Favourite Film & TV 2015

December 30, 2015December 30, 20151 Comment

I love a top 10 at this time of year. Unfortunately my memory sucks so you’re getting a top 8. Also, disclaimer time; I have not been to the cinema nearly enough this year and I’m always very late to watch TV stuff so I’m sure I am missing a TONNE of great stuff. Please take pity on me and leave me your recommendations from the year to check out.

FILM

Inside Out

One of Pixar’s most imaginative films takes place inside the mind of a child with her emotions becoming the main characters. It’s perfectly cast, beautiful and a joy to watch (even though it is also incredibly heartbreaking at times). Not only the best animated film of the year, but one of the best films of the year.

It Follows

Best described as a sexually transmitted demon, It Follows is an instant cult horror hit. It’s quietly terrifying and never goes for the cheap thrill while he soundtrack heightens the atmosphere much like an early Carpenter film. The premise sounds slightly silly to begin with, but it works so, so well.

Trainwreck

Like most Apatow films these days, Trainwreck is about 30 minutes too long, but this is forgiveable as it is very funny. It’s the film that has put Amy Schumer in the spotlight his year and rightly so, girl has spot on comic timing. A needlessly long runtime is one of my pet peeves but the dance routine at the very end more than makes up for it. Great turn by wrestler John Cena too.

Jurassic World

Probably the best dinosaur movie of 2015 (honourable mention goes to The Good Dinosaur for it’s sheer beauty), I love it for the influx of dino merch it has inspired apart from anything else! Still, a good blockbuster that lived up to the anticipation preceding it.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Talking of living up to it’s hype, I’m betting that the new Star Wars film will be a late entry to everyone’s best of list. It’s a massively successful return to form for the franchise and an exciting start to the upcoming six (yes, six) new additions to the space opera.

Game of Thrones Season 5

Yeah, my fave every year. I feel like season 5 got off to a fairly slow start (the books also stutter around this time), but when it stepped it up, it did so in a big way. I liked the changes in the narrative in this series (I compare the books and the show in this post if you’re interested) and I’m really excited for season 6 to start in April. I don’t want to spoil anything but NOOO, Davos, don’t goooo!

Shark

I loved this BBC series all about sharks, appropriately titled Shark. Sharks are largely feared and definitely misunderstood but they are vital to the survival of the oceans so they should be respected and protected. I’d love to see more sharky stuff on TV like this and not Jaws (as much as I love that film).

The Hunt

Another year, another incredible BBC and David Attenborough natural world series that knocks everyone else out of the park. This year it focused on the measures that carnivores have to go through to survive. As usual the filming was breathtaking, the techniques innovative and it was packed with never seen before footage and behaviours. Love, love, LOVE.

What wonderful things have you watched this year?

Favourite Books of 2015

December 29, 2015December 28, 20152 Comments

Hello everyone, hope you all are having an enjoyable festive season. I intended to do a bunch of Christmassy posts last week, but the actual business of it being Christmas took over and I ran out of time before I went home for the holidays. But I’m back now and I thought I’d kick of the pre-New Year posts with my favourite books that I read in 2015. I read 48 books this year (a massive amount for me) so it was tricky to narrow it down to five but I’m happy with this selection. The titles are links to my fuller reviews.

In no particular order, they are:

Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill

And by extension Asking for It, O’Neill’s second book. Author of the Year for me, for sure. I read Only Ever Yours at the start of the year and the impact has stayed with me. It’s a YA dystopian with a sharp feminist tongue while Asking for It is a contemporary novel. Both are definitely worth a read depending on which genre you prefer.

H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald

This is one of the few non-fiction books I read this year and I loved it. A very lyrical, beautiful book about the author coming to terms with loss and attempting to train a goshawk. The wildness of the bird provides a salve for Helen’s hurt and she begins to lose herself in its world.

The Bees by Laline Paull

This is such an unusual book – it’s a fiction about bees and the story is as dramatic as any dystopian sci-fi I’ve ever read. As sad as it may seem, I kind of really want to learn about bee society from an entomologist point of view so I can re-read this and appreciate all of the elements which Paull has included.

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow

This is the first free-verse novel I have ever read, poetry is not normally my thing at all but I absolutely adored this book. It helps that it’s super cool and about werewolves in LA of course. I really need to look into more poetry in future, I feel like my eyes have been opened to the possibilities now.

The Good Girl by Fiona Neill

I’ve read quite a few domestic thrillers this year as it’s a genre I generally enjoy and I think this is my favourite. It’s well paced, chock full of drama and very up to date topic-wise. If you like books like Gone Girl, I think you’ll like this.

And so concludes my favourite reads of 2015. I already have a massive TBR pile for 2016 so I’m hoping that there will be a few more favourites hidden in there. Let me know what your favourites have been.

Sample Samplin’ | Nov & Dec

December 17, 2015December 6, 20151 Comment

Time to empty out my empty samples bag again! The stash is slowly diminishing which is great. I think I want to streamline my clutter next year starting with beauty products. I love them, but I don’t need them. We’ll see how that goes. Anyway, here are a few samples I’ve used up recently.

This is without a doubt my favourite discovery of recent months – the L’Occitane Repairing Shampoo & Conditioner. I’ve had real problems with my hair recently, my scalp is so dry due to the hard water here and my hair is falling out at a rate of knots (oh yeah, knots, I have them too) and this shampoo and conditioner really made a difference. It’s pricey at £17 for a 300ml bottle but I think that once I’ve used up all my existing shampoos and conditioners I’ll need to splash out as my hair is a major concern at the moment.

Another thing I tried was the new Don’t Blow It creme from Bumble & Bumble. It’s meant to smooth your hair on days that you’re just letting it air dry. It’s nice but not really for me – I have the feeling that it would be much better for people with wavy, curly or thick hair.

I don’t know if travel sized products count as “samples” but I’m including the Soap & Glory Clean on Me Shower gel anyway. It’s a great shower gel, but truth be told, I’m just a bit over the S&G scent now. The good thing about this is that it’s really thick so it lasts for ages, but that has meant I’ve just got bored of it.

On the other hand, the L’Occitane Verbena Shower Gel is much more exciting. Really zingy and fresh, it does a great job of waking you up in the morning.

Next up, some face products. The Organic Pharmacy is a new brand to me and I tried their Double Rose Rejuvenating Face Cream. Urgh rose scented anything – gross. I can forgive a dodgy scent if the product is great but this one was just a bit meh. Nothing exciting, wouldn’t pick it up again to be honest.

The Pixi Glow Tonic is a much hyped product in the beauty blogger world. It’s a gentle exfoliating toner and it’s very nice. I must say though, I need a bit of a heavier duty exfoliator so although I enjoyed using this I probably won’t rush out to buy it – it is also quite expensive at £18.00 for 250ml.

Finally, a bunch of perfume samples. The first is Paco Rabanne 1 Million. I really didn’t like this and then I realised halfway through, it’s because it’s a mens fragrance. Doh! Still though, I don’t like it and wouldn’t buy it for David.

The other two are both very similar to each other. They are Dolce & Gabbana Dolce and Givenchy Dahlia Divin and both are sweet, floral fragrances and much more up my street than a bloke’s aftershave!

That’s the lot! I’m definitely going to be revisiting the L’Occitance shampoo and conditioner soon. What have you added to your beauty routine recently?

Pop Culture Snowflakes DIY

December 16, 2015December 5, 20151 Comment

Today I wanted to share some links with you for these awesome DIY snowflakes. At work we have a little competition between the offices – a Christmas Dec-Off – to see who has the best decorating skills. Obviously we’re going to win in Bristol, we’re going for a handmade theme so I whipped up these snowflakes. I feel like we should get extra points for them being based on film, TV and games since that’s our biz.

Anyway, enough rambling. Here’s what I made and the links to the templates so you can make your own.

Game of Thrones House Sigils from Krystal Higgins. These don’t actually have a lot of internal bits to cut out so they’re the easiest of the bunch even though they look pretty complicated. I love them all but I think the Night’s Watch and the Baratheon ones are my favourites.

Star Wars by Anthony Herrera. There are so many Star Wars options on Anthony’s website, it’s amazing! I must admit I went for the easiest looking ones but I might attempt a few more. These are the original pop culture snowflakes and the best.

Minecraft snowflakes via Instructables. These ones were actually pretty difficult due to all the right angles! Make sure your knife/scissors are sharp.

Mario Mushroom from Atelier Drome. They also have a Kanye West template. Oh yeah.

Frozen by Anthony Herrera. I think Olaf is my favourite of the whole bunch. He is so adorable! Anthony also has Guardians of the Galaxy ones on his website too so make sure you check them out too if you’re a fan.

Making all of these took me pretty much an entire day but I enjoyed it and I’m revelling in all the compliments I’m receiving for my mad paper cutting skills.

Let me know what you think of these! Hopefully you’ll love them as much as I do.

Lottie London So Gel Top Coat | Better than Seche Vite?

December 14, 2015December 5, 20153 Comments

I can’t remember who I saw talking about this top coat on You Tube (it may have been Miss Budget Beauty), but whoever they were, they mentioned that this might be a good alternative for Seche Vite so I ran out the door (almost) to try it.

Lottie London is available at Superdrug and the So Gel topcoat is priced at £7.99. I picked it up along with two of their nail polishes as it was on 3 for 2. I’ve never tried any of their products before so I was keen to try a couple of different finishes. I chose ‘Hit Refresh’ a nude pink creme and ‘No Limits’ a rose gold glitter strand top coat.

I really struggled to get decent photos due to the (lack of) winter light so apologies for that. Hopefully you can see though that the top coat gives a glorious shine. It really is great, I was very impressed. It has a slight plumping effect that you can also build up if you like – I used two coats to have a glass-like effect without being too thick. This mani lasted me a week and I’m sure a lot of that was down to the top coat. It definitely does not dry as quickly as Seche Vite and is a lot thinner so it depends on if you like these qualities whether you will like it better. In my opinion, the major benefit is that So Gel doesn’t shrink! This was always a major peeve with Seche Vite for me and put me off repurchasing. So in my opinion, So Gel is better and my current number 1 top coat. Plus it’s a couple of quid cheaper. Win win!

What is your favourite top coat?

Personal Planner Review

December 10, 2015December 6, 20151 Comment

I do love a good bit of stationery and it seems like there are a whole community online of fellow stationery addicts. I’m not quite ready to drop £75+ on a designer planner and shed loads of stickers, but I did want to dip my toe in the planner addict world. So I decided to place an order with the much more affordable Personal Planner UK and share with you my first impressions.

The defining feature of Personal Planner is that everything is customisable. I decided to go for the A5 size for £22.90 including shipping. You then choose the cover design, there are lots of options from a plain colour, patterns, images or your own photographs. I decided to go for the gold dots with the date in black and a black elastic. When it arrived I was a bit disappointed that it wasn’t gold foil (although I think it does say this on the website), but I still like it. I think it looks quite Kate Spade-like. I added my name to the top using my label maker which I think finishes it off well. I might use some gold foil nail polish to pick out some of the dots to add an extra dimension.

The planner is covered with a thick protective plastic which is slightly textured. The inner covers on the front and back are a sturdy card so should hold up well.

The inside cover has a little bit about the origins of the company which is quite a nice touch. The facing page is customisable – you can put your contact details, a motivational quote, fill it with emojis… I decided to keep it simple with my blog name (and a couple of anchor emojis of course) and leave space to stick a picture. I decided to pop in a card from a Lucky Dip Club box just using blu tack so I can switch it out when I get bored of it.

There are a number of layout choices to decide between. You can go for vertical columns, squares, or a horizontal layout like I have. I went for the weekend split into two, but you can also get it separate with thinner weekdays. I went for this layout as it’s similar to what I’ve had in diaries in the past, but I’ll see how it goes. You can opt for plain paper, ruled or striped. I went for striped as it’s a bit more subtle than fully ruled but I can’t write straight without some guidelines! You can also go for the timetable option with time stamps if you need an appointment style diary.

You also get options for three modules. I went for dinners, training and ruled on the facing page, but there are lots of options including to do lists, exams, graphs or leaving it blank. Plus, there are daily details you can add in such as weather tracker, work schedule (great for shift workers) and workout details. I left this option blank as I didn’t think I’d personally use any of them but I can see them being useful for others. I would love for them to include a water intake tracker in future – I can’t think of anyone who doesn’t say they need to drink more water and I would find this so helpful.

Another neat feature is the dates option. You can choose to have holidays and national days for your country automatically added, plus you can add personal dates such as birthdays, anniversaries and other memorable dates. You can choose to add them as a one off, or an annual event so that when you log into your account to make another planner, they are already there. I really like this feature and I love that you can choose to have ages added to birthdays. Very helpful for little ones and to make sure you don’t miss any milestone birthdays.

In the interest of everything being customisable, you can even chose the colour of the plastic movable ruler. Probably not that essential, but handy as a bookmark and at least you can match it to the rest of your planner if you’re so inclined. I just went for a clear one because I’m boring!

The final decision is what goes on the inlay and back pages. This was a fairly easy choice for me. I wanted a month overview at the start of each month so that I can have an at-a-glance view of my blog posts for that month. I also wanted the 2016 and 2017 overview which I find helpful for planning things like annual leave. Lastly I added lots of lined pages for list making. Other options include pages for teachers to plan their timetables, an address book, and fun elements like colouring pages or sudoku.

Lastly, you also receive a movable plastic pocket which I popped in at the back to store some planner stickers. I got these water tracker ones from Dook Plook Designs on Etsy.

Overall, I’m very pleased with this planner. It reminds me of my high school one that I always found helpful! The order time for these is up to 2 weeks. I did receive mine quicker than that, I think it was 10 days. If you’re looking to order one for the New Year, I would do it now. However, you can choose to start the diary from any date so don’t worry if you’re a bit late to the party.

I’m looking forward to starting this soon. I’m also after some more cute stickers, if you are a planner addict and know some cool suppliers, please leave me their links below.

Lush Christmas Haul

December 9, 2015December 5, 20152 Comments

I really was not intending on doing a Lush Christmas haul this year. Let’s be honest, there are more sensible things to spend your money on that bath bombs. I managed to resist right up until December but then my resolve well and truly crumbled. I sent David out with a list and came home from work last Friday to a big bag bulging with bath goodies. Happy days! I decided to get all stuff that I hadn’t tried before bar Cinders (fave bath bomb of all time so I had to get one) and most of it is new for this year. Here’s what I picked up:

Buche de Noel Cleanser (£12.09). This is a gentle exfoliating cleanser with cranberries, almonds and cocoa butter. I’m not totally sold on the smell of it, like a dirty cake is the best way I can describe it. But I do love how it feels. My skin needs a good scrub on the reg but while also hanging onto as much moisture as possible and this is exactly what Buche de Noel does. Really happy I have such a big pot of it!

Stardust Bath Bomb (£2.95). This is a lovely simple looking bomb, you can’t really see from the photo but it is covered in a very fine silver glitter. It is vanilla scented and quite inoffensive. I have used this and I’m afraid I didn’t love it though. It fizzes away to a blue centre so leaves your bath a slightly milky colour and it releases a bunch of multi-coloured dissolvable stars. It doesn’t really add anything beyond that though so overall a bit boring I’m afraid.

The Magic of Christmas (£5.95). Another new star shaped product for this year. This is a reusable bubble bar which is basically Christmas on a stick. A cinnamon stick to be exact. It’s a large orange bar overlaid with a bright gold glitter (think Sparkly Pumpkin) and studded with cloves and star anise and finished with a bell and a red bow. The design team must have had a ball with this one! It smells like cinnamon (obviously) and orange. It’s lovely!

Cinders Bath Bomb (£2.65). Next up is one of my favourite bombs, I always pick up a couple each year – lucky that it’s one of the cheaper ones. This is quite a small bomb but it’s enough. It is a sweet cinnamon scent and this one is packed with popping candy which is meant to make your bath sound like a crackling fire. I think this will be perfect with some bubbles from The Magic of Christmas so this will be the combo I’ll use for my Christmas Eve bath (I like my bathtime traditions).

Peeping Santa Bubble Bar (£3.95). Aw, how cute is this Santa? There’s a teeny bit of shimmer to him, but not too much like with Stardust. He is strawberry scented so a nice change to the spicy scents that tend to dominate this time of year. Th white parts are actually bath melts (like the bubbleroons are) so he does a create job of softening the water and your skin as well as producing lots of bubbles.

Yog Nog Bath Bomb (£3.95). This is a giant beast of a bath bomb! Based on the very popular soap, this one smells like cinder toffee – very sweet but also warming. I can see two big chunks of cocoa butter in mine so I know it’s going to be supremely moisturising. It’s very crumbly though so I’m having to keep it in it’s packaging to avoid getting Lush dust everywhere.

Bar Humbug Bubble Bar (£3.65) This one is possibly the least Christmassy product of the range this year but it’s one of my favourites. It’s as though someone has stuck a liquorice stick in the Comforter so it’s sweet and fruity but with a kick of something special. I hope this one does well.

And that’s everything I got. I might try to get some other bits in the Boxing Day sale such as some of the Snow Fairy scented things I’ve had in the past as I really do love them and the festive Cranberry face mask. However, the Lush sale is a stress so I might not bother!

What are your favourites from Lush this Christmas?

AlleyHope

UK Beauty, Books & Lifestyle Blog