Throwback Thursday - Cereal Toys of the 90s

Hi!

A lot of you won't know that in 2011, before I started this blog, I had a nostalgia blog where I posted about all the things I remembered from my childhood or teenage years. It had movies, music, clothes, pop culture, makeup, toys - I took it offline two years ago after it was just overrun with spam, but I decided that I'm going to repost something from The Irish Nostalgic here for Throwback Thursday every week.

Or until I forget.

This week - I'm focusing on Cereal Toys.

Ah, cereal - the staple diet of a whole gaggle of hungry children in the 80s and 90s. Cereal was usually eaten in the morning before school, again when I came home from school, and later before I went to bed. We rarely had chocolatey cereal - it was usually Cornflakes or Rice Krispies - but on rare occasions, my Mum would buy Frosties or Lucky Charms. Lucky Charms were discontinued in Ireland and the UK by the mid-90s, but I think they're available in those shops that sell US food.

The best part of cereal in the late 80s and early 90s was the free gift - there was something in almost every box. You name it, we had it - frisbees, pencil toppers, stickers, cars, monster in my pocket, puppy in my pocket, bike reflectors - just about every single cheap plastic thing available at the time was shoved into a cereal packet. The best part, if you had siblings, was the dash to help bring the shopping in - then spot which bag the cereal was in, rip the top off the box, shove your hand in, and grab the toy before anyone else in the house even had a look-in. In the summer holidays when we went shopping with her, it was a mad dash across the back seat of the car - you'd be finding Rice Krispies down the back seat of the car for weeks. Many a row we had because my sister would open the box pretending to be hungry when she was really just after the toy.

It's a wonder my bicycle wheels could rotate at all, the amount of Kellogs cockerel reflectors I had on them (I always seemed to get yellow ones). I loved the series of holographic "Casper" stickers that came with Frosties in the mid 90s - presumably around 1995 when the film was released.

 Sometimes, cereal companies (mostly Kelloggs, I can't really remember having any other cereal bar the Lucky Charms) would have tokens on the box, so you could collect them and send off for something really good. You'd have to sellotape a big old 20 pence piece to the cardboard form, sent it off, then sit and wait for the guts of a month for your coveted item to arrive. I remember collecting tokens for a Polly Pocket - took ages to arrive, but it was so worth it! Years later, I collected tokens to get my first Discman. It was an AIWA one, and I loved it - even though it went through batteries quicker than Kylie Jenner goes through lipliner. A major collectors item in 1998 was the Kelloggs Cockerel radio. We never had one. *sob*

I don't know why they stopped putting toys into cereal packets - you'd imagine the fact that kids wanted more cereal boxes would have appealed to Kelloggs. I know that the tokens still pop up from time to time for spoons or bowls, but I haven't come across a toy in a cereal box in decades. It seems that lots of people were pretty fond of the bike reflectors - the ones in the picture there on the left sold on eBay in 2011 for over €25.
There are still others listed - we had so many of them! There's a lot on Snapchat at the minute about advice to your 18 year old self - well if I could give advice to my 12 year old self, I'd tell her to hang on to all her stuff, because one day she'll be 32 and wishing she took better care of it.

Truffleshuffle have an amazing range of vintage Kellogg's memoribilia in stock - I picked up the little Frosties mirror a while ago, and it just brings me great joy whenever I see it in my bag. You can check them out here.

At the moment, Kellogg's have a promotion going to collect cereal bowls (with 3 sons that means 9 tokens.....I finally understand why my mother made us eat so much cereal if we wanted to collect something), you can check that out here.

Do you remember cereal toys? Anything in particular?

Rebecca Minkoff & Essie - Leggy Legend Fall 2015 Collection Swatches

Hi!

It's that time of year - the pastels from Spring and neons from Summer are slowly being shoved aside for the richer, warmer berry tones of Autumn. I love this time of year in the makeup world - jewel tones, burgundies, golds - give it all to me, please.

I bought the mini kit from this collection, it contains four of the six shades from another Rebecca Minkoff collaboration (the first being the Flowerista one that I swatched here) - here are all six.

I bought the mini kit from Beautyzone2007, my go-to eBay seller for the latest Essie collections. I stopped buying the full sizes a while ago because I've never, ever finished a nail polish so the big bottles were going to waste. 

The shades in the mini kit are (L-R): Leggy Legend, With the Band, In the Lobby, and Frock 'n Roll.

The two missing from the kit are the "burning red orange" Color Binge and the "intense midnight indigo" Bell Bottom Blues. Neither of those are my kind of colour so I didn't bother buying the seperate big bottles. I do think Bell Bottom Blues will be popular but I've gone off blue over the past year or so.

Here's a look at the four I have:

The collection is "a throwback to the Rock 'n Roll era of the Seventies" and that definitely comes through. The rich gold and lush burgundy scream Seventies chic, and are a very wearable way to enjoy the Seventies Revival trend.

Here's a look at them individually, swatches are inside (L) and outside (R) as usual.

Leggy Legend

This reminds me of a Tiger's Eye stone. It's a beautiful warm, rich, bronze gold (Essie call it "an alloyed bronze") that lends its name to the collection. It applied flawlessly in one coat, but I did two for the pictures just to make sure. It looks like it's lit from within - if there's one I would buy in full size - this is absolutely it, it's going to look fantastic with some knitwear over the next few months.

With the Band

This is one coat, lads. It's lovely - described as a "toasted spice burgundy", it's really flattering on pale skin and looks glossy and vibrant. I'm not a lover of red polish but this has just enough depth in it for me to really enjoy wearing it.

In the Lobby

Or "exotic cinnamon plum". This is another showstopper for me, it's almost syrup-like when it dries. It has an almost glazed feel to it, it's a dark, warm plum that was a little gloopy to apply - but I gave it some drying time in between two coats and the payoff was worth it. I love this one. Just a warning - it stains like hell, so do use a basecoat.

Frock 'n Roll

This is described as "shimmering rich espresso". This is the colour of coffee beans with a slight purple undertone, it leans more towards the blackberry side of things outside. There's a fine glitter running through this - it's not sparkly disco ball glitter, but it is there and it does translate well on to the nail unlike some other glitters. The pictures show one coat. It's nice - but it's not my favourite of the four and I don't think I'll get much wear from it.

Here's the closest I can get to showing you the detail in Leggy Legend and Frock 'n Roll:

My absolute favourite of the collection is Leggy Legend, but In the Lobby is coming in a very close second. I almost ordered both in full size, but I'll see how long the minis last before my head is turned by whatever Essie have in store next.

Again I probably should say that I don't have any kind of agreement with the brand, I buy the collections myself as they're released because they genuinely are my favourite nail polish brand.

Will you be picking up any of these? Or do you have a favourite colour for the Autumn months?

Books I Read in July

Hi!

I did well at the beginning of the month and then Snapchat really took off so my reading went to the dogs towards the middle and end of July. I was still reading at night but not as much, plus I was doing some cross stitch projects and devouring Grey's Anatomy.

The total for July was 15, which is surprising, because I didn't think I read that many. Some of those were just a few hours long though, so it's not as massive as you might think.

ARCs

I've been trying to cut down the amount of ARCs (Advance Reading Copies) on my Netgalley shelf for ages - some of these have been approved since last October and were just sitting there. I made a real effort to try and get the shelf cleared - then requested a load more, oops....anyway, ten of my reads this month were ones I got from Netgalley.

Buzz Books 2015 Young Adult Fall/Winter by Publishers Lunch

I love these compilations. They come out twice a year in both YA and Adult format, and they bring previews of several upcoming releases from both prominent and new authors. This one had 20 extracts, favourites included Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon and Dumplin' by Julie Murphy, both of which I have yet to read in full. I did request a few full books and was approved, but it's also a great way to figure out what to avoid - handy for someone like me who tends to buy into hype when it comes to books. And makeup. And candles. And pretty much everything. 

Buzz Books 2015 Adult Fall/Winter by Publishers Lunch

This is the adult version, and has 33 decent extracts. Tender by Belinda McKeon is included, as well as the new one from Mitch Albom, The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto. The Social Network star Jesse Eisenberg's debut Bream Gives Me Hiccups was a surprising favourite here, it's a Sedaris-esque satirical look at social situations. You'll also find some upcoming novels by Patrick Ness, Geraldine Brooks and Alice Hoffman. It covers 14 fiction, 10 debut fiction, and 10 non-fiction books including Dick Van Dyke's latest book on ageing. I ended up with 13 of the 33 either requested or pre-ordered in full. Oops. 

One by Sarah Crossan
This is a YA (young adult) novel about conjoined twin sisters Tippi and Grace. They have been homeschooled for 14 years, but now must enter mainstream High School after the funding for homeschooling has run out. "Normal is the Holy Grail and only those without it know its value". I enjoyed this, but I felt it was a little over hyped. It's written in poetic verse, making it a quick read - this wasn't at all off-putting but I just found it hard to connect with the characters. I am very much in the minority though, so do give it a go. The writing is beautiful.

Are you Still There? by Sarah Lynn Scheerger
I read a preview of this in one of the Buzz Books collections and thought it looked good. It's another YA, about a very ordinary High School student named Gabi who helps to run a teen helpline after a student plants a bomb in the school. We also get the POV of the bomber, or "The Stranger" here - I was totally wrong about who the bomber was. This is very cheesy, but I did enjoy it because it reminded me of the Point Horror books I loved as a teenager. Give it a miss if that's not your thing.

Are You Watching Me? by Sinéad Crowley
This is the second novel from Sinéad. We revisit Detective Claire Boyle, first seen in last year's Can Anybody Help Me?. She is now Mum to a small baby, and her marriage is strained due to the pressure of being new parents with job commitments. This book focuses on twentysomething Liz McClafferky, the reluctant public face of Tír na nÓg, a refuge of sorts for elderly men who have no other source of interaction in the community. As one of the men is found dead and a link to the centre is discovered, Liz has to come to terms with her past and Claire has to figure out how to have it all. I enjoyed this, not as much as the author's first book, but as "the difficult second novel" it was a worthwhile read.

This Raging Light by Estelle Laure
This was another Buzz Books extract that I ended up requesting. The protagonist, Lucille, is 17 and left in charge of her 9 year old sister Wren after their mother goes AWOL. Their Dad is in residential care after having a mental health incident a few months earlier. Lucille is trying to keep on top of things and deal with the prospect that her mother might not come back, so now is definitely not the time to fall in love. This was sweet, it sounds a bit shite from my synopsis but the writing was sharp, the characters were likeable, and it wasn't a sweety-teeny-googly eyed romantic book. Really enjoyed this, the teenagers didn't make the best decisions at times, but if you can't make a few mistakes when you're a teenager, when can you? It was just different enough to be very enjoyable, and the ending was brave.

The Lost Child by Ann Troup
Elaine's mother has died, so Elaine has returned to the town her mother grew up in to scatter her ashes. While she's there, she befriends a tearaway teenager named Brodie. Brodie's sister disappeared 30 years ago when she was three, and Elaine becomes involved in Brodie's attempt to find out what happened to her. If you've read any kind of thrillers or mysteries at all you'll spot "the twist" a mile off, as I did. That's one of the perils of reading a lot so it wasn't necessarily off-putting, but the writing was a little Joey-Tribbiani-with-thesaurus. Fifteen words where one would do. Not bad by any means, just snooze when you've seen it done a million times and done a lot better.

Edgewater by Courtney Sheinmel
This had a real We Were Liars vibe off it (not the same plot, though). Rich family secrets, strange goings-on, and cover-ups. Lorrie Hollander is attending a prestigious equestrian program for advanced riders when she is removed immediately and sent home because her Aunt hasn't paid her fees. Lorrie goes home to sort it out - and realises that things at home are much worse than she could ever have thought. Enter rich boy love interest and a shit-ton of family secrets and you have one slick, well-written novel about everything going to pot behind a glossy exterior. Really enjoyed this.

My So-Called (Love) Life by A.L. Michael
Books like this are like chewing gum - not particularly satisfying, but sometimes you just bloody want chewing gum. The main character's name is Tigerlily, which was off-putting, but essentially this is a feel-good story about a woman who makes positive changes in her life after her fiancée left her a few days before her wedding. Ollie, the love interest here was a total ride, and while I didn't really like Tigerlily, I appreciated her determination and desire to grab life by the balls after wasting time with someone who didn't appreciate her as she was. Perfect fluff for a rainy afternoon.

Where Secrets Sleep by Marta Perry
Have you ever read Amish fiction? Me neither! This was set in Dutch Pennsylvania, in a part Amish community and centred around Allison, who has inherited a converted mansion from her recently deceased Grandmother. The mansion is home to several small businesses and shops, including an Amish quiltmaker named Sarah, with whom she strikes up a friendship. There's also a handsome single Dad carpenter named Jamie and a bit of small-town rivalry thrown in. This was okay - it was like one of those Lifetime movies I'd get sucked in to if I were doing nothing of a Sunday, but it ran a little long for me. Still, it was okay.

Rick O'Shea Book Club

This month, the two book club picks were Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Harvest by Jim Crace. Both are on the shortlist for the 2015 IMPAC Dublin Literary Awards. I bought Harvest for the Kindle but I didn't get to it, I had Americanah in paperback so I read that. 

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Ifemelu, a lifestyle blogger who moved to America to study and who is now returning to Nigeria. The book is written in 6 parts, some of those are told from the POV of Ifemelu's High School sweetheart Obinze, a young man who had planned to follow Ifemelu to America but ran into some problems. I just really, really enjoyed Adichie's writing and how it flowed, even though I didn't particularly like Ifemelu or Obinze as people. The writing is powerful and it taught me a lot about Nigerian culture and racism. 

Fiction

Summer at Shell Cottage by Lucy Diamond

This is the holiday read of 2015 for me. It's easy to read, the characters are well developed, and the story flows well. It's the story of several different female generations from the same family, and how they cope with various issues in their lives. Olivia is recently widowed and a little bit lost after discovering her husband was hiding something from her. Freya, a GP, has made a mistake at work and fear that her job will be on the line. Harriet, Olivia's daughter in law, feels like she doesn't really belong in the family, and finds out something about her husband - does keeping secrets run in the family? Throw in a teenage girl with a secret (and potentially dangerous) relationship and wrap it all up in Shell Cottage - "The generous-sized cottage, painted a soft barley colour, with a thatched roof and a poppy-scarlet front door, above which a scallop shell had been carved into the stone lintel. Behind the house you could see a flower-filled garden, which looked very much as if it might lead straight onto sand dunes and then a pale, curving beach in the distance." - and you have an incredibly enjoyable summer read. Really, really liked this. 

The Peculiar Life of a Lonely Postman by Denis Thériault

I picked this up in the recent Kindle sale, it's quite a short book and took around an hour to read. Bilodo is a 27 year old postman who has no real human interaction apart from his work colleagues. He is alone, but he's not lonely - he has taken to steaming people's letters open before delivering them and has become obsessed with an ongoing correspondance between a man in his local town, and a woman, Ségoléne, in Gibraltar. When tragedy strikes and the man is killed, Bilodo decides to continue the correspondance in his place........the whole thing takes a very odd turn here, although it's set in Montreal, it's very Asian and reads more like a Japanese novel. Really quirky and the ending left my mouth hanging open! I'm glad I got it.

The Baby by Lisa Drakeford

I saw someone talk about this on youtube - possibly Amber - but it looked interesting. A young girl gives birth on the bathroom floor at her friend's 17th birthday party, and the girl has to deal with the repurcussions along with the baby's father and their three other friends. Every person involved gets a chapter, and though it had a completely unnecessary "twist", I did enjoy it. 

Non-Fiction

It's Not What You Think by Chris Evans

All I really know about Chris Evans is that he presented The Big Breakfast and TFI Friday on Channel 4 when I was younger. I watched both, but never really gave Chris much thought. With the recent TFI Friday special, I spotted this on sale for £0.99 on kindle and decided to give it a go. It's one of the most enjoyable autobiographies I've read, it covers the period from Chris' childhood right up to the early 00s when he purchased Virgin radio from Richard Branson. Every chapter starts with a Top Ten list, the number one being the topic for that chapter. The chapters are between 1 and 5 minutes long. Chris is easy to read - he's warm, funny, and acknowledges when he has been a bit of an arse. He's respectful of ex wives and partners, and comes across as a genuinely nice person. I downloaded the follow-up to this immediately after finishing, I really like his writing style. 

So, there you go. If I can cut back on the Snapchat and come out of Booktubeathon 2015 alive, hopefully August will be a good reading month too!

Booktube-a-thon 2015 - Information & TBR!

Hi!

You may remember me talking about Booktube-a-thon last year, but if not, here's a quick synopsis. Booktube-a-thon is a week long readathon, hosted by Ariel Bissett and a host of other booktubers. It's a week of challenges, quizzes, reading sprints, and general bookish fun. You don't have to be a booktuber or book blogger to join in, anyone of any age can take part, it's all about challenging yourself to read more and having some fun along the way. This year, it begins at the stroke of midnight TONIGHT your time, wherever you are in the world. That's August 3rd, and it ends at the stroke of midnight your time on August 9th, next Sunday night.

Find out more:

Official Booktube-a-thon Youtube Channel
Official Booktube-a-thon Twitter
Official Booktube-a-thon Instagram

My Booktube-a-thon posts from last year are here.

This year, Ariel has set a whole new host of challenges! Here they are:

I've been putting my TBR pile together for a few days now, and here are my choices. You don't have to pick a different book for every challenge, you can double up - for example, if you have a book you really want to read that has blue on the cover? That's challenges 6 AND 1 completed.

• A book with blue on the cover: Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon
• A book by an author who shares the first letter of your last name: To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (think it's about time, don't you?)
• Someone else's favourite book: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (Margaret from Bleach House Library's favourite book)
• The last book you acquired: Memoirs of a Fruitcake by Chris Evans

• Finish a book without letting go of it: Are you there, God? It's me, Margaret by Judy Blume (should be able to do this in one sitting when the kids are in bed)
• A book you really want to read: 172 Hours on the Moon by Johann Harstad
• A seventh book: The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan

If you're taking part in Booktube-a-thon 2015 please let me know! I know that Chloe, Breige, Paula and possibly Róisín are taking part so do keep an eye on their blogs too. My 10 year old is going to try some of the challenges too, I love seeing children read so I'll let him write his own little review next week on how he got on. 

Let's do this!!