My Morning Routine | Summer Edition

I'm one of those people who can't function without breakfast. So the first thing I do in the morning is get myself something to eat. Because it's summer I tend to opt for something light and healthy, like a smoothie or a bowl of fruit & yogurt. 

*Disclaimer* I wouldn't recommend putting orange in a blender, the bits go everywhere and you end up having to sieve the bits out.

Because of the warm weather, most days I have are makeup free. But when I do put makeup on, I tend to go for a light base, golden eyes with mascara (no eyeliner), a tiny bit of bronzer (to match my slight tan) and a hint of blusher.

I then pick an outfit - today I went for Levi's shorts, a black vest and a patterned kimono from Primark. Most days I tend to sit out in the garden, because weather like what we're having this week in the UK is rare and I want to make the most of it. So I take my laptop outside a write, check emails and do other bits of work from my garden table.

De-Cluttering | The Importance of Having a Clear Space

Packing all my stuff up when I came back from university this summer made me realise something - I am a massive hoarder of things that I don't need. Clothes, books, CDs and even an iron that I have no idea how I came to own.

After getting back to Hull, I decided to change this and set about having a huge clean out in my room. The clean took around three days(!), and I managed to get rid of all the stuff you can see in the picture above as well as 6 bin bags of clothes. 

I even finally managed to throw away the GCSE revision I've been keeping (you know, just in case the government contact me and tell me I need to resit my GCSE Biology exam from five years ago).

I also sorted out my book case, and my collection of CDs and DVDs. I've given most stuff to charity, but have kept a small collection of stuff to sell too (stay tuned for a post on how to sell clothes online successfully).

My room feels super welcoming now
I've finally thrown away all the stuff I've kept for years.

Now that I've completed this long overdue sort-out, my room feels so much more like a space that I want to occupy - rather than the place I go to sleep in at the end of the day. After getting out of my awkward shut-myself-in-my-room phase that all teenagers go through, I never really spent much time in my room and I suppose that's because - without realising it - I didn't like it. 

The room didn't feel like somewhere I wanted to spend time in, it wasn't really my room.

If any of you are the same as me, and you have so much stuff to get rid of it feels like it's going to take years, my advice would be to just do it. Set up a checklist of all the different parts in the room that you want to sort out, and go through each one day-by-day. Before you know it you'll only have a couple more things to sort out, and your bedroom will feel so much more like your space. 

Plus, you're bound to find something cringey from when you were thirteen - and that's always worth it.

August favourites

I'm not gonna bore you all with a huge paragraph about how I can't believe it's September already and 'oh my god where has the time gone?!' because I feel like I do that with every post and you must be getting bored with it - so I'm just going to get on with it.

1. Rimmel Stay Matte BB Cream - this has honestly been my saviour over the summer months. I normally struggle to find a BB Cream that doesn't make my skin look greasy by midday, but this really helps to keep my oily skin under control.

2. Navy blue dungarees - I'm thought for ages about whether to buy these in this colour or not, as I feel like they make me look like a car mechanic. But despite that I love them all the same, and are great to throw on now that the weather is cooling off.

3. Bourjois Color Boost in the shade Plum Russian - I've been wanting a darker lip colour for ages, and to keep in with the autumn trend of dark red/purple lips, I went from this one. The colour isn't too dark, it doesn't feel caked on my lips and it suits my skin tone really well.

4. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak - obviously when I picked up a book set during WWII I didn't expect it to be happy, but the honesty with which this story is told makes it both stunning and shocking. I've not finished reading it yet, so expect a full review when I do. But it is genuinely one of the most captivating but heartbreaking stories I've ever read.

5. Soap & Glory Heel Genius - because I've been wearing sandals and slip on shoes without socks in the summer, my heels have been getting a little bit damaged and the skin has been starting to look a little gross. My mum gave me this to help and the difference in the softness of my feet has actually been incredible (I never thought I'd get so gushy about a foot cream, but there you go).

6. Green tea - I've been watching a lot of videos by youtubers that drink green tea, so I decided to give it a try. It took me a while to get used to the taste, as I'm a big fan of just a regular builder's cup of tea, but since starting to drink it I've noticed it makes me feel so much better - a lot healthier, and it's helped clear my skin up as well which is a bonus.

A Week in Spain

For the past week my family and I have been holidaying in a resort near Malaga in Spain called Puerto de la Duquesa. We haven't been abroad on holiday for a long time, as we normally prefer staying in England and travelling down south somewhere for a few weeks.

However this year we decided we would actually quite like to go somewhere hotter, and maybe even tan for the first time in 4 years

.

The resort itself was lovely - it was the perfect blend between being busy but also not so busy that you couldn't hear yourself speak. We timed it just right with the weather, as the weeks before Spain was having a heatwave which meant that it would have been dangerously hot. 

We also made the good decision to book a room in a privately owned complex, which meant we didn't have to fight people for sunbeds because there was barely anyone there. 

To give ourselves a break from just being at the hotel by the pool all the time we also went to a waterpark on the third day (after getting v lost and nearly ending up on a boat to Africa).

If we wanted to we could've gone and visited a nearby castle and gone to Gibraltar for the day, which is great for people who (unlike my family) don't like holidays where you just lounge on a sunbed all day.  

The two photos above show the view from near the pool at our hotel, being near the
sea meant there was always a lovely breeze to cool us off.

There were loads more restaurants and bars along the beach (which was too
pebbly for us to spend a day there), and walking right along it meant that you ended up
in another little town just like the one we stayed in.

I tried to get a cool, artsy photo of all the bars and restaurants lit up at night
by the mariner because I thought it would look pretty, but it kind of failed.

Dream Diaries

I've always been one of those people that's been able to remember their dreams really vividly. I think it must be because I'm a light sleeper, as barely anyone else I know is able to remember their dreams as clearly as I remember my own.

I'm fascinated by what dreams mean and what they're caused by. I sometimes have really strange lucid dreams - the only way I can think to describe this is that it's like being half-in half-out of your dream, and so you're conscious enough to be aware that you're dreaming but you're also still completely submerged in the dream. 

Due to this interest in dreams, I have decided to keep a diary of all the dreams I remember when I wake up in the morning. I do it as soon as I wake up, so I don't forget them throughout the day, and record every little bit of detail I can remember. If my dreams are really strange, I'll perhaps spend a bit of time searching the internet to find out what exactly it means. 

I started doing this last year, but lost motivation about a week in. However this summer I've started doing it again and have actually managed to keep it up this time. I love going back to last year's dreams and reading them over, because sometimes they actually jog my memory as if they're something I consciously experienced - rather than them just being a dream.

I love doing things like this - it's now become a little routine that I have in the morning, that instead of getting up straight away and getting my breakfast, I spend 5 or 10 minutes recollecting my dreams from the night before and writing them down.

I find it weirdly therapeutic, and I have even got a few of my friends doing the same thing - which means sometimes we have really interesting discussions about our dreams from the past few nights!

#hairgoals

Since Christmas I've been slowly getting my hair cut shorter and shorter, which seems ridiculous after spending the last four years trying to grow it long.

As much as I loved my longer hair, since having mine cut short I haven't had any regrets. Obviously there was the initial 'Oh my god what am I doing' as I saw a huge chunk of it fall to the floor of the salon, but that was quickly followed by a 'Oh my god why did I do this 2 years ago'.

I don't want to sound really pretentious about how getting a new hairstyle makes me feel like a new person, or that it's as if I'm starting afresh - I don't want to be too heavy-handed with the symbolism, but I will say that short hair is honestly so much more fun and so much less maintenance than long hair.

Before & After
(I am aware that this make me look like I've highlighted it as well,
but I think it was just a combination of natural lightening from the sun
and the difference in lighting in both pictures)

I especially love it now, as I've got to grips with styling it properly. I particularly love putting it in a top knot, which is also great now that the weather is getting warm. The other two styles I mainly go for are slightly wavy or full-on curled (by 'full-on' I mean tightly curled, I don't know why I couldn't have just said that in the first place).

Aside from the days where I wake up and my hair refuses to do anything but look like I've had a bowl-cut, I'd say cutting it short is one of the best hair decisions I've made in a really long time - it has now officially reached my #hairgoals standard.

Home for Summer

One thing I did miss about home - the view of the sunset from my
bedroom window.

I've been dwelling on how to write this post for the past few days, and no matter how I've thought about tackling it none of my ideas have seemed right. 

Being home is an odd one for me; I'm happy to have time off from university, and I enjoy being back with my family and old friends, in the place that I called home for 18 years of my life. However, leaving Lincoln, I couldn't help but feel disappointed.

University has certainly been a challenge. Homesickness mixed with feelings of stress and doubt did sometimes make me think "I just want to go home", but now that I am home I know that I wouldn't change my decision to go to university away from home for the world.

I've definitely got an amazing life at university. I'm doing a course I love and the friendships I've made are close ones, and it's hard now that I'm home not to miss that. I'm find that when I think about going back to Lincoln, all I can say to myself is: "I can't wait!" and that makes me feel guilty - because surely leaving my family, lifelong friends and familiar habits behind should be something I can wait for?

I don't know, I'm still finding it difficult to process being away from home and having a great time and feeling good about having a great time.

I've decided that my time at home should be a productive one - I'm blogging more frequently, I'm going to gym, I've started driving lessons again and have booked a test, I'm going on holiday (which may not be productive, but I'm looking forward to it all the same), and I am attempting to find a job/gain some work experience somewhere. 

I've found that filling my time up - and making sure I never have days where there is nothing to do - is the best thing I can do while I'm at home. I'm trying to find an equal balance between relaxing at home, working and seeing my friends, and so far it's been going great.

I know that coming home is good for me. It has been and will continue to be good for recharging my batteries. And as much as I'm looking forward to going back to university in September, I think part of the fun is waiting for it to arrive.