Beauty Vixen: candy

Holiday Chocolate Guide

By Jill Oliver-Fox Monday, December 04, 2017 candy, chocolate, gift guide, gifts, holiday, holiday 2017, holiday guide, president's choice

I was working on my Gift Guide and Stocking Stuffer Guide for this Holiday season, it has become apparent to me that the lists are a little too long, because I was including chocolate in them. While not wanting to exclude good stuff from my guides, I thought it might be a better idea to have a stand alone chocolate gift guide. I mean it is chocolate, I cannot just cut it out.

I love chocolate and I receive, buy and eat a lot of it this time of year. It makes a great stocking stuffer, gift to a loved one or a someone in a service industry you like to give a gift too (I am a dog groomer and I get tons of chocolate as a gift this time of year), or a hostess gift. Here are a bunch that I think are a good bet as a gift.

Before we get started, some items were in a gift bag I got when I attended a Shoppers Drug Mart Christmas preview party. Those that I received for review have an asterisk (*) next to them, all others I bought with my own money. All views and opinions are my own as always.

Mint Chocolate:
Mint is my favourite chocolate ever! I love mint chocolate tea, candies and chocolate. Growing up Mint Aero bars were my favourite. So here are some must have in the mint chocolate department.

After Eight
I love these sticks, crunchy and sweet with that cool mint flavour....yum. Now Mr. Fox loves the squares with the soft gooey middles, but I love these and you can only really find them this time of year.

Mint Hershey Kisses
Hershey Kisses are a great holiday treat, this time of year you can find white with mint in them. This cute bag has a little to/from tag on them too.

Mint M & M

I love mint and chocolate together, but sadly mint M&M's are only here in Canada during the holidays (in the USA any time of year). If you know a mint chocolate fan, get them a bag of these and make the happy. I just found out that there is also a white version of these, so I am going to keep my eyes peeled for them.

President's Choice Candies:
OK, there is one non chocolate one in here. But PC makes some nice candies and I have a few favourites that I get almost every year.

Maple Fudge*
Maple Fudge is Mr. Fox's number one favourite treat of all time. I can never go to a small town or fair and not bring him back some. It has to be maple, not maple walnut or anything like that. So when you find a good quality fudge that is made from real maple at a store you know you've done good.

Italian Dessert Truffle Trio*
This trio has Stracciatella, Tiramisù, and Cioccolato, each wrapped individually and imported from Italy.

Assorted Licorice
Assorted licorice is a favourite around her (you notice you hear that a lot, we like candy). I love buying it but often find it isn't as fresh as I would like. PC's is imported from the UK and in a nice classic tin so it stays fresh a lot longer then you would think. The quality is by far the best out of all the ones I have tried. I like the little buttons, they are my favourite.

Toffee and Sea Salt Chocolate Squares
These little squares are just like their name says, toffee, sea salt and chocolate and imported from Belgium. Mr. Fox is a fan of any toffee or caramel sea salt products so I picked some of these up for him as part of his Christmas gift from me this year.

Other Holiday Classics:

Sometimes you just want some holiday classics, they always work well as gifts or your own little treat.

Ferrero Rocher Grand Roche Chocolate Shell*

I love Ferrero Roche like no other chocolate. Every Christmas I get at least one box of them. This gigantic shell of a Ferrero has two inside it (they also make a bigger one with four inside it). It so big I was jumping for joy when I got it. I honestly cannot wait to dig into it. So yeah I think it will make a great stocking stuffer for anyone who love Ferrero Rocher.

Lindt Lindor*

Lindors are a classic holiday treat. Individually wrapped and filled with a gooey middle they make a great gift for just about anyone. They come in a whole pile of different flavours, but their milk chocolate is a classic.

So there you go some good choices for those that have a sweet tooth. whether it is a stocking stuffer, hostess gift, or a gift for a friend or someone who you just want to show some appreciation to, these make for great gifts.

Do you have a favourite Chocolate or Candy that you love to have during the Holiday Season?

Cross Border Haul

By Jill Oliver-Fox Wednesday, October 08, 2014 candy, cross border, food, gum, haul, lorac, NYX, pumpkin, pumpkin spice, target, tart, too faced, trader joe's, trader joes, under armour

The hubby and I took a day trip across the border this week. I managed to get some stuff at ULTA, Target and Trader Joe's.

First off we went to ULTA, I wanted some Lorac items, but sadly their holiday sets weren't in yet.

I did get the Lorac TANalizer Highlighter and Matte Bronzer Duo, it was $12

I picked up some NYX as well, two Butter Glosses (apple strudel and sugar cookie) and Dark Circle Concealer in Fair, it is a orange toned concealer.

I saw before going that Ulta had exclusive holiday sets from Too Faced and Tarte, so I decided to get one of each.

Too Faced Sugar and Spice contains 12 shadows and a mini Better Than Sex mascara in a cute little bag.

Tarte Away Oui Go set is meant for the traveller. It has four sets of four shadows and blush, 3 glosses and a Lights, Camera, Lashes mascara.

The idea is that you can pop out the set you want and take it with you in the blue travel case.

Over at Trader Joe's I succumb to pumpkin spice madness. No kidding, I love pumpkins and pumpkin spice...so I stocked up on many many pumpkin themed items, and I am happy. We got lots of junk food, but be aware TJ might be the healthiest store ever, their veggie and fruit selection is crazy and really cheap. Since I can't bring that stuff across with me, we loaded up on tasty treats that will last us months.

First off we got a very large insulated tote bag, it holds so much and seems to be very well made so it will get lots of use.

We got two Triple Ginger Snaps, the best ginger snaps ever! a Fruit Jellies for the hubby, he really likes fruit jellies and I am always looking for some for him. Finally we got the product that started our TJ obsession, the Chocolate Orange Sticks.

Three tubs of Speculoos Crunchy Cookie Butter, they were out of the regular one. This might be my favourite stuff on earth. The hubby got a PB&J Milk Chocolate Bar.

Now on to pumpkin madness....

Pumpkin Spiced Chia Tea Latte Mix, yeah that just sounded too yummy not to get. Pumpkin Cornbread Mix I plan on making Chili and making these to go with it. Pumpkin Spice Coffee I needed coffee and this has all the pumpkin spices (no pumpkin) in it. It smells amazing. Pumpkin Body Butter I have the Coconut version and love it, so I had to get this. Pumpkin Bread and Muffin Mix and Pumpkin Butter, I got the Williams-Sonoma version of this a few years ago and it was a hit at Thanksgiving. While the WS was tasty it was also pricy as hell, these were $2.99 each. They were also doing tastings of them together and it was just as good as the WS version. Finally I got the Toasted Pumpkin Seed Oil which is such a pretty dark green and just the right amount of toasted, it is going to be used on salads for months to come.

Original Irish Breakfast Tea. Last time we went to a TJ I got one of these, my Step-Mother-in-Law got half of it and didn't think much of it, but my Mother-in-law went nuts for it when she came over to vist. She took no stock into the fact I could not buy more and just made pot after pot with two tea bags in each. Soooo...one box is going to her and one is staying here.

Finnaly I got the best mustard ever, the Hot and Sweet Mustard.

Over at Target I got more food. I really tried to get some beauty stuff there but every single thing on my list was not there. It wasn't meant to be.

We got 4 cases of Cherry Coke Zero as well.

The hubby loves candy corn, I mean LOVES it. He picked up some Brach's S'mores and Pumpkin Spice Candy Corn. I hate the texture of candy corn so these are all his (he already ate most of the S'mores).

I always have to get Swiss Miss Diet Hot Chocolate. It only has 25 calories and taste amazing.

Kelly McKelly raved about Coffee Mate Hazelnut on one of her Coffee Time With Kelly videos, so heck I had to grab one. Hazelnut is one of my go to flavours (as well as pumpkin, pumpkin spice and mint chocolate). I also got Archer Farms (Target brand) Pumpkin Spice Coffee Syrup, it happens to be sugar free and the exact same bottle of my empty Starbucks hazelnut syrup. So I am putting the Starbucks pump onto this one. I saw that they had regular flavours as well (hazelnut, carmel, vanilla) so I am going to go for a hunt to see if they are in Canada or not since it was ¼th of the price that Starbucks charges.

I picked myself up some tasty other treats, Trident Layers gum in Pumpkin Spice and Mint M&M's.

I also stopped by the Under Armour outlet. I picked up a few shirts on clearance and this fantastic gym bag for $39.99. Very happy about it since it is still listed on their USA website for $69.99.