This week's favourites!

Happy Friday the 13^th! It’s funny, I wouldn’t normally notice the significance of the date, but it’s really grey here in Glasgow today and I’m expecting to hear back about my finance test results so I’m really feeling it today…

I seem to be getting more into the idea of updating this blog, any time I’m out or doing something I wonder if it’s worthy of writing a post about it. The last few days I’ve seen or bought little things that I’ve thought I could post about but it ended up not really being enough to write a whole post on, so I’ve decided on doing something different… A list of my favourite things this week :) (original, I know. Just go with it haha)

So, without further ado…

1. Lush Lip Scrub (Bubblegum)

My friend introduced me to this – I get really dry, cracked lips during winter no matter how much lip balm I get through, so she let me try out hers and it was so good that I had to go get my own! It’s a little pot small enough to carry around in your bag, and contains caster sugar and jojoba oil. You just use it like you would an exfoliator for your face, except – and this is probably my favourite part – because it’s sugar, you lick it off and the oil stays to moisturise your lips. It tastes so good!

2. Lush Bath Ballistic (Granny Takes a Dip and Dragon’s Egg)

My parents were out visiting me this week, so because they were in a hotel it meant that I could come and visit and use the bath there… university hall problems. Of course, the first thing I did was run down the street to Lush (literally, I was so excited) to buy one of their bath bombs which I love love love. The first one I picked up was Granny Takes a Dip (to the left), which smelled amazing, I don’t know how to explain it other than like a sherbet-y sweet? The colours were also so cute, all pinks and blues and greens and the water ended up a dark pink colour which totally bought me in. I was too eager to use this one to take my own photo, so I’ve used a stock one haha. I also got a second one, Dragon’s Egg (for a second bath, obviously – need to make the most of it), which was a little less mad but gave a really nice lemony smell and released a white foam, which then ended up orange and the water was all glittery which would usually annoy me but this was really cute... That one I did get a photo of! (right)

3. This cupcake

How cute is this!? I met my mum between classes yesterday and she suggested getting a cake from Greggs, which I usually wouldn’t go into just cause I’m not a big fan of shop-bought cakes (it’s the baking soda I don’t like, I’m not a cake snob!), but I saw this cake literally smiling at me and it was way too cute to not pick up. It made me smile anyway!

4. Yankee Candle (Vanilla Cupcake)

I remember when I was little, my mum would always be ordering off QVC and one product that would be all over the house was Yankee Candle. Obviously when you’re like 5 you’re not very interested in how good candles smell, so I haven’t really got into them until recent years haha. My favourite of all time has to be Christmas Cookie, but it’s obviously a seasonal one so I always have to stock up to try and make them last the whole year. For some reason though, I never noticed until the other day that Vanilla Cupcake gives off almost the same scent? Maybe it’s just me who smells it that way, but anyway it is amazing and I actually had to go on a quest just to find someone with matches who could light it for me the other day… I had to get someone to light it while they were standing outside their flat for a cigarette, I was that won over by it. This was at 11pm, by the way. Not even ashamed.

… and I think that’s it! I could probably go on to be honest, but this post is getting pretty long and I salute you if you’ve actually made it to the end haha

xo

D.I.Y Hair Colour

So for ages now, I’ve wanted to go blonde. I always got told that I was too pale to pull off a sun-kissed looking blonde, which was the shade I wanted, and so after a while I kind of gave up. Then the trend of dip-dyeing came about, and after going for that, I realised that I didn’t actually look too washed out with the right shade of blonde (almost a darker, sort of dirty blonde colour).

Now, I’ve decided that I want to try and go for a lighter hair colour – however, as I’m now a student I don’t exactly have the budget to just walk into a salon any more. So, I decided to try going for the DIY option… I know, I’m really lucky that I’m not walking around with bright orange hair. I went for L’Oreal Prodigy in “Natural medium blonde”.

So, my hair was like this before the dye was put in… I’d previously dyed the ends blonde with L’Oreal’s Preference Wild Ombrés (shade No. 2), while I still had old highlights in at the top and the rest was just my natural brunette/reddish colour.

The instructions for the dye suggested that I wash it out after half an hour, but when I checked, my hair was still pretty dark and the roots had only just started to get to a lighter brunette colour, so I kept it in for a further half an hour.

By this point, I had searched online to see how long blonde home dye kits normally take to make your hair a really worrying colour and had freaked myself out (just in case my hair was some mad colour I just couldn’t see yet), so I ended up washing it out after a total of an hour of it in my hair.

This was the result…

(This is my "I'm not impressed" face)

I don’t know about you, but I can’t see any difference. I mean, it looks a bit more yellow in a certain light if anything... If you put a light right over the hair on the top of my head, you can see some blonde hairs, but only on the surface. Not exactly the shade I was looking for! I actually feel like my hair looks darker, which isn’t exactly ideal considering I had the dye on for double the time it had told me to keep it on for.

Pretty disappointing; Looks like I might have to just save up and get to a salon after all!

Burnout

Do you ever have so many good intentions, thinking you’ll get so much done, and then you get to a point and realise you’re getting nowhere?

I was so determined that I was going to get this blog up and running and taken seriously, and that I shall do… I just need to shift so much stuff out of the way first! I feel like I haven’t written on this for ages, and it has pretty nearly been a month which feels like such a fail – I just didn’t realise how much work I’d be coming back to when I went back to uni! I’d planned so much while I was at home for the next few months, the main one being to find a job… then I got back and realised no way was that going to happen. But I will definitely get back into this!

(This post is the first tick off a very long to-do list, but I’ll try!)

xo

*EDIT* I just looked back and realised my last post was actually a month ago today! Even worse!

Bomb Cosmetics!

I’ve been so so excited to use these!

I’ve had sensitive skin since I was little, so I was never allowed to use bath bombs or fancy gels or anything like that (sad times). But it looks like since I’ve hit adulthood my skin’s decided to lay off and give me a break, which means that I’m finally able to catch up on these things!

One of my friends got me a Bomb Cosmetics Rockin’ Robin gift set for Christmas. It came in the cutest wrapping paper with robins in Santa hats, but I was too excited to see what was inside to actually get a picture of it all first… I at least remembered to get a photo of the actual products!

The set comes contains:

Rockin' Robin Blaster

Snowflakes on Your Tongue Mallow

Plum Berry Crush soap

Seasons Tweetings Mallow

Glitterballs Creamer

... and they’re all so cute! They’re not as colourful as the bombs you get in other places such as Lush, but they smell so good and they make the bath all glittery – glitter can never be a bad thing! The only one I'm not sure about is the bigger one in the top right of the photo - it smells of a cocoa/chocolatey scent, so I'm not sure if that one will be too sickening or not. They also pass the sensitive skin test, so I’m really happy with these :)

I’m definitely going to buy some more of this sort of thing while I’m at home – the student halls I live in have a tiny “shower” i.e. a corner of the bathroom sectioned off with a shower curtain, so I’m making the most of having a bath here!

xo

Tweeting and stuff

If I'm doing this, I'm doing it properly!

I've now got a Twitter account to go with the blog - follow me if you want! You don't have to, but, y'know...

@hannnn_xo :) 

(Someone already took "hannnxo" as a username, an egg from 2010 who hasn't posted yet! Gutted.)

xo

Resolutions

Happy 2015! I really should have made this post four days ago, but I was too busy sitting on the couch eating every last chocolate I received at Christmas and dreading the day when normality would come back.

That day appears to be tomorrow… at least, for everyone else, it seems to be the day to return to work, school, college etc… I’ve turned out to be one of the lucky ones, who’ve managed to come into their first year of uni and avoid exams. My Christmas holidays don’t come to an end until the 26^th! But I've finished all the selection boxes, so I decided I should maybe switch off from holiday mode too. You know, just to make it fair.

On the title of my post, I was thinking back the other day on previous new years, where I’ve said to myself the usual “okay, it’s a new year, it’s a new start, and this will be the year where everything falls into place”. To be honest, I can’t think of any particular resolutions that I said I’d do and then stuck to. I don’t think I’ve ever taken it seriously, and so I wasn’t going to go for anything. But then I thought, I have this blog now! I could make a list of (achievable) goals, and then come back to this post on the 31^st December 2015, and see what I’ve managed to do, or most likely if I’ve even made an effort to attempt them…

2014 was definitely a good year – there’s not many years where I’ve been really sad to them go, but I actually felt quite sad when the bells brought in the new year this time round! I finished school, passed my driving test, passed my exam results and started university – it’s been mad and scary, but it’s been the first time I can genuinely say that I was quite proud of myself.

So, for 2015, and considering what mindset I took on last year to see myself achieve those things, I’ve devised this list:

Be positive. 

Don’t listen to those who tell you you can’t or won’t achieve something. Negative comments seem to shoot me down really easily, and I find it hard to rise back from them. Just don’t give them the chance to make them!

Don’t burn yourself out.

I have this awful habit of not bothering about something important for as long as I can, and then when I have a small amount of time left I suddenly realise how much I have to do and I work myself up to the point where I’m having some sort of breakdown (a la final exams). I need to learn to give myself time to do things that need doing!

Do something for yourself sometimes. 

Another habit, but this one isn’t as bad. I tend to do things because I know it will make someone else happy, or because I’m scared that they’ll look down on me for not doing what they wanted. There’s been so many times that I’ve maybe spent money on something because someone’s said it would be great and it really wasn’t, or I’ve taken them somewhere but I haven’t enjoyed myself cause they weren’t, even though I have to do the same thing when they want to go places. I need to just listen to what I want sometimes too!

Stop worrying. 

This one might be a little harder – I’m a worrier, big time. My new car has the reverse gear in a different position on the gear stick to the old one and it’s harder to get into; I will genuinely want to cry if I meet a car on the road and have to reverse for them. I need to stop getting worked up about tiny things that have no real impact on anyone lives. The other car can reverse for me! Hell yeah!

Attend a (proper) music festival. 

I went to Radio 1’s Big Weekend in Glasgow Green last May, and it was one of the best days ever. But you only get tickets for one day, so this year I want to do it properly and go a whole weekend at one, with tents and mud and everything. Me and my boyfriend have tickets to T in the Park this summer, so really this one is already going to be achieved, but hey I could break my leg or something before we go so it’s in here okay

Remember to keep your diary up to date! 

When I left home for university, my parents gave me a really cute diary from Paperchase so I could write down everything I got up to and look back on it when I’m older and reminisce on a time where I was young, free, and in debt due to student loans. It started off fine, as in there’s a good load of information about what happened during Fresher’s week, but I keep forgetting to sit down every so often and write in it since then. I need to start again!

I think they’re straightforward enough! I’m not one of those people who go “I must get into the gym”, but I think these goals will make my year and me better off!

xo