Life | Things I've been loving recently

Golden Globe Fashion Favourites

I do love the award season. We get bombarded with beautiful gowns that we can only dream of owning, but love to look at. And then there are the slightly less beautiful gowns that make us feel that tiny pang of smugness that it wasn't us, but lets not focus on that.

Sunday night was the Golden Globes, one of the biggest nights in the movie and fashion calendars, so here's my top five fashion champions from the night!

Free Fashion Magazine!

Hi everyone!

Very brief post today. I got an email the other day about a new fashion magazine called Clique.

I was so excited when I read this! The idea is to create a free print magazine which is delivered to your door every month. The magazine works hand in hand with an app to make it the worlds first shoppable magazine. I don't know about you but I love having the actual physical magazine to flick through, but the use of the app is great and works well with the magazine, not against it. And did I mention it's free?



Sign up here!

10 Stocking Fillers under £10 for Her!

I did somewhat of a gift guide a few weeks ago for presents under £30 which were in the sales or had a special discount (you can see that here). However, some of them may well have expired now and I thought I would do a stocking fillers one this time! All items are under £10 at full price and I've put links where possible directly to the product if you want to buy it now.

Today it's for the ladies but I will do one for guys as well. Perfect for Christmas on a pretty tight budget!

Happy Halloween!

This year, I was lucky enough to go to two Halloween events (none on actual Halloween though...) I went to the traditional house party and then a proper night out.

Now I don't know about you, but I find that house party and proper night out warrant different dress codes. The house party is a safe environment where the majority of people there will probably know you, so it's safe to go a bit further with your whole Halloween look. I'd like to point out now, I am not massively into Halloween; to be honest, I just like eating the sweets left over from the teeny amount of Trick or Treaters and watching Halloweentown, but I do love a good party and an excuse to dress up. This year my house party costume was a pirate. Initially, I was aiming for a bit of a dead Elizabeth Swann, instead I wound up looking more like a sleep deprived Jack Sparrow, which interestingly worked better than my first plan!

 

Just in case you fancy recreating (probably a much better) version of this, the details are all below!

Discounts and Sales!

It's getting much nearer to that time of year again... yes. Christmas is coming. We can't deny it anymore. The Argos advert is on, Next has it's Christmas display up and the Christmas candles are out in force. There's just 10 short weeks to go until it's present swapping time, and we all know how much pain Christmas causes our bank accounts. After about 5 years of panic buying the week before Christmas, this year, I am starting my shopping early.

So, for this reason, I have be traipsing the internet all afternoon to find you guys as many discount codes, offers and sales as I can to make the present buying experience a little less painful and a little more organised.

But, first things first, before you go and buy anything for anyone, make yourself a list of some ideas for what to get people. I do this every year (I rarely stick to it, but I have the right intentions...) and, to make that a little less of a headache, I like to make mine pretty and festive, to put me in the spirit of things when I start my shopping. Also, set a budget for each person. If you're doing secret santa, keep it to a £5- £10 limit and try and make this the only novelty gift you buy! (I struggle with that every!) Personally, I tend to do £30 per parent and sibling, £10- £20 for my best friend and per grandparent and about £10 per housemate. Obviously, if you can get the perfect present for less then don't just buy loads of extra things, they won't know it was in the sale! Boring, but important stuff there!

So, to the fun bit. I'm going to pick a selection of gifts "For Him" and "For Her", all on offer, with a discount (not student, not all of you have that) or are in the sale. All items will be under £30.

I shall start with "For Him". I don't know about you guys, but buying for men is the baine of my life. I struggle so much!

Fashion Union Wishlist!

Fashion Union is the website I discovered after a bad experience with Missguided. I came across a pair of shorts I loved when Fashion Union was advertised on a blog and I've loved it ever since. I have got myself that pair of shorts, 3 jumpers, a dress and a pair of heels from there in the last couple of months, so I was really excited to be given the opportunity to win a £500 voucher to spend on their website!

Here is a little compilation of some of my favourite pieces the site has to offer for this turn of the season. Trust me, I had a lot of trouble narrowing it down!

Wrap up!

Sorry for being a little bit absent- I've been busy getting ready to move back to uni!

And so that familiar autumnal chill is definately in the air this week, bit of a shock to many peoples systems! My last post listed 5 reasons why Autumn and Winter are great and this is sort of like a follow on (if you didn't get a chance to see it, have a little look here).

I went shopping the other day and couldn't help but notice the massive amount of gorgeous jumpers there are this year! So I thought I would compile you a quick wish list of some of my favourites.  I've picked 3 expensive, 3 medium priced and 3 cheapy ones so there is something to suit everyones budgets!

NB: I'm an unashamed fan of the 'ugly' Christmas jumper. I just can't help but love them.

Prices L to R: £36.00, £42.00, £38.00

The first little selection comes from H! by Henry Holland at Debenhams. I've never really looked in this section before, but these cute little jumpers just caught my eye! They are so soft and cosy, I found myself putting them on my Christmas list! Very festive, a little pricey but there's 20% off them at the moment, so have a little look if any of these take your fancy!

H! by Henry Holland 

Prices L to R: £26.00, £22.00, £15.00

These are all from Dorothy Perkins. A bit more reasonably priced and the middle one is so cute! The last one also comes in various other colours, but this is my favourite- I am a firm believer in not being able to accept it's A/W until I am wearing something burgundy. This one also comes in a very similar style with the same range of colours for £18. 

Dorothy Perkins 

Prices L to R: £7.00, £5.00, £8.00

Although ASOS now stocks some Primark products, unfortunately these jumpers aren't included, so you'll have to get yourself down to a store and rummage around! (I've tried to take relatively decent photos of the three latest ones I have bought to show you). They're all pretty basic crew necks, but that's all I really wanted from Primark, although the grey one does have a lush criss-cross back! They're super cute if you pop on a little collared blouse underneath and poke the collar out (that's what I tend to do) and they come in LOADS of different colours. Perfect, purse friendly additions to your A/W wardrobe!  Although I did get them in a size bigger, just in case of any shrinking. The blue one is my favourite- the quality is much better than the pink and it's so soft and cosy!

I hope you enjoyed my little selection- obviously there are so many more but I didn't want to bore you too much with talk of jumpers! Although there are some particularly hideous-but-I-love-them Christmas jumpers in Primark.  A guilty part of me is slightly hoping Mum gets me one for a joke...

A little side note- I will be starting up a You Tube channel in the next few months so stay tuned for that and be sure to let me know of any videos you would like me to do! Don't forget to Like my page on Facebook and Follow my blog if you enjoyed this post!

Thanks for reading- hope you are all well! Have a lovely week!

Attention Freshers!

Many of you would have got that little brown envelope last Thursday (or in July if you, like I was last year, are an IB kid). For a lot of you, that little envelope held your golden ticket into university in September! For those of you brave enough to venture straight into the world of work, treat this post as the ultimate pay day wishlist, for those future freshers among you, this is a selection of the things you will most definately NEED at university.

If you are anything like I was last year, you will feel like an entire new wardrobe is needed for uni. So you will head for Primark and buy everything in the shop and then have nowhere to pack it, nowhere to store it when you are at uni and the millions of items you purchased before uni will probably be quite poor quality. I did this last year and regretted it massively when my entire wardrobe basically fell apart within the first few weeks because I had gone for quantity over quality.

After a year at university, I finally think I have got the must have uni wardrobe nailed. So, I have put together the items I think you definately need to invest in while you still have access to mum/dads bank account and while you are still willing to spend the money (trust me, when you get your student loan you will be studying your bank account religiously everyday).

This is not going to be a cheap list, but if you play it right, these items should last you long enough that you won't need to replace them for at least a year- they are definitely investment pieces.

Literary Emoprium

I love books. I love fashion. I love jewellery. So I'm sure you can't even begin to fathom my excitement when I was browsing the interweb, on the hunt for some gorgeous new jewellery and I came across this blinder of a website. Literary Emporium is a website that sells products based on books. It doesn't get much better than that.

They sell other bits and bobs but my favourite section was definitely the jewellery one. Each necklace has a little charm on it and the packaging of that necklace comes with a supporting quotation from a book. Such an adorable idea and the necklaces are beautifully simple and subtle. And the quotation often doubles up as a wee bit of life advice which we could all do with now and then, and it gives your shiny new piece of neck candy a meaning that only you understand. Simple, relateable pieces that really brightened my day!

I've selected some of my favourite pieces for you to have a gander at. Give the website a look- such a good find! http://www.literaryemporium.co.uk

All £12.00

There aren't hundreds of necklaces on the website but it was still so difficult to choose just 4 to share with you! They are all lovely and prices range from about £12.00 up to about £14.00 which I think is pretty reasonable for such a unique piece.


What do you think of my choices? Don't forget to check them out!

Dorothy Perkins: Back in the Game!

A few years ago, Dorothy Perkins was my go to. No matter how often I went in, there would always be at least one thing that I felt I needed in my life, there and then. It was the place I got my Chanel-look quilted chain bag, (that I still have, 5 years later), and the place I bought my only pair of vaguely bearable heels.

But alas, recently DP has been letting me down. There isn't actually one in Guildford where I go to uni, so that's partly why, but everytime I have been in there in the last year or so, it's always been very.... 'fine', very 'that's quite nice'. Nothing has made me stop, scream and march over to the til to spend my final pennies (apart from my gorgeous kharki spring jacket, must have!). Until today.

I was passing and thought 'it can't hurt' so stuck my head round the door, expecting nothing special. Instead I was hit with a selection of clothes I fell immediately in love with. Turns out the designers at Dorothy Perkins have upped their game significantly at the turn of the season
. I was so excited about my little visit that I thought I had to share my favourite pieces with you, so here is my Dorothy Perkins wishlist:

In Her Shoes...

At the weekend, my trusty black pumps decided to finally give up on me after a year of battling the British weather and my inability to pick up my feet when I walk. So this meant I needed to get shoe prowling pronto.

After hours of traipsing around Bluewater, scowering various shops and many a sales rack in the hope of a good bargain, with no success and so much disappointment, I found myself, as always, in New Look.

Just when I feared even New Look's humongous shoe heaven couldn't help me, I spied these little beauties in the corner, the final 3 pairs. My size. Sold.

New Look, £17.99

Festival Fashion

Festivals are the highlight of the Great British Summer. We make the most of the rubbish weather by donning our wellies and jumping around on muddy fields all over the UK to some of the best music in the world. Over the years, festivals have developed and grown and now you can find one for almost every genre of music possible. Most are largely televised in some way so the less brave of us can still enjoy the atmosphere.

For the girls, a lot of us like to use a festival as an excuse to purchase copious amounts of clothing, regardless of its inevitable ruin during the weekend. Alas, I am not going to a festival again this year. I have yet to pluck up the courage or funds to go to one, so instead I thought I'd follow my festival music post with a festival fashion post (not really the same as going but I vow to go to a big festival one day).

Failure to Blog.

I know. I failed in my promise to blog more but this time I do have a valid excuse. Sort of. I've just finished uni so had exams, then end of first year shenanigans then recovery from such shenanigans which has led to my utter failure to blog. But, I am now (relatively) free for the summer so I actually promise to blog more often.

You may have also noticed the slight change in the look of my blog. I decided to have a little play with Photoshop and this is what I've come up with so far. I'm still in the process of improving things but Blogger is not loving me right now so bare with.

Anyway, in a bid to justify my absence, here is what I've been getting up to.

Last Couple of Weeks

Hi Everyone!

Sorry again for such a hefty absense, uni is ridiculous at the moment!

Just thought I would fill you in on what I've been up to as an attempt to justify my failure to blog.

Make a Wish...

So I haven't done one of these for a little while, but as my student loan arrived last week, I have inevitably found myself mooching around the internet looking at what is on offer this season. Frankly it's depressing. There is so much good stuff but I can't bring myself to justify buying it as my rent comes out tomorrow...

Loving and Hating

Sorry I haven't blogged in a while- been a busy bee! I've been filming and editing a short clip for uni which has taken a great deal longer than planned but I've got a few great blogs lined up for you to glance over this week. You may have noticed the layout change- I'm still in the process of learning things but I hope you like it so far :)

I've been shopping a couple of times this week and seen a number of things I am loving but also a fair few that I am hating. I thought I would share my findings with you.

This Weeks Fashion Finds

Finding cute little outfits that will be suitable for the Great British ‘Summer’ is one of life’s great challenges for many females out there. How do you wear this summer’s colours when you, like me, are not going anywhere but the rainy English coast if you’re lucky. This week, the dreary weather has made me crave some summer colour in my life so I did some online window shopping and came across these beauties that I will be snapping up as soon as I get my student loan. Not that I condone splurging all your cash on clothes, but I think after this miserable start to the spring, we all deserve a treat!