This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

There's only one way to start this post, and that's...

 

So another week of being cooped up in the office whilst the sun shines on proudly...punishment yes, but at least it held out so we got to enjoy a few early evening rays! (HK Mouse: ahem - at least you have sun over there, we're currently being battered by a Typhoon...).

 

In not so great news, the weekend doesn't look so cheery - boo hiss - but let's look on the bright side, whatever the weather, you have two luxurious sleep-ins ahead with 48 hours of pure YOU time! 

 

When we haven't been itching to wriggle into a bikini rather than work wear, this week the Mice have mostly been...

 

Springing out of bed and into our early morning makeup routine just so we can use our new Naked Urban Decay eye palette! There's nothing quite like opening a brand new piece of make up especially when it's a beautiful array of bronze hues. 

 

 

I've been on the hunt for the perfect eye palette for a while now, one that I can use for everyday and jazz up a little more from office to cocktails. Well this bad boy is your answer - with 12 shades to pick from it ranges from a milky cream base to gentle golden tones, almond essentials and deep chocolates with a sprinkle of pizazz. A mix of matte and metallic shades gives you the option of day to evening and it comes with a double ended brush to make application a smooth operation. 

 

At £37, the palette's a little bit more than your Rimmel trios (remember those?!) but with 12 shadows in one neat box it works out at a mere £3.08 a colour - bargain!! Pretty perfect I'd say! 

 

Ummm'ing and Ahhh'ing with every lip smacking mouthful on our recent trip to Raw Duck. 

 

I often stroll past the bustling Duck Soup in Soho and always make a mental note to get it in the diary ASAP. However, whenever I've tried, the booking policy always seems to be my barrier, requiring a minimum number of diners for bookings (which my table for two never meets). As a result, the walk-in tables are my only option...a tasty restaurant in the heart of Soho = constantly packed...so it's still firmly on my to-do list! 

 

However the sister restaurant, Raw Duck, is a different story all together. You can make a booking for any party size easy peasy, so on that basis this is now my favourite sibling! Having said that, it's not the easiest location to get to. The nearest station is Hackney overground however, located just a trot from London Fields, it's a great brunch / lunch option to pair with a day nosing around Broadway market. 

 

Once you spot the neon raw duck sign, you've reached your destination and there are only good things ahead! 

 

 

Decor is simple yet quirky with blackboard walls for wine lists, bookcases crammed full of knick- knacks and long sharing tables divided by a line of pot plants to give you a little more privacy! 

 

 

 

Recommendation number 1 - order cocktails they are immense! We opted for the Sparking Shrub (A fizzy fresh rhubarb and vanilla party in your mouth) and a Provence 75 (a light citrus lavender gin delight). So far so good...

 

The menu is a mixture of small and large plates from all over the world to share with your dining companion - they advise 3 small and 2 large which was the perfect amount for two hungry tummies! We were a little daunted by the menu so to avoid missing out we asked for recommendations. 

 

First up a simple dish but oh so delicious - basically a Greek yogurt dip with a punch of amazing flavour from Israeli spices...

 

 

We went for a few trusty favs ,super creamy mozzarella and thick authentic prosciutto - both delicious with the homemade sourdough bread...every scrap was devoured...

 

 

 

For the large plates we went for the rare hanger steak, shaved radish, salted ricotta and cicorino leaves...delicately flavoured meat cooked amazingly rare paired perfectly with the creamy ricotta and crunchy radishes...

And finally, after a rave review from our waitress we went for the buttermilk chicken...unfortunately this is where the experience fell down a little, our drinks took twenty minutes to come and arrived with our small plates - not ideal when you've had the day from hell in the office and are gasping for anything stronger than water! However, once we took our first sip all moaning was soon forgotten...that was until we noticed the chicken dish was missing. Fifteen minutes after finishing all our plates we enquired and were informed that the kitchen was very busy but it would be on it's way shortly. At this point we were already late for our next date so cancelled our order of the much hyped buttermilk chicken booo! 

Despite the slightly slack service I would venture back again in the hope that it was an off Wednesday at Raw Duck...everything we got to taste was super, bursting full of flavour evidently using the best quality ingredients. And besides, the brunch menu looks pretty tasty and I'm all for second chances...!
 

On that note I am now ridiculously hungry and must go and kick this weekend off in style...with some delicious food, a strong cocktail and of course some fun!!!

 

This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

...miraculously NOT on holiday.

It's a sad, sad week when not one of us is drinking Champagne for breakfast, living out of a suitcase or on a constant mission to find the next Instagram-worthy beach shot. Fear not though Blog Buds, I can guarantee that our passports won't be loitering in the drawer for long, our travel toes are already itching and we're very much in planning mode for our upcoming overseas jaunts - watch this space...

In the meantime, I've been making the most of being back home for a bit, enjoying summer and catching up with friends. In glass half full mode, and chanelling that well-worn saying "a change is as good as a break", I guess if you're coming back from a long trip then staying at home is effectively a holiday (just with less bikinis and more spreadsheets). Convinced? Yeah, me neither?! I have been doing my damndest to cram the last seven days with as much lovely stuff as possible though, so here's a quick round-up of all that's new and fabulous in Mouseland. This week the Mice have mostly been...

Turning a whiter shade of pale now that I've finally caught on to the pale nail trend. The London Mice who are much cooler and more fashion forward than their HK sister, blogged about Tippex talons this time last year. Twelve months on, and I'm just about playing catch up.

When it comes to nail colours, given the fact that I work in a more corporate environment than the London Mice, I tend to stick to deep reds and pretty neutrals. Post my last couple of holdays though, with hands a little more tanned than usual, I thought I'd give white nails a try... I've braved them in the office over the last few weeks, and so far no outraged comments about their inappropriateness, so I'm going to take that as tacit approval.

I started with low cost, fairly safe, white-toned beiges and pinks courtesy of Barry M Gelly Hi-Shine nail polish. I opted for Rosehip (pinky white) and Almond (beigey white) which are a bargainous £3.99 each and last on my paperthin nails for a good three or four days with minimal chippage.

And then, sold on whiting-out, I graduated to blinding white - we're talking full-on tippex-esque nails here - with Chanel's Eastern Light.

All three colours are fairly tricky to apply and pretty prone to streaking but with careful loading of the brush and three coats I tend to manage to make them look passable. If anyone else is as backward in adopting trends as I am, I'd highly recommend all three products for clean, modern, summery nails.

Having serious concerns that I'll turn into the old woman who lived in her shoes after previewing the brand new Charlotte Olympia Fall collection at the Hong Kong Landmark store last night.  

The Shanghai Express collection will hit stores in a couple of months time but is currently available for pre-order. With Ming vase inspired platforms, panda flats (the perfect Eastern take on the much-loved Kittys) and Dollys with tasselled backs, each and every pair are kitschy fabulous and I want them all! Here's a little look at the range...

I also got a sneaky peek at the 9 till 5 Collection Lookbook and have my name down for a pair of Natalie's... Well, it's wrong not to bag a pair of your namesake shoes isn't it?! If you haven't heard about this new range yet, let me fill you in... Due to drop in stores in Hong Kong in late August, the 9 till 5 collection is designed to offer shoes that can be worn all day, every day.

Charlotte Olympia fans (let's call up Olympians) will know that her platforms can reach a neck-breakingly awesome 6.5 inch height, which is fine for taxi to curb nights out, but not so great for trotting around the office. Step up the 9 till 5s which sit at a much more manageable 4 inches and come complete with a pair of matching stockings and a super-cute briefcase-inspired shoebox designed to sit professionally under your desk. Keep your eyes peeled for well-heeled girls everywhere spinning Charlotte's web in an office near you very soon...

Getting flicky with it following my acquisition of the full-sized Benefit They're Real! Push-Up Eyeliner. I blogged a couple of weeks ago about trying out the sample of this brand new Benefit liner and summed up by saying it was good but not game changing. Well, after picking up the full-sized version in duty free last week, I've sort of changed my mind. Where the sample size has a squeezy tube which makes dispensing the correct amount of product tricky, the full-sized version has a twist base which means that as long as you'e restrained in your twisting, you get a perfect amount of liner. Having a full-sized pen to hold also makes applying a precise line much easier. The result is a much finer, tighter line than I can usually achieve with a brush and a gel liner.

As I said before, once you've applied the liner, it's pretty much there until you remove it and in fact, lots of eye make-up removers aren't even up to the job of shifting this stuff. Great when you want eyeliner that goes the distance, not so great when you're trying to avoid the panda look the next day. To combat this issue, Benefit has formulated a product specifically deisgned to remove the They're Real! liner and masacara - the aptly named, They're Real! Remover... While I haven't tried it, reviews are good, but the £14.50 a tube pricetag is fairly punchy. My top tip is to use Boots No7 Beautiful Skin Eye Make-up Remover which gets rid of every last scrap of black in just a single swipe and comes in at just £8.50 (as far as I'm concerned this is a total dupe of the £21 a bottle, Lancome Bi-Facil Make-up Remover too).

And that's all for another week! I don't know about you, but...

 

This weekend I'm thinking that if a little of what you fancy does you good, then surely a LOT of what you fancy is going to make you awesome...

 

Have a wonderful weekend!

 

x

 

The Mice

This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

…BACK TOGETHER!

Yup, this week all three of us Mice have been hanging out at Mice Towers, London, drinking too much Hendricks and generally being very squealy and squeaky (we tend to revert to a sister language spoken at a speed and pitch that only dogs can hear and no one who isn’t a Robbo can properly understand…)

When we’re all in the same city we try to squeeze in as much fun as the week can hold and this week has been no exception. When we haven’t been sobbing in a corner over the football (less said about that, the better), this week the Mice have mostly been…

Munching our way through a seriously mind-blowing eight course menu at the Clove Club. The London Mice checked out the Clove Club a few weeks ago for cocktails and gave it a big thumbs up. I’ve read a myriad of glowing reviews about the restaurant and have been dying to try it, so this week we finally bagged ourselves a booking, spent the day eating minimally in preparation, and moseyed along to Hoxton with rumbling tummies and very high expectations.

We started the evening with a glass of Champagne in the bar where we chatted about our days and swooned over the beautiful jugs of flowers sitting on the bar next to copper coktail shakers.

We then moved through to the dining room where we were greeted by a chorus of “Hi” from the chefs and kitchen staff slaving away in the open plan kitchen. The dining room is minimally decorated with lots of white and scrubbed wood but the effect is homey and laidback rather than stark. The kitchen, a hive of activity, gives the room buzz and a dash of colour courtesy of the turquoise splashback tiles. 

The menu is fixed and comprised of a set of three small starters served together to kick things off, followed by a procession of three bigger main courses and topped-off with two desserts and petit fours. There’s an optional charcuterie plate (which we went for) and an optional main course (which we also went for) and we got a bonus main course to boot (fatty Mice). That’s an awful lot of food for three girls, but we gobbled up each and every morsel with gusto. The optional charcuterie was a dish of pale buttery Saddleback which had us oohing and ahhing and fighting over the last slither.

Each of the three starters was beautifully put together and so incredibly good that we’d have happily had full-sized portions of each. We particularly loved the buttermilk fried chicken and pine salt – three grown-up chicken nuggets served atop a bed of pine needles. And how beautiful are the sheep’s milk yoghurt and pea tarts?

Too good to eat? Nope, we inhaled them and they were ridiculously delicious. The Asparagus, black sesame and gouchuchang was also simple but sensational.

Next up an earthy Jersey Royal soup holding aloft a perfectly poached Gull’s egg sprinkled with Montgomery cheddar and a scattering of truffle. Silence descended on the table as we slurped up every last drop of this dish.

Then our bonus course of tissue-thin slices of cucumber cloaking a bed of crab. Swiftly followed by a second stellar fish dish – salmon with courgette and basil spiked with Indian spiced butter.   

We then came ashore for the meat courses. First up, 30-day, dry-aged Challans duck breast served with green-topped baked carrots and a yolk-sized cake of carrot puree, and then juicy, minty Tamworth pork chop with a salty anchovy kiss.

Staggering onto the dessert leg of the meal, we were all wowed by the Amalfi lemonade and Sarawak pepper ice-cream which fizzed and sparkled like an actual glass of the most deliciously refreshing lemonade you’ve ever drunk.

The second dessert was probably our least favourite – baked loquat kernel custard with almonds – a perfectly silky custard but with a fairly powerful flavour, we commented that it was a bit like Amaretto crème caramel.

Lastly the Petit Fours including a handwrapped Clove Club Chocolate bar with coffee and almond-biscuit ganache and what looked like three cough pastilles… We were reliably informed by our lovely waiter that these were Dr Henderson’s Bonbons – sugar shells filled with a concoction of fernet branca and crème de menthe. We were told to put a bonbon on our tongue and wait… as the sugar shell melts, the liquid centre is released giving a burst of minty freshness to end the meal (and the fernet branca apparently aids digestion meaning all that overindulgence is countered…ish!).

We all agreed that it was one of the very best and most inventive meals we’ve ever eaten and left merrily reliving it all course by course clutching another chocolate bar each to be wolfed down with a coffee the next morning at our desks while dreaming of going back for round two!

The set menu that we ate was £55 per head

The Clove Club

380 Old Street 

+44 (0)207 729 6496

Channelling our inner Audrey and trying out the latest liner promising Hepburn-esque feline flicks. 

When I’m back in London one of my key shopping pitstops is Boots. Hong Kong has a ridiculous dearth of budget beauty products so it’s dizzyingly exciting to be faced with shelves and shelves of shampoos, nail varnishes and moisturisers. On an initial case-out of what’s new and notable, I picked up a couple of Barry M Gelly nail varnishes (great colour range, nice high shine finish and good, non-chippage), some still yet to be trialled Fake Bake tanner and the latest Benefit base – the Big Easy (a sort of cross between a foundation and a BB Cream – velvety finish, great coverage - I’m loving it). While I was at the Benefit counter, I spied an advert for the soon to be released They’re RealPush-up Liner – little sister to the bestselling They’re Real Mascara. I’m a huge fan of the mascara and buy it in bulk whenever I pass through duty-free. I’ve heard whispers that latest addition to the range is phenomenal, so I was pretty happy when I got a free sample of the eyeliner when I bought my Big Easy.

They’re Real Push-up Liner is a gel formula eyeliner but rather than coming in a pot and requiring a thin brush and a steady hand to apply it, this liner is in pen-form with a flexible silicon nozzle applicator. The claim is that the liner delivers the perfect cat-eye and manages to get right into the base of your lashes. The sample tube is pretty teeny and while the full-size version has a twist-base dispenser, the trial-size requires you to squeeze the tube to dispense the product instead. I think this may mean that I squeezed out too much product, as I found the blob of liner on the applicator far too much and ended up having to use the back of my hand as a palette… The liner goes on smoothly and the angled tip of the pen is great for good flick action. Staying-power is incredible, my liner lasted all day throughout hot commutes, a full day in the office and a night out. In fact, despite some serious scrubbing that evening, I still had my cat-eye when I woke up the next morning…

Overall verdict, the new liner’s good and I will definitely try the full-sized version when its out (on 27th June) but it’s not as make-up game-changing for me as the mascara.

Listening to Lana on a loop checking out the brand new album from LDR, Ultraviolence. But, despite the loop listening, we’re not convinced.

Maybe we were expecting too much, maybe we just need to give it a little more time to grow on us, but it just hasn’t grabbed us like 'Born to Die'.

When 'West Coast' was released we were seriously excited for the new album to drop, but having given it a few listens, it’s really just that track and a couple of others that grab us while the rest of the album seems to merge into a bit of a breathy, dreamy blur. We don’t hate it, we’re just not sure that we love it. The reviews have been pretty good generally and it’s apparently charting very well so maybe it’s just us…

And that’s it for another week blog buds! We’re off for a weekend of sistertime (which is a bit like hammertime but less hammery, more gin-fuelled and much, much more awesome…). Wherever you are, whatever you’re up to...

Lots of love

The Mice
x

This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

Weekend Greetings Blog Buds, it's....

 

We hope that as you read this, you're making lots of exciting, cocktail-soaked plans for the next two days. To help speed along the rest of your office-bound day, here's a quick rundown of the week gone by in Mouseland. Grab a coffee (and  cupcake - go on you deserve it...), this week the Mice have mostly been...

Getting down and dirty with what's sure to become a skincare stalwart - GlamGlow Supermud Clearing Treatment.

This week has been very much about relaxing and recharging after too much fun at the weekend, so there have been lots of lazy nights-in with the obligatory at home beautifying. While finally getting round to watching Pitch Perfect (loved it - ideal girls' night-in movie), we decided a mani and face pack were in order. We picked up a pot of GlamGlow's Supermud last week and had planned to do a full review in a month or so on the basis that products generally don't have instant effects and we'd need to give it a fair go. Well, scratch that. This is a wonder product and we don't say that lightly. 

Slather on a thin layer of the pepperminty mud, it has some weird lumpy bits which are apparently tea leaves, so don't worry about those. You'll feel a tingle as it goes on and then you leave it for fifteen to twenty minutes while it dries to papier mache consistency and sucks out all the bad stuff. In a disgustingly fascinating twist, you can actually see the gunk that's been drawn out through the dark spots as the mask dries down - love a product you can actually see working. Once the time's up rinse it off with warm water and you'll reveal glowy, velvety smooth skin. Any blemishes are instantly reduced and here's the really miraculous part - pores are miniscule, actually noticeably tiny. A couple of days on and I'm still marvelling at my new skin. Go and buy a pot now, make sure you spread the word, and thank us later.

Rediscovering H&M's cooler, edgier big sister store, COS. We try do a spot of wardrobe rehab every few months, editing out things that don't fit, are worn-out or broken or that we just don't wear anymore. Aside from leaving us with a more streamlined, tidy collection of clothes, this also means we have room for new season pieces. Win, win!

A recent clear-out also lead us to identify a bit of a gap in our work wardrobes. While we've got the basics covered, we're missing those colour pops and more interesting pieces that can lift a dull day behind your desk. En route to Zara on a mission to fill the gap, we wandered past Cos and spyed a bright green top calling our name. We haven't shopped in Cos for a year or so for one reason or another, but we popped in to check out the top, and left an hour later laden down with bags... Because we're short and quite small we have to dodge the boxier, mid-length stuff, but Cos does a great line in well-cut, nice quality pieces with a dash of added quirk. Everything we picked up feels far more high end that highstreet and we've already worn (and been complimented) on lots of our purchases. Cos is very much back on the 3BM high street shopping radar. 

Here are a few of our fav buys:

COS Graphic Print Skirt
£79

 

COS Short Panelled Skirt

£55

 

 

COS Printed Silk Top

£79

 

While we were in there, we also couldn't resist adding to our pool of wardrobe staples. If you haven't discovered yet, Cos does the best basic T-shirts on the high street (think T by Alexander Wang without the giant dent in your bank balance), at this price, you can snap them up in every colour.

COS Round-Neck T-Shirt

£19

 

 

Giving it even more lip with yet another new lipstick purchase. Yup, we know that we said last week that we aren't really lipstick girls, but this week's new lip product may just tip us into full-blown lipstick addiction... Lipstick Queen's Velvet Rope in Star System.



Velvet Rope is a matt lipstick but unlike other matt products, it doesn't feeling drying or waxy and glides on leaving a silky slick of colour. Quite aside from the fact that it gives great lip, we adore the packaging which is very Tom Ford-esque and makes us feel like Marilyn Monroe.

We played it safe this time with Star System, the perfect nude, but we're now eyeing up Black Tie and Brat Pack - much punchier reds - and have a feeling that our Lipstick Queen collection may be growing exponentially in the very near future...
Coffee drained? Only cupcake crumbs and a smudge of icing left?

Phew, because that's a wrap!

We hope you have a wonderful, wonderful weekend, we'll mostly be making sure we live by our weekend mantra...

 

Lots of love

x

The Mice