Belated Birthday Presents

Last week my best friend Angela came to stay with me for a few days. We've been best friends since we met at secondary school aged eleven and realised we shared a love obsession for the Irish boyband Boyzone.

Sixteen and a half years later and not much has changed. We still share a love for those Irish musicians, and we're still best friends... except she now lives a few hundred miles away up in Scotland and we don't get to see each other as often as we'd like. In fact, the last time I saw her was a few weeks before I injured my back a year and a half ago, so it was lovely to see her and catch up. We chatted, we laughed, and we got up to our usual mischief at a Ronan Keating concert. We never change!

Angela is renowned for buying me birthday presents... and then forgetting to send them. Sometimes I get them a few months late, sometimes a few more, and on this occasion she hand-delivered my birthday presents six months late. I let her off as I love her, and she's a very busy, hardworking single Mum to the most amazing little boy.

Would you like to see what she bought me?

Angela gave me a box full of lovely hand made bath products from an independent Scottish company called Granny Sally's Soap Kitchen who are based in Edinburgh.

 The products are all hand made from natural ingredients, with either fruit or vegetable bases, and they smell delicious, too. From previous experience of their products, I can tell you they're amazing, and I was excited to get such a lovely box of goodies.

Here are the bath products out of the box.

The Lemongrass & Tea Tree Body Butter has a wonderful silky consistency and has a zesty citrus scent.

The Mississppi Mud Pae face mask looks good enough to eat and smells like chocolate cake batter. I can't wait to give this one a try. (I'm not sure if the name is intended or a typo).

I got two fruity scented soaps shaped like lollies, or soapsicles, as they've named them. I got a strawberry and a dewberry, and they smell amazing. How cute are these?

These little shower melts came in a set of three, and smell like lemons. The idea is to place them at your feet in the shower to give your feet a treat. I'm looking forward to trying these to see if they'll give my feet the TLC they need.

I was also given one of their jelly baby shaped soaps in lemon. Isn't it adorable? These jelly baby soaps come in several other fruity scents.

This is the Shea Delight, which is a whipped shea butter bubble bar that contains coconut and avocado oils. The scent is hard to put my finger on, but it reminds me of an Avon bubble bath I used to get regularly when I was little. It comes with a pink plastic spoon, to make it easy to pop some of it in to a hot bath. It's quite a large bubble bar, and I'd imagine it would cater for at least four baths, if not more.

These little butterflies are cinnamon shower melts and were presented in a pretty little pink organza bag. They smell just like cinnamon sticks so remind me of Christmas spices. These are also designed to place at your feet while you're showering to give your feet a treat.

She also gave me some Thorntons cookies, and a little box of Lindor. I am spoilt!

I'd thoroughly recommend Granny Sally's Soap Kitchen products, and you can buy them online via the link. I can recommend the strawberry shortcake soap and gingerbread man candle from previous experience.

I think it's important to support independent British businesses, especially while we're drifting in and out of recessions and our big name high street brands are buckling in to administrations faster than we can yell 'depression'. The way the big name brands are disappearing, the independent businesses may soon be all we have left.

I believe we should support our own. There's something to be said about buying something which has been handmade and hasn't been mass produced. I love the attention to detail and that lovely hand made feel you don't often get with mass-produced products.

I hope some of you will check this company out for yourselves.

Let me know if you do!

I'm off to try some of that mississpi mud pae face mask, and put my feet up for a little while.