For those of you that may not know, Harper’s Candles are a vegan business that make vegan friendly scented candles. I discovered them when they were travelling for vegan events up and down the country and their scented candles stood out from anything I’d ever smelt before.
Recently, I found out they offer a subscription box! They offer different levels of subscription boxes at different prices, but I decided to opt for the regular subscription box. They are delivered every 2 months.
The regular box contains a mix of goodies as you can see from the picture above. There are different sized candles, tea lights and a wax melt.
First impressions, I was ecstatic. The box was a little brown parcel filled with beautifully personalised labels and amazing scents. I was like a kid at Christmas. Scented candles make me unnecessarily happy!
They all smell amazing, but my personal favourite is the Hygge wax melt. Ever since it arrived, it is always melting in my living room. It’s a gorgeous, soft, sweet smell that fills the room with subtle fragrance.
I have Karma in my office which is a really musky scent which is really nice and calming when I’m working.
I honestly couldn’t recommend these subscription boxes enough. This is only my first one but I already can’t wait for the second one in October. The scents are so lovely and they’re so different to what you normally see on the shelves.
If you’re after something different or even a special gift for someone you know, I highly recommend Harper’s Candles!
Another 2 months has passed us by so it’s time for another run through of my latest delivery of the Deluxe Cruelty Free Beauty Box! I was lucky enough to win this box this month in their usual sharing giveaway. I was so chuffed.
If you want to read about the box before this, click here for the post. Previous posts can be found under the Beauty section.
As always, the box did not disappoint and had so many goodies that I cannot wait to try!
This months box contained the following:
My HairCare Rescue My Hair Hydrate Shampoo Bar (RRP £14)
Natura Pumpkin Sheet Mask (RRP £5.95)
Fairypants perfume (RRP £1.50)
Palm Bar Body Butter Bar (RRP £5)
Bellapierre Liquid Gold 24k (RRP £30)
Niu Body Glow Facial Serum (RRP £27.95)
Gardner’s Halloween Cookie (RRP £2)
Vegan Bunny Chai Latte Soy Candle (RRP £13)
Jeavon’s Rizo (RRP £2.75)
The total value of the Deluxe box comes in at £102.15 but will only cost you £39.95.
I’ve eaten the cookie and Rizo bar already and both were a dream. I haven’t had shortbread for a long time and the Gardner’s cookie was a delicious shortbread.
I’ve written about Natura products in various other blog posts I’ve written and I love the sheet masks. They’re a really lovely treat so I’m looking forward to using this pumpkin one.
My final favourite is the Vegan Bunny Chai Latte candle. I’ve actually bought Vegan Bunny candles off Etsy before, but not for myself! I’ve bought Christmas scented candles as stocking fillers for my family members and regretted not buying one for myself. The Chai Latte smell is incredible! I haven’t lit the candle yet but I can’t wait till I do!
I absolutely cannot recommend The Cruelty Free Beauty Box enough. They only send every 2 months which is more than enough for me, and every month is full of new and interesting treats. I adore The Deluxe box with the lifestyle treats. It’s so nice to receive new things that I’d never normally buy for myself or want to try.
We’re into Summer now and over the past few weeks, Tom and I have been making a conscious effort to clear out our junk and start re-organising ourselves and the home! We are still very much in the process of clearing out but we’ve made a good start.
I’ve filled 1 large bin liner with clothes that I haven’t worn for a year or so (some even longer!). These have now been donated to charity.
Old shoes have also been cleared out, with the unwearable ones thrown away and the others donated to charity. I had, still have, an unnecessary amount of shoes.
With those 2 tasks completed, we were able to reorganise our third bedroom/office/dressing room. It’s much tidier with much more room.
This also included an early trip to IKEA on a Saturday morning after a week of designing our ideal wardrobe using the PAX Planner on their website. It wasn’t the easiest design tool but it was great for what I needed, although did heat up the laptop quite considerably!
My wardrobe design using the PAX planner
With the PAX Planner, you can save your designs to go back to later, add them to your basket and/or print out a list to take to your local IKEA store; which is what we did!
We spent a Saturday morning with our IKEA shopping list, struggling around the self serve section of the store with the trolley, collecting our items and cross-referencing them with our list. As it was still early, it wasn’t busy so we were able to get in and out within the hour. I also treated myself to a BRUSALI Shoe Cabinet.
Our IKEA trip was so exhausting just from lugging the items back and forth from shelf to trolley, trolley to van and van to house, that the thought of building it that same day was completely unfeasible. We settled for building the shoe cabinet first and saving the delightful wardrobe adventure for Sunday.
I wish I took before and after photos of the house, but before our shoe cabinet, we had a very basic shoe rack from Dunelm. This, combined with the masses of shoes, made for an incredibly messy looking hallway. The shoe cabinet has made a huge difference. It’s much more organised and having the shoes hidden away declutters a lot.
BRUSALI Shoe Cabinet
The only problem with the shoe cabinet was that the already provided gap for the skirting board was not large enough for our skirting board. This is probably my own fault for not checking but we got too lazy to cut it so we left it as it is, not screwed into the wall. We don’t have young children so we’re not too worried about furniture falling on anyone other than ourselves!
Now onto the wardrobe…
We woke up early on Sunday morning to build the first 100cm frame. I let Tom sleep in while I built the drawers as he would have the harder job of carrying the wardrobe frame upstairs. We opened all the packaging downstairs and he took the frame up piece by piece as it was heavy in it’s packaging.
We had to move the room around in order to give us enough room to build the frame but once we had that in place, it was fairly simple to follow the instructions. Our favourite thing about IKEA are their instructions with the funny looking faces. It can be quite difficult to follow and we made a few mistakes with misplacement of screws but fortunately they were rectifiable.
100cm frame with 1 drawer
100cm with drawers, shelf and rail
After completing this frame, we took a well deserved lunch break for an hour before moving onto the smaller 50cm frame. After building the first frame, it was much easier and quicker to do the second as we’d already completed the steps once before.
Both frames completed and put together
And finally, to finish off the wardrobes, we attached GRIMO doors with black ENERYDA knobs. The doors were incredibly simple to attach with the hinges and after we measured the door handles in the right place, the look was complete and we were ecstatic with the finished product.
With doors on
With doorknobs on
I’m not sure what everyone’s overall feelings towards IKEA are, but I recommend these wardrobes. Something of a similar size, without the customisable options, from somewhere like Made.com was at least double the price.
In my opinion, it was very much worth the effort of collecting, carrying and building for the perfect wardrobe. I’ll complete another post in the future with the wardrobe filled and some more of my organisation improvements!
VGN Annabel 