Real Talk: Riding the waves.

Recently I have been checking out the whole mindset of being 'mindful' to help me deal with any issues or anxieties I am having about my school work, social or home life, to try and organize my issues and various situations into more manageable chunks. As someone who does tend to panic, worry and generally get very anxious about stupidly small things, I feel like some of the techniques I use and some of the thinking I've been looking at might help other people in a similar position.So if you are the sort of person who has difficulty dealing with their anxieties and huge amounts of jobs then keep reading...

So here we are with the real talk: Sometimes it gets hard.
Sometimes life gets really overwhelming and real and important, and when that happens, everything seems to happen kind of at once. Nothing important or stressful happens by itself, it is always accompanied by other important or stressful things. I know, it sucks- but cest la vie!
Sometimes there will be periods of time when it feels like nothing is ever going to be okay again.
Everything goes wrong, everything hurts, and the number of things that need to get done start to have an almost physical presence in your life.


1. Let me start by saying you are not alone in that feeling.
That weight, and that stress- that anxiety that keeps crashing into you like a wave, someone else has felt that way. In fact, many other people have felt that way.
So you should take comfort in the fact that your inability to handle and process everything that is happening to you, is something that we have all felt at points in our lives- you're not alone.

2. Breakdowns are human.
We are taught we need to be strong to be successful, this is not untrue. You need to be strong enough to chase your dreams, to be knocked down and to get back up again.
But it is an entirely human response once in a while, to sit down and feel sad- to be overwhelmed, to be emotional. Letting your sadness wash through you, letting the struggle hurt and addressing the fact you're angry or frustrated or upset is actually very healthy. human beings are not designed to be happy or strong all the time, we are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, We are flawed, it is a fundamental feature of our existence. It doesn't matter how pretty, or rich, or successful, or funny, or smart a  person is- they will have flaws. They will have too short a temper, be too harsh on themselves, be too harsh on others, fear relationships, test relationships, have issues with authority, have issues without any authority. The fact is no one is perfect, and the acceptance of our flaws and moments of weakness is okay.

3. Drowning.

Being overwhelmed is a horrible feeling- it's like everything you need to and are expected to do suddenly washes over you when you least expect it. You turn your back on the sea that is your responsibility in life and suddenly you're caught up in a strong salty woosh of horrible things. Jobs pile up, and the more there is the harder that wave hits you- and if you let that wave wash over you and drag you down it feels like you're drowning.
In this instance you have to hold on to something that will keep you afloat. This can be in the form of many things, the least healthy but arguably the easiest of which is people: good, kind, constructive people in your life will help you float to the surface of the problems you are having, by giving you advice and support to get you through.
This is highly effective, although you need to be careful how regularly you do this because those people, for whatever reason, may not always be there to bring you back up, leaving you to cope for yourself. So use people to stay afloat very rarely.
Alternative ways to keep yourself afloat include routine: have a set time to do things, go and sleep, make a little time for yourself, for your family, friends, extra curricular activities. But have them in a regular and achievable routine. This will help normalise your issues, or regulate the waves you feel. Organising yourself to the point you know when those waves or that intense pile up of jobs is going to happen will help you to prepare for their impact. Trust me, it helps.


4. Physical effects of drowning (ie: panic attacks and anxiety)

To deal with the physical effects of your emotional or mental "drowning"in your worries or anxieties it's really important to think about how the effect you physically. The most important is breathing:
breathing slower and more deeply is going to pull your body out of a sense of panic and shock, and once your body starts to stop freaking out, your head should automatically follow. It's like an anchor. Think about how you're sitting and if it is going to make you feel more light headed. Do not sit paralysed, movement helps to get the blood pumping round your body in a non-panicky way. Make sure you move, but as you do make sure you are doing things deliberately with force and focus: this way you don't feel like you're treading water and more like you're swimming to shore. The more you make a conscious effort not to panic and try to improve whatever situation you're in, the faster these overwhelming thoughts and issues can be resolved.

So there we have it, some real talk about how to deal with anxiety on a small and personal scale. I hope you find it helpful, and I'd love to hear anything you have to say about this or anything else I post!

X

To My Best Friend (II).

So, I wrote you like this once before- it was very different and very teary and very very honest, and I felt like after that milestone you would never want to read this little blog of everything ever again! But yet when I force posts and reviews on you, you read them and you humour me and I feel like I can probably force you into reading this one too. I know you hate these kinds of cringey things, but I know you appreciate when things are heartfelt- so I figured I would be a huge melt this evening and write a little something.

We're friends through mutual, muddled, acrylic paint and coursework deadline filled circumstances. Through the eye rolling over that annoying girl at school, through dropping every lame excuse in the book for late homework. A random person who had unknowingly sat on the edge of the others social spheres, who turned out be so frighteningly like each other that we still spook each other to this day,

When I met you I was a very very different person and you were too- we made questionable fashion and lifestyle choices, we consumed at least 4 times our daily calorie intake on a weekly basis, and once we got talking people found it very difficult to shut us up. (As they still very often do today.)

Since then there's been a billion coffee dates, Snapchats, Facebook messages. One prom, so many envied profile pictures, a few drunken nights of hilarity and one New Years that neither of us ever want recreated. There's been obscure conversations until early hours of the morning, frantic phone calls, and crisis after crisis.

There was a crazy Halloween, and flapper dresses- that cheeky almost foursome that we stayed well clear of.

There's been friends who turned out not be such great friends, and boys who turned out to be just as stupid as we thought. There have been eventful mornings where the pink shirt makes an appearance- and there was also that time all the lads wore suits. (Class. An absolute class day.)

There was that time we went to Wagamamas and had to walk to the station in the pouring rain with Ollie, who was only wearing a jumper, and laughed ourselves stupid. ( I never will remember what we found so hilarious.)

That time we breathed the same air as Cal, Ash, Mikey and Luke, and we screamed until our throats hurt, and we walked down Camden in search of a Starbucks FOR A STRAIGHT HOUR BECAUSE WE ARE THE DEFINITION OF WHITE GIRLS.

There was that time you were hungover, and we sat on the kitchen floor and I made you toast- we talked about the people we love (and hate) and about stresses and confusion and about how we actually felt about a moron, and I ignored the bitter things in my head and we laughed about silly things and then got back under our duvets because it was 5 am and we were out of it.

There was that time at Ollie's house when everyone ended up attacking each other with wet dishcloths and we had to tidy before his parents got home. We were breathless and hysterical and we had to watch a weird movie with wet t shirts whilst Ollie muttered the entire script.

That time with Kathleen in muffin break when we went for a random coffee.

That really cute lad in the year below, and how much we giggle to be annoying.

There was one session of messages about feeling guilty because the only remotely negative thing we had ever felt towards each other was jealousy. I will never forget that conversation because no one had ever told me something like that before, and I had never said something like that before either.

There's been dates and crushes and morons at school. Teachers that could only be the devils spawn and a few essay related panic attacks. There's been much needed catch ups involving impromptu trips to my house those times when you forgot your keys and we sat and stalked social networks, listened to old songs and went through endless OTP's on Tumblr.

There has of course been youtubers, a day watching Pretty Woman in duvets with all the unhelathy food I could find at Sainsbury's (one of my favourite days). There's been Brighton, and Nandos, and Nero's on a weekly basis- and I think I'm safe to say I have laughed more in your presence than any other human I know.

You have stuck with me, even though I am probably a hugely demanding person- even though I'm clingy and dramatic, and kind of mad. I think it's because secretly you're nuts too and when we're happy and nuts we seem to bounce off each other. Maybe it's because we only have like 4 people we like and 1/4 of them are each other, maybe because we hate the same people- maybe because we can Snapchat serenade each other without fear of humiliation or screenshots.

Whatever we've managed to do since we've known each other we seem to have ended up together trying to work out the utter madness of our very teenage lives, so thank you. Thank you for all the above and more, because I probably couldn't put down the amount of things you've helped me through, laughed with me about, cried a little over, eaten too much of...

So I guess thank you for everything Chummy

x

The Bug Autumn Haul.

So this one has been a long time coming, and I've been promising it for a while to the real life people who read my blog that I would do this soon and I've just been putting it off and putting it off.

BUT here we are lovelies- IT'S AUTUMN! I'm sitting here at my desk listening to the rain with the 'Stuck in Love' soundtrack playing to my left, and a hot chocolate to my right- and let me tell you, it is ideal. So, possibly my favourite season of the whole year and it is here, so I though I'd do a post with all my Autumn essentials in one big haul.
Hope you enjoy it!

The Winter Warmth Essentials.

1. The Cardigan.

Okay so this cardigan was my absolute MUST HAVE this season, I was sitting around on blogs and Pintrest and I was seeing these gorgeous tall models kicking it in long lines cardigans, rushing to castings and around big cities- and I thought to myself: I haven't got the big city, or the long legs, or the cheekbones, but I can sure as hell have one of those hella comfy looking cardigans.
So I looked around for a while before I found this one here (available from New Look, about £20). I actually gave back 3 caridgans, 2 from H&M and 1 from Zara before I settled on this one. It's not actually wool, it's acrylic but it is so so much softer than the others I tried.

I'm not usually fussy about material and textures but this knit was just so cosy without being all baggy and hobo-ish. (Some girls can pull those off, I cannot because I don't have the figure...)
It's been absolutely gorgeous for those crisp autumn mornings waiting around for obnoxiously late public transport. I usually wear it with plain black jeans and a tea, or blue denim- I seem to have quite a thing for monochrome at the moment and I think I may need to branch out a little... Regardless though, this is one of my all time favourite winter essentials, so cosy and warm, so soft, and so easy to chuck on with a chunky scarf and leggings or jeans.

2. The Boots.

So my search for boots is never ending.
I was bought a gorgeous pair of tan leather Chelsea boots last year from Red Herring, and I can tell you now that they are the single greatest purchase I have ever made. Beautiful, comfortable and easy to pair with ANYTHING. Jeans, skirt, dress, leggings- the whole deal. I was in love with them.
So, this year when I came into a bit of money, naturally the first thing I spent it on was black versions. (yeah, I am seeing why people are telling me I have a bit of a monochrome obsession). I was initially going to buy a fancy expensive pair for myself, but somehow I managed to sign myself up to help out at a school event where we had to dress fancy and put together an outfit that required black boots- so of course I rushed out before the evening, dropped into Cafe Nero for about 3 hours with a couple of my favourite human beings, and made a quick purchase when I realised I needed black boots.

These little beauties were only about £25 and are so comfortable- they were an absolute steal.
Recommend so much.

3. The Scarf.

I bought this scarf last year from Accesorize, and I cannot stress to you enough how completely essential woollen scarves are. I have a little beanie hat to match, and it is so warm and cosy I have actually had to take it off mid-walk on a couple of occasions for fear of overheating and passing out. So there's a little story for you.

The Cold Weather Health and Beauty.

1. The Handbag Must Haves.

• Tissues- it's cold season.
• Strepsils- it's cold season.
• Hand sanitiser- it's cold season.
• A scarf- you may need it, don't be a muppet and stand around all cold.
• Headphones- always, not because you're an antisocial muppet, but because music on a cold night waiting around for public transport is often beyond a jokes. therefore, even if you have frostbite hands and blue toes- at least you'll be mildly entertained.

2. The Lush Products.

So I was treated to a mini Lush haul this half term, and lord did I take advantage.
I picked my top 5 products- and yes, they are all seasonal.

Melting Snowman

This little munchkin was perfect for kicking off my Christmas spirit this year, making my bath water soft and bubbly and oh so sweet smelling- the perfect stocking filler.








Brightside

This bath bomb was obsolutely gorgeous, and made me feel very exotic and warm. The orange and the yellows were beautiful in the bath water.






Dashing Santa

It's that time of the year, and I refuse to be calm about it- I am excited, because cold weather means santa... in Lush bath bomb form.





Cinders

Although this little gem only turns bathwater a yellowy apricot colour and not much else, the smell is absolutely lovely and fruity- and the water was so soft it left my skin feeling the same.
Love it.



Big Blue

Self explanatory really- pacific ocean blue water and a fresh and sharp smell, a little different from my usually fruity tendencies but a lovely addition to my favourites.











3. The Lip Product.

So I am definitely a big investor when it comes to lip products, and in winter time- this really needs to pay off. Being one of large lips is difficult when all the icy winter winds and cold weather does is chap them- but fear not, I have a solution.
What I've been doing as the weather gets colder I've been carrying around a little pot of aloe vera Vaseline, but also just before I go to bed, and as I start my makeup in the morning I apply a little Blistex Intensive Lip Moisturizer and I've been good to go.

4. The Nail Varnishes.

Barry M is forever my go to for nail varnishes, and I thought as the cold weather has arrived I could get away with some switching up of colours. So I purchased a little everyday wear 'Peach Melba'.




Then I also found myself being roped into some 2 for 1 deal- so I grabbed this little berry coloured beauty in 'Red Wine'...

5. The Christmas Smells.

As can quite easily be guessed from this post- I am a very pro-Christmas person. I love the holiday season and the corny TV, the crackers, the presents and the smells. My favourite little christmassy body product is Body Shops gingerbread flavoured body butter. Soft, awesome smelling skin? Yes please.

6. The Perfume.

Hugo Boss, woman. In love,

7. Concealer.

Cold weather is back, and my skin has gone into freak out mode. In the winter time I tend to wear a lot of foundation, a little bronzer and of course some blusher. My make-up is brighter in the winter time, a lot more shaping and bright, bold colours- and of course my skin suffers because rather than look after it, I just cover it up really.

So I've made myself a deal in order to keep my skin somewhat alive I'm going to have cheat days, where all I wear is a little moisturiser and concealer- this little Rimmel London Wake Me Up is my perfect little make-up bag essential. Light, decent coverage, and I found a colour that matches. ideal.

... 

So there we have it, my absolute FAVOURITE items for this season, and my essentials in one big Autumn/Winter haul. I hope you liked it, if you have any comments or questions feel free to drop one in the comment boxes I'd love to hear from you! There's a Winter Term Back To School Haul coming really soon too- because I went a little stationary crazy and feel like I could share that too!

But for now, have a fabulous day lovelies!

10 Reasons Why Autumn is Awesome.

1. Hot drinks.

Lo and behold children for it is the season of the pumpkin spice and gingerbread latte. Starbucks will be filled with us "white girls" kitted out in our oversized knits and Instagramming our little mugs and cups of joy. If nothing else, these gorgeous smelling, heart-warming treats are just some of the beautiful winter drinks we can start drinking now that autumn is in full swing.

So if you're feeling a little chilly, a little sad or low- get your ass into your kitchen and makes up some hot chocolate! Sugar boost, warm up and general joy will ensue. Make it as basic or fancy as you want- add that whipped cream, those flavour shots (my personal favourite is hazelnut- lord knows hazelnut hot chocolate is a whole new hot drinks ball game), shake on some sprinkles and shake of your chilly winter blues!


2. Leaves.

This is a simple little joy that not everyone will get, but is in my humble opinion, one of the best things about the seasons changing. The leaves go from a deep green to crispy reds and browns and golds. I live out in the countryside so I get to witness this all on a pretty big scale, driving down badly laid roads and avoiding tractors and their hay bales- some of you may live in cities. But here's the thing, you can still enjoy this little phenomenon in parks or on the street. It's simple, it's silly but I think it's beautiful.

3. Movies.

Cold weather = movie day excuse.

Get your besties, popcorn and duvets- Netflix it out or whack on a DVD (or VCR, it's your life) and enjoy a day of relaxation.


4. Candles.

My personal favourites at the moment are my classic Yankee Candle, and a brand call Lily-Flame that do the most delicious and unusual scented candles ever.

Really, look into them, they make me look forward to my evenings.


5. Fall fashion.


Cool bright mornings that give you an excuse to wrap up warm are my favourite.
The boots come out and you feel sassy and sophisticated, the big chunky cardigans,and ugly sweaters from the 80s, the big cosy snoods...

and the boys start wearing their beanies and THAT IS ALWAYS A GOOD THING.
And they wear long sleeve t shirts and then have to roll their sleeves when they get warm and forearms and.... IT'S JUST A GOOD SEASON FOR MENSWEAR. OKAY?







6. Halloween.

Nothing more to be said.

7. Fireworks.

Hot foot, cold feet, lights and colours in the sky that little kids stare at like it's magic. The bonfires and the friends, the slightly damp socks and misty breath.
It's like magic.

8. Christmas party dresses and general increase in sparkles.

Everything is in sequins, and metallic prints, and its bright and bold and theres jewellery and big earring everywhere. So have a look about at this seasons party frocks, H&M ad New Look have a whole range of cute little numbers to suit everyone's needs. It's brilliant.
It sparkles.



9. Christmas build up.

• Present displays.
• Christmas foods.
• Fairy lights.
• Trees.
• The Coke advert.
• The Christmas movies.

10. Reminiscing.

• It's getting to the end of the year.
• Get those bucket list things done.
• Kiss that boy. (Or girl)
• Get those last few pounds off.
• Think about the good.
• Think about the bad.
• Start making those New Years plans!

New Years is my favourite night, it's magic, it's fun and drunken, and it's always got it's ups and downs.

The Power of Trashy Books and Television.

We all have those day's, those weeks- those times that we just need to stop thinking for a little while.

Reality shows like Keeping up with the Kardashian's, Made in Chelsea, The Only Way is Essex, are all shows we switch on as a nation to zone the hell out of our own lives. Reality shows are escapism for some people, the way that other people read books, draw or write- it's all the same thing, so don't judge people for how they escape, we all need to do our own thing.



Trashy TV shows have endless quotes or jokes that you'll use in your daily life.

Kim Kardashian's crying face is an international phenomenon.

And I am not entirely ashamed to say that I have fallen into the appalling habit of calling my friends "doll", which my mother also tends to use when she feels that I'm being too sassy for her liking.

As much as it's unhealthy to live in a world entirely dominated by those beautifully made up reality show celebrities, it can also be a good release.

Now we have to remember:
We are not the overly paid, spoilt, and entertaining stars we see on TV. They are not real and to be honest we can't act like them- because, well, it's just not socially acceptable. Enjoy it but do not be consumed by it- words to live by regarding anything you like.