What's in your Handbag?

Monkey Supermarket are currently running a competition in order to win a Mulberry handbag and for a chance to enter, they want to see inside our handbags!  

Their home insurance expert estimates that women carry around with them on average the sum of £850.00 worth of contents within our handbag and I must confess, I was very curious to see what my total would be.

When it comes to my week day handbag, I like to cover most eventualities.  The thing about having a large bag however is that things seem to disappear into it, never to resurface until you have a clear out.

I took the opportunity of this blog post to go through the contents of my handbag and remove the excesses, including more lipsticks and glosses than I would admit!  I have never really thought about the value of the items I carry around with me so this has been an interesting experiment.

My bag is from Fiorelli and cost me £60.00 about three years ago.  It it a classic shape and style and is perfect for my day to day use as it goes with practically everything.

I have divided the contents into sections, all of which help me in my daily life and are permanent fixtures in my handbag.

Every Day Essentials

Purse - £5.00 from Primark
Cash inside - £20.00

Blackberry - £200.00

Monthly bus pass - £39.00

Face powder – approx £6.00

Powder brush - £3.00

Lip tint from MUA - £3.00

Crystal cat keyring - £5.00

If I were forced to use a smaller handbag during the week, these would be my absolute essentials.  Yes, three items are makeup, but I fail to see the point in applying it at the start of the day only to end up with a shiny nose and dull lips by the end of it.  I am a woman after all!

To Wear Off Boredom

Book - £9.99

Notebook for blog ideas - £10.00

Pen – £1.00

Apple Earphones - £25.00

Blackberry – already listed

For my daily trip to work on the bus or when I am travelling in general I like to have a variety of options to entertain me.  I always have a book with me and a notebook for jotting down blog ideas.  In addition I like to listen to music on the way to work on my phone which also obviously offers the connection to the internet and my addiction that is Twitter.

Helpful Items

Umbrella - £10.00

Dorothy Perkins Sunglasses - £7.00

Spare Blackberry battery £15.00

Blackberry charger £15.00

The three things I detest are getting caught in the rain, being caught in bright sunshine for over an hour without sunglasses and my beloved Blackberry running out of charge (hence the two options on the battery front!). 

My Fix Me Up Kit

Marc Jacobs perfume - £20.00

Benefit They’re Real Mascara - £19.50
MUA Red lip tint – already listed
Pink lipstick from No 7 - £9.00
Little Pink Tin of Lip Moisturiser - £3.00
Soap & Glory body butter - £7.50
Two different hair slides - £8.00
No 7 Slanted Tweezers - £8.00
Two hair bobbles – 50p

I always like to have a little fix me up kit in my handbag.  This works twofold in that I have the everyday items that I use to touch myself up with and also some additions such as the earrings, the mascara and the hairslides/bobbles which I can use to change up my look if I am going straight from work to a catch up with the girls.

One of my pet hates is having to lug another bag to work if you intend on going out for the evening straight after, so I have whittled my kit down to the utmost essentials that can easily and quickly take me from a day to a night time look.

If I had to chose just one item out of everything in my handbag to carry around with me it would have to be my Blackberry.  My phone is the most multi-functional item in my handbag, it would get me most things at the touch of a button and it is what I would chose in a crisis.

Taking into account the cost of the handbag and the contents, this equates to a handbag total of £509.49.  Considering that the average is £850.00 I am quietly impressed with myself!

What do you carry in your handbag?

 

Milestone Necklace Giveaway!

Writing a blog is a strange thing.  Although you are putting your point of view and images on the internet, with anyone able to access it, I am always surprised when someone finds it and actually reads it.

When I started my blog in July 2010 I had the idea that I wanted a blog but didn’t really have a focus of what I wanted to talk about or what direction I was going in.  I remember being excited that in my first month I had 49 views!

Over the past year I have found the path I want my blog to take and the views have been increasing every month.  Although I knew that I was getting a fair few hits per month now, it was still quite a shock to realised that at the beginning of this week I reached 25,000 views.  Not a lot for some, but a great achievement for me and something I am proud of.

I wanted to celebrate reaching this milestone and so decided to host a giveaway on my blog.  I reached out to the lovely Allie of Love from Misbehave to see if she would like to participate in the giveaway and she has kindly donated a necklace, pictured below and linked here.

I first found Love From Misbehave via their Twitter feed Love Misbehave and have been a huge fan of their jewellery ever since.   In addition to jewellery they also sell tshirts, hair pieces and scarves.   I urge you to check out their website as they have some fantastic pieces, at great prices.

 

Love from Misbehave will be reaching their first birthday in a few months so make sure to look out on their site/Twitter feed for giveaways and offers.

 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Old Toothy!

I'm writing this post further to the Flash the Flesh Challenge on Saturday, which is all about being happy and confident in yourself.  I wanted to do a short post today to tell you this little story which make me laugh about how silly I have been.

I have a gap in my teeth that I’ve hated all my life,  Every smile I’ve ever given has had my tongue pressed up right against the gap so you couldn’t see it as much.  It’s a ridiculous thing to do but I’ve always done it. 

Recently I decided to do a vlog post, found here.  What I immediately noticed upon watching it back, which had never occurred to me before, is that the gap is perfectly notable when I talk, so all these years of trying to hide it have been completely pointless!

I can’t believe that I’ve actually spent my whole life shoving my tongue behind the gap in my teeth, without ever realising that it was perfectly visible when I was speaking.  What a lunatic I am!  It also then of course dawned on me that it has also been visible to others and I had never had any bad comments about it, so why the worry and insecurity?

Sometimes the insecurities we have are ones that we force upon ourselves without any interference of society and other people’s opinions. 

What have you been insecure about that you have had no need to?