You know when you've been wanting to try a brand for ages and finally feel the joy of getting round to purchasing something? This is how I felt about buying something from Conscious Skincare. They came onto my radar in 2013 when they achieved Leaping Bunny certification, and in June I finally got round to looking at their range properly and settled on their Neutralize Facewash. 

The Neutralize Facewash is designed to combat spots and excess oil without drying the skin out. The formula contains lavender as an anti-inflammatory and lemongrass as an astringent, and the company is certified by Leaping Bunny, The Vegetarian Society and PETA.  

I started using this about a month ago as my daily cleanser, and whilst my skin did feel like the perfect balance between cleansed and softened I didn't notice any long term changes to my skin. However, my skin didn't get any worse either - stayed the same. In positive news, like all cleansers I buy, I also tried out on my back and chest (as the skin is thicker and different there) and found it worked a charm on my pimply back (I'm not putting pictures up cause my back is so naturally spotty that I don't wear dress/tops with a low back - just take my word for it that it improved whilst using this).  

Another big plus about this product is the sheer size of it. It foams up nicely too so you only require a little bit each time. Will do me a while. 

I was also sent a free sample of their make-up melt, but it stung my eyes. Not recommended...

I'd recommend this for you if: you have a spotty back or chest, or have skin that is only mildly oily. 

I wouldn't recommend this for you if: you have skin that is very spot-prone. 

Ingredients: aqua, potassium sunflowerate*, potassium cocoate*, glycerin*, potassium chloride, potassium citrate, cymbopogon citratus*, lavandula angustifolia*, citrus grandis seed extract. 

* denotes organic 

Morag x

This week has been a bit more relaxed than usual. Aside from completing my third trapeze lesson (finally getting somewhere with climbing the rope) I've been having a chilled week, which has included working my way through Lolita, making a delicious vegan pizza and selecting the winner for my first giveaway. 

And, obviously, reading a lot of stuff on the internet! 

One of my favourite new speciality food blog finds this week is Gluten Free Cuppa Tea. 

I was invited to the Happy Food Launch in Edinburgh but life got in the way of food. Here's Jen's blog of how the night went. 

Making me drool: Butter Bean and Root Vegetable Stew with Herby Dumplings. 

If you're vegan and in the Essex area Sarah is hosting a meet-up! 

Given my passion for sociology and my obsession with American, I still didn't know the difference between Hispanic, Spanish and Latino was until I watched this video. 

Survey shows that even teenage boys think women are over-sexualised in games. Funny that. 

20 reminders every feminist needs. 

I agree with cutting obnoxious and toxic people out your life. But have a bit of compassion for people with mental health problems. 

On a similar note: managing my spoons apparently makes me a shitty friend. (Article SFW, but the site it's written on is NSFW)

If any women I care about goes ahead with pregnancy which was caused by rape I'd stand by her, but some woman have felt stigmatised in this situation. 

17 clever ways to use mason jars in your backyard. 

My homewares wishlist is getting slowly larger thanks to Louise sharing her garden party wishlist. 

The nominees for the Scottish Fashion Awards is out now. Did you favourite brand make the cut?

I currently work on the Finnieston Strip, and I agree that it has a lot of local talent to offer.

I can't get across to Dundee this weekend but if I could I'd totally be visiting the Artificial Womb craft fair. 

If you're looking to get your nails done (especially if you want nails with broccolis and a rogue carrot - and why would you not?) look no further than the new NAF! Salon. 

Mimmi took her first trip to my home town of Aberdeen recently, here's her photos and thoughts (the word grey is used, ha!).

Glasgow will soon be getting another geek café! 

Helga - who's blog I've been reading for close to a decade - shares how much money she's spent on her blog. 

The sweetheart Hayley shares her five ways of sharing the blogging love. 

Technology required for a simple sales funnel.

If you're wanting to be more proactive in developing brand partnerships but feel a bit icky 'pitching' a brand, I discovered Bloggers Required and got selected for the first project I threw my name in the hat for.

Whilst I've never had a job that involves hosting a stall at a craft fayre, I do regularly attend them and as a consumer I agree with these mistake to avoid. 

Ayden has a lovely new blog post up on how to get a good night's sleep.

One of the biggest barries I faced entering 'geek culture' when I was a student was that I was studying a non-geek subject in the business school. This 29 Photos of Cosplayers Revealing their Day Job is a reminder that you don't have to be geeky by trade to be a geek.

If you're travelling to California anytime soon, $200 to swim with river otters would be money very well spent.

10 retro games you can play on your smart phone (including snake). 

If you're thinking about getting  your nose pierced, here's some advice some recent nose-piercee Lauren. 

How Manouk has dealt with ethical dilemmas whilst travelling the world was interesting and eye-opening. 

And a reminder that it's okay to change your mind. 

As may all know I love myself a good pizza, and have excitedly shared the vegan options available at Project Pie in Dundee and UK-wide at Pizza Express. However, I do occasionally like to create my own pizza at home. The very first pizza recipe I followed was one in my Standard Grade Home Economics recipe book which was very basic and my pizzas since then have remained so. 

However the most recent issue of Vegan Life Magazine* was the pizza special and in it they had a range of pizza recipes ranging from basic to the sophisticated. Confident I already had the basic recipe down, I decided to attempted a slightly adventurous pizza. So I recreated the front cover recipe - the Pizza Veganiano.  

Whilst the base was your standard thick New York base, what made this pizza stand out was the 'cheese' sauce made from carrots and potatoes. Yep, you read that right. The cheese you see on the pizza was actually a sauce made from puréed carrots and potatoes along with nutritional yeast, garlic powder, olive oil and cayenne pepper. This pizza was honestly one of the most beautiful I've eaten and the leftover sauce worked well as part of a cauliflower cheese recipe. 

Whilst I've become quite adept at pizza making over the years it isn't the easiest food to make yourself and I've made a few blunders over the years. Here's some of my tips for making vegan pizza for yourself:

If you have a copy of this issue of Vegan Life Magazine I highly recommend you try this recipe as it was beyond  gorgeous, and I'd quite happy receive something of this quality in a restaurant. If this really doesn't sound up your street the other pizza recipes include a crust based on flax seeds and walnuts, a different crust based on oats and quinoa, mini pizzas and a cheese sauce based on cashews. Then there's the article about what vegan beers to pair with what pizza. Pretty much everything you would need!

Have you tried any of the pizzas from the newest issue? Or did a different article catch your eye? 

P.S. If you liked this you might like my post on making your own vegan sushi at home. 

Just a month back you might remember that American vegan beauty blog Logical Harmony hosted a UK exclusive giveaway to win some Purechimp goodies. Well, guys I was one of those lucky winners. I got one of four runner-up prizes which consisted of the Super Shampoo Bar and a bar of Super Soap (the top prize of the tea and skincare set went to the very lucky Kelly of The Vegan Taff). It's been a while since I received these products and I thought I'd give a round-up of what I thought. 

The Super Soap bar was the first product I began using. Initially I took it into the bath with me but later discovered it was better as a shower soap, as it doesn't foam up as well (does anyone else feel there's a difference between a soap you might use in the bath versus the shower? Maybe just me). But being a natural product I did realise it wouldn't lather up much. It takes the forms of a lovely thin cream that you can easily spread across your body. It also smells delicious and reminds me of a banana hair mask I had when I was 14 (think it was Boots own brand, and was aimed at teenagers). A little bit also goes a long way. 

The shampoo bar was something I waited until the weekend to try as I've never had much luck with natural shampoos and didn't want to risk going to work with oily hair. But thankfully this worked just fine. It also has a lovely banana smell to it but included beer in the ingredients so it formed a nice lather in the shower. It cleansed my hair well and got rid of any grease however I did find it a bit drying. I do double-wash my hair each day using two different shampoos and I've been using this consistently for my first shampoo (second shampoo is a volumising one) so this prevented it from drying out my hair too much. However, while this shampoo got rid of oil, I did find that it didn't add any extra volume, shine or oomph to my hair. Which is something I personally really want from a shampoo. Also like the soap, a little bit goes a long way. 

I'd recommend this for you if: using natural products is important to you or you just like to use soap for cleanliness reasons and aren't bothered if it provides fancy beautifying extras. Also if you like banana smells. 

I wouldn't recommend this if: you like top-notch shampoo and soap which doesn't just clean but adds oomph and volume et al. 

Super Shampoo Bar ingredients: Coconut Oil (Coco Nucifera), Olive Oil (Olea Europaea), Avocado Oil (Persea Gratissima), Beer, Natural Banana Flavour. 

Super Soap ingredients: Olive Oil (Olea Europaea), Water (Aqua), Coconut Oil (Cocus Nucifera), Shea Butter (Butyrospermum Parkii) Cocoa Butter (Theobroma Cacao), Banana Powder (Musa Sapientum), Natural Banana Flavour..

Remember in January when I turned into my mother and began raving about a cleaning product called the Laundry Egg?

Well, the blogging gods clearly listened as Ecoegg sent me over their newest kit* to try some more of their range. Inside of it was their Antibacterial Laundry Egg (a world first!), 2 Laundry Egg Holders, a Double Size Stain Remover, and an Ultimate Detox Tablet. I was also sent their newest fragrance, Orange Blossom to try out to see how it compared to the Soft Cotton fragrance I already have.

Naturally, I was excited (I actually received make-up samples the same day, but was more excited about my newest egg) and grabbed what was currently in laundry basket to try it out (like the secret forty year old that I am).

Each of the eggs are filled with tiny balls that act like a detergent. In each egg there are mineral pellets and tourmaline pellets which acts together to clean your clothes without the use of chemicals. The Orange Blossom box came with several packets of laundry refills, some of which were suitable for whites and some for coloured laundry. EcoEgg has also sent me over a second antibacterial egg so I've created an egg for my coloured clothes and one for my white clothes (so I now have three eggs in total making me weirdly organised).

In my first review I said I would need to see how long it lasts me. I can now report that my original egg is still going strong and in use despite having used it every week since January. So now I have two scents to switch up and change as need be. The quality of both are exactly the same so it will be down to personal choice which scent works best for who (there are other scents on the EcoEgg website too).

Also included in the package was their Double Sized Stain Remover. The Batman top I wear to bed and to get ready in the morning (or just generally laze around my flat in) was getting pretty worse for wear with make-up and toothpaste stains so was the perfect place to start. Obviously these aren't exactly the crème de la crème of stains so I can't vouch for whether it will work on anything more stainy (like...car oil? kids finger paint?) but I can vouch it removed my (probably) one month old toothpaste stains (and random bronzer marks).

On top of all this they also sent me over an Ultimate Detox Tablet to clean my washing machine with. I’m going to admit that cleaning the machine I clean my clothes in is one of those adult things I haven’t quite ticked off my list yet. So…my washing machine was probably in dire need of a detox. To use it, you place it in your empty washing machine and send it for a wash on your hottest setting to get the drum and all those pipes cleaned out. It’s one of those products that are hard to determine the effectiveness of as I’m not really sure how one check’s their laundry pipes, but my machine definitely had a fresh clean smell to it afterwords (for the sake of a review I did pop my head at the entrance of my machine washing and had a sniff...).

This is quite a lot of products to absorb in one go, however if you do want to try this out for yourself, QVC UK will be doing a special deal on everything I've mentioned for better than half the price of buying each product individually on the EcoEgg website. This coming Monday this kit will be the Today's Special Value on QVC so if you do fancy buying it, hop on over on Monday!

The full kit contains:
- The Orange Blossom EcoEgg with refills
- A spare antibacterial Laundry Egg
- Two laundry egg holders
- An Ultimate Detox Tablet
- A double sized stain remover

This deal and the Orange Blossom fragrance is exclusive to QVC as well.