In my last post I said that I had "got a lot going on at the moment" and that was just the tip of the iceberg. Things haven't got back to normal just yet but I did find a couple of hours to visit the West Midlands Vegan Festival and I'm glad I did!
The West Midlands Vegan Festival was the 7th festival, the first being back in 2008 and it didn't disappoint. There were over 100 stalls covering both the civic hall and wulfrun hall in Wolverhampton.
As soon as I got there I headed straight to my twitter friend Karris @TheVeganKind Subscription box scheme.
If you've not heard of The Vegan Kind Subscription Box where have you been? They are celebrating their first birthday and I for one can't wait for the birthday box. Go check it out http://www.thevegankind.com/
They have recently started a vegan beauty subscription box too, which I treated myself too. I loved absolutely everything in it especially the eye shadows and kohl pencil with sharpener attached!
Next I headed over to another twitter friend Marrie-Anne over @heavenlyskin who makes all her Heavenly Oganics products, and they are heavenly.
I asked Marrie-Anne which product she was most proud of and it was the first product she created; her body scrubs. Once again I treated myself and Marrie-Ann was offering a fantastic offer of buy 3 products for the price of 2 - how could I resist. To top it off Anne-Marrie gave me a fourth product for free, how lovely is that. I couldn't go without one of her body scrubs and I chose the orange and lime body scrub as it smelt divine. Once again I will be reviewing the products I left with, I've already tried the scrub and the name of her company says it all - Heavenly Organics! Go try it for yourself http://www.heavenly-organics.com/
I couldn't leave out another beauty company and twitter friend @ichoosy, this company was set up out of the frustration of having to read the label of every beauty product to check whether it was vegetarian or not and that's something we can all relate to.
My eyes were drawn to a funny looking spongey object on the table, a Konjac Sponge. Konjac is a type of potato from Asia and over the last century its properties as a beauty treatment has been recognised. I just had to have one of these! There are a range of Konjac sponges to choose from and I chose the red clay one which is for dry and sensitive skin. I was overwhelmed when I was given this free in return of writing a review. So watch this space to see what I thought of this fascinating product. Go and check out all the vegan products on the web site http://ichoosewhatiuse.co.uk/shop/category/vegan/
I couldn't leave the festival without a present for Marco so I headed straight to the Ethical Pets stall, where I picked up a few treats.
There was also lots and lots of cakes to choose from but I felt myself drawn to the soda bread cakes. I ended up buying a slice of chocolate mudcake, which was huge! I also bought a strawberry and champagne cake which was out of this world. I definitely need to try and re-create this. I loved it with a scoop of vegan ice cream it kind of reminded me of arctic roll! Now there's an idea!
There were lots of food stalls there to chose your lunch, although most of them were fake meats, which I'm not that in to, but I did find a Jamaican stall which had just what I was looking for, I had rice and peas, callaloo and spinach, chick pea curry and a chunk of plantain, delicious!
Overall, I spent a great couple of hours there, with everything going on in my personal life at the moment I nearly didn't go, but I'm so glad I did! I came away with a couple of bags of treasures, including my favourite crisps; Ten Acre Cheese and Onion and a couple of tins of condensed soya milk, now I wonder what I'll make with that?
I'll be back again soon, but please bare with me whilst things are a little topsy turvey at the moment. Next post will be my review of the Konjac Sponge, so watch this space
