5 things I love this week: Mid-September
Time for a few more small, affordable treats with prices starting from only £1.
I’m starting off with a couple of items from Dunelm, and in particular I’m very taken with their The Edited Life collection. This contains hundreds of items from washing up brushes to made-to-order sofas, and features products that are kinder to the planet, including natural fibres and recycled plastic. It’s exactly the sort of thing I’ve been looking for recently when trying to shop more mindfully, and I’m sure it will appeal to lots of you out there too.
Dunelm Coconut Stick Table Runner | £18 – £20. Buy here.
This sets off my dining table nicely on top of a natural linen tablecloth, and it’s made from sustainable materials. It’s an easy way to add a contemporary, relaxed boho feel to your table, and it fits well with most types of decor. Available in large and medium sizes, this table runner is durable and should last a long while, and I liked it so much I went back and bought the matching coasters too.
Dunelm 15cm Black Leaf Planter | £8.00. Buy here.
I don’t think this is from their Edited Life collection, but it definitely doesn’t give me that niggling ‘bad for the planet’ sensation either and you can’t have too many plants. It’s one of those design items that looks far more expensive in real life than it actually is, and there’s a chic Japandi style motif on the front that looks great on a side table, desk or shelf. The tripod legs are a fun feature too.
Beauty Pie Supercheek Powder Blush in ‘Plumminess’ | Edited to add: I am no longer willing to recommend this company or its products.
Hada Labo Tokyo Deep Wrinkle Super Filler Cream| £20.00 for 50ml. Buy at Superdrug or Amazon UK.
A slightly odd name for a new-ish skincare product that I really like, made even more confusing by the ‘extra rich’ circle on the packaging. What is this stuff exactly, when push comes to shove? It’s brutal break-it-down time! Looking at the ingredients instead of the hype, this is a very thick, soothing gel that mainly adds water to the upper layers of your skin and isn’t like a traditional rich greasy cream at all. That’s thanks to a high level of humectant glycerin, four different types of hyaluronic acid, and a few helpful supporting ingredients such as meadowfoam seed oil, pullulan, fermented soy milk, and a little tetrapeptide-4. It’s marketed for both day and night use, but as the texture is so thick – weirdly it feels almost like Vaseline but it’s not at all occlusive and a little goes a long way – I’m only using it at night over serums, mainly because I can’t be bothered hanging around for products to sink in first thing in the morning.
I bought this mainly to use on the skin on my neck (there are no special ingredients included in anything marketed as ‘neck cream’ so you might as well buy any facial moisturiser that suits your neck’s general skin type and save yo’ cash) which turns slightly dry every year when autumn and the central heating start to kick in. My neck isn’t what you’d call wrinkly so I can’t honestly report back about the wrinkle-reducing effects, although this product would probably give most people a skin-plumping / tightening effect in the short term due to the hydration, and in theory also a bit of a long-term smoothing effect from the tetrapeptide-4 and soothing plant extracts. Comfortable fragrance-free moisturiser for normal or slightly dry and irritable skin, yes, anti-ageing powerhouse, nope – but it works well over serums which tend to be more effective anyway.
When I purchased this it was clearly stated that the range had no animal testing, and that appears to be correct for the ‘Hada Labo Tokyo’ line which is the official collection available in the UK. However I’ve recently heard the parent company, simply known as ‘Hada Labo’, has apparently tested its other lines on animals which puts me in a tricky position. I’m in two minds about repurchasing this one when it eventually runs out, and haven’t yet decided whether they should be rewarded for introducing and expanding their no-testing UK line, or avoided due to their international products having a different status. What do you think?
Lotte Pepero Almond 32g | £1.00. Buy here.
Would it even be a ‘Five things’ post without some kind of nibbles included? Of course not. Here’s my latest crush, these Lotte Pepero Almond biscuits – introduced to me by a friend who knows me only too well – which are like a lovely mutant hybrid of a Ferrero Rocher and a skinny long Korean cookie. Take it from me, these are the crack cocaine of the chocolate biscuit world so you have been warned. I’ve only been able to find smaller boxes of these in the supermarket here, but maybe that’s a good thing.
Seen anything you like the look of? What’s your favourite treat this week?
