A big sleep-in started my birthday with a snoozy bang. I did wake up at 7am to rush into my housemates room and sleepily jibber about birthdays and she made it worthwhile by presenting me with two wonderful prizes!

Carmen Electra: Fit to Strip Vol. 2 (review coming very, I love it!) and STOTT PILATES: Sunrise Workout (also coming soon!). Yay! We’d both been meaning to get some workout DVD’s happening, so now we’ll be busting moves and stretching it out in the comfort of our own home!

After my gift receiving I fell back into bed til 11am and then made my favourite healthy breakfast: Honey porridge with sliced banana!

This stuff is really good for you too as it keeps blood sugar levels even throughout the day, so it’s a perfect brekky.

Backtracking a little… the night before I went to dinner at Galileo Buona Cucina, Shenton Park. Totally in love with this place now!

Bruschetta for starters (possibly the best I’ve ever had), pear nectar (!!!) and one of their signature dishes, artichoke ravioli for mains… such a fantastic birthday dinner!

Urban Spoon rating:

My parents gave me something dorky I’d been wanting for a while, A WATER JUG! I’m going to use this to make my special Iced Green Tea – I make a big batch of this up and drink it throughout the week, I’ve found it really helps with glowing skin so I’m really excited to get back into this!

Back to my day though! I met up with my Mum and had a HUGE salad and detox juice (beetroot, carrot, apple, celery) from Edens Salad Bar in Subiaco, they were both delicious and the juice was enormous! I recommend.

Urban Spoon rating:

As my birthday treat to myself, I bought the latest Good Health magazine and some of the new Lindt Blueberry Intense chocolate – OH MY DELISH! As well as the blueberries, it also has little slivers of almonds, yum.

Another lovely gift I received, from Conor @ Hold the Beef was some Oxfam Unwrapped seeds, I found it really thoughtful and it made me smileeeeeee that my birthday inspired Conor to want to help someone else 😀

Throughout the day I slurped on green tea & rosehip tea to up the wellness quotient, and when it came time to get ready for my party, I used some Akin & Al’chemy prods to “gussy up”.

My locks were treated to [Al’chemy] Rice Aminos & Wheat Protein Intensive Moisture Shampoo and Avocado & Calendula Re-Moisturising Conditioner. These hair heroes are SLS free (a very good thing) and are devoid of many other nasties as well, so are great when you want to give your strands a break from the chemical torture they’re usually subjected to!

Post-shower I spritzed some ‘Cellular Brightening Mist’ on my face, I –LOVE- this stuff! It smells like lavender and feels cool & sparkly on the skin. I haven’t done any comparitive analysis pre and post spritzing but it makes me FEEL like my skin is brighter, so I’m sticking with it!

Seeing all my favourite people in one place that night ended my birthday on a high note, friends are critical to wellbeing and I was so happy that all my besties made it out to celebrate with me.

Love you all. Thanks for reading. Here’s to the next wellness filled year, hope you stick along for the ride!

Be well,

Annette

xoxo

♥ ♥ ♥

We’re pretty used to paying to keep ourselves looking and feeling great. Gym memberships, massages, yoga classes, personal trainers, haircuts, dancing, waxing, boot camps… the list goes on! It seems keeping fit and polished automatically comes at a price, and over time you could find your wallet mourning the loss of yet another $17 for an hours worth of movement or $100+ to be hair free for just a month.

Fear not my loves, while staying in shape, looking great and working towards optimum wellbeing are ENTIRELY worthwhile endeavours, they don’t have to be expensive if you don’t want them to be!

We’re here to shine some coin-saving lights in our new segment ‘Cheap / Free’! We’ll be highlighting fantastic places in Perth to participate in all things wellbeing related.

As always though, we’ll only be focusing on places that we think are high-quality and would personally recommend.

Stay tuned for our first article on a nifty little late night exercise spot in the Western Suburbs that just happens to be completely free… well I never!

Please share your tips for cheap / free health & beauty in Perth!

Be well

xoxo

Hello! ♥ This week we’ve got a tasty variety of interesting articles and websites for you to check out, some quick bits to get you thinking!

♥ Healthy skin care rituals for a clear and glowing face and body! Some lovely advice here.

♥ Eat Pretty Super Foods for Your Skin! – eat yourself pretty!

♥ You Are the CEO of Your Life – interesting reading, treat your life as you would treat a company you were the CEO of.

♥ Apple Cider Vinegar is a thing that you should look into! It will give you energy, soften your skin and ad shine to your hair according to BeGenki!

♥ The Manifesto of Encouragement – if you read any of these links, read this one. SO good and I am tricky to impress with internet self help articles!

Wellness WA is going to be moving offices during the next week, we have HEAPS of articles ready to go but there may be a little down time so please bear with us, there is also a new section launching soon!

Be well,

Annette

xoxo

So I thought it was time for a bit more of a ‘personal’ type post on here, just to remind you that there are actual people just like you working hard behind the scenes to make this blog run!

Since the weather is cooling down I’m finding it -really- hard to get motivated to get out of bed (let alone exercise!), I figure some of you might be in the same boat so I pose the question – What do you do to get motivated?

I found this great post on one of my favourite blogs, How to get and stay motivated and her tips are really helpful, so I recommend you check them out 🙂

Personally, the following things help keep me motivated:

♥ Green Smoothies – I know I go on and on about these, but they give me so much energy and vitality that I am always shocked to remember how good I feel when I haven’t had one for a while, which is now, so I really need to get back into it! (Just haven’t been able to find any good spinach lately)

♥ Exercise Classes – I always find I’m pretty motivated the day after a class, especially if it was a bit more of a cardio workout. This is no good if you’re trying to get motivated to go somewhere, but just try and think how good you’ll feel the next day!

♥ Hot showers – this is definitely a motivator for me to get out of bed! Another great thing I’ve done recently is acquiring a dressing gown, so there’s no running around in towels to be done. Also I’m lucky enough to live somewhere with a bathroom heater, without this I don’t know how I will do it!

♥ Social Motivation – If I know a friend is going to an exercise class then I am 72% more likely to attend! If they pull out, then often I will as well. This is something I need to work on 🙂

Please share your tips on being / staying motivated with me!

Be well,

xoxo

Do you ever have moments walking along the street, conversations with people or dreams where you are reminded of a product that you used to use ages ago, or your Mum used to use it, or you had heard about it’s release in America/Europe but it never came to Australia, and you are suddenly gripped with the very capitalist urge to own it either for the first time in your life or to own it once again and again and AGAIN? I do.

So what do you do if that product is nowhere to be found in Perth…if it’s discontinued or it was never here in the first place? Should you cut your losses? Should you say to yourself “well it’s JUST makeup” and move on to obsessing over more important things like boys and clothes, politics and world peace?

Hell.

No.

The answer is so simple you may even already know it, but just in case you don’t, why aren’t you using the INTERNET to achieve these dreams? Now websites such as StrawberryNET http://www.strawberrynet.com and the like are pretty common knowledge to get good deals on current products from popular brands so let’s just assume the humble reader has this knowledge and move on to the discussion of your harder to find/discontinued product.

L’Oreal – Blush Delice in Strawberry Tart ♥

About two years ago (approx) L’Oreal stopped production on a few colors of their Blush Delice range. Anyone out there remember Strawberry Tart that perfect mix of baby pink and luminous wonderment? It was the best for a pale complexion and I really had a love affair with it from the moment of its release up until the dark, dark day that they stopped making it (for some stupid reason).

I went through the normal sort of feelings you go through after a relationship ends, sadness, rage, depression but goddamnit I was just not ready to give up on this little guy! So in a moment of desperation I typed into the google machine ‘shine+delice+blush+strawberry+tart+buy’ and guess what the first result was, ebay.com. OF COURSE! EBAY!

And guess what? I got two compacts of Strawberry Tart for $6 (plus $6 post and handling). I was hooked, I started looking up everything I had ever once loved, liked a lot, had a fling with- but for some reason or another had been taken away from me- and it was ALL there.

Clinique – Almost in Black Honey ♥

Remember that shade of Clinique ’s Almost Lipstick that was re-released here a little while ago, sold out almost immediately and then was never added to their permanent roster of products, a little shade called Black Honey? Hm? Yep. It’s there. And it’s way cheap.

Now, sometimes going to the Australian version of eBay (ebay.com.au) is not going to cut it, so you need to go American and go to just plain old ebay.com – but it’s worth it; obviously they have far more options for the nostalgic shopper. However, shopping on the American website does have it’s downfalls. Namely- sometimes sellers will not ship to Australia. I have found in a couple of instances if you just ask them really nicely they will have no problem with it but sometimes they just flat out refuse.

Barry M Kohl Pencil

I encountered this when I was trying to buy a Barry M kohl eyeliner in black. I had owned one when I was living in London and had never used such a good eyeliner (never hard and scratchy on the eye, so soft, so glideable, so smudgeable) but I couldn’t get it in Australia. So I just stopped using eyeliner (it really was that good). Anyway, I found one on ebay.com but the seller wouldn’t ship it to me (seriously you cant put a pencil in an envelope and send it to me even when I’M PAYING FOR THE SHIPPING?!!!?!??!) So I just went back to the old google search and came across this website http://www.crushcosmetics.com.au which is actually an Australian website but stocks Barry M. Take that lazy eBay seller who wouldn’t ship to me. Take that indeed.

In summary, I guess I’m not telling any of you anything new here but I do hope that all of this might make you think about a product that you used to own and love so dearly and maybe will encourage you to go to the internet buy it, and reignite that love.

Article by dream make-up internet babe Adriane Daff.

Be well,

xoxo