mask sundays

 

Mask Sundays is something that i've been doing for the past few weeks without even intending too, every weekend I go to my beauty stash and pull out the latest addition to my collection and slather it all over my face until I'm contempt that you can no longer see any actual part of my real face!

This week was a treat from the Lush Kitchen, the Oatifix fresh face mask, first things first, it smells absolutely delicious, you genuinely feel like you could pick this up and scrape it out as your sunday breakfast (post hangover?) and feel pretty damn happy with how good it tastes!
In all seriousness though DO NOT EAT IT!

Oatifix contains all the fresh goodness you would expect from Lush and is packed full of amazing skincare benefits including illipe butter which reduces redness, a HUGE problem I suffer with so this is straight up my street. along with bananas, crushed almonds and of course oats, these all combined allow you to have super soft and nourished skin.

The ingredients are also great if you are a dry skin sufferer i.e: myself, As many of you may know if you've read my blog or watched my YouTube videos for a while now, I suffer from really dry/flaky & dehydrated skin, something that I battle with on a daily basis and this was the main reason I picked up Oatifix & I can confirm it really does nourish and replump my lack lustre face, however I would say be very careful with how much you exfoliate this off after use as it did make my face a little sore as the almonds can be quite abrasive, especially if you suffer from sensitive/dry skin.

The actual feel of my face after using this was soft and supple, you could really see and feel the difference in my skin, after the initial soreness of over exfoliating this off had calmed down, you could really see and feel that the mask had done its work, my skin was much brighter and significantly soothed and less aggravated, makeup went on so much easier and lasted longer throughout the day too!

I would definitely recommend trying Oatifix out if you have similar skin to mine or if you are just looking for a great weekly mask that can be doubled up as an exfoliator too & the best part of it is the price, at £6.75 it is such an affordable product that its so worth heading to your local lush for!

Frankie xo

so, its time to plan your wedding

Myself & my Fiancé Samuel have been engaged now for a little over a year and a half, some may think this is quite a while, some may be thinking its way too soon to start planning a wedding, but hey were doing it and we have a little over a year left until the big day!

Once you have been engaged for a while the fuzzy warm feeling soon passes and the realisation that you have A LOT to plan, make, organise, do etc becomes very overwhelming and you may catch yourself in a huge ball of WTF, so before you find yourself drowning in taffetta and confetti, grab yourself a cup of tea, glass of wine, maybe even grab the bottle and have a read through my advice & tips for brides to be.. 

Theme

This might not seem like the obvious choice for where to begin your planning but it can actually help more so than you think!

We wanted a 'rustic barn theme' so that whittled a lot of potential venues down and made the start of planning a whole lot easier once we had decided a theme!

There are a lot of different choices and styles for wedding themes, personally we kept our choice true to our personalities, but if you are struggling for ideas, Pinterest is the best place for a whole ton of theme inspo! 

Venue

You've chosen your theme, this is where the fun happens and you can finally go and visit your potential venues!

We settled on the first and only venue we saw purely because it just felt right, but you may be a very indecisive person and struggle with choosing the 'perfect' venue, have a look at local venues to you, fitting within your theme: i.e 'rustic barn weddings in Kent'..

I suggest whittling the list down to your favourite 3-5 venues and view those only to begin with, just to not over complicate things.

Liase as much as you can with the wedding planners that are dedicated to those venues and search for someone who is helpful, yet assertive as you know she/he will get shit done on your big day! 

How you gonna do it?

Now this relates purely to how you are as a person, are you someone who loves being crafty? 

Are you a super organised person who has to have every single things absolutely perfect and wont have it any other way? 

Maybe you're super relaxed, yet know what you want and will happily hand everything over to a wedding co-ordinator? 

Having your decision on how your going to go forward with the whole experience is invaluable, personally I have struggled to decide how much control I want over the day, i'm a complete perfectionist & also very crafty, but how much homemade is too much homemade.. 

Budget

This is one of the most important aspects of the entire day, and will also help you decide the last section, do you have an unlimited budget and money is no object when it comes to your big day or are you a budget bride and saving every month to have the wedding of your dreams (yep I'm the latter)!

Sit down with your fiancé and grab a notebook and draft out every single thing you want to be a part of your wedding day and a rough estimate of how much you want to spend on each of those things, total them up and work out if that is an achievable amount for you to spend on the day itself, this is more for the bride who has a budget but it helps either way as it will just set you out for exactly where you need to be savings wise! 

Once you have totalled everything up divide this out over the number of months before your big day (minus the month before as most vendors expect payment upfront around 3-4 weeks before the wedding date) and this will be the amount you need to put aside every month! e.g £5670 ÷ 15 months = £378 per month!

With our estimation's we made them slightly more expensive then we would expect to be paying, therefore allowing us to save extra and then use anything left over to go towards our honeymoon, savings, houses etc etc!

Don't sweat the small stuff

I know this probably sounds so much easier said than done, so I went to Facebook and asked fellow brides and brides to be, the all important question, what advice do you have for us wedding planners?

The feedback I had back was invaluable and the majority of ladies said "not to worry so much over the day at hand & to enjoy it!

Don't worry about others expectations, who to invite (it really is who YOU both want there, not who is expected to be invited), who will and wont sit with who and all the other little niggly things we know and expect that come with wedding planning!

Instead celebrate the enjoyment of the build up, cherish the engagement photos with your partner, have girly evenings with a bottle of wine making table decorations, invites and bouquets, browse pinterest and dream up your perfect wedding day and then take all the inspo you can and turn it into your own take on those beautifully edited photos!

Wedding planning is hard, and hell i'm a long way off of even being close to the finish line yet, but i'm definitely taking as much advice and help along the way I can and I hope that i've helped you in the process too! 

Let me know about your own wedding plans, ideas & what you have in place already, i'd love to hear all about your stories and make some fellow wedding planning friends! 

the life of a twenty-something millenial

Did you ever hear your parents say "I wish I could go back to school, I wish id done enough" and think NAH, no you don't, and then hobble back to your bedroom with MSN nudges chiming in the background with a little giggle under your breath?

Well fast forward about 13 years later, sitting in living room of the flat I share with my wonderful fiancé & life partner of 9 years, the world at my feet & here I am saying those exact words my Mum mentioned to me when I was that aggy teenager and think "DAMN GIRL you were fucking right"!

My twenties have been a constant slur of feeling like *that girl* who's on a constant merry go round, waking up in the morning feeling like i'm going to own the world & be the next #GIRLBOSS, to then crying into my bubble bath, being a complete sap of life.
Its been a constant slur of emotions of negativity, positivity, frustration and pure un-adultness and not knowing exactly where I want to take my life, I have career aspirations, personal life goals and also the odd occasion of wanting to divulge an entire galaxy caramel bar and ngaf!

For those of you who follow my blog, you'll maybe also know that I make YouTube videos & this is something that is a HUGE passion of mine, I absolutely love it, but that also doesn't go without saying that is really bloody hard to feel a part of a community that you are equally so distant from, having a conversation with my mum the other day made me realise how much we have come to depend on instant gratification from the likes of social media 'influencers' alike and how we thrive off of a world we have absolutely no true understanding of!

I lay awake till sometimes 3am at night, scrolling my feeds & pulling my screen down numerous times every ten minutes, with the hopes of a new subscriber, a few more instagram followers and tweets in my notification box, realising i don't quite live the life of the other girls on my feeds, a holiday to the Maldives? YEP hand me the ticket please, Gucci Dionysus, i'll have one of those to make my outfit posts trend!

Life as a Millennial is a constant battle of trying to live your normal life and do you, whilst living your life through a lens of other peoples and constantly measuring yourself up with the hopes of living that life one day!
Now I'm totally not knocking this life, its the life I want, of course it is, I'm blogging for fun and I make videos for the love of doing so, but u wanna hand me a paycheque for that too so I can go shopping for some new Haul content, sure!

Its a constant battle of fear of never being good enough, even re-reading this blog post right now, I'm worrying is this content good enough?
Never matching up to those you aspire and follow every day of your life, never feeling quite like your content reaches that level like those bloggers you see in the hammocks on beaches on insta, but thats ok! thats really fucking ok!

We are human, we are normal everyday people, who live everyday normal lives and thats ok!
I want this post to be motivation for your day, motivation to get up and hug your partners, hug your cats/dogs, tell your parents you love them & love your damn self, love yourself so hard.
You are good enough, you will always be good enough, have your dreams & push them, push those boundaries so hard they might break, but know when to take a back seat and chill with that galaxy bar, in the bath if you really fancy and realise there is more to life then relishing in the lives of others achievements!
Realise how far you've come in life and how much more potential you have,  do you & do it well!

an affordable amazing cleanser?

If, like me, you are someone who spends a considerable amount of money on skincare and it all runs out at the same time, leaving your bank card sighing at the thought of yet another contactless payment being run through the till - sound familiar? 

Yep, well that was my life & I knew something had to give as my penchant for Space NK was definitely wearing thin! 

Being a 26 year old with limited funds, yet a love for high-end products left me wondering where exactly I could've taken myself and then one day I stumbled across a Liz Earle counter, now i've seen Cleanse & Polish many a time before, its a product you've probably heard every female and their mother mention atleast once in your lifetime, and you may have even own a bottle or 2 aswell, but me, nope, i'd never even considered trying it.

I have this thing where, if something is too 'hyped' up I just wont buy it, am I the only person who does this?

But something this time caught my eye, maybe it was the very significantly lower price tag or the huge bright flash of aqua running in columns along its counter, either way I picked up my bottle and headed over to the till with my bank card squealing with a happy face and brought my first ever bottle.

Now fast forward about 5/6 months and I've gone through around 3 bottles or so now & still loving it, however i'd been really wanting to go on a skincare splurge, but my ever relenting anxious stomach told me I couldn't, so off I trailed down to boots to pick up a fresh bottle of c&p, this time I thought, seeing as I fancied a change, to go for the Rose & Lavender and very excited by the prospect of feeling like I was trying a new product even though, really it was exactly the same just with a fancy new scent! 

Anyway, I'm totally digressing from the actual reason why you clicked on this post, are you bored yet? If not heres a snippet on the actual cleanser at hand.. 

For a start, the bottle is absolute genius, you literally pump it straight into your hands which makes it so easy and mess free to use, also no wastage which is a win win imo, the cleanser is then dispersed straight into your fingers and onto dry skin you massage the creamy cleanser all over your face, even on the eye area which is amazing for me, as, even though I luuvvvv my skincare, i'm also incredibly bloody lazy and I need a product that removes everything in one go, none of this extra eye makeup remover thanks, so, yes it works wonders with removing all traces of makeup/dirt in one cleanse, however I always like to go in with a second.

For me the ingredients in this product are just so perfect for what I need in a cleanser, the beeswax & cocoa butter help sooth my dehydrated and dry skin & rosemary oil helps repair, especially if I have a flare up of acne, i'm a picker, and this helps massively reduce the healing time and redness of the actual area - another reason I love it!

When removing the product, I like to use the (warm) muslin cloths that come with the product as they are gently exfoliating and great at removing any last traces of debris from my face without stripping it or making me feel as if I've literally rubbed sandpaper on my face, or 2-3 times a week i'll add in my Clarisonic for extra cleansing and the two work REALLY well together, my skin feels absolutely amazing, just like I've had a thoroughly good facial!

Now i'm aware this is a rather rambly post but I feel like this product really deserves all the praise it can get, I really feel like it has transformed my dull, lifeless face into one that is more healthier and radiant, which makes me one chuffed little pea!

I can safely say that I think Cleanse & Polish will remain a firm staple in my bathroom cabinet for a little while longer, maybe I should delve into trying some more from the brand? 

Do you have any recommendations? Not that I need to add anymore products into my home, but a few more can't help surely? 

Frankie xo