Forget the times of your distress, but never forget what they taught you.

This is a very quick update post on a couple of random things! 

First of all, my patchwork quilt! I did quite well up until November with my quilt and this is the point I got to! I have finished the main pattern section, all that remains is to stitch on a cream silk border and add the padding & backing. This is all the complicated stuff, leading to the finished product and I am waiting till Summer to complete it when I am relaxed, as I have far too much work on at the moment!

As always a couple of cute photos of my doggies! The above picture is obviously of Ella, oh sorry could you not tell?! Yes here she is, at 8 weeks old trying to get my mum's westie to play with her. It is so funny now as Molly is towered by Ella, and still tries to boss her around despite her miniature stature! I love looking back at old baby photos of Elle and seeing how much she has grown over the last couple of years, my first born! 

Here is the most beautiful boy in the world! We were walking along the river and he just looked so handsome I had to take his photo, which he happily obliged. My gosh, he is so photogenic it is a serious problem as I think all my friends and family on Facebook are getting a bit tired of Lincoln's face. "Here's Lincoln smiling on a bridge, on the sofa, asleep upside on the floor, sitting, standing, walking, eating." - too obsessed with his cuteness, but not this extreme I am happy to announce.

And finally, a hilarious psychology Meme, this really made me laugh and truly brightened my day. I then went on to find many more psychology jokes that made my fiancé wish we were no longer together. Then he realised, to understand them I must be smart, so ran back to me - yay!

Just thought I'd write a couple of posts today to make up for my lack of presence over the last few months - wow my last post was June? Lord. If you have not seen, I have made another blog for my psychology stuff if you fancy a read the link is below :) 

http://social-developmental-psychologist.blogspot.co.uk 

Lots of Love,

Lauren 

xoxoxoxoxo

Think of all the beauty still around you, and be happy.

Now I know I am not a beauty blogger, it is not why I write my blog but all the products above take pride of place in my everyday makeup bag and besides my benefit brow zings palette hiding in the corner, they have been new to my life since December & I thought I would share them with you all. So I will take you through the order in which I pop these onto my canvas & tell you about how amazing they are!

♥ Rimmel Fix & Perfect Pro Primer - I have never used a primer before so never felt the need to buy one. I got this free with the foundation and thank god I did as I have dry skin so my foundation often highlights any flakiness throughout the day. So this primer is fab at providing a moisturising barrier between my skin and foundation, so it'a smooth base for my paint to go on! Gorgeous.

♥ Rimmel Wake Me Up Concealer in 010 Ivory - I have switched up my routine since using this concealer and now put this on before my foundation, as it is slightly yellow toned for me, so on top of my foundation it looks odd, but underneath it cancels out the blue under my eyes and perfectly covers up any redness from break outs (which I seem to have in abundance since Christmas)! I am a realist, I will not be saying 'this concealer completely hides my breakouts' - anyone who says clearly do not have bad breakouts as most spots I have cannot disappear, they just had to be managed! This concealer helps to cover my scars from previous breakouts and alters the colour so they stand out less, but of course you can still tell as they are a different texture to the rest of my skin! 

♥ Rimmel Lasting Finish Foundation in 010 Light Porcelain - I swapped out my MAC Face & Body foundation for this, as I could not stand the price tag for the foundation (I remember the bottle being much bigger the lsat time I bought it? May have been delusional) However, this foundation claims to last 25 hours, I disagree, but I do only have to touch up after about 5/6 hours so less worrying if I am having long days out of the house i.e. university days. This foundation does feel lovely going on, and it claims to be hydrating and light-weight, so for a dry skin girl like me, I am willing to give it a go! I chose this foundation because Rimmel had introduced a new colour to their range - 010 (named differently amongst various products). This is the first foundation that has matched my skin tone, it also neutralises the slight yellow tone from the concealer, so for high-street price, I am very happy with this foundation. 

♥ Collection Pressed Powder in 03 Translucent - Not colourless, in fact slightly yellow toned, but this is a very very affordable powder that I use on my T- Zone, around my nose and on my chin to take away any shine from my foundation. Due to my recent outbreaks my skin seems to be slightly oiler than it has been before, so this product has been a miracle worker!

♥ Benefit BrowZings Palette in Light - I have completely used up my wax in this product, and love it. I do not have to do too much maintenance with my brows and tend to just sweep this wax over to maintain any strays and I am ready to go. I, of course like most, have a couple of slight gaps in my eyebrows I would love to fill, but unfortunately the powder in this palette is far too dark for my eyebrows despite being called light - think scouse brow, mhmm not good on me. I am very tempted to try the drug-store dupe for this product by sleek :).

♥ Stila Smudgestick Waterproof Eye-Liner in Damsel - This is definitely my favourite eye-liner, it is light enough to add subtle depth to the eyes, but could also be applied heavier to create a more dramatic look. Absolutely perfect, will not be returning to black pencils any time soon. Despite slight smudging at the outer corner of my eye after hours of wear, I have no complaints about this product!

♥ Barry M Liquid Eyeliner in Black - I love a cat eye look and am a big fan of these pen/pot products. Think Lauren Conrad - thats the look I tend to go for day-to-day, with a simple cream eyeshadow on the lids, possible taupe shade through the crease (Naked 2 palette Foxy & Tease normally). 

♥ Soap & Glory Thick & Fast Mascara - I got this mascara for Christmas & have been using it since my trustworthy Maybelline mascara ran out. The wand is absolutely massive and does make me feel quite clownish, but it does lengthen my lashes well, and gets all the lashes in one swipe. However, recently I have noticed that the mascara has started to clog :( sadness!

♥ Rimmel Lasting Finish Lipstick by Kate, in the colour 08 - Finally, I am loving this lipstick by Kate Moss for Rimmel, it has a matte texture and is a slightly dark rose pink shade, it is beautiful and great for everyday i.e. a statement, but not too bold. I also have a red lipstick from this collection which is also amazing but sadly not in the photo, it's number 107. It is the perfect bold red lip for someone with my colouring i.e. blonde, green eyes and pale, it makes all these aspects pop as it is slightly more blue toned, fabulous!

Here is a photo of Ella trying to get in on the action by sniffing the lipstick. I think they smell goes too so cannot blame her for trying! Such a cutie.

Let's pull a silly face on the way to work! 

Enjoy your day & stop taking life so seriously.

Lots of Love,

Lauren 

xoxoxoxoxo

We're Back!

♥ We hosted Christmas for the first time this year & it was a success, woo-hoo ♥ I have started baking and cooking things from scratch like this Baileys Chocolate Cheesecake ♥ I've been trying out more adventurous make-up, this was for Russ' work night out, vamping it up ♥ A cute little shot of Linky-Bear ♥ My mum bought us matching Next Onesie's for Christmas ♥ As you can see I've barely taken it off, it's my study-wear, I had so much work over Christmas it was very depressing, Masters for you! ♥ Walking shot of the doggies, Ella now loves swimming if you cannot tell by how wet she is ♥ This is a photo of me & my sister shopping before Christmas ♥ My new love/addiction - Caramel Iced Frappe from McDonalds = Delicious ♥ I dyed my hair at home for the first time since my first year at university, it went slightly ginger but could not afford a hairdresser, sadness! ♥ This year Russ & I watched our first Super Bowl! ♥ Ella watched too, (Lincoln slept) but she was hiding under the blanket, looking so cosy! ♥ Here's a snap of Russ having cuddles with the puppies, they are so spoilt with love ♥ We have great news, my mum has helped us buy a house & here Ella is demonstrating how much she wants to just move! ♥ We have spent soooo much money at Ikea, think we've kept them in business this year ♥ Finally, I started a new blog which I hope you can all see called 'The Developmental Psychologist' where I just discuss psychological research and ideas that I come across during my studies and share them. ♥

Once again, apologies for my absence, as you can see we have had a lot going on over the last few months! 

Lots of Love, 

Lauren 

xoxoxoxoxo

3rd June - Diet Diary

So today Russ & I went for a massive food shop as that time came where too many things needed replacing. Oh Tesco how expensive do you want to be? We normally shop in Aldi but Tesco have a much better rang of everything :( So £96.00 down we have a ridiculously healthy fridge.

So today for breakfast I had shredded wheat with a little bit of sugar -  calories

Mid day snack of prawn cocktail crisps - 130 calories. ( anyone else noticed they've made the packets tiny now? Probably to make it seem like they're full instead of completely empty like the old packs!)

Lunch time - I made a bacon vegetable salad (I hate regular salad bleugh!) I used spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans and sprouts, with pancetta and a couple of new potatoes.  -  calories

Dinner - We will be having chicken breast, with sweet potato fries and baked beans! Mainly because I've already used my achieved my healthy 5 a day already and fancy being naughty.

Exercise-wise = I am taking the puppies for a walk each this afternoon so about 1 hour of walking and I'll be doing my 30 day shred routine again which burns around 130-140 calories.

My Fitness Pal tells me I only have to work out to burn 940 calories a week to lose 1 pound a week in combination with a healthier diet of 1200 calories or less.

My aim is to be slimmer by my 21st birthday & graduation!! :)

2nd June - Today is a new day!!

So I've been really depressed lately about my weight, I mentioned a few months ago that I hated how much weight I had put on but with all the university stress, I had no motivation or energy to do anything about it. So whilst I'm sat around applying for jobs, I'm going to start today!

I've done well so far, I woke up motivated, not just for exercise but in general. I suffer with depression clinically, and it often comes in waves so some days its just difficult waking up, let alone going for a jog. I'm doing a 5 day trial at the gym by me soon, I just have to buy ink for my printer to print it off! But today I'm getting the house all sorted and getting our life back on track as it all got ahead of me during the last wave. I'm going to be using my fitness pal to calculate my calories & i'm going to use my blog to keep a track of how I'm getting on! Because now my laptop is fixed I have no excuse :)


It's now 1.30pm - I've had breakfast and lunch!

Breakfast - I had an egg and two pieces of toast - 222 calories

Lunchtime - I had spagetti with a stilton and parmesan sauce (naughty) - 524 calories.


Dinner - I had breaded cod with broccoli, cauliflower, mange tout and baby sweetcorn.

I did have a late snack - naughty! I had low calorie ice-cream with some sprinkles!


I did my 30 day shred workout which I started today, and I did a tone-it-up arm workout! Feeling very good about myself :)

Irritated with ASOS!

Mini rant alert! I ordered my benefit moisturiser from ASOS last week, and since I've moved I added in my new address whilst placing the order and then checked out. What I was not aware of was that even though you select 'add new address for delivery' it doesn't automatically send to that address. So even though I've moved to a different city, my moisturiser was being delivered to my old address. So immediately in the morning when I realised I contacted the customer service team - who only operate on twitter, lots of conspiracy about how they don't like to speak to customers on the phone. Easier to stop speaking to a person online than hang up on someone on the phone..

Anywhoo, it had only been 12 hours since I placed the order, and my package was still being packed for delivery. 2 days later, it was despatched & I was told that they were not able to change the address. Even though the bloody package was in their possession for 2 days. Simply don't send it out. I asked to cancel the order, because at ASOS you pay straight away even before receiving the package. After a long winded and angry series of tweets, they said they would attempt to contact the individual courier.. of which I've heard nothing. They told me I would need to get in contact with the current occupants myself. Even though they apologised for the mistake their system had made, it's bloody ridiculous. My life is pretty much crap at the moment, and all I wanted was a new moisturiser to try & sort my skin out, and not even that can go right! Plus unhelpful customer service drives me crazy!!

Really need to sort themselves out - will definitely be driving to the nearest city to purchase my moisturiser from house of fraser instead of bothering to order with them again. Meant to be for convenience, and it's just caused massive stress. Now I have to go through the irritating process of contacting my bank and making them get my money back.

xoxoxoxox

What does the future hold?

I had an amazing dream last night, so much so I snoozed my alarm three times and Russ left me to sleep an extra hour as I refused to wake up! What was this dream about? Well something quite broody actually, I dreamt that we had a baby, and she was 2 weeks old at the time. The entire dream consisted of using going shopping for her new outfits, according to my dream self I only purchased two onsies for her, and she'd been living in them for two whole weeks - evil mother. She had short blonde curly hair (like Russ when he was younger) and green eyes, very adorable...

It's not a surprise that I then woke up saddened that it was not reality and that Russ had not impregnated me. I mean I'm 21, but my news feed on facebook is full of people who have got pregnant younger than I am, and are living with babies and posting all their snaps of their happy little family. So a girl is definitely going to be feeling a slight tinge of jealousy even if she has two puppy babies of her own. This led to an hour of me walking round like a mother looking for her child, until Russ told me 'not for a few more years Lauren', then I had to go for a jog with Ella to get it out of my head. We had a lurvely time, I love walks with Ella through the country, we walk for 95% and jog for 5% but it gets my heart rate up and she loves the little bursts of running. Plus it's a beautiful day so I'm feeling much happier!

Anywhoo! What does the future ACTUALLY hold for us?

Well as you may know we moved into our new rented house in March, and we're staying here for at least a year and a half till September 2014. Then the road in unclear!! Which is exciting & terrifying at the same time. I am doing a masters in Applied Child Psychology which takes 1 year and ends in September, which will prepare me for doing my Phd, till then I have to find somewhere that focuses on my speciality and apply a year in advance?! HAHAHA - stress. Whilst Russ is maybe applying for masters, but thinks he will just work full time for a year and save up money for his studies :) it will be strange if we're both not studying because that's all we've ever known each other to do!

No luck as yet with the temp agency, they've called me about a few jobs, but never got back to me. Slightly disheartening, I did apply for a job which I thought would be lots of fun, and hopefully they will get back to me - fingers crossed please!! Plus I need to get back to taking photos now that it's becoming sunny again, for some reason when it rains I lose all motivation to take snaps of how depressing life is! Here's a couple of photos for you :)

Here's Linky sitting on the back seat for the first time! Russ' mum came to visit, and we took Lincoln to a massive car boot sale, he did amazingly well considering he's scared of people sometimes and he let lots of children stroke him :) very proud of my big baby!

As I said Russ' mum came to stay with us for a weekend, and on the Saturday my mum also came to visit. Together they helped us create a window seat for our Lounge! It's a pastel silky pink to tie in with the theme and it's so comfy and padded. Amazing was two ladies can accomplish when they put their heads together. 

My patchwork quilt is also on it's way, very exciting! I am having a break from it, as soon as my exams finished I got really into doing my patchwork, but then Russ' mum visited and told me my stitches were not strong enough and that I needed to re-do them, see how many there are?! Not impressed :( But! At least almost 1/7 is finished, there will be 6 more sections like this, and they will then be stitched together to make a quilt. I felt like this was the easiest way to make the quilt without having a massive piece to work with :) Very excited!!!!

Lots of love,

Lauren :)

xoxoxoxooxox