YAY 2016!

I often fear the new year, y'know becoming a year older, having to make more life decisions. Growing up is tougher than you get taught. Last year brought many tough decisions and huge life changes. Scary changes at that. 
At the beginning of the year, Adam and I were still trying to work out the whole long distance relationship thing, which for those of you who have done it, will know it is not easy. When Adam achieved is dream job in 2014, I wasn't ready to move so far from my family to a place I knew nothing about and where I knew nobody. Therefore when Adam moved to Wiltshire, I moved back to York. We would see each other every 4-5 sometimes 6 weeks and our travel expenses would be ridiculous. Trains are such a rip off these days! On our wages, it just couldn't be done.
When February 2015 arrived, both our rental contracts were about to run out and I made the decision that I would move to Wiltshire so we could live together and just make life easier. Although some days have been difficult, I have never looked back. Our families have visited us more than we expected and have helped us every step of the way. Because of work commitments, neither of us could go home for Christmas or New Year. In any case, we made the best of the situation and got ourselves excited about buying our first Christmas tree and all the trimmings to pop around our home. 
To my surprise, my parents said they would come to us for Christmas and spend it in our cozy one bedroom flat. We had a lovely time and enjoyed every minute but have vowed that next Christmas will be different and we will for sure see all our family like we have in previous years. 
Last year really tested us both and really made us appreciate our families a whole lot more. As we didn't see them all the time, it made it all the more special when we saw them for 2 family weddings, my Dad's 50th Birthday and an amazing holiday to Corfu, all spread throughout 2015. So many amazing things happened last year and so many testing things too. Our families have been there every single step of the way and we owe them so much more than just a thank you. 

Adam and I have been saving like crazy and have some great plans for 2016. More big decisions await but I am so excited.

I don't usually make New Year's resolutions as I never ever keep them up but hey ho! I'll try.
1. Attempt the whole "picking the healthy option" thing, I've done it in phases but we'll see if I can stick at it.
2. Keep up the blog. I do enjoy writing my blog even if its only for me to read. I need to stop doubting myself when it comes to it. If I enjoy it, I'm gonna do it!
3. Stop buying things for the sake of it. I want to actually buy things that I will wear and that will last. Quality not quantity. 
4. Read more books. Again I go through phases with this. I feel much more intelligent when I read and I do actually really enjoy it. 
That'll do I think, I don't want to kid myself too much!

Sorry for the soppy post, I don't often get like that, I promise.

What are your new year's resolutions and are you any good at keeping them up?!

Happy New Year!

Longleat's Festival Of Light

Before Christmas we attended Longleat's Festival of Light with Adam's family as they were visiting us. Adam and I had seen the lantern display last year and were more than happy to visit it again. The whole evening was a night of "Oooo"s, "Ahhh"s and "Wow, look at that!"s, just as it was last year. The festival takes weeks and weeks of preparation and you can see why as you walk around the grounds of Longleat. The main theme of the event is of course animals, but alongside the colourful elephants, lions and tigers, there a mixture of Asian inspired lanterns, such as Chinese pagodas, Geisha, the Chinese zodiac signs, beautiful sculptures made from China cups and saucers and lanterns depicting the famous Terracotta Warriors. Some of the lanterns were the same as last year but used in a different way, my favourite addition to this years festival was the under the sea display!! It was amazing! Huge, beautiful coral reefs with amazing fish, dolphins, sharks and an enormous whale! I absolutely loved it.
Longleat House is also open on the nights of the festival. This year it was decorated like a Fairytale. Each room with a different theme and a different actor to make you really feel like you were at a Christmas panto! It was just as beautiful as the lanterns. 
There is also a Santa Express train and an ice rink for if you have kids with you.
Even though we went on a very drizzly night, we still enjoyed it so that just proves how good they are. The doughnuts are also very delicious.
Longleat are for certain doing another Festival of Light next Christmas and I would recommend it to everyone if you are in the Somerset/Wiltshire area. It is truly magical!
Be prepared for a lottttt of photos.

Winter Essentials

Being a postlady, I spend a good few hours a day in the cold, wind, rain, fog, etc. Therefore my skin and hair definitely take a daily beating. Here a few of my holy grail products that help protect me from the not so great parts of the cooler months.

My skin is very dry and sensitive and I have bouts of eczema since I was little. I have to be very careful with what I use on my skin as a lot of products can just make things worse. For the past year or so I have been using the Garnier Body Intensive 7 Days Nourishing Lotion for dry skin with mango oil. I have been through bottles and bottles of this. I use this twice a day and it just helps to soothe my itchy skin, leaving it silky smooth and moisturised. Its super fast absorbing and doesn't leave you with that horrible sticky/greasy feeling. Plus it smells delicious and is pretty much always on offer in Superdrug or Boots! 

To give my hands some TLC, I use either the Body Shop Hemp Hand Protector or the Burt's Bees Almond & Milk Hand Cream. Both of which have a very thick consistency. Both also have a smell that is quite acquired, with the hemp cream smelling very herbal and plant based and the Burt's Bees smelling very much like marzipan. I can't praise these two enough. Even Adam will pinch some occasionally. They absorb like a dream and leave your hands feeling moisturised but never greasy!

I have used the Blistex MedPlus lip balm for years and years and years now! It is the only lip balm for me that not only soothes and repairs chapped/dry lips, but prevents them too. I struggle with lip balms as a lot of them can make my lips worse or cause me to have a weird reaction, making my lips swell up in little tiny bumps.. Very weird.. I discovered this lip balm after having one of the bad reactions, it was the only product that made the swelling disappear. It tingles when it is applied which to me makes me think its doing something beneficial. Super cheap and absolutely my holiest of grails.

Using a face mask to give my skin an extra burst of moisture is essential in this crappy weather. I love the Sanctuary Brightening Facial Moisture Boost Mask for this. You can buy the sachets super cheap from Boots just as and when you need them. I will either pop this on while I'm in the bath or you can actually leave it on overnight if you're in need of a serious boost. This mask leaves your skin unbelievably soft and just helps brighten and even out your skin. I love it to bits.

Being curly and bleached, my hair is especially dry, damaged and unruly. It is also quite fine aswell so I have to be careful with what sort of products I use on my hair. I am currently testing out some higher end products which I will post about in the future but at the moment I have found a fairly cheap and organic treatment to use on my hair that just helps it out a bit. Everyone knows the benefits of Argan Oil on our hair, but in a lot of hair products the good ingredient is watered down with chemicals no one can pronounce. I bought some 100% Argan Oil from Amazon and I just smooth it through my hair 30 minutes before washing as normal. A couple times a week I will also flip my head upside down and give it a really good massage into my roots for 3-5 minutes. This just helps to ensure that the new hair growth is nice and moisturised and also just helps the hair to grow in general because of the increase in blood flow to the scalp. I also recently bought a pack of Popband hair ties. They have a thicker band and don't cause any breakage to your hair. The little things help too! 

What are your Winter essentials?

Sugar Skull Halloween Costumes

When I was at sixth form my A Level Art project was the study of the Mexican tradition, The Day of The Dead. Since then I have always wanted to use it as inspiration for a Halloween costume but have never got round to doing it. Adam and I are going to a friend's Halloween party next Sunday so finally I am going to do it! We didn't want to spend a tonne of money on costumes and the basics of this idea we already had so we just needed little extras to bring it all together.

If any of you fancy doing the same thing, I am going to talk you through how we're going to do it and where we have got all the bits and bobs from. 

For Adam's costume he will be wearing black trousers, white shirt, black suit jacket and black shoes. All of which he already owned. We ordered him a top hat and a black bow tie from eBay fancy dress shops, both of which were ridiculously cheap and were delivered super quick. I bought a bag of artificial flower heads, also from eBay, to add onto the top hat to make it look the part. I am going do this by glue gunning the flower heads to piece of black elastic and simply placing it over the existing band on the hat already. I didn't want to glue directly onto the hat just in case we needed the top hat again in the future. I am then just going to paint Adam's face a sugar skull design using the Snazaroo Rainbow Face Painting Kit and then he's set to go! The colours in that kit are absolutely perfect for this kind of face paint design, they're nice and bright and great quality. 

For my costume I am going to wear a collared black dress with a lace bodice that poofs out slightly at the waste with black tights and black boots. All of which are already in my wardrobe. I ordered some lace black gloves from Amazon and bought some fake eyelashes to pop on after my face paint. I have done a practice run of the face paint design so I'll put the picture further down. I'm really happy with it but it did like 2 and half hours so I'm going to have to speed up on the day because I'll have 2 of us to paint! I am going to curl my hair and create a quiff at the front and then pin the flower heads into the side of the quiff. 

There we have it! A cheap but really cool Halloween costume! 

What are you going as this year?

5 Affordable Things to do in Autumn

Finding things to do in our spare time is always a challenge, especially when we are being very strict with our spending. Everything seems to cost the earth these days! You can't go to a sweet cafe for a cuppa without being charged a tenner for two drinks and a brownie. Adam and I are used to Yorkshire prices. Now the weather is on the turn too, we are even more limited with our options! I don't think we are alone in this predicament so I thought I would let you know what sort of things we end up doing and hopefully it'll help out.

1. Get into the Halloween spirit and get your pumpkin carving on! 

This is one of my absolute favourite things to do this time of year and I feel it is an important tradition to keep up. I have always done it religiously since I was a kid. My mum actually told me that pumpkins used to be blinking expensive when I was little so she used to buy us turnips to carve instead...Yes turnips! Can you imagine hollowing out a turnip?! Our pumpkins were 2 for £3 from Asda which I thought was a good deal. Adam admitted to me the other day that he has never even carved a pumpkin before! I was horrified so am taking it upon myself to rectify the situation on Monday. Carving pumpkins always takes a while and is always a lot of fun. So there we go, an afternoon of festive fun for £3!

2. Baking! 

For me, baking in the cooler months is all about tradition and anything with warm flavours. Anything that makes me feel homely. Treats such as gingerbreads, shortbreads, carrot cakes are perfect and all very simple. I will be blogging a carrot cake recipe soon. I love spices but I don't like them to be over powering. Carrot cake is lovely because it has sweetness alongside hints of nutmeg and cinnamon with the crunch of tasty walnuts. It is one of my favourite things ever.

3. Get into a series or watch some festive films.

 I love to watch the traditional Halloween type films at this point every year. I'm not talking about scary films, I'm talking Disney's Hocus Pocus and Practical Magic with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. Both oldies but goodies in my eyes.

Adam and I recently watched an amazing series on Netflix called Narcos. The series tells the true story of Pablo Escobar and the creation of the Colombian drug cartel.. Not festive at all admittedly BUT still fantastic! We binge watched it over 2 days whilst cosy-ing up with baked goods and big fluffy throw.

4. Another thing to do with a fluffy throw and baked goods is to snuggle up and read. Often on a night we will be at either end of the sofa with our noses firmly stuck in a book. At the moment I am reading Alan Carr's autobiography which is hilarious. I just finished The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion and I can't recommend it enough. If you love a awkward and humorous love story then you're in for a treat with that one!

5. I know I mentioned the turn in the weather but when it isn't raining, Autumn offers up the most beautiful, crisp, sunny days. When we're feeling energetic on days off (which is very rare) we'll wrap up go for a little walk to the park a couple of minutes away from our flat, just to get us out and about. I love being wrapped up in a big scarf and hat, scouting around for the perfect conker like I'm 5 years old... 

Take a flask and some gingerbread, sit on a bench OR a picnic blanket if you're feeling extremely Pinterest, and just take in the wonderfulness that is Autumn!  

Whats your favourite thing to do in Autumn?

A Croc-ing Day Out

Today we took a little road trip to Crocodiles of The World in Brize Norton, the UK's only crocodile zoo. Adam's absolute favourite thing is anything with scales. It has been his dream to visit this place for a very long time so when our friend Erica suggest we go this weekend, we jumped at the chance.
The admission for an adult was only £8.95 which I thought was really reasonable. Admission for children is £6.95 and children the age of 2 and under go free!
It was fantastic to hear about how the zoo started just from one man's dream and to see how the zoo has progressed over the years. The zoo is still quite a small premises but it has grown vastly over the past few years and they spoke about further expansions in the near future. 
Don't be fooled by the name! The zoo is not exclusively crocodiles/alligators, there are a variety of other animals dotted around. Meerkats, Kookaburra, Lizards, Macaw and snakes to just name a few. There is also a little play park for if you are visiting with children. Talks and activities go on through the day also. We watched the Nile Crocodile feeding and were involved in the Meet the Animals talk, which finished we an absolutely adorable baby skunk! Both were brilliantly presented by a zookeeper called Terry (I'm pretty sure he was called Terry). Another lovely zookeeper called Ian was on hand to tell us info on some of the other crocodiles in the enclosures. One of which had just had babies (Awwww). We also got the opportunity to touch one of the slightly older babies, they have super soft tummies and were very very cute. 
Overall, we had a really lovely day and the staff were all brilliant. It was nice to see the scalier animals get a bit more attention! 
On the way back home we stopped off at a country pub and had a tasty Sunday dinner topped off with a chocolate brownie for me and pint of Guinness for Adam. Perfection. A very nice way to spend a Sunday I think!
Now we are just cosied up watching The Big Bang Theory so I thought do a quick blog post to show you what we've been up to! 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Hope you've all had a nice Sunday!

Seasonal Makeover / Affordable Ways To Change Your Decor For The Change in Season

Interiors and changing up our decor in the flat is something I love to do so if you're anything like me, the change in season not only effects your wardrobe, but effects your home decor as well. Gone are the days of bright patterns and florals. The time for spicy scents and fluffy blankets are upon us! 

Its unrealistic to change every single part of your decor and honestly, who can afford too?!

I recently got a couple of things that have helped to transform our flat ready for the chillier months.

You don't have to break the bank to change things up with your decor, just a few subtle changes will make a big difference.

I don't have the best of cameras so the pictures aren't as great as I would've liked. Also we only have a diddy one bedroom flat so they're is only one angle I can really take pictures from. 

Anyways, here we go!  

1. Every year, I always buy some sort of seasonal bedding. George Home at ASDA have some absolutely fantastic duvet sets in at the moment. There were so many to choose from. In the past I have picked a design that is super super christmassy, like a fairisle print or like last year I got a set that was covered in stags (Both of which I still love). This year I was conscious that I also had to take Adam's taste into account so I didn't want to got tooo crazy. I chose the George Home Christmas Tree Duvet, just a plain white cover dotted with black and grey winter tree drawings/paintings. Not only did I love the design but the price was too good to miss out on as well. For a kingsize duvet cover and two pillow cases, £14 seemed like an absolutely amazing price! I was slightly weary of what the quality would be like but when the set arrived I was happy to discover that my doubts were unnecessary. The quality is brilliant, no scratchiness, no cardboard-like feel and it felt even nicer after a wash. The parcel arrived super super quick too so I definitely recommend taking a look.

2. Cosy is without a doubt the way to go in the Autumn/Winter months. Fairy lights and candles just scream cosy! There is just something about snuggling up in a big fluffy blanket (or your new bedding) with your candles lit and you fairy lights twinkling away. Both can be bought on the cheap too. You can get some gorgeous fairy lights from places like Primark, Home Bargains, Wilko's, eBay, tonnes of places. My white fairy lights came from a DIY shop in my hometown about a billion years a go and they've lasted me years.

The pearly tealight holders on our bedstands were from the Yankee Candle Outlet store in York. They were only a few pounds each and they look absolutley beautiful when they are lit up.

3. Everything always smells so much more warming and homely in the cooler months. I love to get the foodie scents out that have a hint of spice to them. It smells like your baking delicious treats all of the time just without the effort. The last thing I got was a reed diffuser from Homebase. It was the lovely price of £3.99 and it smells delicious. I can't find the scent online to leave a link and unfortunately it doesn't have it on the bottle either so I am not sure of its exact name. It came in orange packaging and definitely had a name related to spices... I'm a doughnut and can't remember. If you're near a Homebase, do go and smell them because they have some lovely ones and they usually come in candle form too. This one smells like a spiced cake in the oven. You get a whiff of it every now and then and its like heaven! £3.99.. can't go wrong!

So there we go! I know these changes are probably obvious but I just wanted to prove that you don't have to do much or spend much to change things up!