The Liebster Award.

Hello there lovelies

I was recently nominated twice for the Leibster Award by Kyla from Afternoons in my LBD and Ellie and Brooke from Ginger and the Blonde. I thought I would do the two sets of questions in one post rather than separate posts. So here we go….

The Rules.

·      Make a post about the Leibster Award and thank the blogger who nominated you

·      Write 11 interesting things about yourself

·      Answer the 11 questions created by the blogger who nominated you

·      Nominate 11 other bloggers (who have less than 200 followers) and notify them about the nomination

·      Write 11 new questions for your nominees

11 facts about me.

1.I hate the number 3, I don’t know why I just don’t like it. If I have a biscuit I have to have 2 or 4 but I can’t have 3 or bad things will happen (they won’t).

2.I can’t stand dried fruit, I wish I liked it because Christmas puddings and fruit cake look lovely but just the thought of it being in my mouth makes me heave.

3.I don’t own a single onsie, never even tried one on.

4.I’m a qualified midwife.

5.I have 2 children (girls).

6.I love Chinese food.

7.I love things with birds on (hence my blog).

8.I hate it when people are late.

9.I can’t get into an unmade bed, if I don’t make it all day I’ll make it before I get into it at night.

10.I love the smell of washing that has been dried outside.

11.I watch way too much tele.

Questions from Kyla.

1.If you could only wear one make-up product for the rest of your life what would it be and why? (e.g. mascara, lipgloss etc)

Mascara, I think it completely changes the way my eyes look, I don’t feel like I’m wearing makeup without mascara.

2.Who is your favorite high-fashion designer?

I don’t really go for designer clothes, as I just prefer high street fashion. But I love Louboutin shoes.

3.If you could live anywhere in the entire world where would you go?

Australia. I love their way of life and could happily adopt that lifestyle.

4.What cities have you been to? Which was your favorite and why!

Really boring but London and Paris. When I go on holiday I tend to go on relaxing beach type holidays. I love London and Paris equally.

5.Who do you look up to?

My parents, always there when I need help or advice.

6.What is your all time favorite piece of clothing and when did you get it?

Black skinny jeans from Miss Selfridge. I got my first pair in 2012 and have bought 2-3 pairs since.

7.If you could announce one thing to the entire world, what would you say?

I’ve got a blog, because nobody I know knows I write a blog.

8.Who is your celebrity crush?

Brendon Urie from Panic! At The Disco, OMG I’m totally in love with him.

9.What is your favorite make-up brand?

MAC- enough said.

10.What would you order if you were at a 5 star restaurant and everything was free?

Starter- Calamari

Main- Beef Rendang curry

Dessert- Tarte Tatin

Or I would use it as an opportunity to try things I never have before.

11.And finally, who would you choose to spend a day with if you could pick anyone dead or alive? 

(I know its very "middle school essay" but I think it's fun)

Brendon Urie- I could listen to his voice all day or Jennifer Worth.

Questions from Ginger and the Blonde.

1.What is your favourite thing about blogging?

Trying to be creative with photos and the support from the blogging community, if I've got a question I know I can just ask on twitter and will normally get a response.

2.Cats or dogs?

I love all animals, I’m a real animal person. I had cats growing up and loved them so much and I’ve got a dog now (a little 4 year old Chihuahua) and love her to bits, I think I’m more of a dog person as I can’t walk past a dog without stroking it, I just love their little personalities.

3.What is your favorite film?

Probably Forest Gump (I love Tom Hanks) but I also love The Notebook, The Holiday and The Devil Wears Prada.

4.What are the best books you have read recently?

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch, it’s absolutely brilliant, I’m reading the second one now.

5.If you could travel anywhere in the world, where would you go?

I’d love to go all over, but mostly Australia to go diving and the Far East (mainly for the food).

6.What is your all time favourite beauty product?

Probably YSL Touche Éclat concealer.

7.Tea or coffee?

Definitely tea, I love it, I easily drink 10 cups a day even in summer.

8.Who inspires you?

Its more a case of what doesn’t inspire me, people who actually do something about their lives rather than sitting there and expecting things to happen without them putting any effort in. You reap what you sow.

9.What is your guilty pleasure?

Dance Moms, I’m so addicted to that programme, if you follow me on twitter you will have seen my tweets about it. It’s just completely addictive.

10.If you could meet anyone, alive or dead, who would it be and why?

Jennifer Worth because I think she would be really interesting to talk to, Florence Nightingale or someone that was on the Titanic.

11.What is your favourite Lush product?

Confession time- I’ve never tried any Lush products. I have really sensitive skin and it all seems so perfumed that just walking past a shop makes me itch, I’d love to try some stuff though as it all smells lovely.

Thankyou very much to those who nominated me, I’m very flattered. I’ve been having trouble finding people to nominate due to the 200 follower rule and people being nominated several times before but they are….

A Splash of Beauty

Wonderful Flowering

Madeleines Little Blog

Amelia Holly

The Fairly Pale

Four Blue Mondays

A Beautiful Delight

Darbx

Simone a Belle

Daisy-Dew

Heart Ocean Secrets

My questions for them are

1.Whats your best childhood memory?

2.Whats the best holiday you’ve ever been on?

3.Whats your favourite way to relax?

4.Whats your favourite season?

5.What are your favourite blogs to read?

6.Who is your favourite YouTuber?

7.Whats your favourite makeup brand?

8.How much do you think you spend on beauty products/clothes each month?

9.What would be your dream job?

10.What would you/have you/are you studying at university?

11.Do you prefer Sunday roasts or BBQs?

Hope you enjoyed this post.

Until next time

A Little Escentric

Hello there lovelies.

I saw the Escentric Molecules Molecule 01 fragrance sometime last year, either on a blog or YouTube video and thought it sounded quite interesting then I kind of forgot about it. On a recent shopping trip I had it in mind to buy but it wasn’t set in stone that I would buy it. I noticed it in Liberty and decided to try it. 

It’s got one single ingredient (“iso E Super”) that makes it change its smell depending on who wears it creating a scent unique to that person. This is what drew me to it in the first place, having a scent that was unique to me sounded good. It doesn’t really have much of a scent when you smell it on its own, but when I wear it it’s quite strong, I only do a couple of squirts on my neck and I can smell it all day, I can never normally smell my own perfume on me, so it gets top points for lasting power. The smell is definitely unique, not like another perfume I’ve smelt. For me its quite a heavy woody musky smell which are scents I don’t usually like, I would normally go for light floral scents. In hindsight I should have sprayed it on myself and seen what it was like for the day instead of just buying it (lesson learned). I only got the 30ml travel size, which doesn’t come with a lid; this puzzles me because why would a travel bottle not have a lid?? I have to keep it in its box. Other people have said it smells nice like fabric conditioner and clean washing, now I don’t mind that but its hard to tell if people smell the same scent that I do and from reports from others it would appear that they don’t as no one has said it smells woody or musky. 

I like the concept of it creating scents unique to the person wearing it but I don’t really like what I smell on myself although it seems to be different to what others smell. There is another version of this fragrance called Escentric 01 which is apparently a bit lighter and I may give that a try but I will spray a tester at the start of the day and see how I feel about it after wearing it for a few hours then make my decision on whether to make a purchase or not. Although it is described as having warm musk and woody tones therefore I’m not sure if this will tickle my fancy either. I also know Molecule 01 can be layered with other scents which I haven’t tried yet so may see how it is after trying that. I don’t think it’s the best scent for me, especially for spring, which means a new fragrance purchase is on the cards very soon. If you like musky fragrances then I would recommend this product if you like lighter fragrances I would recommend trying it out before you buy it.

Have you ever used this perfume? What did you think? Have you got any suggestions for a nice spring perfume I could try?

Until next time

Tips for writing a dissertation

Hello there lovelies

*SUPER LONG POST ALERT*

For this post I thought I’d offer some tips if you’re writing a dissertation (or Undergraduate Major Project). I completed my BSc degree last year so the experience is still rather fresh in my memory. Firstly- I feel your pain but keep going you’re almost there. If you’re a third year student you may have already started or even finished your dissertation and if you’re a second year student you may want to start thinking about a subject to write it on now as it will come around quicker than you think, these tips can also be applied to other essays not just a dissertation. Now I’m no expert but these are just some things I picked up when I was writing my dissertation that I wish I’d known before starting it. I’m not a natural academic, I had to work really hard to get my marks and I wasn’t very good at keeping myself focused. I always had something more important to do than writing my essay. It was much more important that I colour coded my socks than sat down and did research even though the little voice in my head kept nagging me to do it.

So these are my tips….

1.Stating the obvious but DON’T leave it until the last minute, it will be reflected in your writing and you won’t be able to produce your best work resulting in you loosing precious marks. Start early and do little and often.

2.Keep all correspondence between you and lecturers. Keep all emails in your inbox, don’t delete them, it’s proof that communication has taken place, if you’ve asked for help and haven’t received it you’ve got the proof that you’ve asked for it and didn’t get a response. Or if you’ve been given a piece of advice and it turns out to be wrong you can show that you was advised to do/not to do that.

3.Get to grips with referencing. Take on board feedback from previous essays, if your unsure most university libraries have staff that can help with referencing, use them.

4.Take regular breaks. There’s nothing more soul destroying than staring at a computer screen for hours and not typing anything, if you get writers block walk away from your computer, make a cup of tea, pop to the shop, you’ll probably find that something will soon pop into your head to write once the pressures off.

5.Reference as you go along, it saves time at the end. Writing a reference list from scratch can take hours or even days and is sooooo tedious. I have 2 word documents open and whenever I use a reference in text I type it in my reference list straight away. This will ensure that no references are missed and you can just copy and paste your completed list over to your finished project at the end.

6.Include a bibliography, some people see them as a pointless exercise but it shows you’ve done the leg work when conducting research, if you’ve found a really good source but just don’t know how to utilise it put it in the bibliography.

7.Ask for help. If you’re really struggling don’t suffer in silence go to a lecturer and explain, its what they get paid (quite a lot of money) to do. Also use support staff like student services as they will be able to offer advice if your not sure what route to take. This also links back to point 2.

8.Don’t underestimate how long editing will take. Allow a good week to get it exactly how you want it to look. Front cover contents page abstract etc and aim to have it 100% complete and ready to hand in at least a week before its due. This allows for any last minute alterations or unforeseen circumstances.

9.Have a day off. We all need a break; I wouldn’t work at weekends so I could do shopping, washing, housework, catching up with friends etc so I didn’t have to think about it during the week when I needed to be writing. I also wouldn’t work past 9pm as this gave me an hour or two to wind down before bed so I could get a good nights sleep before starting again the next day.

10.Don’t loose faith. It may feel like its never going to end but it will and once its finished you’ll feel so much better. I think the whole campus must have heard my sigh of relief when I handed it in.

11.Break it down into sections rather than one 10,000 word essay (I’m assuming most are 10,000 words for undergraduate). The thought of writing 10,000 words filled me with dread but when I broke it down into sections and thought about what I wanted to say in each section it wasn’t so bad. I think I did something like 5 sections at around 2000 words per section and made each one link so it flowed nicely.

12.Avoid distractions; plan them for your day off. Explain to people that your writing so can’t do x y z but you’re up for celebrating when you’re finished. Most people will understand, especially if they have done a degree, they were in that position once.

13.Keep a notebook handy, even if you are having a day off. You’ll think of the best lines to write at the most inconvenient time and if you don’t write them down straight away you’ll forget it- trust me, the amount of times I thought of some excellent things when I was just nodding of to sleep or driving. Even write it in a text message and send it to yourself if you’re out and about.

14.Save it everywhere possible, memory sticks, external hard drives etc. I would email it to myself then you can always access it from any computer. If something should happen to your computer you can log in to your emails from another machine and get to your precious work.

15.Proof read, by the time I’d finished mine I could probably recite the whole thing from memory the amount of times I’d read it but what may sound good one day may not make sense the next when looking at it with fresh eyes. If it doesn’t make sense to you then it won’t make sense to the reader. Try reading a sentence out loud to see if it sounds right or reading it out loud to someone else.

16.Don’t be ambiguous. Write clearly so the reader can understand, you don’t get marks for using super big words that sound clever. I was always told to write as though the reader has no knowledge of the subject, ask yourself, will they be well informed on the subject by the time they have read your piece.

17.Once you’ve handed it in forget about it or you’ll send yourself crazy if you keep thinking about it and trying to predict your marks. What’s done is done. I worried myself sick and convinced myself I’d failed one of my exams and I ended up getting in the 90s for it, so its not worth thinking about. Just enjoy the freedom until results day.

I don’t think I’ve said anything that you probably don’t already know but sometimes it’s just nice to know that someone else can relate to what you’re going through. Sorry this is a bit of a monster post, if you got this far- high five. And hang on in there; if I can do it believe me when I say anyone can. And lastly GOODLUCK.

Until next time