April Resolution

Apologies for the late post. I know we're well into April now, but I haven't forgotten about my monthly resolutions! The March resolution was more difficult than you'd think. My plants died...more than once...

I ended up deleting the app, because honestly, it pissed me off! I had notifications all day, I wasn't drinking as much water as I should have, but I was drinking a lot more than I used to! I made a conscious effort to grab water whenever I could, and I still am to be fair! It was difficult for me to keep up with the app, but I'm still being a bit better with my water intake! Just not as strict as the plants would want me to (RIP Ivy and Dandy)

April so far has bought me a dry spell with the blog post inspiration. I was so happy last month, because I was bubbling with ideas, and managing to post more consistently than before. I'll admit that's dwindled over the past few weeks, and that makes me feel so guilty! I want to be consistent and watch my little blog grow and progress. That's why this months resolution is...

Take more time out for blog planning

I'm going to try and get myself a bit more organised, and plan a little better with posting. I need to learn how to organise my time a little better, and it will more than likely take longer than a month to get there, but that's what I'm going to kick start this month!

I definitely need a change in routine, and hopefully that will reflect in my future posts. If any of you fellow bloggers have any tips and tricks, please share. I would love to hear any ideas

Thank you for reading :) 

E is for...Einstein's

E was another hard letter to think of for a good date. I even googled it to find some ideas, but even then I had no luck. In the end we decided to go to a local bar called Einstein's. It's a gorgeous German style bar that serve amazing food.




We are regular visitors to Einstein's, as they do amazing cocktails and a great selection of German beers. When they first opened, Dan had a mission to try a different beer every time as they had that many. I'm not sure that he's actually managed to complete this! They also do large two pint steins if you're feeling brave.

The food really is gorgeous here. We rarely come to this place for a date, which is a shame as it is a really lovely atmosphere. I've sampled a few things on the menu, but this time I went for a currywurst pizza. Curry ketchup truly is a thing of the gods, and a pizza made with it, well there are no words really.



They also play old school music which I am a big fan of. I think this place is aimed more at the older generation, but I always enjoy going in for a cocktail or two.

I do apologise that E wasn't a more exciting date, but to be perfectly honest, they're not always going to be adventurous outings. I always have a great time no matter what we do, so to me I feel like anything beginning with E would have been nice, but it doesn't always make for great blog content I guess. I promise F will be more of an interesting date ;)

Let me know what you thought of this post. If you ever come across a German style restaurant, go in and sample the food. You may surprise yourself by trying something a bit different!

Thank you for reading :)

Creme Egg Cookies

In the spirit of Easter, I thought i'd bake something yummy and in theme. I got a creme egg Easter egg since they're my favourites, and I thought it'd be an idea to try something different with them.



I got this recipe idea on Pinterest from a lovely blog called Daisies and Pie, by searching for 'things you can make with Easter eggs'. They're really tasty, and super easy to make.

Ingredients

• 100g Caster Sugar
• 100g Butter (room temperature)
• 1 tbs Maple Syrup
• 3 Cadbury's Creme Eggs 
• 180g Self Raising Flour

1) Heat your oven to 180C (Gas Mark 4), and prepare a baking tray lined with some baking parchment.

2) Mix the sugar and the butter together in a bowl. I didn't have caster sugar, but I quickly googled that you can make your own with normal granulated sugar in your blender!

3) When your butter and sugar is mixed well, add in your syrup.

4) Chop your Creme eggs into chunks (this is harder than it sounds! I tried with a knife, but you might find it easier to just break them up with your hands)

5) Sift half of your flour (90g) in with the rest of the mix

6) Add in your Creme egg chunks and mix well

7) Mix in the rest of your sifted flour

8) At this point you should mold it into a dough, then separate into small sized balls. (See picture below for reference) Don't worry these will expand!

9) Leave these to bake for 10 minutes - NO later than 15 minutes! When you take these out, they will feel gooey, but I promise you they will harden up as you leave them to cool.

10) Leave your cookies to cool for about 20 minutes to half an hour. They will then be nice and moist and ready to eat!

11) Enjoy, get a warm hot cup of tea, cuddle up and watch a film whilst its horrible and raining on this Easter weekend!

I hope you enjoy this recipe, and thank you for reading! :) 

DIOR | Glow Maximiser Light Boosting Primer

So I have another high end beauty review, and I promise I won't be doing this all the time! I just had £60 worth of boots points to spend, and I'm making my way through my treats!



I bought the beautiful Dior Glow Maximiser Light Boosting Primer on a whim really to help with my dull sad skin. Using this with the combination of my body shop glow boosting moisturiser has made a real difference!

The primer is really gorgeous. The initial colour might make you sceptical about putting it all over your face, but honestly, if you work in a light layer, it gives a stunning yet subtle illumination to your skin. I've also used this separately as a liquid highlighter, by just dabbing it onto my cheekbones, as it is very subtle but still a gorgeous finish.



I think this is perfect for lacklustre skin in the winter months, but also great for that fresh, dewy-like look in the spring. It works well as a primer, i.e. it is long lasting, and gives a gorgeous base for your foundation, but is also great for a subtle highlighter.

I have to say that I’m very happy with this purchase. I bought it from boots for £28.50, which is quite expensive, but I can imagine this will last me a very long time. You seem to get a lot in the tube, and you honestly don’t need that much when you use it. Overall, it’s a great product, and I would recommend for those looking for a healthy boost to their skin.

Have you tried this product? Would you recommend any cheaper alternatives?

Thanks for reading :)

10 tips to survive working in an office

I've worked in an office environment for the past 4 years now (wow it's weird to put that in writing), and you don't come that far without knowing how to adapt to your surroundings. The office is a very weird environment to be in. It's much different to retail or hospitality jobs (both of which I have also worked in), and the pace of it isn't for everyone.

I thought I'd put together a post on need to know tips to working in an office, and how you can make it more bearable to work in. After all, for some people you might spend more time there, then you do at home. You need to know how to survive, and make it through the week!



1) Know the drink schedule

I cannot stress to you how important caffeine can be in an office environment. I would love to know how much tea/coffee is consumed in the average week in the office, because it would probably shock you. It's not even always about the caffeine, a nice warm mug of tea/coffee is a great comfort, and even just by offering, you're in the good books. You'll know how important a hot drink can be, when you stand up, say 'does anyone want a drink?' and you get a chorus of relieved moans of joy, which translate to 'Yes I'd really love one, but can't be arsed to make one for the whole team, so I've been waiting for someone else to offer'.

When you get to grips with how the drinks system works in your office, you're onto a winner. You don't want to be caught in 'tea politics' (which I promise you, is a very real thing), and you definitely don't want to be branded as 'the person who never makes a drink', that is not a good position to be in.

2) Have a laugh, and get to know your colleagues

It's really important to get to know the people that you're working with. If you can make really good working relationships, it can make your time in the office 10 times easier. It's good to have a laugh and not take everything seriously. At the end of the day, you're all there for similar reasons, and you're all in the same boat, just trying to make it through the day. You don't have to go on every work function, and make best friends with everyone in the building, but be friendly, take the time to get to know the people you work closely with, and respect them on a personal level. Your relationship with your colleagues can make or break your work environment.



2) Make lunch your happy place 

So unless you're having a super busy day, and lunch doesn't even occur to you, you'll be counting down the clock until 12pm when you get to have a break. The halfway point to your day is very important. For me, I like to take mentally take myself as far away from work-mode as I can. I buy a magazine, read a book, blog posts, etc. The hour can go by so quickly, but I go back to work feeling so relaxed and mentally recharged. It's important to have a break from your desk anyway, but it's good to give your brain a rest! It'll make part 2 of the day feel not as bad.

I don't always make lunch, but I try and make it a really exciting lunch that I look forward to! Even if it's going for that Boots meal deal (the sushi salad...omg), it doesn't have to be healthy, it doesn't have to be unhealthy either. I like to mix it up and keep it exciting, but it always helps when you've got a really good lunch to look forward to!

3) Give yourself 5 minutes at the end of your day

Sometimes it can be overwhelming when you come into work in the morning, look at your emails/to do list, and think 'Fuck sake, i'm not up for this today'. I know myself well enough to know my reaction to things in the morning. That's why I give myself 5 minutes at the end of a work day, I make a list of things I could do the next day, and basically make it as painless as I can for myself to get into work and start on things in a morning. I find it's important to not dive straight into work. Sometimes you've got no choice if you've got strict deadlines, or a scheduled day full of activities, but I think sometimes the worst feeling is knowing you've got to go back to something stressful at work the next day. So it's important to take 5 minutes out to plan for that, and to make life easier for yourself.



4) Make your desk your home away from home
Your desk is your desk, and even though you can't exactly bring your bed into work with you (omg that's too nice to imagine), you can at least personalise it, and make it a happier place to work in. Here's a few ideas to help bring a small smile to your face, and make your day a bit better:

• Bring comfies (depending on how strict your work is, I used to be able to wear slippers under my desk)
• Bring a pillow for your chair
• Have a hot water bottle in your drawer for when it's cold
• Have snacks in your drawer (not all bad ones though, have a few healthy options in there too, but make sure they're all little treats)
• Bring pictures of happy things (your family, pets, partners, friends, anything that brings a smile to your face)
• Have cute little desk accessories. It's always nice to be prepared, but with your own stationary you'll feel super organised and also more at home
• Be prepared and have desk wipes, sanitiser, etc. There's nothing worse than when you have a dirty desk and nothing to tidy with. I also like to keep spare things, e.g. I have disposable spoons in my desk drawer for when I have my morning porridge pot. It's just being prepared for the things you come across during the day, and stocking up on those things you could do with.

5) Make the most of your evenings

Sometimes you'll have those day when it's horrendously difficult to get through, you'll be constantly clock watching, and won't be in a positive state of mind. It's important to make the most of your evenings and do fun things that will make 5pm seem even better. I try and do something fun on Monday evenings, and make it feel a bit like Friday. For a lot of people, the evenings will be the only time you'll get to see your partners/friends/family, so make sure you make the most of it.

6) Write things down!

Even if it doesn't feel like important information at the time, it might be later on. I try and write down everything that i'll probably forget. It's good to refer back to when you're trying to refresh your mind with a task. It's also very probable that someone will ask you about it later, and you'll be like 'oh! let me just check my notes because I did write it down'. You don't know how helpful that can be sometimes! It also saves you from chasing others for information,



7) It's okay to procrastinate!

Sometimes you need to get your mind away from something that requires a lot of energy and focus. I personally think it's fine to have 5 minutes to yourself, have a walk around, get something to eat/drink, or even check your personal emails, etc. Obviously don't take the piss and sit there on facebook all afternoon, but it's good to give yourself time to chill out if something's making you crazy!

9) Know when to switch off

Sometimes there literally aren't enough hours in the day, and you might physically have to take your work home with you to get something urgent done, but that doesn't mean you have to do that every day. For the most part, work should stay at work. It can be hard to switch off, but if you let work take over you, you can lose yourself in it. That goes for working late too. Yes you should love what you do, and be happy doing it, but you need to learn your limits, and don't exceed them. Even if you could work for 12 hours a day, should you? If you're not harming yourself by doing that (you might be, even if you don't realise it), you could be disappointing others in your life. Learn to switch off, and keep your work and personal life separate. 

10) If you're not happy, do something about it

One of my favourite quotes in life is 'If you don't like where you are, move. You are not a tree'. It's so true! Sometimes we can be so rooted in a routine and the familiar, that we accept being unhappy at work. It doesn't have to be like that! If you find that you're so unhappy, and not doing something that you're comfortable doing, it's not the way it has to be. That doesn't necessarily mean you have to quit your job and find something else, talk to your manager, or speak to another colleague. Your employer might see potential for you to do something else, move departments, etc. You are a human with a million different aspects to your personality. There's lots of things that you can do, and you might not have found what it is that you excel in yet. Keep going, there's lots of different paths that you can take.

Reading this back, it's quite a deep post! I just think that the way you feel at work is so important! I hope that this post helps you in some way! Let me know if there's any other tips that you use to survive in your work environment.

Thank you so much for reading :) 

Thoughts on the PLL Season 6 finale

So I thought I'd steer off my posting schedule for a special that is close to my heart. If you know me, you know that I have an UNHEALTHY obsession with Pretty Little Liars. I've been watching the show for about a year (a lot of Netflix binges), so I haven't dedicated as much time as the fans who've been watching since the beginning, but I feel like I can definitely call myself a super fan.

DISCLAIMER: Unless you watch PLL, then this post will probably bore you, I give you permission to click off here if you have no interest in the crazed ramblings of a fangirl. Also there are spoilers. Duh.

I think there are generally two types of PLL fans. There's the type that love the show, think it's great, accept the twists, and manage to get on with their lives normally after an episode encounter. Then there's the other type of fan. The type that can't get the last episode out of their head for the days, that follow I Marlene King on Twitter and go through every clue she's ever given, that can't accept any new twist without asking a million questions to try and justify it, that spend hours on end scrolling through theories on tumblr because they simple cannot stop themselves. I have to say, I am the latter.

I watched the finale yesterday morning, as soon as it was available on Netflix. I had read a thousand theories, and clued myself up on all of the pre-finale reveals that had been confirmed. I have to say I actually wasn't disappointed! 

For the super fans, it's fair to say that we've had our fair share of disappointment with this show over the past season. Whether you liked the A reveal or not, it's come with quite a lot to get your head round, a lot of things that don't add up, and a lot of teasers that have lead nowhere. I knew that there would be a twin, and Mrs D was one of my guesses, but even though I had that in the back of my mind, I thought it was a good episode. If you had no idea that there even was a twin, then it would have been a shocking episode for sure. I think the problem I have with this show, is that the writers TELL you these things to build up hype, and then you're kind of left thinking 'oh well yeah I knew THAT would happen, but is that it?'. It's kind of like the A reveal, we'll tell you that A is Charles, but you don't know WHO Charles is.

LET US BE SHOCKED. 

I know what you're thinking, don't search for clues and then you will be shocked. That is actually a very fair point, and if I had the will power, I think I would thank myself for it when these big twists are revealed. I think next season I'll try and not dig as much, and leave the mystery in the show, but that will be easier said than done! 

As for the twists of the finale, I thought it's an interesting path to go down to make Mary the twin, to make Charlotte her real daughter, and to make Dr Rollins in on the whole thing (AND BRITISH! Gotta be linked to Wren right? I hope this isn't a coincidence) 

As always though I'm left with an abundance of questions. I'll leave below a few that are bugging the hell out of me. Please feel free to comment, there's nothing I would rather do with my time then talk about PLL:

- Who is Charlottes father? We know Mary had Charlotte whilst she was in Radley, so the father must either be a fellow patient or someone who worked there right? Unless she was pregnant before she went in, but even so the father was 'unknown' on the birth certificate. I hope it's not just a random guy, and it leads to some sort of twist! 

- Did Mary kill Mrs D? I feel like she must have done. It feels very much like 'you had this perfect life, so now I'm going to ruin yours' by tricking Ali into a mental institution 

- Who killed Charlotte!? I thought this would have definitely been revealed in the finale. 

- Where has Mary been for the past 20 odd years!? And why has she never been mentioned by Mrs D? What did she do that was so terrible for her to stop all contact with her sister/family, and for her to get thrown into Radley!?

- So were Dr Rollins and Mary the ones blackmailing the girls and sending them texts then? Or was this A.D? This has me so confused since Mary was the one who was at the Lost Woods Resort on the video footage, yet A.D. was the one who had Hanna in the church at the end and then text the girls?

- WHO THE HECK IS A.D?! I think it would be amazing if Ali was uber A, I think she's way too smart to fall for Dr Rollins and his games. Let's not forget the kind of girl she used to be before she went missing.

- Finally the question on everybody's lips...WHO is Sara Harvey!? and what is her deal? Are we ever going to find out how she ever came to help Cece? and for the love of god WHY!?! 

That's just a snippet of some of the questions I've been thinking about since I watched the finale, there's still plenty more going on in my brain!

If you watch PLL were you happy with the finale? What are your theories? Let me know, i'd love to read them.

Thank you for reading :) 

The Body Shop Skin Saviors

Don’t you love those shopping trips that start with ‘ooh I’ll just nip in here to have a look at that thing I heard about’, and then end with you buying half the shop? Well this happened to me last week when I went into the Body Shop (maybe not as drastic as half the shop, but more than I intended on).



I love the Body Shop for starters. I feel like they’re one of those trustworthy brands that have been around for years, and really know their shit when it comes to skincare. The make-up range, I’ll admit, I've never really tried, but I have heard some really good things about.

What peaked my interest, and led me to have a nosey round the shop, was a few weeks earlier, I had done the skincare test on The Body Shop website. It takes about 5 minutes to complete, and asks you a few questions about your lifestyle and skincare routine. It then tells you what products would work best for you and your skin. It gave me a few recommendations, but the one that stood out to me was the Vitamin C Glow Boosting Moisturiser (£16). I was in the market for a new moisturiser, and wanted one that was quite lightweight, and could bring a bit of life back into my skin. When I went in store to have a gander, I had to pick it up. It’s lightweight, works for all skin types, and smells glorious. It has a citrus scent that makes you feel awake and refreshed in the morning (which is something I need!). The moisturiser clams to hydrate and energise the skin, whilst revealing a natural healthy-looking glow. It is targeted at dull, grumpy, fatigued skin, which is definitely what I've been working with for the past month or so. I should charge you 10p for the bags under my eyes!



So what’s the verdict? I have to say It's fantastic. It’s definitely bought a noticeable brightness and life back to my skin. It's not quite a moisturiser that I'm used to, in that when you apply it to your face, it dries almost instantly, and leaves your skin quite matified, but still very soft.  An interesting formula, but still very good. It does a very good job at what it claims to do, when it I look in the mirror, it does feel like my face does glow somewhat.

The next thing I picked up was something that a lot of beauty guru's rave about. The Tea Tree Pore Minimiser (£8.50). I wanted something that would prep my skin for make-up without making it too greasy, or too 'layered' if that makes sense. With some primers I feel like they can be a bit heavy, soafter you've put on foundation/powder, you've got a lot of layers of texture there, which isn't nice. This is great and lightweight, it boasts to to mattify the skin, which it does very well. Overall I'm really happy with this, I've been using it every day since I bought it, and it hasn't let me down yet.



Lastly was something that I believe has been a skincare staple for about 20 years. The Body Shop Tea Tree Oil (£8). My mum used to buy this stuff back in the day! She introduced me to it years ago when she found one out that she used to have. I picked this up again, because it is an absolute game changer for spots and blemishes. I get a lot of hormonal spots, and when I feel a really sore, angry one coming on, I use this stuff and it dies down dramatically. I would say it's the best thing that I've ever used for my spots, a very big claim, but it's that good!

It's also worth noting that I bought the Tea Tree Oil and the Pore Minimiser in a pack, The Body Shop always tend to package similar things together in store and it does work out cheaper! I think I paid £12 for both of these together, rather than buying them separately. If you do go looking for something in particular, it's always worth looking at if they come in a little set with something else for a cheaper price!

So this was a little body shop haul, with a few skincare treasures. Let me know what you think, if you've used any of these before, or if you have any more skincare favourites from The Body Shop.

As always, thank you for reading!