I need some 'Happinose'...

Do they even sell that anymore? I really, really hope so. I'm gonna go on a hunt for it in a minute before I come back and attempt the gym for about 5 minutes before deciding that 'Sneezy' is not really a good exercise look. Because, hurray, I am totally full of a cold. Ugh. It attacked me on Thursday and although it's getting better it's just at that proper cold stage now where my nose hurts because it's been scrubbed at with a tissue so much. Lovely image eh? So I am in dire need of some nose rescuing substance that I can slather all over it tonight and sit in my pyjamas eating cake and watching tv. I haven't been out with friends in the evening for over a week, because I fail dismally due to being ill - the boyfriend on the other hand seems to never stop at the minute (usually much the other way round!). I'm not sure whether this is making me feel worse, or whether I'm just enjoying the quiet time to get early nights with tv and cosmo in! :D

On the plus side, 8 of us went to Pizza Express yesterday, and had a fantastic Sunday lunch. All the better because it only came to £7.50 each, because I had £50 in vouchers that needed using up :p And the best bit? The waitress came over after everyone but me had got their food, and apologised for accidentally squishing my pizza - which I was fine with anyway, but no, they'd already put another one in the oven. So she gave me the original to 'nibble on'  and said she'd swap it for the proper one when it was ready. So in true student style, I wolfed down as much as possible and called in 'nibbling' and when they brought my fresh pizza, they let me keep the first one. It would only have been thrown out, so 2 pizzas for the price of one for me! Student life is great...

So tonight I will mostly be eating pasta, watching Gossip Girl (yay new series back on ITV2!!!) with cake, and turning my phone off in between ad breaks so that the boy cannot harass me once  he gets back from dinner, as he's pleasantly promised to. Sounds good to me.

(Is it only me that's desperately excited to see this?)

Feel-good Friday

Oops at my total lack of posting since last Friday. Ah well, if I remember this every week, at least that's one a week right? Always look on the bright side :p With that in mind, here goes  this weeks good stuff...

1. I got the most fabulous early night (kind of) last night. I was in bed just after nine, tucked up with a copy of Cosmo, and hopefully beating this cold off. Yay. And the boyfriend didn't text me past 10 (okay, apart from once at nearly 11...) because he knew I was going to sleep, so he wouldn't wake me, bless him, even though usually when he goes out on a Thursday I get at least one text at around 1am.

2. I've, yet again, kept on top of the work I wanted to do this week, so I'm still on track! My friends and I do like to bitch about how we want to swap to Ancient History so we don't have to do all this work but it's not so bad really.

3. Especially when you're doing Ovid! 50 lines of Ovid (in about an hour!) was a big achievement today, and it made me realise that I actually really love his writing. Yay.

4. Next weekend one of my best friends is popping in on her way back to St Andrews so we can go shopping and hot chocolate/cocktail drinking and gossiping. I genuinely cannot wait.

5. The weekend after that my boyfriend will be here! :D We're both ridiculously excited for this, planning what to do and where to go. Well, okay, I'm trying to plan, and he doesn't care what we do because he's just so happy to be coming, but still. Eek. There will be eating out and drinking decent wine in the flat and just talking properly. It feels like both next to no time and forever since we were last together, and I can't wait. At all.

6. The week after that (I know, my February is getting busy!) my parents are coming up for a few days and we've booked tickets to go and see the pandas at the zoo! I'm really hoping they're out, because if they're inside you can't see them, and I will be gutted if that's the case.

7. My boyfriend's mum sent me a little parcel on Monday with some slippers and photographs from over Christmas in it, which are all now stuck on my wall. Well, not the slippers.

8. I've acquired £50 of Pizza Express vouchers from the boyfriend, because they have to be used by the end of Jan, and there isn't a Pizza Express in Huddersfield (what is this madness!?) so I'm going for Sunday lunch with friends which will be great!

9. Even though I have a silly cold I've not been too bad, and hopefully I'll be able to shake it off very soon. And I've still been to the gym, just for less time than usual. Very proud of myself :)

10. Last but not least, tv has been good this week. I've basically been holed up at home working/being ill, and I've  watched a good amount of Don't Tell the Bride and Pretty Little Liars :p Also, Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents is back on Wednesdays! I was so excited about that it was a little embarrassing. It's so terrible, but I love it so much. And thankfully, it just serves to make me feel lucky for having the parents I do :p

Hope you've all had a good week too, and your next is as good, if not better :D

Feel-good Friday

I've been wanting to do one of these posts for a while - I've seen them around, and I always love reading them, so here we are.

I'm pretty bad for being too hard on myself - I'm one of those people who's prone to ridiculous freak-outs about little things I think are wrong, and think everything's going to be a disaster if I'm not sure of something. Oops. But since coming back to uni last week, I've been better than I thought I would be about letting things go sometimes, so I thought I'd keep up the happy thoughts with a little post of things that are making me smile this week. I was originally going to do this on a Sunday, but I think I'll have more time on Fridays, so here goes. If I suddenly switch to Sundays, ah well, these things happen. I'm going to aim for ten things each week, which might be a bit steep, but we'll see! :)


1. I may not have done quite the amount of work I was planning on this week, but I've done enough - and the rest of my time was spent taking time off to read and watch tv :D

2. I've actually been to the gym every single day this week, since I got back to uni! Only for half an hour every day, but I'm so proud of myself. Now to keep it up for next week!

3. As a side-effect of going to the gym, I've been reading so much more recently. I finally put something other than lecture notes on my Kindle over Christmas, so I've been taking it to the gym and reading away while I exercise, with the result that I've read at least 4 books in as many days. I can see this Kindle is going to serve me very very well at uni. And it makes exercise seem much easier.

4. Today I booked my train ticket home for my Dad's birthday in March, and got upgraded to first class for the entire journey. For less than £20!

5. As of tomorrow, it will only be three weeks until the boy's Valentine's weekend trip up to see me :D

6. Speaking thereof, I went shopping yesterday (in the 10 minutes in which there decided to be a freak snowstorm, grr) and got the little present I wanted. Nothing impressive, just a little silly bit, and I still have to get a card, but it makes me smile to know I've at least got something.

7. I finished Season 1 of Pretty Little Liars today. Can't wait to start on season 2!

8. It's my friend's 19th birthday do tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to it a ridiculous amount. I'm not a massive clubbing/going out person, but I've had some of my best nights in Edinburgh with her, so it promises to be a good one.

9. I had the full day off today. 3 day weekend. Oh yeah... Okay, this is the only time it'll ever happen, but still. Besides, due to a weird tweak in our timetable this year, I've only got half the amount of Friday Latin this semester than I did last semester, which means every other week I have pretty much the whole day off (one tutorial at 12 definitely doesn't count!)


10. I made a bleedin' good stir fry for dinner, and topped it off with ginger sponge and custard, watching Don't Tell The Bride, before I head off in 2 minutes to a 'Back to Uni' house party. Life is definitely good

Tea-tree face washes

So, although I decided to veer a little a bit away from the fashion/beauty blog thing, basically because I don't know enough about it, but I will still be posting that sort of thing for sure. Today for starters, because I've been planning to write a post about my weekend since about Saturday and still haven't, so I feel bad for having no posts. So here is one!

Thought I might take a look at my day to day face products. They are... (please ignore shocking picture quality - the lighting in my room decided to get weird on me and I'm not enough of a camera genius to combat it)

Superdrug's own brand tea tree and peppermint facial wash and scrub :) I was attracted to them firstly because Superdrug had an offer on their own brand products, and I am an advertisers dream, alas. But also, I think tea tree/mint is a really refreshing smell and it really wakes me up in the morning, so for a girl who enjoys her morning shower these were really good. Also, my conditioner is tea tree and I thought it would match, but that's just my weirdness. They actually smell really good, tangy and refreshing, which is great, but I've also found that they work! I use the face wash first, and then a tiny amount of the scrub, and I've found that my poor party-abused skin has started to recover a little.

You get 150ml of 'Foaming Facial Wash' for £1.49. It lathers up really well, and once I've got it on my face it feels slightly warm, but not uncomfortable. I was worried the first time I used it, because I have fairly sensitive skin, and if something like this feels warm, I occasionally end up with a bright red face :/ Luckily, I didn't, and the warmth just seems to be it doing its thing. I really like it now, it's as though I can feel it working.

The scrub, as you can tell, is smaller, and you only get 75ml for the same price of £1.49, however, you do only use a tiny amount each time really. I've always used facial scrub type things before, so it's nice to follow up the wash with something more familiar to me - I always think that when you can feel the little beads it at least feels like you're doing some good! The granules in this are great, not too scratchy, and it leaves my skin feeling very soft and exfoliated.

Overall, for two things I picked up simply because I needed some face wash, I love these, and I will almost certainly be repurchasing them when I run out! :)

Mafia murder-mystery

I feel the need to share my terror with someone. Lucky you, eh?

Tonight, I am going to one of those murder mystery dinner/party things. Set in 1960s Soho. Involving the mafia. It sounds fun, in theory, doesn't it? Even I think it sounds fun, in theory, but the reality is I am bleedin' terrified.

It's hosted by a friend of my boyfriend's mum, and was originally just a party, which sounded great, but then they had this bright idea. I do really want to go, but can I not just hide in the corner in a pretty dress and make people cocktails while they do this whole murder mystery thing? Apparently not. Without me there won't be enough people, so I have to bite the bullet and attempt to do this whole improv/acting thing. The boyfriend does not understand, because, being an actor, this is heaven to him. I, however, do not do improv. Just no. The thought makes me want to cry. And noone will pander to me because they keep bringing up my Drama A-Level. NOT THE SAME.

At least he's tried to pick me the character that gets to wear a cocktail dress. He's done his best to make me as comfortable and happy as I could be, poor love.

This isn't even coherent, I am that worried about tonight. I am going to embarrass myself to death, I just know I am. Have any of you ever done one of these things and can put my mind at rest? Tell me I'm going to love it and have the best time ever? Ta.

I'm going to have a fantastic time. I will try my best and it will be awesome. 

I need a cup of tea.

Cupcakes and breakdowns

 

This was supposed to be a happy, shiny post about the cupcakes that I made with the cupcake maker my wonderful nan bought me for Christmas (because much as I can bake properly, my oven at university did goodness knows what to my last cake, and although edible, it wasn't altogether beautiful, so this will save both time and my sanity when in Edinburgh.) However. life conspired against me.

First, what happens when I go to university but the self-raising flour getting all weevil-y and icky? Not a good start. I will actually cry if, when I get back to Scotland, the flour in my cupboard is weevil-y. I did manage to get over myself, and find the plain flour and baking powder to attempt to rectify the situation, and was thoroughly happy again. Or close enough anyway. I had my snazzy new apron on and Disney/Evita playing loudly to sing along to, so all was looking well on the cupcake front.

I got 100g into measuring the caster sugar and realised there was a spider on the bag. And I freaked.

You know how people say they're arachnophobic, and they mean they don't like those things? I am not one of those people. I cannot even say the word. It took serious shivering to write it up there so that you all actually have an idea what I'm talking about. My boyfriend was the one who started calling them 'flabbits' because it 'sounded nicer' and now even my parents do it. They even bought me a bottle of repellent for Christmas so that I can ward them off at uni, and they stuck stickers, on which they'd written 'Flabbit,' over where it should have given the real name. It sounds stupid, but it honestly helps massively.

I am pretty certain this one was long dead (and barely the size of a fingernail) but still, I screamed, ran, and had a minor panic attack. It was not at all pretty. I just about managed to get the milk back in the fridge so I didn't ruin it, but the other accoutrements of my baking fiasco are still littering the kitchen, waiting for my mother to return from work and help me out. Because until then, I cannot go in my kitchen. Great.

So I am cupcake-less, still. Hopefully tonight will involve a clean out of the baking cupboard and the buying of some more flour so that tomorrow will be infinitely better on the cupcake front. I live in hope.

Eep, new blogger!

Ahhh, so I may actually keep up with this whole blogging thing now. I've discovered both inspiration, and the new blogger interface. Now, I'm sure most of you already found that, and I'm just very slow, but hurray, I feel like I can actually use it. This is rare. Blogger used to make me want to kill things. And I wondered why I never got into blogging...

Watch this space, I say!