Chaffree underwear - Review

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of talking to the lovely Amanda from Chaffree about their new products.

Anti Chaff shorts are something I have been wearing since my teens, under skirts and dresses. There has been little in the way of the good but plenty of the bad and the ugly. I started with cycling shorts as a teen, which never lasted long and to be honest were usually hot and sweaty as the materials were not very breathable. I then moved onto short tights from Evans in later years, which to be honest mostly drive me insane, as the legs rolled up and the waist rolled down, the sizing was never great and the seams were often uncomfortable for me, I have super sensitive skin that gets sore easily so rarely even wear tights for this reason.

When I heard about Chaffree I was interested to see if the lived up to their promises

• Seamless, Stretchy, Lightweight and Quick Drying
• Keeps skin cool and dry as made in the performance wicking fabric COOLMAX®
• Latex Free with Anti Bacterial properties giving relief from sweating and chafing.

After asking Amanda a few questions, she really felt that her shorts could work for my ridiculously sensitive skin.

I have to say that they really do. I expected to have some gripes with the shorts as I have honestly hated every pair I have owned in the past. I wore them simply so I could wear a skirt without my legs being raw. even as a size 8 teen I never had the mythical thigh gap so long walks in just a skirt would make my sensitive skin raw.

The Chaffree Womens Knickerboxers  are a fantastic length and even come in two options 6" and 8" so you can have a shorter pair for short skirts or even for under summer shorts and culottes, if like me your legs even get sore in them.

I have been really unwell recently, part of my condition gives me what I call fluey skin, it prickles and burns as my nerves go crazy and my clothes feel painful against it. I have however worn these shorts on numerous occasions and they have not irritated my skin so far and I have also washed them many times and they still look and feel like new. The higher waistband on me in the size L/XL goes right up under my bra but I am pretty short at only 5'2 so not sure how that would work for taller women.

This is to give you an idea of where the shorts sit on me length wise in the longer leg L/XL I am also a size 22 apple shape to give you an idea of sizing.

I also have a some images from the site to give you an idea of fit and shape.

You can select mid rise or high rise waist.

These shorts are not shape wear so do not hold you in or make me you feel restricted in any way. the seams are placed in such a way that they don't rub between your legs and are lovely and stretchy.

I was also sent a pair of Womens Briefs in black which a lovely and cool under my clothing and fit beautifully. 

My lovely husband was also sent a pair of Mens Boxers which he said are amazingly comfortable and breathable. 

One of the things I would say these shorts would also be amazing for, is runners, the coolmax tech is comfy and cool and the smoothness of the material would be great to wear under shorts to keep things in place or to stop chafing in general.

Brices start at around £17 depending on style the longer shorts I was sent are £19, take a look around the site and give them a try if it is something you need. I plan on ordering myself a few more pairs and really want the blossom colour for under pretty light dresses this summer. 

Mhairi 

xxx

Valentines Outfits

Valentines Day is fast approaching and even if your single its a night to spend with friends and loved ones.

We tend to stay home and eat nice food, watching a film, I would say its a nice romantic comedy but its usually a Horror or Sci-Fi for us!

I have put together a few outfits form my favourite brands which offer next day delivery so there is still time to get something special for the weekend.

The classics

These dresses are perfect for a romantic dinner or a night out with the girls.

Little Mistress @ Evans 

This dress is stunning, I love the off the shoulder and fitted shape it is beautiful!

Little Mistress @ Evans

Valentines and red always go together and this gorgeous lace dress is a gorgeous classic that can be worn again and again.

Simply Be

I adore this dress! It comes in both Black and  Red and the cut out heart detail at the back is seriously cute!

Brights

If you want to step away from the usual and make a statement then brights could be for you. They are everywhere at the moment!

Here are a few of my favourites.

Evans

Trouser // Jacket // Top

This jacket is such a fantastic way to inject some brights into your wardrobe, It would be fantastic for a meal out or a night at the cinema. This is one outfit that even if I don't go out on the night I will still be buying.

Evans

Top // Trousers

This top is another way to bring in the brights it will work well with trousers, jeans and skirts. and could be easily dressed up or down.

Asos Curve

This dress is simply stunning, the gorgeous bright orange with the contrast of the black and the flowers is amazing, slip on a nice jacket and your set for a fabulous night out.

Simply Be

If you like something a little more romantic this orange dress is stunning the gorgeous lace detailing and the pleated skirt are so pretty.

Naughty but Nice

Sometimes we don't want to be classic or romantic but instead want a bit of an edge to our look so the next outfits are for you.

Anna Scholz @ Simply Be

Skirt // Top

I am in love with this skirt and top combination. I may have to invest in the skirt as soon as possible as I would enjoy wearing the hell out of it!

Asos Curve

I love this dress, I am not sure I could pull it off! someone seriously needs to wear this though so I can ogle them and admire how amazing they look!

These are just a few of my suggestions, but plus fashion really does have a lot to offer, take a look around and let me know if you get anything fabulous.

Mhairi

xxx

Keeping Warm With Curvissa

I am a little bit obsessed with coats! I own a ridiculous amount, to be honest and every year I want a new one. I have a smart going out coat and a lovely warm winter coat but I can never find a decent outdoors coat that is stylish, warm and tough.

So when I was contacted by Curvissa recently about doing a Coat Review, it was with my outdoor needs in mind that I began my search.

Parkers are very in fashion right now but if I am honest they either swamp me or are nowhere near warm enough so although a couple caught my eye it was this lovely Soft Shell Coat that I went for in the end.

I usually wear a 22 but my previous experience of Curvissa has taught me to size up so I did with this to a 24 to make sure it worked over my bust and I am glad I did as it is only just right.

It is made of a lovely soft material that feels like it will be shower prof although it does not state this in its description, it is windproof and breathable which is ideal for walking my dogs along the river next to the open fields as it does get pretty blustery around here. The coat is lined with a gorgeous thin fleece which is soft to touch and very warm.

The length of the coat is perfect for me as it covers my bum, please remember though I am only 5'2  and one anyone taller it is likely to sit just below your bum the picture of it on the model is a good indicator of its length.

The tie waist is a nice feature as it gives shape to the coat which is often missing from outdoor coat.

I assume this is the brand although it isn't called this on curvissa.

The hood is big and feel like it might stay put in the wind as it hooks over quite nicely.

All in all I am very happy with this coat, its sizing could be a little more generous but otherwise it is lovely and I would highly recommend it to anyone look for a good outdoors coat. it feels like it can cope well with my three biggest dogs jumping up at me with muddy paws when we play and me falling on my bum in the mud which has happened a few times.

A few other fabulous ladies are also working with Curvissa to review coats and they all look far more glamorous than me, so head on over to their pages and take a look. The links are below.

http://itsemchannel.blogspot.co.uk

http://pamperandcurves.blogspot.co.uk 

http://www.lilybobombslovelylumps.com

http://www.sugar-darling.com

http://www.adressisforlife.com

Mhairi 

xxx

Black Friday

Black Friday is not something that has previously been big in the UK, but it is slowly picking up momentum here and everyone seems to be jumping on the band wagon.

I wanted to share some of my favourite deals with you, these are the ones I am keeping a close eye on today.

Dorothy Perkins

Dorothy Perkins have 30% off site wide HERE

On top of this every 3 hours they are bring a selection which you can take an extra 30% off with code YGF84 (only the selected lines) the 9-12 selection can be found HERE
A couple of my favourite items are

Treggings

Blazer

Tesco 

Tesco have 25% off site wide on their clothing HERE

Party Dress

only up to a size 20

Jersey Dress

Tesco Direct also have some great offers if you can get online, it automatically retry for you which is great so I got on eventually. 

Go HERE

Amazon

Amazon have lightening deals happening this Black Friday with limited stock keep and eye out HERE and set alarms if you see something coming up later you want to check the deal on.

Linda Bop

Linda Bop have taken 15% of loads of there dresses head over to the site and take a peek HERE

I have this on its way to me.

Audrey

Evans 

Evans have some amazing deals on HERE including all their jeans for only £10 a pair and 50% off coats and boots!!

A few other places to check out include:

Debenhams 

Rocket Dog

Lakeland

BHS

There are plenty of amazing deals in there for christmas presents and treats, if I come across any amazing deals today I will update here.

Mhairi 

Impressed By Tesco

For the last few years Tesco has been getting better and better as an on-line store but in store has been another story, clothing sections have been getting smaller and smaller and plus size ranges have mostly disappeared.

I am very luck to live very close to some very large Tesco stores and used to live 10 minutes from their head office store which to be honest has a shockingly small clothing section for the size of the store.

On Monday my fabulous friend Andrew visited me and we went for a drive to Bar Hill Tesco, which is a huge store just off the A14 in Cambridgeshire. When I say the store is huge think French Supermarche, I hate doing my food shop there as instead of 30-40 minutes I am in there for 3 hours and come out spending way more than I meant. It has always had a large mezzanine floor which used to be split between electrical's and clothing but it has been a couple of years since I last visited.

The whole store has had an uplift and the change is fantastic! the mezzanine floor now has a Cafe which is lovely and the the entire rest of the floor is taken up by clothing, I was in heaven! it is huge, it felt modern, and could have easily been a high street fashion retailer, with excellent posters and mannequins well displayed stands no over crowding and fantastic bright lighting.

This style of store could easily work in a shopping centre as a stand alone clothing shop not just in the supermarkets. The selection was immense.

I snapped a few photos which are a bit rubbish as I only had my phone with you but you can get the idea.

Beautiful Displays of Party Wear

A Nice large section for Lingerie and Nightwear.

They even have a Sports Wear section which is beautifully set out and has a really good selection of trainers.

Just me trying to run out of Andrews photo.

I loved this skirt and Crop top 

Great online order system if you cant find our size in store.

Plenty of brands

I liked the advertising points

Excellent Childrenswear section

To give you an idea of the size, women's wear is all behind me and that is the length down towards menswear.

I think my only dissapointment is that yet again no plus sizes that I could see, I may be wrong as we were not being very methodical so could have missed it but I doubt it. 

Please Tesco sort this out and the store will be perfect!!

Mhairi 

xxx

Looking fabulous in Firmoo

Hello to my lovely readers, so sorry for such a long delay in coming back life has been kind of crazy recently. Things are finally coming together and I will tell you all about it in a few post very soon.

Even though things have been crazy and this post is very very overdue I have at least looked fabulous during it all thanks to the lovely team at Firmoo who let me choose a gorgeous pair of glasses to review in my prescription.

There is so much to choose from it was a really tough decision but it was well worth it as I love my glasses and live in them. Sadly in the time it has taken to get organised the pair I chose are no longer on the site that I can find but I will show you how cute they are and the others that I really loved and still want to order.

I have to apologise or the picture quality, I have some gorgeous photos on my camera but my cable for getting them off has vanished so to stop any more delays I have used the ones off my phone for now and will add my camera ones as soon as I have access to a cable again.

I am honestly madly in love with these frames I love the reds and the shape suits me, I don't feel overpowered in them.

Firmoo offer so many frames and it is difficult not to just add the entire catalogue to this post but I will try to whittle it down a bit.

#Rena5852

I love the shape and colour of these frames.

#Reon5827

I love these so much they are green which makes them perfect and they are tortoise shell which is another bonus.

#F1007

I tend to gravitate towards rectangular frames as they work well with my face shape, these are very cute I love the brighter tones within the tortoise shell pattern.

Firmoo prices are excellent and they offer many different options for the lenses to be thinned and for coatings all that you would expect from an opticians these add to the overall cost of the frames, you need your full prescription from you recent eye test and also your pupillary distance which you can ask your optician to give you I called and requested mine and picked it up the same day.

There is a flash sale on right now but I am not sure how long it lasts or what the terms and conditions are so take a look HERE if it is still going. 

Mhairi

xxx

*These glasses were provided for this review free of charge but all views and opinions are my own.

Almost Lost It!

Wow, Life has been really quite hectic recently and I am so sorry it has been a while since I last posted.

Everything has been very exciting and incredibly stressful the last few weeks as we have moved house, we found out on Wednesday 13th that we would be moving house on the 16th and had so much to do, to be ready to go. It was a nightmare but we made it! unfortunately we ended up being without internet until yesterday due to a mess up with our installation date, this has meant a longer than expected hiatus from the blog.

I did also have a near disaster, I almost lost my blog address as without internet connection I didn't realise my payment hadn't renewed although I am planing on a slight name change I still want to keep this address as so many people have it and I can still redirect people from it to mine. managed to renew it today so it is all safe now!

I am back though and my planned update for the blog is underway I also have a few gorgeous review pieces to show you which I will get up this coming week there and Glasses, LBD's and an amazing skirt to show you which are going to be my staple outfit pieces this coming autumn.

My blog also sneaked past its 3rd anniversary while all the craziness was going on so I am hoping to celebrate that as soon as I get the new layout all sorted. 

I hope your all well, those who are still reading thank you for staying with me, I promise to be better now I am in a happy place and have a decent internet connection again. 

Everyone at Plus North this weekend have an amazing time, I am so sad I couldn't make it again this year, moving became the financial priority but I am coming next year even if it kills me! 

Mhairi

xxx

Saving students money with BT

Summer is here and it is lovely to have a break but soon enough I will be back being a student again. When I found out about the new services offered by BT for students, I wanted to share them with you.

I now study and live at home so I have to pay for my bills all year round, many students however spans around 3 months a year back at home for the holidays and end up paying for phone and broadband services for the whole 12 months. BT have now introduced a 9 month plan perfect for students which launched on July 30th.

There are 3 options available.

BT Broadband

• Save £96 versus the standard price for Unlimited BT broadband (unlimited download usage) with Unlimited Weekend Calls due to BT’s, exclusive to students, 9-month contract for just £16 per month (plus £15.99 a month line rental) 1

BT Infinity

• Save £138 versus the standard price for BT Infinity 1 Extra broadband with a 40GB download limit and Unlimited Weekend Calls due to BT’s, exclusive to students, 9 month contract for just £14 per month(plus £15.99 a month line rental) 2

• Save £222 versus the standard price for Unlimited Infinity 1 broadband with unlimited download usage and Unlimited Weekend Calls due to BT’s, exclusive to students, 9-month contract for just £19 per month(plus £15.99 a month line rental) 3

All packages come with unlimited access to BT Wi-fi, free BT Sport online and the BT SmartTalk app.

I have BT infinity at home and love the amazing speeds I get, so if you are in an area capable of receiving it, I have no problem recommending BT fibre optic services. I have had my broadband from other suppliers and just haven't found the service and reliability to be as good. I also love that I have unlimited downloads, my husband and step-son are both gamers online and I dabble in it myself, as well as using a number of streaming services for films and music so we get through a fair amount of data.

Other services such as access to 12 million public BT Wifi hotspots, access to BT sports and the BT smart talk app all make these packages perfect for student houses, splitting the costs amongst your friends also makes it even more affordable and great value for money.

Being a student is hard enough financially so making savings like this is a huge bonus and not being tied into and annual contract is great.

For more information about the Student packages available head HERE

Small Print

1  £96 savings claim based on Unlimited Broadband monthly price on an 18-month standard contract (£8 a month for 6 months, then £16 per month) compared to a 9-month student contract (£16 a month).  

2 £138 savings claim based on Infinity 1 Extra monthly price on an 18-month standard contract (£8 a month for 3 months, then £16 per month) compared to a 9-month student contract (£14 a month).  

3 £222 savings claim based on Unlimited Infinity 1 monthly price on an 18-month standard contract (£16 a month for 3 months, then £23 per month) compared to a 9-month student contract (£19 a month).  

Please share this with your friends and family who may be going off to uni or maybe have kids heading off.

I hope this information is useful to some of you, I personally thought it was a great service.

Mhairi

xxx

*I have asked to post this information on behalf of BT but all opinions are my own. The services listed and savings calculations were provided to me.

The Evolution of Festival Fashion with Newlook

Festival Fashion Timeline by New Look

New look have put together the above Evolution of Festival fashion and I remember many of the styles myself. I have b=never been to any of the big music festivals but I do hope I get to do it one day.
I do however tend to go to events like the Strawberry fair and County shows and festival fashion has its place at these events too.

This got me thinking about what type of festival fashion I would be likely to wear. I am a very practical person if I am honest and like to think of every eventuality. Festivals to me bring to mind, Spilt drinks, porta-loos and mud!

So what does that mean for my choices? well it totally excludes the idea of playsuits which seem to be the festival goers staple this year. There is no worse thought for me than struggling to undo and slink out of a playsuit while trying not to drop it on the gross floor (see I think far too much). This means I am likely to choose separates or dresses which can be lifted up out of the way easily or taken off quickly.  Spilt drinks are likely with hundreds of dancing and possibly drunk partying people so there is no way I want to be wearing my most expensive clothing. The chances of your feet being stood on are also high so for me there is no chance that I am going to be wearing my gorgeous sandals while dancing in a large crowd!

So with that in mind I have put together my choices.

All items can be found at Newlook (suncream is Tescos own)

For those hot and sunny days I have gone for the above outfit choices Shorts which are light weight, comfortable and easy to take on and off. They are also fabulous as I can dance and not flash my knickers! Asimple vest that can be worn tucked in or out a cover-up for when it gets a bit chilly or later in the evening.  Comfy shoes are my biggest tip, and these cute canvas ones are fab at protecting you from rouge stomping dancing feet. Don't forget the suncream and sunglasses very important!

My second outfit is for the cooler or wetter festival days.

Lightweigh trousers which are quick to dry and comfortable are my saviour for days out, team them with a vest or tshirt and have a cover-up handy for if you get chilly. a waterproof is also a great item to pack. Comfy shoes again or a pair of wells if it looks like it is going to be a rainy day, the ones I have chosen would also work for a hot rainy day outfit too!

I actually have a couple of pieces on there way out to me, which I am going to wear in my own little festival inspired outfit.

I Think I am going to team them with a pair of cuffed trousers or a midi skirt for a relaxed casual outfit.

So you remember some oh the festival styles from years gone by? Do you have an festival essentials?

Blisters No More

Summer is here and as some of you who follow me on twitter may know so are my dreaded blisters! I have the most ridiculously sensitive skin on my feet, even in shoes that seem as soft as melting butter my feet end up covered in blisters. This year I am yet again on the hunt for a pair of shoes that are comfortable and do not rub half my skin off!

I recently came across Spartoo in the Blogosphere and I have been searching for that elusive perfect pair. While I might be dreaming about shoes that look like this

My poor back and feet are screaming No at me and demanding I be sensible. In a bid to not end up in a Weird Al Yankovic parody for wearing socks and sandals! it is possibly time for me to make some more sensible summer choices without compromising on my style.

I am thinking maybe a pair of awesome Vans, it has been a while since I have had a pair and they were always so comfy!

I want a pair that will loo good with both jeans and dresses, something like these ones maybe?

Cute, functional and I can wear socks!

Also loving sandals but they need to be super comfy!

I will keep dreaming about ones like this!

Do you have any recommendations for a perfect pair of summer shoes?

Mhairi

xxx