***Women and home***

Now this is a magazine title which speaks for itself... It is a women's magazine which addresses a long list of issues obviously first and foremost including the home. I first bought this magazine because of an article that was written in it about influential women in the beauty industry and how they got high up in their jobs as well as these women discussing their best beauty tips. I thought this looked like a very interesting article because I am so interested in beauty and cosmetics. The article was five pages long and talked through seven influential women. I loved this article and showed it to my mum because of how interesting it was. I then sat down to read the rest of the magazine from which I was very impressed by.

***What magazines I used to buy and advertisement***

I normally buy magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour but the amount of unnecessary and uninteresting advertisement they consist of has started to hack me off so I think they are a waste of money now. Whereas Women & Home does feature advertisement pages but the featured adverts are actually of interest to me and are well thought out for where they appear in the magazine. Women & Home also includes many small sachet samples attached to the advertisement which is nice since samples are more influential than anything. The adverts also cover a wide range of topics from skincare like Estee Lauder's Advanced Night Repair serums to Laura Ashley advertisement to Febreze air fresheners.

The issues covered in this magazine include:

1. Features

Features are particular articles by celebrities about glamour, love, sex and life. But despite them being celebrities they do come forward and say the good and bad things about themselves and what they wish they could change about themselves. This is very interesting because usually you only see and hear about celebrities being head to toe in makeup and money and you rarely hear about their personal problems unless they are weight problems or drug or alcohol related. For example in June's Women & Home magazine Kim Cattrall (best known for her role in Sex and the City) talks about how her life has mainly been made up of just sex not actually relationships but how she is changing to warm to relationships and sex combined.

2. Glamour (hair and beauty)

This is the part of the magazine which particularly interests me. With beauty products I love that the writers of this magazine include very detailed information about particular products. They usually do around a three page spread for a product including the brands background on the product and the scientific background as well as why the product works and who will benefit. But the most interesting and important part to these write ups is that they include real women's reviews on the products and they give you links for more information.

There are also very useful articles on cosmetics surgery or what top experts opinions are on particular problems to a women's body and what they can do to relieve these problems.

Also included in the glamour section in the magazine maybe the top beauty buys or top hair product buys. As well as expert hair advice and other top ten products for example, the top anti-ageing products.

3. Food

This is a part to the magazine that I love because many magazines provide a one page recipe however Women & Home often provide around ten or fifteen recipes including starters, mains and desserts. They also provide a least of ingredients they recommend for example, in the June magazine it showed edible hearts and stars to put on cupcakes from Lakeland, which my mum actually bought for me after seeing them in the magazine.

On food adverts in Women & Home there are often coupons off the products which are a great way to encourage you to buy and try the product. I often cut them out and put them in my purse just in case I happen to buy them when I go shopping.

And of course the magazine does not leave out the most recommended wines. These are also featured. I find this very helpful because I am not great at picking out wines and the guide they occasionally do for wines tells you the wine of the month, and other very recommended wines and the price and where to buy them. I have bought one of these recommended wines (a rosé) and it was very good indeed.

4. Home

The home section consists of day to day realities like how to make your garden beautiful and how to style parts of your house.

It also looks at what appliances are handy for in your home and occasionally this section has a snippet of a home brochure from a particular brand like Marks and Spencers home ware.

5. Fashion

What is so great about the fashion pages in Women & Home is that the clothes worn by models are tailored to a particular theme for example, summery romantic outfits. This is a really nice edge to looking at clothes as it actually gives you ideas on what to wear at particular times of the year or to particular occasions.

Women & Home also features one off pages of the top ten beauty must haves, or glamour updates. This is nice because although it is great to look at models in clothes you don't often look at the accessories they use to make their clothes a proper outfit. So these pages home in on accessories in particular to finish off an outfit.

Sometimes Women & Home also feature exclusive offers for discounts in particular shops, and alongside these offers they also put a selection of clothes that the shop is currently selling. This is a great way to allure you into using the discount! The magazine producers are not stupid! I think they must have psychologists in the background telling them where to place each article in the magazine and the best ways the human mind works to draw in information.

6. Diets (health and wellbeing)

Now this section really is a reason I would buy Women & Home again and again. They often give you an article with the Do's and Don'ts on what to do when dieting for example, 'do not skip meals' since this can make your diet far more difficult to complete. It also usually gives a 7-day diet plan which is set out day by day, meal by meal. So this is very easy to stick it. It is a realistic diet as well as it includes snacks. I couldn't be without my snacks!

In this section it also contains even more recipes! Perfect to teach you how to make new healthy recipes! Plus it points out the calories in these too!

However this section is not all about dieting, it also includes ways to cope with stress and other features like the best foods which contain the most antioxidants.

7. Lifestyle

This section often has lots of articles on how to deal with redundancy and ways to find a job. It also contains other such lifestyle articles like '10 reasons why sex is better at 40' and features on motherhood. Lifestyle also includes how to have better relationships and weekly horoscopes! Horoscopes I think are one of things that most people claim not to be interested in or read but virtually everybody secretly does! I always find a way to relate them to my life probably because of the way they are psychologically written to link to everybody's lives in some way.

8. Travel

I suppose this is the section of Women & Home that I find the least interesting but I can see how most other people would find it interesting.
It includes celebrity's favourite places to go on holiday, the best spa places, reviews of restaurants and many other travel articles. I suppose I find it the least interesting section because I know I could never myself afford to go to any of these places on holiday until I am much older to fund them myself.

In June's magazine it included 'The world's most glamorous holidays.' These were very nice to read about but by gosh did they make me green with envy! They were beautiful but not terribly realistic to what most people can afford. But I suppose that is why they were called the 'most glamorous holidays'.

9. Entertainment

The entertainment section is very interesting especially if you are in need of a good summer read or a movie to see at the cinema. It reviews books and films and often interviews an author on their inspiration to write.
Most issues of Women & Home also include a short story by a new author. These can be highly amusing reads and I always look forward to these in the magazine.

10. Offers and competitions

This is the section which is in all magazines. This includes a page of how to subscribe to Women & Home... which I have just got my brother to subscribe to for my mum for her birthday present. It also came with a free Elemis product. So twelve issues of Women & Home and the free product cost £23.99 altogether which I think is a bit of bargain since each issue normally costs £3.50.

This section also includes competitions which you can enter online or via the post. This includes many very nice prizes such as winning a luxurious break for 4 people or winning over £500 worth of cosmetics.

***My verdict***

This is a fantastic full packed magazine! It contains approximately 250 pages. I always take this magazine to work to read on my breaks. It usually lasts me a whole week of work breaks... that is how full packed it is!

I usually cut out all of the recipes I like the look of and have an attempt at them when I have some free time.

If you are looking for a magazine that contains a little bit of everything then this magazine is perfect! I love how it has an equal amount of each section in so everybody can find something to interest them.

I particularly like all the very unique articles like the one I mentioned in my introduction of this review of the most influential business women in beauty. It gave me such an insider's look into the beauty industry and allowed me to see how normal each of these women were. This is great for readers to see so they too believe they can make it in their careers whether it is in beauty or not.

In my opinion this magazine has the perfect balance of adverts to articles. Plus I love that it is a magazine for real women! It is not showing pictures of celebrities on the red carpet completely airbrushed and it is not updating you on celebrity's marriages and breakups. It is talking about daily issues that women go through and would like answers on.

It is always an eye catching magazine for example, the last month's issue had an actress on the front with a lime green background.

Although £3.50 is a little pricier to pay than some other magazines on the market it, it is well worth that bit extra. Some of the cheaper magazines I can read in all of about 20 minutes whereas if I read this magazine from cover to cover in one go I think it would take me a good three hours. This is perhaps why it has been called the fastest growing women's magazine. However it has been stated that it is for women of 35 years onwards which I do not agree with at all. I think it is interesting for women of 20 years onwards.

There is also a Women & Home website with forums about recently published articles in the magazine. This is great for people suffering with particular issues at home to be able to talk them through with other people in similar situations: www.womanandhome.com/

A great full packed magazine!