5 Tips For Using Shipping Forwarding Services.

Do Your Research

Make sure you absolutely cannot find the product anywhere online first. Check eBay and Amazon. It’s always better to buy direct from the store if possible because forwarding and purchasing services will always charge a fee one way or another.

Read The Fine Print

Make sure you read the terms and conditions of your service provider. Some companies don’t allow refunds, some do, but charge through the nose for it. Also another little known pitfall is that some online stores have cottoned onto product forwarding and won’t ship to forwarding addresses. Stick to smaller companies for purchases like that.

Understand What You Are Buying

Make sure you pay attention to the weight and materials of your product as the weight can drastically effect the cost of shipping and sensitive materials can be a nightmare at customs. Forwarding services are not very understanding when it comes to your items being held or destroyed at border control. They’ll also charge you a fortune to ship something heavy like furniture.

Find a Shipping Company That Works For You

Ask around and see if you know anyone who’s used a service like this and talk to them about their experience. Some companies are better for bigger items for security and insurance reasons and some smaller companies are better for compact, easy to ship items and are more cost effective than using a larger company.

Watch Out for Sneaky Add Ons

Some companies will brag that they don’t charge for their services but will throw in extra charges for things like wrapping, handling and insurance. The more transparent a company is about their charges, the better. Also check out the store that the item is from and how much shipping they charge for in country purchases. It’s often free particularly from larger stores, and a dodgy company might charge you for initial shipping to their address when they didn’t get charged for initial shipping at all.

Sites to Check Out

Myus.com

Brionybuysuk.com

Shopaholiques.com

Priceusa.com.au

Hopshopgo.com

If you have any questions you can follow me on Twitter and like me on Facebook. I also guest edit the PayPal shopping site Lustable and talk about online shopping on the radio.

Thankfully I have two trump cards in this area. Rather good genes in the ageing department (my mother looks like she’s about thirty and I’M almost thirty) and the fact that I hate the sun. With a passion. Seriously, I’m like, half vampire. Unfortunately, I live in a country where you can’t escape the sun if you want to ever leave your house. 15 minute walk to the shops, sitting on a balcony drinking sav blanc or watching some form of sport, it’s unavoidable. So I’m constantly slathering myself in sunscreen, which is often thick and drying, as well as making me even whiter than I already am.

So imagine my excitement when the clever folk at Vaseline came up with the most ridiculous I-can’t-believe-they-hadn’t-invented-it-yet product of the century. Total Moisture Aloe Fresh SPF 15 Daily Light Lotion. It’s body lotion with sunscreen in it. Genius.

Do you smell a giveaway? I certainly do! 

The fancy people at Vaseline are giving one of my readers the chance to win A YEARS SUPPLY of Aloe Fresh. That’s one bottle per month, for a whole year. That’s a hell of a lot of sun protection right there.

Here’s what you have to do.

• Head to Facebook and like the Vaseline page
• Pick your most surprising skin fact from the list below
• Use it to enter the comp
• And share the fact with your Facebook or Twitter friends

Skin Facts – Very Important for Saving Your Skin (and also entering the comp).

1. There are two different kinds of sun rays which can cause our skin serious damage – UVA and UVB.

2. As much as a short walk from the train to work is enough to cause incidental sun exposure.

3. More than 47% of Australian women rate dry skin as the number one skin concern, while less than 40% use a body lotion daily.

4. One of the major causes of dry skin for Australian women is UVA damage from incidental sun exposure.

5. UVA ray strength remains much the same all year round – causing constant dryness and ageing.

6. UVA rays can cause premature ageing, wrinkling of the skin and can indirectly contribute to skin cancer formation, while UVB rays can cause the skin to burn.

7. Lack of sun protection is dangerous. Skin cancers now account for 80% of all newly diagnosed cancers.

The Boring Bits.

* Promotion open to residents of Australia 18 years or older * Entrants can submit multiple entries * Only the skin facts listed in the post are acceptable answers in the competition entry form * The promotion opens on the 1st of February and closes on the 29th of February * The winner will be drawn at random on 5th March * There will be one winner from each of the participating blogs Smaggle, BellaMumma, The Sydney Girl, Fat Mum Slim, Makeup and Macaroons, Miscellaneous Mum, Danimezza and Hello Owl.

Please visit the Vaseline Facebook Competition Page for full terms and conditions.

What You Need

250gms of rice biscuits or gluten-free plain biscuits, crumbled

110gms of melted butter

4 cups of desiccated coconut

395gm can of sweetened condensed milk

200gms of glace cherries, finely chopped

125gms copha, melted

rose pink food colouring

dark chocolate melts

What You Do

1. Grease and line a slice tin with butter and baking paper. Leave baking paper extending over the sides of the tin so you can easily lift it out when it’s finished.

2. Place crumbled biscuits in a large bowl. You can food process biscuits or use a mortar and pestle. Rice biscuits are very soft so I often use my hands. It makes me feel like the Hulk. Add butter and stir in with a wooden spoon. Press mixture into the base of the pan (packed very tightly to stop it from crumbling later) and then refrigerate for  30 mins.

3. Mix coconut, condensed milk, melted copha and cherries into a bowl. Mix well. Add a few drops of food colouring and mix well. Spoon mixture into the tin and press down firmly with the back of the spoon. refrigerate for 15 minutes.

4. Melt chocolate and spread over the top of the slice. Refrigerate for 10 mins. Remove from the fridge, allow to stand for 30 mins and slice into small squares.

Fun Cooking Fact

Did you know that copha is only produced in Australia and is used to make chocolate crackles, coconut ice and rocky road? That probably explains why they all have the same suspicious after taste.

If you loved this recipe and want more be sure to like us on Facebook and follow us on twitter.

Two others on my list are Adrien Brody and Willem Dafoe. Prada, you read my mind.

As everyone read The Top Ten Most Preternaturally Beautiful Men from Coilhouse?

Who do you find unusually attractive?

I like pure, no bullshit dark or bright red or pink. I’m also fond of very dark purples, browns and burgundys. Occasionally I’ll rock a blue or green but only if I’ve seen someone cool doing it recently.

This is precisely why I love a polish collection that caters to all tastes, because I know that not everyone likes goth/stripper nails like I do. If you follow me on Instagram (I’m Smaggle FYI) or like me on Facebook you have probably been noticing a few images popping up of me wearing Darling nail polish. Darling is a brand new online store that houses a colorful little army of nail polish bottles in whimsical shades like Dollface, Trophy Wife and Love Shack. The founder of the company, Heather, is a friend and colleague and she sent me a stupid amount of Darling polish to play with last week and I have to say I’m hooked. My Bellini home manicure lasted for 6 days and I even did the washing up. Score.

And guess what? The lovely team at Darling are offering three lucky readers the chance to win a Double Darling Prize of 2 Darling polishes. Bonza!

All you have to do is…

1. Visit the Darling shop and choose your favourite colour.
2. Like Smaggle on Facebook and leave a comment on the Darling Competition Post saying which colour you love the most and whose hand you’d like to hold while wearing it.

Don’t forget to visit the Darling Facebook page for a chance to win the whole collection valued at over $600.

The Boring Bits
1. Only one entry per person.
2. Competition closes Tuesday 31st January 5pm EST.
3. Open to Australian residents only.
4. The most original and creative entry will be jointly judged by Smaggle and Darling.
5. Winner announced on Friday 3rd of February.

The Darling sweeties are also offering a discount of %15 to Australian Smaggle readers. Simply use the code ‘SMAGGLE’ to take advantage of the offer.

Good luck!

Be a planner.

Honestly, a long distance relationship is not going to last if one of you moves 800kms away from the other, neither of you have a car and you have to charter a private jet because airlines don’t fly to Why-The-Fuck-Did-I-Move-Here Airport. Before you move discuss your financial situation and work commitments, then figure out how often you need/can see each other. Don’t expect it to all work out because travel is expensive, time-consuming and needs preparation.

But be spontaneous.

One day my partner and I really missed each other (a.k.a got really horny), so that night we met in a town in between our two cities, spent a glorious 24 hours in a hotel together, then went back to our respective cities. It was pretty hot. Do this often.

Be aware that the first three months are the hardest.

I was a mess in the first three months, broke, unemployed and drowning myself in cheap red wine. We put in some serious ground work in those months, lots of phone calls, extra visits, sending each other packages. Allow yourself the time to be a bit sad and clingy in this phase. It’s really okay.

If you are the one who’s leaving…

Be prepared to deal with how alone you may feel. I left my entire support network behind and felt incredibly lost and small without them. I quickly developed a little makeshift family and we’d spend every night together, sharing bottles of nasty plonk and getting way too hammered on weeknights. Make contacts in your new city as soon as you can, you need it.

If you are the one who’s staying…

Be aware that things will be slightly emptier. You don’t have all the excitement and adrenalin of a new life, so make sure you actively involve yourself in your partner’s experiences to avoid feeling jealous or left out of their new life. Also, keep busy. Idle hands can make for a very sad brain.

Make the commitment.

You either want it to work or you don’t. If you don’t want it to work, it won’t.

Treasure your time together.

Try not to spend every weekend together bawling into each others hair as you cling pathetically to the bed like an octopus. Moving is, most of the time, self-inflicted. Remind yourself of that and have a good time with your lover while you have the chance.

Make sacrifices.

You might have to work a little harder to earn money for plane flights, you might have to miss an important 21st, you might have to take a few days off from work unpaid. Be prepared to make these sacrifices for the sake of your relationship. Although be wary here. If you’re the one constantly forking out for flights and fancy hotels, you might not be much more than a high-class, interstate booty call.

Don’t force it.

If it’s been five days and you haven’t contacted each other and you don’t really care, perhaps it’s time to have a chat.

Don’t take it too seriously.

I mean come on, you’re not Emily freakin’ Browning. There’s mobile phones, Facetime, Skype, email, Twitter, Facebook, texting, MMS-ing. Quit being a baby. In the days of yore, you wouldn’t hear from your lover for weeks and then you’d get a letter a year later from their sister saying that they died of small pox.

Have rules.

Personally, I’m a fan of monogamy but that’s just because I don’t like other people playing with my toys. If you’re a particularly sex charged couple who can’t last two weeks without some nookie (what, are you cave people?) then have some ground rules. I’ve heard of couples having ‘sneaky pash on the dance floor’ rules or ‘no names or numbers’ rules. Just make sure the boundaries are clear before you start playing games.

Realise that you aren’t alone.

When I dramatically announced that I was moving cities and that the Mr and I were embarking upon a potentially tumultuous and difficult long distance romance, most couples nonchalantly shrugged their shoulders at the news and went ‘Oh yeah, we did that back when I was at uni/working interstate/travelling around Europe.‘ It’s not actually a very special or unusual thing to do and most couples will experience it. So don’t be thinking that you’re all modern and cool.

Set an end date.

There is nothing worse than open-ended torture. You must have an expiry date set or the relationship will curdle sooner than you think. Imagine running on a treadmill with no idea how long you have to run for. It’s terrifying. Don’t do it to yourself.

Realise that it does get better.

In the first few months of our long distance relationship, I was this pasty, sleep deprived mess who’d ugly cry for the entire seven hour interstate trip home, sipping on my sad little thermos of coffee because I couldn’t afford to buy a takeaway. Two years later I was drinking red wine that wasn’t born from cardboard at the airport, a qualified jeweller and freelance writer in very expensive shoes that I bought as a present to myself for generally being awesome. I hardly recognised the deflated creature who’d sob in JB Hi Fi when Unchained Melody floated out of the speakers. Remember you/they moved for a reason and it was probably a very good reason. It will be hideous only momentarily before it’s amazing. I promise.

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Order a fancy tea instead of your usual coffee? Russian caravan? Infused chai? Raspberry vanilla?

Try your hardest to eat four ginormous serves of vegetables today?

Offer to brush someones hair?

Get really, really excited about something really, really small? Like eating an ice cream? Or seeing a friend? Just like when you were a kid?

Run as fast as you can for no reason?

Pick a signature nail polish colour for the season and wear it until March? Peach? Coral? Burgundy? Ink?

Wear five of your necklaces at the same time? And not give a toss if they don’t match?

Take a mental health day from work? See a movie by yourself? Have your favourite treat? Be delighted that you don’t have to share it?

Do your extra special Saturday night party make-up and hair routine on a Wednesday? During the day?

Click on images for original sources.

Don’t be too ambitious.

Start will little 2 inch heels or some shallow wedges. Save the McQueen Armadillos for when you’ve practiced a little more.

Practice.

I can often be seen tottering around my house in my lazy pants, hoody and glittering heels. Wearing your heels around the house not only breaks them in, but it also gives you practice at walking on different surfaces. No one wants to show up to a carpeted party and immediately take a face plant because you’ve only ever walked on tiles.

Think about where you are going and what you are doing.

When I lived in a small city, I wore heels every day because I drove everywhere. Now I live in a huge city I mostly wear flats because I walk everywhere or take public transport which requires a lot of walking. If you’re making a quick dash to the train and spending the rest of the day sitting at your desk, then go forth with giant heels my friend. If you’re running all over town for meetings or your job requires you to move quickly, perhaps save the heels for dinner dates and weddings.

Walk heel to toe.

My most favourite season in Melbourne is race season. When all the die-hard spray-tan fans break out their giant heels that they never wear and attempt to walk in public in them. They do this bizarre toe balancing walk, mincing along like they have a broken pelvis and no control over their upper body limbs. Just calm down, slow down and walk heel to toe. Take small steps. Stand up straight. Place one foot in front of the other. Easy.

Don’t buy cheap, nasty shoes.

Please. Just don’t. They don’t breathe, are badly designed and they hurt. You are much better off investing in amazing, good quality shoes that will last and that you can wear for longer than five minutes. I respect a lady’s right to well priced footwear just please consider the quality before you hand over your cash.

Get assistance.

I’m totally addicted to those gel inserts that you stick inside high heels. I don’t have a particular favourite brand but I love the heel strips and the gel pads for the balls of your feet. My trick? Don’t put them in your shoes right away. Wear your heels and tuck your gel pads into your clutch. Half way through the evening when your balls start burning and your heel is developing a nasty blister, pop your gel pads in your shoes and it will buy you a few more hours. This is a particularly fantastic tip for weddings.

Talk to the professionals.

A few years ago my mother told me about these places that you can go to get shoes fixed. They’re called ‘shoe repair stores‘. It’s mental. They can reattach straps, fix holes in the soles of your shoes, stretch them, dye them. Take advantage. They take your well-worn pair of boots from unbearable to good as new.

What about you? Any wisdom to share on how you rock your heels?

I asked this question of a friend only last year, that’s how out-of-the-beauty loop I am. The response of ‘It’s like a foundation for your foundation!‘ displeased me greatly. That’s like saying ‘It’s like underwear for your underwear!‘ But actually, it’s not.

It’s more like a ridge filler, for lack of a better non-handyman, non-spackle related phrase. It smoothes on like silk and your foundation kind of sticks to it and makes your whole face of slap last all day.

I always thought it was remarkably unnecessary to use such a product but on special occasions and evenings out, I’ve become a total primer gal. I’ve even been using eye shadow primer. I’ve totally gone to the dark side.

The one I’ve been using is perfect for summer, it’s the Smashbox Photofinish Luminising Primer. I’ve never been one to play up a tan or go down the bronze path but I’m liking the lil’ kick of colour I get from this product. Makes me look less pale and moody than usual.

What about you? Do you use a foundation primer?

My Smashbox one is running low and any recommendations would be tops.

This product was offered to Smaggle for editorial consideration.