Pay day treat for you all!

Glossybox Review

After the recent Motel/Glossybox event that I attended earlier this month I have now received my very first Glossybox. 

After having saw lots of fellow bloggers reviewing Glossybox over the last few months, I have been intrigued to see what all the fuss is about myself. So here's my review of this months box.

Illamasqua 'Freak' perfume sample

Monu revitalising moisturiser

FC5 Swiss ultra hydrating hand creme

Dead Sea Spa Magik bath salts

Nail Rock nail wraps

The first thing about that box that stood out for me personally was the cute packaging. As I've said before packaging really helps sell something for me, I sometimes find myself drawn towards that more so than the actual product. Glossybox comes in a themed cardboard box and it's literally like receiving a present, all wrapped up with ribbon and tissue. Although the little bits of black tissue inside were rather annoying and went everywhere! 

As for the products the only two that appealed to me was the FC5 Swiss hand creme and the nail wraps. I suffer from really dry hands all year round so I know this will come in handy and I'll definitely use it. As you may know by now I love to decorate my nails and I've never tried nail wraps before so I'm excited to try these out! The bath salts and the moisturiser will come in handy, however I very rarely take baths so this isn't something I would ever by myself.

I've read a lot of other bloggers that were disappointed with the Illamasqua perfume sample. Glossybox send out 5 items each month to try out and if I was paying for this I would be very disappointed that this is included as one of the items you pay for. I'm sure you'd be able to pick this up in any department store selling Illamasqua surely?! But as I have received this first one for free I'm not complaining. I do like the smell of it, although it's a little musky for me, and my heart is taken by Marc Jacobs Daisy! Haha. 

All in all I don't think I will be signing up to pay for these boxes as it's just not for me. My drawers at home are full of samples that I never get around to using. But I do have to say apart from the perfume, Glossybox's samples are really good sizes! I'm looking forward to everyones reviews of the Christmas special box and to see if they get any more exciting in 2012. You never know I may be converted...

P.S Have you entered my Dixi giveaway yet? And there are still tickets left for the Bloggers Christmas Party! Comecomecome :)

Sweet Monday 057

My Christmas (kind of) jumper. 

01. Hope everyone has had a good weekend? Mine was pretty chilled, had a nice night Friday and then went out for a few drinks Saturday but didn't spend a lot of money which was great :) I get paid Wednesday and am hopefully going to Bristol at some point to finish my Christmas shopping. I fancy going somewhere more festive than the internet haha. And I REALLY want a Wagamama's. I can't even remember the last time I had one now, and this makes me very sad. I saw a tweet from Michelle longing for  one the other night and it brought my cravings back again!

02. I posted a little giveaway yesterday. The lovely Dixi are offering one of my readers an item of jewellery up to the value of £7 so go and enter :) Could make a nice Christmas present for yourself or a friend. 

03. I received this beautiful coat from Motel on Friday, it's literally the coat of my dreams! Haha and I wore it out last night. It's a little big I think being in a size small, but usually there sizes are so tiny I always have to get a small. But I'm rocking it never the less. Will try and get an outfit post up soon, haven't done one in ages again. It's so hard when I don't have a tripod and my mother doesn't know how to use and iPhone :( 

Dixi Christmas Jewellery Giveaway!

Above is a small peek at some of the beautiful new jewellery items that Dixi are selling this Christmas as small gifts for either yourself or friends and family. Each piece comes in a lovely gift bag perfect to give to that special someone. 

After the success of my last collaboration with Dixi, they are offering my blog readers a little something special again. 

For your chance to win a jewellery item up to the value of £7 all you have to do is:

- Visit Shop Dixi's Christmas Jewellery Shop and comment with your favourite piece.

- Leave your email address so we can get in touch with you

- and finally be a follower of my little blog please :)

The competition will end next Sunday the 4th December at midnight. I will use random.org to pick a winner, good luck! :) x 

(And remember even if you're not the lucky winner you can use SWEETMEETSDIXI to receive 10% off any order)

Candy Cane Nails

Maybelline: red

Sinful Colors: 101 snow me white

Nail art pens: red & white

My blog is turning into a small homage to Heather of Effiesmakeupbox. On Wednesday I posted my first DIY post where I studded a pair of denim shorts after seeing Heather customise lots of her clothes with studs. And then last week I saw her post up a range of Christmas nails, which got me thinking about Christmas nail designs. Last year I did a lot of glitter tips designs in all different colours, but this year I wanted to try something new. I saw on Heathers wheel of nails a candy cane nail, so playing on this I've done my own design. Super simple and so easy to do :) I alternated the colours on my ring finger to change it up a little. But yeah think I might be wearing these nails a lot over Christmas! :) x

Studded Shorts!

I may as well just refer you all to Heather's blog for this post, haha. A few weeks ago I saw a video she'd made on how to stud a shirt collar, and I know Heather had studded lots of other items before so with her help I ordered my first batch of studs from eBay.

They came really quickly but it's not been until now that I've got around to doing anything with them.

For my first 'DIY' I've played it safe and studded a pair of high waisted denim shorts, Sabo Skirt style! 

The studs are so easy to use, they have pointy backs that stab through the material, and then I used a pair of scissors to bend the backs over. 

I actually bought these shorts off Lyzi, hope she doesn't mind me trashing them! Haha. But I've gotta say I am loving the studded look right now. Will definitely be trying my hand a few other stud diy's soon. 

Sweet Monday 056

(a little obsessed with instagram, follow me 'Kim Parslow')

Leather jacket: Miss Selfridge

Dress: Topshop

Bag: H&M

01. OH HAI! I firstly should apologise for my lack of blogging, to be honest I haven't had anything to blog about :/ my life is that boring right now! haha. However this weekend two friends and I went out for a random night in Cheltenham. Went back to my fave club Kukui where we managed to get queue jump thanks to a love friend on the door and then free drinks all night thanks to another friend behind the bar ;) not bad at all!

This is what I wore out...I bought this leather jacket last week from Debenhams in their sale. Our local Debenhams has a Miss Selfridge in it, and I'd been looking for a nice leather jacket for ages so when I spotted they had 20% off everything I couldn't resist. After trying on three different ones I decided on this one.

02. You may also have noticed I've had a bit of a hair revamp. My dip dyed locks were a bit out of control and well DEAD! So I decided to go for a much needed chop (no split ends :D) and I dyed it a really dark brown. Looks black in these photo's but I swear it's not :) Had lot's of compliments so far but I'm still unsure, hopefully it will grow on me! I also had my nose pierced, all in the same day! I went a little crazy. I wish it was the new year now, to match the new me :)

03. Don't know if you caught my blog post from yesterday but I got well and truly in the Christmas spirit after receiving some Tala products yesterday. So I did a little Christmas gift guide. And I spent the afternoon watching Home Alone :) and then Grease, which is not Christmas related but so good! Perfect Sunday. Did anyone else watch them?

04. The lovely Dixi have uploaded a little photo of me on to their website ;) so chuffed! Remember if you're buying anything use SWEETMEETSDIXI for 10% off!

05. Anddddd I am going to keep bombarding you with the deetz on the Christmas blogger meet up until you all come :D

It's on Friday 16th December, 7pm, at Java Bristol, in association with Boohoo. All other details and tickets can be found HERE xx

Christmas Cookery Gift Ideas

Tala icing syringe set - £27.95

Tala dry measure - £7.95

Hope & Greenwood christmas truffles - £10.99

Tala sugar shaker - £11.95

Hope & Greenwood hot chocolate - £4.99

Tala icing bag set - £12.95

I've never done a Christmas gift ideas kind of post before, but this year I've seen lots of bloggers do them for all different items, so I thought I'd do my own. If you're a regular follower you'll know my blog is rather cup cake orientated so what better than some Christmas gift ideas for the budding baker. 

I've heard a lot about Tala products but have never invested in any myself. Their packaging draws me in, I love the old fashioned font and colours used, very 50's house wife. 

Tala's range isn't too badly priced. I perhaps wouldn't spend the money on myself but would certainly give them as a gift and put them on my Christmas wish list. My favourite from the above items is the icing syringe set. I've never used one before and for the reason alone I'd love to see how good they are. At £27.95 it's pretty pricey but feel free anyone that would like to buy me it for Christmas ;)

Also Hope&Greenwood do lots of cute gifts, all of the sugary kind, so for anyone with a sweet tooth they'd be perfect. Again I love their packaging, very traditionally English and Christmassy. It tends to be for me the packaging that sells products too me.

I've been sent the Tala measuring cup and icing bag set so will try and use them this week on my days off to let you know how they did compared to the products I already use in my baking. The icing bag set doesn't have as large nozzles as I like to use for my icing but it does have a really sturdy material bag with a plastic twist end which should hold well. Compared to my cheap bag that burst last week :(

All Tala products can be bought online from Kitchens Cookshop

All Hope & Greenwood gifts can be bought online from Hope and Greenwood (where their website is as cute as their packaging!)

Aspire

Last week I was contacted by Laura from Aspire drinks, who had a stall at Britain's Next Top Model Live. With all of the commotion on the day I remember seeing the stall but not having the time to stop. So when Laura contacted me about their drinks I was more than happy to try some and see what I thought.

Aspire drinks are a cranberry flavoured calorie burning drink, the first of it's kind in the UK and has proven that one can of the soft drink can on average burn over 200 calories!! Not only that but each can provides a good source of vitamins and minerals, what could be better?!

For myself who's a bit of a skinny minnie, I don't really need to lose any weight, if anything I probably need to be eating an extra 200 calories a day, not losing them. But for anyone that is interested, they can be enjoyed as part of a balanced diet. Health wise I think they're great, and for me they would stand out against competitors for their cute and practical packaging. I find all of these sports drinks on the market can be quite off putting with their masculine bottle shapes and crazy coloured liquids. Where as these cans are just the right size and look very feminine with their cute floral design and font. I am a big fan of simple design, and this company are just that, nothing is too over done, representing what's inside the can perfectly.

The cranberry favour isn't as strong as other drinks I've had, and I'm not sure whether they will be launching any other flavours, but if cranberries your thing you can pick Aspire drinks up in your local Waitrose, Holland and Barrett or Selfridges. Or alternatively you can buy them straight from the Aspire Drinks website where you can buy 24 cans for £33.99 which works out at about £1.40 per can. So they're not the cheapest drinks out there, but compared to a lot of other heath drinks they're on par. (I was at a service station the other day and a small bottle of water was £1.50!!)

In other news I've been getting crazy excited about the Christmas Blogger Party. If you haven't heard of it, please hit the link and check it out. The more the merrier :) You can follow what's happening with the hashtag #xmasbloggermeet on twitter!

Alsoooo after my great giveaway with Dixi last week the lovely boutique are now offering my readers 10% off with discount code with SWEETMEETSDIXI. The code can be used on any items, and they have a lot of lovely new stock in at the moment, so go take a look. If you entered my competition but didn't win maybe now you could pick up the Adele dress for yourself with a little bit of money off :) *

Sweet Monday 055

My friend Hettie and I doing what we do best ;)

01. My competition to win the Adele black crochet waist dress from Dixi ended last night, and I got all excited picking a winner tonight. I had 70 entries via my blog and twitter and the number selected at random was number 66 which belonged to the lovely Becca at Fashion Train! :D I'm so happy Becca won it, she has a lovely blog which you should all go check out if you don't already follow her. Congratulations Becca, I will be passing your details onto Dixi right away. Thank you to everyone that entered :) 

02. I spent this weekend in Bristol celebrating my best friend Emily's birthday. We went to a spa on Saturday which was lovely. It was a much needed rest :) They had some great facilities, large swimming pool, steam room, sauna, jacuzzi. Afterwards we went out on Park Street to Browns for some amazing cocktails (photo below) and then finished the night in Agora. I've never been to either of these before. If you're in Bristol I would recommend both. Browns is rather fancy, but their cocktails weren't too badly priced at about £6. And Agora is a really funny night. The place was heaving and the drinks were pretty cheap. Danced the night away to some old favourites including Beyonce, Rihanna, Run DMC. Haha was so much fun! I wore my Adele dress which Becca has just won. I dressed it up with my fake JC Lita's and some knee high socks :)

03. Last night after a lovely lie in till 1.30pm (bearing in mind I didn't go to bed til 4am) I went to the cinema to see In Time. I've heard some mixed reviews and to be honest Justin Timberlake films never seem to get a good review. But I was pleasantly surprised, in fact I really enjoyed it. I thought it was a really original story line with a few twists that I wasn't expecting from the trailer. I'd recommend it if you've been thinking of going to see it!

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend! I've been so busy recently with London, Bristol and lots of work in between, looking forward to a chilled week this week. x

Motel Rocks Event

As I mentioned in my previous post, last Thursday I was invited along to the Motel & Glossybox event in London. Along with lots of other bloggers we were treated to a viewing of Motel's new collection. Some of which is already online and the rest will be on sale in the next few weeks, so it was great having a sneak peak! 

I've been a huge fan of Motel ever since 2007 when my friends in Bristol introduced me to the Motel boutique on Park Street. Back then this little boutique was the only way of getting your hands on Motel clothing, so it wasn't well known, meaning every night I wore a Motel dress out I'd always be asked where I got it from. They have such a signatory style to their clothing, and it has now become a worldwide fashion brand! Being sold in Topshop, ASOS, Urban Outfitters and many other retailers online, it's easy to get a hold of making it one of the most popular brands in the UK. If you are ever in Bristol and love Motel I would still recommend you visit their boutique on Park Street as they have a whole section dedicated to vintage pieces where you can find some gems. 

Myself, Ashley and Michelle

On arrival we were greeted with some very strong cosmopolitan cocktails and a guy from the Candy Event Company whipping up some pink candy floss and sugary popcorn.  Shuffling past the crowds we headed towards the Glossybox stand where they had made some gorgeous cupcakes and had a competition where you had to guess how many products were in a box that they had made up. By entering we will be sent November's Glossybox to try. I've seen a few bloggers review these Glossybox's so I'm intrigued to see what all the fuss is about. 

By this point the room was full of gorgeous ladies so it was very hard to make our way around the room to look at the clothes. We did our best though and a few pieces really caught my eye. This season Motel's colour palette has changed to a darker shade with lots of blacks, charcoals, purples and turquoises. Pattern wise they've used cityscapes and prints including their signature leopard. 

Myself, Ashley, Jess, Rosie and Michelle

We all had the opportunity to pick an item of our choice to have and I was struggling to decide. I love Motel clothes, and have been a fan for years. So when faced with a gift item my head went to pot. I stumbled across their fur coats, and had seen one online a while ago that caught my eye, but with the £99 price tag I knew I would never be able to afford it. So when I spotted it at the event, I had to try it on (and get Michelle to take a photo). It's a long charcoal grey coat with black fur trim and fits so well. It's slightly big around the sleeves so you can layer underneath. I picked it as my item and really hope I get it. It's the perfect coat for this season. 

All in all it was a really fun day, meeting lots of lovely bloggers who I follow and read regularly. I'd like to thank Selina for inviting me and the whole team at Motel for putting on such a good night!. 

All decent photo's courtesy of Ashley and Michelle :)

P.S My competition to win the black Adele dress from Dixi ends at midnight tonight so enter now before it's too late! :D

Peach Melba

Barry M: Peach Melba

Models Own: Juicy Jules

Models Own: Champagne

Just a quick post today, I'm off to the Motel/Glossybox event tonight :) It's my first proper event so I'm rather nervous, but super excited to meet so many other bloggers. Luckily I've met a couple before, and I'm meeting Michelle before heading to the event. 

If you're on twitter and want to follow the evenings events you can search for #MotelBloggersEvening 

Hopefully I will actually manage to take a photo or two and blog about it afterwards. 

I'm now off to get ready, think I'm going to wear my new Dixi dress which you can actually win one of through my blog. The competition ends Sunday so get your entry in before then :) x

Sweet Monday 054

01. Last night I went to see the babe that is Tinie Tempah! My friend bought the tickets as a surprise for my birthday back in April and to be honest I'd forgotten about it, this year has flown by!! So yesterday we travelled up to Birmingham and saw him perform at the LG Arena. For support he had Redlight and J Cole. Both I hadn't heard to much of before hand but was thoroughly impressed by both. Redlight had Mz Bratt with him and played an awesome set, everyone was up dancing having such a great time. And J Cole currently has the number 1 album in the US, he played half a dozen tracks from it, and it's not completely my thing but I liked it and he certainly got the crowd moving. 

But of course the star of the show was Mr Tempah, he burst on stage through the floor, literally jumping about 5 foot in the air wearing some crazy get up. It was such a fun night, he played every song off his album including his collaborations with Labrinth, Swedish House Mafia and Wiz Khalifa. We were all buzzing and ready to party afterwards but sadly work at 9am today meant we couldn't go and join the after party at Gatecrasher. It's his 23rd birthday today so it would have been amazing to celebrate with him. I was huge fan anyway, having seen him perform before and even met him at an event in London earlier this year, but now my love for him is out of control. And now he's my age ;) perfect! haha I wish. 

02. Hope you all had a good weekend, did any of you see some fireworks? I spent the evening at a friends where a group of us set some off in her back garden. Now I love fireworks but I've always been to massive supervised events so I was a little scared to say the least haha. 

03. Also this weekend I was able to launch a great competition between myself and Dixi where you can win their Adele dress that I modelled last week. I haven't done a competition for ages and was saving the next one for when/if I hit 1000 followers but when Dixi contacted me last week it was too good to be true. It's a fantastic prize so get entering now :D It runs til next Sunday! x

WIN Dixi 'Adele' Dress!

Hello ladies, you may have seen my post the other day where I wore Dixi's Adele dress. I loved it so much and Dixi loved my post so much that they have been in touch to offer one of my lucky readers the chance of winning the dress for themselves :D I can hand on heart say this dress is one of my favourite pieces in my wardrobe now. It's style, material and sizing are perfect, so you will want to win one ;)

Now the the dress in question that I am able to give away is a UK size 10. So I know this is restrictive but if that's not your size, with Christmas only 7 weeks away (YAY) it would make a great present for a friend or loved one!

Now for the rules!

To be in with a chance of winning Dixi's 'Adele' black crochet waist dress, UK size 10, all you have to do is:

- be a gfc follower of my blog Sweet Monday
- visit www.shopdixi.com and comment with your two favourite pieces!
- leave your email address for me to get in touch if you win! :)
- for an extra entry you can tweet "win the beautiful Dixi Adele dress from @kimparslow http://bit.ly/sN58NF"

The competition will end next Sunday 13th November at midnight. I will pick a winner using random.org. The winner will be announced on Monday 14th November and will be contacted by Dixi themselves.

For the duration of the competition you can use SWEETMONTREATS for 10% off anything in store.

Pretty Bow

Models Own: Pink Blush

Rimmel: Lemon Drop

Models Own: Black nail art pen

This is my first attempt at a bow on my nails, and I don't think it's very good! Firstly I think it would look more girly if the outline wasn't in black but alas I have no other nail art pens at the moment. I think white would've gone better. Also I'm not too good with the line work so it's come out a little thick! But I do love the yellow and pink together, very pretty. This 'pink blush' by Models Own is one my latest additions to my ever growing collection and it's a great shade. 

Hope everyone has a good weekend! :)

p.s I may have a little competition coming your way soon, I'm so excited! xx 

Someone Like You

Coat: Topshop

Stole: H&M

Cardigan: Miss Selfridge

Dress: Dixi

Chelsea boots: Topshop

Nails: Models Own 'nude' & Models Own nail art pen 'black'

I bought this 'Adele' dress from Dixi last week for £30 when they were offering one of their free shipping nights on Facebook. If you don't already follow them on Facebook it's well worth doing for all their discount codes! As soon as they'd uploaded the item I knew I had to have it. Shortly after buying it they uploaded it in a wine colour to and I was a little worried I'd picked the wrong colour, but now that it's arrive I love it in black! It's such a versatile item. I wore it yesterday for a meal and cinema, but it could also be dressed up with heels for a night out and I may even wear it to work with a blazer and pumps. 

The dress is one of the best purchases I've made recently, I literally can't rave about it enough. The material is really thick and it has a sturdy gold zip all the way up the back. The crochet detail around the waist is similar to that of the iconic dress in Topshop that all the celebs were wearing. It truly is beautiful. 

I teamed it with my staple chelsea boots, burgundy cardigan and trusty topshop camel coloured coat. I have detached the fur stole from my Dixi leopard cardi and added it to my Topshop coat now. I love A/W for fur!

As I've said I wore this to the cinema yesterday where I went to see 'Ides of March' with Ryan Gosling and George Clooney. If I'm honest the film didn't grab us, we were pretty bored and contemplating walking out :( The only thing keeping my eyes focused on the screen was Ryans beautiful face!

Whilst in town though we stopped by Starbucks where we had a festive toffee nut latte each and got all excited knowing the red cups are back :D We both quickly uploaded a photo to instagram and noticed 4 other people I follow had too! Starbucks must have done a roaring trade yesterday. Also if you don't already know it's buy one get one free on all Starbucks festive drinks between 2-5pm every day til Sunday so get in quick!

Chocolate Delight

Makes 12

Butter: 4oz

Caster sugar: 4oz

Self raising flour: 3oz

Cocoa powder: 1oz

2 eggs

Buttercream Icing

Butter: 3oz

Icing sugar: 5oz

Cocoa powder: 1oz

Firstly I'd just like to put out there that I made these ingredients up, I couldn't find my cake recipe and so I remembered everything except how much cocoa powder you're meant to put in. So excuse me if I'm wrong but they still taste amazing so I'm sure it's ok! I made these for a friend who's been down in the dumps all week in an attempt to cheer him up, hopefully he'll appreciate them! 

The buttercream was so thick from the cocoa powder that my hand cramped up trying to squeeze it through the nozzle haha and then most of it squirted straight through the side of the piping bag :( haha was a massive fail! But all was not lost, I still managed to cover 9 cakes....and so with the rest I had to make something up as I'd ran out of icing sugar. What a palava!

I had the bright idea to roll out some royal icing instead and to make them a little interesting I cut a few butterflies and flowers out then painted them with food colouring. So here are the let overs...

BINTM Live

Finally getting around to posting about last Friday when my friend and I went to Britain & Ireland's Next Top Model Live at the London Excel. I won tickets courtesy of Rachel and couldn't believe my luck when I did.
It was a really great day, lots of fun catching a million tubes to and from the Excel centre and I spent a small fortune. The event was full of great vintage stalls, where I spent about £70 on a lovely shirt, christmas jumper, bits and pieces for halloween, hair products! I could've spent far more too, there was a great stall called Strawberry Kats where I picked up the shirt and could've bought the whole stand to be honest. There's a photo coming up of all my buys :)
The catwalk itself was great too, very energetic with lots of hunky men dancing non stop while the models walked in between. Sadly this year I didn't catch much of the show so I didn't really know who was who but it was still fun to watch!

Please excuse the poor quality of photo's, all of them were taken on my iPhone!

We received a free diet coke with this great design on, there's three to collect and this one remains up opened on a shelf in my room. It's so pretty! After 4 hours of shopping we grabbed some food in the Excel where there were loads of different options. We spotted a roast and couldn't resist. My friend had the one pictured above...roast beef with all the trimmings squashed into a massive baguette. And I went for the classic pork, stuffing, crackling and apple sauce! Yum! 

As we were leaving the event we spotted a large group of girls swarming around Amy Child's stand, so we went to have a cheeky look and then Amy herself walked right in front of me! I was a little late with the camera, but here's the back of her head ;) 

And finally here's what a I bought and my outfit for the day :) I picked up two cute bracelets too, one was very fitting with my Halloween costume, coudn't resist buying it when I spotted it!

I opted for my new red jeans and a plain top, and stitched my H&M fur stole on to my leopard jacket to create something different. I was worried I looked a little pimpish haha. 

Hope you enjoyed my post :) x

(Technically the black dress is from Dixi which I also purchased last week)

Jeans: ASOS

Top: My Mums

Leopard jacket: Dixi

Fur stole: H&M

Bag: H&M

Chelsea boots: Topshop