This is long, I know. Apologies in advance. But it's worth it and necessary to appreciate just how INSANE WHAT THE FUCK AWESOME this collection of MANY gifts are!

I feel really bad, because I have a history of having completely bonkers santas who just go unbelievably over the top, and this make up exchange was another one of those.

I also feel bad because these gifts (ALL OF THESE MANY, MANY, MANY, MANY GIFTS) arrived at the end of last week and I haven't written it up until now, but that's because I was in utter shock and disbelief about the kindness and generosity which one stranger can send to another.

Anyway!

Last Thursday, a huge box arrived - like four times the size of my head huge. BIG BIG BIG HUGE. Seriously. I need to start having bananas in my house because the scale of this thing was unbelievable!

It was wrapped in oh-so-funkiful bring pink zebra tape. That combined with the sheer size of the thing was enough to tell me this was a special gift. Madly so. The label for which exchange it was was hidden, and I had a couple of gifts I was waiting on, so I as mystified!

Open opening it up (ripping, mauling through that gorgeous tape), the first thing I saw was the lovely note from disconinja127 (go to her profile people, she has the world's coolest hair!) explaining that she'd added in a few extra unrelated gifts that she hoped I'd like in addition to the make up, which was really far too sweet of her!

And then I saw the "DO NOT OPEN!" note. Oh my god. People. Please. Stop giving me these. I think you severely over estimate my self control. And the amount of gifts I discovered in this box meant that it was a good hour until I was able to open it! I resisted, but man was it hard, those things are so damn tantalising! (Okay please don't stop giving me these, I love them really and they make me so happy!)

There was a great sticker from Alaska - I've ALWAYS wanted to go to Alaska, I'm sure it would feel like home to me! And I love stickers so thank you!

And then there was The Grass Monster (I've named him Karl). I had a lot of fun getting bits of Karl (and all of his apparent children filling the rest of the box) EVERYWHERE in my living room and kitchen (where the box almost immediately got relocated to), but less fun tidying him up. But he had great character and made me giggle, so I wanted you to experience all of the joy this box of funness brought me!

Once Grass Monster Karl had been relocated to my kitchen work surface, I got to peer inside at the FIRST LAYER of goodies (that’s right - this bitch had three of four layers. I wasn’t aware of that at this point but holy fuck that sucker was jammed full to the top)! That Sephora bag omg. I was SO upset when Sephora left the UK and spend the majority of my holiday budgets on Sephora when I’m in the States so that had me so excited already eeee! And all of those extra wrapped exciting things!!

At this point I was starting to realise just what a crazy volume of gifts I had, so I resisted taking photographs of EVERYTHING and reigned myself in to just the gifts themselves and each exciting new layer within the box of mysterious makeup delights!

The first gift I unwrapped was a collection of skincare goodies from iQ Natural - toner, cleanser and moisturiser. I was really excited at this point because I’ve heard lots of amazing things about iQ Natural but have never been in a position to purchase anything from them. I was convinced that my santa was a secret mind reader living inside my brain, but had absolutely no complaints!

Next was an extraordinary collection of brushes (I had a few on my wishlist but holy fuck this was far far more than I expected wtf. SO APPRECIATIVE YOU DON’T EVEN UNDERSTAND) some makeup remover wipes (which I always need!!) which will work really wonderfully with my sensitive skin, extra points there to wonderfully thoughtful santa!

Next came the Sephora bag eeeeeeeeeeh! Exciting!! It contained a simply glorious Stila liquid eyeliner pen and a collection of 3 Urban Decay pencil liners - wtf. This is when I really started getting nervous and texting my redditgiftee best friend to say I was concerned I’d been given another mentally impaired santa who had absolutely no self control in gifting to people. Because I would’ve been overjoyed to just receive those two alone, and I still had 85% of this ridiculously big box and SO MANY WRAPPED UP GIFTS to go through what the helllllllll!!

The next package (and serious props to disconinja127 for her funky wrapping - love it!!) contained 9 iQ Natural eye shadow pots - in glorious amazing shiny colours. I did swatches of these, but at this point in time I didn’t know how much more was to come and I’ve edited out the photos of those because this package contained SO MANY gifts I didn’t want to overload you!!

Next layer was nail gifts!! I wasn’t expecting to receive any nail varnishes, and had resigned myself to that fact, because I discovered (through RG!) that you can’t send nail varnishes to/through the UK post booo! But nobody told disconinja127 that and I’m sure as hell not complaining!! The nail layer included some fabulous nail wraps - to match the pink zebra tape- an amazing top coat (I’ve already tried it out and it is fantastic and so fast drying and shiny!) and two boxes of OPI varnishes (which I love, I love their varnishes!) Thank you!!

And then there was EVEN MORE. What. The. Hell.

There was a iQ Natural make up bag inside which hid two lovely iQ Natural blushes, a Too Faced eye primer, and a white NYX eye pencil. I’ve been meaning to pick up some good blush for ages, so that was another mind reading moment there!

The matching penultimate gifts were two AMAZING eyeshadow palettes - I don’t know who these are by but they’re SO pigmented and are just amazing. I’m not going to do swatches (obviously!) but I have tested these thoroughly and they are fantastic!!

The last gift was a box (wonderfully wrapped, of course)! It housed a mind blowing collection of iQ Natural face masks, moisturisers and sugar scrubs! Seriously, there are huge and there are so many! They are also, by the way, some of THE MOST INCREDIBLE things I’ve ever smelt. I cannot describe these scents, just encourage you to go and find some and smell some because holy fuck. Just glorious. I want to live in their body souffle!

And then I FINALLY got to open that mysterious letter from before! And then that made me even more appreciative, because disconinja127 explained how carefully she’d thought everything through for me and my skin type specifically - and that she’d gone totally and utterly out of her way to find replacements for out of stock products she wanted to include!

She revealed that she works for iQ Natural and gave me advice on which products to try first - I immediately tried the Dead Sea Mud Mask and it made my skin so soft omg. So. Soft. I love it. (see attached, totally embarrassing, picture!)

This was a mind blowing collection of gifts, I’m still not over it. And I cannot wait to try EVERYTHING. Thank you so so so SO much disconinja127, I would love to do a future exchange or two with you but I feel like I’m going to be forever indebted for the unbelievable awesomeness of these!! Thank you!!!

TL;DR: I had another mad and completely over the top santa. And I love them for it!!!