Jumping on the favourites bandwagon - July 2013 Favourites

I don't normally write about 'these are my favorites for this particular month' because it would imply I'd have to have liked and used something for the whole 30 days before I can tell you that I like it, I would rather tell you my favorites of the moment so this is a little mix of both. Some things I have liked all month, some things I have liked for years, some things I've liked since last week, but they're all worthy of a mention so here goes:

First of all, and a non-beauty favourite is Lana Del Rey and her album Born to Die. I am just obsessed with her, watching covers of her songs, watching live performances of her, interviews and everything else between. I just can't get enough of her album and it is all that I listen to!

The next, and a kind of 'beauty' favourite that has become a part of my routine is taking a Zinc supplement ever day, and a vitamin B12 supplement too. Zinc is great for immune system boosting properties, and I am prone to getting sick. Vitamin B12 is great for boosting energy!

Next up is my Boots 'Good things' face mask. Not only does it smell absolutely incredible, like a terrific real fruit smoothie, not synthetic fruit scents. But it has a clay texture which means that as it dries on the skin, you can see and feel the impurities being pulled from the skin, it's perfect for a clogged up T-zone

My Ocean Salt face scrub from Lush is my clarifying shampoo for my face. When I'm feeling thoroughly let down by my horrible, dull, blemished and oily skin. One dose of this has it sparkling looking fresh and feeling crisp and clean. It is very gritty, smells of the sea air and feels very 'real' like nature doing good things to your skin. (Not suitable for dry skin!)

Burts Bees hand cream is my old favourite. I still have 2 pots of the stuff in my backup stock. The isntructions suggest using it after every hand wash, but my skin is generaly very oily anyway, so I find it can take more than 30 minutes to skin in to my hands and sometimes elbows, so I prefer to use it before I go to sleep. More than the moisturising element is the sensational scent. It is mind blowing, cramy banana-vanilla amazingness, and one of my favourite scents in the entire world

This is a non beauty favorite but just the other day I caught my first episode Extreme Couponer and I had to pick my jaw up from the floor. Those couponers are amazing and now I always catch an episode when I have a few minutes getting ready or something. I did not know shopping like that existed although I did read somewhere that it is fake, but I hope not!

My mum got me a Hello Kitty pink fluffy Light up Pen which I now keep with my diary, and it has got me back into writing my diary on a regular basis again.

Bobby Brown Shimmer Bronzing brick in shade Bronze is my new bronzer of choice. I usually preach that good bronzers can only be matte but maybe I've been convinced otherwise by this one. It gives my skin a 'glowy' element rather than just contouring which I adore for the summertime.

How to brighten up your room starring Hello Kitty!

 I have no idea why, but the photos for this post took around 3 hours to upload! Driving me crazy!
Anywho, I went for a beautiful lunch with one of my very best friends, but that's not what this post is about- after lunch we nipped into a few shops and I saw this Hello Kitty poster in WHSmiths. It looked so pretty and fun I just had to have it! As far as I can tell it's hello Kitty in all different occupations, and it's everything from office worker, to detective, to popstar to princess to chef and photographer. My favourite ones though are oddly all together on the poster and they are the doctor, fireman, scientist and sailor - The sailor is my number one love!

It's an average sized poster but for some odd reason, the interior designer of my halls (uk term) or dorm (US term) thought it would be a great idea to have a feature wall in a mustard colour. I've always disliked it but anywho, the poster helps to cover up at least some of the yellowness.

Then, when I got back from lunch I'd almostly completely forgotten that I'd already ordered a Hello Kitty map of the world and it arrived!

It's so fun and pink, plus it's probably helping since one of my friends that I live with is oddly good with continents so when she comes to my room it seems to frequently end in a geography quiz

 Look how huge it is! It spans the majority of one of the walls and is right above my bed

I love all the cute illustrations! It has adorable fun facts too.

So that's how my room went from normal to Hello Kitty-fied in under a day!

Hello Kitty in France and Dior Lipstick that I Must Have

Today I got the beautiful Dior Lipstick 'Must Have' shade 579 - The colour itself reminds me of cocktails, but before we even get to the colour I need to take a moment to treasure the packaging.
It looks so extravagant and I feel like I'm holding something precious- it's just a delight to look at!

 The colour itself is a mid pink, but less dusky than a rose colour and perhaps more artificial in shade rather than natural- not that I'm complaining. The formula itself is wonderfully buttery and rich which makes it very easy to work with since the application is forgiving and you can just swipe Diors lipstick on anywhere without having to think too much about the intricacies of application.

The pinky colour has a shimmer to it, without being chunky glitter to make your lips look 'wet' I mean that in the most complimentary way- it makes your lips look like sweeties, kind of delicious rather than being a matte colour.

My sister bought me back this lipstick as a souvenir from her easter holiday to France along with:

Sweetie pie Hello Kitty plush! Isn't she a dream?? She's holding a silky lollipop and I just love her dotted dress, the pastel chunks look kind of like chunks of sweeties or something similar!
She will be as treasured as my many other plush dolls that my sister and other contributors have kindly gifted to me and I hope she is happy to live among her fellow sister kitties!

I hate to sound like a Hello Kitty hipster but...

Sometimes I really do think that I loved Hello Kitty before she was a big deal in the UK. When I was around 9 or 10 years I started to love Hello Kitty so whenever I saw anything Hello Kitty it was a surprise has she hadn't cropped up on that much merchandise in England yet. If my mum saw something Hello Kitty she'd sometimes get it ten months in advance of my birthday because she wouldn't hardly see anything Hello Kitty. As the years have gone by it's become much more readily available on children and adult products, much to my delight!
Today I was in the kiddy section of a store and I saw all these beautiful Hello Kitty toys!
I reckon I would have still loved all of these aged 9, I'm envious of little girls today and all the choice that they have!

Okay, so the little girls on the boxes look considerably younger than 9...but who cares- play-doh is for everyone!

Keepin' it Cute

I'm too used to wearing my ankle boots, nice as they are I decided to switch around, and I totally forgot that I had these beauties hidden away in a shoe box at the bottom of my wardrobe

My Hello Kitty vans!!

The craziest part is that I'm wearing Hello Kitty socks too... (crazy or tragic)

I paired them with my inky blue jeans with a little roll up on the bottom, and a navy blue jumper!
They're suuuper comfy, like walking on clouds in comparison with heavy boots.
Ah, if only it was getting warmer so I could wear these all the time, but realistically it just rains and soaks through the material.
Ah well

Post-Birthday presents!

It's been a month since my birthday but it still feels like my birthday as there was some delayed arrivals!

This is the delayed arrivals a la my sister!

A bottle of palmers cocoa butter- I love this stuff, as does so many other people, it truly is delicious. I used to only have a baby sized bottle that I used up a long time ago, but now I have this lusciously huge bottle to last me a whole lot longer! I put some on and walked in the kitchen and someone went 'ooh, who smells like hot chocolate?'

Neutrogena Pink grapefruit face scrub, which I may say smells like a fruity dream and is very good for oily skin like mine, and coulnd't have come at a better time as my Oxy face scrub is just about used up

Two, yes two pots of Burts bees banana hand cream, which I've blogged about previously and how much I love it, and my container for that is just about empty too so now I have two as back ups!

Some Burts Bees lip balm which is very appropriate for the chilly weather that seems very relentless up here

Neutrogena face wipes- especially good for nights when you can't quite make that trip to the sink to wash your makeup off

Nautically wonderful, stretchy leggings from Republic

A makeup mirror with one side having a 5x zoom! Hello blocked pores..

and the grand finale gift...

A Liberty Hello Kitty gift set

It's seriously wonderful, and comes with Hello Kitty face scrub, bubble bath, moisturiser, spray, wash mitten, eye mask etc... It's wonderful, and the scent isn't sickly sweet like you might think, it's actually sophisticated and lovely. Inside the case is a mirror, and the print on the outside has Hello Kitty's face hidden in it. It's so beautiful, I don't know where to display it!

Hooray for birthdays, even if your birthday was a month ago!

Wedding dresses, fancy hotels and a Hello Kitty ball!

You best bet the Hello Kitty part belongs to me whereas the dress and hotel... well they're my sisters!
Today was a very special day because it was the day that we went wedding dress shopping (I say we, I mean she- I sat and ate the complimentary chocolates and helped pick out dresses)

When I saw her in the very first dress (even though it wasn't our favourite in the end) I just gasped! My sister in a wedding dress! I wish I could have taken pictures of that part to show you, but they won't let you in the shops incase you send the picture to China to make a copy or something, oh it was so sad! But don't worry the one that we do end up getting, I'll take so many photographs the fabric will probably get faded from too much of my camera flashing away- haha!

Another fun little part, which I did get to take pictures of was the gifties my sister had got me since I saw her last- my sister showers me with gifts almost every time I see her, it's like a mini birthday! Sometimes she'll bring me her old cosmos and other times it's more fancy stuff like chocolates, clothes and soft toys, and sometimes it's nothing but her funny loud voice and stories from her job.
This time, she'd been to London for the long weekend due to the diamond Jubilee and stayed at The Savoy- very fancy pants. She brought me back chocolates that she saw being made in front of her! I intended to show the actual chocoaltes, but they went somewhere before I got a chance...
One had the print of the union jack on and they all tasted amazing!
I also got some super duper cute pink and cream stiped shorts from New Look- I love candy stripes!
And the cutest of all is the Hello Kitty ball! It looks like Hello Kitty was cros bred with a blow fish, it's so adoable I want to squeeze it! But I instead just cuddle the cuteness out of it!

Happy white dresses and kitty ball Mondays!

Hello Kitty Curls

Saturdays are the perfect days where you have a little more time to give your hair a little more
'ooh-la-la' there is nothing particularly Hello Kitty about the curls other than I'm wearing a hello kitty jumper!

Here it is! My insanely easy and not-so-slow loose, perfectly-imperfect mermaid curls

First of all, split your hair into an upper and lower layer, and clip up the top layer (you might need to split it into more clipped up layers if your hair is super thick)

Pinch at little sections of the bottom layer of your hair and place it between the plates of the straighteners

Holding the straightener pointing downwards, begin in the middle of the hair strand so that only the ends are curled and it looks more 'loose and natural' twist the straighteners to wrap the hair around the straighteners and slowly pull the straighteners downwards so that the hair is pulled out between the plates. It's super important to do it in a kind of slow and graceful motion, like when you use scissors to curl ribbon!

Here's a little looky at how my curls looked!

Once you've curled the bottom layer, pull at small sections of hair from clip that seperates off the next layer

...And do the same again as you did on the bottom layer, same technique with the straighteners pointing downwards and curling like ribbon, but rather than beginning half way down the hair you may want to start twisting closer to the root for more curl and body to your hair

Keep going all the way around your head until you have pulled all the hair from the clip seperating the curly from the straight hair. If your arm gets tired have a little break- maybe a quick snack!

The end result! Wonderfully, natural looking waves that just ooze glamour but are super simple and can be done with a straightening iron curlers, mousse or even hair spray is really needed!

And while we're here.... We may aswell have a quick look what I wore today, it's not super exciting

A baggy Hello Kitty jumper that looks like it was from some 80s dance movie where baggy dance gear was 'all the rage'! I wore a white vest underneth because it's kind of cold today!

Then some simple black treggings on the bottom, they're super comfy stretchy and go with everything, I got them from TKMaxx
(of course, the thick hello kitty socks are the most glamorous part of this outfit, theyre from H&M)

For my Make up that I wore today I'll do a little step-by-step for that tomorrow otherwise this post will be a bajillion pictures long and you might fall asleep half way through! Haha