Since I got back Charl has been kind enough to invite me onto her radio show Ginger Girl Says on 6 Towns Radio.  It has been such a cool way to spend our Wednesday nights and is really just an extension of conversations we have between ourselves everything from Celebrity Gossip to our personal dating stories.  You can join us on Wednesday nights from 9-11pm here.

At the start of this week I spent what felt like two full days in Selfridges Birmingham, not that I am complaining, it was a pleasure especially with the brand new beauty hall.  It was my first visit since the re design and I was honestly gobsmacked, it is everything a beauty lover could wish for and more!  The surprise of lots of new brands was great, especially  Urban Decay and Charlotte Tilbury.  There is also now a Beauty Personal Shopping Service available with the lovely Rose, meaning your entire Selfridges Beauty Experience can be tailored to your needs.  I was lucky enough to meet Rose at an event in London just over a year ago and have to say she was absolutely made for this position, she is such a great addition to the Selfridges Beauty Department.  You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram to keep up to date with all the beauty goings on.

Last Monday I spent the afternoon with Urban Decay.  Learning  more about their new launches and was lucky enough to have my make up done by their National Make Up Artist Karen, she is literally a magician with a make up brush!  It was really good to have a closer look at the products that had launched recently as well as the much talked about Naked 3 Palette which launched when I was away.  This little visit also made me completely rethink my foundation routine for summer, so there will be more about that very soon.

Tuesday last week was a truly great day.  I was invited by Dermalogica to take part in their debate as part of Selfridges Beauty Project to discuss the topic, Does The Stereotypical Notion of Beauty Really Empower Women?  We had two sessions throughout the day and I was delighted to be in the company of such inspiring ladies, it was really fantastic to see how beauty can empower women in so many different walks of life.  Doing things like this can really help to change the way people think about careers in beauty and to remove the stigma of it being a less academically challenging profession.  I would really love to hear your thoughts on this in the comments below.

Something else really exciting happened on Tuesday, I met a guy who convinced me to let him take me for a coffee that same night, we went for coffee, walked around my favourite area of Birmingham and will be seeing each other again next week.  The day after we met the most beautiful bouquet of flowers arrived on my doorstep, the most romantic thing anyone has done for me in a long time.  Lets be honest girls flowers are always a welcomed surprise, I will keep you all updated on this situation.

Since arriving back from Morocco I have been shopping so much, I'm going to try and put together some kind of clothing haul as that is what I have bought the most of, having shops on my doorstep again has been far too tempting.  In the last little while I have also  received some really lovely items to feature here on the blog from Skincare, Body Care, Clothing, Accessories and Pizza!  I have so many exciting features planned and genuinely cannot wait to bring you some new and exciting content.  Myself and Charl are going out today to take some outfit pictures including some pieces we have picked up recently so look out for those in the coming week.

I hope you enjoyed this little update, if you like this kind of thing keep an eye on my Instagram, Facebook and Twitter where I share little bits of my days, seven days a week! 

Hi Hunnis!

I am so glad to be back after what seems like the busiest few weeks of my life.  I think its been nearly three weeks since I got the chance to sit down and spend some quality time with my computer and I have genuinely really missed it.  The reason for my little spell away was a mixture of a few things.  My camera has broken and been sent off to be repaired so any new products I have bought and received lately are patiently waiting to be photographed, I say patiently, its killing me not to use them.  Also Ill use this little sentence to apologise for the quality of these pictures but its all I can manage at the moment. If my camera breaking wasn't bad enough my laptop has now given up and gone to laptop heaven so at the moment I am using the family desktop computer, which unfortunately isn't as convenient for me as I often used to write posts on the train to work.  I have also been extremely busy with work, my contract has been increased at Lush so I am now no longer a part time worker but full time between two jobs working 40 hours a week, this has been a big change in my life and I now find myself with very little free time.

I hope that explains why I had a little break and I hope you didn't miss me too much but I have now managed to get into some kind of routine with life, work and blogging so this makes me very happy.

I have so much news and couldn't wait to tell you all.  First exciting piece of news is I got an I phone, eventually after having a blackberry for years.  I love it and don't know how I coped with a Blackberry for so long.  It makes emailing and using social media sites so much quicker and easier, high five to Apple.

As soon as I got my I Phone I signed up to Instagram and its just the best thing ever!  I post everything on there from the make up I'm using each day to what I had for dinner.

Id love it if you could follow me 

@THEGEMMABUTTON 

You all know how much I love my brows but also know what an effort I find it each day to make them look nice, well the effort is no more.  I have had the amazing Benefit Brows Treatment and now have beautiful brows all the time with minimal effort.  I will be writing a separate post  to go into more detail about what is included in the treatment as it was just fabulous.

On Wednesday last week I went for coffee with two lovely ladies from the Elemis Press Team, which was such a lovely way to spend my afternoon.  They introduced me to the new product launches which are all AMAZING and I genuinly cannot wait to share them with you.  It was so great to speak to the lovely ladies I have been in touch with through email for so long, face to face.

Also last Wednesday I went to the Shopping Event in L'Occitane in collaboration with Glossy Box, this was fabulous as I do not know much about this French brand and love discovering new products to fall in love with, the L'Occitane hand cream is now my favourite.  It was great to see some bloggers who unfortunately I don't get to see very often. 

 I have also re subscribed to Glossy Box after cancelling last year.  I started my subsription again as the boxes recently have been fabulous and when I receieved my box in May I was delighted with the contents.

One last very exciting piece of news for you is Lush related, if you already follow @lushbirmingham on twitter you will know, but if not I decided to let you know on here.

At work Jen, John and myself have launched a Lush Birmingham Blog!  We will all be writing on the blog and from now on any Lush related product reviews I write will be over on the Lush blog.

I will be creating a separate page with more information about the Lush Birmingham Blog but its going to be phenominal so keep your eyes peeled.  I would appriciate it so so much if you could follow us  and show us some support.

Follow Lush Birmingham Blog HERE

I think thats everything I couldn't wait to tell you, if you made it to the end thank you so much.

lots of love

Gem

xxx