November Favourites

November favourites and it’s my birthday month. I still get a little jolt of excitement when I see the word November, because I remember just how amazing it was as a child when my birthday finally came around. Such a long wait! I’m not big on birthdays; other than demanding at least two nights away somewhere nice, a home-baked cake from my Mum, time off work and special treatment from anyone who comes into contact with me in the week prior and after, I’d say I’m pretty low-maintenance.

Anyway it’s on the 28th, just in case there’s a chance you will come into contact with me and want to react with the appropriate enthusiasm levels. (Give it a good 8/10, if you can. Think “greeting someone who has just passed their driving test on the first go”.)

Here are this month’s favourites, including some incredibly cute beauty that would make fine stocking-filler-fodder, the cashmere that’s a cut above the rest and the lip balm I’ve been using for twenty-five years. (Not the same tube. Although I do have a MAC Strobe Cream from 1999, so.)

[Ad info: no paid or sponsored content. Contains affiliate links and the Hello Kitty product was sent as a press sample.]

Remember that there’s a video version of this post at the bottom of the page. Sometimes it’s quite nice, I find, to just have a Youtube video ambling on in the background as you do menial tasks. Part of me feels as though I’m doing myself a disservice by suggesting this, that I’m selling myself short - oh just stick me on as white noise, I don’t even care whether you’re listening properly or not! - but I’ve been doing this gig for sixteen years now. I’ll take whatever views are on offer, I’m not fussy!

Best Book

Best book of the month, for me, is the new Booker Prize winner: Flesh by David Szalay. I wrote more extensively about this in my recent post here, but I’ll say it again: the writing style is so fresh, modern and spunky that I cannot help but be in full admiration. I mean, it’s quite the risk to write an entire novel where the main character speaks all the way through but manages to say virtually nothing. To write a whole book following a man’s journey through life yet have him play almost no part in it.

Spectacular, in its own way. Very clever. If you love a page-turner and simply must have a plot then this might not be for you, but then again, I couldn’t put it down, so…

Find it here online.

Kit-sch Beauty

Even if these didn’t have strange, featureless Hello Kitty heads as lids they’d be a winner because the products inside the packaging are so very good, but the addition of the retro-green cats makes them ideal stocking filler fodder.

Pixi’s Hydrating Milky Mist (here) adds an instant burst of dewy hydration if you feel as though your skin needs a quick fix, or if you want to refresh makeup slightly, but I am now a convert to all of these mists and can tell you the most lovely way to use them is after cleansing and before serum. Whew do they lock in that moisture! Extra plumptious! The mist is £16 and the makeup setting spray and exfoliating tonic (which is brilliant) have also been adorned with the Hello Kitty lids.

I love them.

Favourite Shoes

You lot know all about these LK Bennett shoes. I repeated the whole “love letter to the pointed courts” mainly for the benefit of the Youtube subscribers, but if you missed the post then you can read it now:

Brilliant Cashmere

I should have looked up my Chinti & Parker cashmere sweatpants before including them in the favourites, because I don’t think they make them anymore with the cuffed bottoms. (Sidenote: isn’t “sweatpants” the most terrible name for any sort of garment? Why does it even need “sweat” in it? Had the person naming these ever sweated into cashmere before? Nobody wants to sweat in cashmere! It’s almost impossible to wash it and so you have to make sure that you don’t eat, leave the house or get even remotely hot in it.)

They do a wool-cashmere mix but these are not the same! I have both. I have tested extensively. M&S do similar but I have also had these and can tell you that there’s quite the difference. Although the M&S are about half the price so it’s forgivable. At any rate, I’m going to recommend 100% cashmere joggers in general, despite them being the most ridiculously inconvenient and inappropriate thing you can own, because they make you feel as though you’re wearing clouds.

The M&S ones are here, the C&P wool-cashmere are here.

The Lip Balm I’ve Been Using for 25 Years

Sorry but can you quite believe that? Twenty five years! It was only the other day, when I realised that Elizabeth Arden 8 Hour Cream was the one thing that was getting rid of my sore, cracked lips, that I worked out that I had been using this product in one way or another for two and a half decades! First introduced to it as a model, in 2000, because in those days makeup artists used 8 Hour Cream for absolutely everything, including as a body gloss, a brow tamer, a lid sheen, a highlighter… The smell of it is just completely etched into my brain.

It has been around for an absolute age and for good reason: it really works well. I’ve been testing lip plumpers and lip treatments for a beauty awards and in terms of treatments, nothing much comes close. Especially for the price. I am a big fan of Lanolips and also of Glossier Balm.com, but those tubes are tiny by comparison - you get 50ml of the 8 Hour Cream! - and so I do need to give the Arden one some sort of virtual winners’ rosette.

Right: here’s your vid. Make sure you’re subscribed, because the next thing coming your way is the Books and Chocs roundup, 2025! If you’ve never experienced the thrill of this particular feature before then: brace positions.

You can get 8 Hour Cream for about £19 instead of £31 at time of writing - it’s here.