I’ll start this post with a bit of an emergency bargain announcement, because it might not be around for long and you’ll kick yourselves if you miss it. The Rodial Airbrush, an amazing luxury foundation brush with a dome-shaped head and firm, densely-packed bristles is – at time of writing – £10 instead of £50. Buy the Rodial foundation brush here* Every time I feature this brush I have dozens of people asking where it’s from and I always feel slightly guilty that it’s so expensive, so this discount is a bit of a gift from above. Whether they’re discontinuing it (I bloody hope not!) or its ju ..read more

It fills me with absolute beauty joy when I find an affordable face base that behaves like a much pricier one, so I’m going to plough straight on in with my review of the Maybelline Dream Urban Cover foundation. I was going to do a comparison post and review it alongside the CC Cream from IT Cosmetics, but I’m afraid that could take some time (I like to walk about for a few weeks with half of my face covered in one product, and the other half covered in the other) and we don’t want summer suddenly slipping away from us before we’ve properly discussed the seasonal makeup gems! And it is a true ..read more

A fleeting break from tradition with this life update because I’m going to be talking mostly about me. My favourite subject. (Joke: I hate talking about myself unless I’ve had too much wine. In fact, I tend to stop people in their tracks when they try to ask me what I do for a living – I usually tell them that I work with computers and they are too bored to ask more!) I’m talking mostly about me because I feel as though I’m at a weird old juncture in my life, one that has me wondering who the hell I am and what an earth I’m going to do next. I think that shopping for Angelica’s school uniform ..read more

Just a quick one (ooh err!): last week I took a lot of fashion pictures for Instagram Stories, loved them all, realised they were kind of wasted on a platform that makes things disappear forever after a mere twenty-four hours and decided to post them on here so that they have a permanent place for all eternity. Or at least for a couple of hundred years. God, imagine if someone is reading this in 2119. At school. Imagine if it’s on the curriculum as a historical text! “Crilly was widely regarded as the Shakespeare of her day. If you turn to page 154, you will see a whole feature she wrote on p ..read more

Here’s a “home haul” video, which I believe is the correct down-with-the-kids-speak for Things I’ve Been Buying For The House. Which could also be called Ruth’s Neverending Stream of Parcel Deliveries, or even Ruth’s Husband’s Ultimate Source of Discontent, because he has to endure the incessant ringing of the doorbell and the cardboard boxes everywhere and me being indecisive about everything and then eventually, after placing different cushions on different beds for a week or so,  me asking him to go to the post office to send things back. But it’s a necessary evil, internet homeware shoppi ..read more

Award for the most unlikely makeup hero of the year, so far, goes to Chanel’s new Baume Essentiel. The transparent version. (There are two.) This is one of the most low-key radiance balms you’ll ever find; it’s so subtle – Chanel’s word is discreet, which I love – that you’d be hard-pressed, as an observer, to work out what an earth someone had done to their face. Healthy skin, a mirror-like shine but not a trace of obvious highlight to be seen. With no shimmery bits and absolutely no glitter, I had to wonder at what this balm would actually do – surely a swipe of Vaseline would suffice, if y ..read more

I’ve just risked life and limb careering up the stairs to get this review out to you; such is my dedication to the beauty cause that as soon as I saw the Japanfusion Supreme Cream back in stock, I dropped my knitting (aka browsing the Rightmove app) and scurried to my laptop like a rat to a discarded chip bag. (I appreciate that’s not the most delightful image, but it’s at least an accurate one.) I’ve been holding off posting this review because Supreme Cream always seemed to be unavailable when I checked, but it’s there online right now and it’s amazing and – if you can get your head around ..read more

Something almost happened to me last week that made me think quite differently about those dreadful hospital stories you hear about foreign objects ending up in places they were never meant to be. (When I say “ending up” I mean inserted and when I say “places they were never meant to be” I mean the long dark passages of the human body, specifically the back one. If this post sounds as though it’s going to be more than your constitution can handle then I’d advise you to turn back now; it’s only going to get worse.) Now look; we’ve probably all been told various hospital-based anecdotes about o ..read more

I like to throw out a little video of myself now and then, otherwise you’re all left to construct a mental image of me from the mad things that I write about like gussets and too-small boilersuits and the restraining order that Tom Hardy took out against me. I’m not sure I give the most flattering impression of myself, really, here on the blog and so the occasional video is necessary to show you that I’m completely and utterly normal. Honestly. I definitely don’t wear my coat inside the house in the middle of June and eat a solitary dinner in front of the iPad in the kitchen (I could have bee ..read more

Well here’s a little something that gets my gadget-geek side a bit overexcited; La Roche-Posay have just launched an incredibly useful piece of tech called My Skin Track UV. It’s a wearable sensor that measures your exposure to UV, pollution, pollen and humidity and then, via an app, gives you personalised advice based on skin type and concern. Giveaway below: 20 Sensors for UK Readers This all tickles my fancy immensely, especially as I can’t seem to work out whether I am, for the first time ever, suffering with hayfever or just have the world’s longest-running cold. I’m dying to find out wh ..read more