Drug & Department Store Make-up Haul!

Hiya folks!

So a couple of days ago my housemates and I decided to go make up shopping in Chester, and while I went out thinking ‘I’ll just have a look, I don’t really need anything’ sadly, that quickly changed…

We set off for town at around lunch time, meaning we HAD to duck into Starbucks for lunch before shopping – you know, for the coffee boost.

After that we hit Superdrug (because it’s next door), and had a browse at the various stands. None of us really bothered to get anything expensive (apart from face wipes because our hands were COVERED in lipstick/eye-shadow/lipgloss swatches), but I did decide to buy two eye-shadow palettes from Make-Up Revolution, a brand I’ve been banging on about for the past year and am slowly converting everyone in my household to using.

For the record, it’s working.

The first thing I bought was the ‘Eyes Like Angels’ palette; 32 shimmery shades of awesome (hopefully) that I should be able to use for absolutely anything. The second thing was inspired by another blogger (I forget her name, sorry) who talked about wearing stunning-looking cranberry shades, so when I saw the ‘Chocolate Deluxe’ Baked Eyeshadow set for £2 I thought, well sod it!

We left Superdrug and headed for Debenhams, hoping to find a good quality gold pigment for my housemate to wear at her sisters upcoming wedding. I also had some left-over Christmas vouchers to use and had my eye on the MAC Viva Glam Miley Cyrus lipstick.

I’m pretty sure I’ve said this before, when I go into Debenhams I tend to just head straight for MAC and forget that there are so many other lovely make up counters around me. This time, I had a browse at YSL, Bobby Brown and Chanel (I’ve got a mental image of my mum cringing as I type this) and decided I could find products that were just as good for half the price elsewhere, but that didn’t stop me from raiding MAC…

Now I already have quite a collection of MAC lipsticks, but I’ve never bothered with the lip glass or the lip pencils, so after a great deal of deliberation (about 15 minutes) I decided to buy 1 of each, but which ones?
As I said before, I’d pretty much made the decision I was buying the new Viva Glam Lipstick because the colour is incredible (an Amplified vivid pink), great for spring/summer but perfect for winter if you fancy making a statement (like me), I also think it’s great how a huge chunk of the money raised goes to the AIDS foundations MAC support.
So you look great and have helped someone else out too!

I spent a lot of time deliberating over which pencil to get. For those of you who are die-hard MAC fans, you’ll know they recently released a new selection of lip-pencils/glass’ in already-popular lipstick shades, plus some new additions. Unfortunately this included a new lip-glass in ‘Heroine’, a purple shade.
This made it incredibly difficult to look at anything else, but SOMEHOW I managed to think of how much purple make-up I already own and question did I really need ANOTHER purple lip-gloss?
The answer was no, so instead I decided to think ahead to summer and look at the orange-y shades which was a great decision. I picked up what one of the MAC assistants called ‘that beautiful lip-colour’, which I totally agreed with. For you mere-mortals it’s called ‘Fruit Cocktail’ and teams perfectly with the Cremesheen Glass ‘Richer, Lusher’ which is exactly that!

After I’d spent a good 30 minutes eye-balling the MAC counter I wandered over to join my housemates at Dior who were cooing over their selection of cream eye-shadows, something I’ve recently become a fan of after the wife gave me a Maybelline Colour Tattoo pot that she didn’t really care for.
Hand on heart, I didn’t intend to buy anything from Dior… but I did. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even think about whether I’d wear it, I knew I’d find a way. Anyway, I ended up spending my last small segment of voucher on the Diorshow Fusion Mono eye-shadow in ‘Mirror’. Shimmering, golden and mesmerising. That’s all I can say.

Our final stop was at Boots because my housemate had found a similar Dior Eyeshadow that she thought perfect for the wedding, but it wasn’t in stock. I didn’t mind, more ‘browsing’!
In fairness I wasn’t particularly struck by anything this time, instead I bought another Maybelline Colour Tattoo 24 Hour in ‘Taupe’, because I thought it a perfect base to apply nude eye-shadow.

Then, cocktails.
Walking back from Boots we stopped at the Macdonald New Blossom Hotel to check out their bar. We got cosy in the high-backed brown leather chairs and I ordered a Champagne Cocktail (I forget what my housemate ordered), which went down quite easily. We then bought another round, I had a Long Island Ice Tea which came in a jam-jar and was very strong (I didn’t complain, I could taste my moneys-worth at least!). We continued chatting, and were greeted by the General Manager which was a nice change. In some hotels the GM’s don’t bother making an effort until someone complains!

After a few hours, we finished our drinks and headed out once again, this time to The Church.

For those of you who aren’t local to Chester (I pity you, it’s lovely here), The Church is a recently restored church (as you probably expected, I didn’t suddenly feel the need to confess and pray at an ACTUAL church), tucked away down a side-street, which sounds a little dodgy but it isn’t. The Church is huge and incredibly well furnished, using a colour-scheme of deep red and white to warm the place up a bit and giant booths that make you feel kinda regal… ESPECIALLY the giant white booth upstairs that looks like it’s been stolen from Winterfell – love it. They even kept the huge pipe-organ as a centre piece, to form part of the bar and allow people to appreciate how stunning the building was as its former self.

So, we picked a booth and ordered more cocktails (I had a New Long Island, again I forget what my housemate got) while we decided exactly what to order. After so long I opted for steak in a blue cheese sauce, and my housemate went for the Spanish chicken breast.
It was weird me ordering steak, because as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I don’t really like it. The last time I can recall having steak was in December 2011, at a New Years Eve meal, I never bothered after that. But after talking to a couple of friends the night before, one of them had talked about steak and I kind of wanted to try it again, and I’m really glad I did.

After a few minutes it all arrived, and after about 2 minutes of photography/instagramming, we tucked in. So, my steak was medium-rare, as I’d asked for (another weird thing for me, usually I cringe when I see meat pink in the middle) and absolutely delicious smothered in the blue cheese sauce. As I said before, my housemate ordered the Spanish chicken, which was chicken breast filled with chorizo, mozzarella and garlic, then wrapped in smoked bacon and served with sweet potato mash and veg, sounds tempting I know…something for next time perhaps!

So after our lovely meal and a lovely spree, we decided it was time to return home, mainly because it was cold and raining outside and we wanted our beds..

We’re a wild bunch I know, in bed by 9pm.

Anyway, do you have any of the products I’ve just bought? What do you think of them?
Tweet me @alejashleigh or comment below and let me know!

Also, don’t forget to follow me on Bloglovin!

Leigh
xx