Why I’m Not Going to See Toy Story 4 in the Cinema

So apparently I want to branch out from already being a ‘bad’ blogger to also being a ‘bad’ Disney fan, but hear me out on this one.

I think we can all agree that this has been a mega year for new movies. From Avengers Endgame already smashing a tonne of box office records to the highly anticipated Star Wars Episode IX coming soon, film boffs will most likely be spending more time in the cinema in 2019 than ever before. And out of all these films, I think Disney has had the most fingers in the pie than any other production companies, with some huge films having already hit the big screen and many more still to come.

This is all very exciting for Disney fans; we’ve seen some of our favourite animated classics have a reimagining as live actions, and also some pretty huge sequels, one of which closest to the hearts of my generation being Toy Story 4. 90’s kids like myself have grown up with the adventures of Andy’s toys, many of us sobbing FAR too many tears over *that* scene in Toy Story 3, so we were all good and ready when a fourth film was announced to be hitting our screens.

I was ready to go and see it, don’t get me wrong, and I am excited for when I finally do see it, but I’m not going to the cinema for it, and here’s my reasoning..

While the experience of some films is heightened by seeing it on an enormous screen in a pitch black theatre with surround sound and no talking, I personally think that other films are somewhat ruined by it, and Toy Story 4 is one of those for me. Give me all the action and adventure on the big screen, give me stunning cinematics and world class special features, but when it comes to a feel-good family animation, to be quite honest I’d rather be curled up on my sofa at home with a blanket and pile of snacks, being able to laugh out loud when I want to without getting evils from the rest of the guests.

And as awful as it sounds, I truly do get bored watching some films in the cinema. If its not a super gripping storyline or visually incredible, I find myself sat in the dark wishing it would hurry up and be done with sooner so I can get out of there, which I probably wouldn’t be thinking if I was watching it at home – y’know, unless it was a rubbish film in the first place.

So there’s one hell of an unpopular opinion for you I’m sure, but its something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and honestly, I stand by it. Anyone else feel the same? Let me know in the comments!

August 3, 2019Lottie 2 Comments

Has Blogging Changed?

Having just returned from my accidental blogging break, but more importantly having felt slightly detached from blogging for the best part of a year now, as I have been starting my attempt to rediscover my blogging ability, I can’t help but notice that there are many things in the blogging world that seem to be different to how they were a year or so ago.

I mean, of course there is always going to be change. We live in a world where technology changes and improves on an almost daily basis, so of course the blogosphere will be reacting and evolving with the ever-changing environment, but there are a lot of things that haven’t evolved, but seem to instead have become extinct.

You see, while I may have slipped from posting on my blog, I definitely have not been away from Twitter, which I would say is my main source of interaction with the blogging world, and the majority of the people I follow on Twitter are bloggers or linked to the blogging world. I would probably also go as far as to say that Twitter is the main site of blogger interaction, would you agree?

Twitter brought my blog out of the depths of the internet and into the view of so many of my readers – I was super late to the Twitter game and started this blog over a year before I actually got Twitter. It is one of my biggest sources of traffic, and I have always taken advantage of that fact by being as active as I could on Twitter. I used to try and schedule 4-5 tweets a day to share new and older blog posts, tagging as many retweet accounts as I could and hoping that I would get those shares, and I was not alone. My Twitter feed used to be full of scheduled tweets (sometimes the same ones EVERY DAY..) but now as I scroll through I feel like I’m seeing fewer and fewer of them. I mean sure, this could be due to the ever-changing Twitter algorithm, or the fact that I’m following a more diverse range of accounts, or, as I feel it might be, it could be that scheduling constant blog promotion tweets has become a thing of the past..

Why does this matter, I hear you ask. Well, it leaves me confused as to what is acceptable for me now as I re-enter the blogging world – not that I truly left in the first place but still. If I go back to my old, 5 posts a day ways, will I be the minority, or worse still, will I be considered annoying?

Also on the subject of Twitter, where did all the blogging chats go?! I remember a time where everyone who was anyone was present for as many Twitter chats as they could possibly manage; I myself would be at my laptop with 3-4 tabs open so I could keep up with the sometimes hundreds of people weighing in on these chats and it was insane but it felt FAB. The term ‘blogging community’ has been somewhat tarnished of late so I don’t really like to use it, but this truly felt like just that – a proper community of people all wanting to talk, all wanting to be friends, all wanting to feel like part of something. I worry now that everyone is too busy trying to become better than others that they’ve forgotten that blogging used to be something that so many of us turned to because we wanted a way to express ourselves and the community made us feel like we weren’t alone.

This has become a bit of a ramble, so I’ll wrap it up. I guess I just need to feel my way around for a while and find my own blogging way again. (But if anyone wants to clue me in on current etiquette, hit me up)

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April 6, 2019Lottie 4 Comments

The cariPRO Ultrasonic Toothbrush from Smile Brilliant | AD

The following post contains some affiliate links and features a gifted product. All views are my own.

Let’s face it, we all feel better when we look good, right? Well, the truth is I can be a little lax in that area, and it does affect my mental health, so one of my personal New Years resolutions for 2019 was that I wanted to spend a bit more time taking care of myself and my appearance.

At first, I thought that this would be taking a bit more time to do my makeup, or being stricter with my skincare routine, and it never even really dawned on me that I could also benefit from focusing more on my oral hygiene, until I was contacted by Smile Brilliant to try out their new electric toothbrush, the cariPRO Ultrasonic.

I don’t think I’ve ever really used an electric toothbrush before, except maybe a kiddy one as a child, so I was excited to see if brushing with a little bit of power would actually make the difference that you always see dental adverts claiming. I’ve never really had any concerns about my teeth; I’ve never had a filling, braces or really needed any sort of treatment, so I’ve always thought I was doing just fine with a manual toothbrush, but how do I feel now?

My first impressions of the cariPRO toothbrush were surprising. I expected it to be quite heavy in the hand and bulky compared to the manual toothbrushes that I’m used to, but it was surprisingly lightweight and a lot slimmer than other electric toothbrushes I’ve seen before, and its soft touch grip means it holds really nicely. The brush head is quite a bit smaller than on a manual toothbrush but this makes it easier to focus on each tooth individually to get a great clean all over.

The cariPRO has five different brushing modes – Clean, Whiten, Massage, Gum Care and Sensitive – with each one having a different vibrating effect, and it also has a built-in 2 minute timer, and every 30 seconds there’s a small pause to indicate when you should be moving on to the next section of your mouth, which is super handy if, like me, you never really stop to think about how long you’ve been brushing for. The toothbrush also comes with extra brush heads, a wireless charging dock and a 2 year warranty – oh, and did I mention its totally waterproof?!

But are my teeth cleaner?

Well, they definitely feel it, but not only does using the toothbrush make my mouth feel better, it also actually makes me want to clean my teeth. I now like taking the time to brush thoroughly, alternate between the different brush modes and ensure that I am getting a full 2 minute brush in, whereas before I used to see cleaning my teeth as a bit of a chore.

Are you interested?

Well it might just be your lucky day because I’ve teamed up with Smile Brilliant to give you the chance to win your very own cariPRO Ultrasonic Electric Toothbrush by simply clicking here! And if you don’t win or you can’t wait to try it out for yourself, you can save 20% off your purchase using discount code ‘lottiedoes20‘ at the checkout, so everyone’s a winner really!

Be sure to head over to the Smile Brilliant website to see all the other excellent products they have on offer, and check out the FAQ page if you want to know anything else!

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electric toothbrush
//www.smilebrilliant.com/widget-caripro-article/lottiedoes/773/228

January 23, 2019Lottie 1 Comment

Why I Won’t Write About Saving for A House

Its now been almost 8 months since Matthew and I got the keys to our first home, and truthfully I thought I would have written a lot more about the process by now, but between everything else going on in my life and my minor falling out with blogging last year, I just haven’t got round to it.

I have, however, been thinking a lot about the sort of posts that I wanted to write about this, and while at first I thought a ‘Tips on Saving for Your First House’ post would be a great idea, the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I was getting with the concept of that post. Here me out.

Its no secret that our generation, ‘millennials’, are renting for longer, if not indefinitely, and the percentage of homeowners under 30 has dropped more than significantly in the last 10-20 years. I count myself as a minority for becoming a homeowner at the age of 23 and I’m very aware that while I could write about how Matthew and I saved up for our house, there are a whole tonne of circumstantial reasons why this wouldn’t be relevant to a lot of other people.

House prices differ MASSIVELY throughout the country

As a born and bred southerner, I have lived my whole life with a notion of what I thought was the price of a house was based on what house prices were like around where I lived. I started saving as young as I could because I knew that I wanted to buy my own place at some point in my life, and I knew that wasn’t going to be cheap.

But Matthew is a northern boy, and when we did start looking at houses seriously, we knew it would be up north. I was left dumbfounded when I discovered that we could buy a detached house for less than what a 1 or 2 bedroom flat would cost in Bournemouth. Suddenly, the deposit money I had been saving all these years was more than enough for a house, despite being nowhere need what it would need to be in my hometown. The fact is, most people aren’t prepared to move across the country just to own a home, and we were lucky (if that is even the word) to be relocating for Matthew’s job, because the chances of us being able to buy somewhere down south without significant help were slim.

Not everyone can make the ‘sacrifices’ we were able to

I never moved out of my parents’, and Matthew moved in with us 9 months before we bought our house. We both worked at the same place, so it was pretty easy for us to share my car. It would be pretty easy for me to write a post saying that to help save for a house you should move in with your parents, share/sell a car etc, but I know that those options aren’t always an option for everyone.

We all have different histories

I started working at 16, and I didn’t go to university after sixth form, so I had the luxury of no student loans. I always knew that I wanted to buy a place, so I started saving super early, even before Matthew was in the picture, AND Matthew and I were able to buy together, when not everyone can split a mortgage.

We also have totally different histories to previous generations. My parents were married by my age, not fighting for jobs in overcrowded industries like so many people are today AND the housing market was a totally different place to how it is today. We just can’t compare ourselves.

Home-buying incentives and schemes

Because we bought a new-build, we were eligible for the government Help To Buy loan for up to 20% of the value of our house which is interest free for the first 5 years. If you’re not buying a new-build, you can’t apply for this, and to be honest, without this we wouldn’t have been able to afford the house we fell in love with. There are also other options, like shared ownership and Help to Buy ISAs, but again, these aren’t always options for everyone.

Now none of this is to say that people under the age of 30 can’t save enough to buy houses, I mean we’re living proof that it is possible, but I’m just a little fed up of all these clickbait articles saying that its because we love avocados (which we don’t all love just FYI) or some other ridiculously false reason, when in fact its because we’re stuck at the bottom rung of the property ladder with baby boomers stomping on our hands and so many real factors are actually affecting our generation.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so drop me a comment!

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January 5, 2019Lottie 2 Comments

Pup Life – A Month with Finn

Its now been a whole month since we brought Finn home and our lives were turned a little upside down. Having a puppy in our lives has brought SO much joy, but its also a lot of responsibility and a total lifestyle change.

Because I work from home, I spend pretty much all day every day with this little fuzzball, and we’ve got ourselves a pretty good rhythm, and as he gets older and more used to life by the day, we’re starting to see some improvements in his typical puppy behaviour.

Sleeping

Finn was already sleeping through the night pretty well when we got him, so the only big change for him really was sleeping alone, as he still had a brother and both of his parents with him at the breeder’s. We tried to start him off with tough love, giving him a Pluto soft toy and making him sleep in the utility room by himself, but this was all a little too much too soon, and that night did not go exactly to plan.. We decided that as he would ultimately be sleeping in our bedroom with us anyway, that we would move him upstairs for his second night, and this resulted in his bed being right next to my side of the bed, and I spent the first week sleeping with one arm dangling off the side of the bed so that he knew I was there! He does now, however, sleep in his bed on the other side of the room from us with no problems, and he’s gone from waking up at 6/6.30am to sleeping until at least 7am – yippee!

House training

Despite having no issues with using puppy pads before he came home with us, once in the house, he completely disregarded the ones we put down and did his business wherever he was caught short, although he would also take himself to the back door when he needed to go BUTTT in the last week he has become amazing, and has only had accidents when we didn’t get to the back door to let him out quick enough – he sneaks off there sometimes while I’m working!

Eating

No surprises here, Finn is a dachshund who loves his food! He’s on Tails.com food, and has advanced from needing 3 small meals a day to 2 bigger meals. He loves treats, especially denta-stick type chews, and although at least 90% of the time he’s strictly on dog treats, he does enjoy a little bit of sausage as an extra special treat.

Life at home

Honestly, he naps A LOT. Most of the day when I’m working, he’s either curled up asleep under my desk or playing with his toys in my office, most of which have been thoroughly chewed now.. He has what I call ‘psycho hour’, normally between 5-6pm where he runs around like crazy for no reason, which can drive me a bit mad when I’m trying to finish up my work for the day, but is mainly just funny to watch. He spends his evenings curled up with us on the sofa, and then I normally go up to bed and he stays downstairs with Matthew until he comes up. He’s even got pretty good at when Matthew comes in from work in the early hours of the morning.

Out and about

Because of his vaccinations, we couldn’t walk Finn for the first 10 days he was with us, but now he’s getting the hang of it. Most days its just a trip to the post office and back while I’m posting orders, but last weekend during our visit to Bournemouth he spent some time at the park and at the beach and he sat nicely in two different dog friendly cafes while we had breakfast!

He is super friendly and gets so excited meeting people, but he’s still getting the hang of meeting other dogs. He barks a lot when he sees other dogs from a distance, or hears dogs barking, but up close he does calm down – he just needs to get a bit more social!

I just can’t believe how lucky we are to have such a beautiful puppy, and I now can’t imagine life without him.

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November 29, 2018Lottie 3 Comments

Rebuilding

You ever see those funny triangle diagrams floating around on the Internet, where each side is labelled with something we aspire for in life, like ‘good job’ or ‘social life’ or something similarly cliche, and then it’s captioned something like ‘you can only have two, what do you choose’?

These viral posts tend to have their comment sections full of people saying how much they relate to the ideas suggested by it, that we can’t ever seem to really have it all, but I never subscribed to that belief myself.

I always thought that I could have it all. I was *that* person who prided herself on working full time AND maintaining a blog AND being able to go to the gym every morning and while I’ve never really had much of a social life, that was mainly down to the fact that I never lived near to any of my friends, but I still found the time to go and see them and we still talked every day, but I also lived with my boyfriend and I saw my family every weekend.

Reading that, you’d think that I did have it all; it sure as hell sounds like it. But behind all that, there are some shortcomings: I still lived with my parents (not that I ever really minded that), and I worked in a job that didn’t truly make me happy, and that wasn’t a career for me.

Fast forward to today. I now own a home with said boyfriend, we have a puppy and I am living my self-employed dream. The social life aspect hasn’t really changed, although I am a little bit closer to some friends now so I do get to see them more often. This is all wonderful, and I am truly happy for all of this, but some of the walls of that triangle (or more like a hexagon) are crumbling. It would only take you a few minutes of scrolling back through my blog to see that I’ve gone from posting 5-6 times a week to going over 3 weeks without writing anything. I now live 250 miles away from the family that I adore, and as for going to the gym every morning, I can’t actually remember the last time I got in a workout.

I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining, because my life is incredible in so many ways, but each one of these things is an aspect of who I am, and I feel like by losing these things I am losing sight of who I am, and I’m now becoming one of those people retweeting that triangle diagrams saying ‘I feel attacked’. I don’t want to believe that these silly little sketches are true, I want to go back to feeling that little bit smug thinking that really I do have it all.

My life has changed a lot in the past 6 months, and I guess if anything I was naive to think that it would all be easy, because nothing about it has been, but what’s the fun in things being easy, right? There’s no shame in being vulnerable, but I’m ready to start rebuilding these aspects of my life, and rediscovering the person that I used to, and want to be.

She’s in here somewhere, just under a nice little layer of comfort podge, y’know, from avoiding going to the gym for too long, but she’ll be back, just you wait.

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November 28, 2018Lottie 1 Comment

Meet the Puppy

I know things have been a little quiet on here lately, but they’re about to get a whole lot louder as Matthew and I adopted our first puppy on Monday! Everybody, meet Finn..

Finn is a miniature long-haired dachshund puppy, he’s 15 weeks old today and we are already so in love with him.

Truthfully, this all happened rather suddenly. Matthew and I have talked about getting a puppy since we first got together, but of course we always knew that it wouldn’t be possible until we got our own place, and then when we first moved into our house there were still a lot of reasons that we didn’t get one straight away. Finally, we settled on waiting until after we came back from our holiday in January, but last weekend I decided to torture myself by looking at puppies online, and that was when we found Finn.

I grew up with two dachshunds, both miniature long-haired, so part of me always wanted another sausage, and it didn’t take much to convince Matthew of the same! Most of the dachshund puppies for sale whenever I’ve looked have been short-haired or wirey, so as soon as I saw a listing for long-haired pups I had to show him, and I in no way was expecting him to respond with ‘ok, I think we’re ready’! So we went to meet him the following day, and were back the next day to pick him up! He was one of a little of five, with just him and one other brother left, and to make things even more perfect, his mum’s name was actually Lottie! I mean, that’s just meant to be, right?

Its safe to say that the last 5 days have been a total learning experience. I suddenly feel like a first time parent, and flit from relaxed and calm to super worried and googling every problem in a split second, but I have to keep reminding myself that I won’t have it all down instantly. We’ve already got toilet training almost down, and sometimes sleep through the night, and most of the time he’s a perfect little angel who loves naps, cuddles, and running/bouncing around the garden. As of Monday he’ll be able to go out for walks, so that’ll be the next big step for him.

Expect to see a lot more puppy content, and for more frequent Finn photos, be sure to follow my Instagram, linked below!

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November 3, 2018Lottie 5 Comments

Colourpop x Disney Designer: My Buys and Swatches

I think this has possibly been the best collaboration to come out of 2018, if not the best beauty collaboration I’ve ever seen. Two of my favourite brands, Disney and Colourpop coming together to release a whole collection of beautiful makeup? Yes please.

I was poised and ready the minute the collection dropped, and even being there as the clock struck midnight (metaphorically, it was actually 6pm but hey it would’ve been midnight somewhere), I still missed out on a couple of items that I wanted – the two highlighters from the collection, which sold out instantly – but I was still so happy to know that I was getting my hands on what I knew would be amazing products. Better still, Colourpop have now updated their site to include tax when shipping to the UK, so no more hideous customs charges, yippee! I was also pleasantly surprised at how quickly I got my dispatch email and how soon these beauties got to me, and the struggle of waiting until I had photographed them before I could have a play was real guys.

So out of the collection, I bought the It’s A Princess Thing pressed powder shadow palette, three of the Supershock shadows, shades Heigh-Ho, So This Is Love and Be Our Guest, and the Ariel Creme Lux Lipstick, and I did a little squee when I unboxed every single one of them.

For starters, the packaging is GORGEOUS. The collection features around just six of the Disney princesses, Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine and Tiana, and they all feature on the front of the eyeshadow palette, plus their autographs are plastered over most of the packaging. I love the gold and black and the low-key extravagance of it all.

Now I have a couple of Colourpop palettes and Supershock shadows already, so the product I was most intrigued by was the Creme Lux Lipstick, as I’ve not tried a Colourpop lippie before. I chose Ariel as it looked like a shade that I would get plenty of use out of, being more of a nude shade, and what I love about the Colourpop website is that they don’t just show the product and a swatch on an arm, they actually show the shade on lips, and on a range of different skin tones, so you can actually gauge if it’ll suit before you buy.

Again, I loved the packaging, and while the tube is plastic, it actually feels expensive. As for the product itself, I was SO happy with it. The shade is PERFECT, its soft and smells amazing, and even though I put it onto my already fairly dry lips, even up close it didn’t look dry and I didn’t find it drying over time.

The Supershock shadows also did not disappoint. They came in the same style pot that the regular Supershock shadows do, but in black with a gold castle on the lid. I’ve written a proper review on Supershock shadows before, so I won’t go into the nitty gritties, but they’re beautifully buttery shadows, and the pigmentation blows my mind.. I was actually only going to buy one, but when the highlighters sold out, I needed to top up my order to get free delivery, so I grabbed two more, and I’m really glad that I did.

Top to Bottom: Be Our Guest, So This Is Love, Heigh-Ho

Of course the centrepiece of the collection was the It’s A Princess Thing palette. It looked stunning in the photos that I saw prior to the release, and it was even more stunning in person. This is my third Colourpop shadow palette, so I expected good things, but it wasn’t until I swatched the colours out that I realised just how incredible this palette is.

The pigmentation is so unbelievable; photos don’t do justice. The shimmery shadows practically turn into foils on the skin, I’ve never seen powder eyeshadow look so flawless. All of these swatches are one swipe with a finger and the colours are so vivid. The only shade that didn’t do too much for me is Chip, which is the lightest matte shade, but I think that’s only because its not as bold as the others, and I reckon I’ll actually use it quite a lot nonetheless.

Top to Bottom: Chip, Juju, Grumpy, Triton, Abu

Top to Bottom: Prince Charming, Ray, Fair Godmother, One Kiss?, Thingamabob

Top to Bottom: Enchanted Rose, Poison Apple, Magic Carpet, Beast, Midnight Curfew

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve got anything bad to say about this palette; I may go as far as saying that I think the quality is better than that of other Colourpop palettes that I own and love. As well as these swatches going on so well with a finger, the shadows apply beautifully with brushes, they blend perfectly and have good staying power even unprimed.

This collection, like a Disney princess, is flawless.

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October 10, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

W7 Blazin’ Palette Review

So a few weeks ago I mentioned that I’d bought a couple of W7 palettes from TKMaxx, and shared the first one which I thought to be a potential dupe for a Too Faced palette. Today I’m reviewing the second palette, which I think could also be a possible dupe, but this time for Urban Decay’s Naked Heat eyeshadow palette, but as I don’t own that I can’t really do a side by side comparison!

So this is the W7 Blazin’ palette. The RRP is £9.95, but I picked it up from TKMaxx for £4.99, and looking around you can get it from a lot of places for under £5.

As with most of the W7 palettes, it comes in a tin form, and its quite a sizeable one, but I think it looks the part and the outside definitely gives a good indication of what’s to come on the inside. There’s also a double-ended brush included, but one end is a foamy applicator which I personally don’t like so won’t use, but the other end is fine!

The inside, however, is when it really starts to look like its Urban Decay counterpart, and looking at photos of Naked Heat the shades do seem to match up pretty well, but as I said I can’t do an exact comparison! I started off by swatching the shades, and the below swatches are one layer using just my finger.

First off, I really liked the feel of the formula – it was soft and buttery to touch, but when using a brush later on it did have a little bit of crumble to it but I personally like my shadows to be a bit powdery as it means they get picked up well by all brushes. I thought the pigmentation was really good for something that cost less than £5, with the middle shades coming off best I thought – my forearms are super super pale so I always struggle to get whiter shades to show up when I swatch them, but as you can see in the second swatch photo they did hold out ok, and when using them on my eyes I’ve had no problems. I felt like the darker colours could have been a little darker, but it really doesn’t bother me as those are the ones that I know I won’t use so much.

I have had a lot of fun playing around with this palette! There are a lot of looks that you can create, which surprised me considering there’s not much range in terms of colour, and I was also uncertain as I’ve not been much of a reddish shadow kinda girl before, but going into autumn I think this is definitely a palette I will use a lot. The colours build and blend like a dream and there’s a good mix of matte and shimmery shades so you’ve got all bases covered! W7 is also a cruelty free brand, so for £5 I have absolutely no complaints about this palette, and now I don’t need to fork out £30 for the Urban Decay Naked Heat one!

If you do have Naked Heat, let me know how you think these photos/swatches compare, I’d love to know!

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October 4, 2018Lottie 4 Comments

Is This £5 Palette A Too Faced Dupe?

You know, there is nothing worse than being on a spending ban when you really want to play with new makeup, and that’s made even worse when you really want to blog about it.

So while I don’t really have a payday anymore, I did decide to allow myself a little bit of a spend at the end of August, and having seen so many people post about amazing finds on the TKMaxx website, and being in constant search of the bargains, I decided that was where I’d look first. I was actually super impressed to find some great products from some of my favourite high-end brands, but believe it or not, I was actually drawn to some of the cheapest palettes I found, and I decided to forgo the big brands and opted instead for a brand that’s made me a little curious for a while now: W7. I bought three palettes in total, which came to £15, and while I will share them all eventually, today’s post is about just the one of them..

So this is the W7 Cheeky Trio palette, and when I saw it online I did have a little question in my mind as to whether this would turn out to be a potential dupe for what is already one of my favourite face palettes, which is the Too Faced Sweet Peach Glow palette. And well, take a look for yourself..

Sure, there’s an obvious size difference in the two palettes, but first impressions wise, the shades looked pretty damn close to me so I figured I was onto a winner! The packaging is a fairly simple tin, but it does the job and it doesn’t scream of an obvious dupe attempt.

But how does it actually shape up compared to its Too Faced counterpart?

Well formula-wise, W7 doesn’t make any sort of claim on the peach front, so it doesn’t deliver the glorious smell that my TF palette still gives off after over a year of use, and its not quite so smooth and buttery to touch, but its certainly not a crumble-fest either. The pigment is pretty decent, but do the shades match up?

Highlighter – Top – W7, Bottom – Too Faced

Despite looking VERY similar in the pans, as soon as I swatched out the highlighter I could tell they weren’t an exact match. Its kinda hard to tell in photos, but the W7 is a much more silvery-gold, whereas Too Faced does have peachier undertones which gives it a little more depth.

Blush – Top – W7, Bottom – Too Faced

The W7 blush is also much pinker than its Too Faced friend, but the colour is pretty and it builds nicely. It also doesn’t have the slight shimmer than Sweet Peach does, but I don’t think blusher has to be shimmery so I’m cool with it.

Bronzer – Top – W7, Bottom – Too Faced

Again, the bronzers looked super similar in the palettes, but the swatches for these two probably have the most difference out of all of them. Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of the Too Faced bronzer as it doesn’t really suit my skin tone, so I prefer the W7, although it could maybe be considered more of a highlighter than a bronzer as its kinda light..

So is this a good dupe? Well, its under £10 (and under £5 in a lot of places), and its also cruelty free, so it ticks a lot of boxes for me straight off the bat, which is why I bought it in the first place. Given that I already owned and loved Sweet Peach Glow before this, I was maybe a little swayed by that peach scent I love so much. However, as palettes go, I think that the Cheeky Trio is a fab face set, and the slight differences in the shades mean that at least I’ve got an excuse to use them both!

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September 6, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

Things I Am When I’m Not A Disney Fan

Because its what I talk about 90% of the time, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Disney is all I really care about. Truth is, though, there are actually a lot of other fandoms that I belong to, and while I might not always talk about them as much, many of them mean as much to me as Disney does.

I have loved Lord of the Rings since the first film came out. I was only 7 when the first movie came out (2001), so no, I hadn’t read all the books before seeing the films, but I have read them all now. The movies were a HUGE part of my childhood, and once we had them on DVD, me and my sister would watch them at least once a month, if not most weekends – all extended versions, for any other fans who care about these things. As well as the story itself, we became obsessed with all of the behind the scenes features on the DVDs (there are two discs worth for each film), which we’ve watched way more times than is probably considered normal.

The last Lord of the Rings film, Return of the King, was actually the first film I ever cried at. I was 9 years old at the time, and I wasn’t crying because the end of the film was sad, I was crying because I was sad that it was the last Lord of the Rings film, and there wouldn’t be any more movies; this was way before any of The Hobbit films had been announced.

I also LOVE musicals. Its probably the only thing that makes me wish I lived in London because I could quite easily go to a show every night. I saw a lot of musicals as a young kid because my parents have always been musical fans, but it wasn’t until I was about 11/12 that I really got into them. I’m super lucky to have seen a lot of musicals on West End, and even a handful on Broadway, and my all time favourite musical is Rent, with other favourites including Avenue Q (which is actually the musical I’ve seen the most times), Wicked and Spamalot. I’ve also seen a lot of the classics, like Phantom of the Opera, Les Mis, and I even saw Cats when I was very young.

And even though I’ve actually seen more musicals than I can even remember sometimes, I’ve still got a list as long as my arm of more shows that I would love to see, with the top of the list being Legally Blonde and Hamilton.

I’m also a Potterhead, I love building Lego and doing sudokus and I’m a sucker for a crime/detective show on TV (I’m patiently awaiting the return of Death in Paradise). Disney is a huge part of my life, but I am more than just a Disney fan.

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August 13, 2018Lottie 8 Comments

A Timeless Gift*

Despite everything having been a total whirlwind over the last few months, Matthew and I have had a lot to celebrate lately. We bought our first house and became homeowners in May, celebrated our two year anniversary in June, and Matthew finally started his new job at the end of July, so its been exciting times all round.

Of course we celebrated all of these wonderful moments at the times they occurred, but with all the craziness going on, I felt they were a little rushed, and I wanted to commemorate them with the right gift, which I was really struggling to find. Matthew has always supported me in everything I’ve done, and he’s worked so hard over the last few years to get his dream job, I wanted something that wasn’t just an every day sort of present, I wanted to get him something that was special. So when I was contacted by the wonderful team at Jord Watches, I instantly knew that this was an opportunity I wanted to share with him.

A watch makes an amazing gift for a special occasion, but these watches are in a world of their own. This stunning Hyde watch is just one of the wonderfully unique wooden watches that Jord have to offer – and no, you read that right, its actually wooden!

Matthew chose the Ebony & Iron finish, which is beautifully subtle but every time I see it I’m absolutely amazed at how intricate the design is. The darker colour makes styling the watch effortless, and it goes well with everything in his wardrobe. It was custom sized to his wrist measurement, and came in this incredible presentation box, which just added to the whole unboxing experience.

And while I did let Matthew choose the watch itself, I did surprise him by opting to have the back of the watch engraved with our anniversary date to add that extra personal touch to commemorate the last two years we’ve spent together.

This watch just made all my gift choosing worries disappear. Being able to have it engraved meant I could use it as a way of celebrating our special day, but also what’s wonderful about giving a watch is that in Matthew’s new job as a pilot, he’s actually required to wear a watch at all times, so I could also use this opportunity to gift him something that he’ll wear and use all the time, but that’s more than just practical, its stylish.

Jord make these incredible wooden watches in both men’s and women’s styles, plus they also do amazing wooden straps for Apple watches, so there’s really something for everyone, and with that in mind, how do you fancy winning $100 credit towards a watch of your own, or so that you too can give someone a truly timeless gift? Simply fill out the giveaway form here – plus you’ll get a 10% off code just for entering! Giveaway closes September 9th at 11:59pm.

Wooden Wrist Watch

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*This post contains gifted items. All views are my own.

August 10, 2018Lottie 5 Comments

How Relateable Do Bloggers Actually Have To Be?

I’ve been thinking a lot about bloggers and relate-ability lately. Let’s face it, the aim of the game for most bloggers is to create content that people are going to want to read, right? But do readers always want to see something that they can relate to?

I recently read a really interesting post by Hannah from The Giraffe’s Life about why Zoella is considered by many to be unrelateable, and I agreed with many of the points put forward; personally I’ve never really been that bothered by Zoella anyway. But regardless of whether or not her millions of fans actually relate to her life of million pound mansions, jetting off to 5 star hotels and being on the cover of every magazine under the sun, they still want to watch her videos and read her posts, which got me thinking about whether or not bloggers do actually need to be relateable?

I don’t know about anyone else, but I kinda like reading about things that I would never actually be able to do myself. Clickbait-y titles like ‘I spent £700 in Primark’ are intriguing, and I can’t help but want to see what on earth was purchased to rack up that receipt total.

From my own stats, I know that my most popular posts are my holiday diaries, especially when I’m in Disney parks, and while I’d love to live in a world where being in Disney parks is considered everyday, I know that it isn’t.

And yes, on the flipside I do love a high end makeup dupe, a budget city break and quick, easy recipe posts, but I’m also super nosey and would love to see what it was like at the latest Spectrum release party, because it’s something that I’d never get to experience myself.

I think also that there’s a huge difference between the relate-ability of a blogger and the relate-ability of their content. A relateable blogger could do the most unrelateable activities, and I’d still read what crazy stuff they’d be up to, but an unrelateable blogger could buy five things under £5 from Primark and I’d have that little meh feeling when I read it, so I guess in that respect relate-ability is kinda important.

These are just my own personal musings on the subject, I’d love to hear your thoughts so drop me a comment!

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August 7, 2018Lottie 7 Comments

Things To Remember During The Heatwave

I don’t think anyone in the UK expected these temperatures to last as long as they have done, and they’re not predicted to be dropping soon either. Yes, its summer and its supposed to be better warmer, but this constant period is not what a classic Great British summer is normally like, and I’m sure we’ve all been feeling the heat.

I, for one, have found that this heatwave has also brought a wave of sleepless nights, a lack of any sort of motivation and a need for at least two cold showers a day just to make it through, but I’ve been thinking about other things that we should all remember while temperatures are high.

People need to dress cool, don’t make them feel uncomfortable

Short shorts, summer dresses, loose tops, one of the most important ways to survive the heat is to dress cool. What is not cool, however, is to stare at people, or make them feel uncomfortable in any way because of how they’re dressed. I wore denim shorts and a t-shirt to the supermarket on Wednesday, and was made to feel so super uncomfortable by a middle aged man who was so blatantly staring at my legs as I walked past him that I actually went straight to the checkout so I could leave, rather than picking up the last few things on my shopping list.

No one is to blame for the heat, so don’t take out your frustration on them

Anyone who can maintain a constant happy mood in this heat is a hero, but its ok if you’re feeling a little fed up. That said, taking out your frustration on anyone, from family and friends to customer service workers, is not ok.

Always carry water in the car

Whether you’re going on a 10 minute journey or a 3 hour trip, chuck a couple of bottles of water in the car. All it takes is a nasty traffic jam or a breakdown for you to be stuck in a rolling sauna for longer than you anticipated with no way of re-hydrating. And on that note, make sure your screen wash is topped up!

Sun burn is not cool or funny

I personally don’t understand why anyone thinks they don’t need to bother putting on sun cream. You might be one of those people who never burns, and that’s great, but you still need to protect your skin from the sun regardless, and if you do burn, then you shouldn’t even question using it.

Think of the animals

If you have pets, its so important to make sure they’re cool and hydrated. Try to avoid walking dogs on hot tarmac or sand, brush out long haired pets regularly and you can even go as far as setting up little paddling pools or making ice lollies for them. Do what you can for the wildlife too, put out water for birds and critters and try to create some shady spaces in your garden.

Regular water and shade breaks are super important

Indoors or outdoors, make sure you’re drinking plenty of water, and if you are soaking up the sun, make sure you’re spending some time in the shade as well!

Enjoy it while it lasts folks, I’m sure autumn will hit us like a brick!

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July 28, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

The Test of Time

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately. This is mainly because I’m leaving the town I grew up in, and am faced daily with the question of ‘aren’t you gonna miss things?’. If I’m being honest, leaving Bournemouth has always been a fairly easy decision for me because other than my family, I haven’t felt like I have that many other ties to this place. I’ve quite honestly felt like I’ve had no friends in Bournemouth for quite some time now.

I was one of the only people in my group of friends who didn’t go to university after sixth form, and I maintain to this day that that was the right decision for me, but it did mean I isolated myself quite early on. Even before we left school, I was getting a bit sick of hearing everyone talk non-stop about what uni they were going to, sorting things out etc, and although they’d probably never admit it, I know that my friends judged the decision that I made in choosing not to go.

So I left them drift away. I kept in touch with a few, and there would be the occasional gathering when people were back at Christmas or in the summer, but again I tended to steer clear for fear of that inferiority feeling I would get around them. Just over two years ago was the last time I went to a party with these friends, and to be honest, it was great, and I was starting to feel a little more confident about being around people again, but then a personal situation messed everything up, and I pulled myself away again because there were two people in the group that I couldn’t face seeing again. I’m still in a group chat with all these people, but I stay silent, and I can’t bring myself to show up to any of these gatherings.

But that’s just back story, and not what this post is really about.

Yesterday I ran into an old friend in the supermarket. He was one of my best friends during my last few years of school, but he went off to uni and although we’d occasionally chat on Facebook, it’s been about 2-3 years since I saw him last, and even those times would have been fairly brief.

So when I saw him in the supermarket my head went two ways. The first was ‘oh my gosh I need to go and talk to him’, and the other was ‘he probably really doesn’t care about seeing me’. Luckily, the first won out. We stood and caught up right in the middle of an aisle in Sainsbury’s, and d’you know what? It was so good to talk to him again.

We talked like old friends, which is exactly what we are, but it wasn’t one of those conversations you have with someone you used to know, where you just blurt out whatever’s happening in your own life and don’t really pay attention to what they’re saying back, it was a proper conversation. Old jokes from years ago were being thrown about, nothing was fake or forced and I walked away at the end of it with the biggest smile on my face.

I guess through all the recent years where I haven’t felt like I had that many friends, I forgot about the friends that are still there even when you can’t see them. The true friends that no matter how many miles are between you or how many months or years go by will still always consider you to be a friend, and treat you like a friend, and sometimes it just takes an unexpected moment to remind you of those things.

July 4, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

Another Mid Year Review

And just like that, half of 2018 has been and gone.. What?

This has honestly been the craziest year of my life, the last few months especially, and I’ve definitely been swept up in all of the goings on which has probably caused the year to fly by so much, but I can quite confidently say that its been a great year so far.

How am I doing with my blog targets?

Bloglovin followers – 1500 – I must admit that I have been super rubbish with Bloglovin lately, so I definitely haven’t seen the same growth that I achieved last year, but I’m on 1179 right now, and I think if I kick myself back into gear for the next 6 months, this is still reachable!
Twitter followers – 3500 – I can’t remember what I was on at the start of the year, but I’m just over 3200 at the moment so I feel like this is going to be doable!
Instagram followers – 2500 – after a measly 2017 where I didn’t hit my target at all, I feel like I have really smashed Instagram this year, and now have over 3300 followers, having only hit 2000 sometime in January! I’m setting myself a new possible target of 4000 for before the year is out, but I’m not putting too much pressure on myself because we all know what it can be like!
Page views – 100,000 – well I’m just coming up to 85,000 now, so this is definitely in sight so long as I manage to keep up my content!

I’ve felt myself slip a lot with my blog this year, which I’ve hated but its been somewhat necessary with everything that’s gone on this year. I’ve been posting a lot less than I have done over previous years, but what is good is that I’ve learnt that this is totally ok.

There’s a lot more exciting things coming to the blog over the rest of the year, including lots more house related posts, my 1000th blog post will be coming in July, and in October my blog turns 5, so stay tuned!

Resolutions, goals and life

Looking back on my 2018 resolutions post, I feel quite happy in knowing that I’ve achieved a lot of these things. Despite occasional dips, I’ve been looking after myself a lot better and putting myself out there more, and I’ve surrounded myself with wonderful people who make me so happy. My love of photography has definitely come back, and my sewing has gone to new levels I couldn’t even have imagined back in January.

The only thing that’s really hit a major roadblock this year has been my marathon training, after breaking my ankle back in April, but I’m seeing definite improvements in physiotherapy, and I’ve even taken part in my first fun run since the accident recently, which makes me confident that I’ll be back out there very soon, and if you want to sponsor me for my marathon, you can do that here!

I’ve learned a lot in the last few months about so many things, but the rest of the year will be focusing on putting so many of these things into practice. My whole life is changing as of the end of the week when I officially become a Northerner, and I’m seeing this as an amazing opportunity to create and live my best life and become even happier.

I hope 2018 is treating everyone well, and the rest of it only gets better!

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June 30, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

What I’m Doing With My Time Off

Next Friday is my last day at work before I officially make the big move up north. I could have left at the end of this week, which is what Matthew is doing, but because I work in finance I decided to do the nice thing and hang around to sort out June’s month end accounts instead of leaving my team before the busiest week of the month, so I’ve got just over a week still to go!

July is going to be the biggest month of my life; the month I officially fly not only the nest, but the town I grew up in and have lived in my whole life up til now, and there’s going to be so much to get used to, along with getting properly settled into the new house, unpacking and decorating etc, so I decided a little while ago that I wasn’t going to rush into finding a new job immediately, and instead take July off for a bit of me time, but also a bit of ‘getting stuff done’ time.

Enjoy summer

I haven’t got to just enjoy a summer off since I was at school. I’ve taken some annual leave at work, but only ever for trips abroad, so its been ages since I’ve been able to just laze about in the sun, sit out in the garden and have endless bbqs.

Vamping up old blog posts

For the longest time now I’ve been meaning to go back over some of my old blog posts from before I edited photos or made pretty flatlays and spruce them up with new photos and a little bit of editing because there are so many posts that I loved writing and would love to share more, but feel a little embarrassed when I see dull or rushed photos.

Life admin

Moving comes with so much work you don’t even think about, like updating address on everything from bank accounts and credit cards to electoral rolls, and I just know that its not going to be straightforward given that our address still doesn’t exist on most systems..

Explore my new home

Although I’ve been to Manchester more in the last few months than I had done in my whole life beforehand, I still don’t know much of the city passed the Trafford Centre, not to mention the towns surrounding Winsford and the rest of the North West region.

Starting matched betting

I’ve been thinking about trying matched betting for a little while now, but I’ll actually have some time to put into it and hopefully I’ll be able to reap the rewards if I don’t mess it up too much! Luckily I have some excellent guides who are well experienced in it to help me along the way, so I’m really hoping for good results..

Working for little old me

While I’m calling July my ‘time off’, I will still be busting my butt for my small businesses, and July will give me the opportunity to see if I can do well enough to take what I do full time, so I’ll appreciate any orders that come my way through the month!

Working ON little old me

I’m really just looking forward to having some time for myself, and being able to take the time to get my life on track. I’ll have time to cook proper meals, get back into marathon training and work on feeling better about myself.

I’m not counting down the days, promise..

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June 27, 2018Lottie 4 Comments

My Best Self

I’ve been thinking about myself a lot recently, but not in a narcissistic sort of way. You see lately, I haven’t always been liking myself that much.

Its no secret that there is a lot going on in my life right now. Matthew and I have just bought our first house, and I am in the process of moving away from my home town, which has been massively drawn out as I’m still working my notice period in my current job. I’ve felt in a real state of limbo over the last few weeks, and honestly its been getting to me a bit. I feel so on top of certain aspects of my life, while simultaneously drowning in others, and this position has been messing with me more than anything else. To put it simply, I just haven’t felt like I’ve been my best self lately.

I’ve not been doing the things that make me happy. I love going to the gym in the morning, and normally that’s at least 4 times a week, but lately I’ve been struggling with managing twice a week due to just feeling overwhelmingly tired and unmotivated most mornings when my alarm goes off. There’s a little voice in my head that tells me I should go back to sleep instead of getting up, and it just keeps winning out.

I haven’t even been making an effort with my appearance lately. Makeup has been absolutely non-existent on my face, with the exception of a little eyebrow maintenance, and instead of dressing how I like dressing, I’ve just been throwing on whatever I can find, which primarily has been baggy, stretchy trousers and loose tops, and I tell myself that it’s more comfortable but I just end up feeling like a slob all day.

This just isn’t the me that I want to be. I’m losing confidence and it’s all my own doing – like another part of me is sabotaging everything that the good part of me is trying to do. I keep telling myself that it’s just a phase that I’m going through while everything is up in the air, and I just hope to god that that’s true and that it will all sort itself out very soon, but I’m not going to stand by and wait for it to happen; I’m making changes.

Sometimes it’s not always possible to be your best self, and that’s completely ok, but when it’s making you unhappy, you don’t have to just stand by and watch it spiral out of control. I’m going to do my best to by my best from today onwards.

June 25, 2018Lottie 3 Comments

Things You Will Need On Moving Day

Ok, so you won’t need all this

Although I’m technically still in the process of flying the nest, Matthew and I have already had our first moving day into our new house, and for me, it was my first ever moving day.

Having never moved out from my parents until now, I had absolutely no idea what to expect, and as our moving process has been a slow one and we didn’t have to do it all in one weekend, I wasn’t even very sure about what we’d necessarily need to bring to the house with us straight away. Luckily, we had my mum and dad to help out with some of the basics, but there were also a number of things that no one thought about, so whether you’re moving for the first time or the hundredth time, here are the things I’ve learned that you will need in your new place from day one.

Toilet paper

If it wasn’t for my dad, we would have all been caught short in our house when we arrived. Even if its just a couple of rolls to cover you until you can take a trip to the shops, its a necessity.

Hand soap

As well as for obvious reasons, moving house can be messy business. Dusty boxes, moving furniture, you name it, your hands will be covered it it.

Towels

This was something that we didn’t have on our first weekend, with the exception of the one towel I brought in my weekend bag for showering, and while I’d never thought towels to be a real necessity, every time I washed my hands I was stuck. If nothing else, chuck a couple of hand towels in the moving van.

Scissors

There will be more things that will need cutting than you could ever imagine, bring as many pairs as you own.

Bin bags

This seems obvious, but we managed to forget them. You can never have too many bin bags.

Basic tools

You probably don’t need the whole of B&Q at the ready, but your basics like screwdrivers, maybe a drill and a level will make your life a lot easier. The last thing you’re gonna want to do is have to run out to the shops when you want to put up a shelf there and then but don’t have the tools for the job.

Folding chairs/beanbags/cushions

If, like us, you’re moving for the first time and don’t have all your furniture yet, you’re going to need something to sit on, even if its just temporary. We didn’t have a sofa, or any dining chairs, but we did have a giant bean bag, and my dad also packed a couple of fold up camping chairs which meant we didn’t have to all sit on the floor while we ate out traditional moving day take out food.

I think moving day is probably a different experience for everyone, but hopefully these little tips will help with a couple of the little things that make moving so much less stressful!

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June 23, 2018Lottie Leave a comment

Reasons Love Island Isn’t Total Trash

We’re now a few weeks into what is either considered the most important 8 weeks of summer telly, or the least important, and no, I’m not talking about the World Cup (mansplainers, I don’t care if my football statements are wrong).

Love Island completely splits the nation into those who are in front of ITV2 at 9pm every single evening for weeks on the trot, and those who couldn’t give two figs about who’s grafting who and think a melt is a term for a type of toasted sandwich. And d’you know what? That’s okay. Everyone is entitled to their opinions about the show, and even I, a watcher, still think its total trash, but whether you like it or loathe it, here are a bunch of great things about the show that you might not have thought about.

It creates a community

Last year was the first year that I watched Love Island, after a number of people on my team at work talked my ear off about how good it was, and getting into it opened me up to a whole world of conversations that I would have otherwise been left out of. I’m now in a Love Island group chat with work people, plus almost the whole of my Twitter feed is full of people gossiping about the goings on of the villa. Even my boyfriend, who last year wouldn’t be caught dead watching it, has been watching it with me so he can keep up with all the talk with the people he works with.

There’s no slut shaming

Of course the environment in the villa is not at all organic, and in any other situation most of the islanders would probably act very differently, but when things start to heat up, there isn’t a smidge of judgement from the other contestants, or even the viewers. I’ve not once seen a slut-shaming comment from a genuine viewer, and there’s not a bad thing said by the islanders about any antics that do occur.

Power is in everyone’s hands

Girls pick, boys pick, girls dump, boys dump; it might alternate a little bit but everyone gets their turn at the controls.

It makes people think about serious dating and relationship issues

Unfortunately, we have to see it to start talking about it, but actions of the islanders can raise some serious discussions about toxic relationships, gaslighting and so much more.

There are some incredible characters

Just looking at this season alone, you’ve got Jack who will inevitably leave the island and become a comedy act doing impressions, Alex who is the purest little soul and we’re only two weeks into getting to know them!

What are your thoughts on the island?

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June 21, 2018Lottie 3 Comments

Cruelty Free Summer Makeup – All Under £10

There’s nothing worse than having your makeup routine completely perfected, only for summer to come around and through humidity, heat and hay-fever your way, and it changes everything.

Not only does summer mess with my skin, but I’m now on a makeup buying ban for a little while, and I’m also no longer buying makeup that isn’t cruelty free, and while you’d think that these bans would limit my options for the summer, I’ve managed to find myself a summer kit that’s not only completely cruelty free, but actually every item is also under £10!

Primer – The Ordinary High Spreadability Fluid Primer – £5.50

This is my all year round primer, but it really holds its own even against the struggles of summer!

Foundation – The Ordinary Serum Foundation – £6

I love both of the foundations from The Ordinary, but tend to use Coverage more in the colder months and switch to Serum from Spring onwards as its a lighter formula but the coverage is still very good!

Blush/bronzer/highlighter – Makeup Revolution – (my set now discontinued)

I’ve had this little palette for a while now, but as the shades are a little darker than what I would normally wear, I save it for summer when I’ve tanned a little bit and can get away with glowing a little more.

Highlighter – Makeup Revolution Baked Matte Lights Highlighter – £3

I love this highlighter as its a great base for building on. I normally start with a good layer of this matte highlight and then go over it with a shinier highlight.

Eyeshadow primer – NYX Proof It! – £6

I swear by this primer, and if you read my blog a lot you’ll have seen this mentioned over and over because it is really that good!

Eyeshadows – Colourpop Supershock Shadows – $5

The only downside of these eyeshadows is having to pay international shipping and customs (I actually bought mine in the US) but I think they’re fab! They blend so nicely and hold up well under summer conditions.

Brows – NYX Tame and Frame Brow Pomade – £6

Ever since I reviewed this recently I’ve been using this pomade. Its such great value for money and such a good product.

Mascara – Too Faced Better Than Sex Mascara – £8.50 (for travel sized)

I only bought this in a travel size because I do love my current mascara and I just wanted to try it out, but its a fab little cruelty free mascara.

Setting spray – Urban Decay All Nighter – £10 (for travel sized)

Say hello to your new favourite setting spray and say goodbye to your makeup running. Despite being a travel sized bottle, its still pretty large and will last you through summer no problem!

Here’s to a summer of long lasting makeup!

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June 11, 2018Lottie 3 Comments

Small Summer Goals

Every year for the last few years I have written a summer bucket list, and every year I’ve only managed to tick one or two things off of those lists.

I think I always think that the summer is a time where I can get loads done, because during our school years the summer holidays are the longest time we would get off, but in the real world work, I don’t get six weeks off during the most glorious time of the year, in fact last year I didn’t get any time off work in the summer.

This year will actually be a little different as I’ll be leaving my current job in July 6th, and plunging myself into a bit of uncertainty with what I’ll be doing after we move, but I don’t want to pressure myself into thinking I should be working through a list of activities while dealing with it all. Instead, I’m setting myself some little goals for the summer; things that are actually achievable even if things do get stressful or busy.

Spend more time outdoors

Because I’m normally working through the summer months, I find that I’m rarely out enjoying the sun for the short period of time we get sun here in the UK. I won’t be by the beach, but we do have a lovely big garden at our house, and we’re surrounded by lovely fields for walks, so imma get me some more vitamin D.

Lose two inches

Whatever my body looks like, that is my summer body, and I’m happy accepting that, but I have gained some weight recently since breaking my ankle, and I’d like to try and shift a little bit of it before I get back into marathon training in the autumn.

Explore my new home

I’m still coming to terms with the fact that in a months time I’ll be a northerner, and it’s gonna take some time before I really get to know the area, but while the weather is good (or as good as it gets up north), it seems like the best time to get out and about.

Bake more

I know that when it starts heating up outside, turning the heat up in the kitchen seems a little strange, but I’ve got a brand new kitchen to play in and I miss baking so much right now that I want to make more of an effort to make the time for it.

Our garden’s first bbq

We also need to break in our new garden and what’s better than a bbq in the summer?

What are your plans for the summer?

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June 5, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

Our First Weekend In Our New House and What We Got Done

So even though it feels like we’ve waited forever, in reality its only been 2 1/2 months since we saw our house for the first time, and on Thursday we officially completed and its now ours! We picked up the keys on Friday and the weekend has been the first phase of our moving process – I don’t actually leave my job until July 6th, so until then we’ll only be able to visit on weekends, but that hopefully means by the time we’re up there permanently, it will be mostly finished in terms of unpacking and decorating! (This is a bit of an unedited photo dump so apologies that some pictures are a bit dark)

We went up with my parents in a one car, one van convoy, both packed to bursting with the stuff we already have, and then once we’d unloaded that all into the garage, it was on to Ikea for the big furniture shop. I won’t bore you with the details, but 5 trolleys and one delivery coming on Tuesday, and we’re actually still not completely done as we realised we’ve picked up a few things in the wrong sizes and forgot a few little but key things like hinges and legs for cupboards.. As that was a fairly manual labour filled day, we didn’t build anything that night, and Matthew and I had what I believe is a traditional ‘first night in new house’ evening of takeaway pizza on the floor because we don’t have a dining table/chairs or even a sofa, and slept on our mattress on the floor because its our bed being delivered on Tuesday..

Our current living room set up

Saturday morning my parents brought round some food for breakfast; we got to use our toaster and kettle for the first time with toast for Dad and a cup of tea for my mum. Matthew and I then headed off to do a bit more shopping with Mum while we left my dad to start building some of the Ikea stuff. We hit Costco (for mainly cleaning supplies at this point), B&Q for paint and decorating bits and then went to DFS to order our sofa, which was a pretty easy job as we’ve had it picked our for ages! On our way back to the house we decided to try out our first local chippy to see how it was (a solid 7/10) and then after we’d eaten, again on the kitchen floor, Matthew and I set to work painting the feature wall in our guest bedroom. (I’ll be doing a full post on how we did this later on this week!)

Once the wall was painted, we could then build the bed in there and position all the furniture, and then my parents headed home. Matthew and I drove into Crewe for another B&Q trip, this time for paint for my office, plus some screws and wall plugs and a few other bits and bobs, and I spent the evening painting the feature wall in my office.

Sunday morning was another coat of paint in my office, then we headed back into Crewe and hit Home Bargains and Dunelm for some things for the bathroom, grabbed lunch in Nandos and headed back to the house where the Sky man had just arrived to set up our Sky box. I built all the bathroom bits, then while Matthew screwed them into the walls, I built the desk for my office and got that all set up.

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing some finishing touches in the guest bedroom, which is now pretty much finished apart from a mirror needing to be put on a wall and a few other little decor additions, then tidied up all the mess into the garage.

So one weekend in, we have pretty much finished the guest bedroom and the bathroom, bar a few little details, and made a start to pretty much every other room. We still haven’t decided how we want to decorate our bedroom or the living room, but as neither have that much furniture in them right now we’ve got plenty of time to decide! If you want to see how some of these rooms looked before, check out the first look at our home here.

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May 28, 2018Lottie 4 Comments

Sixty Seconds of Self Care

With mental health awareness increasing by the day, self care is becoming an ever increasingly more important part of day to day life. Quite simply, self care is any act in which you do something to look after yourself, either physically or mentally.

Too often though, we think of self care as a bit of a big deal, and I know that I for one am guilty of ignoring self care with the excuse that I don’t have enough time, when in fact we should always be finding the time to make sure that we are happy. Self care doesn’t have to mean spending 2 hours in a bath with £20 worth of Lush products, it can be as simple as a minute here and there, and sometimes the smallest things can make a big difference to your day.

Here are a few self care practices that I’ve been doing lately that take no time at all:

Taking a little more time brushing my hair after washing it, rather than just enough to get any knots out
Instead of gulping down my hot chocolate while I’m trying to get work done, I’ve been stopping to sit back and enjoy it
At the end of each day, taking just a small amount of time to write down, or just think about all the good things that have happened that day
Sitting to eat breakfast, rather than standing
Using an in-shower moisturiser to keep my skin happy with minimal effort
Drinking at least one glass of water every two hours
Deciding what to wear to work the night before so I don’t have to rush around in the morning and feel cuter
Taking a little bit of time each morning to comment on Instagram posts instead of just liking, and also replying to comments on my own posts
Using my Fitbit’s ‘relax’ feature for breathing exercises before bed
Applying BioOil to my stretch marks after showering
Reminding myself why I love what I do when I’m feeling stressed about it
Retweeting cute animal videos to brighten up my (and others) timelines

These might seem like insignificant little acts, but just by doing them and knowing that I’m making a little effort towards looking after myself, they have been making a big difference!

Do you take time to look after yourself?

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May 23, 2018Lottie 1 Comment

Travelling with Revolut

When you’re a regular, or even a non-regular traveller, there’s nothing more annoying than either having to get all your travel money exchanged into cash, or risking foreign transaction charges on most of your cards if you have to use them while you’re away, and even if you have a card that doesn’t charge, there’s that nagging worry about losing or having cards stolen while abroad, and if this sounds familiar to you, you need a Revolut card.

Revolut is, in fact, a mobile app, and the only way you can get a card is through the app itself. Essentially, its a pre-paid credit card: you simply link a debit or credit card to the app and use that to top it up by whatever amount you need, and if the card doesn’t have enough on it, the transaction will simply fail, so you’ve always got the added security of knowing that if there’s nothing there, nothing can be spent.

But what makes Revolut different to any other pre-paid card is what makes it ideal for travelling – you can exchange money right there on the app, and get the best rates as it uses the central bank exchange rates, rather than those that retailers use to make money out of your holiday money needs. For example, as I’m writing this, Post Office are currently offering 1.2961 on USD, whereas Revolut has 1.3401! Once you’ve topped up your card with cash, you can hit the exchange button, select your desired currency and watch what the exchange rate is doing as it updates every few seconds, so you can wait until it goes up a few 0.01s to get a little bit more for your money, and once your money has been converted to whatever currency you want, that means you’re using the correct currency for the country you’re in, so no foreign transaction charges! Plus, any leftover currency can be converted back just as easily as you switched it in the first place, so you don’t have to worry about selling your money back to a bureau de change or hiding it away until your next trip.

Another great thing about the app is that it notifies you as soon as you’ve made a payment, so you can see what you’ve spent straight away, with a clear description of where you spent it and don’t have to guess from ‘pending transactions’ where your money has gone. Its also got nifty features like being able to split your bill with another Revolut user, and also a selection of other things on offer, so its a really handy thing to have!

Apart from the cost of the card, which is £5 plus £3 delivery, Revolut is completely free (unless you choose to go Premium), so compared to so many other credit cards that have annual fees etc, its a steal, but don’t just take my word for it, download the app for free for all the information!

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May 22, 2018Lottie 1 Comment

NYX Tame and Frame VS Benefit Ka-Brow!

Even when I’ve run out of time/can’t be bothered to do my makeup for the day, my eyebrows are normally a must. I don’t have bad eyebrows, in fact I think I’m pretty lucky that I don’t really have to do much to them at all, but I just feel so much better with everything nicely filled in and looking a whole lot more together.

For the last couple of years, my go-to product has been Benefit’s Ka-Brow (shade 01, if anyone’s interested) and its never really let me down, but I’m trying to make an effort to switch out my remaining non-cruelty-free products for more animal friendly alternatives, and also trying to cut down what I spend on some makeup, and a friend of mine suggested I tried the NYX Tame and Frame pomade, so I’ve been comparing the two.

The reason I’ve always used Ka-Brow is because its really convenient. It has a brush built right into the packaging, meaning that I can throw it in my bag, or take it in my hand luggage when I travel, and never have to worry about whether or not I’ve remembered a brush. I’ve also always used it because its never failed me. The formula is more cream than gel, so its not at all sticky feeling and applies smoothly and its buildable – my one annoyance is that sometimes if I apply it too heavy at first, it doesn’t blend out particularly well, and often by the time I’m coming to the bottom of the product, it starts to dry out and get a little bitty.

I knew that my NYX shade would be Blonde as I have a NYX pencil in that shade, so I didn’t have to worry too much about knowing which one would match for me, although its possibly slightly lighter than its Benefit counterpart, not that it bothers me. As with many other NYX products, the packaging it pretty simple but its nice and does the job – I particularly like the fact that its a frosted glass effect rather than being clear. The formula is more gel-like than Ka-Brow, but is also soft and creamy and not at all sticky. It glides on like a dream and builds up nicely, blending better than Ka-Brow – because its a bit lighter in shade I do have to build it up a little more, but its not like its hard work!

Obviously there’s no brush built into this little jar, but the product holds all day with no problem at all, so its not like I need to be reapplying throughout the day, and its the same with Ka-Brow – all day brows, no fuss. The big difference between the two, however, is of course the price tag: for a Benefit product you’ll be paying Benefit prices of £18-20, compared to NYX’s £6 a pot. For that price, plus the bonus of being cruelty free, Tame and Frame is getting my vote on this one!

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May 21, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

Just Because

I can’t imagine that there’s anyone who hasn’t been told at least once in their life, and most likely by their mother, that ‘just because *this person* did that, doesn’t mean you have to. If they jumped of a cliff, would you follow?’ while you rolled your eyes because it really wasn’t a big deal.

These were always things that we wanted to do; places we wanted to go or styles we wanted to copy, not things that we felt obliged to do, but as you get older, everything suddenly becomes more about what you feel like you should be doing, rather than what you actually want to do. Sure, some of these things are things that we think we should be doing for good reasons, but then there’s also a good number of things that might not always be good for us, and these are the things that we should maybe give a miss, at least every now and then.

Just because other people stay late at work, it doesn’t mean you have to

When I started my new job, I thought that just because the guy who sat next to me came in an hour before me, and often stayed past when I left, it meant that I wasn’t doing my job well enough, and frankly that’s just not true. So long as I come into work, do the hours I’m contracted to do and complete all the work that needs to be done, that’s good enough. If others want to come in early, stay late or take on extra work, that’s on them, but I did enough of that in my previous jobs and now I like that I’m able to walk away when 5 o’clock hits and not have a care in the world.

Just because you’ve made plans, it doesn’t mean you can’t cancel them if you’re not feeling it

If you’re tired, having a bad mental health day or for whatever reason you don’t feel up to it, you shouldn’t feel bad about cancelling plans. People might not always understand it, but that doesn’t matter. Put yourself first.

But as well as the things you shouldn’t be doing just because you thin you should, there are also things that you can do even though you didn’t do what other people did..

Just because you didn’t go to university, it doesn’t mean you can’t get to the same place as someone who did

I’ve actually just started working with a girl I went to school with. She went to university, and got her job through a graduate scheme. I went straight into work after sixth form, and after gaining skills and working hard, I am just one level below her, and with another year of experience and study support through work, I could move up into the same position she works in with a university degree. Sometimes there’s more than one path.

Just because you haven’t got a huge following, it doesn’t mean you don’t a good following

You could have a million followers, but if one a few hundred actually bother to support you, then you might just be better off having a few hundred followers who cheer you on at every possible moment. I mean, the Instagram algorithm is screwing us all over anyway..

There are however many billion people in the world and every single one of us is unique, so just because one or two people make you stop and think you’re missing out on something or doing something wrong, do you think that’s right?

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April 12, 2018Lottie Leave a comment

Things I’ve Learned While Trying To Beat The Algorithm

Instagram; it makes us all sigh just a little bit, right?

Don’t get me wrong, I love Instagram. It was the first social media platform I used to promote my blog, and you know what they say, a picture’s worth a thousand words, so its an amazing place to express yourself, but since the introduction of the infamous ‘algorithm’, interaction and growth has been pretty sucky, and everyone and their mums have been theorising various ways in which to take back the platform for the greater good.

I am, of course, one of these people. Having failed to reach my end of the year goal for 2017, I’m determined to do it this year, and I’ve already written about my plan to make this my year on Instagram, now we’re a few months in, I’ve already learned a few things along the way.

People actually like seeing me in photos

I used to avoid photos of myself like the plague – they never seemed to get even a fraction of the likes that any of my other photos did – opting instead for photos of clothes hanging up or as flatlays, but it turns out that people actually like little old me in photos! My outfit photos lately have been super popular, so I guess you’ll be seeing more of me on the ‘gram.

Timing isn’t always everything

I use UNUM to plan my Instagram feed, and even on the free version of the app you do get some insights, one of which being you’re supposed best time to post based on previous likes and comments. Well, I gave it a go, and I can quite safely say that its totally hit and miss. Sure, certain times of day are always going to be better than others – I tend to post on my lunch break at work, and that seems to work for me, probably cos that’s when most people are checking their phone anyway, but even when I followed what the stats told me to a tee, it didn’t guarantee the post would be super successful.

Posting what I love makes me so much happier with my feed

Since the new year kicked off, I’ve been concentrating more on making my feed something that I love to look at, even if no one else did. Yellow is my favourite colour, and integrating it into my feed has made me super happy. I’ve also been using a cute textured throw blanket as a backdrop for product photos to mix things up a little and not shying away from my Disney side so that every aspect of my personality and life shine through in my photos.

Support and shoutouts are super important

If I’m being totally honest, I think the biggest factor in the growth of my following so far this year is thanks to supporting other accounts and other people doing shoutouts for me. I did a Twitter request for people to send me their Instagram links so I could go on a follow spree, and I followed about 100 accounts, most of which returned the favour (although I didn’t expect or ask them to), and I’ve also gained a lot of followers when other bloggers and accounts have included me in shoutouts on their stories, which I am so grateful for. Asking for help, especially when you’re about to hit a milestone, is nothing to be frightened of, and people who support you are always happy to help!

Quality over quantity

I’ve been working so hard on improving the quality of my photos this year. Rather than just taking photos on my phone, I’ve been utilising the 50mm macro lens on my Sony a5000 to take most of my photos and I’ve been so happy with the photos I’ve been taking, and I think I’ve definitely been seeing an increase in likes on *most* of my photos since then. I say most because, y’know, the algorithm is still against us all..

So I’m quite proud to say I’ve gained about 300 followers this year, give or take a bunch of follow/unfollowers (ugh), and I’m really hoping I’ll reach my 2018 goal fairly soon, but we’ll see! If you want to join me over on the gram, you can follow me @lottiedoesdisney!

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April 6, 2018Lottie 7 Comments

4 Shops for First Time Buyers – That Aren’t IKEA

Whether you’re buying your first home, or just moving/re-decorating, its no secret that it ain’t cheap. I mean, its a big enough purchase as it is, but all of a sudden you’ve gone from buying one thing to having a shopping list longer than your arm and a bank account that’s crying just a little bit.

For this, the world has learned to love the wonder that is IKEA. Its the answer to a whole bunch of your home needs and is pretty friendly to any budget, but despite my love for the big blue stores, there are a couple of things that you either can’t get, or I wouldn’t get there, and now I’m actually in the process of becoming a home-owner, I’ve suddenly realised that there’s a world of other stores out there that can also save me a pretty penny.

Home Sense

Sure, it can be hit and miss, but Home Sense is an absolute gem if you’re prepared to do a bit of digging. Stock is completely random, but its big brands for low prices, and you can grab yourself a real bargain – Matthew and I really wanted the pastel blue Smeg toaster and kettle for our kitchen, and would you believe that we randomly came across one tucked on a bottom shelf in our local store for £40 off the RRP! You can also find a lot of brands that are known to be a little pricey, such as Joseph Joseph and Le Crueset, for crazy good prices and there’s always a good range of Pyrex and Tefal. We’ve also picked up some amazing throw blankets and cushions for prices you won’t find in the likes of John Lewis or Next.

TK Maxx

TK Maxx actually own Home Sense, so a lot of the stock can be found in the home section of your local TK Maxx if you don’t have a Home Sense nearby, and unlike Home Sense, TK Maxx have an online store, so you can shop the deals without even leaving the house!

Supermarkets

Do not underestimate the home section of your local supermarket. Both George by Asda and Sainsbury’s home have some really nice ranges of kitchenware, bedding and soft furnishings, and even if their styles don’t take your fancy, they’re also a great place to pick up your basics – white plates, drinking glasses etc – for a good price.

Home Bargains

So the actual home decor stuff can vary from super tacky to actually pretty good – we’ve just bought some decent nest tables for £20 – but even if the home stuff doesn’t take your fancy, Home Bargains is an amazing place to buy a bunch of the things that you probably buy from the supermarket all the time for even cheaper than your rolled-back, price-matched prices; cereal, biscuits, chocolate, ketchup, all branded stuff for lower than your own brand equivalents, so its a great place to do your shopping once you’ve spent all your money on furniture!

Do you have any favourite places to nab a good deal?

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March 30, 2018Lottie Leave a comment

How I Manage My Combination Skin

My skin is super weird. I mean, I’m quite lucky to have relatively few problems compared to some, but my face seems to take it to the extremes when it comes to having combination skin. Some days, I’m so dry and flaky I practically have scales, other days I’m more oily than a 3am kebab, and sometimes I flit between one and the other in a matter of hours, its fab.

That said, however, the more I’ve learned over the years about my skin and what works and doesn’t work, and the more products I’ve tried and tested, the more I’ve been able to manage the different phases I go through, which is great. It does, however, mean having pretty much two of every product, but I’ve got those nailed now.

Dry skin days

Most days tend to start as dry skin days, and so my mornings start with Nip+Fab’s Glycolic Cleansing Fix, which was an impulse purchase at the time but now I cannot imagine my life without it. For starters, it smells amazing, which is odd because they never mention the scent on the packaging but its SO GOOD, but even if it smelt like nothing at all, the product still speaks for itself. The formula seems a little strange, but you get used to it – its quite runny but also gel like, and it also foams up with a bit of a scrub, so I either squeeze a little bit onto wet hands and rub it onto my face, or I take it into the shower with my Magnitone, squeeze it onto the brush head and go to town. It leaves my skin feeling so refreshed but also smooth and moisturised and ready for the day.

My toner of choice most of the time is the wonderful Pixi Glow Tonic, and when my skin is dry this is no exception. I was a bit late to the Glow Tonic party, and worried when I finally got to try it that it would turn out to be over-hyped, but it does wonders for my skin and I noticed a change almost instantly after starting to use it regularly.

Of course it goes without saying that when my skin is dry, I need a good moisturiser and I’ve yet to find anything that works so well for my skin as Kiehl’s Ultra Facial Moisturiser. I love that even the tiniest little dollop goes such a long way, which is handy because this stuff doesn’t come cheap, so the longer I can make a bottle last, the better, but despite the price tag I can’t flaw the product at all – it smells nice, it makes my skin super soft without being at all greasy and it absorbs quickly.

Oily moments

What’s weird about having oily skin now is that I didn’t really have oily skin that much as a teenager, but you know what they say about karma.. When my face is feeling oily, all I feel like doing is washing it, and even though I’m not a teenager, this is where I use Nip+Fab’s Teen Skin Poreblaster Wash, which is designed for exactly this situation. It comes in both a day and night version, I have both but tend to use the day one the more just down to preference. Sadly it doesn’t smell as glorious as the Glycolic Cleansing Fix, but its certainly not awful and it foams up well and leaves my skin feeling lovely and fresh.

My other cleanser for oily days is Lush’s Angels on Bare Skin, which is a solid sorta paste that I grab a chunk of, mix it up in my hand with some warm water to an easier to use consistency and rub it straight onto dry skin. Because its got some exfoliant ingredients it does a great job of picking up and washing away and dirt and grease, plus it smells great.

When it comes to a toner, I also go to Lush and my favourite toner from their collection, which is Breath of Fresh Air. Because it contains sea salt, it dries up oil with a simple spritz and wipe, and its got a calming fragrance to it which is part of the reason I love using it before bed because it puts me in a good mood for sleep!

It might be a pain going between two different skincare routines, but when the products are so great, its not so bad..

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March 28, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

A Little Lush Easter Haul

I feel like its been a while since I’ve done a Lush haul post, because believe it or not, despite buying a good number of products from the Christmas collection, I never actually blogged about them, even though I think it was the best Lush Christmas to date! But enough about Christmas (psst! 287 days..).

I don’t know if I’ve ever actually bought anything from a Lush Easter collection before – I normally grab a few Valentines Day bits, but seem to miss Easter entirely, so when I went into the Trafford Centre store over the weekend and saw the multicoloured goodness of this year’s offerings, I knew I had to get a couple of things to try, and having had a good Etsy payout earlier in the week, I felt the spend was justified.

So I picked up four things for myself on this occasion, but I think they’re all so stinkin’ cute and I cannot wait to try them out!

My first buy felt like a bit of a two for one deal, and this adorable little chick actually splits into two separate halfs. I noticed in store that they had these Free Rangers in a few different colours, and I don’t know if there’s actually any difference between them, but I liked this little orange chappy so he was the one who came home!

My next choice was the Cream Egg bubbleroon because just LOOK AT IT!! Its like Lush went inside my head and picked out the best colour scheme and turned it into a cute little sandwich of a bubble bar and it smells AMAZING. I imagine I’ll stock up on a few of these before the collection leaves stores because its so pretty and I think I’ll be sad to use this up!

Which Came First? This bathbomb is actually pretty huge, and a dreamy pastel design.

This final buy was a total impulse purchase – I’d gone to pick up my usual shampoo bar (Seanik), but as soon as I saw this little fluffy tail and ears on a yellow shampoo bar all sensible-ness went out the window and whether or not this bar turns out to be any good for my hair or not I don’t really care – its so cute!

I can’t wait to give all these goodies a try in the coming weeks! Have you used any of these before?

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March 14, 2018Lottie 7 Comments

A Week in the Life of Lottie – Saturday and Sunday

So Saturday was a pretty crazy day and due to my phone dying on the drive home from up north, and being too tired when I got in, I decided to combine the two days into one blog post!

Saturday was not in any way a normal day in my life, but I guess it might just be the biggest day in my life to date. You see, the real reason Matthew and I drove up to Cheshire on Friday night wasn’t just to visit his mum after her house move, but actually so that we could put down a reservation fee on a new build that we fell in love with a few weeks before. That’s right you guys.. WE’RE BUYING A HOUSE!

The house itself, being a new build, isn’t finished of course, but we’ve visited so many showhomes of the same property that we know that this is the one, and whilst we were at the development we did get to poke around a completed one that someone else has bought, just so that we could take some measurements and get some ideas for when our house is finished, and then we had to go through a lot of paperwork and sign a number of documents, but I won’t bore you with the nitty gritty because I foresee a lot of house-buying blog posts coming in the future! I am just so happy and excited, I can’t tell you..

Well after all that we were pretty hungry, so we went to the Chill Factor to have a Nando’s for lunch, because we figured the Trafford Centre one would be pretty busy – I’ve never been to Chill Factor before but it is SO COOL. After lunch, we did actually go to the Trafford Centre to pick up Mothers Day cards, I treated myself to some Lush goodies because I got a big Etsy payout this week, and then we went to DFS to look at sofas, although we got caught up in some post-match traffic around Old Trafford so that took a little bit of time to get to. We’ve actually had our sofa picked out for quite some time in the hope that we would be getting a house soon, but now we can actually say we have one, and had all the measurements we needed, it was working out the logistics of what style of the sofa would fit the space and where etc, but I think we’ve got it sorted now.

We then stopped off back at Matthew’s mum’s, where Matthew finally found his childhood Disney pin collection which he’s been looking for for ages, watched a little bit of Crufts and then drove back to Bournemouth!

Today, despite being super tired from Saturday’s antics, we were both awake just before 7am, but I didn’t get out of bed for at least 45 mins, then went and had a shower before my mum woke up and I gave her her Mothers Day present. As the sun was out, I took the opportunity to get some blog and Instagram photos taken, which I’m happy I did because the sun quickly disappeared behind a lot of cloud..

This morning I had a family friend coming round for a wedding cake consultation (oh yeah, do you guys know I’m a cake decorator sometimes too?), so I spent a bit of time playing around with some sketches and getting some inspiration from Pinterest before she arrived, and she was here for about 2 hours chatting cake stuff, wedding stuff and just having a general catch up because I haven’t seen her in about a year or so.

After she left, I spent some time doing general admin type stuff – writing up the weekly newsletter for the #HappiestFitbitClub, editing blog photos, doing some Etsy bits and packing up orders etc, before having some lunch and watching last night’s Saturday Night Takeaway.

My sister brought our cousins round early afternoon to help put together the Mothers Day afternoon tea we had planned – my job was to make the cupcakes – and the rest of the family came to ours at 4pm. Big family dinners are quite a common thing for us, and they tend to be fairly loud affairs with 13 of us round one dinner table! Once the extended family had left, we watched the only tv show that we still watch as a family since my sister moved out, Only Connect, and then my sister left too and Matthew and I watched Sherlock Holmes while I did a bit more Etsy work and some writing and we’re just gonna chill for the evening now.

This week has been pretty busy, but I hope you’ve enjoyed tagging along with me! Normal blog posts will resume from tomorrow!

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March 11, 2018Lottie 3 Comments

A Week in the Life of Lottie – Friday

It’s Friday guys, we made it! Last 5.30 alarm of the week, which was torture as I actually went to bed pretty late last night and I was super tempted to just reset it for 7am and skip the gym, but I knew how much I’d regret that if I did it, and as per usual as soon as I stepped out of the front door I found my motivation.

I was really feeling the effects of a good week of solid workouts, so I kept it relatively easy at the gym, hopping on a bike for a bit, then spending some time on the resistance machines and TRX and focused on chest and back. In a week I try and make sure I’ve hit every area at least once during my various gym sessions, and this week I definitely feel like I’ve done that.

This morning was a little grey so I decided to wear my new yellow jumper from Tu Clothing at Sainsbury’s, and I got a bunch of compliments on it during the day so I figured it was a hit! Work was a totally regular day, although at one point there was a very heated debate among my team about fried breakfasts – I don’t even know how it started but it got quite loud..

While I waited for Matthew to finish, which today was only half an hour after I did, I nipped to M&S and grabbed us a pizza to cook for dinner as we were in and out as quick as we could when we got home.

I’m coming to you from the drive up to visit Matthew’s mum who’s just moved into a new house in Middlewich, and because Matthew and I also have some business to attend to in the area (this is very exciting and I will tell all tomorrow!). The weather is absolute poo so the drive will probably be slow and we’ll arrive quite late, but the last time we saw the house it wasn’t completely finished so it’ll be nice to see how it is now – although it was only today that they moved in so it certainly won’t be in a completely normal state!

Hello weekend!

March 9, 2018Lottie 1 Comment

A Week in the Life of Lottie – Thursday

Happy Thursday gang! Now in theory, today should have started with another 5.30am alarm, but I was actually so tired last night that I forgot to set an alarm.. Luckily for me, I can be quite a restless sleeper, waking up quite a few times most nights, and it just so happened that I had a little wake-up moment and remembered that I hadn’t set an alarm, and this was actually at 5.37, so my day wasn’t actually affected!

This morning I had another session with Steph at the gym, but today’s session was a strength session – lots of heavy weights and pushing myself which I love because I’ve discovered just how strong I can really be when I put my mind to it. I was lucky that my legs weren’t as bad this morning as I thought they would be after last night’s run, so the squatting wasn’t complete torture!

Sassing up Thursday in my favourite pink ASOS trousers

After the usual walk home, shower, change malarkey, it was a pretty bog-standard day at work for me, although part of my brain was busy thinking about my San Francisco/Aulani trip which is now only six weeks away! I hadn’t packed a lunch, so I popped out to get some soup from the M&S Simply Food across the road from the office – butternut squash, for those who were wondering – and spent the rest of my lunch break in the little kitchenette area on my floor, which is where I normally spend my lunch, and today that meant scrolling Instagram and Pinterest!

After work I headed home and spent some time working on an Etsy order that I have for my famous* (*ok, its not so famous) Chip Disneybound skirt, and I did this with Wonder Woman on in the background, cos it is International Women’s Day after all! After an hour of working, I had to go and pick Matthew up, and we headed to B&Q to have a look at a few things, then went home and cooked a chilli for dinner, which is a favourite of ours because its quick and easy but also super flavourful and filling, and I made proper tortilla chips to go with it.

Thursday night I would normally be busy with the #disneybloggerschat, but unfortunately the shopping and cooking of dinner took a little longer than I thought so I missed out tonight, but there’s always another week!

Who’s ready for Friday?

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March 8, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

A Week in the Life of Lottie – Wednesday

Despite it being a running theme for the last two days, this morning did not start with a 5.30am alarm, yippee! I mean, it was 6.45 instead but that’s practically a lie-in in my books and I didn’t actually get out of bed until about 7.15, meaning I had to rush around a little to be ready and leaving the house on time to get into work for 8am – I don’t always start this early but I like having the flexibility to be able to finish at 4pm, which I needed to do today, plus it means the first hour is nice and quiet!

Today was a much more normal day at work for me, and that meant I could finally get caught up on all the work that’s been a little overdue with snow days and yesterday’s outing. Although it was Matthew’s day off, he came to meet me for lunch, and we used our 3 Wuntu offer to get a burger and fries from Cafe Rouge for £1 – Cafe Rouge is about a 2 minute walk from the office, so whenever these offers come up we always take advantage! I also had to make a quick trip to the post office to send off some Happiest Fitness Co orders, and then back to work where the majority of my afternoon was spent tackling my team’s enormous filing cupboard which has needed a good clear out for way too long.

The reason I wanted to finish at 4pm today was so I could get over to a fabric store in Ferndown that closed at 5 so that I could pick up some Disney fabric I’d pre-ordered for some custom work, but of course I ended up also buying a few extra little bits and pieces because they have such an amazing collection of Disney cotton which is notoriously hard to find from UK sellers online, let alone independent stores, so having someone nearby selling it is an absolute godsend! Traffic meant getting back home took AGES, but there was no way I was gonna talk myself out of a run tonight after not being able to go out all of last week.

It was a slow run (and I mean really slow) but today was just about getting out and doing the distance no matter how slow I ran or how long it took, and although my legs are gonna hate me in the morning and I’m pretty pooped right now, it felt good to be back out on the roads. Matthew had ordered Dominos for dinner, but as I’ve given up takeaways and fast food for Lent, I stuck to my guns and had a jacket sweet potato with beans and cheese.

Being a little worn out from my run, I’m not doing any custom work tonight, instead I’m already tucked up in bed and I’m gonna get some writing done, get some tweet scheduled and do some Pinterest scrollin’!

Happy hump day!

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March 7, 2018Lottie Leave a comment

A Week in the Life of Lottie – Tuesday

Ok so I don’t think I’ve actually stopped today and I am exhausted. It started with another 5:30 alarm and walk to the gym, today for a session with my PT Steph which was a circuit of cardio and power work; battle ropes, 40kg farmers walk, slams and various other methods of torture.. I love working with Steph – we have such a great relationship and although I don’t need to be training with her twice a week as I do, I do it because I want to. On the walk back I stopped off at my local delivery office to pick up a package I’d missed yesterday, which was some fabric for a custom order I’m working on at the moment, then home for a quick shower, dress and out the door again. I’d done 10,000 steps before I even got into work today..

Work was totally mad today. I got in early and instead of easing myself into my workload as I normally do – y’know, logging on, flicking through some emails, making a drink etc – I was straight into a mad rush to get some morning tasks done as we had a big presentation to go to which was going to take up the rest of the morning. Because of the number of people attending, the presentation couldn’t actually be held in the office, so we were bussed into Bournemouth town centre and it was held in a screen in the Odeon cinema complex – they even gave us popcorn! Part of the meeting was the presentation of some annual awards that are held within the department, and my team was actually voted 3rd in the Team of the Year category, but unfortunately that meant no prizes for us!

I didn’t get back into the office until past 1pm, so I had to try and cram a whole day’s worth of work into a few hours. I worked through my lunch break with just a packet of lentil crisps and an apple at my desk for fuel and just powered through everything as quickly as I could, but I had a real nasty headache come on and was definitely feeling the energy draining out of me so eventually at 4.30, having started at 8.30 that morning and not taken a break at all, I figured it was time to go home and just about managed to drag my feet back to my car.

Despite being desperate for a nap when I got home, I forced myself to stay awake and got started on cutting up the fabric that I had picked up in the morning ready to piece together later in the evening. I had everything cut out and ready before having to go and pick Matthew up from work, and set to work constructing the skirt when I got back, while Matthew cooked us a chicken curry for dinner. The rest of the evening was spent working on the skirt with Aladdin on tv in the background, and when today’s extreme tiredness really kicked in, I decided it was time to step away from the sewing machine, get into bed and write this post!

Is it Friday yet?

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March 6, 2018Lottie 1 Comment

What I’ve Watched Lately

Since going back to a 9-5 job, rather than the 8-8 shifts I was working before, I’ve definitely found that I’ve had more time to enjoy some of the simpler things in life, like just spending an evening watching TV, taking advantage of my Odeon Limitless card, or binge watching things over a weekend; its been great.

Over the last few weeks especially, I feel like I’ve watched a lot of pretty great things, and so I figured I’d share some of them with you!

TV

Hunted

I know it was the third season this year, but up until now I had never seen any of the Channel 4 programme. Well, my parents started watching it and were hooked, so Matthew and I decided to give it a spin too – although Matthew had seen some of a previous series. Well, we also ended up pretty obsessed too. Not only did we catch up to my parents in the current series, but I also went back and watched the entire first season in a few sittings, and am now getting started on season 2 – its just so more-ish! I really thought that I wouldn’t get sucked into it but wow..

Death in Paradise

I love a good murder mystery, and despite having watched Death in Paradise on BBC since the show first started, they’ve just released the earlier series on Netflix, so now I’m going back and rewatching it from the start as well as waiting for each new episode on Thursday evenings. Its so unrealistic in terms of the number of murders occurring on a small Caribbean island, but also just so entertaining, and what’s great about re-watching it is I can’t remember who did it from the first time round!

Movies

Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle

If I didn’t have Odeon Limitless, this would not have been a film that I would have bothered paying for as I wasn’t massively interested in it at first, but I actually thought it was brilliant! The storyline was always going to be just a little far-fetched, but the cast were amazing – I mean, The Rock, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, it was never not going to be funny. If you’re on the fence, just watch it, I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did.

The Circle

This is a Netflix original movie, and one that I have scrolled past time and time again while looking for things to watch, but Matthew actually bothered to read its little synopsis and so we decided to try it out because let’s face it, Tom Hanks is great in everything, right? Well its another one that really surprised me. From the first 15 minutes or so it doesn’t feel like its going to be much, but from then onwards I was pretty glued to the screen. For a fairly low budget film, its got a cracking cast, an interesting story and I was actually pretty upset when it was finished because I wanted more.

Black Panther

This movie was all the reviews had it cracked up to be and then some. I’m not going to spoil anything for those who haven’t seen it yet but Marvel are gonna find it hard to beat. The casting, the costumes, the cinematography, the underlying message of the film, it was all completely spot on and I think it deserves every accolade coming its way.

Have you watched anything good lately?

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February 22, 2018Lottie 1 Comment

Kayla’s Bikini Body Motivation & Habits Guide

Now I’ve never believed in the term ‘bikini body’ or ‘bikini body ready’ – for me, a bikini body is any body in a bikini, simples. I’ve also never really trusted these fitness influencers or Instagrammers as I’m very wary of some of the products and diets that they endorse, so when it comes to Kayla Itsines I’ve generally not paid much attention.

However, I saw this book in the supermarket the other week; Matthew pointed it out as we’re trying to keep healthy and active in preparation for our trip to Hawaii in April, and at first I kinda scoffed, but then I had a little flick through and noticed that despite the title suggesting otherwise, at least half of the book is recipes, and I’m a sucker for a good recipe book, so it ended up in our basket.

Spoiler alert, I’m now treating this book like my bible.

The book is actually so insightful. The first part talks about habits and motivation, and some of the psychology that goes behind it, and how you can combat the set-backs and hurdles that many of us face day in day out. I must admit that I haven’t read all of this as I’ve got a lot of other books and journals that I use for habit tracking, so I didn’t feel this was particularly relevant to me, but after this bit, the book gets really good.

The next section of the book is all about nutrition and meal-planning. I went into this with a pinch of salt ready to read things suggesting certain foods are really bad for you, or you should cut down on this or that, but there wasn’t any of that and I did a little happy dance. Everything written is informative, well researched and completely balanced, and the nutrition part covers everything from your basic food groups to micronutrients to non-dairy, vegetarianism and veganism, so it covers a pretty good range of dietary needs, but what I love the most about this book is the meal planning.

Now the book itself has a 4 week food plan, including 3 meals and 2 snacks every day over the 28 day period, so if you like to follow something by the letter, this is absolutely great – it even includes your weekly shopping list! However, if like me you struggle to stick to an exact plan day in day out, Kayla also includes an example meal plan, that is a guide of how many portions of what food groups you should be eating each day, and how you can mix and match these to suit. Did I mention how much I love this?

Also included is a big glossary of example foods for every food groups, and portion sizes, so if for example your meal is going to be 2 grains, 2 veg, 1/2 dairy/alternative and 1 meat/alternative, you can simply flick to the back of the book, have a look at what these could includes and make up a meal from there. This makes everything so flexible and easy, and there’s absolutely no calorie counting, or cutting out certain foods – its all about getting the portions and proportions right. Its a meal plan, not a diet.

The recipes offer so many options, and not only have you got every recipe for the 28 day meal plan, there’s also extra recipes that you can substitute in if whatever’s on the menu doesn’t take your fancy! All the recipes are quick, easy, and based on a single portion, which is great because I hate having a recipe designed for 2 or 4 people and having to go through and scale all the ingredients down. Oh, and there’s also a section at the back for desserts!

I have been following the meal plan, in my own way, for two weeks now and I’m already noticing a difference (along side my regular gym workouts and running). Some meals I haven’t changed at all from what I was eating before, but I’ve just got a better balance in what I should be eating and the size portions I should be having. Its so easy to break down every meal into groups, so all I count is the number of portions of each group I’ve had – absolutely no stressing over calories or not eating this or that. Most importantly, I feel so good within myself because I’m eating well.

The final section of the book is workouts, and you get a little 28 day workout guide poster that you can follow along with your meal plan – again, given that I go to the gym 4-5 times a week as it is and know my stuff quite well, I wasn’t so bothered by this, but it is a good little plan.

So while the title of the book didn’t endear me to it in any way, I guess its just proof that you can’t judge a book by its cover!

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February 17, 2018Lottie Leave a comment

Ways I Want to Help The Planet in 2018

In the last few years, saving the planet in an environmental sense seems to have slipped from the minds of a lot of people. Sure, we have a tonne more recycling bins now than we ever did, and you’ve gotta pay for a plastic carrier bag now, but I think most people just think of that as a bit of a hassle, rather than remembering the reasons behind it all.

Then Blue Planet 2 hit our screens, and thanks to David Attenborough and his ability to capture an entire nation through the TV screen, suddenly the impact that the human race is having on Planet Earth suddenly started to really hit home again. I was blown away by the number of celebrities, bloggers and influencers discussing such an important topic, and using their platforms to get other people talking. Not only that, I was seeing ideas; what we can do to help this place we, and millions of other creatures, call home.

Its a subject I’ve always been passionate about, but like many others I’ve slipped back into bad habits, but in 2018 I’m determined to bring it back to the forefront of everything that I do, and here are a few specific plans I’m making:

Buying more responsibly

Local produce, UK based companies, more sustainable products etc. This beautiful top from Monki is made from 100% recycled fibres and I had no idea something so pretty could be made from recycled materials!

Donating and recycling my old clothes

On Christmas Eve I took two huge sacks of old clothes to a local recycling centre that actually sends the decent items to Africa for people living in poverty to sell in order to make money, creating industry and supporting those who need it, and the stuff that isn’t good enough they recycle, plus, you can take down old sheets and towels which they donate to the RSPCA. I still have another bag of clothes that I want to take to local charity shops to give them a new home.

No more disposable coffee cups

I’m not a tea or coffee drinker, but I do love a Costa hot chocolate, especially from a winter menu. From here on out though, I’m going to be carrying my own travel cup so that I can benefit from the discount that a lot of coffee places give to people who bring their own cups, and also save on unnecessary use of paper cups and plastic lids. No mug, no drink!

Making my small businesses more eco-friendly

Over the next few months, I’m going to try and source more sustainable packaging for all my products, as well as making more of an effort to raise awareness with my customers.

Eco-blogging

I have the gift of this platform, and I’m going to use it. Stay tuned this year for more eco-friendly content, from recycling to upcycling and so much more!

Here’s to a responsible 2018!

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February 14, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

5 Things I Do To Stay Sane At Work

In case I haven’t harped on about it enough, its not been two solid months since I properly started my new job, and its safe to say that I am so much happier since then. But while I love being the person who doesn’t dread going to work every day, I’m still normal in the sense that there are places I’d rather be, and sometimes I do feel that little ‘is it 5pm/Friday yet?’ twinge every now and then.

I found it very strange transitioning from a retail environment to a call centre around 18 months ago, but having now transitioned away from a customer facing role into a standard office-y type job, again I’ve been thrown a little out of my comfort zone and having to adapt to a different working style, but I’ve come to learn that there are a few little tricks and tips that I do at work to keep me a little more sane, and many of these can translate to most work environments.

Don’t eat lunch at your desk

I used to spend at least half of my lunch break sitting at my desk, and even though I wasn’t working and my screen was locked, I still always found that there was a little niggle in the back of my head reminding me of whatever work needed doing, and so I’d spend my time thinking or stressing about getting back to work. Now, even if its just going down the corridor to our little vending machine area to sit with my lunch, I won’t spend my lunch time at my desk.

Stay active and step away from your screen

If you work in an office, you probably spend at least 90% of your working day sat down and staring at a screen – I don’t need to tell you that its not great for your posture or your eyes. As a Fitbit user, I have a little goal set on my Charge 2 to get in at least 250 steps every hour, so I always make sure that I’m moving around a bit, whether that’s going to the printer on the other side of the office instead of the closest one, going to fill up my mug with water, or taking a trip to a different floor to go to the toilet. I also like to get out of the office completely on my lunch break, even if its just to walk to the shops across the road or go and sit on the grass outside in the summer.

Spread some positivity

So many people find their work a little dull or maybe a little stressful, and its easy for negativity to spread in a working environment, especially when everyone’s feeling under pressure, so I try to be a little extra sunny on those days. I’m the newest person in my department, so I probably don’t understand some of the strains that other people are under with deadlines and targets etc, so I like to use that motivation to cheer others up. I wish everyone a cheery ‘good morning’ when I come in or see them for the first time that day, I make little jokes with people and have a chat at the photocopier; its the little things that can brighten someone else’s day and I feel so much better for it too.

Wear something cute

This probably sounds like the silliest thing but whenever I need a little push to feel more better about the day ahead, I always find myself reaching into my wardrobe for something special. Sometimes this means I’ll wear something quirkier like my Mickey Mouse blouse or galaxy print Black Milk shorties, and other times I’ll go for something a bit fancy like a nicer-than-everyday dress or the blazer that makes me feel all kinds of girl-boss-like, and it sets me up for the day, plus every time I catch my reflection in the mirror or a window, I get a little boost.

Work the right number of hours

Its so easy when there’s a lot of work to do to end up staying late, or cutting lunch short, but whenever I do find myself putting in more hours than I’m getting paid for, I always make sure I give myself the time back when I can, and this is a lot easier now I don’t clock in and out on shifts! On two occasions last week I ended up staying 15-20 mins late to finish up a few things, so on Friday I pushed myself to get things done a little quicker and left 20 mins early to have a good start to my weekend. I appreciate this isn’t something that everyone can do, but its the first time I’ve ever been able to do this in my working life and I’m taking advantage of it.

Do you do anything in particular to keep your head above at work?

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February 12, 2018Lottie 1 Comment

‘Celebrity’ Books That I Loved

When it comes to books, I generally don’t gravitate to those with a ‘celebrity’ author, and by that I mean a TV personality, film star, sportsperson etc. I’ve never really been one for autobiographies, and I’m a bit stubborn when it comes to famous people writing about stuff that they’re not so famous for. (Yes, I know they probably know the subject very well and all that, I just can’t help but think they’ve had some other person do most of the research and even if that’s not the case, I’ll still think it). Basically, I’m probably most celebrity authors worst nightmare.

That said, there are three books that fit this category that I completely worship, and I personally think that every girl – hell, anyone in general – should read, and here’s why.

Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick

I will fight anyone who doesn’t like Anna Kendrick. I think she just so genuine in her personality, I think she’s crazy talented and she’s ridiculously funny, but also loves a big helping of sarcasm. When she released her book, I knew I wanted to read it straight away, despite my previously mentioned dislike for autobiographies. Well I took it on a flight from Gatwick to Orlando, and I’d read it cover to cover before the plane landed. I loved learning more about her career as a child – she was on Broadway as a teenager and was the second youngest person EVER to be nominated for a Tony Award for her role in High Society – did you know that? I sure as hell didn’t before I read this. The whole book just reads as Anna, like she could just be sitting across from you telling these stories. I doesn’t sound like someone just trying to plug their successes and just overall it gave me so much more respect for her, not that I didn’t like her already. Lots of fun, lots of sarcasm but ultimately lots of reality.

Girl Boss by Sophia Amoruso

I hate to be ‘that person’ but I actually read this book before it became the enormous hit that it is now, but I do think it deserves every accolade. As well as being an autobiography, this book made me feel like I could take on the world. Sophia’s story is so impressive and its the true underdog story of Subway sandwich artist to CEO. Again, the writing just felt so genuine and not at all edited or scripted in any way, and also quite incredibly humble for someone who achieved so much. And while the book itself and the story that it told was a fabulous read, its the culture that it has inspired that makes it truly amazing. #Girlboss

Pretty Happy by Kate Hudson

Kate Hudson is another celebrity that I admire hugely, but I definitely think even more so since reading this book. This isn’t an autobiography but I also struggle to categorise it as its combination of health, lifestyle and positivity. What I love about this book is that it doesn’t focus in any way on one particular method to be healthier. It teaches the thing that I find most important when it comes to health and fitness and that is that every body is different and its all about learning how to understand your own body and what it wants and needs and using that mindfulness and understanding to learn what to do to become healthier. I think that this is something that anyone can read, not just people who are trying to become fitter or healthier. Kate really nailed it with this one.

I’d love to hear any recommendations you might have for similar books, so please drop me a comment if there’s any books you really love!

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February 9, 2018Lottie Leave a comment

A Lazy Girl’s Guide to Skincare

Skincare is a bit like Marmite, you generally either love it or hate it, and can do both simultaneously. Its also kinda like eating your 5 a day, in that you know you should be doing it but sometimes you just really can’t be bothered. You feel me?

I am both a lover and hater of skincare. Some days I enjoy nothing more than taking the time to properly remove my makeup, then cleanse, tone, moisturise and get my face feeling like a babies bum, and there are other days when I just crawl into bed with a makeup wipe and scrub off whatever I can before going to sleep. Some weeks I’ll be the good person every day, sometimes I can go days on just makeup wipes and trying to get the rest of the dried up mascara off my eyelashes in the shower the next morning. Its not always a pretty sight.

I have, however, picked up a few hacks along the way, so that even when I’m short on time – or short on bother – I don’t have to live with the consequences of a face that makes me want to peel my own skin off. Enter my lazy skincare guide..

Wash your face mask off in the shower

With the exception of sheet masks, obviously, I find there’s nothing more annoying than having to wash off a face mask after its done its business. I tend to use clay masks and Lush’s fresh face masks, which are generally super thick and I can spend ages with my face over a sink winding myself back up having just unwound courtesy of said mask. So I’ve started using face masks before showering, so that I can just hop into the shower when I’m finished and wash it all off in one fell swoop! This is also handy if you’re in a rush, as well as if you’re just lazy like me.

In fact, do everything in the shower

If I’m in a hurry in the morning, especially if I’ve been to the gym and am dealing with the aftermath of a sweat-fest on my face, I grab my cleanser and my Magnitone and do my face in the shower as well as the rest of my body. Like with face masks, being under a constant supply of running water makes everything super easy to wash away and also means there’s no mess to clear up round the sink!

Put everything within arms reach of your bed

I have a little basket on my bedside table that’s complete with micellar water, cotton pads, toner, facial moisturiser and body moisturiser – as well as the dreaded face wipes – so even if I do get straight into bed after coming home from work, there’s no excuse for why I can’t at least have a little bit of a skincare routine.

Guzzle water

If nothing else, drinking lots of water is never going to be bad for your skin. When it comes to dry lips, I actually reach for my water bottle before I reach for my lip balm, which is saying something cos I do love my lip balm. Dry lips especially are a sign of dehydration, so I at least make sure I’ve had at least 250ml of water before going for the balm.

Bare all

I know that going barefaced isn’t everyone’s scene, but its really important to let your skin breath. I do at least 2 days a week without any makeup, normally the weekends but often when I’m at work too and I feel so much better for it, plus it saves me time in the morning and I don’t have anything to take off in the evening! However I do know that a lot of people can’t face leaving the house without any makeup on for a lot of different reasons, but if that’s the case then just trying to go a few hours every evening before bed is also a way of getting a bit more free-skin time!

Do you have any skincare hacks that you use to save a bit of time?

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February 5, 2018Lottie 2 Comments

Hello February

Well if it wasn’t enough that we’re in 2018 now, we’re already into month 2, wowzers.. I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter saying how January felt like it went on forever, and I felt that a little bit but I also have no idea where the time has gone.

It wasn’t the totally stellar beginning to the year that I hoped for; I’ve been ill quite a lot and my mental health has been quite up and down, especially in the last few weeks, plus my family got some bad news this month, so I’ve dropped off the high of the new year buzz a little, but now I’m ready for the fresh start that a new month brings. That said, January wasn’t all blue – we celebrated Matthew’s birthday, had a weekend away in Bath and I’ve been so happy with blogging and my small businesses this month, so I can’t complain about that!

I always think that February is such a funny little month, I mean, its only 2-3 days shorter than any other month but it seems that way. It just seems more manageable, y’know?

Well I plan on filling February with fun and positivity, and here are a few things I’m looking forward to..

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child

I am FINALLY seeing The Cursed Child in London in a few weeks time, eek! I did read the book, so I know how the story goes down, but even that seems like so long ago now that I can’t remember every little detail, and I’m not going to refresh myself so I can experience it all on the stage.

Meat free days

With it being a little bit shorter, I thought this would be the perfect month to put myself to the challenge of doing at least one completely meat free day each week and expand my food repertoire with some more veggie options and dishes.

No more overtime

This Saturday is the last day of overtime I will be working for the foreseeable future, yay! This is despite having said the same thing every few weeks for the last 8-9 months, but this time I mean it because technically I left the job that I’ve been doing the overtime for two months ago, and its been causing me so much stress in the last few weeks that I’m just gonna put myself first and work normal days and normal hours from here on out.

More creations

I’ve launched a brand new product on my Etsy store today, and there are some fab deals and other new products that will also be appearing in the coming week or so, so stay tuned! January was an incredible month for sales and I’m so proud of that, so bring on another month!

Another Instagram milestone, maybe?

After what feels like the longest time trying to get there, I finally hit 2,000 followers on Instagram just under a week ago, and by some miracle I’m already up another 50 from there! I set myself a fairly modest, although still potentially unreachable goal of 2,500 for 2018, but if I keep going like this then maybe February will at least see me at 2,100..

Booking another Disney trip

I have no Disney park trips on the cards for 2018, but January 2019 is gonna be a good’un! DVC home resort rules means that we can book our stay at Disney’s Polynesian resort 11 months in advance, so hello booking time!

A big push for fundraising

On said 2019 Disney trip, I’ll be running my first full marathon, and I’ve decided that I might as well do something good with this madness, so I’ve set up a Just Giving page where you can sponsor me, with the money going to Cystic Fibrosis Trust, a charity very near and dear to me – even if you donate just £1 you can help me make a difference, and if you fancy it, click here.

Here’s to a great month!

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February 2, 2018Lottie 3 Comments

Things I Didn’t Buy In Sephora

This post is a little belated, given that my Florida trip was back in November, and I almost wasn’t going to write it, but that was until I saw the lovely Roxie’s anti-haul post based on a similar concept, so I decided to bite the bullet and publish it.

Every time I go to America I think about the Sephora trip, whether its because I’ve already planned a million things I want to buy, or I’m dreading the credit card bill that will inevitably come following the trip, and the last trip was no different. On this trip, I hadn’t really thought too much about products I wanted to buy, but that’s because its Sephora – there will always be things that I want.

That said, however, there were quite a few products that I rushed towards, but that didn’t end up in my basket in the end for various reasons, and here’s a few of those..

Too Faced Peaches and Cream collection

When Too Faced announced that they were releasing a full range of products following on from the Sweet Peach eye palette, glow kit (which I own) and a handful of blushes and lip glosses that they had before, my heart skipped a beat. I adore the glow palette, I’m a sucker for anything peach scented and Too Faced packaging is always the cutest, so that was the first stop when I entered the store. That said, however, I was a little disappointed. The packaging of some of the items felt a bit cheap, and I didn’t anything smelt as good as the original products, so for what they would have cost me, I just felt like my money could have been spent better elsewhere..

Anastasia Beverly Hills Sugar Glow Kit

This was the first ABH glow kit that I actually wanted, but as it had been out of stock when I was there in February, I opted for the Nicole Guerriero kit instead, which I was actually really happy about at the time because I love that palette. But this was in stock again, so I picked it up, looked at it, tilted my head and put it back. The fact was, the shades were just very similar to the ones in the kit I already had. Sure, none were exactly the same and I loved them all, but I just figured that I already had a pretty great set that still has plenty of use left in it, so I decided to stick with it.

Fenty Beauty

Firstly I was a little taken aback by how tucked away in the store the Fenty collection was, but nonetheless I did have a quick glance. The problem for me, however, was that the range had only been out for about 2 months, and I hadn’t seen that many reviews on the products to know where to even start. Its probably something that I’ll go back to, but it just wasn’t on the cards this time.

The minis

I normally love choosing from the huge range of minis in Sephora, but the fact is I was already quite stocked up from two previous trips that year! I ummed and ahhed over one or two things, but eventually left with no tiny products at all.

I guess that by being good on this trip, it means I can be a little naughtier next time though, right?

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January 19, 2018Lottie 4 Comments

Getting Monday Ready

Call me crazy, but I’ve always kinda liked Mondays. I see them like a fresh start, a mini New Years every week, and this liking of Mondays has only increased since starting my new job because I don’t also dread them a little bit anymore.

I also like to think that by starting off the week right, it will mean that the whole seven days will go off without a hitch, and with that in mind there are a few things that I like to get sorted every Sunday in the hopes of a smooth coming week.

Cleaning my makeup brushes

I find cleaning my brushes really therapeutic for some reason. I don’t quite do this every week as there are some weeks I just don’t wear my makeup as much as others, but its always a Sunday evening task regardless! All my brushes are Spectrum, and I use the Freedom Cosmetics brush bath to clean them, and then let them air dry on a shelf above my radiator overnight so that they’re nice and fluffy in the morning and ready for action!

A good skincare session

Over the winter months especially, I have been making much more of an effort to be more on top of my skincare regime as the weather can drive my skin crazy, so I do have a daily routine, but Sunday’s are for a bit of extra love. Sometimes that’s a face mask, sometimes a long hot bath, and sometimes its just a longer session with my Magnitone and a few extra or more special products thrown in.

The food shop and meal planning

Sundays are normally the day that Matthew and I do our Sainsbury’s shop and decide what dinners we’re going to have in the week. We keep our weekly shop below £50 as we each get vouchers through a salary scheme at work, and we like quick and easy meals that we can throw together after we both finish work, so typically we have things like chilli, soup, curry etc, but also like to mix things up with whatever else takes our fancy. There’s also a little bit of meal prepping done on a Sunday night, but now I’m back working 9-5 I don’t have to stress about it too much.

Packing up orders

Any Etsy or Happiest Fitness Co orders that I’ve sorted out over the weekend end up in a little pile of boxes and packages by the door by Sunday night ready for me to take to the post office during my lunch break on Monday – no rest for the small business-er!

Tweet scheduling

Every Sunday night I try to get my whole week’s worth of scheduled tweets sorted so that I don’t have to think about them for the rest of the week. Its a slightly boring task but I know that if I get it out of the way, at least its done!

Ironing and outfit planning

I don’t completely plan out my outfits for work, but I try to think ahead so that I have the key items ready, washed and ironed so that I don’t have to worry about getting the ironing board out in the week.

Do you do anything specific to get ready for your week?

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January 14, 2018Lottie 6 Comments

About My Younger Self

This was me, aged 15. This photo was taken about two or three days after I had been dumped by my first long-term boyfriend – we’d been together around 8 or 9 months – by text, at around 2 o’clock in the morning. Yeah.. My two best girlfriends had slept round mine, and we had gone to a local summer festival where we tried to get as many free things as we could, ate food that came from trucks or stalls and just had some fun.

In those days I always carried a camera. More often than not it was my dad’s because he had much better ones than me, and phone cameras still took grainy, low quality photos. My phone at the time was a slid-up LG thing with buttons. Yep. I would take so many photos, most totally silly but every one a memory that I would painstakingly upload to Facebook in groups of 5, caption individually and tag, so that everyone could see. I still have every single one saved on my computer.

My two best friends were everything. Our lives revolved around sleepovers at each others houses and trips to Primark. We sat together in every class but still text each other under our desks, and we were there for each other through every breakup, fall out or family problem. We all had our own style and our own likes and dislikes, but we all respected each other. I never thought there would be a time that we wouldn’t be friends anymore. Well, we drifted apart in the end.

In those days I knew very little when it came to makeup, and I certainly didn’t wear it every day. When I did it was probably just blue eyeliner and mascara – I think by 15 I had given up on my Dream Matte Mousse in 3 shades more orange than my face actually was. My eyebrows were never filled in, nor did I ever pluck them (but that was partly because I’m quite lucky with my natural shape), but my nails were always painted. My nail varnish collection was my pride and joy and every week at school was a challenge to see how long I could make it before a teacher eventually noticed my navy blue tipped fingers and made me go to the office to take it off. Most gave up bothering.

Even back then my style was different. I wore skirts and shorts with knee high socks and high-tops – Converses were basically the only shoes I owned, and still are. I wore dungarees and band t-shirts, and actually knew who the bands were. I knew what I was wearing wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I almost thrived from it. I guess the fact that I didn’t try and blend in back then is what makes my style what it is today. To be honest, when I look back I still love every outfit.

Younger me went through a lot. I look back at some of it and wish some things had been different. I wish I could have told myself so many things about how life would be in 5-10 years time but I also applaud that version of myself for getting through it all. I almost feel like I don’t know that person anymore, but she was great, despite not believing it herself.

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January 13, 2018Lottie 7 Comments

Let’s Talk About Luck

Luck (noun)

“success or failure apparently brought about by chance rather than through one’s own actions”

I feel like this says it all, but because you don’t know the point I’m trying to get across, here’s some backstory..

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you achieve, there will always be someone who says ‘oh wow, you’re so lucky!’. Whether you’ve just tweeted about a promotion at work, or you’re Instagramming beach pics from a fabulous holiday, so many people jump to luck. Now don’t get me wrong, 9 times out of 10 this is probably meant as a compliment, but that’s just the thing. Unintentional as it may be, claiming luck invalidates the accomplishment.

Take bloggers for example. I follow so many incredible bloggers on Twitter, all of which produce great content, take photos that could easily appear in magazines and pour so much effort into their posts that they deserve every opportunity they get, but whenever they tweet in gratitude about one of their favourite brands reaching out to work with them, so many of the responses that come flooding in are ‘oh my gosh, this is amazing! You’re so lucky!’. Yes, it is amazing, but look at the definition of luck (see, I put it there for a reason), these things came about through hard work and determination, so that’s far from luck.

Personally, I hate being told that I’m lucky whenever I go on holiday. Sure, I guess I’m fortunate to have a job that pays well, but I earnt that job and I work hard in that job, plus I put in so much overtime for the very purpose of being able to pay for said holidays. And I suppose it helps that my outgoings aren’t too high, but again, that’s because I’m very careful with money, budget like a pro and know how to find a bargain. Yep, these are all sounding like my own actions..

I’m not saying that I’m not grateful for every opportunity that comes my way, because I am. I am so grateful and so thankful for everything I have, and there are so many things that I do think I’m lucky to have, such as my amazing family, incredible boyfriend and wonderful friends, because apart from somehow convincing them to be in my life, my actions had nothing to do with them being who they are, I just wish that we didn’t devalue accomplishments by suggesting luck has anything to do with it.

What do you think?

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January 11, 2018Lottie 3 Comments

My January Sale Buys

January sales are a weird concept. We’ve just spent all our money showering our friends and relatives with gifts, and have been showered in return, yet the second we see a sale poster in a shop window, or a promotional email slides into our inbox, we suddenly forget our credit card bills and piles or presents and shop til we drop. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a bargain.

As you can see, the majority of my steals were homeware – including the gorgeous throw blanket that I’ve doubled as a backdrop here! Its the prettiest creamy-blush colour, not to mention being crazy supersoft, and d’you know where I got it from? Homesense, £16.99, boom. I’m also completely obsessed with this yellow neon ‘hello’ sign by Talking Tables which I got on ASOS. I had my eye on it before it went on sale, but as soon as I saw it was less than half price, it was in the bag!

Also from ASOS, I picked up two of these amazing pastel furry throw cushions for only £8.50 each, and also this Skinnydip ‘Time to Get Ship-Faced’ bag for future Disney cruises, which was also half price. This little plant pot is one of two which I got from Homesense for just £2 too!

Lastly, Matthew and I picked up some tealights and diffuser oil in Passionflower and Mango, which smells amazing! Both were half price and under £2 from Sainsbury’s of all places.

Have you managed to resist the sales?

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January 5, 2018Lottie 6 Comments

What I Got For Christmas

I’m kinda not over the fact that its already been a week since Christmas, but hey, that means just another 51 weeks til the next one! No? Just me..

Anyway, I know I’m a little late in posting the classic ‘what I got for Christmas’ haul, but as I was having my little Christmas break from blogging, I’m just extending the festive period so that I can share with you all the wonderful gifts I received on the big day.

Let’s start with the present that was too big to fit under the tree – say hello to my new suitcase! Bit of back story here, my current suitcase is about 15 years old and has two wheels, and all these new-fangled suitcase have four, which I’m not a huge fan of but apparently its the thing now. Well Matthew figured that the only way to get my over my dislike of four wheels was to make it Donald themed! Super excited to take this bad-boy to Hawaii in April to test it out!

Matthew also got me the Fitbit Flyer headphones, which I’m already super impressed by but I can’t wait to put them to good use when I start my marathon training, and a book on how to get the best out of my iPad Pro, plus a cute kitty mug, unicorn slippers and a onesie! I hate the phrase ‘boy did good’ but it seems fitting here..

Now I have no idea how she managed it for a second time, but after the incredible surprise of a CoachxDisney wristlet on my birthday, my mum shocked me with another item from the collection, this time a purse. I’m quite jealous as I had no luck finding any of the collection in the outlets, yet she’s done it twice – she also nabbed me this Mickey sweater!

How gorgeous is this Fiorelli gym bag? I actually picked this one out myself but I still had to wait until Christmas to get it.. I suspect my gym will be packed this month with New Years resolution-ers, but I’ll be ready to fight for all the good machines now I’ve got a bag to fit all my kit in.

Other goodies in my stocking included Eat Like a Gilmore: The Unofficial Cookbook for Fans of Gilmore Girls, a little collection of Lush products, a couple of gift cards and a pretty Beauty and the Beast bracelet from Couture Kingdom from Matthew’s mum, so it’s safe to say I’ve been incredibly lucky this year!

I hope everyone else was spoilt rotten, and if you want to share what you got for Christmas please leave me a comment so I can be nosey!

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January 2, 2018Lottie 5 Comments

Why I’m Disappearing for Christmas

I don’t imagine this is much of a surprise given that over the last week or so I haven’t been keeping up with my usual posting schedule, but I’m putting myself on a little Christmas break and there will be no new posts until the new year!

As I mentioned last week, I’ve started a new job and I’ve been concentrating on getting settled into a new role and new routine, as well as getting ready for the big day next week, so blogging has just had to take a back burner. This is a huge step for me, because as someone who religiously publishes at least 5 posts a week, I do feel a little like I’m letting my little blog down, but I’m proud of the fact that I’m not letting myself feel guilty for putting myself first.

I need a break, and this year is the first time that I have let myself really take one. If I’m not at work, I’m writing, or working on my small businesses, and I even blog daily when I’m on holiday. This Christmas, I think I’ve earned myself a little time off. I only have a few days off work over the festive period, and I want to spend that time enjoying myself, spending time with my family and just relaxing for a change.

I’m also concentrating on making sure come January I’m gonna be ready with great new content right from the get go, and using a new job and a new year as a fresh slate – and there’s going to be lots to come!

In the meantime, I wish you all the most merry of Christmasses, and if I’m not back by then, a lovely New Year!

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December 22, 2017Lottie 3 Comments

Creating and sharing magic!

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The following post contains some affiliate links and features a gifted product. All views are my own.

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*This post contains gifted items. All views are my own.

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How am I doing with my blog targets?

Resolutions, goals and life

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