OhLaLa Macarons - "Macarons and Martinis" Event

Here at The Amazing Blog, we absolutely love having a fun girl’s day out. What’s better than spending quality time with your girlfriends over drinks and yummy food? When we heard about the Macaron and Martinis Events from OhLaLa-Macarons, we knew it would be the perfect venue for our next girl’s day.

The Macaron and Martinis Events are designed by the talented team at OhLaLa, where you’ll be delighted with culinary excellence in a gorgeous venue with amazing people. Each event lasts for two and a half hours, and includes unlimited macarons and martinis. The company hosts public events, as well as hen parties for soon-to-be brides.

During the class, you’ll learn how to make your own macarons, since you’ll be able to take home a box of 12 designed by you. After you’ve had your fair share of sweet treats, you’ll get to go behind the bar for a lesson in martini making. You can even make your own recipe with the ingredients provided, and the bartender will name it after you and will give you a card with the recipe on it to take home. Talk about fabulous!

The next public event is on 28th March, and you can book your spot for it here. Ticket prices are £65 each. If you’d rather have your own private event with your friends, you can email the staff directly via the email provided on the bookings page of the site.

ZSL Pooch Parade

Attention all animal lovers! The Zoological Society of London will be hosting its first Pooch Parade sponsored dog walking event in London on Sunday 22 March and this is also your chance to participate in a great cause.

The 2.5 km walk through Battersea Park is raising funds for ZSL’s Lions400 Campaign. The campaign aims to raise £5.7m to create Land of the Lions, a new state-of-the-art lion breeding centre and exhibit at ZSL London Zoo, as well as extend vital conservation work in India where only 400 Asiatic lions are left in the wild.

Heidi, Asiatic Lioness at ZSL London Zoo

To participate in this event, you can register your dog here for £10, plus a pledge to raise £40 per dog for the Lions400 campaign. Each dog can be accompanied by up to four walkers. Each participating pup will receive a special doggy bag and a medal to show off when they complete their walk. Places are very limited so that's why we at The Amazing Blog are giving you the 'heads up' at least a week in advance.

Even if you don’t have a four-legged friend to register, this is a great event to come out and watch. The event gets up and running at 10 a.m.

Friday Favourites - Mother's Day Feature

Here at The Amazing Blog, we know that we’ll never be able to repay our mum’s for the endless amount of love and support they give us. We may not get to see our mum’s regularly, but we always think about them and how much they have impacted our lives. This Mother’s Day, we wanted to give you a proper gift guide designed to please your mum, since she deserves only the best on this day and every day. 

To help your mum unwind on her special day, treat her with a beautiful quotation candle from Not on the High Street.

You can choose from four different quotations to put on the candle, including “A mother holds her child’s hand for a short while but their hearts forever” and “Mum, I know you’ve loved me as long as I’ve lived, but I’ve loved you my whole life” and two other sweet phrases. After the quotation, you also have the option to customize the signature, which a remark such as “you’re the best,” followed by your name.

In addition to the four different quotations you can choose from, the candles come in four colours to choose from: light stone, medium stone, pale rose and duck egg blue. It’s made from 100% natural soy wax and has an average burn time of 35-40 hours. The gift wrapping is also included with the price, plus you have the option to add a personalized gift tag to the candle to make it extra special.

Order your candle here for £25 and give your mom a long-lasting gift this year.

To give your mum time to reflect this mum’s day, give her this bold “I Love My Mum” notebook from Smythson. She can gather all of her thoughts and record all of her goals and dreams in this stylish notebook.

Featuring a lambskin cover, in a fun hot pink colour with shiny gold text, this notebook makes a statement and lets the world know how much you love your mum. It’s filled with 96 leaves of lined, pale blue, featherweight paper designed to capture every note or idea written on every page. Just like any quality journal, a sturdy pink ribbon bookmark is attached so your mum can mark her most recent page. It’s portable, easy to carry and will always remind her of you.

Head to the Smythson website here to get this lovely notebook for your mum for £35.

To add a sweet touch to your mum’s bathroom, pick up a few bars of the Lavender Hand Soap from Dr. Harris and Co. for a beautifully scented hand washing experience.

The soap is designed for delicate skin, so it will not cause any irritation if sensitive skin is an issue your mum deals with. It lathers extremely well, so let all of the lavender-scented suds wash away any impurities while deeply moisturising your skin. Hand washing just got a lot more luxurious.

Get a three-bar pack of these adorable soaps here for £17.50.

For a gift your mum can display for all to see, we recommended a Mother’s Day inspired flower bouquet from The Flower Stand Chelsea. With all of the vibrant colours and varieties to choose from, you can choose an arrangement that suits your mom and her personality perfectly.

The Flower Stand shop can be found near Fulham Road and Old Church Street, with clientele ranging from footballers to film stars. The prices of their flowers are some of the most competitive in London and are of very high quality. When you mum receives one of the bouquets, the flowers will be in top-notch condition. They are shipped from Holland overnight, and then are cut and arranged into vases within 24 hours.

The Mother’s Day arrangements come in a variety of colours, ranging from white to yellow to pink to red. Some of the flowers you can choose include lilies, roses, tulips and lilacs, depending on whatever your mum prefers.

Head to the Mother’s Day section of their website here and check out all of the different arrangements you can choose from, starting at £35.

Of course, Mother's Day wouldn't be complete without a special treat. Macarons by Babette will be having a pop up shop just in time for the holiday.

These macarons compare with the best of French macarons. With flavours like pistachio, raspberry, salted caramel and lemon, they are almost impossible to resist! These lovely treats are sold in beautiful gift boxes that your mum will love.

The pop up shop will be on 62 Old Church Street and will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on 14th March and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on 15th March. Can't make it to the shop? Not to worry, you can order your box of 20 Macarons by Babette here for £23.

Friday Favourites: Make-Up We Love

We here at The Amazing Blog are true beauty junkies. Whether we’re obsessing over a new lipstick or testing out a bold eye shadow, we just can’t get enough.

Out of all the cosmetics to choose from, it’s hard to know what to buy and which products are truly worthy of our praise. Thankfully, today’s post contains four of our favourites, so you’ll know they’ve passed our product quality test.

Wish you had eyebrows like Cara Delevingne or Lily Collins? We are totally into the bold brow trend, which is why we have started using Threads Beauty’s ‘Crayon De Sourcil’ to make our thick eyebrow dreams come true.

Threads & Beauty’s ‘Crayon De Sourcil’ is a semi-permanent mineral brow pencil that lines, defines and fills in the brow instantly. Made with carnauba Wax, bees wax, cocoa butter, shea butter and manganese violet, this richly pigmented pencil enhances the appearance of the brows by boosting their fullness and boldness and protects the layer of skin around the brows. The pencil tip mimics the appearance of tiny hairs, evenly distributing and smoothing brow hairs while providing natural looking shape and contour.

If you want model-inspired brows, you can purchase the ‘Crayon De Sourcil’ for £15.00 here and choose between black, brown and coffee shades. You can also purchase them at the Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge.

A glowing complexion doesn’t always come naturally, so for the days when we want a little something extra, we reach for the Glow Up powder from Ellis Faas. It comes in three shades and plays with the light around you for an effortless glow. Since the powder contains vitamin E, you’ll be protected from the outside environment, and it’s free of parabens and oils so it won’t weigh your skin down.

For a soft shimmer, dust the powder onto the spots where light hits your face first: the bridge of your nose, your upper cheekbones, your Cupid’s bow and your collarbone. This will emphasis strong bone structure, bringing forth a young and vibrant appearance.

To get your own Glow Up powder, head to the Ellis Faas website here and get the powder and a compact holder for £22.

We always love a fabulous lip product, whether we’re heading to the office or out with our friends on a weekend. Since red-toned shades are our signature, we loved the Dissolved in Dreams lipstick from Rouge Bunny Rouge. It’s the perfect shade combining the best parts of red and coral lipsticks.

The finish of this lipstick was unlike any other we have tried. It’s wasn’t matte or sheen, but rather gave us a dewy, classic finish. It stays comfortable and soft all day long, and won’t dry out your lips like other lipstick finishes might. Its vitamin E formula nourishes and protects, while filling in fine lines and ultimately making sure your lips look their best. Even though the shadows provides shimmer, they don't feel rough or gritty like some other shimmer lipsticks might.

Try out this lip colour for yourself by heading to the Rouge Bunny Rouge website here and picking it up for £24.

For the times when we’d rather focus on creating a fun eye shadow look rather than concentrating on a statement lipstick, we reach for the Mineral Eye Shadow Quads from Mary Kay. With these palettes, you don’t need to figure out which shades will work well with one another, since they’re already chosen for you.

The shadows combine matte and shimmer shades that allow you to add variety to your look as you choose. You can use all of the colours or just one, giving you an infinite amount of creativity. The colours are long-lasting and glided onto our eyelids so smoothly without any irritation. Plus, the shades work with every skin tone and eye colour, so everyone in the office could try out the shades and they looked great on all of us.

Head here to get your favourite eye shadow quad for only £10.

Friday Favourites - Healthier Sweet Treats Feature

Here at The Amazing Blog, we know how much joy a yummy sweetie can bring us on a Monday or after a long day at work. A sweet treat brings pleasure and is a fun way to balance out our healthy diets. We love experimenting with all sorts of different snacks and sweeties, and we’ve compiled a few of our favourite healthier sweet treats to share with you this Friday.

As expected from our chocolate-loving staff, we ate two bars of the speciality chocolate from Seed and Bean in only a few short minutes. There are so many delicious flavours to choose from in three different varieties: dark, milk and white chocolate. We received the Just Ginger Fine Dark Chocolate and the Rich Milk Chocolate, and both were heavenly. If you’re looking for something a bit more eccentric to satisfy your adventurous taste buds, they have a few very interesting dark chocolate flavours such as: Chilli and Lime, Lavender, Mandarin and Ginger and Pumpkin Seeds with Hemp Oil. 

Beyond their delectable taste, they’re also 100% organic, ethical and fair trade. All of their chocolate bars are produced at a small facility in Northamptonshire, England in order to save food miles and provide local employment. 

Pick up a few of the chocolate bars here to satisfy the chocolate lover in your life. The standard 85g bars are £2.49, but smaller 32g bars are only 99p. They also have exquisite gift sets if you’re rather buy in bulk or share the gift of chocolate with someone you care about.

These delicious milkshakes from Shaken Udder satisfy our sweet tooth without guilt. They are made with fresh British milk and all-natural ingredients, filled with calcium and vitamin D for healthy bones. They’re low in fat and sugar, so you don’t have to worry about racking up too many liquid calories.

The three flavours to choose from are: chocolate, vanilla and banana. Each one is loaded with great taste and flavour. The consistency of the milkshakes is the perfect balance between a glass of milk and a thick, standard milkshake. This makes them easy to drink and extremely portable, as they are packaged the same way bottles of milk would be sold, but have the milkshake satisfaction you desire.

You can purchase your own bottles of Shaken Udder milkshakes at Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury’s for £1.49 each.

For a unique chocolate experience, we loved trying the aromatherapy dark chocolate bars from JustBe Botanicals. These chocolate bars aren’t your stereotypical plain chocolate bars – they provide benefits that common aromatherapy oil treatments provide the body.

The two varieties we tried were JustBe Detox and JustBe Loved, contained first in clear plastic packaging and finally in an adorable polka-dot envelope, and finally with a blue or pink wrapper advertising the flavour on the front. The detox chocolate contains cleansing Jupiter, fennel and milk thistle, bringing a savoury blend to a normally sweet treat, while still satisfying your chocolate cravings. The loved chocolate is a bit more romantic, since it is infused with pure rose oils and aromatic rose petals, which you can see and smell when you open the bar. We highly recommend the two chocolate bars and we loved every bite.

Pick up a set of the two bars here for £8.50, or you can buy the detox and loved chocolate bars individually for £4.50 each.

Last but not least, we really enjoyed the sweet marshmallow treats from Mallow and Marsh. The independent brand offers a new spin on the standard marshmallow treat to bring a fresh experience to consumers. Since marshmallows are naturally low in fat, high in energy and gluten-free, they’ll satisfy you without the bloat or guilt.

The brand’s current flavours are: Raspberry, Roasted Coconut, Peppermint & Dark Chocolate and Vanilla. Other flavours set to launch in the near future are: Coffee & Walnut, Raspberry & Liquorice and Violet Cream. They love experimenting with new varieties and tastes, all made without preservatives and additive, so be on the lookout for even more flavours in the future.

The office favourite marshmallow was the raspberry flavour, made with 100% natural raspberry, since it was tart, sweet and delicious. You can pick up your own marshmallows here, starting at £3.