May Favorites

And so another month is coming to its end, and we all know what that means. A monthly favorites post. I have been loving reading these kinds of cute little blog posts and since it has been a good while since I posted one of my own, I thought it was about time to update you all on what I have been loving recently.

Beauty

There are quite a few products that I have been using religiously this month, the first being the new L'Oreal Infallible Matte Primer. I first saw this in a youtubers American beauty haul and I have been keeping an eye out for it in Boots ever since. When I was down in Glasgow last month I spotted both the primer and the matching foundation and decided to pick both up. I absolutely love this primer. To be honest, I have never really used primers all that much before as every one that I have tried just hasn't done all that much for my skin but this works wonders. I just smooth some of this onto my face after cleansing and moisturising and it keeps my makeup looking fresh and shine free all day. I wasn't really a fan of the matching foundation, choosing instead to use the primer with my trusty Rimmel Long Lasting Finish 25 Hour Foundation as its a higher coverage and it works beautifully. 

Another beauty favorite of mine this month has been the Soap & Glory Brow Archery and I use the shade Hot Chocolate.My brow product knowledge is pretty poor as I'm relatively new to the whole doing your eyebrows thing but after trying quite a few products, this one seems to work best for me. You literally cannot go wrong with this product. It makes doing your brows super quick and easy and there is quite a good colour selection with the product also.

Skincare

Well we all know this is the bit where I ramble on about my favorite Lush bath products of the month now don't we? This month I will not disappoint. When I go into Lush I tend to be one of those really annoying people that just stick to bath bombs but no. I branched out this month. The first product that I have been enjoying using is the SkinDrink Moisturiser. One of the lovely girls that works in the Buchanan Street store in Glasgow was nice enough to give me a few testers of their different facial moisturisers and this was by far my favorite. I still cannot get over how soft and wonderfully hydrated my skin feels after using this product, and I will definitely be purchasing the full size pot at some point in the near future. 

My favorite bath product of the month is going to have to be the Lush Amandopondo bubble bar. I, again, am a bit of a novice when it comes to bubble bars but I could not resist the smell of this beauty. After buying this and a good few other products I actually had them in a backpack for the remainder of the day in Glasgow as we were going to a concert in the evening and by god, each time I opened my bag I just got a waft of wonderfulness. I originally thought that it was the Space Girl bath bomb giving off this beautiful scent but it was this bubble bar. I may or may not have used quite a few of these over the past month.

Haircare

After having my hair dyed a dark violet/burgundy colour at the start of April, I have been trying to take good care of my hair in order to maintain my colour as much as possible. I have also taken to blowdrying my hair in the evening after my shower as opposed to letting it dry at night so I have been using the Argan Oil hair treatment in my hair while it is still damp in order to abolish the dreaded frizz. 

Book

If you have read my last book review you will know that my favorite book of May has been Wait For Me by J Lynn. You can read my last review here if you fancy checking that out. Basically, I adored the book and connected to the protagonist so much. I have actually purchased the other books in the series in the hopes that I love them just as much, and hope I enjoy them just as much.

Tv Show

Ok, so at the end of last month I got Netflix which may be the best or worst decision I have ever made. One one hand I finally jumped on the Pretty Little Liars bandwagon but on the other hand, literally all I did over study leave was watch it. Which may very well be detrimental to me getting into uni in September. But anyway, I finally caved and watched Pretty Little Liars. To be honest, up until season 3 I kind of hated it, but after being told by many people that you just have to keep at it and that it does get better I carried on watching. They were right. I was hooked and after finishing 5 seasons in 2 weeks, I cannot wait for season 6 to come out! 

This month I also got back into Grey's Anatomy after not watching it for about 2 months, which is shocking going from watching around 5 episodes per day minimum to none for 2 months. Life just got a little hectic but alas I began to crave my Mcdreamy fix and restarted the tv show for the third time. Yes, I am aware that this may be bordering on obsession at this point but to be honest I'm just grasping at straws as to why I cannot subject myself to the pain of season 11. I refuse to accept that it exists.

Summer is near

While autumn is undoubtedly my favorite season, think warm baths and falling leaves, I have to say I am very partial to summer. After the harsh Scottish winter that generally tends to last from about November to late March, you begin to miss the warmth of the sun on your skin and the smell of heat in the air. 

My favorite parts of summer are the beginning and the end of the season. I love the excitement of the sun coming out and realising that it is actually warm enough outside to ditch the jacket and throw on a pair of shorts. I love the atmosphere of heading down to the beach for the first picnic of the year and knowing that everyone else there has the same idea of just relaxing for a little while out of the town and soaking in the sun. I love the mad rush in supermarkets on the first day of BBQ season to grab all the salad and cocktails available before everything is all snapped up. I love the easy breezy attitude of spontaneous garden parties and family outings to enjoy some fresh air and the sea breeze.

Don't get me wrong, among all my romantic notions of summer I do detest the sweaty sheen that is always present on my forehead, having to shave my legs all the time and being inevitable stuck inside at work on the warmest days. But the great days more than make up for that. It's true what they say that everyone is happier in summer.

I also look forward to the transition of summer to autumn, when the nights begin to get longer, the temperature cooler and the clothes thicker. I think that there is a great sense of joy in being able to see the seasons slowly meld into each other and being unable to tell them apart until one day it is pretty darn obvious in the rainy October downpours that it is no longer summer and despite the warmth of the morning, definitely not appropriate to be donning the shorts and shades.

Summer to me is like freedom. It is the time to let go and to just be.To let your insecurities go and simply live. To list all the things that you are scared of doing and to damn well do them anyway. Summer is a time to prove to yourself what you've really got and how far you can push your limits.

Review: Wait For You by J Lynn

5/5 Stars

I know, I know. It has been a shamefully long time since I last posted a review but to be honest there has been nothing I have read recently that has been all that much to write home about. I was stuck in a massive reading slump for a while and I finally found a fabulous book to get me out of it so I thought that I better let you all know my thoughts on it. I have had this book since autumn last year after absolutely falling in love with the blurb, but as always it got lost in a sea of pretty and fabulous books so it has taken a little while to get around to reading it.

Avery is starting college, far away from her home, ever critical parents and her past. She wants just one single thing - to start over and have a normal life with noone knowing what had happened to her five years ago when she was only fourteen and what made her closed and uncomfortable around others. But what she is not expecting is Cameron - popular, extremely good looking and real charmer who is determined to get to know her better. But will Avery be able to run away from her past forever

This was my first dip into the writings of Jennifer L Armentrout and I can say without a doubt that I get it now. I understand the hype over her books. From the beginning I was absolutely enraptured by the mindset of Avery and her take upon the word. Avery kind of broke my heart at the beginning - she just seemed so very alone. She had plenty of coping mechanisms to get her through the day but she’s not really living, just moving on from one day to the next. I felt so sorry for her – the people that should have been there to cherish her and care for her had really let her down when she needed them most and she’s reached the point where she trusts no one and cannot comprehend why people are now being nice to her.

She literally crashes into Cam on her way to her very first class and it soon transpires that they are neighbours and they get to know each other slowly. Cam – le sigh!! Cam is just wonderful. Every girl needs a Cam. He’s funny, charming, endearingly over-confident, thoughtful, attentive, caring and HOT – I could continue to rain down superlatives but I think you get the gist, right? I pretty much adored him right from the get go. I loved the way he asked Avery to go out with him on an almost daily basis – he never gave up and just waited for her to slowly come around even though she took hard to get to a whole new level.

This here is my ideal book. Let's get this straight, while I am partial to the odd book with completely a completely original storyline and I do love fantasy novels, above all I love books that make me feel something. Books that make me keep on reading until 3am desperate to know the fate of a budding relationship. Books that make me shed a tear over the hardships that characters have overcome to get to where they are at that moment. And books that make me clutch my pillow and want to squeal at the unbelievably cheesy cute moments that fill my stone cold heart with the good old warm fuzzies. This book did all of that things.

Summer of Freedom

Earlier today I sat my very last exam of my high school career. The past 6 years of my life that I have shared with the same crazy bunch of people is well and truly over and I don't really know how I feel about it. I made a post about 3 weeks ago on the night before my last day of high school and I thought that I would follow that up with a little something on the eve of my last exam. 

It's always a very strange feeling when exams are over, you have a years worth of knowledge that you no longer require and a body so stressed out you feel like your brain is about to liquidate and run out your ears (gross!). The end of exam season always signifies a new beginning but the only new beginning I have ever encountered has been the start of a new school year, but obviously this is not the case this time. 

I think the biggest thing is that I don't quite know what to do with myself. For the past few years generally all of my free time has been filled with homework, studying, worrying about homework and studying or procrastinating to avoid homework and studying. I have none of that now. It feels like I have nothing to work towards in a way which is an unsettling feeling as if you have been following my blog for a while you will know that I almost always set goals to aim for. I don't have any goals at the moment. 

In some ways I feel like that is a good thing, that I can just live a little. Just be. But on the other hand I have the knowledge that at 9am tomorrow morning I am headed into work where I will be 5 days a week for the next 4 months. In some respects I feel like I will just be watching the summer pass me by as by the time I get a day off I just need to relax a little after a hectic week and have no desire whatsoever to go looking for adventures. 

I want to make a list, a summer bucket list of sorts. I used to do this when I was younger, make a colourful list in a pretty little notebook of all the things I wanted to accomplish over my 6 week break from school that inevitable ended up gathering dust under my bed somewhere. This year I want to check off a few things before I go off to University in September. Am I being over assumptious? 100% yes. Of course I am. But I'm damn well going to try.

Ask me now what I want to put on this list and I will tell you I have no idea. This wasn't even what I had planned for this post but let's just roll with it. I shall keep you updated (I promise I will this time) on my summer goals and maybe even write a little blog post on how each of them turns out. We will just have to wait and see how everything turns out.