1) Weird postage issues (ie: me being in Paris half the time) have meant that I completely missed Clinique’s letter about their Kiss It Better campaign. They’ve supported this cause for a few years now, raising money for research into childhood cancers, and this year they teamed up with Lulu Guiness to produce gorgeous lip purses with matching Chubby Stick lip colours. I’m pretty sure those have all sold out now, and I apologise profusely about that, but you can still get the limited edition nail polish. It’s in Kiss It Better pink and costs £12 – 50% of the RRP goes to the appeal. Find it at Clinique until the end of Feb.

2) This week’s read: Sister by Rosamund Lupton. Now I won’t say that I didn’t enjoy this novel, because that wouldn’t be fair. I did, after all, devour it in just over a day. But can I say that I was a little disappointed in it? That it seemed to run out of steam towards the end, and all concluded rather rashly in one of those “and it was all a dream” kind of sequences? (That wasn’t a spoiler; there’s no dreaming involved in this storyline, but you know the type of narrative device I’m talking about, don’t you? Where you find, in one huge twist, that you’ve been misled and nothing is quite as it seems…) I found myself sighing, a little, as I reached the last few pages – I really wanted it to be a stonker of an ending, but it just wasn’t. But I very much enjoyed Lupton’s writing; easy on the eye. It flows beautifully and she makes it difficult for you to find a place to stop reading and put the book down. I can’t wait to see what she comes out with next – I have her name bookmarked to remind me to check for new novels! (*Update – there is one! Afterwards. I have just bought it and will let you know what I think.) You can find Sister on Amazon here – let me know your thoughts on it in the comments below, if you fancy.

3) Weekly animal pictures. Some of you might be pleased to know that I’ve “moved” my pets onto their own Instagram account so that I can a) stop clogging up my feed with pictures of the cat sitting in various boxes and b) feel better about posting even more pictures of the cat sitting in various boxes, just on a different account. It’s an all-round win-win situation. Find Dexter and The Bear here: @dexterandthebear

In the photographs above, the dog was trying to give the cat a sock as a gift and the cat was having none of it. The dog then tried to fully mount the chair, with the cat in it, and force the cat to accept his gift. (All this is starting to sound dodgy and – if we’re honest – a little bit dark. I’m going to stop now.)

4) 18% off at HQHair, LookFantastic and BeautyBay BeautyExpert for anyone stocking up on Alpha-H or the like – you need to use the codes below before midnight on the 18th February.

Lookfantastic: 18QUICK here

HQHair: SAVE18 here

BeautyExpert: SAVE here **Sorry everyone who had the daily email, I thought that the code was for BeautyBay and it is, in fact, for BeautyExpert. But they actually have an excellent range of Alpha-H sets, so…