July Favourites. For once I had far more contenders for my monthly favourites round-up than I had available slots. There can be only five favourites per month and I have kept to this rule for a few years now – it provides me with some necessary structure so that I don’t ramble on for hours and also forces me to be rather more selective than I would be otherwise. Also, are they really your favourite things if you have thirty-eight of them?Anyway, usually I struggle to pick just five, because I am the female incarnation of Victor Meldrew and can find fault with almost anything at this point in my life. I can find the smallest flaw in an otherwise exemplary scenario and anything I’m reviewing is analysed to such a microscopic degree that sooner or later something untoward will crop up and ruin things. It simply has to. You could say that I’m wasting my life away with this pessimistic, fault-finding attitude, but I think that it’s probably quite a decent attribute for someone who tests and recommends stuff for a living. (Or part of it.)So yes: usually I struggle to pick five favourites, but this month I had eleven of them . Eleven! Who even am I anymore?, as all the cool kids say. And I bet you’re hoping I tell you what the six runner-ups were, but I’m afraid I’m not going to: I might need them for the next favourites edition. August could very well be a dry month for “things that bring me joy”, what with the school holidays in full swing and our geriatric cat deciding to toilet everywhere except in his actual toilet. (Not a medical issue, he is apparently one of the best and healthiest thirteen year-old cats the world has ever seen, with science-defying blood results and unexpectedly good kidney function. Outstandingly good teeth. So it must be behavioural, but your guess is as good as mine as to what’s rattled his cage.)Here are my five favourites: [AD info: no paid or sponsored content. Contains affiliate links. Honeylove bra was sent as a sample for review purposes with no obligation to feature.]Oooooh. I think if someone cruelly forced me to choose one, only one, foundation that I had to wear for the rest of my life then this would be it. In all honesty it wouldn’t be that cruel, even, it would be a relatively easy decision. This foundation has all of the staying power of the original Lancome Teint Idole – a solid longwear formula – but rather than being a velvety-matte sort of finish it has an element of juicy glow. A freshness. Virtually no tangible residue on the skin – it’s not one of those face bases that looks dewy but that also leaves film of sheeny oiliness over your face – but a lovely fresh and luminous effect. Perfection. I wear shade 220 and it seems to suit me all year round, amazingly – I did try to go a shade darker for the summer and tested a sample on counter (shade 230) but it was too warm. So back to 220 I go.I do tend to err towards a lighter skin tint these days, a tinted moisturiser style base, but boy do I notice when I put this foundation on – it’s like being magically filtered. But it’s not thick or cakey, it doesn’t settle into my fine lines and I can apply the sheerest layer of it and it still lasts for the whole day. If you’d like to see before and after photos and so on, I wrote a whole review post about this foundation here.I bought from the Lancome website because they had a 15% promotion running which brought it down a smidge from the £41 price tag, but I can see that today it’s on offer at LookFantastic and Boots (£30.85) with a bigger discount than I managed to bag. Now is the time!Let’s move to bras now, because finding the “comfiest bra with good support” seems to have become a life mission, along with finding the perfect pair of jeans (not managed this) and expanding on my easy-wear shorts collection (have done pretty well at this task).I’ve talked about the bra situation before: I want something from my bra that is borderline impossible, I think, because what I’m asking for is maximum hold that can’t be felt. I want my breasts to be supported by air streams, basically, or clouds – cotton clouds – and I want these clouds to sort of mould the flesh into a pleasant shape, preferably the shape that was naturally mine without any effort whatsoever about two decades ago. Is this really too much to ask?Now: there are a lot of soft and comfy bralettes on the market. Hundreds of them. Many of them cotton, or bamboo, or made from tree pulp, the softest things you can imagine. But yes of course you are soft if you don’t have to perform any kind of supporting role! If you merely hold the breasts in place by way of stretchiness! (SKIMS bralettes come to mind as being the best in their game at this, by the way.) What I want is softness and comfort AND the ability to scaffold my rack so that it doesn’t sit on top of my belly, but is rather lifted up and away from the ribcage in a miraculous feat of lingerie engineering. I want the effect of an Edwardian Corsetry torture device but the feel of a slinky yoga bra. Again, I wonder, is it too much to ask?Well: sound the klaxon because I have found a bra that is pretty close to perfection. From a brand called Honeylove. Yes, their bras are a fuller coverage than is workable if you wear little vest tops or sexily undone shirts and the like but if you are looking for something comfy to wear beneath t-shirts, sweaters, anything that’s not low-cut, and you require more support than you’d get from one of those teeny bralettes then you may have just struck gold. So far I’ve tried the Softform and the Crossover bra and I have to say that both are amazing. As I type this, on the train to London, wearing a “normal” bra with underwire, I could almost weep at the memory of the comfort levels the Crossover bra provides. I think I like it even more than the SoftForm, which is (as name suggests) softer, because the Crossover gives a little bit of boob separation and banishes that blocky monoboob effect that can make clothing look so matronly.Oh God it’s an absolute triumph, this Crossover Bra. It kept popping up in instagram ads and I thought that it must be a scam, because I am cynical about almost all Instagram ads, but it delivers on every front. One thing to note: the materials are synthetic and this does not bode well on extremely hot days, sweat-wise, but I’ve tested now for a couple of weeks in varying degrees of weather warmth and only found them truly too sweaty when it was searingly hot outside. Otherwise, 10/10. What a find. I followed the sizing guide both times I ordered and took my usual size, 32DD, the fit was excellent.I get a 20% discount for my readers with Honeylove: there’s no code but if you click this link then it will apply the discount automatically at checkout. Let me know how you get on.I mentioned The Safekeep in my previous post and so won’t delve in again too much – I also don’t know how to adequately write about this book without totally spoiling the big old twist that splits the book in two, so I’ll keep this brief. It’s a complex story about a love affair that is also a power struggle, that is also a very sad, dark glimpse into the WW2 atrocities in Holland and their after-effects, years later. The central characters are two women; the first is neurotically possessive over her family home -she lives there alone and takes regular inventories of the contents because she’s sure someone is stealing them. She exists in fear that one day her brother will rightfully claim the house and she will be powerless to do anything about it. Then the second woman comes along, disturbs this fragile existence and threatens to take what has been so fiercely guarded – all of this further complicated by the ever-changing relationship between them. It’s intense. Slow at first, but whoa is there the most monumental twist to the tale – one that actually made me exclaim out loud when I realised what was happening! It’ll stay with me, this story. Simply written with surprisingly few frills and flourishes, but it’s almost what’s left unsaid, in the silences, that’s more important. I’ve actually just convinced myself to read it again, straight away! The SafekeepI am absolutely flying through my summer reading stack and am now looking for more to add to the diminished pile, so any suggestions are more than welcome. I actually just ordered The Trading Game by Gary Stevenson on the recommendation of my publishing editor, Lucy, and this is so far from my usual sort of book that I’m certain she’s having me on. I then also ordered MILF by Paloma Faith on her suggestion, which Lucy hasn’t read but wants to borrow from me after I’ve finished it and so basically tricked me into ordering. (Hi Lucy!)Two interiors finds, now: one that’s in the house and one that’s up at the work cabin. The one in the house is a new rug and it is filling me with joy every time I come in through the front door or go down the stairs. I have been looking for a rug to soften up this space in the hall for years. It has hard flagstones and there’s something about stone that feels very unforgiving, especially if you’re a shoes-off-at-the-door household. But also the stark, cool greyness… I don’t know. It’s not massively welcoming.I found this rug at Ruggable and couldn’t be more delighted. It’s just the right amount of retro. A smidge of mid century. It’s cosy but stylish. Only took me three years and about ninety hours of internet searching to find it but I am well chuffed.Ruggable have two styles of rug that you can choose from, once you’ve picked your style and size. There’s a Flatwoven, which is very flat (apt) and brilliant for high traffic areas where perhaps you don’t want a trip hazard, or you want heavy furniture to sit nicely. I have a Flatwoven in my cabin and it’s great. Looks very rustic and cool. Then there’s Tufted, which is thicker and more cushioned and has a more luxurious feel. (In my opinion.) I went for Tufted, here, because I wanted to be able to sink my feet into it a bit when I came through the door. (I leave my shoes outside. We have a huge overhang along the front of the house that means you can really embrace inside-outside living. And also means that ALL of the shoes, scooters and cycles in the entire world are parked under it. One day I’ll show you just how much crap comes to congregate on our mid century version of a veranda. I bought my rug here – it’s the Ember. Second interiors win: these gingham pom-pom trimmed curtains from Amazon. I needed to set-dress the outdoor bath tub at the cabin for a shoot (as you do!) and only had about two days to turn the whole thing around. I needed curtains in a hurry and these were about twenty quid a pair, next day delivery. They could have been awful, you never know with these random purchases, but I think they’ve turned out so well! It’s worth noting that you barely get any width of curtain, once it’s all gathered up, so I would factor in two or even three pairs of them for a metre-ish-wide window if you want a fuller look. I reckon I could stick another pair up there for an even better effect, but ‘tis too late. Tin bath tub from BC Designs hereThey’re not outdoor curtains so I can’t leave them up long-term but they will be great for shoots. I have loads of bath-related content coming up including a few ideas that will hopefully become regular features! Just in case you think I’m absolutely mad for having a bath outside… Think of it as a prop. Although it is LUSH to lie back in, surrounded by nature, with the butterflies prancing about and the bees droning away. I can imagine it would be even better at night because the owls would be hooting and the bats would be flapping and it would be like having some crazy Harry Potter bathing experience, especially if I surrounded the bath with some greenish lava lamps. Ha. I could sell this experience, I’m sure…I bought the curtains here. Oh ho-ho: I almost forgot! There’s a whole video that goes alongside this post. If you like a bit of semi-relaxing chat and mooching about then you’ll love this:
