London International Mime Festival 2020

Let this New Year begin with laughter and joy as you soak up brilliant talent, skill and humour at the London International Mime Festival 2020. Commencing on the 8th of January until the 3rd of February, the 44th year of London’s Annual International Contemporary Visual Theatre Festival is here to keep you entertained, gleeful and excited. Be sure to find your way to at least one if not all the shows coming up at theatres around town such as The Soho Theatre, Shoreditch Town Hall, and Wilton’s Music Hall etc. Missing these astonishing, fascinating and exquisite performances will mean forfeiting the opportunity to experience one of the best mime shows in the world.

With 20 performances going on throughout the early year, the festival is pulling in talent from all ends of the world including Puppetry from New York and France, a dance theatre company from Belgium as well as talent from Australia amongst various others ensuring they’ve got something or the other for the diverse and distinct taste of all Londoner’s. 

First, we’d like to introduce Australian artist Fleur Elise Noble who has spent seven dedicated years towards creating The Magical Universe of Rooman. The show incorporates a rich tapestry of puppetry, projection, moving animation, dance, music and sound effects. Rooman highlights a fable of romance, fantasy and the eventual pursuit of happiness. Centred around a girl meeting a kangaroo man in her sleep, Fleur Elise Noble explores the theme of romance, life and furthermore the human psyche. On at The Pit in Barbican from the 14th – 18th January, book your tickets online for only £18.

Up next is BOYS presented by The PappyShow (UK), a celebration of male tenderness, silliness, vulnerability and community performed by a cast of exceedingly talented young men. Unscripted and refreshing, each story is told uniquely in every performance. BOYS is a joyful, electric, occasionally raw but always tender piece that hopes to unravel preconceptions and uncover the endless possibilities that can make up a man. Brought to life in 2013 by director Kane Husbands, the PappyShow is one of London’s finest theatrical ensembles.  On at the Southbank Centre's Purcell Room on the 20th and 21st of January, the show has been said to be an essential viewing for every boy, so be sure to get your tickets well in time! Tickets are priced at an easy and affordable £18.

Last but certainly not least is Optraken created by the ferociously talented Galactik Ensemble. Unstable ground disappears underfoot, walls wobble, ceilings collapse, danger’s come from every side. Forget elegant tumbling and spangly tights – this wonderfully inventive and original piece of physical theatre is a battle in which every movement matters for survival as five breathtaking acrobats pit themselves against a hostile environment. The show proves to be spectacular, impressive, unpredictable and enormous fun at The Peacock from the 29th of January to the 1st of February online. Ticket prices range from £15 - £45 depending on the seats you choose to buy.

Finally, we at The Amazing Blog highly recommend you see a minimum of one of the twenty shows being putting on by the London Mime Festival not only to enjoy the various talents of the participants but also to give yourself that much-needed break from your hectic schedules! Hop on over to their official website here for more information regarding the same.

Friday Favourites – Christmas Gift Sets from Heathcote & Ivory

As regular reader may have gathered from our week of reviewing gift sets, at The Amazing Blog we’re now really getting into the Christmas spirit.  Since one gift doesn’t always work for everyone, we have gathered a selection for our gift set finale, with a trio from one of our favourite brand Heathcote & Ivory

Founded in 2000, this quintessentially British brand Heathcote & Ivory has successfully established itself as a lifestyle brand spread across over 35 countries, with its most unique and recognisable hallmark of bright and floral patterns on all its designs and collections. With an extensive variety of products from home fragrances to bath and body care, there is always something for everyone. If you’re new to The Amazing Blog then see here for some of our other #amazingfinds from this company.

The first item we’re going to talk about today is their Sweet Pea & Honeysuckle Floral Hands & Perfume Pair. This adorable Christmas-themed packaging contains a roll-on perfume gel and hand cream. The 10ml pink flacon of perfume gel is alcohol–free, and the smell is soft and floral with notes of fresh sweet peas and honeysuckle. The 30ml hand and nail cream has an identical scent and is enriched with shea butter, vitamin E, glycerin and pro-vitamin B5 to help keep hands soft, smooth and moisturised during this chilly season. Both products are small and will fit beautifully into a small clutch or travel bag, so if you know anyone who loves travelling this would be the ideal gift. It has a retail price of £8 here.

Next up is the gift set styled as a set of classic Christmas crackers. Young or old, everyone loves opening crackers to see what’s inside. We know that we do. Vintage & Co Grand Circus Let’s Go Cracker Set has themed carton crackers with all the fun of the circus,  each contains a three 30ml tube of hand cream. We love that it’s full of long-lasting festive fragrance notes of pomegranates, ripened red berries, eggnog, mulled wine, vanilla frostings and sweet orange swirls. Each tube contains shea butter, vitamin E and sweet orange essential oil as part of their key ingredients to help keep hands soft and smooth. The texture is thick and creamy, and a little goes a long way. We must quickly point out that the crackers contain three identical hand creams, so no swapsies here. Instead spread the love and make three people very happy with just one purchase here. All for the princely sum of £10!

Finally, we’ve saved the best till last. The Enchanted Forest Beauty Trilogy, with its majestic look, this elegant body care collection opens like a book and weights like a treasure chest. We took a peek and found 150g Bath Salts, 200ml Body Lotion and 100ml Hand Cream. The Bath Salts, have the enchanting scents of forest greens, with relaxing chamomile, bluebells, jasmine and rose; with subtle base notes of sandalwood, cedarwood and sweet vanilla. The Body Lotion quickly absorbs into skin, making it soft to the touch and locks in the shared fragrance. The Hand Cream is the same but enriched with shea butter and vitamin E. Its light non-oily texture leaves hands feeling soft and moisturised. Best of all we love that this Beauty Trilogy box can be reused to store papers, photos and memories – what a gift! If you wish to treat someone you love we recommend you buy this gift set here for only £18. We love the originality and affordability of the Heathcote & Ivory gift sets – they never fail to disappoint!

Mathmos Pod

With Christmas coming, at The Amazing Blog we love searching out all manner of interesting new gadgets and gizmos to bring to you, our loyal readers. We also can’t resist a spot of nostalgia either … and when we get to mix the two, it makes our day! So, for a minute step back in time to the 1960s and a symbol of Pop Culture at its best - the Lava Lamp, a staple requirement in any up to minute interior, with its dayglo colours of the rainbow playing a hypnotic symphony as it proudly sits centre stage.

The company behind the original lava lamps was called Crestworth, and the inventor who made it all happen went by the name of Edward Craven Walker who was actually working on his concept for a new kind of egg timer when he came up with the product that would change his life, and become synonymous with the Swinging 60s - and indeed the 70s. In the late 1980s however, interest fell, and so the next few years saw a period of rebranding when Edward and his wife Christine teamed up with a couple of young entrepreneurs, Cressida Granger and David Mulley. The came up with a new company name – Mathmos, which refers to the bubbling force in the sci-fi cult 60s movie Barberella, and the second wave of popularity for the lava lamp began, which continues today.

However, in the spirit of continuing to research and develop, as their founders did, Mathmos have come up with a new type of lava lamp for us the Mathmos Pod which sits proudly alongside their full range. Standing at 240mm tall, the Mathmos Pod exudes all the quality of Craven Walker’s original - the bright glowing colours of globulous intensity which rise phoenix-like in slo-mo up the illuminating tube, surrounded of course by the heavy cast iron metal keeping everything safely grounded.

However, the clincher here is that these fabulous new lamps are not powered by electricity, but by the humble tealight, which sits happily burning away in its burrowed tessellated hexagon-shaped base, heating up the Mathmos gel, and creating the effect we cannot ignore. NB: The pod will take up to 20 minutes to heat up before you see all the magical colours interspersing. It’s spellbinding, with a modern elegance that is undoubtedly going to see this beauty jump off the shelves at a phenomenal speed as we head towards Christmas. If you’re quick, the first 100 have a unique limited edition number making them even more of a prized collectors item. They cost £44.00 from here they also have a current promotion running whereby if you order more than one, you get a 20% discount.

Friday Favourite – Cookbook for Christmas

Whether you are looking for inspiration for this year’s Christmas catering or for a gift for a loved one, today at The Amazing Blog we’ve narrowed down three of our favourite new seasonal cookbooks just for you.

Having watched the series, and enjoyed the twists and turns of the Crawley Family on the big screen, we now have the chance to channel our inner Mrs Patmore and bring a flavour of Downton to our own humble kitchens in the form of The Official Downton Abbey Cookbook. Fans of the show will salivate over the sumptuous pages of their favourite series dripping from every page - not just full of tempting recipes, but also bon mots as can only be delivered by Dame Maggie herself, along with historical facts of catering for such a house in those times. The writer behind this surefire bestseller is Annie Gray, one of Britain’s leading food historians, who brings the stories of both the upstairs, and the downstairs to life for us in her detailed research of recipes of the period. Alongside  such mouth-watering options as ‘Veal Chops Périgourdine’, which would have appeared on the upstairs menu, we have the equally tempting ‘Toad In The Hole’ which would have been served downstairs in the Servant’s Hall, both with the relevant side notes of why they would have been popular, and how the ingredients would have been sourced.

Apart from the surge of culinary excitement to try favourite recipes out, this encyclopedia of food history and knowledge will be snapped up by fans of Lord and Lady Grantham, and foodies alike. Served up at £25.00, we can all secure ourselves a slice of this delicacy from all good bookshops including Waterstones and BooksEtc here.

If you or your guests diet is more plant-based, then a festive treat comes to us from Scandinavia, Karoline Jönsson who has put together the ‘Happy Vegan Christmas’ after the success of her online cooking blog which attracts 20,000 visitors every month, and the first all-vegetarian cooking show to air on Swedish television, of which she was the host. Karoline gives us five different sections to take us through the Christmas period, including the obligatory “Leftovers”, which is a definite ‘must read’ as it not only offers up the irresistibility of ‘Sun-Yellow Energy Soup’, but also craft projects to keep us all engaged over the holidays. Priced at £14.99, and published by Pavilion Books you can find it here.

Remaining on the vegan theme, we move onto the next course on today’s menu, which is the pudding section - ‘Incredible Plant-Based Desserts’. Written by Anthea Cheng, whose blog and social media account entitled ‘Rainbow Nourishments’ has inspired this fabulously colourful cookbook to give us all options on the desserts trolley from the vegan perspective with recipes including gluten and without gluten, with refined sugar and without. With mouth-watering methods to create ‘Raspberry and White Chocolate Cookies’, ‘Baklava Custard Tart’ or the intriguingly named ‘Rainbow Pear Tart with a Cardamom Coconut Cream’, this must be high on every vegan gourmand’s wish list. The colours of Anthea’s desserts jump off the page and are very effective in drawing us in to try our hand at making them - with such a successful online presence in the marketplace, she has a firm foundation on which to build a even greater fanbase. Anthea takes us through everything we will need - not just the best ingredients, but also the correct kit required, and her book is a joy to read - the fact we get to enjoy the secrets to her success is an added and welcome bonus. Available at £16.00 from Waterstones here whether you are vegan or not, the colours of this rainbow are for everyone.

Friday Favourites - Luxury Skincare for December

It’s the party season! Demanding schedules, unpredictable weather, an overload of caffeine and often a deficit of sleep can leave your skin and your spirit feeling a little run down and exhausted this time of year. This is why here at The Amazing Blog we’ve decided to walk you through our Friday favourite skincare to rescue your hard-working self and return you back with a radiant glow. We have picked some of our favourite luxury skincare products from some of the trusted brands whose other products we previously featured: Albiva, Repechage and Tiiya.

Let’s begin with one of our early #amazingfinds, the luxury skincare Albiva who are also the recent winners of the Next British Beauty Brand. With the constant gravitation towards technological advancement in almost every industry, it’s no surprise that the beauty industry is setting foot in the same and delivering magically effective products. Albiva is a natural skincare brand where science and nature come together to showcase optimum results. It is vegan, cruelty-free and gender-neutral and this award-winning skincare brand uses effective technology, where the brand confidently maximises the therapeutic benefits of all their ingredients in each and every product. To quickly refresh your memory, we recently reviewed their ECM Advanced Repair Brightening Serum here

One of their many products that distinctly caught our eye is the ECM Advanced Repair Lift & Firm Moisturiser. Made with rubusiIdaeus fruit water, argania spinosa kernel oil and simmondsia chinensis seed oil amongst various others, the product is free from toxic chemicals, parabens, animal derivatives etc. The Moisturiser is enriched with intensive actives that work in synergy to support the skins self-healing properties at a cellular level. With the use of this product, even for a short while, we noticed our skin felt more hydrated and radiant with notable plumpness and reduction in fine lines.

Additionally, Albiva’s ECM Advanced Repair Eye Lift is a true game-changer. We all know the pains and struggles of puffy dark under eyes that often leave us overloading our faces with concealer. Albiva’s Eye Lift gives you fresh and bright under eyes that minimize the appearance of fine lines resulting in a fresher and better version of yourself. Made with 96% natural ingredients and 82% certified organic ingredients, this highly concentrated yet lightweight eye treatment is enriched with peptides and multiple antioxidants that provide intense hydration alongside protection against oxidative stress. This luxury skincare brand carries with itself a promise of radiant, glowing and youthful skin that they deliver with utmost precision. You can purchase these products starting at £145 for The ECM Advanced Repair Eye Lift and £165 for The ECM Advanced Repair Lift and Firm Moisturer here.

Up next is a salon brand Repechage, Beauty from the Sea. Their new Vita Cura Mask brings the luxury of a spa to your very own home. We tried out the B3 Lifting Mask for smoother, younger-looking skin and noticed it had an instant effect. This resulted in the skin that looking plump with visibly improved texture, diminished signs of ageing and a restored look of skin firmness for a complexion that glows. The face mask is not only dermatologically tested but also in fact plastic surgeon recommended as it features ingredients like extract of kappaphycus alvarezii and caesalpinia spinosa fruit,  plus an exclusive, nutrient-rich and sustainably harvested lamaria digitata seaweed filtrate; all of which help to deeply replenish and hydrate the surface of your skin. Again, those of you who are regular readers will know that we’ve fans of this particular brand and may remember The Triple Actin Peptide Serum that we reviewed here.

Research has shown that this mask has so far delivered a 58% reduction in the appearance of wrinkles and a 41% reduction in the appearance of enlarged pores. This sheet mask is unique in its composition as well as its results. It combines both the benefits as well as the luxury of a day spent at the spa all from the ease and comfort of your very own home. A set of 5 Vita Cura B3 Lifting Masks can be purchased together with a free Ionto Massager for only £75 here

Last, in our line-up are two skincare products from Tiiya Alanoud Alattiya – perhaps better known as a leading couturier and for her fragrance Rose Oud Epiphany Eau de Parfum, which we reviewed here.  Let’s start with the Epiphany Regenerative Day Cream, Rigorously tested in laboratories in Paris, the Regenerative Day Cream is the perfect foundation for healthier glowing skin. Like a shield of armour. The Regenerative Day Cream protects the skin against the effects of environmental factors like the sun and wind, not only does it protect it also nourishes the skin on a cellular level and promotes cell growth. One of the key ingredients is organic Bulgarian rose oil, which has anti-inflammatory properties as well as regenerative effects on the skin, hence the name Regenerative Day Cream. The cream also contains their special ingredient of Phytocelltec™ Alp Rose, a Swiss flower that grows at high altitudes, forcing the plant to adapt to extreme conditions and thus develop unique botanical properties. When used in skincare, it helps to maintain the characteristics of skin stem cells and protects the cells against UV-stress.

Then there is the Epiphany Renewing Night Cream. It works overnight while you’re sleeping to improve the vitality, youthful glow and natural beauty of your skin. We like how fast it is to absorb into the skin, giving the complexion a moisturised feel without being heavy or weighed down. All of Tiiya Alanoud Alattiya’s products are paraben, silicone, preservative, mineral oil and colourant free. The creams come beautiful packaged with the push-down dispenser with low waste as it dispenses the perfect amount every time. You can purchase the Epiphany Regenerative Day Cream here for $130 per 50ml or the Renewing Night Cream for $135 per 50ml here.