favourite iPhone photography apps, which allows you to add loads of vintage looking filters and frames to your iPhone photos and then share them, with followers. You can also follow other people: it's sort of like a visual Twitter. And the app is free, hooray!

Ordering Stickygram magnets turned out to be easy-peasy. You pick out sets of 9 Instagram photos - I picked ones of my parents with baby Joe - and they will print them as magnets and post them to you. Although the prices on the site are in US dollars, they are actually a UK company and my order arrived in a couple of days - so UK readers still have time to order for Mother's Days!

It is great to find ways to use all the photos I have taken on Instagram, and has inspired me to look into more ways to print them out. I really like these Instagram posters you can order online from Pinstagram. Have you found any great sites for using your Instagram photos? I'd love to hear about any recommendations!

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PS. This is not a sponsored post! Stickygram and Instagram have not asked me to promote them, I just like to share the love when I find something great! I will always make it clear if a post is sponsored by a company or is a promotion or review.