Review: LUSH Lord of Misrule Bath Bomb

While Halloween may have come and gone, I still really wanted to review this bath bomb because it was absolutely one of my favorites from LUSH to date. The Lord of Misrule bath bomb put on quite a beautiful, spooky show in my tub and felt incredibly luxurious as well. I'm hoping this one will be back next year!

Description
Frothing, Herbal, Mischievous
Featured Ingredients 
Patchouli Oil, Popping Candy, Fair Trade Vanilla Absolute
How-To
Pop into a warm bath (I particularly enjoyed this on a crispy Autumn evening just before Halloween) for a surprise-filled show in your bathtub. This bomb turned my bath into a work of art as it fizzed and released its crackling popping candy, and it smelled incredible–a little feast for (almost) all the senses! Read: Don't taste your bath bomb. But feel free to enjoy the sights, smells, sounds, and of course the feels of it!
My Review
I absolutely loved this bath bomb, in case you couldn't tell. Immediately upon dropping it in the bathtub, it started fizzing and foaming, turning my bath a lime/slime green shimmering color. But as the exterior dissolved it gave way to a bright poppy red interior that shot out from any openings, creating really beautiful foamy, fizzy designs in the bathtub. Once it had fully dissolved, the water was a deep wine-red color and the texture felt very smoothing and nourishing. Despite the popping candy, red pigment, and the shimmery materials, it didn't create any additional mess in the tub and I completely cleaned up just by draining and giving the edges a quick rinse with water. I highly recommend Lord of Misrule next year, but am highly looking forward to trying some of their Holiday offerings that have quickly taken over! Stay tuned.

No Takeout November | Skinnytaste Meal Planner

Hello, November! I can not believe how quickly time is passing these days. Sunrise/sunset... Okay, moving on. I have a friend who's doing a No Spend November and she is basically my hero. If any of you have done something like this successfully, and saved a quick and easy thousand dollars in the process, my hat's off to you! Truly, I think I would die. But the idea inspired me to take an honest look at where most of my money goes each month (cough, cough, takeout/restaurants/bars) and I've isolated something I can SAVE BIG on without going berserk.

No Takeout November, for a New Yorker, is definitely still a sacrifice in order to save big. I typically buy breakfast, lunch, and usually dinner from various restaurants ranging from Dunkin Donuts (coffee + breakfast at work), to my favorite local Mexican restaurant (a dinnertime favorite), to Domino's Pizza (yes, I am the worst New Yorker ever...my boyfriend will be the first to point this out). Hear me: It is ridiculous to eat 3 meals out every. single. day. And, trust me, it adds up fast. Also, when left to my own devices and spur-of-the-moment decisions, I am just NOT a healthy eater. So cooking healthy for myself is a secondary benefit!

My go-to website (and cookbook) for healthy, easy, delicious recipes is skinnytaste.com and so imagine my surprise when I found that she recently released a companion to her amazing cookbook that was a tool specifically for meal-planning and calorie/activity tracking. Enter The Skinnytaste Meal Planner. It seemed like perfect considering my No Takeout pledge.

Image from Kittsona

It's got a spread at the beginning of each week to plan your meals, which I'm using to establish which nights of the week will be "cooking nights." Since I am still as busy as I ever was, and life doesn't take a back seat to my No Takeout plans, I will try to keep these to 2-3 a week, maximum and try to knock out the bulk of my planning and shopping on Sundays.

Then for each day of the week, there's space to track everything you eat (amazing if you're trying to be cognizant of that) as well as a cute space for activity tracking! Sure hope I manage to do more of that as well, but I also know the importance of focusing on one goal before conquering another.

I'm very excited about this No Takeout November project, and will definitely let you all know how it goes! Wish me luck!

Review: LUSH BlackBerry Bath Bomb

A super-friendly LUSH employee tipped me off that the BlackBerry bath bomb may be discontinued pretty soon, and sure enough it's marked as "online only" already so it must have been pulled from shelves. In short, order this before it's gone if you want to try it!

Claims Fruity, Shimmering, Uplifting

Featured Ingredients  Frankincense Oil, Citric Acid, Bergamot Oil

How-To  Just like any bath bomb, drop into a warm bath and enjoy! This one is quite consistent in terms of color and fizz throughout its duration. Meaning, it's less of a "show" but it leaves your water a shimmery blue and it even has a little surprise inside (as you can see from the photo on the right). SPOILER ALERT: It's a little picture of an explosion with the words "Boom Boom!" written on it to go along with the fact that it's labeled "BOMB" on the actual bomb itself). Very cute.

My Review  I am not normally a fan of Frankincense scents, but this was definitely not too overpowering (unlike some other LUSH products that feature the scent, like the Blue Skies bubble bar - yikes! Not for me!). But this smelled perfectly nice to me! Quite a few reviews have indicated that this left a stain or residue on their bathtub, but I definitely didn't find that to be the case for me. TIP: I usually turn the shower on after having a LUSH bath, to give the tub a good rinse-down. And it definitely saves on the clean-up. The verdict: BlackBerry was quite invigorating and fun, vs. some of the other more relaxation-themed bath bombs. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but since I'm a bit of a newbie to all things LUSH, I think I'll be okay to let this one phase out. I'll try to stick to new things and true faves.