Making My Own Beauty Advent Calendar

This year I am so so so super duper excited for Christmas! I cannot wait for it! And I have been particularly excited because I have promised myself that this year, I will treat myself and buy a beauty advent calendar!

For those of you who don't know (though it is fairly easy to work out), a beauty advent calendar is one that contains small beauty related items (lipsticks, moisturisers ect ect) behind each door instead of chocolate. I have wanted one for such a long time, and now that I have recently acquired a part-time job, I think I should spend some of my hard-earned wages and get one!

You would not BELIEVE the amount of research I have done for this, oh my goodness me, even I think it's a tad excessive. I started looking in September, but there weren't any released back then. I have quite probably read every single blog post written about beauty advent calendars, and you cannot imagine my excitement when Makeup Revolution (my favourite brand) announced that they were releasing one!

But I still have been at such a dilemma at which one to buy. Unfortunately I do have a quite limited budget, which I want a lot from. I have looked at so many advent calendars online and in stores, but all the ones that I can afford seem to be filled with tiny samples of things that I will probably never use ever, or filled with full size products, but are only 12 days long! If I'm getting an advent calendar, it will be for the whole 24 days!

So this morning, I then came up with my ground breaking idea - what if I make my own advent calendar?????

If I go round all my favourite brands, gather 24 little products (maybe ones that are on sale or on a deal), I'll create a cracking advent calendar!!! I know it will probably end up being about 4 times the price of a shop bought one, but at least it will be filled with things I know that I love and will definitely use.

Although the surprise element may be taken out of it, I have a cunning plan. I am going to wrap each product up and find some little identical boxes to put them in so that they all look exactly the same. I'll then give them to someone (probably my mum) to jumble them all up and number them, so that the surprise will be in the order and that I don't know which one I'll get each day. Plus, it's quite impressive how shocking my short term memory is!

So that is what I will be doing for my beauty advent calendar and I am soooo excited about it (though my bank account really isn't!)

See you soon!

Finding things a little tough

Hi everyone! If I'm completely honest, I don't know really where I'm going with this post, I think that it's just going to be one of those where I spill my thoughts and see where it gets me. I apologise if this isn't the happiest post in the world, but this blog has always been somewhere for me to be completely truthful and to be me, as I hope you all feel like you have the ability to do here. Plus, what better way to share my private thoughts than by broadcasting them on the internet?

I think that recently, I have just been finding things a little tough. For the past two months, I have been up and down a huge amount, and you may have noticed that I haven't been the most consistent writer. I always say that you have to be in the right mood in order to write, otherwise the whole thing just won't work. Recently, I just haven't been in the right mood at all really.

Things seem to have come around so fast and I'm finding it difficult to keep up with everything at the moment. What's worse, for me, is that no one else appears to be struggling particularly, and I always find things even harder when I feel like I'm on my own going through them.

I've had to think a lot about my future which incorporates some pretty big changes for me in the next few years, the thought of which terrifies me more than I'm able to explain. I'm a proper homing pigeon - I like to be safe and sound where I know and with who I know. Anything that changes that is very difficult for me to consider.

I guess these thoughts have been the basis of quite a lot. Because of all this, I have started to argue with my parents a lot more, something which is very new to me. I am very much the type of person who will shy away from confrontation and I don't enjoy arguments with anyone, especially my parents whom I have always got on with very well. Yes, I'm just a typical teenager, but I don't want to be and I don't enjoy it. It has been making home life quite difficult, despite my parents being lovely and amazing people who only want the best for me.

And then there's school, with everything ramping and gearing up as this year is one of the most important in our schooling careers. And I... I just have no motivation for anything at all. I have this really weird brain process, and I don't really know how to describe it, but I think that it is partially why I am finding things hard:

Every since I was little, I have loved Hermione Granger. I love her enthusiasm and passion and most of all, her intelligence. I also love how she does work for it, as I am a great believer in working for everything that you get. I have always wanted to be like this, I have always wanted to be hard working and intelligent, and just a bit of a teachers pet. So whenever I get told about a piece of work that I need to do, inside my head, I am getting excited. I love the idea of working hard and creating something great and achieving something amazing. I want to be that person who's work is always exceptional ect ect. That is my idealism, me living as some kind of Hermione Granger figure. But then it comes to actually doing the work, and I can't do it. I don't have the motivation, the passion, the drive, the determination or anything. And I don't want to spend my evening doing the work.

But then afterwards, when it comes to handing in my mediocre piece of homework or my incredibly average piece of artwork, I get so angry and upset with myself. Angry because I couldn't make myself do it, because I didn't have that determination, and upset because I feel like I've failed myself. And every single time, I promise myself that I won't let it happen again, that I'll work harder and longer next time. And I can't do it.

I'm trapped in this cycle of high expectations and failing to achieve them and it sucks, it really does, because at the end of it all, all I am left with is self hate and embarrassment. Recently, it has just been so hard to fight this cycle, and then I just end up thinking: what's the point?

Even right as this very moment, I have a mountain of art coursework to do and I'm sitting here writing a post because I don't want to do it, despite promising myself that I'd be all up to date with an exceptional standard of work by tomorrow.

All I seem to want to do is read my book and daydream at the moment, but whenever I do, I can't enjoy myself because I feel guilty that I'm not doing something else. Even when I set aside an amount of time specifically to do some work, like when I go into the art department at lunch, I can't focus, I can't concentrate and I can't do anything.

I don't know what the point of this post is. Maybe it is just a distraction, a procrastination. Maybe it's a way for me to help me to feel worse about myself. Maybe I'm just feeling sorry for myself, and I need to get off my bum and do something. Or maybe I am just trying to understand why I'm not very happy at the moment. I want to be happy, I really do, I just don't know how, and I would really appreciate it if any of you could share any tips or advice if you've ever gone through anything similar.

So, yeah, that's me. But I'll tell you something, when I went away to Amsterdam, for four days I stopped worrying about absolutely everything besides what flavour of ice cream I'm going to have for pudding. And it was amazing. I want to be like that all the time.

Anyway, I will be happier next time, I promise!

See you soon!

I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson

If you've been here a while or care enough, you may have noticed that I sneakily skipped a book in my book challenge. It was the category 'a book you picked solely because of the cover', and I don't know why but I've just been putting it off for ages.

I chose to read I'll Give You The Sun which I can honestly say I picked just because of the cover, mostly because it's yellow (which is my favourite colour) and because of the title (because isn't that the loveliest title EVER???).

With so much love towards this book, I don't know why I have been putting it off for a while. I started to read once before, and it didn't go too well, I couldn't get into it and I didn't venture far enough in to fall for it, but I when I did this time, oh my goodness - I frickin loved it!

I know I say this about pretty much every book I read, but this is one of my instant favourites, I can't wait to read it again! I would say that it was a little tough for me to get into, because its a little confusing at the beginning with it jumping around a lot and being (seemingly) mundane, but it gets sooooo good!

It is about two twins, Jude and Noah, who both tell their stories 3 years apart, in which time a terrible tragedy has happened. They now no longer speak, and every little bit of information you learn all contributes to why this is. It keeps switching between each point of view and before and after the tragedy, so it can be a little confusing but that's ok because it's brilliant!

Each twin tells their story of how they fell in love, and how it goes wrong because they can't be happy without each other and without closure. They are both also really artistic, and art plays a huge role in this book. I loved hearing their viewpoints on art and their ideas on it, it made me want to be so much more artistic.

I liked the way that each twin told their story very differently. Noah saw his life as a series of paintings, but Jude did every thing according to a book of luck. Noah had splashed all the pages of his story with paints and drops, which just adds a really nice touch.

My very favourite thing about this book is the way its written. The language is absolutely beautiful, and the imagery is so amazing, its more of a poem than anything else, or maybe a painting with words. Its the kind of book that I just want to read again, but with a notebook on my lap so I can jot down every lovely phrase to keep.

I would really recommend this to anyone looking for a beautifully articulate book to fall in love with and read again and again - it's fab!

For the next book in my challenge, I'm due to start 'False Tongues' by Kate Charles.

See you soon!