White Foundation Mixers - A Review

White foundation mixers are supposed to be the pale person's saviour. Any foundation that is supposed to be a near-white shade of 'porcelain' can too often be several shades darker than a pale person's actual skin tone. Pure white foundation mixers allow us to lighten any foundation shade to our perfect shade.

Or so the theory goes...

As someone with grey/translucent skin, I've always struggled to find a foundation shade that matches my skin tone on the high-street or from high-end brands. Either they're slightly too orange to start with, or they'll swatch on pale and then oxidise to a dry/orange paste. I must have spent hundreds of pounds on these poor foundations and have yet to find a perfect match.

Several years ago, I thought I found a miracle. It was the Barry M Foundation Creme in a pure white shade. I used it to lighten several shades of high-street foundations and it always did so perfectly. Finally, a solution to my problem! Until one day, my tube ran out and after several searches of Barry M makeup sections, I checked online to find that it had been discontinued.

I accepted my fate. I was destined to blend down my neck and hope that my orange face wouldn't be obvious next to my white hands and chest.... But then Body Shop came through with another miracle and my journey with foundation mixers began.

Body Shop - Shade Adjusting Drops - £10.00

When I first got my hands on a bottle of this, I was so excited. It had been years since the high-street had been able to offer me something like this and I was buzzing to try it. I can't remember the first brand of foundation that I mixed it with but I remember that the formula worked well for me. Well enough that I recommended it to all of my friends and left them a glowing review on their website.

It took a few drops to get the desired effect for me which meant the dropper-style bottle design was a bit of a pain - but it blended so well that I put up with it. Since I needed so much of the stuff to actually lighten my foundation to the right shade, I very quickly ran out. I went into the store to find they were out of stock and the same was true online. I signed up for a stock alert and it was WEEKs before they finally had more in which just shows how many of us need to customise our foundations.

When the second bottle arrived, something was different. The formula wasn't blending as well and it left my foundation patchy and oily. I tried a few foundations in case it was the formula in the foundation but it didn't like any of them. I'm not sure if they changed the formula to get the stock out quicker or if my skin just didn't work with it anymore. Either way, I couldn't use it anymore and had to look for alternatives.

5/10 - I was sold a dream and it was taken away.

MAC - Studio Face & Body Foundation in White - £29.50

After the let down of Body Shop, I had to look for an alternative. A friend recommended the MAC Studio Face & Body Foundation in the pure white shade. I was delighted! An actual white foundation from a high-end brand like MAC must be incredible, right? Their reputation is so strong and they're charging almost thirty quid a bottle...

I was so disappointed. Not only was the formula watery even after several good shakes, it also led to the same patchy coverage that I'd seen with the second Body Shop bottle. Again, I tried several foundations in case it was the formula but I couldn't make it work. It didn't even seem to be lightening my foundation at all, even with a huge dollop of the stuff. After a few days of trying it, I stuck the bottle in a drawer and it's been gathering dust there ever since.

1/10 - Daylight robbery.

NYX - Pro Foundation Mixer in White - £8.00

I had all but given up when the new NYX aisles in Boots revealed this beauty. I had been loving the NYX range and thought I'd give this a try.

Sadly, it too left to patchy foundation but with the added bonus of EXTRA oil on my skin. I'm not sure if the formula is just too heavy but I ended up shinier than ever and had to touch-up with powder once an hour. It did lighten my slightly but the coverage was poor for such a heavy feeling formula.

2/10 - Betrayed by NYX

LA Girl - Pro Coverage Foundation in White - £11.33

For a little while, I stopped bothering with foundation mixers. I accepted that my face and body would never match and started cracking jokes about it to people around me just so they would know that I was well aware of it. I tried searching for products here and there but nothing ever came of it.

I had all but given up until my brutally honest sister finally told me that my orange-face-white-neck combination had gone past the point of acceptable.

After going on Amazon to buy Airspun setting powder (review to follow), I noticed this foundation in my recommendations list. It only has a few reviews but they're really strong so I thought I'd give it a try, and I'm SO GLAD that I did.

This stuff is incredible! It blends well, it has excellent coverage and it has a matte finish so I have zero oil slick by the end of the day. I only need one pump to match up my foundation so the bottle has lasted a good few months already.

10/10 - Miracles do happen


I hope that you find this useful! I wish I had more positive reviews but hopefully this can help you learn from my mistakes. Ultimately, you have to find the right formula for you so there's an element of trial and error. Just don't get sucked in to the 'reputation' (read: branding) of some of the high-end names - expensive doesn't always mean 'good'.

Yet Another Re-Launch

Oh look, another entire year has gone by and I've barely touched the blog - what a surprise!

I'm disappointed in myself for letting this slip. Last year I was dedicated AF to this blog, and I think that was more about having a four-posts-per-month goal and sticking to it. This year's goals were way too vague and way too dependent on others (more on that to come) for me to be successful.

That said, the beauty of the digital space is that with a few clicks and an hour or so agonising over fonts, I can completely re-launch and re-purpose this blog. I've decided to take a slightly different route with this space now. I could write several posts about beauty and lifestyle that float off into the ether, but would I necessarily read similar posts from others? Probably not.

I still love beauty and makeup though, so I thought about what I search for myself. Nine times out of ten, I look for advice on my biggest problem: my pale AF skin. Every time I want to try a new foundation, concealer, contour and even blush, I have to go on the internet and hope that someone has swatched it on skin the same colour as mine. I know it's difficult to tell if you've got a pale-sister via photos on the internet, but I still find it difficult to find anyone as pale as I am while I do these searches.

Don't let the filtered photo on the sidebar fool you into thinking I have a normal skin-tone. I have grey/translucent shaded skin with blue veins that you can follow a path with in even the dimmest light. I also have a red face and freckles so makeup shopping is always super fun for me.

I'll still post regular beauty and lifestyle type pieces, but with an angle on suiting pale skin too as this is (hopefully) an area I can help with. I'm still no expert, but I've got several years of trial and error that shouldn't go to waste.

I'm going to have a think about my posting-goals for 2017 over the next couple of weeks, but I'll see you shortly either way. I hope you like the new design in the meantime - we've come a long way from the days of the pink background (thank fuck).

Lean in 15 - A Month Of Eating The Body Coach's Recipes

Buying this book was yet another helpful recommendation from the same colleague who suggested the 5K (holla, Andrea - thanks for keeping me motivated). I got it for £7.99 on Amazon at the end of January with the intention of eating as many of his recipes that I fancied - at least across the whole of February. I was keen to shake things up too - I'd been living off salads and chicken which was delicious but bordering on bland.

It arrived really quickly so I was able to get started straight away. I loved the book, flipping through every page the moment I opened it. The pictures and layout are colourful as well as glossy. He's also sectioned all the recipes according to when they should be eaten - low carb for everyday and carb-based for post workout meals to refuel. On top of that, there's some snacks and a section for his at-home HIIT workout (no equipment, no excuses).

It's a fantastic book for basic food education and re-working your relationship with food as well. His main focus is eating food that nourishes the body and staying away from the scale (or 'sad step' as he calls it). I didn't mind staying away from the scale so much with all that Christmas weight sat on my hips. I did struggle not to count calories though - I just couldn't avoid entering the recipes into MyFitnessPal to make sure I wasn't going over my daily calorie allowance. Most of the recipes were heavily vegetable based which was calorie-friendly, but I did have to halve quite a lot of the meat quantities to keep to my daily goals.

Another thing that a lot of people comment on is the cost. It does cost money to eat fresh, particularly as a lot of the recipes call for added ingredients to flavour the dish (ginger, lime, spring onion, chilli) which can stack up pretty quick. My first weekly shop was £67 where I usually spend £40 - but a lot of that basket were things like coconut oil (which is still going strong) and spices that I didn't have in my cupboard already. Subsequent baskets were around £50-£55 so still expensive but the portions are huge even with my meat quantities halved so the cost was well worth it to me.

I definitely had my favourite recipes - usually anything that involved cheese (come at me cheesy chorizo). The thing I liked most about the book was how easy to make the recipes are. None of this 'broil this', 'ferment that' or 'grow your own asparagus' bullshit that you get in a lot of other cookbooks. Just straightforward recipes that can usually be chucked in one pan and completed in 15-20 minutes.

At the end of the 5 weeks of Lean in 15 recipes, I ended up losing 9lbs. However, I should point out that I think this more to do with a calorie deficit than the recipes themselves. I didn't buy this book for weight loss - I bought it for fresh and tasty recipes. The weight loss that came with it was reassuring though. Especially since you see so many amazing transformations through his 90 Day SSS Plans on his social media.

All in all, I really enjoyed all of the recipes that I tried in the Lean in 15 book and it's got a firm place on my cookbook shelf. I'm moving on to the BBC Good Food Low Calorie cookbook next and will let you know how I get on with that. In the meantime, here's some pictures of some of my Lean in 15 dinners from Instagram because YES - I'm the type of instagrammer that takes picture of food #judgeme

Couch to 5K - My Journey From Netflix Under a Duvet to 05:00 Gym Sessions

As part of my on-going 'weight-loss journey' (cringe), I decided to chuck a bit of exercise into the mix to try and speed things along. It turned out that I actually put on quite a bit of weight across Christmas (24lbs....) so I have an even longer way to go to get to my goal weight before Bermuda.

When a colleague said she was signing up for the 5k Race for Life in July, I told her to sign me up with her and suddenly I had a tangible goal to work towards. I'd heard about Couch to 5K before on the My Fitness Pal forums and figured I could give that a try. There are actually quite a few apps for it out there - even one from the NHS which helped me feel like this was a good idea.

I chose the C25K app from ZenLabs. It's completely free from the app store with only a tiny strip of ads at the bottom of the app which doesn't bother me. I also think it's really well-designed as an app - simple, sleek and easy to use. 

Week 1 was a really gentle start. I remember feeling like I could definitely run more than the 60 seconds of jogging that it starts you off with. The immediate running endorphins had me feeling like such a bloody champion. I kept thinking 'oh my god, this is so easy. I'm a natural! I was MADE for running!' and day dreaming about running a marathon someday. 

As the weeks go on, the time spent running slowly increases up to the full 30 minutes of non-stop running that you eventually end on. I should note here that you're only going to be running a full 5k by the end of this if you're running a 10 minute mile. Any slower and this app is only going to train you up to run 30 minutes without stopping - but you can work on speed later on.

I did have to have two weeks off near the beginning - the first one because I got a horrific case of runner's knee. It turns out I had VERY WRONG shoes and it was putting all kinds of pressure on my poor crooked knee joint. I invested in some high-arch Nike trainers to support my ankles and haven't felt any pain since. I also had to have a break when I got a chesty cold too but thankfully that passed quickly.

I'm just about to head into the 8th and final week of the programme on Tuesday and I'm really excited about it. I'll be continuing to run 5k three times a week after the programme and until at least after the race. 

I didn't expect that I'd stick with this for as long as I have so I'm really proud of myself for that. I remember that after completing the 4th Week, the app comes up with a little trophy and says that people who reach the halfway mark usually go on to complete the programme. That motivated me massively. It's so rare that I actually complete the fitness goals that I set myself so this feels like a step in the right direction at last. 

There have been so many mornings when I've just wanted to go back to bed - especially those mornings when the alarm goes off at 04:15 because I have to fit a session in before an early start at work. But I have managed to overcome the hesitations each time and my reward has been endorphins and a buzzing energy for the rest of the day afterwards so it is well worth it.

I'd recommend this programme to anyone that is wanting to take the first step in fitness and isn't sure where to start. It's perfect for building up stamina and you can take it all at your own pace too so there's no pressure.

Tabitha

Hello.....It's Me

Cheap Adele reference...sorry.

It's been well over two months since I last posted on here. Half of that is sheer laziness and the other half is me truly believing that I am too busy to blog. That said, I am back with a brand new blog design? Isn't is fancy?!

The hideous old pink design that I had tried to stitch together on my own is now long gone (thank god!) and I finally gave in to buying a ready-made template. Shout out to Kay Luxe Design on Etsy for the new design.

I'm not going to set myself a target post number for now. I just want to get back to blogging for the love of it. Particularly since 50% of my monthly content last month was a Birchbox and MyLittleBox review - neither of which I'm subscribed to any more.

In any case, I hope you enjoy the new layout and the new content I'll be posting. Don't forget to subscribe by email at the top right of the page to be notified of any new posts.

Tabitha

2016 New Years Resolutions

Like last year, I have a number of specific goals that I want to achieve this year and my hope is that I can be just as successful with these as I was with my goals for 2015.

2016 New Years Resolutions
1. Lose a further 3 stone by May 23rd, 2016 - this is on top of the six stone already lost and will not include any weight that I may have (okay - definitely have) put on over Christmas. To clarify, this will be a total loss of 126.2lbs and I want to have achieved this on or before May 23rd.
2. Go Home to Bermuda - Fraser and I have been planning to go back to my home country of Bermuda for a couple of years now and I would like to commit to going back in 2016, ideally at the end of May and on completion of my weight loss goals
3. Visit a Mortgage Advisor - Fraser and I also have big dreams to buy a home next year. I don't want to make that a goal since finding the right home and exchanging on that home will take time and will be out of my control. However, I would like it if we could take the first step and visit a mortgage advisor to get an agreement in principle if possible, or understand the areas we need to work on to make that happen.
4. Save a further £3,000 - Some of my savings will be spent on Bermuda but I would like to continue my good budget habits by committing to a further saving of £3,000 in 2016.

The list isn't as extensive as last year's but I hope to continue some of the habits that I've developed this year (drinking water more, reading books) without having to set specific goals for them. I hope that this time next year, I am able to report success against these goals too and look forward to all the challenges and good memories that 2016 will bring me.

Tabitha
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How To Keep New Years Resolutions

They're something we make every year and are quite often broken by the time we hit February. In fact, an article from Forbes suggests that just 8% of people keep their New Years Resolutions and manage to achieve them. It's easy to scream out "New Year, New Me" on January 1st but the real work has to start then too alongside an honest dedication to your goals.

Long term followers of my blog (hi, Mum) will know that I set myself some pretty specific 2015 New Years Resolutions this time last year and I'm delighted to confirm that I kept and achieved all six of these goals. You can read more about my progress on these in this post from Tuesday. I truly believe that the only reason I was successful with these resolutions versus every other year I've made them is because I was so specific with the goals. They weren't vague like my 2014 resolutions or easy to procrastinate on. They were very specific as well as published on a publicly available domain too. This meant there was an element of pride attached to achieving these as no-one likes to publicly fail.

The Forbes article from above agrees with this sentiment, stating that New Years Resolutions should be 'tangible'. There has to be a way to measure it.  If it's to lose weight, you need to commit to losing a certain amount and measure this through a scale. If it's to fit into a smaller size of clothing, be specific with how small that size should be and measure this with a tape measure and some kind of log. All six of my resolutions were designed to be very specific. I turned "drink more water" into "drink at least 2L of water a day" for example.

These resolutions have to be achievable too, which means being realistic with yourself. I could have set myself an ambitious goal of 10 blog posts a month, but that would only have set me up for failure. If I fail at something, I know its very easy for me to throw in the towel on all of it so setting realistic/achievable goals was very important to me.

Finally, I think the biggest help in sticking to these goals was to regularly check in with myself. At the end of each month, I would check myself and my progress against the goals I had set. I'd look at my weight records, my savings etc and review the progress I'd made with these as well as my daily water/reading goals too. If I could see room for improvement, it was a lot easier to pick up the slack at the end of each month rather than trying to do a rush job in November. It's a lot like keeping on top of doing the dishes each day. If you do them on the day, it takes 10 minutes vs a half hour job if you leave them for a few days. Just be honest with yourself and your progress along the way and it's easy to keep up with your goals.

I hope that this post helps some of you when it comes to setting your goals for the new year. I'll have a separate post going up today with my 2016 goals. In the meantime, I recommend this motivational video to inspire you when you need it:

Have a wonderful and fortune filled 2016 <3

Tabitha
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