It’s not often I talk beauty round here but I feel like sharing my current choice of lip colours this season with you so here goes. Even I can't resist a berry tone when Autumn comes around and these four are my favourites at the moment. I say favourite, I mean only. But I do love them!

From left to right:

• The 'Perrie' shade from the Collection Little Mix range at Superdrug (£2.99). This is the boldest colour I've bought to date, it's perhaps aimed at a younger audience but I rather like this one and the way it is quite different although most definitely not tarty. Plus I'm really not the type of person to rush out and buy a celebrity backed item makeup, it was definitely chosen on merit!
• The No 7 'Cranberry' shade was bought a year or two ago now in the Moisture Drench range (still available at £9.50) and is by far the most natural of my picks. It is very easy to wear and only emphasises my natural lip colour instead of changing it. Boots had one of their voucher deals going on when I bought this (I think) as I wouldn't usually spend so much on one lip product.
• The dark red shade called 'Prohibition' is from the Collection 2000 deluxe range and cost £3.99. I saw a review of another shade in this range and was going to buy that but I preferred this one instead. Reds aren't really for me usually and I most certainly never wear bright red (they make me feel very uncomfortable) and am deeply envious of all the ladies out there that look gorgeous in reds. The dark red shade is as close to vamp as I have erred and I rather like it!
• The final choice is from NYC Smooch proof lip stain in 'Berry long time' costing £3.99 and is downright brilliant. The application is dead easy, it's basically a felt tip pen. My worry is that it's just going to dry out in a short space of time, but I'll have to wait to ascertain the longevity. I'm hoping to pick up another couple of lipstains in some more colours in the coming months and most likely from NYC as I do rather like the brand: cheap and cheerful.

Do you have any recommendations? Have you tried any of these?

Christmas has crept up on me good and proper this year and I’ve been so busy that I’ve almost missed blogging about it altogether save my Christmassy trip to Elveden. Anyway, I thought I'd just have a festive waffle while I've got a spare minute. We've made a start on our 'must-see' Christmas viewing, our DVD and Blu-ray collection expands a bit each year. My personal favourites being The Holiday and Love Actually but essentially anything with a bit of snow and a bit of cheesy festive cheer is fine by me. Four Christmases is one we are missing and is worth a watch if it happens to be on telly again this year.   

If you follow me on Twitter you might have heard that I’ve been consuming iced mince pies at an alarming rate and I’m starting to look like one.  I picked up this Mulled winter punch (non-alcoholic) whilst at Elveden and it is simply divine.! I’ve just warmed it up a little and sipped it out of a mug (classy – yea?) it’s made a lovely alternative to the mulled cider I enjoyed so much of last year.. Plus it was only £3 a bottle which is pretty reasonable.

I bought some super cute Christmas fabric with the genius idea of making a Christmas stocking for my Nephew but as yet that has not quite materialised. I’ve got a couple of hours of beavering away if I want to get it finished on time, eeek. Wish me luck!

I’ll leave you with my festive look, I've been sporting my hat for a few weeks now. What are you doing to get in the festive mood?

Sophie

It’s been far too long since I featured little Lincoln over here and believe me we've been busy. As you know Lincoln started some anxiety related lead and shoe grabbing back in summer, so we started seeing a dog behaviourist to work on smoothing things out. We've been getting to grips with working together. The first thing I learned about 'dog training' is that the name is that the name is distinctly misleading; you can teach a dog in no time at all that by doing what you ask it gets rewarded. It is in fact the owner that gets the training by an instructor; the commands, your reactions whether it be quick to reward or prompt to correct and most importantly the need to be consistent and patient. We've not been working on tricks as such, but more a general emphasis on good behaviour, getting Lincoln to pay more attention to us and take direction from us instead of making his own plan. Importantly, we've been working on mitigating bad behaviour, how to avoid obvious triggers and what to do to get things back on track. We know that by nature staffies are easily excitable so we try to keep Lincoln nice and calm, he doesn't need us egging him on into a fizz. Lincoln is a really chilled out dog 90% of the time and that's what I think people don't expect about staffies: they react to your behaviour! If you're chilled out then they're chilled out. If you get them wound up then guess what? Excitement!

As part of our training, we have been muzzle training our little lad. This is so that if he starts redirecting excitement or anxiety to the lead (or my shoes) then at least we wont have a stand off as he can't get hold of anything. To start with I really thought the muzzle would be something that would cause more problems than it would solve. As a greedy little boy, Lincoln is always up for treats so getting familiar with Mr Muzzly (aka Muzzolini, 'Mr Muzzle-loves-the-dogs-you-hate) wasn't too difficult, but at first we couldn't get him to take a single step wearing it. He would stand completely rooted to the spot, almost like he was made of stone even with the lure of more cheese (we use soft cheese in a tube, which is gross but he really loves the stuff) just a couple of inches away wasn't enough to persuade him to take the smallest step. One biff of his paw would get the darned thing off before we could stop him too. I really thought we were wasting our time.

Nevertheless, we persevered despite the s.l.o.w start and now several months later Lincoln is happily wearing his muzzle for the duration of his dog training. I thought that he would find it too much of a distraction and would get into a right tizz trying to get it off his head, but conversely, he's found it very calming and he's not once had a burst of excitement with it on. After a couple of months of individual sessions we've finally made it into a group class, yay! Linky was so well behaved, I was so proud of him. To be honest, if Lincoln wasn't a staffie people would say he's a bloody good dog. It makes me sad that some people can't get passed the prejudice against the breed. I just hope that our little chap can help spread a bit of positivity around. We'll be checking back in here with news of what we've been getting up to so keep your eyes peeled. For now I'll leave you with some pictures I took of his little face. Cuteness!

Sophie

A couple of weeks ago we headed to Oxburgh Hall in the village of Oxborough (isn't that confusing?) on a free entry to the estate weekend. Over the winter the Hall is not open to the public but the grounds are so I thought as it was completely free and the weather was favourable it would be a good chance to take a walk with my camera.

Having never visited before I didn’t really know anything about the Hall itself. It looks like a lovely building and I’m pretty keen to make a return next year to have a snoop around the inside – I do love to get inside National Trust properties. Blickling Estate and Felbrigg Hall were great to visit earlier this year.

The planted gardens were looking good, especially for this time of year so I imagine come summer they really sing.

This sight made the cutest picture in my opinion, who could fail to be invited over the stile?

This tree did creep me out a tad, it looks like the Sleepy Hollow tree

Plenty of pretty autumn colours and a rather good spot for some outfit pictures too.

I’m looking forward to my next visit!

Sophie

Sometimes I question why I blog.

Sometimes I debate if I should just stop.

Have you ever watched the episode of Buffy where she flicks between herself in Sunnydale and herself as a patient in a hospital with a mental illness? Blogging does seem quite like this, especially when your blog is something of a secret to all but one. So intangible, like a parallel life where everything is different and you get sucked in to the whole blogging lifestyle then snap back to reality. It's strange to think I have this whole second existence on an essentially imaginary platform. I can choose to open the lid of my laptop and put together posts to share of what I get up to and then when I'm done I can just close the lid and it's all gone.

Sometimes I wonder if I should just get on with real life and forget about wasting time taking pictures, spending hours editing and writing posts, promoting my blog, reading other posts, taking part in chats... Should I instead spend my time working on real life? After almost three years of blogging regularly; 857 posts, to be exact has it all been a royal waste of time?

Sometimes I wonder

Sophie