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Christmas Gift Guide - Boyfriend

'What do you buy a boy???!' this is a question that I always think whenever it comes to an occasion where I have to buy my boyfriend a present, and it always seems that my friends are exactly the same. However, this year, it seems that I have managed to formulate quite a good mix of things for my boyfriend that are both affordable, but he will use. So here we are, my first Christmas gift guide of this year...


1) Touch screen gloves... to be honest who doesn't need these? Your outside in the cold, waiting for a train, or meeting a friend, all wrapped up and then you hear it... the vibrate and 'PING' indicating you have a message. First you try to unlock your phone with your gloves on, no such luck. You then reluctantly take your gloves off and feel the cold completely numbing your hands. Too much of a palaver. I found these ones on Amazon for £4.69, but I believe that they can be found in local markets quite inexpensively too.

 

 

2) A couple of months ago, my boyfriend and I went to see 'The Maze Runner' at the cinema. For about 2 weeks afterwards he just kept saying 'That was such a cool film!!!!' I then realise that the film was an adaptation of a book franchise, and as he is an avid reader, I thought that this would make an excellent present. The one I picked up was from Waterstones for £6.39

 

 

3) So this one, I probably wont buy until the day before I actually give presents to my boyfriend. The both of us have a little tradition where we like to buy a big box of Dunkin Donuts for ourselves every so often. I found out that they now have Christmas edition donuts, that look adorable. A box of 12 is just £9.99.

 

 

Hope these ideas have helped you for a boyfriends or even any one else! Is there anything you've picked up that you're super proud of?

Mamma Mia!

So for years and years now (possibly even longer than that?!), I have been nagging everyone in my life about how much I want to see the West End stage production of Mamma Mia! I have always had a (not so) secret addiction to Abba and a few years ago I went to see a tribute band at my local theatre with my mum which was absolutely amazing, and it I'm 99% sure that the film adaptation of Mamma Mia is my all time most watched DVD.

For my birthday, my two best friends took me up to London, and I had no idea. Right from the train journey, to getting out in Covent Garden and then having a Pizza Express dinner, I was completely oblivious to what my surprise would be. Might I add that Covent Garden around this festive season is gorgeous.

 

The performance was absolutely amazing, and completely lived up to and exceeded my expectations. I was particularly impressed with the performance of the actresses who played Tanya and Rosie, as they were absolutely hilarious. My favourite number was definitely 'Lay all your love on me' and 'Voulez Vous'. 

 

This was definitely one of the best West End shows I've seen, but I definitely want to see more! What are your favourites?

How I keep organised

It's that time of year again... no not Christmas, 'the most wonderful time of the year' but 'the most busiest time of the year'.
Don't get me wrong I am in love with Christmas as much as the next person, yet for some reason, the work load and commitments in my life seem to just go overboard, like everything needs to be done by the end of the year. And so for someone like me, who finds it easy for things to get on top of them, I realise that in order for me to not only keep my head above water, but keep swimming right until the finish line, I need to get organised, so here are a few of the things I find really help

1) Write everything down! Get a beautiful notebook and a good quality pen and make sure that anything and everything you need to remember, you write it down. No matter how insignificant it might seem and how easily you think you will remember it!

 



 

2) Tidy space, tidy mind. Make sure your work space is tidy, so that when you sit down to complete a piece of work, you know exactly where all of the things you need are. I tend to find if I make sure my room is tidy when I go to bed, I can wake up in the morning, I can find exactly what I am looking for and get straight on with my tasks.

 



With these little things, I manage to get through everything I need to, and to the standard that I would like. How do you keep organised?

Zoella and Ghost writers - bad idea or innocent mistake?

Unless you've been living under a rock for the  last 18 months, you will be highly aware of one of the most famous bloggers and YouTubers possibly, well, ever. That's right, it's Zoe Sugg a.k.a, Zoella.

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Her debut book Girl Online has become the fastest selling debut book since records began,, surpassing the likes of J.K. Rowling and Dan Brown. Obviously, a great achievement for any first time writer, for anyone, let alone someone who is not known for being 'a writer', however, what are you to do when the whole of the media is accusing it of not being your work?

 

"My dream has been to write a book, and I can't believe it's come true. Girl Online is my first novel, and I'm so excited for you to read it." is what Zoe has labelled on the back of her book and I remember watching her daily vlog back in june when she announced that she would be writing a book with penguin, she had made it exlplicitly clear that she had always loved to write stories as a young girl and I have to admit that as a dedicated viewer of Zoe for the past few years, I saw this as legitimate and never thought anything other than she would be writing the book on her own.

 

However when speculation in the past week emerged about the fact that tht this novel was not her own work and spokesmen from Penguin released the quote "To be factually accurate, you would need to say Zoe Sugg did not write the book Girl Online on her own" to The Sunday Times, I can hardly say that I was overly surprised about it. It isn't uncommon for someone in the public eye, who isn't trained as a writer to use the aid of a ghost writer, such as Katie Price or David Beckham.

 

You may even question why there has been such a large hype and bashing toward the teen idol, when so many others do it? As the independent suggested, it was not the fact that she had a ghost writer, it was the fact that her 6 million subscribers thought that she was legitimately writing this book on her own and were so proud of her.

 

As a viewer of Zoe for almost two years, I will admit that I am quite a large fan of her and it was, in all honesty, very strange to see speculation in a negative way, when you feel like she is in a way, an online friend, which many girls my age and a lot younger also geel like.

 

In my opinion, I do see why Zoe decided to take a few days off of the internet and do believe that on Zoe's part, it may not have been made clear by the publishers just how much having a ghost writer could have caused her issues if it got out.

 

 

 

 

We are still waiting for a response from Zoe that includes more detail and more justification than the short message she gave to but I have no doubt that any explanarion we do get is honest and just.

What are your thoughts on ghost writers? And do you think that it's right that so many YouTubers are getting book deals?

 

Taylor Swift - The RED Tour!

Reunited with my one true love!

Ever since I was 11 years old, there has been one constant love throughout the years. Friends, boyfriends and fads have come and gone, but Taylor Swift has been one beautiful person getting me through the awkward teenage years. 

Six years later, I am now 17 and the love affair continues. On Saturday 1st February, I was lucky enough to go, along with my two best friends, to the O2 arena to see this marvellous woman for the second time! 

A few days before the concert, we bought plain white t-shirts from primark, a pack of sharpies and decorated them with our favourite Swift lyrics along with the album art. The amount of time we spent trying to get it exactly matching to eachothers was ridiculous but so worth it!

 

 

We decided to arrive at the O2 arena quite a few hours before the actual concert started, because we knew that there would be a lot going on.  One of which was the Taylor Swift tour exhibit that would be displayed in the British Music Experience museum at the O2 arena. On this day, as well as the journey through the most iconic music artists that you can ordinarily take, exclusive pictures as well as Taylor's previous tour costumes were on display.

 

 

 Through out the day we met so many other lovely fellow Swifties, as well as getting to see their very inventive costumes (one girl came as the fridge from All Too Well?!?!) Our seats were phenomenal once we got into the actual arena and some of the highlights for me were her secret song (Fearless, one of my absolute favourite songs that she doesn't perform live anymore) and the guest performance from the wonderful Ed Sheeran!

 

My tips for healthy skin!

Over the past few years, one of the struggles I've had with how I look, is the bad skin that naturally comes with teenage years. Around the age of thirteen, I had it all; bright red spots, white heads, black heads and all the scars once they had gone. Whilst my skin has vastly improved, as hormones and all that stuff settled down, I still managed to have a few spots come through, and my complexion wasn't always all that (sad face)

However this year, I decided to make a concerted effort to try and improve my skin, and so I had to do my research. Scouring the internet for the best remedies for good skin, and putting into practice the things that I've heard into my daily life, I came up with the following list. 3 and a half months on, the improvement in my skin has been incredible!

1. Going bare faced (almost!)

Foundation + your skin = Not a happy mix! Make up clogs up your pours, and makes them dirty, and when that mixes with the natural oils in your skin, that is when when spots have the opportunity to develop! It's a viscous cycle, you get a spot, you use foundation to cover it up, that causes more spots, so you have to use more foundation to cover it up. Soon you find yourself unable to be seen in public without it! I decided to go cold turkey and cut foundation out of my day to day life completely, and only wore it on special occasions like parties. I didn't deprive myself of make up completely, I needed eye make up and to fill in my eyebrows of course!  I'm not going to lie, it was difficult at first, but I powered through and I'm very glad I did!

2. Almonds and water and fruit

I am a massive food lover so the prospect of eating and getting a benefit from it on my skin was not going to go a miss! From my research the best foods to eat for your skin is nuts and fruit and vegetables. Some of my new favourite snacks are almonds (full of vitamin E), cashew nuts (killing bacteria and germs), grapes, carrot sticks and cucumber. Just eat lots of fresh vegetables to help nourish your skin and keep guzzling water (I tend to go for the 8 glasses a day rule)

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3. Cleanse, tone, moisturise...

This one probably comes as no surprise to most of you, but this year I have really been religious about making sure I complete this twice a day, once when I wake up, and once before I go to bed. It is really important that you do this because you will need to wash off all the dirt and bacteria off of your face that builds up in your day to day life without even realising. My favourite brands that are helpful to me (with normal to combination skin) is Simple and Soap & Glory both of which are really effective and affordable

I'm not a skin expert,  but these are some of the things that have really helped me over the past few months to improve my skin, and I hope this has managed to give you a few ideas on how to improve your skin. Have you got any other 'remedies' you think I should try?

Love Yasmin x