Be Gone Jelly Belly!

OK so it's not long until summer, as if we haven't guessed by increased Special K adverts and pictures of celebrities paddle boarding all over the Daily Mail (my only source of current affairs much to Bean's disgust). So I am whole heartedly jumping on the band wagon to look like Millie Mackintosh in two weeks time...it's good to have goals.

Firstly I HATE running, unless it's somewhere nobody can see me so I can stop loads. I also don't want to spend my money on a gym membership, I'd rather spend it in Boots buying endless products promising better effects than the exercise in said gym would bring.

Myself and a friend have been working pretty antisocial hours lately and so have been fitting in our exercise using Fitness Blender. It is an archive of totally free workout videos, of varying difficulty. The great thing is that you can look up exactly how many calories you are burning. Simply cruise the workouts and find out exactly what you need to do to burn off an entire packet of custard creams. Simple.

My favourite combination is the Quick Sweat Cardio followed by At Home Abdominal and Oblique Exercises and Express Glute and Thigh Toning Routine. Each one takes 10 minutes. Half an hour in total is worth it for a killer beach bod (which I'm hoping will show its face soon).

And the best bit? You can do it in your pants! Give it a try and let us know how you get on. Also any recommendations are welcome on our mission to chase the jelly belly away!

I'm off to do some lunges...

Barrel

Beer in my hair

I spend endless money on shampoo and other hair potions to give me the instant shine, volume and thickness we all crave. But recently I gave up with this and resorted to buying Alberto Basalm for near enough free - convincing myself it made no difference.

As well as having slippery skin I also have oily hair - painting a picture of attractiveness! Although I am blessed with thickish straight hair i was soon consumed with YouTube blogs and an overriding feeling that I must buy more hair things ! At the end of the month when I am always in my graduate account overdraft I'm not going to try out Bumble and Bumble - (although almost was conned into the salty spray which surely is just salt water ?!). Instead I went with the grandmas favourite ... Anelco Beer.

The previously popular Linco beer was discontinued but Superdrug soon brought out Anelco Beer in pretty much the same packaging - methinks it's the same thing. And I bloody love it! So many good things 

1- it's cheaper than a bag of chips

2- shampoo and conditioner - the lazy girls dream 

3- I feel like I'm being organic and helping the environment (I'm not)

4- my hair gets uber volume ! 

5-  I've been washing my hair less and I look less like a greaseball on non wash days - meaning I don't have to pull my hair back into a 90s sporty spice number.

Not so lovely things...

1- Okay so it doesn't smell amazing - I won't be wafting my hair in people faces so that's not such an issue.

2- using a shampoo and conditioner makes me feel like I'm camping

Apparently you can also just put beer on your hair but then you really would smell and having your colleagues smell a tinge of alcohol on you is never good.

Let me know if you like the shampoo- or think I'm talking codswallop! 

Friendly fist bump,

Bean 

Beauty, Belly, Big fan of

Beauty, Belly, Big fan of

So a new blog brings a new tradition. Somewhere to begin. In these posts we talk about a product we love, a food we cant go without and a little thing that makes life good. It’s a popular theme among bloggers and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 

Beauty...

In order to keep the alliteration theme my first beauty big up is going to be Bioderma. It took a while for me to be sold on this due to it being £15 for what seemed to be a product that ‘acts like water’. This seemed to me a silly idea, spending money to imitate water. But it literally does. I’m the dry critter out of the two of us and I love this stuff. I hate the idea of chemicals and perfumes drying out what little moisture God gave me. A little goes a long way and it takes care of all my make up. My latest routine involves using this to remove my make up, follow up with a super-nourishing cleanser (to be reviewed shortly), then another wipe of this holy water. I find it to act as a toner like stage, without the stripping feeling they sometimes bring. So if you are on the fence, jump down and buy this.

Barrel

I'm now going to ruin the alliteration here, because I can. As much as I like to pretend I live somewhere with excellent shopping, I don't- and after watching many people tell me I must have Bioderma (including a recommendation from Barrel) I couldn't get hold of it. But I could get hold of Garnier Micellar Cleansing Water - which was £5 - and I'm now addicted to it! A side effect of buying either of these waters means you obsessively clean your face. I, being the oily spotty one (how attractive), don't like putting lotions and potions on my face but this takes my makeup off and leaves me squeaky clean - what's not to like?  Also my spots and pores have been looking better - I think this is largely due to another product (review to come) but surely my skin wasn't clean before using magic water! 
Bean

Belly...

As I write this, I am marooned on a sofa filled to the brim with chocolate. But that’s ok because it’s Easter Sunday and I don’t feel remotely guilty. In future posts I will try to stick to healthy or adventurous culinary exploits but this time it’s the power of a Creme Egg. They are the balls.

Barrel

After Barrel cooking me a cracking Easter lunch then forcing me to do a YouTube workout (Fitness Blender - look out for a future post), which I resented, I travelled back to my house and ate a fish finger sandwich followed by a banana one. Yes you are correct - 4 pieces of bread within 10 mins. 

Bean

Big Fans of…
Blogging! Woohoo another B to finish things off. We are new to it (hopefully not too obvious) and we are very excited about our new hobby. So if you are reading this and haven’t found it too much drivel then come back soon!

Barrel and Bean

p.s. find us on twitter, we'll be making noise shortly! @barrelandbean

About B and B

Welcome to Barrel and Bean, a new generation of beauty blog aimed at telling the truth. Firstly let us admit, we are avid beauty blog fans who will believe anything to get ‘that glow’, ‘that body’ and that ‘wholesome, instagram filtered lifestyle’. Secondly let us admit we have not yet reached any of these goals.

 

We have every respect for those vloggers and bloggers who spend their life and earnings buying and reviewing all things beauty. However we simply do not have the money, the time or the muji shelves to accommodate this. Instead, we periodically go on a wild rampage to splurge on unnecessary items that promise us the world.

 

Our aim is to report on such rampages as to what really works, what doesn’t and why we are more than miffed that we don’t look like something out of Made in Chelsea…more like the cast of Gogglebox. To put it simply, we are normal. We are a pair of very different gals. One oily as a mackerel, one dry as a bone. One tall, one short. One in an office (boring), one drifting through life (dossing).

 

Stand by for too many cleansing balms, clothes, useless scatter cushions and half arsed fitness. If your lucky we may even test some ‘healthy recipes’.

...Happy reading