Bye Bye Ombre, New Hair Colour!

I've been feeling so bored of my hair lately, the dip dye has left my ends feeling seriously dry and the brown at the top of my hair has been looking crazy dull so I decided to go for a change and colour my hair a warmer, coppery colour. I think for autumn, when I am less tanned and my skin tends to need a little extra help looking bright, a more vibrant hair shade is a welcome change.

As I am trying to save money now I have rent and bills to pay, I decided to go down the DIY colour route and I tootled off to Boots yesterday to buy myself the relevant products. I purchased L'oreal Excellence Creme in '6 Natural Light Brown' to cover the blonde at the ends and L'oreal Feria in '74 Mango - Intense Copper' to apply all over my hair after.

So as you can see from the photos it looks quite a rich, warm brown in certain lights but in natural sunlight it has a lot of copper to it. I'm not sure how I feel about it at the moment, I think it might take some getting used to. I'm fed up of my hair full stop to be honest, it has no shape to it and the temptation to just get it cut off is getting hard to ignore! 

What do you guys think? Will you be changing your colour for Autumn/Winter?

Becca.x

A Little House Update and a MASSIVE Homewares Haul

So as some of you may know if you follow me on Twitter, Andrew and I went to sign sign our contract this morning and pick up the keys to our beautiful little house! I am so insanely excited it's ridiculous but seeing it again has made me panic slightly, there is so much work to do and not a lot of time and I am such a perfectionist it needs to be just so!

As you may imagine we have picking up a lot of house bits since we found out we'd got our pad (lol) so I thought I'd show you some of my favourite things. We are buying all our furniture second hand, apart from the bed, and "shabby chic-ing" it for that country cottage look I do so love. Not only is it going to look incredibly cute, it is working out to be incredibly cheap as well, bonus!

Andrew's not allowing me to buy any more mirrors, I have 5 now, one for each room! I picked both of these up for under £5 from a car boot sale, sanded them down, painted with a couple of coats of Habitat Matt Emulsion and then sanded again to allow for that "shabby chic" look.

Good quality curtains are SO expensive it's actually ridiculous and I need atleast 6 pairs for the house so I have been really struggling to find any I like that are in budget. I nipped to my local charity shops after picking up the keys this morning and was lucky enough the stumble across 2 pairs I really love. The top pair were £5.99 and are a really heavy striped set which go perfectly with the colour scheme for the bedroom and the bottom are a thick pair of cream linen which only cost £6.99 and will make the living room feel really warm and cosy.

Kitchen Scales - Laura Ashley @ Homebase - £9.93

We picked up these gorgeous Laura Ashley kitchen scales in the Homebase sale for under £10 the other week and they will look perfect in the kitchen which we are painting a muted sage green. They also have them in red if you had a brighter colour scheme, I love looking out for things like this as I think it's these details that make the house more homely.

Vase Set - Ikea - £10

We found this vase set in the garden section of Ikea the other day and instantly knew they were just what we needed to "jazz up" the house a bit so to speak. I think we're going to use the larger one for a plant in the living room and have the smaller one with fresh flowers in on the kitchen table. 

Glass Bottles - Ikea - £2.50 Each 

Neither of us drink hot drinks so we bought these bottles for fruit juices so it looks a little fancier than the boring old cartons. As I mentioned earlier in the post I think it's these little extras that make all the difference to a house. 

'My Room' Sign - Debenhams - £6

'Seaside' Sign - Debenhams - £7.50

I LOVE little signs and trinkets like these, I have quite a few already but these are the newest addition to the collection! The seaside one is for the bathroom as we're having a blue and white nautical theme and was reduced from £15 to half price in the Debenhams sale. The small 'My Room' sign is so cute with the metal detail and will be hung on either the bedroom door or the dressing room door. Andrew's sister Catherine was kind enough to buy us the little 'Welcome' sign as an early house warming present and it will look so cute in the entrance. I haven't linked it as I think it's kind of rude to google presents but it's by the company 'East of India' if you want to look for it yourselves!

I'm Becca and I'm a candle addict. I have been buying candles and cute candle holders like they're going out of fashion but this gorgeous little house shaped tea light holder is my favourite and I got it for a bargain £2.50 from Debenhams due to a little chip on the corner.

Cushions are another thing I cannot stop buying, I think it's a girl thing to just chuck soft furnishings everywhere and anywhere. This floral/striped one I got in the TK Maxx reduced section for £11.99 is my favourite as I love the colours and the fact it's double sided, I think it will look lovely on the living room sofa (when we actually have one). 

Massive well done if you survived until the end of this post, I know it's a long one but I'm super nosey and love seeing how people decorate their house! Please let me know if you know anywhere that'd good for cheap soft furnishings, I still need lots of cushions, throws and curtains and it's really hard to find good quality furnishings at a reasonable price. Where's your favourite place to shop for homewares? 

Becca.x

Stila In Poundland?!

There I was having a casual stroll around Poundland the other day when I glanced up at the beauty section only to find it's usual selection of diamante eyelashes, blue mascara and glitter hair spray replaced with a fully stocked shelf of Stila makeup, yes you heard me right, STILA MAKEUP! Now let me tell you, I was so excited I couldn't contain myself, I nearly peed a little and I started screaming 'Oh my god! Look mum, LOOOOK!' at the top of my voice. Needless to say I was making a bit of a show of myself, but luckily enough it drew the attention of a very nice shop assistant who helped me find all the bits they had to offer.

The first items I grabbed (literally) were a couple of the sheer colour tinted moisturisers in medium 03 and dark 02. I think I was a bit late to the whole 'Stila in Poundland' game so there weren't any light shades left but I snapped up the 2 they had. The dark one is much too dark for me but the medium 03 is fine when blended in and gives really lovely coverage for a tinted moisturiser. 

The next couple of bits I picked up were a powder foundation refill and the sponges to go with it. The only colour they had was shade E which is obviously far too dark with me but I think it will make the perfect contour powder with it being so matte, a definite worthwhile investment for just £1! I don't ever use sponges for my makeup so I'm not too sure why I bought them but I think I was quite honestly just too caught up in all the excitement, I was the definition of a kid in a sweet shop. 

The final item I picked up was again, a little bit pointless, but hey it was a £1! It's a little silver eyeshadow 4 pan compact for putting in the single Stila eyeshadows, of which I have none...Oh well, it'll look cute on my dressing table.

So all in all that's 5 items of Stila makeup for £5! The cheapest item they have on the boots website is £10 so really I saved myself a small fortune. I definitely recommend running down to your local Poundland and seeing what beauty bargains they have to offer, I know I'll be nipping in a lot more often!

Becca.x

OOTD & Some Very Exciting News...

Hey hey heyyy! I must start this post with my exciting news as I simply cannot contain myself for a minute longer, as some of you may have seen if you follow me on twitter, ME AND ANDREW HAVE FOUND A HOUSE! It is a cute little cottage really close to where we live now and we couldn't be happier, it needs a bit of decorating and updating but that's all part of the fun so you can expect lots of house related posts over the next few weeks!

Anyway, enough of that, here's what I wore out to a meal the other night, it was nothing fancy so I just kept it simple with my midi dress, leather jacket and little ankle boots. I feel like my outfit posts are always really samey and boring at the moment but I've had a few requests to do more posts like this so I hope you don't mind my lack of new clothes; gotta be saving for serious grown up things like sofas and curtains!

Jacket - Zara

Dress - New Look

Bag - Zara

Boots - Office

Becca.x

OOTD - Transitional Flowers

I thought I'd go for a bit of a double whammy today and treat you all to 2 posts as the first one was an ever-so-slightly off topic feminist rant. I wore this ensemble for my first day back at work yesterday and I thought it was quite a good outfit for transitioning some key summer pieces into the colder Autumn/Winter months. I am moving out VERY shortly so I am going to have to do this with a lot of my wardrove to try and save as much money as possible for the new bachelor pad.

Shirt - H&M

Skirt - H&M

Bag - Zara

Boots - Office

Perfume - Burberry 'Body' 

Lipstick - Revlon 'Smoked Peach'

I'd just like to give a quick mention to my new perfume 'Body' by Burberry which I picked up in duty free on the way back from Corfu. It's not like any other perfume I've ever owned, I normally go for really sweet girly perfumes like Marc Jacobs 'Daisy' or Juicy Couture 'Viva La Juicy' but I feel like this is going to be perfect for the Autumn months and it makes me feel all ladylike and sophisticated. I'm absolutely rubbish at describing scents but The Perfume Shop describes it as 'A feminine and effortlessly sensual fragrance with an eclectic combination of refined ingredients.' 

Becca.x

Review - 50 Shades Of Shit

Now this isn't my usual kind of blog post but if you remember a little while back you may recall I told you all I was waiting for my holiday to read the infamously controversial '50 Shades Of Gray', and having done so I feel utterly compelled to write this review. Now from the title I'm sure you can all imagine my feelings towards this "novel", to put it simply it was quite possibly the worst book I have ever read, in fact forget possibly, it was THE worst book I have ever read. 

I don't want you to mistake me for some snobby book worm who only enjoys to spend my time reading the complete works of Jane Austen, I'm quite the opposite infact, but I found 50 Shades to be nothing more than extremely poorly written. On almost every paragraph there is a 'Holy shit', 'Holy fuck', 'Holy crap', 'Crapola'  I mean CRAPOLA?? Come on now, that's just silly. I found the writing style to be incredibly repetitive and don't even get me started on the constant 'My inner goddess...' references. 

Now I'm no feminist but I'd love someone to tell me when it became all good in the hood to glamorise being beaten by your boyfriend? Don't get me wrong, if your into all that S&M malarky then you go for it, enjoy yourself, but when reading the book there are many moments where it just doesn't seem consensual and that's where I really struggled to understand the appeal of the book. I am far from prudish but I actually found some of the sex scenes seriously uncomfortable to read and actually pretty degrading to us women of the world. Girl power and all that.

I'm not going to lie and say the book didn't give me some giggles, there were times I was reading it on holiday and literally rolling around on my sun lounger with laughter. The novel has some seriously hilarious moments, but I do get the feeling they weren't intentionally funny and it was in fact just the incredibly poor use of the English language which led me to my hysterical state.

I haven't read the other two books, and to be quite honest I don't intend to, but I've heard lots of people say you end up loving the mysterious masochist Christian Gray, so don't let me put you off too much. It has clearly been a phenomenally successful book so there must be people out there who love the 50 Shades writing style, but for me I think I'll stick to something a little less 'Crapola'.

Have you guys read '50 Shades of Gray'? 

Becca.x

Holiday Series - My Week In Photos

Hello strangers! So I'm back in sunny GB (No but really?!) and my god am I getting those post holiday blues, almost forgot how stressful real life is! But anyway I won't bore you with all the depressing stuff, my holiday was amazing, such a nice relaxing week away with friends. We went to Sidari in Corfu and stayed in a lovely little hotel only a couple of minutes walk from the main strip, the bar staff were so lovely (and generous with the shots) and really made the holiday extra memorable!

So as you can see I had an amazing time! Lots of delicious Mexican food was consumed and a few too many Sex on the Beach's (Ooh cheeky). I'm back at work tomorrow afternoon but I have my cousin's 4D scan first, cannot wait to see little baby's face! I hope you've all had a lovely week, what have you all been up to?

Becca.x