Welcome to part 2 of my online shopping experience. Are you curious to see how the following web stores score? Just follow me!
Let’s start with:
When it comes to online shopping, my new obsession is the ability to click and collect. This basically means that you fill your basket up with beautiful things. You pay online and then from 24 hours to 5 days later you pick up your parcel of dreams or nightmares, depending on sizing or the picture looking better than the actual item.
On the “New Look” website you need to spend a minimum of £20 to be able to click and collect. This might be a pain in the bum, especially if you have student discount as you end up buying more stuff to get over the discount cut of your order.
The delivery time however has become a lot quicker than it used to be. From the moment that you have placed your order, It usually becomes available for pick up within 72 hours. “New Looks”’s pictures of items tend to look better than the actual item and colours are not the same. The materials can also be very cheap quality and sizing is terrible. Make sure you try on in store to save yourself the hassle of going back for a refund.
Debenhams
I have bought from Debenhams a few times. The items I bought were mainly sports clothing, such as sports bras. Price and quality is very important when you work out (or when everything jiggling about in an insanity class). I have also bought shoes online but make sure you try them on as sizing is terrible. Previously I bought “Faith” which is a highly considered designer brand here in the UK. When ordering my size (and waiting nearly 7 days for them to arrive) I found that they were massive. Now delivery time to store is well within the 72 hour limit I expect to wait. The quality of the garments are good, some materials used are better than others it depends on the designer.
If you buy clothes from the “Henry Holland” range, go a size up. The brand is a very small fit. Other designers, such as Julian MacDonald, are a great fit. I would advise caution with bras. Especially the sports bras “under amour” and “Shock Absorber” are very small sizes. Debenhams do deliver worldwide for a fee, however not the entire website is available. I have checked with Katerina, and for instance the beauty section was not available when she selected Belgium as country to deliver the goods to. There is no spend limit of online orders. However some items not be available for store collection, look out for that when you go to pay.
Marks and Spencer
Buying online is so simple with Marks and Spencer. If your order is submitted to them by 5pm it will be available the next day in store after 1pm. You can’t get quicker than that.
They deliver all the way across the world. Shipping fees differ on where you live.They are opening shops in the EU and recently Turkey gained its' first branch of M&S.
Score out of 10 for Marks and Spencer: 10
Sports direct
In the past I have refused to buy online at "Sports Direct" because of their shipping fees. If you want your parcel to be shipped to the store you need to pay £5 or if you want to have it sent to any local shop near you or to your home you have to pay £5.99. It’s a total rip off.
However I fell for it in the hunt for some white converse trainers. I found a bargain for the Triple tongue white Converse. In their store they charged £10 on top. This is the first thing you learn about Sports Direct: prices online do not in slightest bit reflect the store prices.
Quality and fit of products depends on the brands (size up for Nike, same you are for Adidas, cheaper brands are cheaper quality fabrics and fit is anybody guess). Their trainers tend not to be the new releases from companies. They may be a few seasons old, especially sale items they could be 3 years old.
Score out of ten for Sports Direct: 2
Stay tuned for part 2 next week!
Earlier this month it was National Glamour Day. If you don’t live in Belgium or in the Netherlands you might wonder what I am talking about. Let me tell you.
Welcome back to The Freckled Soul! Yay!
About a month ago, we put the site on a hiatus in order to give our offline lives a little breathing moment. But now we are back. At this point there isn’t a fix posting schedule yet. However I want to try, together with my co-blogger to get two-three posts out each week. This way we can keep up with posting as well as our real life obligations. Plus summer is coming, and face it when you life in Belgium and there is just a little bit of sun out, you have to grab that moment with both your hands, because the next two weeks it might be raining as if all hell broke loose. I hope you will enjoy your stay here and keep looking out for our posts! (Pssss Our first post will be coming in one hour)
Today’s post is going to be a little update on what is going on behind the scenes of this blog. As you may have noticed updates have been slow this month. At this moment I have recorded from my third lung infection this year and I am currently taking care of my boyfriend aka Mr. White Wolf who is also an author on this blog.
My boyfriend has had surgery last week. This is the reason that he has been absent at this moment. He is doing better each day but he still needs to recover. So at this point I am doing a lot of the chores around the house, which is why I don’t have so much time to write for the blog at this moment. I did prepare a blogpost or two while I was sitting by his side in the hospital while he was still out of it from the anaesthesia.
So this is one of the reasons of the reasons that I reached out to the third author on this blog, Rachael. She has also been struggling with a nasty cold. We decided it would be a good idea to temporary close the blog so that we could find the time and create a schedule for each of us to post. And also in the little time that we do find to write, to prep some posts so that we can come back stronger!
I will keep you up to date on when we will be back, at this point I am thinking a few weeks, maybe a month at most. This would mean a return the latest by the 15th of April. I hope you don’t give up on us in the meanwhile!
This is the first part, and probably the first of many of our brand new project, which we titled "Project Home".
As I mentioned before, my boyfriend and I moved in together in May of last year. But what should have turned out to be a beautiful dream, turned into the nightmare. I know due to my asthma I am more vulnerable for illnesses such as the flu and colds, but it is the third time this year that I have fallen ill (and we're only February!) and I believe stress and lack of sleep has been a big influence.
We only have been living here for ten months, but you wouldn't believe the things we have had to deal with. It is crazy. There were the weekly parties at our upstairs neighbour. We even caught his friends doing drugs one time in their car on the parking lot, which is supposed to be a parking lot for occupants of the apartments only. I can tell you, with your own car parked aside, you don’t sleeping at ease anymore. We called the cops on them, because we were scared that they would drive off in their car, possibly causing an accident in traffic. Not for their sake but for the other people on the road. Of course the cops decided not to show up.
Another thing that has been bothering us a lot is that we are paying quite a lot of rent for an apartment that is full of defects. We pretty much needed to beg over and over for repairs. And the landlord has been coming up with excuse after excuse not to do repairs. He even refuses to fix some of the things that need fixing. For instance, our boiler needs fixing. We can still use the heating and have warm water, but it is only a matter of time before it breaks down completely. You wouldn't believe the stunt the landlord pulled in order to get out of fixing it. We have a new appointment in a month to have it fix, but there is no way to tell what he is planning next.
Also don't get me started on the real estate agency. They have chosen the side of the landlord unconditionally. They don't care if the landlord is lying, in their eyes we are the ones that are lying and being difficult. The landlord even told them we wouldn't let him enter the apartment to do repairs. Yes, because that totally makes sense. We are the ones whining about getting the defects fix and then we don't let him enter? Sure.
It has really come to a point in which we are desperate. It's scary that you can be scared to go home in fear of what you might find there, or scared to go to bed in fear of the noise the upstairs neighbour will be making.
So I wanted to turn this post into a little request. We have already been getting a lot of tips and ideas from the people that we have been talking on how to deal with a difficult landlord, but if you have any more tips, simply leave a comment below. Or if you can relate, tell me your story. It feels so good to know that we are not alone.
The product that I am presenting you today are the Loose Pearls by Yves Rocher. I got the colours 67722 Copper (pictured on the left) and 67427 Pink.
This is what Yves Rocher says about them on their website:
Loose Pearls - Intense illuminating effect
For women who wish to obtain an ultra-luminous look. The Pure Nacres - Intense illuminating effect provide an extraordinary makeup effect: an intense reflection of light and incomparable sparkle.
User test evaluation:
- colour is sparkling, luminous and scintillating (95%)*
- their eyes are enhanced and illuminated (over 86%)*
- the product doesn’t dry eyelids (95%)*
- the powder texture is ultra soft (95%)
They contain soothing virgin organic sweet almond.
To intensify your look, use with melt-in khol that underlines the eye contour and deepens the look.
Bottle 0.1 oz. / 3g
*User test under ophthalmological supervision for 21 women during three weeks.
