Edinburgh: PizzaExpress Open House

1.Open House 2.Antipasti platter 3.Restaurant seating 4.Pizzas being prepared 5.PizzaExpress Morningside restaurant 6.Organ 7.Bianca Formaggi and Fiorentina pizzas with Pinot Grigio and Cortese wine 8.Wine expert Adrian with the lovely PizzaExpress waitresses

It's no secret that I love eating and drinking, so when I was invited along to a pizza and wine tasting evening at PizzaExpress in Morningside I jumped at the chance. PizzaExpress are introducing a new concept, 'Open House', to their Edinburgh branches this summer so I headed along to hear what it was all about - and sample lots of pizza, of course!

I met up with Laura and her friend on Sunday evening and we headed in to the restaurant. The Morningside PizzaExpress has only been open for a couple of months so this was the first time I had visited. The building itself is gorgeous; it's located in an old church so has lovely high ceilings, big windows and even an old organ above the pizza ovens! The decor was clean and modern, but with a bit of a retro feel, and I loved the little "Edinburghy" touches like the quotes from The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie on the walls. The three of us took a seat and enjoyed some antipasti and a glass of Prosecco before being introduced to the concept of Open House by Emma, the Marketing Director at PizzaExpress. On Sunday evenings, PizzaExpress are encouraging us to make the most of our weekends and head down to our local restaurant with our favourite bottle of wine, which they'll help match to the perfect pizza partner. BYOW (or, Bring Your Own Wine) is a concept that's starting to make its way into a lot of top restaurants across the world, and PizzaExpress have chosen Edinburgh as the first place to take advantage of Open House Sundays, which is lucky for me! The promotion is exclusive to Edinburgh and runs until the end of July - but who knows, if it's successful it might make its way to more destinations across the UK!

After that, PizzaExpress's resident "Master of Wine", Adrian, gave us an introduction to our first wine and pizza combination of the night (there were eight in total, oh the things I do in the name of blogging!). We started off with one of my favourite wines (although I must admit I'm not terribly picky, as long as it's drinkable I'll drink it!), a Pinot Grigio, which matched perfectly with the creamy, salty cheese flavour of the Bianca Formaggi pizza. At the same time we also tasted a Cortese - which was quite similar to the Pinot Grigio but with subtle differences due to the type of grape and the region it's grown in - which Adrian suggested would work well with the Fiorentina pizza, which had spinach, egg, garlic and olives. Many, many glasses of wine later we were finally getting the hang of this tasting business (the warmer the climate, the sweeter the wine!) and we reached the final wine-pizza-combo. I'm not usually a huge fan of red wine, but I must admit when it was paired with spicy pizza it worked really well. We had a Chianti along with a slice of Sloppy Guiseppe and it finished off our tasting session perfectly.

I think the idea of Open House is great, especially as it'll help to keep the cost of a meal nice and cheap but you'll still get to enjoy dining out on a Sunday instead of vegetating on the sofa watching endless episodes of Come Dine With Me. The Open House BYOW (with no corkage, yay!) is currently available at all eight of the Edinburgh PizzaExpress restaurants from 6pm on Sundays, and will run until the 30th July. I had a great time at the preview event and now have lots of wines to look out for in the supermarket, ready to stock up for the next time I visit!

Will you be trying out the Open House Sundays deal?

Gillian x

Today's Makeup #2: Sunset Glow

Can we all just take a second to cringe at the title of this post? I thought trying to come up with titles for outfit posts was bad enough, but as it turns out makeup posts are a billion times worse. Anyway, this dusky, warm makeup look makes me think of summery sunsets (mostly thanks to the Dallas packaging, I think!), hence the name. Benefit Dallas is one of my all time favourite cheek products; I'm never quite sure if it's a blusher or a bronzer, but that's a good thing as it means it can be used as both. Normally I use it more as a contour shade, but on days when it's sunny outside and I fancy a bit more colour, I'll apply it as a blush instead. It's such a lovely browny-pink shade that's almost matte but with a very subtle glow, so it's perfect for natural, no-fuss makeup especially if you're pale and traditional bronzers tend to be a bit overpowering.

Sticking with the almost-bronze theme, I've paired it with this Arbonne Lipstick in Rose Petal. It's another sort of pink, sort of brown colour which ends up looking like a pretty pale coral on my lips. The formula is super creamy and glides on to the lips really easily. It feels nice and hydrating, but manages to give a really pigmented, solid colour at the same time. Arbonne is a brand I became aware of very recently, after my friend Morag became an Independent Beauty Consultant with them and let me try out some of their products. Arbonne is sold exclusively through consultants, who can give you advice and let you try products before you buy them, so if you're ordering anything from the website, pop in Morag's Consultant ID - 440017741 - when you register and she'll be there to help! The makeup is definitely in the "high end" price bracket, but the lipstick and the mattifying powder I've tried so far seem like great quality and definitely worth the money. Plus if you're planning on buying quite a few items, you can join as a 'Preferred Client' and get 20% off all purchases for the next year. I think I'll definitely be ordering myself some things soon, and I quite fancy trying out Arbonne's skincare range too.

As for base makeup, I've stuck to my usual favourites. Can't go wrong with a bit of Estée Lauder Double Wear Light! A little bit of Benefit Girl Meets Pearl along the tops of my cheekbones and nose helps to give a subtle glow, and this mini version of it is handy for chucking in my makeup bag. As is the baby They're Real Mascara, which helps to add a bit of volume to my cat-eye liner (which you can read all about in my winged eyeliner tutorial from last week). To finish off, I've added a very light dusting of Chanel Poudre Universelle Libre to keep everything in place without becoming too matte and powdery.

Gillian x

Sunday Summary #72

1.Flowers 2.Mini burgers and hundreds of chips for lunch 3.Starburst Martini cocktail

There seems to have been a distinct lack of Instagramming this week, which is very unlike me! I've been quite busy this week, but the kind of busy that involves writing shopping lists and scouring through the library catalogue and replying to emails, rather than the kind of busy when you can take nice pictures of stuff. I did, however, manage lunch out on Monday to the Bristo Bar and Kitchen, where old favourite Assembly used to be. Our waitress was a bit of a space cadet, but the food was pretty good and the chip portions were huge, much to my delight. As it was a Monday lunchtime, I thought I better not indulge in a drink, but I did notice their cocktails were pretty cheap (by Edinburgh standards, anyway) so I may have to go back of an evening to try some out.

Speaking of cocktails, I headed out on Friday evening to catch up with some friends at Tonic. My first cocktail was a Starburst Martini and oh my gaaaaaad it was amazing, tasted just like a strawberry Cornetto! As it got later in the evening, the lights kept getting dimmer and the music kept getting louder, and like the old ladies we are, we decided to head somewhere a little bit quieter so we could actually hear what we were saying - oh how depressing, we're only 22! Luckily there's a Wetherspoons just round the corner so we stopped off there for a couple more drinks before bedtime.

Apart from that, this week has been fairly boring. I had a meeting with my supervisor on Friday, so have now finally chosen a topic for my dissertation - this means I'm actually going to have to start doing the research for it now arrrghhh. I also have a presentation to do for my internship in a couple of weeks, so will be doing lots of work on that next week. I absolutely hate public speaking, so doing a 20 minute presentation is really my idea of fun, NOT.

This evening I'm off to the new Pizza Express in Morningside for a little launch party, ah the perks of being a blogger! My invite arrived through the post attached to a bottle of wine, so I'm already sure it's going to be a great evening - they know the way to my heart!

What have you been up to this week?

Gillian x