Get another installment of what I’ve been discovering at Poundland this month.

Revlon neon nail art – these are a whopping £7.99 in Superdrug. In fact, this exact shade. They do need a shake up but afterwards they’re fine to use.

I’d previously blogged about this Sally Hansen magnetic nail polish, and I’m so glad to see that it is back in more shades!

Another Sally Hansen find, these sugar coats are £6.99 in Boots. There’s a great selection of colours available.

A hair brush with hair dye dispenser attached, for just £1? Amazing.

Excuse the Instagram screenshot, but Grace just found these American sweets in Poundland. I’ve not seen them in the King’s Lynn store yet. Have you spotted any?

These things are like gold dust – 30 pin to 8 pin iphone adapter.

Hula hoops – not just in children’s sizes – in fact, there’s even sizes that fit me in them!

These tealight holders are beautiful.

Anything to do with cupcakes is a firm favourite for me, and these cupcake boxes are a steal. You get 6 in a pack.

Our wedding venue charge £2.50 each for these gorgeous candle bags – so I almost wet myself when I found 3 in a pack for £1!

If you’re interested in writing about your Poundland finds then let me know.

It’s no secret that I love Orlando, Florida. It’s where Tony proposed, it’s where I’ve been on holiday for the past 3 years and it’s where we definitely want our honeymoon (with a few upgrades!). I knew that realistically, we couldn’t afford to go to Florida again this year, and we’d have to wait for our honeymoon next year. This upset me more than I am willing to admit, so I’m really excited that we’ve managed to grab an absolute bargain for a week away in Florida later this year. I thought this would be the perfect time to bring you a series of blog posts talking about how to save money on a trip to Florida.

People often think that going to Orlando is expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. You can do Orlando on almost any budget, and during this series I’ll be providing you information on how to get the best value and decide whether you can afford a holiday there.

Before you do anything, make sure that you’ve signed up to a cash back website – where you’re paid for purchasing something through a link they provide. I’d recommend signing up to Quidco, Topcashback and Fat Cheese.

You’ve got two options when looking at your flight – you can look for a package holiday which includes your flight, hotel and often airport transfers, or you can “DIY” and book them all separately. This is now my fourth time going to Orlando, and each time it has worked out cheaper to DIY and book everything myself.

If you want to look at booking your flights and hotel together, I can strongly recommend Low Cost Holidays, ebookers and Tesco Compare Holidays.

Getting your flight can be the trickiest bit – everything else can fall in to place later, but you need a flight, and you need to book before they’re sold out. If there are very set dates that you must travel (school holidays, annual leave, etc) then you’ll want to get your flights booked ASAP, before prices increase or seats sell out. If you’re free to book your holiday any time then you’ll have more options when booking your flights, and more chance of getting a great deal.

You can fly direct to Orlando International Airport, or Sanford airport (still in Orlando), or you can fly indirect. I’ve flown both direct and indirect, and honestly, they both have their pros.

Direct:

• Gets you to Orlando faster

• Less time spent travelling

Indirect:

• Clear immigration elsewhere in America – saving you lots of time at Orlando

• Saves you from £100 upwards as opposed to flying direct

Start pricing your flights using various sites – I like to look at Last minute and Skyscanner – I find that Lastminute is generally more up to date than Skyscanner, as they had the Virgin Atlantic sales prices listed, whereas Skyscanner were listing Virgin Atalantic flights for double the price. There’s also Kayak and Google flights. Keep an eye on how the flight prices fluctuate, and you’ll get a feeling of when is a good time to book. When looking at the prices, make sure that baggage is included. It is included with Delta, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, but Monarch charge £43 for a bag. I have never paid more than £500 for a flight, including the credit card fee.

If your dates are flexible then be sure to check the prices for different dates. We saved over £150 each by flying back home a day later than we originally planned. Airlines often have sales too – especially at Christmas and Easter. That’s how we managed to bag direct flights with Virgin for £438.99.

When you are ready to book, be sure to go through the cash back websites (Quidco, Topcashback and Fat Cheese) before purchasing your flights, so that you can get a little bit of money back on the purchase.

Once you’ve purchased your flights, be sure to sign up to the airline’s loyalty scheme. These schemes award you air miles every time that you fly. Even if you’re not planning on flying for awhile, and even though you may not fly with the same airline, you may as well rack up the air miles whilst you can.

I really enjoyed bringing you my Poundland finds last month, and it was great to see what you had all been picking up. This month I’ve found another handful of bargains that I was sure you’d enjoy. Once again, these were found in the King’s Lynn town centre store.

I read about this awesome 99p shampoo from A Thrifty Mrs last year (I know, I know, another mention for A Thrifty Mrs. But El is lovely and her tips are words to live by!) and I managed to get about 11 bottles of the conditioner reduced to 55p each. I’ve not seen the shampoo in any of the “cheap shops” for awhile now, so I’m glad it’s made a come back).

Argan oil is getting a lot of love at the moment, and Poundland has a whole range of hair treatments, including this night repair serum.

I use a MAC paint pot every day as a base for my eye shadow. It makes the colour “pop” and stay on longer. I’ve had much more luck with the paint pots than I’ve had with Urban Decay Primer Potion. The paint pots usually retail at £15, although I tend to get them in Florida from an outlet, but this Calvin Klein cream eyeshadow looks like a fantastic replacement. The RRP is £15.50, although you can often find them cheaper, I’ve not been able to beat £1.

Last month I posted the Carmex lip balm sticks that were just £1, but now Poundland also has the pots on sale.

Finish classic dishwasher tablets may not have been what you were expecting to find in this post, but basically in Tesco each tablet is 25p, but in Poundland each tablet is 10p. That’s a saving of over 50%!

I had read a post about Jane Asher at Poundland a few days before going, so I practically ran to this aisle to see what was on offer. I adore pastel colours, and especially in the kitchen. In fact, Sarah’s kitchen is actually my dream kitchen, so I was keen to see the Jane Asher collection in Poundland. I’ve not had a chance to try anything out yet, but everything was so cute and colourful. I couldn’t believe how many pastry cutters you get in a pack for just £1! And the cupcake cases were beautiful (and strong!) so I’ve picked some up for our wedding.

What have you all been spying this month?

Do you know how expensive men’s hair cuts are? I almost fell to the ground when Tony told me that his most recent paid haircut was £11. We live in a small village with two barbers, so it’s not as though we are paying London prices. After that, I decided that I’d swot up on how to cut Tony’s hair myself. Gulp.

Thankfully there are a ton of useful YouTube videos to get you started. We bought these Wahl men’s hair clippers are just £10.39 – cheaper than a single haircut.  The first hair cut was…okay. Tony’s hair was shorter. Perhaps a bit lopsided, but it was shorter and slightly neater than when he started. But thankfully, since then, I’ve perfected my technique and the whole thing now takes 10 minutes including vacuuming up the hair afterwards. The first haircut was done outside, which I won’t be repeating any time soon – you won’t believe how difficult it is to get hair swept up. But now it’s a chair in the living room with Tony’s promise of vacuuming it up straight away.

So what do you think of the final results? I set the clippers to “8″ for the length, then take off the attachment for any areas that need a closer shave. I’ve just perfected using the clippers for around the ears – beforehand I used a pair of scissors alongside the clippers to do any shaping needed. Now if only we can get my haircut cost down.

Photo from Tilsun Group. 

Let’s rewind a couple of months. One Sunday, my BFF and I go to the cinema and grab some lunch, and of course, the topic of the rising cost of fuel came up. I was absolutely astonished to find that friend gets 600 miles per tank (£55 at most) of diesel, whereas I was getting 330 miles if I was lucky on £60-£65 a tank full. I’m no mathematician, but I figured out that I needed a new car. I could not go on spending £300 a month on petrol a month and drive the car I was driving – not quite an old banger, but knocking on 10 years old and a car that I didn’t feel unsafe in, but I didn’t feel particularly safe in. I bought it in a rush when my old car was broken – which is never the right thing to do.

Decision to get a new car made, where do I go from here? I’ve been working really hard to pay off my debts so I didn’t want to take out a loan for a new car. My boss is a big fan of car leasing, then my colleague’s wife got a lease car and the seed was planted. I did a lot of research, a lot of decision making and a lot of talking things through with my Dad, who Knows About Things. I worked out that the MPG on the particular car I was looking at would reduce my petrol bill to £150, freeing up £150 that I already paid for petrol month in, month out; plus the pleasure of driving a brand new car. Decision made: I was getting a lease car.

I did encounter some bad service when trying to get some quotes. I wanted to go with The Tilsun Group – they are definitely the cheapest company out there. My colleague’s wife took out a lease with them, so I got in touch with her personal sales manager. After two eager phone calls, I then heard nothing back from him, and never received my quote via email. I chased him up – nothing. A week later, I tweeted  about it and received a response from them within 3 minutes. I decided not to respond, and a few hours later they got back in touch to say they had no record of my quote request. Hm, strange that, having spoken to a sales manager twice. To give them their due, they did get a quote to me by the end of that day, but my name was mis-spelt and they omitted the first half of my double barreled surname from the quote.

Select Contracts, however, got in touch with me within a few hours and offered me a competitive quote. It was more expensive than Tilsun over the course of the 2 year lease, but they would need circa £750 up front, whereas Tilsun wanted £1,700 – meaning I’d have to rush to sell my car to free up the cash to make my first payment. Paul from Select Contracts has kept me up to date all the way and has dealt with me quickly, meaning I got my car just over two weeks after ordering it.

How a lease works:
Leasing is really simple but there are a lot of options and fees that aren’t exactly clear when you see a price on a website.

Firstly, you’ll see leases listed as 3+, 6+, 9+ or 12+. This is the number of months payments you need to pay up front/as your first payment. The number following that is then how long you will lease the car for. It’s important to work out the total lease cost – so 3+23 would be 26 payments of whatever you’re quoted, 6+23 would be 29 payments, etc. In my instance, I’ve opted for a 3+23 lease, meaning I’ll have the car for 2 years. I did find that I’d save a massive £20 over the 2 year period if I put down 6 months upfront, which I decided wasn’t worth it for me.

Secondly, unless explicitly stated, there’s a documentation fee. The name of it might changing slightly between companies, but this is their commission payment for arranging the finance, delivering the car to you and taking care of everything else. I was quoted anything from £199+VAT – £225 including VAT, so between £200-£250 seems right. Best Car Leasing Deals do not charge this fee, they’re competitively priced, but they got back to me with a quote too late and I’d already ordered the car from another company.

Thirdly, you will need to set an annual mileage. These are usually set between 8,000 and 10,000 miles per annum and I opted for 20,000 as my commute is 12,000 per annum. If you go over your annual mileage allowance then you will have to pay a fee per mile when the car is collected at the end of your lease. I was quoted 3.2p per mile (including VAT) from one company, so for every 1,000 miles you go over, you’ll be charged £32.

Fourthly, your fixed monthly fee includes certain things. Car tax is covered by the leasing company. This automatically saved me £260 a year. Major repairs (not wear and tear such as tyres) are again, paid for by the leasing company. You will have to pay for an annual service, as a main dealer. You will also cover insurance and fuel payments.

Can you haggle:
The price quoted is pretty much the price – there may be a little leeway, but I wouldn’t count on it. You could of course get the cheapest price online, then visit your nearest dealer and ask them to price match the online price.

What documentation do I need:
This varies between providers. Typically you may need:
2 x proof of address
3 month’s bank statements
3 month’s payslips
Driving license – photocard and paper counterpart

What happens at the end of the lease:
You’ll have a few choices. If you do nothing, the lease company will come and collect the car and then take the car to auction and sell it. However, they will offer you the option of extending the lease, taking out a new lease or buying the car from them. Me? I’m putting some money away so that if at the end of the lease they offer me an amazing deal to purchase the car, I’m in a position to do so.

Other stuff to consider:
Driving a brand new, £20k car, instead of my £2k car actually lowered my insurance premium by £50 for the year. It is important to get quotes before you commit to the lease – be sure to check Go Compare, Moneysupermarket and Confused.com as well as ringing your own insurance provider. My provider said they’d change the policy and charge me £180 for 5 months, whereas a whole new policy was £292 for 12 months. No brainer.

Delivery can be anything from 7 working days if the main dealer have anything in stock, and longer if your car needs to be ordered in.

You may need to pay a refundable deposit – Select Contracts asked me for £300, refunded upon delivery of the car, to cover any cancellations.

So a lease really worked out well for me. I know that some people have the opinion of it being a waste of money, but I get to drive a brand new car, I don’t pay for road tax and if anything does wrong, I’m not facing a hefty repair bill.

Ps. driving a new car is lovely <3

I love having a good rummage around Poundland as there’s always something exciting to be found amongst the utter tat. Although I do love their tat too.

I popped in to the King’s Lynn (town centre) Poundland store mid-April and found some brilliant bargains that I had to share with you.

First up in pole position is this Carmex lipbalm in a stick! I have a bit of an addiction to Carmex stick balms, but they’re a massive £3.25 each in Boots. I tend to stock up whilst we’re in America for $1 each, but finding them in the UK for £1 each is amazing.

Sinful colours nail polishes are fast becoming my new favourites, even over OPI. There’s no chipping and the colour range is fantastic. They sell for £1.99 in Boots, so finding them in Poundland makes them half price.

I really couldn’t resist getting this Sally Hansen magnetic nail colour for £1. You can see the finished results in a photo I tweeted here – bearing in mind I’m not a beauty blogger so I hadn’t tidied them up or sorted my cuticles. The effect was brilliant, I’m very impressed for £1!

Various DVDs for £1 – Russell Kane – Smokescreens & Castles Live is £3.40 on Amazon, Paddy McGuiness Double Play saturday night live tour is £2.98 on Amazon and even Thomas, Percy & The Coal is £2.79.

What do you think of my Poundland finds?

Easter is around the corner, so I’ve been working very hard for you, my lovely readers, and I’ve been testing out Easter chocolate. I know, it’s been a real struggle to help you all out, but it has been a sacrifice I’ve been willing to make.

A few weeks ago, I spotted these great chocolate bunnies in Aldi for 99p and I tried out the white one. Well move over Tony, I’ve found a new love of my life. And even better, they’re now on sale for just 69p, nationwide! They’re available in white, milk and dark chocolate – I’ve tried the white and milk chocolate, and whilst they aren’t Lindt bunnies, they’re pretty darn close. And a 100g Lindt bunny will set you back £2.50 – the Aldi bunny is 120g. You still get your foil wrapped bunny, complete with a bow around the neck.

You’d think a cheap bunny would use very little chocolate, but the chocolate is pretty thick, especially around the ears and the bottom. And did I mention it is delicious? We’ve bought 10 since seeing them in store a few weeks ago, and we’ll be stocking up again this week before they’re out of stock for Easter.

I have long, thick hair that often gets weighed down and I suffer from product build up, often resorting to using bicarb to eliminate my greasy hair. I also straighten my hair with GHDs 95% of the time, which means the ends are always in need of conditioning. The condition of my hair is better since investing in a GHD air hair dryer, but I’m always looking for thrifty ways to improve my hair. I have to wash my hair every two days without fail, and sometimes i have to rely on Batiste dry shampoo to make it through the second day.

You’ve probably seen talk of reverse washing your hair all over the internet and social media these past few weeks, and most of the articles I’ve read mention that it is great for fine hair. Of course, my hair is anything but fine. I once made the mistake of buying shampoo for fine hair because it had pink sparkles in, but it did not do good things to my hair. The idea behind reverse hair washing is to use conditioner first (applied to wet hair), leave it on as long as you normally would condition, rinse with water and then use shampoo. So exactly the opposite of how you would normally wash your hair. And the science bit? Your hair still gets conditioned, but the shampoo leaves your hair extra squeaky and removes the residue left behind by the conditioner, making it lighter, easier to manage and gives you more volume. I’m definitely not in need of more volume, so I was slightly skeptical, but I had nothing to lose.

I washed my hair on Wednesday morning. I was working from home, so I thought if it turned out horrific I could just jump in the shower again and forget this whole nonsense. I don’t want to get preachy about this, but even in the shower I noticed a difference. I needed a lot less shampoo to get a lather going, and my hair was lighter. Drying it took a few less minutes than normal, which is always a bonus, and once straightened, it looked great! It felt soft and manageable. And definitely no added volume, phew.

An added bonus was that my hair didn’t need washing again until Saturday, without the use of Batiste! That’s a whole extra day without washing my hair, whereas before, I was relying on Batiste to get me through my second day. Well I am converted!

Does it still work the second time? It did for me. Again, my hair is soft, doesn’t feel weighed down and dried quicker than normal. This is definitely a keeper to my beauty regime, and even better, it’s free!

Love you hair? You might also like the 99p shampoo that leaves hair soft or how you can have your hair done for free or cheap.

So have you tried reverse washing? I’d love to know how you found it.

We’ve just got back from our little trip to the Co-Op. A 3 minute walk at 7-7.30pm guarantees us something for 10p from their reduced shelf. But tonight was a whole other league.

Tony picked up a couple of reduced yoghurts and we grabbed a 10p loaf of bread, only for them to scan at -6p as a total. Some quick maths made me realise that the yoghurts were on a multi buy offer, meaning they were usually 68p each, or buy two for £1. Each one was reduced to 10p, so for every two we bought for 20p, the till was refunding us 36p – 16p profit.

Well you know what happened next! We raced back to the reduced shelf and cleared all the yoghurts in multiples of two. We bought 22 in the end which meant we were owed £1.76. The store couldn’t give us the money, so we used it to buy some cereal alongside 10p pancakes, muffins and bread. There was a hairy moment when the checkout assistant called a supervisor over, but she said as long as the store didn’t owe us money, it was okay.

Now….what can we do with 22 pots of yoghurt?

With a blog name like mine, you’ll understand that I’m a big fan of Aldi. An Aldi opened in Ely in March last year, so now it is even easier to shop there. Their skin care and beauty products have a great reputation, so I was thrilled when they got in touch to ask if I’d like to test out some products.

I was sent the Lacura Anti-fatigue face mask, Lacura Nutri Build-up face mask (both £3.99), Lacura CC cream (4.99) and the Lacura Body Butter in Coconut (£1.99). The packaging of these products is nice – it certainly doesn’t scream “budget brand” to me, and I’d love to receive these. I decided to try the anti-fatigue face mask first – it promises to deliver intensive moisturising treatment which counteracts the signs of tiredness, refreshes the skin and gives a bright and radiant complexion. The past two weeks have really taken their toll on me with lots of stress and very little sleep, so this was the ideal time to give it a try. I’ve also been suffering with flaky skin on my face for about 2 months now, so I was attracted to the moisturising features of this.

The Lacura Anti-fatigue face mask smells divine – very fruity and I had to resist tasting it. You apply it using a brush and it glides on easily – you can apply it as thickly as you want. It doesn’t dry on the skin and doesn’t get crusty, it’s more like a thick moisturiser that the skin doesn’t soak up. After 10 minutes, I rinsed it off using warm water and a face cloth, and my skin felt soft and most importantly to me, moisturised!

The CC cream promises to banish dull, red and sallow skin. It’s a little too dark for me (MAC NW20), but mixed in with some moisrusier to lighten it, it looks great. It provides good coverage as a base for my foundation – I’ve used it for 4 days now and I’m looking forward to seeing more changes to my skin.

The coconut body butter is absolutely divine – I’m a sucker for anything coconut scented, and this is a luxurious body butter without the hefty price tag. I’m looking forward to writing a post comparing this body butter to The Body Shop’s famous body butter – I really do love it. My elbows are particularly dry and after two uses of this body butter, they were fine. The body butter is also available in shea butter and raspberry – I’ll be picking up the shea butter one with this week’s shopping.

All these products will be available in Aldi stores now – great for Mother’s Day presents.

Have you used Aldi’s skincare? What do you think?