Hotel essentials

In my last blog post, I told you all about how John and I celebrated 9 years of happiness whilst staying at St Paul's Mercure Hotel, Sheffield. 

I don't travel lightly - ever - not even when staying in a hotel located 20 minutes from our house. Plus, i've stayed in that many hotels due to work commitments, that I've perfected my 'hotel essentials' and thought I'd share some of them with you. 

I find to achieve ultimate relaxation when you're staying in a hotel, it's best to surround yourself with things that make it feel like home. 

For me, that would be all of the products that I use in my "down time". 

1. Skin care 

My current skin care routine contains the following steps. 

STEP ONE: 

On a cotton pad decant the Simple Kind To Eyes Eye Make-Up Remover and hold over your eye lid for a couple of seconds before wiping away the eye makeup from your skin. 

STEP TWO: 

Just like step one - decant onto a cotton pad the Simple Kind To Skin Purifying Cleansing Lotion and clean the remainder of your make up from your face, using circular motions. 

STEP THREE: 

Follow the same direction as step two with the Simple Kind To Skin Soothing Facial Toner 

STEP FOUR: 

On this particular occasion I decided to opt for the Superdrug Vitamin E Moisture Mask to complete my skin care routine. However i would also use the Simple Kind To Skin Hydrating Light Moisturiser after toner. 

You will notice that the products are fairly light weight and that's because it's the Summer and my skin isn't as dry as it is during the Winter months. 

2. Hair care 

At the moment, my go to hair washing products are the OGX Renewing Moroccan Argan Oil Shampoo and Conditioner and i would always bring my own hair products even if i knew that the hotel supplies complimentary. 

3. Lush essentials

It goes without saying that Lush = Relaxation and if your hotel bath room includes a bath, then you have no excuse then to come prepared. 

I knew ahead of my trip that I wanted to indulge in the ultimate pamper session, so i went out and bought a couple of my Lush favourites. 

Beginning with the bath - no bath is complete without a bath bomb of some sort. Therefore i brought two along with me. 

The Sex Bomb

The Dragon Egg

Once you have the bath sorted, I would then recommend that you jump in and continue pampering your face and hair with more Lush goodies. 

Oat Fix Face Mask

Roots Hair Mask

King of Skin Body Butter

An evening of magic | Date night

After a long break, 2 years in fact. Sheffield's well loved magician, Steve Faulkner dusted off his magic wand and booked a line up of three fantastic acts for an evening of classic entertainment. So, as it was my turn to choose this month's date night - I figured John and I would go for a bite to eat and then spend a few hours being mesmerised by magic and Steve's show didn't disappoint. 

On recommendation from a work friend, we started the evening down at Mud Crab, Ecclesall Road. Everything on the menu sounded amazing, however we both opted for a pizza. The staff made us feel very welcome, we love being served by people with sense of humour and were seated just before they dimmed the lights and turned the speakers up ready for their Friday night guests. It's safe to say that we will definitely be back to try the rest of the menu. 

Greystones was packed to the brim, it turned out that the show was a sell out; which is no surprise to us as the last one we attended in the Backroom was full of happy punters too! Steve turned up with a bag of tricks, keeping us entertained in between acts, whilst demonstrating the traditional methods of street bustling. There was a moment at the end of the night that kept us all open mouthed and gasping in amazement, when he picked Margaret from the audience to place needles on his tounge for him to swallow and later pull out threaded on a piece of string. I've seen him perform that trick before but it still had me in shock and the rest of the audience loved it too.

Andi-Gladwin kicked off the show by admitting his love of numbers and being a self confessed technology geek. He then showed incredible skills of combining magic with his passion and even gave us a parting gift to take home. 

Followed by funny man, John Holt who had us all giggling from start to finish. We especially enjoyed his material on 'trying for a baby' and it turns out he's a magician too, which I'm sure is just as good as his comedy. 

Then the award for 'best entrance onto the stage' goes to headlining act, John Archer. He wiggled his bum, with brief case in hand to 'All about the bass'. John continued with his hilarious antics, including playing a ukulele and serenading the audience whilst performing some of the best magic I have seen. 

Overall the night was a success, we had a brilliant time and can't wait for the next one - even if it's in two months or two years. 

If you're interested in booking Steve for your event or simply want to find out more, then check out his website: www.stevesmagicshow.com or follow him on Twitter: @faulknersteve

Keep smiling, 

Krissie x 

STAYING AT ST PAUL'S MECURE HOTEL

This is blog post 3/3 about our 9 Year Anniversary celebrations, therefore please read PART ONE and PART TWO before you continue. 

As explained in part two, we decided on the day of our anniversary to book into a hotel with a spa for the evening. Although we booked the room at last minute, we still managed to conjure together a list of important requirements for the hotel. 

1. The room had to have a bath - this is due to the fact that we don't have a bath in our house. Yet one of the ways I like to relax is by throwing a Lush bomb into a bath filled to the top and soaking until i'm a prune.  

2. It needed to be located central in the city. Purely because we wanted to have everything around us; shops, restaurants and bars without having to walk far. 

3. It also had to have a spa with relaxation rooms and a pool - just to help us indulge even further and have the ultimate relaxation experience. 

A little Google search for 'hotel and spa Sheffield' soon brought up a list of potential places. However, by following St Paul's Mercure Hotel on Twitter for some time, i remembered their facilities after previously having a nosey at photos - which made the decision pretty easy. 

After calling to confirm that the room did in fact come with a bath and complimentary access to the spa, we were advised by the check-in assistant to sign up and become a member on the Mecure website to receive 10% off our booking. - An added bonus, which meant that i could upgrade the room (for the same price) to include a late checkout of 6pm on the Sunday. (After all, I was going to take full advantage of that bath and spa!) 

Checking in was fast and friendly. The staff are all full of smiles and that always makes the process 100 times better. They put us in a gorgeous room over looking Sheffield Peace Gardens and the Guild Hall, but most importantly it had a bath! 

I loved the decor - mustard yellow is one of my favourite colours and this theme ran throughout the whole room. 

A queen sized bed took up the majority of the room, surrounded with amazing snapshots from inside the Peace Garden's. 

John loved this area of the room for reading. He actually suffers with back ache and these chairs were a complete comfort for him - a nice feature, especially for him to wait while I was getting ready! 

As a make up lover, this desk doubled up as my dressing table with ample room to layout all of my products and brushes. 

Wow, even now I love looking back at the views we had. I couldn't stop watching the clock whenever we were in our room and actually took about 20 photos with the sky changing throughout. 

The bathroom definitely didn't disappoint. I'm not even ashamed to admit that during 26 hours, I took two baths and  two showers. Not because I was dirty but because I could. 

As you can see by the colour of the bath water, I even made a trip to Lush to pick up a couple of bath bombs: one for each afternoon. 

Plus, the room came with complimentary smellies and bath robes for us to use too.

...

Overall, it was a fantastic treat and there's no doubt that we will be back again. 

See you soon St Pauls Mecure, Sheffield

Krissie

x