Hello 25

Well well well, a long overdue blog post to celebrate another year of me.

I’m quite open in my feelings on my birthday – I’m not the biggest fan, but 25 feels like a kinda significant one and I’m full of thoughts today.

For starters, this is the first birthday I have not spent with my family, which is a pretty big deal for me. It’s the first birthday I’ve spent in our current house, and given that we’re moving house very soon (another story for another time, I don’t think I’ve shared that on here yet), it’ll also be my last. Someone was *nice* enough to remind me yesterday that 25 is half way to 50 – I mean, just want I wanted to hear, right? But that got me thinking.

We often see the new calendar year as a new, fresh start in our lives, but not so much when we move into an actual new year of life. So here I am, officially at the mid-20s point of my life, and I’m ready to take some things into my own hands.

I want this to be the year that I will actually do all of the things that I have told myself I’ll ‘do this year’ for the past however many years. I want to properly look after myself after years of overlooking my physical and mental wellbeing and really make 25 year old me the best Lottie I’ve ever been.

Just over 4 years ago, I wrote a small bucket list of things I wanted to do before I turned 25, and I’m pretty proud to say that I’ve achieved all of them except one – with that one being that I didn’t read all the books I wanted to have read – and one changed slightly as my life has but was still achieved, so I’m pretty proud of myself for making these things happen, and now I’m ready to carry this momentum on for another wonderful 25 years and then some!

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Why I’m Not Going to See Toy Story 4 in the Cinema

So apparently I want to branch out from already being a ‘bad’ blogger to also being a ‘bad’ Disney fan, but hear me out on this one.

I think we can all agree that this has been a mega year for new movies. From Avengers Endgame already smashing a tonne of box office records to the highly anticipated Star Wars Episode IX coming soon, film boffs will most likely be spending more time in the cinema in 2019 than ever before. And out of all these films, I think Disney has had the most fingers in the pie than any other production companies, with some huge films having already hit the big screen and many more still to come.

This is all very exciting for Disney fans; we’ve seen some of our favourite animated classics have a reimagining as live actions, and also some pretty huge sequels, one of which closest to the hearts of my generation being Toy Story 4. 90’s kids like myself have grown up with the adventures of Andy’s toys, many of us sobbing FAR too many tears over *that* scene in Toy Story 3, so we were all good and ready when a fourth film was announced to be hitting our screens.

I was ready to go and see it, don’t get me wrong, and I am excited for when I finally do see it, but I’m not going to the cinema for it, and here’s my reasoning..

While the experience of some films is heightened by seeing it on an enormous screen in a pitch black theatre with surround sound and no talking, I personally think that other films are somewhat ruined by it, and Toy Story 4 is one of those for me. Give me all the action and adventure on the big screen, give me stunning cinematics and world class special features, but when it comes to a feel-good family animation, to be quite honest I’d rather be curled up on my sofa at home with a blanket and pile of snacks, being able to laugh out loud when I want to without getting evils from the rest of the guests.

And as awful as it sounds, I truly do get bored watching some films in the cinema. If its not a super gripping storyline or visually incredible, I find myself sat in the dark wishing it would hurry up and be done with sooner so I can get out of there, which I probably wouldn’t be thinking if I was watching it at home – y’know, unless it was a rubbish film in the first place.

So there’s one hell of an unpopular opinion for you I’m sure, but its something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately and honestly, I stand by it. Anyone else feel the same? Let me know in the comments!

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What Come Next?

Yes this is the second blog post in the last few months where I’ve taken the title from a Hamilton song and yes it was intentional but it also does have a lot of bearing for this post so there.

How many times in the last year or so have I said that I’m going to get back on tracker properly with my blog? I mean I could go back and count but no one actually needs to know that figure; it’s a lot.

I feel an incredible sense of attachment to my blog, but I just haven’t felt the urge to write at all lately. Every now and then my blogging brain kicks in and I mentally draft blog posts in my head, and I think about putting my thoughts onto the metaphorical paper that is the internet, but when push comes to shove I’ve just not been bothered to do it.

So I don’t know exactly what to do.

This blog has been with me through the most important time of my life, which is probably why I feel such a sense of connection to it, but the fact of the matter is that my life is very different now, and I do struggle to find the time, or if I do find the time, I struggle to find the want. The blogging world is changing a lot, and maybe I just haven’t been able to keep up. Maybe this blog doesn’t fit into my new and different life.

I can tell you for a fact that my blog won’t go anywhere. If nothing else, it will hang around on the internet for people to stumble across when searching for some of the strange things that my analytics tell me brings people to my site. But will I keep posting? I want to, sure. I do have a big feeling of want in my to keep things going, and I think there’s definitely still a part of my brain that’s dedicated to it, but the honest truth is that I don’t know if I can, and all I’ve done in the last year is build myself up to then only end up disappointing myself, and there’s just no fun in that.

I guess the purpose of this post is to clear my head of some of the negative, in the hopes that positive stuff will fill it up. Side note: man it does feel good to sit and type out a whole blog post without stopping, maybe the reason I’ve not been so dedicated is because I forgot what this buzz was like? I’ve distracted myself.

Anyway, I’m hopeful.

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Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile – My Thoughts

I just want to prefix this post with a potential spoiler warning – I personally don’t think a film based on true life events can necessarily have spoilers, but if you don’t want to know anything about this film then stop reading now.

When the trailers for the Ted Bundy biopic featuring Zac Efron as the notorious mass murderer hit the internet a few months back, I told myself it was a movie that I wouldn’t be watching, but as being a Sky customer meant I could watch the film on the tv in the comfort of my own home on the same day it hit cinemas, I found myself putting it on out of sheer curiosity.

I have never been into this sort of thing. I’m not into murder documentaries or true crime and I refuse to watch anything that glorifies or romanticises abusive relationships or domestic violence and I figured those themes would be inherent in this film which was why I was put off, but I had some reasons behind why I found myself hitting play.

Firstly, the response to the trailers had me interested. My twitter feed was divided into two types of people: those who were going googly-eyed over Zac Efron, as so many of my generation do, and those who were incredibly annoyed by the former, concerned that this film would romanticise the real life character of Ted Bundy, who raped and murdered so many young women. I guess I fell in the latter, and I really wanted to know if this film would be turning viewers into living versions of the heart eyes emoji – hoping, of course, it would not.

Not I don’t know if because I went into this movie with concerns that I was immune to it, but I certainly did not feel like Ted was made to attract the audience. Sure, the part was played incredibly well by Zac Efron, and his character of the deceptively sweet-talking and certain man that his namesake was was very clearly portrayed, but at no point did I feel like many people would be swooning over what I was watching. I think that knowing the true outcome of the case that shocked a generation was the main factor in all of this – we go in knowing that the man is guilty – so my initial concerns were put to rest.

Through the whole movie I knew he was a lying, manipulative criminal and all I wanted was for Liz, played by Lily Collins, to get the happy life away from him that she deserved.

As for the rest of the film, I don’t know if impressed is the word but I respected it. The acting was incredible, the storytelling was clever and when during the end credits they played actual tapes from the real trial, I couldn’t not feel like hats off was due to the director who had really made many of the scenes from the film like for like. There were no proper scenes of any of the crimes committed – which I appreciated very much – only one brief and partially shown incident was in the movie, which I thought showed some respect to the real life victims.

Will I watch it again? Probably not, but my curiosity was satisfied and I am glad it was made in the way I hoped it would be.

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Mission Breakout vs Tower of Terror

Ok guys so here’s a controversial one for you..

On my trip to Disneyland last month, I finally got to experience the new Guardians of the Galaxy, Mission: BREAKOUT ride that has taken over from the Disney park classic ride, Tower of Terror. I have thoughts. LOTS of them.

To set the scene, I’ll tell you about my relationship with Tower of Terror. Obviously, we go way back, and in fact one of the few memories I have from going to Disney as a young child was being on Tower of Terror looking out over Hollywood Studios at night, everything lit up. I don’t remember hating the ride as a child, as many kids do, but as I was reintroduced to it as an adult, things got a little iffy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not scared of the ride and I will always ride it at least once a trip, but I describe it as a love/hate thing. The drops I love, but the build up to and mystery of the first drop drives me insane. I spend the whole queue time on edge, plus the initial part of the ride where you stop and watch the scenes, because the random sequences of the ride mean I never know when that first fall is going to happen and I do not like that. Once we’ve dropped once, happy days, I’m good from then on, but I always have that initial worry at the back of my mind when I think about the ride.

Fast forward to last month. Now I really love Guardians of the Galaxy, so I was actually really excited, and I was curious to see how the overlay would work on essentially the exact same ride, and more importantly, whether I would still hate it in the same way I hate Tower of Terror. Now if you watched my Instagram stories while I was in the parks, or read this blog post, you’ll already know the outcome: I LOVED IT. I got a slightly nervous feeling in the line waiting to get on, but my excitement took over and I was mainly just super keen to see it all. Even the wait for the first drop was bearable because I was so distracted by what was going on around me.

Now you might think that this was just first-time excitement, but every single time we rode Mission: BREAKOUT I loved it more. I went on it way more than I would ever ride Tower of Terror in one trip and I might even go as far as to say its one of my favourite rides in Disneyland AND I would happily see it rolled out to more Tower of Terrors across other Disney parks.

Why doesn’t it strike fear into me though? While I’ve never considered myself particularly spooked by the spiderwebs and bellhops of Tower of Terror, I guess subconsciously the theme of the ride does put a little bit of tension into me, and that translates into me clinging onto the handlebars on the chair until my knuckles go white, meanwhile the Awesome Mix soundtrack and flashing lights of Mission: BREAKOUT put me right at ease as I’m being thrown up and down so much I can’t actually tell what direction I’m moving in.

Who knows for sure, but I am very interested to see how I fare going back on Tower of Terror while I’m in WDW next week and whether I’ve been cured completely by the Guardians, or whether its the theme that really has me on the edge of my seat, metaphorically of course..

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Spring Dapper Day at Disneyland

You might judge us for this, but the primary reason for our trip to Disneyland in April for those specific dates was so that Sarah and I could go to our first ever Dapper Day.

If you don’t know what Dapper Day is, it kinda is what it says on the label, its a semi-official event that takes place in the Disney parks, or at least Disneyland, Walt Disney World and, more recently, Disneyland Paris, where the idea is that guests visiting the parks don their best clothes and spend a day looking utterly fabulous in the most magical and happiest places on Earth. They take place twice a year, in spring and fall, and the dates and other info can always be found on the Dapper Day website.

So anyway, we wanted a Disneyland trip, and we knew we wanted to do Dapper Day, so this trip was about a year or so in the planning so we knew the dates, and the Sunday of our trip, which was also our final full day, was Dapper Day, although the Dapper Day Expo (which we didn’t go to) was all weekend.

The hardest part, of course, was deciding what to wear. There’s no official rules on how you should dress, but a lot of people tend to lean towards 20th century style, and I decided to go a little bit traditional with wanting a 40s-50s style dress. After a lot of thought, I settled on Steamboat Willie as my outfit inspiration – mainly because I have a serious attachment to it, but also because I figured in Disney’s original park, I wanted to do an original character. I found the perfect dress pattern to use and whipped up this little velvet and cotton drill number with the biggest skirt EVER, paired it with some black and white brogues (because I don’t really do heels) and added a knotted headband, and voila!

To sum up the whole day in one word, it was magical. Considering it is just essentially a day spent in the parks, just with the added dress-up optional clause, it just felt so much more wonderful, whether that was because we were dressed up or because everyone else was, I don’t know. I was truly amazed at how big an event it really is; I mean, considering such a huge proportion of my Instagram feed are Disney people, of course I see lots of people talking about it, but there was always a chance that that’s just because I follow all of those people, but honestly the people in ‘regular’ clothes were the minority in the parks.

Really, we spent the whole day hanging out with friends, taking photos and just generally taking in the atmosphere, and of course checking out what everyone else was wearing! Walking around the parks was like a fashion show, and everyone is looking at everyone to see how they’re dressed – but in an excited way. Compliments are being thrown around like confetti and total strangers want to take photos with and of you and chat about your outfits and its just such a pure environment.

There’s also a bunch of cute photo opportunities, and even some unofficial meet-ups happen on the day, and its just an entirely great and unique experience, so I would absolutely recommend it to anyone who’s been considering making a trip for one, or who has a trip coinciding with a Dapper Day!

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8 Amazing Things That Happened on Our First Day in Disneyland

So I know that I usually live blog my Disney trips, but today I didn’t feel like it was right. We took a pretty chilled out approach to the day and I felt like despite it being an incredible day for us, it probably wouldn’t read as well for others, so instead I thought I’d try a slightly different format to tell you some of the AMAZING parts of our first day in the happiest place on earth.

1. We had a whole boat to ourselves on Pirates of the Caribbean

This is my traditional first ride of any trip, and as is fairly normal first thing in the morning, it was a walk-on. But then, to our great surprise, we got into the front row of the boat and realised that no one else had been put into our boat with us, so we got to do the whole ride without other people! I joked that this was a sign of amazing things to come, but little did I know how true this would be..

2. Mickey Celebration Cupcake

Sarah bought a cupcake for the ‘gram, which turned out to be this incredible chocolate chip cookie/cupcake kinda combo which was super yum and quite probably the best Disney cupcake I’ve ever eaten. 11/10 would eat again every day of my life.

3. ‘ Share Your Ears’ Cheeseburger

On the subject of food, we also split the 3-piece Mickey-shaped burger for lunch over at Smokejumpers Grill in DCA and it was so good! Definitely a great option to split between two people.

4. I got to see Pixar Pier for the first time

As it’s been almost 2 years since I was last at Disneyland, there were a lot of changes for me to experience, the main one being Pixar Pier. We only spent a brief amount of time on it today, but I loved everything I saw and I can’t wait to take more of it in over the next few days.

5. Mission Breakout!

I have also never been on the new(ish) Guardians of the Galaxy ride that took over from Tower of Terror in DCA, and so I got to experience that for the first time and I LOVED IT. I have a real love/hate but mainly hate relationship with ToT but Mission Breakout blew my socks off and I thought it was incredible – I can’t wait to do it a few more times this trip!

6. We saw the Disneyland cats

I had no idea this was a thing but apparently the pair of cats that seem to live in DCA are a common sight for guests – who know right? They were really cute though and clearly just wanted some piece and quiet away from screaming guests. Don’t blame them..

7. Tow Maters

I normally skip the smaller ‘kiddy’ rides but we decided to go on the Tow Mater tractor ride and it was actually such a blast!

8. I finally met Mickey as Steamboat Willie

My dream meet for such a long time now has been to meet Mickey as Steamboat Willie, and completely by fluke today it happened and I am still not over it. This meet takes place in Meet Mickey in his house in Toontown, but it’s totally down to chance as to whether he’s on set for Steamboat Willie, or if he’s doing others things that day, and I’ve only ever seen him in his traditional tails and red trousers, but this knocked me for six and I am SO HAPPY.

It’s just been a truly unbelievable first day of what I know will be the most magical trip!

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Has Blogging Changed?

 

Having just returned from my accidental blogging break, but more importantly having felt slightly detached from blogging for the best part of a year now, as I have been starting my attempt to rediscover my blogging ability, I can’t help but notice that there are many things in the blogging world that seem to be different to how they were a year or so ago.

I mean, of course there is always going to be change. We live in a world where technology changes and improves on an almost daily basis, so of course the blogosphere will be reacting and evolving with the ever-changing environment, but there are a lot of things that haven’t evolved, but seem to instead have become extinct.

You see, while I may have slipped from posting on my blog, I definitely have not been away from Twitter, which I would say is my main source of interaction with the blogging world, and the majority of the people I follow on Twitter are bloggers or linked to the blogging world. I would probably also go as far as to say that Twitter is the main site of blogger interaction, would you agree?

Twitter brought my blog out of the depths of the internet and into the view of so many of my readers – I was super late to the Twitter game and started this blog over a year before I actually got Twitter. It is one of my biggest sources of traffic, and I have always taken advantage of that fact by being as active as I could on Twitter. I used to try and schedule 4-5 tweets a day to share new and older blog posts, tagging as many retweet accounts as I could and hoping that I would get those shares, and I was not alone. My Twitter feed used to be full of scheduled tweets (sometimes the same ones EVERY DAY..) but now as I scroll through I feel like I’m seeing fewer and fewer of them. I mean sure, this could be due to the ever-changing Twitter algorithm, or the fact that I’m following a more diverse range of accounts, or, as I feel it might be, it could be that scheduling constant blog promotion tweets has become a thing of the past..

Why does this matter, I hear you ask. Well, it leaves me confused as to what is acceptable for me now as I re-enter the blogging world – not that I truly left in the first place but still. If I go back to my old, 5 posts a day ways, will I be the minority, or worse still, will I be considered annoying?

Also on the subject of Twitter, where did all the blogging chats go?! I remember a time where everyone who was anyone was present for as many Twitter chats as they could possibly manage; I myself would be at my laptop with 3-4 tabs open so I could keep up with the sometimes hundreds of people weighing in on these chats and it was insane but it felt FAB. The term ‘blogging community’ has been somewhat tarnished of late so I don’t really like to use it, but this truly felt like just that – a proper community of people all wanting to talk, all wanting to be friends, all wanting to feel like part of something. I worry now that everyone is too busy trying to become better than others that they’ve forgotten that blogging used to be something that so many of us turned to because we wanted a way to express ourselves and the community made us feel like we weren’t alone.

This has become a bit of a ramble, so I’ll wrap it up. I guess I just need to feel my way around for a while and find my own blogging way again. (But if anyone wants to clue me in on current etiquette, hit me up)

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My Top Tips for RunDisney Challenges

This week was the bib-only registration for this year’s RunDisney at Disneyland Paris, and after taking last year off, I’m super pleased to be back and participating in the 36K challenge!

This will be my 5th RunDisney challenge, having previous run Disneyland’s Rebel Challenge (2016) and Pixie Dust Challenge (2017), Walt Disney World’s Glass Slipper Challenge (2017) and Disneyland Paris’s 31K challenge (2017), so this is not an unusual thing for me, but having only ever done challenges that involve a 10K and half marathon, throwing in the extra 5K will be a little different!

All of these previous events have given me a lot of experience in how I face these weekend challenges, and while I must REALLY reinforce the fact that everyone is different when it comes to their training, approach, recovery etc, I just thought I’d share some wisdom that might be of use to anyone who might be facing their first challenge, or just want a little nosey at how I do things.

Training is SO key

I consider myself notoriously bad at training, and you’ll probably frequently see me tweeting about how little training I’ve done for various races, but my body is so used to doing these races and these distances that I can get away with winging it a little. If you are not a regular runner, or these will be your first events, I cannot stress enough how important it is that you do some training, including running back to back days and take training advice from professionals and experienced runners only.

Do NOT expect to do it all

Running every day is DRAINING. The Paris races aren’t too bad as they start at 7am, but if you’re participating in a WDW event, you’ll have to be awake at 3am at the latest to get to your events, and this has a huge impact on your day. The most important thing I have learned is to take it completely easy in the day before the bigger races, eg after the 10K and before the half marathon (or before the marathon if you’re literally and running Dopey). Have a super chilled day in the parks, or spend some time relaxing at the pool, let your body recover and rest up and you’ll be much happier, trust me.

Take the shorter races easier

You might think that the shorter races are your time to shine and want to run them full pelt, but in reality you probably want to take the opposite approach. Going all-out on a 5/10K could put you in a much worse shape going into your longer races, and believe me you want to be feeling fresh and ready for them!

Walking breaks are your friend

Jeff Galloway, the official RunDisney training expert, absolutely SWEARS by run-walk-run, and whenever I’m doing a challenge weekend I always have this in mind. Taking walking breaks reduces the risk of injury, give you a chance to enjoy your time in the parks and help you breakdown the long distances if you’re finding things hard.

Don’t put pressure on yourself, and remember to have fun!

The races will put enough pressure on your body, don’t go piling on anymore! RunDisney events are incredible things and I have never done a race I didn’t enjoy, so just go out there to have a good time, and whatever you do will be amazing.

Who else joined me in registration this week?

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‘Where Have You Been?’ Uh, France.. and other places

If anyone out there is still with me after all this time, then hey. Also, I hope there are a couple of Hamilton fans out there that appreciate the title of this post.

Six weeks. This has been the longest semi-accidental blogging break I’ve ever had, and I call it accidental because I didn’t really intend to take all of this time away, but the fact is there has just been a whole lot going on and in all this time I haven’t had the time, motivation or inspiration really to be writing 4/5 posts a week. I’m not going to apologise for this – I doubt anyone cares that much anyway. I call it semi-accidental because I did realise this a few weeks back, but I decided I’d wait for a new month, clean slate, fresh start etc, and for me there’s nothing more satisfying than a month that starts on a Monday.

So I’m back. Is this an April Fool? Who knows, we’ll see if I can actually keep it up this time, y’know, after I’ve been saying for the best part of the last year that I would get back on top of blogging and failed every single time I tried, but I think I’ve got a good feeling about this one. Blogging certainly doesn’t hold the same place in my life that it used to, but I still think its a pretty big part of who I am and I’m not ready to let go of that just yet.

All jokes in the title of this post aside, since the last time I touched base on the blog, I have actually been to France, and by that I mean Disneyland Paris. I’ve also had my best friends come to stay at my house for a weekend for the first time since we moved in, I’ve been on a little staycation in Kent with my family and Matthew and I went on a weekend trip to Berlin a week ago, so I have been all over the place really, and even when I haven’t been moving around, I haven’t exactly had time to stop. My business has truly taken over my life, but its been super exciting and I’ve spent the last two weeks working on my very own shop website, which launched on Friday.

Time to relax now? Well, I’m pretty excited to say that next week I’m headed for Disneyland! I don’t yet know if I’ll be live-blogging or will post trip reports once I’m home – I’m trying pretty hard to live in the moment right now – but I’ll definitely be sharing everything that will be happening on this trip, including my first ever Dapper Day! It does mean that this week I might do a little ‘pack with me’ type post showing you some of the outfits and park essentials I’ll be taking with me, but honestly I’m just becoming super overwhelmed with excitement as its been almost 2 years since I was last in Disneyland, which seems insane to me.

What else? To be honest, I’m not too sure if I’ve missed anything out – I know this post has been kinda super rambly – but the long and short of it is that I’m still here, and hopefully I’m back for good this time *crosses fingers*

TTFN

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The RunDisney Castaway Cay Challenge

Yes hi, I am still talking about all the running that I did in January – I think its because I haven’t done any running since so I’m looking back on better times!

So many people thought that I was mad enough to run a FRICKIN’ MARATHON midway through my holiday in January, and most of these people were even more baffled to find out that only a few days after running the longest distance of my life AND while still on holiday, I ran a further 5K race, but here me out on the logic behind it.

You see, I wanted another medal.. Yep, that’s basically it.

Every January, following the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend, the Disney Dream cruise ship sets sail from Port Canaveral for a 4 night cruise. Its the same route and same cruise that the Dream does from Port Canaveral all the time, but this one particular sailing is jam packed full of runners recovering from their weekend races, who have mostly all booked it for the RunDisney Castaway Cay Challenge.

The challenge is this: if you participate in any race during the WDW Marathon Weekend – so this could be as little as the 5K – you can sign up for the challenge, which means that on the morning that the Dream docks at Disney’s private island, Castaway Cay, you take part in a special RunDisney organised 5K on the island, and as well as receiving the standard Castaway Cay 5K, which any guest can earn on any cruise that stops at the island, challenge participants also receive this challenge medal to round off their collection.

As with all other WDW Marathon Weekend events, bib and t-shirt pickup was done at the RunDisney expo at ESPN Wide World of Sports, but t-shirt exchange and merchandise were only available on the ship itself. Merch itself seemed a little lacking to me, there was a pin, a hanging ornament and a tech t-shirt available in two different colours, and that was all – although you could also buy a normal Castaway Cay 5K t-shirt in the gift shop on the island itself.

The challenge 5K starts earlier than the usual race, and takes a slightly different course around the island, meaning that if anyone is mad enough to want to take place in both 5Ks that will happen that morning, there’s a bit of variety. We had to meet in the ship’s theatre at crazy o’clock in the morning, and there were some drinks and bananas available there. There was a brief introduction and then each corral was led off the ship and to the start line, which was quite a walk away from the boat and it was still pretty dark at the time, but the sun had started to rise before the race kicked off.

Mickey and Goofy led us through a pre-race warm-up, and each corral were set loose on the island. There was only A, B and C, about 700 people participating, so it felt tiny compared to the other races I had done the weekend before, but it felt a lot less pressured with fewer people about. We started and ended on the island’s disused runway, and along the way there a handful of characters including Stitch, Vacation Genie, Captain Hook and Max, which was a nice surprise as I wasn’t expecting any characters on the course.

Despite recovering from the marathon relatively well, I found the first 3k HARD work, but we took it nice and easy and many people were walking – it all felt very relaxed. By the last mile my legs had found their strength again and we ran most of the leg, nicknamed by the cast members as the Ring of Fire, probably because it felt like it went on FOREVER, and then all of a sudden we were at the finish line! The finish line was complete with the usual bottles of water, bananas and snacks – I swear I still can’t face bananas – but there was also a bar set up where guests could purchase champagne and cocktails etc.

Doing the 5K was a really great way to see the island a bit before the rest of the guests descended on it, and you can stay on the island from then onwards, but we were starving and in need of a Cabanas breakfast, so we went back to the ship to eat and shower before the day of fun ahead of us!

Another one off the RunDisney bucket list!

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Hi, yes, I do care about my Instagram followers thanks

I know I’ve written a similar post to this in the past, but in light of the recent Instagram ‘glitch’, and that my opinion on this now comes from a slightly different standpoint, I thought I would come out and say this again.

Yes, I know that social media is just that – a website or an app – and followers ‘shouldn’t matter’, but I’m gonna be straight with y’all here: they do to me.

You see, in the last 9 months or so, my social media pages have become less about me personally, and more about my small business. I took my Etsy shop full time back in July after leaving my accounting job to relocate, and it’s been absolutely wonderful. It’s always been my dream to be self-employed, and being able to do something creative and to my own rules to boot, I’ve loved every second*

*Except, ironically, the accounting.

It’s also no secret that the way that people are swayed by trends and products now is mainly through social media. Brands now focus a lot more on social media marketing, full-time bloggers and influencers have become a legitimate thing and I’m honestly just so grateful that I had a blogging background when I decided to start my shop as it meant I knew all of this from the start, and so my Instagram page has become less about my blog and life, and more about my business, which I am totally cool with.

BUT this does change the pressures on it. Yes I am still very much me on Instagram, and I still use it as a social outlet, but probably 80% of what I consciously do on Instagram now is promote my business. The more I grow, the more people see my creations, the more people become potential customers, and as a small business this is SUPER important.

During the Instagram glitch, I lost almost 200 followers. No big deal, some might say, right? So I’ll just have to wait a bit longer until I hit my next follower milestone, that’s not the end of the world? You might think that and honestly I’m not offended if you do, but from my perspective, that’s 200 potential customers lost. That’s 200 people who may not have seen that I released a new product yesterday. That could be the difference between me being able to pay my mortgage this month or not.

My business aside, there are so many full-time bloggers and influencers out there who could lose out on work if they lost their followers. I may have only lost 200 followers but I know of others who lost thousands. That could be the difference between working with a particular brand or not.

I know this might all be sounding a little dramatic, but I just want to reduce the stigma around people being upset about losing followers, or even just not being able to gain them. We all know how hard it can be to gain followers on Instagram these days, so even if you’re not reliant on your follower count for your income, you’ve probably still worked pretty hard to get to where you are with it, right? Just be mindful about slamming people for something that might be important to them, even if it’s not important to you.

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Colourpop Chasing Rainbows Palette – Swatches and Thoughts

What’s that? Another Colourpop palette added to my collection? I’m not even gonna pretend this was an accident..

I asked my mum for Chasing Rainbows for Christmas, perfectly timed with a 48 hour free international shipping offer, and although that meant I had to wait until New Years to get it, I’ve never found Colourpop products to not be worth the wait.

So this is the fourth Colourpop palette that I have reviewed on here, and if you look back over all the previous ones, you would quite easily come to the conclusion that I have a thing for bright eyeshadows, and that is 100% true, which is why this particular palette jumped out at me – well, that and the super cute packaging..

As the name of the palette also suggests, the range of colours covers a good amount of the colour spectrum, with some staple browns and golds to round it out, and as the swatches below show, the pigmentation is of a classic amazing Colourpop standard.

Left to right: Realness, Feeling It, So Meta, Blurred Lines, Wiggles

Left to right: Not Playing, Keep Cool, Manifest It, Wish List, Woke

Top to bottom: Lucid, Bring It, On One, Eclipse, Prism

I really like the versatility of Colourpop palettes; it makes life so much easier when I’m travelling if I can take just one palette but am able to produce a whole bunch of different looks from it, and this is no exception. Special mention goes to the shade Lucid, which on first look didn’t look like my cup of tea, but when I swatched it I discovered its blue-ish duo-tone effect which is really beautiful.

I feel like I’m often spouting the same spiel when it comes to Colourpop, but the fact is in my eyes there’s not a whole lot they can do wrong.

PS I’m super interested in trying out their No Filter Foundation, so if anyone has ever tried it or reviewed it, please let me know in the comments below!

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February Focus

I tell you what, if you ever want January to go quickly, go on holiday. I’ve never been so shocked to find that we’re at the end of the month.

February is always a decent month in my eyes. Its just 4 little weeks that always seem to fly by, not to mention one of my favourite national holidays (I know its not a real holiday) Pancake day. Its just really manageable, y’know? And much like how I feel about Mondays, I always enjoy the fresh start that a new month brings, and having come back from an amazing holiday with a renewed sense of motivation and drive for the rest of the year, I’m bringing all that energy into February with some new goals and plans for the 4 weeks ahead.

Reorganised office

Towards the end of 2018 I was so caught up with finishing up Christmas orders and then making sure I had everything ready for our trip in January that I let my office get a little chaotic and a messy work space is not helping my productivity BUT I am already in the process of sorting it all out. I’ve got shelves that I still haven’t put up since moving in, so that’s first on the list and then I just want to streamline and tidy everything up so that I can take the rest of the year by storm.

House to-do list

In the last week Matthew and I have been trying to make a dent in the to-do list for the rest of the house – basically the stuff we’ve been putting off because its not vital – but there’s still quite a bit left to do and I’d really like to get through as much of it as we can while momentum is on our side.

Mini-goal weight

One of my New Years resolutions was to regain the body confidence that I lost in 2018, and for the first time in ages I’ve actually been successfully losing weight over the last few weeks. I’m already 5lbs down on what I weighed at the end of December, and although I know that the number on the scale isn’t everything, I’m also feeling so much better. I’m not following any particular plan, just eating better and hitting the gym as usual but I seem to be doing something right, and although I’m not going to divulge the number, I have a particular weight that I would like to hit by the end of Feb and I’m feeling pretty positive about getting there.

Work and save

If there’s any month that’s best for setting a spending ban, its February. January sales are over, there’s no more parties or presents to buy, and if nothing else, its shorter than every other month so you’ve got a better chance of sticking it out for 2-3 days less. So the plan is to get my head down and be too busy with work to spend any money, and just pray that I don’t stumble across anything that I’ll want to break the ban for!

Happy times and happy habits

With January being a bit of a blur for me, going into February I am ready to hunker down and get myself into a good routine with self care, positivity and life in general. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit, and I’ve got 28 to get it right, so let’s go February!

Are you up to much this coming month?

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Things I’m Doing to Love Instagram Right Now

You know, it’s really starting to feel super cliche when I complain about Instagram; it’s just not what it used to be.

On the flip side though, I do have to think that back when our feeds were chronological and the dreaded algorithm didn’t really exist, I didn’t have the following that I do now, so truthfully I can never really compare engagement, and maybe even I wouldn’t have my 5000+ followers now if not for the changes. Who knows, right?

Despite all this, I honestly do still love Instagram. It’s my favourite social media platform because I feel it’s where I can be the most creative, and it’s gone from a place where I post occasional life and holiday photos and promote my blog, to all of this plus being the primary place where I promote my business and a place where I’ve made a lot of really good friends.

Over the last few weeks I’ve made a couple of changes in how I approach Instagram, and honestly they’ve all really boosted my positivity around the platform, and have also possibly contributed to an increase in engagement for me as well!

Getting chatty

I see so many rumours and theories flying around about what helps boost posts and I really don’t know where they come from or if they’re true, but supposedly comments really help. Whether this is urban legend or not, I’m actively making sure that if I scroll past a photo and have a thought about it eg ‘ooh I’d love to go to this place’ or ‘wow I need those shorts’, I put that thought into writing. If nothing else, I know how much I love getting comments so if all I’ve really done is given someone a little internal ‘yay’ then it’s a success in my eyes.

Now I don’t know if this is coincidental, or possibly that other people are having the same thoughts as me, but I have noticed since doing this that I am getting more comments and generally more likes, especially within the first few hours of posting, so I might be on to a winner. If nothing else though, I feel pretty good about it.

New editing software

I went from ‘what is this Lightroom thing that everyone’s banging on about?’ to ‘wow this is fantastic’ in approximately 2.5 seconds. Sure I still don’t fully understand it but I’m having fun winging my way through it! And yes, I guess it is just another additional step I’ve created for myself before being able to post to Instagram, but I really enjoy editing photos and I really love the results.

Planning ahead a little

I really take pride in my Instagram, so it does stress me out sometimes when I can’t find the perfect photo to post and sometimes that means I don’t post for days which makes me sad. I know this might sound ridiculous to a lot of people, but like I said earlier it’s one of my biggest creative outlets so while it may just be Instagram, it’s kinda like an artistic wanting to paint but not having any brushes. You get me?

Anyway, I’m tackling this head on with my handy sidekick, the app UNUM, which I’ve had for about a year now. I don’t religiously plan my posts, but I do like to know what I’m doing for the next day or two, with maybe a couple of blank spaces for ‘of the moment’ inspiration, just like I do with my blog posts, and it means I’ve always got something to fall back on if inspiration is lacking a little.

Staggering photos

I came back from my recent Disney trip with, no joke, THOUSANDS of photos. I posted maybe 2-3 photos a day while I was out there, but especially being on the cruise for a few days with no WiFi, I still have so many photos that haven’t seen the light of Instagram yet. Sure, I could post them all back to back, but I sometimes worry people will get sick of them and I also like to keep some content back to fill the gaps between trips (not that I’ve really got many gaps this year if all goes to plan!), so I spread them out between current photos for variety.

Not getting too hung up on numbers

No one likes not being liked, I get that, but Instagram is a weird and wonderful place full of bitchy politics and bots, and I’m just learning to accept that. Fact is, if you’ve seen your follower count drop overnight, it’s more likely to be courtesy of bots dropping out or accounts being deleted or deactivated that it is that many people making the conscious decision to take you off their feed. Hakuna matata.

As for people playing the follow/unfollow game, I just think that they must be having a really miserable time on Instagram if they feel the need to do that all the time, so they can do them and I’ll just be over here having a fabulous time because it’s so much easier than stressing over it.

…

At the end of the day, I know its just an app, but its also an app that is very important to me for a lot of reasons, so its so much easier to enjoy what I’m doing on there, don’t you think?

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The cariPRO Ultrasonic Toothbrush from Smile Brilliant | AD

The following post contains some affiliate links and features a gifted product. All views are my own.

Let’s face it, we all feel better when we look good, right? Well, the truth is I can be a little lax in that area, and it does affect my mental health, so one of my personal New Years resolutions for 2019 was that I wanted to spend a bit more time taking care of myself and my appearance.

At first, I thought that this would be taking a bit more time to do my makeup, or being stricter with my skincare routine, and it never even really dawned on me that I could also benefit from focusing more on my oral hygiene, until I was contacted by Smile Brilliant to try out their new electric toothbrush, the cariPRO Ultrasonic.

I don’t think I’ve ever really used an electric toothbrush before, except maybe a kiddy one as a child, so I was excited to see if brushing with a little bit of power would actually make the difference that you always see dental adverts claiming. I’ve never really had any concerns about my teeth; I’ve never had a filling, braces or really needed any sort of treatment, so I’ve always thought I was doing just fine with a manual toothbrush, but how do I feel now?

My first impressions of the cariPRO toothbrush were surprising. I expected it to be quite heavy in the hand and bulky compared to the manual toothbrushes that I’m used to, but it was surprisingly lightweight and a lot slimmer than other electric toothbrushes I’ve seen before, and its soft touch grip means it holds really nicely. The brush head is quite a bit smaller than on a manual toothbrush but this makes it easier to focus on each tooth individually to get a great clean all over.

The cariPRO has five different brushing modes – Clean, Whiten, Massage, Gum Care and Sensitive – with each one having a different vibrating effect, and it also has a built-in 2 minute timer, and every 30 seconds there’s a small pause to indicate when you should be moving on to the next section of your mouth, which is super handy if, like me, you never really stop to think about how long you’ve been brushing for. The toothbrush also comes with extra brush heads, a wireless charging dock and a 2 year warranty – oh, and did I mention its totally waterproof?!

But are my teeth cleaner?

Well, they definitely feel it, but not only does using the toothbrush make my mouth feel better, it also actually makes me want to clean my teeth. I now like taking the time to brush thoroughly, alternate between the different brush modes and ensure that I am getting a full 2 minute brush in, whereas before I used to see cleaning my teeth as a bit of a chore.

Are you interested?

Well it might just be your lucky day because I’ve teamed up with Smile Brilliant to give you the chance to win your very own cariPRO Ultrasonic Electric Toothbrush by simply clicking here! And if you don’t win or you can’t wait to try it out for yourself, you can save 20% off your purchase using discount code ‘lottiedoes20‘ at the checkout, so everyone’s a winner really!

Be sure to head over to the Smile Brilliant website to see all the other excellent products they have on offer, and check out the FAQ page if you want to know anything else!

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electric toothbrush
//www.smilebrilliant.com/widget-caripro-article/lottiedoes/773/228

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My January Trip Disney Haul

I’m normally that person who leaves it FAR too long to unpack their suitcase after coming back from holiday, so I’m pretty shocked by myself that I am unpacked with the washing done within only a few days of arriving back. I mean sure, I partly did this so that I could do this haul post, but I usually just unpack the washing and my new buys and leave the rest for as long as I can get away with, so this is impressive for me.

This haul is a combination of buys from Walt Disney World, RunDisney merch and some purchases I made during our Disney Cruise on the Dream!

I felt like I didn’t go too overboard with shopping while in the parks, mainly due to the fact that the big expense of the trip was my Walt Disney World annual pass – Matthew and I are hoping to go back a couple of times this year and with our DVC discount it was much more cost effective to get APs than regular tickets! For this very reason I felt justified in buying a couple of magic bands, millennial pink and light turquoise, as well as choosing an orange AP magic band, just so I’ve got options, y’know.. It also meant that on our final day in the parks, which was the first day of Epcot’s Festival of Arts, we could pick up an annual pass holder magnet from Mouse Gear!

The other things I knew that I wanted was a DVC Alex and Ani bracelet, which Matthew bought for me, and the Its a Small World spirit jersey (because did you ever see anything so ME?!) and I also couldn’t resist buying the new Mickey celebration sipper cup!

The Small World spirit jersey was not the only spirit jersey purchase of the trip.. Well I had to round off my collection with the new RunDisney spirit jersey and the navy/rose gold Disney Cruise Line one, so I now have one of all the Disney spirit jerseys!

As well as the cruise spirit jersey, I also bought the Castaway Cay Challenge pin and this cute little cruise cupcake pin which was in a blind bag, and Matthew also bought me the DCL Alex and Ani!

I always try to be restrained at RunDisney expos, and in all fairness I do tend to be happy with the participant t-shirts that runners are given for taking part in the races, so I rarely buy any extra t-shirts at the expo, but as I’m going to shout about it for the rest of my life, I couldn’t not buy the ‘I did it’ t-shirt for the marathon, as well as the headband, and I also bought the mini medal replica pin!

The bottom two photos are the participant t-shirts for the 10K, marathon and Castaway Cay Challenge, and the ear hat was also given out at the end of the marathon which I was very happy about – I even got it embroidered! (or at least my friends did while I tried to recover from running..)

So mainly pins and spirit jerseys, but I’m pretty happy with all my buys, even if my credit card doesn’t exactly agree..

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The Walt Disney World Marathon

Sunday 13th January 2019

On the morning of the marathon I was up at 3am. Luckily, I’d actually slept pretty well that night, unlike most nights I have before races, so it didn’t feel too awful. As I was staying at Disney’s Polynesian Resort, I had to get the monorail to Epcot – there were no buses on for monorail loop resorts so it wasn’t as busy on the roads – but the building we were in, Moorea, was so close to the Ticket and Transportation Center that it was quicker for me to walk there and just get the direct monorail to Epcot than it was for me to get the monorail from Poly.

Getting the monorail meant I did arrive at Epcot earlier than I was used to and the corrals weren’t even open yet, so after I walked from the station to the RunDisney stage area, I sat down for a little bit so that I wasn’t on my feet for too long, then once the corrals were open I made my way to G and sat back down for the wait. To give you an idea of the scale of this event, by the time I’d got to the start line I’d already done 5,000 steps.

While the race officially started at 5:30am, my corral didn’t actually start until 6:10, by which time I was bursting for the loo having drank a bottle of water while waiting to begin, so I had to stop at the first portaloo on the course, which was about three-quarters of a mile in – although on a full bladder it felt A LOT longer than that!

The course took us straight up to Magic Kingdom, which we entered just after mile 5, and those first 5 miles flew by for me, with the highlight seeing Leah at mile 4 cheering me on. The sun was just rising so the castle looked totally beautiful while we were running down Main Street, and in every RunDisney event I’ve done in WDW, this is the moment I look forward to the most. The Magic Kingdom stretch always goes far too quickly as well – it was actually just about a mile – but just before leaving the park via a backstage area we reached the 10k mark.

For some reason in basically every marathon photo I am holding a banana (and no, they’re not all the same banana)

The next stretch of the route was the part I was looking forward to the least; it was a full 10k again before we’d reach Animal Kingdom. Despite dreading it, however, this part went almost as quickly as the first quarter of the race. It was all road with very little entertainment, and it was starting to get hotter as the sun had properly risen by then, but I was still in my stride and feeling good, so it didn’t seem like too long until the course took me into Animal Kingdom. We came in at the top of the park, running over the tracks for the train that normally runs guests to Rafiki’s Planet Watch, then down through Africa, into Asia and past Expedition Everest before leaving the park through the back of Dinoland USA. The park was open by this point, and some runners were making the dash off the route to ride Expedition Everest, for which the single rider queue was open exclusively for. The half marathon mark was also inside the park, and despite thinking I would have a little cry at that point, I was focusing all my energy on pushing forward – everything from this point onward would be the furthest I’d ever run before.

In my head, the next stretch of the race wouldn’t be so bad – it was less than 10K until we got to the next significant part of the course at ESPN Wide World of Sports. In reality, this was the hardest part for me. Between mile 16 and 17 my wireless headphones ran out of battery, meaning I no longer had the Hamilton soundtrack to distract me from the blazing sun and 25C+ temperature with no shade, or the fact that being back on the roads meant there was absolutely no shade. This was also about the time that my ankle gave out, and suddenly it felt like each mile had trebled in distance. When I finally did get to ESPN, I thought the time would go by a little faster, but my feet felt like they were dying and there were actually almost 3 miles to run around the grounds, and those 3 miles felt like 30.

From ESPN the course took us up towards Hollywood Studios, where we ran in through the top of the Fantasmic theatre, to the bottom of Tower of Terror and then along Sunset Boulevard and out of the park through the main entrance, and from there we ran along the path that links Hollywood Studios to Epcot via the Boardwalk Resort area. By this point I was so ready for the race to be over, but I was still plodding along as best I could, thinking that once the route took me into Epcot at the UK pavilion, I’d only have a short bit of the World Showcase to run before leaving the park for the finish line. I was wrong. Turns out, we were running around the World Showcase the long way..

Despite having very little of the route left and still running, albeit very slowly, I found the World Showcase incredibly irritating. Epcot guests were in full swing by this point, so only half of the width of the path was coned off for the runners, but guests were still cutting into the running course, and a lot of the other runners were walking by this point, so I was having to do a lot of weaving, which was the last thing I wanted to be doing as I was nearing 26 miles. The course continued to be super crowded and blocked up by walkers almost right up to the finish line, so I was having to dart into any available space until it finally opened up at the finish line stretch.

I’m not even sure if I can put into words how I felt crossing the finish line. I expected to burst into tears but it had been so hot I don’t think I had any water left in my body to cry out. The whole thing didn’t feel real, and I’m not sure it even does now, because running a marathon is not something that I ever imagined I would be capable of doing in my lifetime, let alone with the year I had leading up to it. But I did it.

The plan and motivation for this race was wanting to run a marathon before turning 25, which I will be in October. I’ve always said that it would be my only marathon and that I would definitely never put myself through it again, but now its over, I wonder if I’ve caught the bug..

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Walt Disney World Days 5 and 6

I’m combining two days into one post purely because I didn’t do too much myself!

After a lie in as a reward for the 10K the previous day, we headed to Animal Kingdom and went straight to our first fastpass at Dinosaur, and from there we went to meet Chip and Dale in their Dinobash outfits which were super cute!! It was pretty much lunchtime at this point so we went over to Satuli Canteen to eat (because I can’t live without cheeseburger pods).

After lunch, Chelsea and Sammy had a Flights of Passage fastpass so Sarah and I just wandered around Africa taking photos while they were in Pandora, and then we went back to Satuli Canteen to meet up with David, Megan and Leah quickly. I was planning on leaving after that to go back to the hotel, but our little meet took us up until our Expedition Everest fastpass so I figured it would be rude not to ride!

I spent the rest of the afternoon resting at the resort in preparation for the marathon, with the exception of going to Disney Springs for dinner at Blaze, and then got myself an early night for the next morning..

I won’t go into all the hairy details of the marathon just yet, but I DID IT!!!

It was hot, it was hard work, but it is over now and I’m so happy. I went straight back to the resort afterwards for a good soak in the bath and some feet up time, and then we drove over to Wilderness Lodge for dinner at Artist Point. It was the new Storybook Dining experience which is Snow White themed, and although the setting and characters were very cute, the meal itself was a little disappointing – although I hardly had the energy to eat anyway.

Matthew and I went back to Polynesian while the girls spent the rest of the evening in Magic Kingdom, but we did watch Happily Ever After from the beach at the resort, and I think I was asleep before 9.30pm..

My next post will be a more detailed look into the marathon, but we’re about to set sail on the Disney Dream so I don’t know if that will be posted tomorrow or a few days time!

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Walt Disney World Day 4

Friday kicked off with the first RunDisney event of our trip: the Walt Disney World 10K. For me this technically counted as a warmup for the marathon, but it was Chelsea and Sammy’s first RunDisney event and it was really great. We stopped to meet Ralph and Vanellope, Chip and Dale as the Rescue Rangers and Jiminy Cricket, and I’m so proud of how they did and happy with how they paced me.

After we’d showered, changed etc, we went back to Epcot in time for our lunch reservation at Teppan Edo. It was my fourth time eating there and it never fails to disappoint! After eating, we went round to Norway to meet Anna and Elsa and then used our fastpass for Frozen Ever After. When we came out from there, we saw that Soarin had a 25 minute wait time so we bombed over there, but actually I don’t think we waited more than 15 minutes to ride. We then hit some Epcot walls, then went to Starbucks and Club Cool for drinks, then went to meet Baymax and Joy and Sadness, and then went back to Mexico to meet Donald.

With our little legs all feeling the long day, we finished up the day in Epcot at Mouse Gear before catching the monorail back to the resort for an early night and the best nights sleep of the trip so far!

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Walt Disney World Day 3

So I’m now running a day behind, but hey ho!

Thursday morning we headed into Magic Kingdom around about opening time, and as we walked into the park Chip and Dale were just heading out to meet, so as they had no queue yet, we were basically the first people to meet them, then we walked towards Frontierland and rode Big Thunder Mountain, then picked up some breakfast and hit up Its A Small World.

From there, we went back to Main Street so Chelsea could get a Starbucks and Sarah could get a balloon, and then visited the purple wall for some quick pics for the ‘gram. Chelsea and Sammy had fastpasses for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, so they went off to do that and Sarah and I just hung out at the castle which is where they met us and we went over to Space Mountain for another fastpass.

A quick snack and some shops later, Sarah left to nip back to the hotel for a jacket and the rest of us had a quick wander through Fantasyland and then rode Big Thunder one more time, this time with a fastpass, and then left the park, meeting Sarah on the way out, and got the bus to Art of Animation.

The bus to AoA broke down, so we ended up having to be transferred onto a new bus, but it didn’t take too long for that to be sorted! We had some food at the resort and an explore, and then we got an Uber to ESPN Wide World of Sports for the RunDisney expo where we picked up our race bibs and shopped the merch for the race weekend, then grabbed another Uber to Hollywood Studios, which is where we finished up the night watching Fantasmic before going back to get a good nights sleep in before the 10k!

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Walt Disney World Day 2

This morning we got up bright and early so that we could get to Animal Kingdom. Due to not booking our fastpasses at the 60 day mark, we didn’t have a Flights of Passage fastpass, so we were attempting to rope drop it, and it was actually a success! Although the queue looked scary as we walked all the way down to Harambe Theater, we hardly stopped moving and actually did the ride in under an hour – plus as I’ve only ever done fastpass for it before, it meant I got to see the cool inside queue for the first time.

Once that was done, we could relax a little and got breakfast at Creature Comforts, then we took some photos at the Tree of Life before going to meet Russell and Dug. It was possibly the cutest meet I’ve ever had, and as it was my first time meeting Dug I was really excited, especially as they loved our Wilderness Explorer outfits. After that, we went over to Expedition Everest and rode it twice, once as single riders and the second time using our fastpasses, then we wandered around for a bit before settling on having lunch at Yak and Yeti (QS).

We ended up sitting at Yak and Yeti for quite a while, just enjoying some shade and time off our feet, and then from there we went over to Africa for Festival of the Lion King, then went back to Dinoland and practically walked onto Primeval Whirl, then met Donald in his Dinobash outfit, before going to meet Micky and Minnie, which we had fastpasses for.

After that, we happened across Pocahontas meeting near the Tree of Life while we were heading back to Africa, so we stopped to meet her, and then went on to our final fastpass of the day at Kilimanjaro Safaris – although our ride was somewhat delayed due to the animals blocking vehicles on the roads – but we did get to see the lions really clearly and hear them roar!

Once we were off the ride, we had a mad dash back to the hotel to meet Chelsea who had arrived while we were being held up by rhinos or whatever was delaying the safari! We headed into Magic Kingdom for some dinner, a quick spin on the Peoplemover and a look through some shops, and then got the monorail back to the resort ready for some rest and recovery!

Tomorrow we’ll be hitting the RunDisney Health and Fitness Expo as well as the parks, so stay tuned!

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Walt Disney World Day 1

Well gang, it’s been a hot minute since I’ve blogged a Disney trip, but would you believe in the last few months I’ve done two trips that I haven’t blogged? So unlike me, right?

Well, I’m now back in Walt Disney World for some magic and some running, and I’ll be back blogging the whole thing, starting with today..

So we’re staying at Disney’s Polynesian Resort, our DVC home, which meant that this morning was far more chilled out as we only had to hop on the monorail to get to Magic Kingdom, and did security at the resort so didn’t have to queue at the park. There had been an early morning magic event on so the park was already a little busy, but we went down to the castle for the welcome show, and then Sammy wanted some breakfast so she grabbed a Mickey waffle at Sleepy Hollow, took a trip to the Tangled toilets and then went for our first ride of the day: Pirates of the Caribbean.

On our way from there to Fantasyland, we met Mary Poppins and the ugly stepsisters, and then met Rapunzel and Tiana in Princess Fairytale Hall, and then headed for Haunted Mansion for our first fastpass of the day. By that time it was pretty much lunch time – Sarah and I hadn’t eaten breakfast either – and we ended up going to Pinocchio Village Haus so that we knew there would be vegetarian options for Sammy.

After lunch, we had to spend a little bit of time at guest services sorting out our annual pass magic bands, and then headed back to the castle to watch Mickey’s Royal Friendship Faire and from there grabbed a parade spot. Once the parade was over, we grabbed a quick Starbucks, and then did our second fastpass of the day, Buzz, and also did a lap of the TTA Peoplemover.

The My Disney Experience app was telling us that Big Thunder Mountain had a 35 minute wait time, so we headed over there, but unfortunately so did everyone else in the park.. The cast member said the queue was at least 70 minutes when we got there, so that was a no, and instead Matthew and I got in the queue for Splash Mountain, but after a while we realised that the queue was going to be too long and we would miss our Seven Dwarfs Mine Train fastpass, so instead we grabbed a Mickey waffle and headed over to Fantasyland.

I’ve never done Mine Train in the dark before and it was so good!! Because most people were camping out for Happily Ever After by this point, the queue for Big Thunder had dropped to only 20 minutes, so we practically ran back to Frontierland, and had the best time riding the back of the wildest ride in the wilderness. With a little bit of time before HEA, we got some food at Cosmic Ray’s, and then got our spot to watch the show – despite showing up just as it was starting, we got a decent view!

On our way out of the park we hit the shops and Main Street Confectionary, and then we decided to forgo the monorail in favour of the ferry back to Poly, and the Electrical Water Pageant was going so we got to see a lot of that while we were waiting which was really cool because I never stop to watch it when I’m leaving Magic Kingdom.

We’ve got day 1 feet right now, so we got back into quickly and are just spending the evening chilling in the room ready for Animal Kingdom tomorrow!

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Preparing for A Disney Cruise

Today is a very big day, Pascal!

No, I’m not leaving for a Disney cruise today, but I will be this time next week, and I can’t wait to be back on the sea, sailing on the Disney Dream.

This will be my second Disney cruise, and having had the experience from my cruise last year, I feel somewhat more prepared than I did last time. I know what to expect now, I know what I wish I’d done differently on my last cruise, and I’m ready to have the best time at sea feeling fully ready for it! If you’ve never done a Disney cruise before and need a little guidance, or are just interested in seeing how I do it, here are a few of the things I’ve done to get ready for this sailing:

Deciding how to decorate the stateroom door

The stateroom doors on Disney cruise ships are metal, so anything magnetic sticks to them and people really take advantage of this by decorating their doors to the max! We didn’t decorate our door last time, so I really wanted to get involved this year, and ordered some personalised decorations for our group so that we have even just a little something! It also makes things so much easier when you can’t remember what number room you’re in and all the floors and doors look them same..

Researching ports

For our Mediterranean cruise last year, I didn’t do ANY research on our ports or excursions, and relied purely on the rest of my group to decide what to do. Sure, I still had a great time and I was pretty happy doing whatever, but this time I’ve watched a lot of YouTube videos of Castaway Cay in preparation!

Packing important things

As well as the usual holiday essentials, and the cruise booklet that you are sent in advance of your trip, there are a couple of things that I would highly recommend packing for a smoother cruise experience. Pack a lanyard or passholder for your room key if you don’t want to carry a bag all the time, I like to bring a travel cup (like the refillable ones you get at the parks, or a travel mug type) to fill up with drinks on deck so you don’t have to use a paper cup every time, and if you are going to decorate your door, don’t forget the decs!

Download the Disney Cruise app

Although it doesn’t do much before your cruise, once you’re onboard the ship and connected to the wifi, the Disney Cruise app becomes your guide to the boat, with daily schedules and timings, plus it has a cute messenger feature where you can chat to your group on the boat!

Plan your outfits

Even if you don’t meticulously plan your holiday wardrobe like I do, there are a couple of things you should prepare for. Every Disney cruise has a Pirate Night, where dressing up is highly recommended – seriously, everyone does it! – so you won’t want to miss out on that, and some sailings also have optional formal or semi-formal nights so plan accordingly. I’ve also planned a special outfit for the sailaway party as ours was cancelled on the last cruise so I want this one to be more special!

Have you ever done a Disney cruise before?

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Disneyland Paris AP Mouse Party Review

Its so crazy that one month ago today I was having the maddest day in Disneyland Paris! I’d flown out the night before so I could spend just one day in the parks, and so that I could go to my first ever annual pass holder event, which was to celebrate the 90th birthday of Mickey Mouse himself.

I’ve seen to many of my friends go to these types of events before and I was feeling a mixture of excited, nervous and also just not knowing what to expect completely, and now I’ve done it, what did I think?

Character meets

I think its safe to say that the majority of Disney fans go to these events for the opportunity to meet rare characters, and this definitely showed. Some of the queues were INSANE. DLP had had the good sense to split each queue into two, so that you knew which of the two characters at each location you were going to meet, instead of queuing with the hope of one, and then there being a switch as you get to the front, but it wasn’t very clear in the run up to the event that each meet would be separate. Sure, there were a few meets where I didn’t expect both characters to be together, but when the meets were billed as ‘Nick and Judy’ or ‘Carl and Russell’, a lot of guests were expecting to be meeting with both characters, not one or the other, especially as the queues were so long for most.

The only characters I saw with a minimal wait queue were Clarabelle and Horace, but after I’d spent almost the first hour of the party waiting for Vanellope, I decided that I didn’t want to spend all my party time in lines.

Shows and parades

There were a couple of shows and ‘parades’ on throughout the evening. I use ” in regards to the parades because it was essentially just some dancers and characters dancing down Main Street before going up on the stage, and the song for said parade was REALLY irritating – not everyone shared this view, but several people I was with did and it was so repetitive.. The other stage shows that were on through the evening were honestly a bit take it or leave it. I caught part of one of them and wasn’t massively impressed, especially considering how good the Surprise Mickey show that takes place in the parks during the day is, I just think the bar was set too high for me by that show.

The show that everyone was there for was the one night resurrection of Dreams, the firework and castle projection show that was replaced a few years back, and I must admit that it was GOOD. I’d only seen Dreams maybe 2/3 times back when it was on, so I didn’t have too much of a memory of it, but I enjoyed every minute of it! There was also another castle projection show towards the end of the party which was entirely Mickey themed and that was also amazing.

Rides

A lot of the rides were open to guests during the party, including Big Thunder Mountain, Its a Small World and Star Tours, and from what I heard, none of them had more than a 5 minute wait – probably because so many people were queuing for characters. The only ride I actually managed to fit in was Star Tours, which was a walk on AND there were only 8 people in the whole ride which was so cool.

I think for future parties, I’ll forgo characters in favour of rides because I loved riding a practically empty ride and not having to queue at all for that privilege, plus I found the character meets a little stressful given the number of guests and not-so-great organisation.

Organisation

I went into the party with a fairly open mind and no exact plan for anything that I really wanted to do, so I was fairly chilled for the most part, but there were some places were I thought Disneyland Paris really let guests down, and I feel a little ashamed to say that its not something I would have ever thought about before, had I not been with a friend of mine who was in a wheelchair.

The party was not disability friendly. There was no separate line for wheelchair users, so anyone in a chair had to be pushed up and down through the queue barriers under the Disneyland Hotel before the party, and then be crushed by the mobs of people trying to get into the park and run down Main Street. The lines for characters were also not clearly communicated. In the queue for Vanellope, we were told by one cast member to wait outside the line while he organised an alternative queue space, but meanwhile another queue had been created, and despite us being the first there, other cast members then tried to get us to move the the back of the now-insanely-busy queue. I hate how ignorant I have previously been to these matters, but I hate more how Disneyland Paris do not cater to all abilities.

Aside from this, however, I didn’t think the organisation was too bad. After being let into the park, each guest was handed a programme for the night and a limited edition print as a little gift, and there were cast members lining Main Street USA cheering and high-5ing guests as they walked in, I guess as also a little bit of crowd control!

And as far as I’m aware, everything else went off without a hitch! I had a good night with good friends, and I think I’ve learnt a lot about how to handle these events in the future. I don’t know if I would go to every party they hold but I’d definitely go back for another!

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Why I Won’t Write About Saving for A House

Its now been almost 8 months since Matthew and I got the keys to our first home, and truthfully I thought I would have written a lot more about the process by now, but between everything else going on in my life and my minor falling out with blogging last year, I just haven’t got round to it.

I have, however, been thinking a lot about the sort of posts that I wanted to write about this, and while at first I thought a ‘Tips on Saving for Your First House’ post would be a great idea, the more I thought about it, the more annoyed I was getting with the concept of that post. Here me out.

Its no secret that our generation, ‘millennials’, are renting for longer, if not indefinitely, and the percentage of homeowners under 30 has dropped more than significantly in the last 10-20 years. I count myself as a minority for becoming a homeowner at the age of 23 and I’m very aware that while I could write about how Matthew and I saved up for our house, there are a whole tonne of circumstantial reasons why this wouldn’t be relevant to a lot of other people.

House prices differ MASSIVELY throughout the country

As a born and bred southerner, I have lived my whole life with a notion of what I thought was the price of a house was based on what house prices were like around where I lived. I started saving as young as I could because I knew that I wanted to buy my own place at some point in my life, and I knew that wasn’t going to be cheap.

But Matthew is a northern boy, and when we did start looking at houses seriously, we knew it would be up north. I was left dumbfounded when I discovered that we could buy a detached house for less than what a 1 or 2 bedroom flat would cost in Bournemouth. Suddenly, the deposit money I had been saving all these years was more than enough for a house, despite being nowhere need what it would need to be in my hometown. The fact is, most people aren’t prepared to move across the country just to own a home, and we were lucky (if that is even the word) to be relocating for Matthew’s job, because the chances of us being able to buy somewhere down south without significant help were slim.

Not everyone can make the ‘sacrifices’ we were able to

I never moved out of my parents’, and Matthew moved in with us 9 months before we bought our house. We both worked at the same place, so it was pretty easy for us to share my car. It would be pretty easy for me to write a post saying that to help save for a house you should move in with your parents, share/sell a car etc, but I know that those options aren’t always an option for everyone.

We all have different histories

I started working at 16, and I didn’t go to university after sixth form, so I had the luxury of no student loans. I always knew that I wanted to buy a place, so I started saving super early, even before Matthew was in the picture, AND Matthew and I were able to buy together, when not everyone can split a mortgage.

We also have totally different histories to previous generations. My parents were married by my age, not fighting for jobs in overcrowded industries like so many people are today AND the housing market was a totally different place to how it is today. We just can’t compare ourselves.

Home-buying incentives and schemes

Because we bought a new-build, we were eligible for the government Help To Buy loan for up to 20% of the value of our house which is interest free for the first 5 years. If you’re not buying a new-build, you can’t apply for this, and to be honest, without this we wouldn’t have been able to afford the house we fell in love with. There are also other options, like shared ownership and Help to Buy ISAs, but again, these aren’t always options for everyone.

Now none of this is to say that people under the age of 30 can’t save enough to buy houses, I mean we’re living proof that it is possible, but I’m just a little fed up of all these clickbait articles saying that its because we love avocados (which we don’t all love just FYI) or some other ridiculously false reason, when in fact its because we’re stuck at the bottom rung of the property ladder with baby boomers stomping on our hands and so many real factors are actually affecting our generation.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this, so drop me a comment!

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My Advice for First Time Gym-Goers

I know we all joke about it, but its true – January will see more people heading into gyms than any other month of the year. Getting fitter, healthier or trying to lose weight is one of, if not the most popular New Year’s resolution, and although its something a lot of people poke fun at, I for one am here for it, each and every year, because I think its a fabulous resolution to have.

I also know that if you’re a first time gym member, or haven’t been to a gym for a long long time, it can be a kinda terrifying experience for you. Trust me, I’ve been there. And while I’m not a fitness professional, I have been a regular gym user for about the last 7 years, and so I’d like to share some advice for all of you who feel like you’re a little out of your comfort zone as you go into the gym this January (or any time, if you’re reading this in the future!).

Do a gym tour/introduction session

Most gyms will offer new members a tour of the facilities, which is a great way for you to get the lay of the land and ease yourself in slowly. It also gives you a chance to get to know the staff a little, and get the low-down on any rules of the gym, plus its a great chance for you to..

Ask the questions that you want answered

How do I use this piece of equipment? What exercises should I be doing to work on this area? Don’t be worried to ask gym staff as many questions as you need to because as well as it being part of their job to help you feel comfortable at the gym, they’d also rather you asked a question that you thought might be silly, than you not ask them and potentially hurt yourself, or even just not feel like you know what you’re doing.

Don’t assume other gym members dislike you

I see SO MANY people on Twitter at this time of year say things like ‘ugh everyone in the gym is so judgemental of us gym newbies’ and it really bothers me because most gym-goers aren’t focused on anything but their own workout. If anyone has said, or does say anything to you that makes you feel bad, I’m so sorry that you’ve had a bad experience but if nothing has been actually said to you then please don’t make the assumptions that people are that nasty because most of us aren’t like that, promise!

Start off slowly

It might go without saying, but don’t push yourself too hard straight off the bat. All good things take time and getting your workout routine right is no different!

Know the difference between ‘the burn’ and real pain

You’re going to want to feel ‘the burn’, and that means that what you’re doing is working, but that is something that should subside fairly swiftly after you finish that exercise. If you’re still in significant pain for some time after you stop whatever it is you were doing, that’s a sign that you may have done some actual damage, and if that’s the case then please don’t try to push through that.

Have fun with it

I personally love going to the gym, and that’s why I go, because if I didn’t like it I wouldn’t do it. The trick is finding something that you actually enjoy doing at the gym. If you hate what you’re doing, try something different, and keep trying until something sticks, but honestly you’ve got so many options to try so keep at it!

Remember, only you can make your fitness goals happen, so ignore everyone else who says otherwise and let’s do this!

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What I Got For Christmas 2018

I don’t know if its too late to write this post and for people to still be interested, but if you fancy a little nosey at my Christmas gifts, then this is the post for you!

Part of the reason that this post is coming a little late is because for the first time ever, I spent Christmas away from my family, so I only exchanged gifts with some people yesterday when I was in Bournemouth for New Years, so now I finally have a full collection of wonderful gifts, and here they are:

For starters, who doesn’t LOVE the Lush Christmas products? My year revolves around when I’ll be able to get my hands on some Snow Fairy again, and because Matthew knows this, he bought be the BIGGEST bottle of Snow Fairy shower gel I’ve ever seen (its bigger than my head), as well as the new Snow Fairy body spray so I can smell like a Lush store all year round. I also got a couple of other bits from both Matthew and my mum, including the Rudolph jelly face mask which I can’t wait to try out! And what’s that in the corner you ask?

That would be my ADORABLE new activewear from Chrissa Sparkles! I’ve had my eye on these sprinkles leggings for about a year now, and back in November they announced that they would be discontinued, so I begged Matthew to buy them for me before they left, and I’ve had the torture of knowing that they were in the house but I couldn’t have them until Christmas Day. I’m so ready to look like a cupcake threw up on me at the gym.

Of course there was a healthy helping of Disney goodies, including a Disneyland Paris spirit jersey from my parents, the beautiful Sorcerer Mickey Pandora charm from Matthew and the Mickey Mouse Museum book from my nan which is full of amazing Disney artwork from through the years.

The little Potter nerd in me LOVES these beautiful books of the Fantastic Beasts film screenplays, and this little rat is, in fact, a Scabbers lip balm – I mean who knew that existed, but I’m here for it!

Finally, something else that I can’t wait to play with is the Chasing Rainbows palette from Colourpop, because look how pretty it is!! Discovering Colourpop was basically just the greatest thing to happen to my makeup drawer and I already know that this will be as amazing as everything else I own from them.

All these gifts, plus some other little bits like DVDs and chocolate have made me one super happy chappy! What was your favourite Christmas present?

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My 2019 Resolutions and Goals

The clock struck midnight, and just like that all the pumpkins in the world turned into carriages as we all become shiny new versions of ourselves in some weird reverse Cinderella story.

Ok, so that sounds a little weird, but honestly I do love a new year. It always brings so much hope and excitement for a bright new future, a new page to our life stories. And while the world is often divided between those who make resolutions and those who make fun of those who make resolutions, I am firmly the former. Even if they don’t stick for the whole of the year, the intentions are always good and I always love believing that I can do it.

So here they are, a bunch of things I hope to achieve in the coming 365 days, and even if they don’t, I’m gonna have a blast trying to make them happen:

Personal Resolutions

  • Choose happiness always – In the last few weeks I’ve been working on my happiness, and I think I’m going to get the hang of it this year, so stay tuned
  • Get my body confidence back – as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I left my body confidence back in 2017 which made 2018 a little bit sucky. I’m not about sucky in 2019, so I’m just gonna skip past the last year and work on getting it back.
  • Wake up earlier – I had this one last year as well, and it worked for the most part, but with the addition of a puppy to our household, mornings have become slightly more about cuddles in bed with Finn..
  • Enjoy cooking and baking again – I’ve always loved making food, but recently its become more of a necessary chore than something I’ve enjoyed doing, so I’m gonna get back on Pinterest and find some amazing food I’m excited to make again
  • Watch more movies and read more books – y’know, all the ones I keep saying I’ll watch/read and then never get round to or end up going back to ones I’ve seen/read before..

Fitness Goals

  • Complete the marathon – its the only one that I’ll be doing in my lifetime (I can already say that with some certainty) and by the end of next week it will be done, and then I can focus on the rest of my goals..
  • Get my 5K back below 30 minutes consistently – its been a little while since I’ve run a 5K in under 30 minutes as I’ve been fighting injuries and working towards other things, but once the marathon is done and dusted my focus will be back on shorter distances!
  • Reach 50 ParkRuns – considering I’ve been taking part in ParkRun for several years now, you’d think I would have hit this already, but I’m going into 2019 with a solid 30 runs under my belt, so let’s do this!
  • Set a new half marathon PB – nope, I’m not going to set myself a definitive target for this one, I just want to beat my current PB and even if that’s only by 10 seconds then its still a win for me.

Business Goals

  • Keep pushing my limits – this time last year I wrote in my 2018 resolutions that I wanted to learn to sew more things. Well, I did, and that’s exactly what turned my little side business into my full-time job, so let’s keep pushing.
  • Keep loving what I’m doing – being a full-time small business boss makes me so happy and I just can’t believe I get to do what I love every day, so I want to keep it that way!

Blog Goals

  • Make 2019 my best blogging year yet – last year I let my blog slip, and that was ok for my life at the time. I’m going to try and stay away from specific blog hope and targets, because I know that so many things can get in the way, but I just want to feel better about my blog and make it the fun outlet that I’ve always loved so much.
  • Reach 8K on Instagram – for 2018, I set myself the seemingly modest target of reaching 2500 from 1900, but with the algorithm as it is, that could have been impossible. I did, however, smash that, and I finished up 2018 just over 5000. This year, I’ve got my sights set a little higher but we’ll see how it goes..
  • More travel writing – Matthew wants to visit a new city every month in 2019, and I want to do more travel writing, so it was a match made in heaven, right?

Wow, when I sat down to write this I thought I’d only do a few for this year yet here we are 700 words later! I guess all I can say to that is that, cliche as it sounds, I’m so ready to make this year the best one ever. All the ingredients are there, I’ve just got to make something with them, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.

Happy 2019 everybody!

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2018: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

It would seem that this end of December break from blogging has become somewhat of a regular occurrence, but honestly it does me a whole lot of good, and here I am, back and ready to take 2019 blogging by the metaphorical horns.

I’ve probably said this a hundred times this year, but 2018 has been a total whirlwind. Its been full of major highs and also some pretty sucky lows, and while I’m not normally one for looking back at the end of the year, there’s a lot to be said about the past 364 days.

The Good

Well, its been a year of BIG things. Matthew finally finished his pilot training and started flying, we bought a frickin’ HOUSE and we got the most beautiful puppy in the world. We visited San Francisco and spent a week living it up in the beautiful Aulani Resort in Hawaii, as well as becoming Disneyland Paris annual pass holders.

This year I also took the leap into self-employment, turning my small business into a full-time job which has been an absolute dream come true, I’ve managed to grow my Instagram more than I imagined would be possible and I’ve spent some of the best times with my closest friends.

The Bad

As I’ve mentioned several times throughout the year, blogging has taken a major back seat for the majority of 2018. I started of the year stronger than I ever have before, but life and many other things got in the way and although it wasn’t easy for me to admit, it was easier for me to let blogging go a little while I focused on the new things that had become more important.

There’s also been a whole lotta change that will take me a little bit of time to adjust to. I’ve moved so far away from my hometown and my family, and that’s still something that I need to work on getting used to, and there has been so much going on that we’ve hardly had time to stop and breathe, so there’s been a lot of feeling constantly overwhelmed.

The Ugly

2018 has also had some pretty sucky times. I’ve struggled a lot with body image, which after such a positive 2017 felt even harder than it could have. I haven’t always talked about it as much as I could have done, but its done a real number on my mental health, and breaking my ankle back in April only made things worse. Honestly, I’m fed up of feeling the way that I do, and I’m determined that 2019 will be the end of it.

I’ve also spent far too much time in 2018 comparing myself to others, so much so that I let an incredible achievement – being nominated for the 2018 UK Blog Awards – go practically unnoticed because I was so sure that compared to the other nominees, I stood so little a chance that I didn’t even think I should ask for people to vote for me.

The Future

I’ve decided that 2019 will be the good, the better and the best; no bad, no ugly, just happiness. I already know that its going to be so full of magic and love and friendship, so I just have to keep filling it with only good things and positive energy. Tomorrow I’m going to be sharing my New Years Resolutions and goals and these are just going to be the stepping stones that make 2019 the best year yet.

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UK Small Shops for Your Christmas Shopping

Although we’re already fast approaching Christmas, like me, you may still have a little way to go on your Christmas shopping. I’m also trying my best to shop from as many small businesses as I can this Christmas, because as a small business owner myself, I know how important sales at this time of year are, so with that in mind, here are a bunch of UK based small shops for you to check out this holiday season who are still open for Christmas orders.

*At time of publishing, these shops are still accepting pre-Christmas orders, but please check their last order dates directly before purchasing*

CoconuTacha

Remember the amazing wrapping paper I showed you a few weeks back? Well its still available! You can also buy some amazing stickers, prints, greeting cards and enamel pins in a huge selection of beautiful designs from this wonderful Wales based store! Shop here.

RockPaperSisters

Whether you want a super cute tees, sweatshirts or tote bags, RockPaperSisters have got you covered for all your fandom and pop culture favourites. They have a HUGE range of designs, inspired by everything from your favourite Disney films, your favourite bands like BTS, TV shows, movies, girl power.. You name it, they’ve got it and you’ll love it. I already have a bunch of their tees and they are so comfortable, such amazing quality and the girls behind the business are also super lovely! Last Christmas order dates for the UK is Monday 17th December. Shop here.

Alice Vitrum

For any fans of Disney or Studio Ghibli, Alice Vitrum has you covered! Patches, pins, prints, stickers and tote bags, all in the cutest designs and you can order up until 9pm on December 12th! Shop here.

Teeq

For cute Disney inspired embroidered tees and sweatshirts, Teeq has got you covered, and they also have a cute selection of matching enamel pins too! Shop here.

Hopefully this will give you a little bit of gift inspiration, or pointed you towards some great small shops even if you are done shopping!

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Pup Life – A Month with Finn

Its now been a whole month since we brought Finn home and our lives were turned a little upside down. Having a puppy in our lives has brought SO much joy, but its also a lot of responsibility and a total lifestyle change.

Because I work from home, I spend pretty much all day every day with this little fuzzball, and we’ve got ourselves a pretty good rhythm, and as he gets older and more used to life by the day, we’re starting to see some improvements in his typical puppy behaviour.

Sleeping

Finn was already sleeping through the night pretty well when we got him, so the only big change for him really was sleeping alone, as he still had a brother and both of his parents with him at the breeder’s. We tried to start him off with tough love, giving him a Pluto soft toy and making him sleep in the utility room by himself, but this was all a little too much too soon, and that night did not go exactly to plan.. We decided that as he would ultimately be sleeping in our bedroom with us anyway, that we would move him upstairs for his second night, and this resulted in his bed being right next to my side of the bed, and I spent the first week sleeping with one arm dangling off the side of the bed so that he knew I was there! He does now, however, sleep in his bed on the other side of the room from us with no problems, and he’s gone from waking up at 6/6.30am to sleeping until at least 7am – yippee!

House training

Despite having no issues with using puppy pads before he came home with us, once in the house, he completely disregarded the ones we put down and did his business wherever he was caught short, although he would also take himself to the back door when he needed to go BUTTT in the last week he has become amazing, and has only had accidents when we didn’t get to the back door to let him out quick enough – he sneaks off there sometimes while I’m working!

Eating

No surprises here, Finn is a dachshund who loves his food! He’s on Tails.com food, and has advanced from needing 3 small meals a day to 2 bigger meals. He loves treats, especially denta-stick type chews, and although at least 90% of the time he’s strictly on dog treats, he does enjoy a little bit of sausage as an extra special treat.

Life at home

Honestly, he naps A LOT. Most of the day when I’m working, he’s either curled up asleep under my desk or playing with his toys in my office, most of which have been thoroughly chewed now.. He has what I call ‘psycho hour’, normally between 5-6pm where he runs around like crazy for no reason, which can drive me a bit mad when I’m trying to finish up my work for the day, but is mainly just funny to watch. He spends his evenings curled up with us on the sofa, and then I normally go up to bed and he stays downstairs with Matthew until he comes up. He’s even got pretty good at when Matthew comes in from work in the early hours of the morning.

Out and about

Because of his vaccinations, we couldn’t walk Finn for the first 10 days he was with us, but now he’s getting the hang of it. Most days its just a trip to the post office and back while I’m posting orders, but last weekend during our visit to Bournemouth he spent some time at the park and at the beach and he sat nicely in two different dog friendly cafes while we had breakfast!

He is super friendly and gets so excited meeting people, but he’s still getting the hang of meeting other dogs. He barks a lot when he sees other dogs from a distance, or hears dogs barking, but up close he does calm down – he just needs to get a bit more social!

I just can’t believe how lucky we are to have such a beautiful puppy, and I now can’t imagine life without him.

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Rebuilding

You ever see those funny triangle diagrams floating around on the Internet, where each side is labelled with something we aspire for in life, like ‘good job’ or ‘social life’ or something similarly cliche, and then it’s captioned something like ‘you can only have two, what do you choose’?

These viral posts tend to have their comment sections full of people saying how much they relate to the ideas suggested by it, that we can’t ever seem to really have it all, but I never subscribed to that belief myself.

I always thought that I could have it all. I was *that* person who prided herself on working full time AND maintaining a blog AND being able to go to the gym every morning and while I’ve never really had much of a social life, that was mainly down to the fact that I never lived near to any of my friends, but I still found the time to go and see them and we still talked every day, but I also lived with my boyfriend and I saw my family every weekend.

Reading that, you’d think that I did have it all; it sure as hell sounds like it. But behind all that, there are some shortcomings: I still lived with my parents (not that I ever really minded that), and I worked in a job that didn’t truly make me happy, and that wasn’t a career for me.

Fast forward to today. I now own a home with said boyfriend, we have a puppy and I am living my self-employed dream. The social life aspect hasn’t really changed, although I am a little bit closer to some friends now so I do get to see them more often. This is all wonderful, and I am truly happy for all of this, but some of the walls of that triangle (or more like a hexagon) are crumbling. It would only take you a few minutes of scrolling back through my blog to see that I’ve gone from posting 5-6 times a week to going over 3 weeks without writing anything. I now live 250 miles away from the family that I adore, and as for going to the gym every morning, I can’t actually remember the last time I got in a workout.

I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining, because my life is incredible in so many ways, but each one of these things is an aspect of who I am, and I feel like by losing these things I am losing sight of who I am, and I’m now becoming one of those people retweeting that triangle diagrams saying ‘I feel attacked’. I don’t want to believe that these silly little sketches are true, I want to go back to feeling that little bit smug thinking that really I do have it all.

My life has changed a lot in the past 6 months, and I guess if anything I was naive to think that it would all be easy, because nothing about it has been, but what’s the fun in things being easy, right? There’s no shame in being vulnerable, but I’m ready to start rebuilding these aspects of my life, and rediscovering the person that I used to, and want to be.

She’s in here somewhere, just under a nice little layer of comfort podge, y’know, from avoiding going to the gym for too long, but she’ll be back, just you wait.

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The Happiest Wrapping on Earth*

Honestly, November has FLOWN by. Its now officially less than a month until Christmas, and I’m feeling super unprepared, but one thing I have got under my belt now, courtesy of the wonderful CoconuTacha, is some incredible Disney inspired wrapping paper, so at least when I do get my Christmas shopping done, the paper is all wrapped up, if you pardon the pun..

Tacha is an incredibly talented UK based graphic designer, and I love the unique style of each of the park icons featured on this wrapping paper. In each set you get 3 A2 size sheets of wrapping paper, plus 4 gift tags, so you’re completely covered for all your wrapping needs.

The paper is a really high quality – way nicer than your regular supermarket roll! – with a glossy finish, and its so beautiful that this is the kind of paper that you’ll want to unwrap carefully so you can keep it again! Also a great secondary use would be as a photo backdrop for blog photos – I may just keep a sheet for myself for this very reason!

And if you’re on the hunt for a cute little stocking filler, Secret Santa gift or just something to treat yourself with, Tacha also has this limited edition ‘Magic Castle’ enamel pin available on her store. Its so pretty and so different from any other castle pins I’ve seen and the colours are stunning together, and for £5 its a steal!

Cute wrapping idea: attach a pin to the gift tag of your present!

There’s currently 10% off both the wrapping paper and pin until the end of today so if you like what you see, head on over to Etsy now, and even if you’ve got your wrapping paper sorted, you should definitely check out Tacha’s designs on both her Etsy store where you’ll find an amazing selection of stationery, planner stickers, art prints and more, and also on Redbubble where you can get her designs on everything from t-shirts to phone cases.

Are you Christmas ready yet?

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*The items featured in this blog post were sent to me, but all views are my own.
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Meet the Puppy

I know things have been a little quiet on here lately, but they’re about to get a whole lot louder as Matthew and I adopted our first puppy on Monday! Everybody, meet Finn..

Finn is a miniature long-haired dachshund puppy, he’s 15 weeks old today and we are already so in love with him.

Truthfully, this all happened rather suddenly. Matthew and I have talked about getting a puppy since we first got together, but of course we always knew that it wouldn’t be possible until we got our own place, and then when we first moved into our house there were still a lot of reasons that we didn’t get one straight away. Finally, we settled on waiting until after we came back from our holiday in January, but last weekend I decided to torture myself by looking at puppies online, and that was when we found Finn.

I grew up with two dachshunds, both miniature long-haired, so part of me always wanted another sausage, and it didn’t take much to convince Matthew of the same! Most of the dachshund puppies for sale whenever I’ve looked have been short-haired or wirey, so as soon as I saw a listing for long-haired pups I had to show him, and I in no way was expecting him to respond with ‘ok, I think we’re ready’! So we went to meet him the following day, and were back the next day to pick him up! He was one of a little of five, with just him and one other brother left, and to make things even more perfect, his mum’s name was actually Lottie! I mean, that’s just meant to be, right?

Its safe to say that the last 5 days have been a total learning experience. I suddenly feel like a first time parent, and flit from relaxed and calm to super worried and googling every problem in a split second, but I have to keep reminding myself that I won’t have it all down instantly. We’ve already got toilet training almost down, and sometimes sleep through the night, and most of the time he’s a perfect little angel who loves naps, cuddles, and running/bouncing around the garden. As of Monday he’ll be able to go out for walks, so that’ll be the next big step for him.

Expect to see a lot more puppy content, and for more frequent Finn photos, be sure to follow my Instagram, linked below!

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Smells Like Magic* – Maple and Whisky Candle Review

I can’t believe that exactly one year ago Matthew and I were having the most magical time in Walt Disney World! I mean, I know we’ve had the craziest and most incredible year since then, but it still sucks.

In the crazy last year we’ve had though, we did buy our first house, and we’ve spent a lot of time turning it into the home that we love, with a big part of that being adding magical touches throughout to remind ourselves of our favourite places.

Maple and Whisky produce the most incredible scented candles inspired by your favourite Disney memories, including park foods like Mickey Waffles, rides like Soarin’ and resorts like The Grand. Quite frankly, if there’s a smell in a Disney park that you love, chances are, they’ve got it!

I’ve been a lover of Maple and Whisky for a few years now – I’ve got a constant stock of their wax melts on hand! – and they were super kind recently to send me three candles of my choosing to review, which meant I could fill the new house with some magical smells, although the hardest part was choosing just three! I took the opportunity to try two scents I’ve never had before, and to also get a new jar of my favourite M+W scent, Campfire Singalong.

Campfire Singalong smells truly of just that. Imagine toasting marshmallows and melting chocolate on an open fire at a Disney resort, and that’s what this is in a jar – its heavenly! For me, this is the ultimate autumn/winter candle as it fills the room with a wonderful warm scent and glow, but be warned, may cause chocolate cravings!

The second scent I chose was Beach Club, inspired by its eponymous Walt Disney World resort, and I chose it because our of all the resorts in WDW, this is my dream resort which I would absolutely LOVE to stay in one day! The smell is fresh and clean and it really does make me feel like I’ve just stepped into the air-conditioned lobby while taking a walk around the Boardwalk resort loop.

Finally, I picked Spirit of Aloha, which is inspired by the smell of the lobby at Disney’s Polynesian Resort. This time last year when we were in WDW was when Matthew and I joined Disney Vacation Club, and Polynesian is our home resort, so I wanted a candle to remind us of our second ‘home’! Not being the biggest fan of pineapple (and not having a super clear memory in my head of what the resort smelt like), I was slightly worried that I wouldn’t like this one, but actually its lovely! The pineapple is there, but its not at all in your face and is nicely balanced with hints of coconut.

Maple and Whisky offer candles in two sizes, 8oz and 12oz, as well as wax melts, room sprays and reed diffusers. The candles I received were the 8oz size, and they last a good long while! They’ve recently changed the design of their labels, so these aren’t exactly what they look like now but the new labels are even better!

What I absolutely love about these over other scented candles is that not only do they smell amazing up close, but they actually fill the whole room with their glorious scents, and that happens almost instantly, whereas even some big brand candles only smell when you stick your nose into the jar! I would absolutely recommend these candles, and as well as these scents some of my favourites are Adventure is Out There (grape soda scented), Butterbeer (for the Potterheads), Rice Krispie Treats and Sugar Rush! Head on over to their Etsy store to see more!

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*I was sent these candles for the purpose of review, but all words and views are my own.
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Its Okay That My Blog Has Taken A Back Seat

I’ve talked a lot lately (or at least it feels like it) about how I’ve been struggling a little with blogging; not finding the time for it, perpetual writers block and general lack of focus and motivation. I’ve blamed so many factors, then promised myself I won’t let it happen again, and then it does, and the cycle continues.

I’ve been thinking a lot of about it, and I think I’ve finally come up with an explanation that I’m happy with.

For so long, my blog has been my life. Its been the constant source of pride and happiness in my life when my life hasn’t always been perfect. I worked for so long in dead end jobs that didn’t make me happy, so I loved having something that gave me a sense of purpose, and so I dedicated myself to it; if I wasn’t working, I was working on my blog, and that made me feel like I was doing something worthwhile.

But things have changed now. My life feels fulfilled in so many ways. I have a house, I have a job doing what I love, and there are so many things in my life that make me happy now, so the happiness and sense of fulfilment that my blog used to give me is already there. I don’t feel like I NEED to blog to be happy.

Of course, I still love my blog. I love writing and it makes me happy, so its not something that I think I’ll ever really give up, but I think I can finally let go of the need to publish 5-6 new posts every week like I used to. I can let go of the pressure to create content and go back to just loving creating the content when I do.

Now that I have realised this, I have found a sense of peace with my blog that I think I really needed. I was starting to think that because I couldn’t keep up with my old posting schedule that I should just give up altogether, but it doesn’t have to be all or nothing, its whatever I want it to be, and I want it to be the thing that makes me happy again.

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Colourpop x Disney Designer: My Buys and Swatches

I think this has possibly been the best collaboration to come out of 2018, if not the best beauty collaboration I’ve ever seen. Two of my favourite brands, Disney and Colourpop coming together to release a whole collection of beautiful makeup? Yes please.

I was poised and ready the minute the collection dropped, and even being there as the clock struck midnight (metaphorically, it was actually 6pm but hey it would’ve been midnight somewhere), I still missed out on a couple of items that I wanted – the two highlighters from the collection, which sold out instantly – but I was still so happy to know that I was getting my hands on what I knew would be amazing products. Better still, Colourpop have now updated their site to include tax when shipping to the UK, so no more hideous customs charges, yippee! I was also pleasantly surprised at how quickly I got my dispatch email and how soon these beauties got to me, and the struggle of waiting until I had photographed them before I could have a play was real guys.

So out of the collection, I bought the It’s A Princess Thing pressed powder shadow palette, three of the Supershock shadows, shades Heigh-Ho, So This Is Love and Be Our Guest, and the Ariel Creme Lux Lipstick, and I did a little squee when I unboxed every single one of them.

For starters, the packaging is GORGEOUS. The collection features around just six of the Disney princesses, Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Belle, Jasmine and Tiana, and they all feature on the front of the eyeshadow palette, plus their autographs are plastered over most of the packaging. I love the gold and black and the low-key extravagance of it all.

Now I have a couple of Colourpop palettes and Supershock shadows already, so the product I was most intrigued by was the Creme Lux Lipstick, as I’ve not tried a Colourpop lippie before. I chose Ariel as it looked like a shade that I would get plenty of use out of, being more of a nude shade, and what I love about the Colourpop website is that they don’t just show the product and a swatch on an arm, they actually show the shade on lips, and on a range of different skin tones, so you can actually gauge if it’ll suit before you buy.

Again, I loved the packaging, and while the tube is plastic, it actually feels expensive. As for the product itself, I was SO happy with it. The shade is PERFECT, its soft and smells amazing, and even though I put it onto my already fairly dry lips, even up close it didn’t look dry and I didn’t find it drying over time.

The Supershock shadows also did not disappoint. They came in the same style pot that the regular Supershock shadows do, but in black with a gold castle on the lid. I’ve written a proper review on Supershock shadows before, so I won’t go into the nitty gritties, but they’re beautifully buttery shadows, and the pigmentation blows my mind.. I was actually only going to buy one, but when the highlighters sold out, I needed to top up my order to get free delivery, so I grabbed two more, and I’m really glad that I did.

Top to Bottom: Be Our Guest, So This Is Love, Heigh-Ho

Of course the centrepiece of the collection was the It’s A Princess Thing palette. It looked stunning in the photos that I saw prior to the release, and it was even more stunning in person. This is my third Colourpop shadow palette, so I expected good things, but it wasn’t until I swatched the colours out that I realised just how incredible this palette is.

The pigmentation is so unbelievable; photos don’t do justice. The shimmery shadows practically turn into foils on the skin, I’ve never seen powder eyeshadow look so flawless. All of these swatches are one swipe with a finger and the colours are so vivid. The only shade that didn’t do too much for me is Chip, which is the lightest matte shade, but I think that’s only because its not as bold as the others, and I reckon I’ll actually use it quite a lot nonetheless.

Top to Bottom: Chip, Juju, Grumpy, Triton, Abu

Top to Bottom: Prince Charming, Ray, Fair Godmother, One Kiss?, Thingamabob

Top to Bottom: Enchanted Rose, Poison Apple, Magic Carpet, Beast, Midnight Curfew

Honestly, I don’t think I’ve got anything bad to say about this palette; I may go as far as saying that I think the quality is better than that of other Colourpop palettes that I own and love. As well as these swatches going on so well with a finger, the shadows apply beautifully with brushes, they blend perfectly and have good staying power even unprimed.

This collection, like a Disney princess, is flawless.

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The Perfect Cabin Suitcase

For someone who travels quite a lot, I’m almost ashamed to say that I have never used a cabin-sized suitcase until now. Whenever I’ve travelled hand luggage only I’ve kept myself to backpacks and holdalls, and while that has always been fine for me as I don’t do it often, I figured that as I now have the advantage of using Matthew’s staff travel to get super cheap flights, I’ll be going hand luggage only quite a bit more from here on out!

Another thing that swayed me was how adorable this suitcase is, so I decided to treat myself to the Minnie Mouse suitcase by American Tourister from the Disney Store website, and isn’t it a beaut?! I already have a large American Tourister case which I got for Christmas last year and I LOVE, so I knew that it would be a great investment.

Its a hard shell case with four wheels, and a built in 3-digit combination lock that the zip pulls click into, so you can secure it without having to worry about having a lock that needs a key.

The inside of the case it just as pretty as the outside, with its pretty pink and blue lining and details, and what I love about the AT cases compared to other brands I’ve seen is that it was a proper zipped divider that fully separates the top section of the case, and also has a big pocket built into it, which is the perfect size for 3-4 pairs of Mickey ears. The main compartment also has a little side pocket, which is perfect for charging cables and other little bits, and the strap keeps everything nicely packed in place!

The first outing of my case was my Disneyland Paris trip last month, and I easily managed to fit all my clothes and other bits for 4 days and still have a good amount of space, which given that I was packing summery clothes means I don’t think I’d have any problems packing 3-4 days of thicker wintery clothes.

The size of the case of course meets the size requirements of a cabin bag with most, if not all airlines, and I had absolutely no problem fitting it into an overhead locker on my EasyJet flight. The case wheels like a dream so walking through airports is no problem at all and it is just the cutest case ever, so if you do ever check it into the hold then you’ll have no problem spotting it on a luggage belt!

American Tourister do quite a big range of Disney designs, as well as normal styles, which you can usually get cheapest on Amazon. As I mentioned earlier, I also have a large Donald Duck suitcase which is the perfect size for a 2 week trip and just as amazing as this one, so I definitely sing the praises of all of their cases!

If I don’t make another little trip before then, the next trip this case will make will be to Walt Disney World in January!

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Would You Change Your Online Self?

Image from Channel 4 website

I don’t know about you, but I have been glued to The Circle on Channel 4!

If you don’t watch it or know what it is, The Circle is a reality TV show where a group of people are living in the same building, but are only allowed to communicate through a specially created social media platform, and because they never see each other, they can choose to be whoever they want to be, with the aim of the game being to be popular. Some people are being themselves, some are hiding or changing certain aspects of their lives/personalities, and some are being completely different people altogether. Every few days, players rate each other, and the most popular players get to choose who out of the least popular players get ‘blocked’ and have to leave the show.

As well as obviously being entertaining, I’m finding it fascinating. We, the viewers, obviously get to see exactly who these people really are, and see what they actually do, say, think and act like when they know the other players can’t see, and it is really interesting to see what goes on behind the screen.

Being a person who does put so much of myself online, I know of course that I don’t share everything, and I would hope that most people know that. I don’t share all the bad stuff, and I often don’t share all the good but mundane stuff that happens in my day to day life, but personality wise, I am completely myself. But this show got me thinking: would I ever change myself in order to be more liked?

Well, without wanting to sound big-headed, I like to think that I’m not disliked online, or at least if I am its by people who aren’t vocal about it, or who are mature enough to just unfollow me and be done with it. Equally, I could probably be more popular. I could have tens of thousands of followers who all think I’m amazing, but I can’t help but think what or who would I have to become to do that? I like who I am (for the most part), and I don’t actually know what I would need to do to become more popular. Would I be more liked if I was the same person, but prettier? Do I need to change my personality to be more liked? Its so hard to say, but when I think about it, if I was anyone but myself, they wouldn’t be liking me for who I really am, and I don’t want that.

Comparing myself to players in The Circle, I definitely think I’m most like Kate. I try to be nice to everyone, and I do prefer to keep some opinions to myself rather than stirring the pot, choosing instead to confide to my close friends rather than openly bashing the beliefs or opinions of others that I don’t agree with. I personally don’t think any of these things make me a bad person, and these traits are what made Kate so popular for the first few ratings, but now a lot of players are finding her niceness annoying, which makes me worry a little bit whether everyone thinks I’m annoying. Its interesting and terrifying at the same time!

So I put this to you, people of the internet, would you ever portray yourself differently online, just so people liked you more?

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W7 Blazin’ Palette Review

So a few weeks ago I mentioned that I’d bought a couple of W7 palettes from TKMaxx, and shared the first one which I thought to be a potential dupe for a Too Faced palette. Today I’m reviewing the second palette, which I think could also be a possible dupe, but this time for Urban Decay’s Naked Heat eyeshadow palette, but as I don’t own that I can’t really do a side by side comparison!

So this is the W7 Blazin’ palette. The RRP is £9.95, but I picked it up from TKMaxx for £4.99, and looking around you can get it from a lot of places for under £5.

As with most of the W7 palettes, it comes in a tin form, and its quite a sizeable one, but I think it looks the part and the outside definitely gives a good indication of what’s to come on the inside. There’s also a double-ended brush included, but one end is a foamy applicator which I personally don’t like so won’t use, but the other end is fine!

The inside, however, is when it really starts to look like its Urban Decay counterpart, and looking at photos of Naked Heat the shades do seem to match up pretty well, but as I said I can’t do an exact comparison! I started off by swatching the shades, and the below swatches are one layer using just my finger.

First off, I really liked the feel of the formula – it was soft and buttery to touch, but when using a brush later on it did have a little bit of crumble to it but I personally like my shadows to be a bit powdery as it means they get picked up well by all brushes. I thought the pigmentation was really good for something that cost less than £5, with the middle shades coming off best I thought – my forearms are super super pale so I always struggle to get whiter shades to show up when I swatch them, but as you can see in the second swatch photo they did hold out ok, and when using them on my eyes I’ve had no problems. I felt like the darker colours could have been a little darker, but it really doesn’t bother me as those are the ones that I know I won’t use so much.

I have had a lot of fun playing around with this palette! There are a lot of looks that you can create, which surprised me considering there’s not much range in terms of colour, and I was also uncertain as I’ve not been much of a reddish shadow kinda girl before, but going into autumn I think this is definitely a palette I will use a lot. The colours build and blend like a dream and there’s a good mix of matte and shimmery shades so you’ve got all bases covered! W7 is also a cruelty free brand, so for £5 I have absolutely no complaints about this palette, and now I don’t need to fork out £30 for the Urban Decay Naked Heat one!

If you do have Naked Heat, let me know how you think these photos/swatches compare, I’d love to know!

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Doing Nothing

In recent months, I’ve noticed an interesting shift in myself. Obviously there’s been so much change in my life in the last few months, and I know that that’s exactly the reason why, but this has felt like such a significant change that I haven’t really known what to do about it.

That change? I’ve learnt to enjoy doing nothing.

I know it seems totally harmless, and probably a little strange too, but pretty much since I was 16, I’ve always filled my time with as many things as I possibly could, and for the last few years even more so. For the last (almost) five years, I’ve been blogging alongside working full time, as well as running my various small businesses, so when I wasn’t working, I was working for myself or writing. Days off were never really days off, but I was cool with that. In order to fit everything into my days, I would be up at 5.30am most mornings, and I had no problem with that at all because I was doing it for me.

Since we moved, all that has changed. As I’ve taken my small business full time, I haven’t needed to cram everything into every hour of the day because I now spend my 9-5 doing all the work I used to fit into evenings and weekends. Suddenly I have all the free time I used to complain about not having – but would always fill with stuff even when I did get it – and the thing is, I’ve started to like it. This might seem totally ridiculous to some, but its such a new thing to me that its thrown me a little.

While it may not seem like a problem, its starting to become one, as the motivation and drive that used to push me to do everything I loved is ebbing away. I now LOVE having lie-ins, so I don’t get up and go to the gym in the morning. I now spend my evenings watching rubbish on TV and scrolling through Instagram videos for longer than I care to say. Its wonderful and frustrating at the same time, because there’s still something in my head that feels like this is wasted time when I should be doing something else, but I also don’t really have that much else to do. Its like I want to be doing more but at the same time I really love the nothingness, so there’s a constant conflict in my head.

Am I being crazy? Well probably – only I would feel guilty for enjoying myself! I know that I still have so many things to adapt to, what with turning my life upside down a little bit, but everything takes time and as Winnie the Pooh said in Christopher Robin: doing nothing often leads to the best kind of something.

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My Mini Disneyland Paris Haul

Did I even go to a Disney park if I don’t talk about it endlessly while I’m there and then continue talking about it endlessly when I’m back? Oh, and if I don’t post a haul?

Well, I didn’t actually get that much from my trip to Disneyland Paris last week, but I still wanted to share what I bought as I got a couple of things that I’ve never seen in the parks before, and so maybe you haven’t either!

First up, and becoming a strange habit of mine seeing as I’ve never really been interested in them before, I bought two pins: one I think must be a regular design, this simple Steamboat Willie, and the second is a design that was only released about a week before my trip, which is this ADORABLE Winnie the Pooh and Piglet Halloween pin. I’m a sucker for Pooh and he’s in this adorable little pumpkin suit and his honey pot says ‘BOOH’ and I just can’t..

Another little purchase was this Donald Duck spatula – now I’ve got quite a few Disney kitchen utensils, all in the classic Mickey style, but I’ve never seen Donald ones before and you all know I LOVE Donald! Plus now we have a house and only one spatula in it, this seemed like a semi-necessary purchase.

The final buy was this Mickey inspired washbag, which I was drawn to as it can be hung using the little hook at the top, which is perfect for Disney cruises due to relatively little bathroom space! It has a little mirror at the top too, and two storage compartments, both of which can actually be detached as they have velcro fastenings. I also love the little Mickey ears at the top, and the whole thing folds up to a decent sized washbag for travelling with, and is held together with magnetic fastenings.

I may or may not already be planning my next trip back to Disneyland Paris, so watch this space!

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Disneyland Paris Day 4

This post is coming a day late because Friday was such a long day and I needed yesterday to recover, but anyways!

This morning I left Matthew behind in the hotel (he had some work related stuff to sort out, I’m not just a mean person) and headed into the parks for early magic hours, bypassing the big queue of Disney hotel guests by using the designated annual pass holder entrance! As I had limited time before going back to meet Matthew, I decided that I only wanted to queue to meet Donald, and then spent the rest of the time taking advantage of the park being much quieter for taking photos.

At 10am, when the park opened to the rest of the guests, I left to head back to the hotel so that we could finish packing and check out – I had planned to get the shuttle bus but didn’t check the timetables so rather than waiting 25 mins for the next bus I walked back, which did only take 20 minutes so I was pretty impressed with that, plus the weather was lovely!

Once we’d checked out, we headed back to the park with our cases, leaving them at guest storage by the park entrance for the day, and then we went back into the Disneyland park. We started with Pirates of the Caribbean, which was basically a walk on, and then walked through Fantasyland, grabbing lunch at Bella Notte, and then went for one last ride on Star Tours before switching parks and going to Studios.

There, we walked onto Flying Carpets, and then also walked onto Studio Tram Tour before doing Tower of Terror for one last time.

We then decided to spend the rest of the afternoon exploring, as Matthew has never been to any of the Disney hotels, so we walked through Disney Village and did a lap of the lake, stopping to poke around Sequoia Lodge and Newport Bay Club, where we sat and had a drink and a snack in one of the lounges, before finally going back to collect our cases from storage and head back to the airport.

It might be a see ya real soon moment, but now we’re annual pass holders I think soon will probably be very soon, DLP!

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Disneyland Paris Day 3

After what I think is possibly the worst nights sleep I’ve had all year, I woke up feeling rough as hell and am definitely coming down with something. Fab. It was also raining here, so we opted for more time in bed and didn’t head into the parks til about midday, stopping off at Disney Village first so that Matthew could buy a hoodie because it was a LOT colder today.

First ride of the day was Star Tours, then Matthew did Hyperspace Mountain (I didn’t feel up to it today) and then we walked into Fantasyland where I met Suzy and Perla. The rain had clearly scared off some people so we then did It’s a Small World and Dumbo with minimal wait times and then wandered through Adventureland and Skull Cove a little before going to Big Thunder Mountain.

Our plan was to get a fastpass for later, but also standby it straight away, but when we got to the fastpass booth a cast member asked if we wanted to play a guessing game, whereby if we won, we would each get a fastpass with no time restriction. Well we actually did win, but not only did he give us the unrestricted fastpass but also an extra fastpass each, so we actually rode BTM twice in a row then, and decided to come back later in the evening to use our final one.

We then decided to switch parks, heading into Studios and doing Crush’s Coaster, but after that we were so hungry we couldn’t queue for anything else, so went back into Disney Village and had dinner at Rainforest Cafe before going back into Disneyland. Despite only being 7pm at this point, most people were heading out of the park rather than in, so it was fairly quiet in there!

We did our last BTM fastpass, then walked the long way round into Discoveryland for a ride on Buzz, and then took up a spot to watch Illuminations just outside of Discoveryland.

Tomorrow we leave in the evening, so we have most of the day in the parks to enjoy before we say ‘see ya real soon!’

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Disneyland Paris Day 2

This morning’s plan was to start off at Walt Disney Studios Park, and we arrived just as it was opening, having decided to sleep through magic hours. We headed straight for Crush’s Coaster, which had its typical hour wait but we did it nonetheless – in fact, midway through the queue we had the dreaded break down announcement, but it cleared up quickly and we waited no more than 10 mins more than the displayed wait time!

After Crush, we went to grab fastpasses for Ratatouille, and then decided that was it was well past 11am that we’d skip breakfast, do one more ride and then have lunch. The ride in question was one of my favourites, although it seems massively underrated: RC Racer. I was pretty amazed at how busy the park was, as when we walked by Studio Tram Tour the queue was actually out of its designated area and going down past Tower of Terror!

For lunch I had the Spider-Man burger, which was actually really good and so big I couldn’t finish it, and then we went back to Ratatouille for our fastpass time. After that we had planned to swing by Tower of Terror to grab fastpasses for later on, but after we’d got them we saw the wait time was only 15 mins so decided to standby it there and then. Matthew then went off to do Rock’n’Roller Coaster, which is one I tend to skip these days (that made me sound super old but oh well) and I just sat outside and waited because that only had a 10 minute wait time.

We then decided to head out from Studios, and walked into Disney Village – via World of Disney to buy some pins – and grabbed a Starbucks and a sit down before going into Disneyland. We did Pirates of the Caribbean with a relatively short wait time, and then walked through Fantasyland, and by the time we’d got to It’s a Small World it was only a few minutes until Stars on Parade was due to start. I didn’t get the best spot, but did the trick of waiting by the rope that was still due to close, so I was only one person back and she stayed crouched with her kid so I had a fairly decent view. Still not Magic on Parade though, amirite?

As I saw the parade was ending, we made a run for it before the rest of the crowd left, and took as many back ways as possible to get ourselves back down Main Street and out of the park while the parade will had everyone’s attention! We hopped on our hotel shuttle, but stayed one more stop to get off nearer Val d’Europe, where we then spent a few hours exploring (I’ve never been before!) and finished up buying some bits from the supermarket to take back to our room for dinner, to give out feet a rest from the parks as mine were about to drop off!

We still have two days in the magic so there’s plenty more fun to be had!

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Disneyland Paris Day 1

Well gang, it’s been a little while but I am safely back on magical property! It’s been pretty much a year since I was last in Disneyland Paris, and being a fairly spontaneous trip I was super excited to get back, plus this will also be the longest DLP trip I’ve been on since I was a child, if not ever!

We’re staying offsite, so started the morning by getting the bus in, which was pretty exciting for me because I’m so used to walking in through Disney Village, rather than through the gates, so that was cool. We were both getting annual passes, so we had to go to the ticket booth first and then could skip the queue of people waiting for park opening and take advantage of what was left of early magic hours! We did Hyperspace Mountain and Buzz Lightyear Laser Blast, then got to the annual pass office for when it opened at 10am to sort out passes out before getting breakfast at Market House Deli.

Fuelled up, we visited the dragon under the castle before going into Fantasyland and starting off with a teacup ride.

After teacups, we hit Its a Small World, Le Pays des Contes de Fees and Casey Jr Train all pretty much as walk ons, and then walked into Adventureland and queued for Pirates of the Caribbeans, which was surprisingly marked as an hour wait time, although we only waited about half an hour. It was then lunch time, so we went to Restaurant Hakuna Matata for chicken strips.

Right after lunch, we figured it wasn’t the best idea to go straight on a fast ride, but we got fastpass for Bug Thunder Mountain and then decided that as the wait time was 45 minutes we might as well get in line anyway – I’d forgotten how much I like BTM in Paris, so I have no issues at all doing it twice in a day! From there we went back to Fantasyland and queued to meet Mickey Mouse, and then as our little feet are somewhat out of practice from Disney parks, we went to the Disneyland Hotel to have a sit down and a drink in Cafe Fantasia.

Rested and recovered, we were back in the park and on our way back to Big Thunder Mountain for our fastpass slot – annoyingly it was at the same time as Stars on Parade so we’ll save parade for another day! After that, we did Indiana Jones as practically a walk on (does anyone else sometimes forget this ride exists?) and then went back out of the park to wander round the shops in Disney Village, and grabbed an Earl of Sandwich for dinner. We decided to get the shuttle back to our hotel inside of going back for Illuminations as Matthew was developing some pretty nasty blisters and we’ve still got three more days to get everything done, so we’re in no rush to squeeze it all in!

Tomorrow we’ll be starting off in Walt Disney Studios and seeing where the day takes us!

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Introducing My First Kickstarter!

Hey gang! Today’s post is something a little bit different, but I just wanted to take a little bit of time to tell you all about something that I launched over the weekend.

As some of you will know, earlier this year I branched out into designing enamel pins, and on Saturday I launched my first ever Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a whole collection of cupcake pins inspired by everyone’s favourite Pixar movies.

The campaign launched on Saturday evening, and hit the initial funding goal for the first pin design within an hour, and not even 48 hours later, pledges have unlocked two further designs and put as well on the way to the next target!

If you’re not familiar with how Kickstarters work, its basically a way of securing funding for projects by pledges from the public, and its ‘all or nothing’ so if you don’t hit your target goal within the set time limit, then no one who pledges gets charged anything. Pledges can be purely voluntary for no reward, or as most projects are done, pledges receive ‘rewards’ based on how much they pledged, usually in the form of the product that they are funding. For my project, you can pledge anything from one pin to all nine, and obviously the more you pledge, the more designs get unlocked so the more choice you have to get your favourite design!

My project has another 28 days to go, and based on its initial interest I’m really hoping that we’ll be able to unlock every design before the 30 days is up, but as the initial funding goal has already been met, every unlocked design will go into production even if we don’t unlock them all, so I’m super happy about that! If you’d like to pledge, you can check out the campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/782349729/the-other-studio-cupcake-enamel-pins – you will have to provide your card details to pledge, however you won’t be charged anything until the end of the project period, so it will be October 8th before anything gets taken!

Even if you don’t want to pledge, I appreciate any shares for my projects so if you know someone who would love this, be sure to tell them about it!

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Is This £5 Palette A Too Faced Dupe?

You know, there is nothing worse than being on a spending ban when you really want to play with new makeup, and that’s made even worse when you really want to blog about it.

So while I don’t really have a payday anymore, I did decide to allow myself a little bit of a spend at the end of August, and having seen so many people post about amazing finds on the TKMaxx website, and being in constant search of the bargains, I decided that was where I’d look first. I was actually super impressed to find some great products from some of my favourite high-end brands, but believe it or not, I was actually drawn to some of the cheapest palettes I found, and I decided to forgo the big brands and opted instead for a brand that’s made me a little curious for a while now: W7. I bought three palettes in total, which came to £15, and while I will share them all eventually, today’s post is about just the one of them..

So this is the W7 Cheeky Trio palette, and when I saw it online I did have a little question in my mind as to whether this would turn out to be a potential dupe for what is already one of my favourite face palettes, which is the Too Faced Sweet Peach Glow palette. And well, take a look for yourself..

Sure, there’s an obvious size difference in the two palettes, but first impressions wise, the shades looked pretty damn close to me so I figured I was onto a winner! The packaging is a fairly simple tin, but it does the job and it doesn’t scream of an obvious dupe attempt.

But how does it actually shape up compared to its Too Faced counterpart?

Well formula-wise, W7 doesn’t make any sort of claim on the peach front, so it doesn’t deliver the glorious smell that my TF palette still gives off after over a year of use, and its not quite so smooth and buttery to touch, but its certainly not a crumble-fest either. The pigment is pretty decent, but do the shades match up?

Highlighter – Top – W7, Bottom – Too Faced

Despite looking VERY similar in the pans, as soon as I swatched out the highlighter I could tell they weren’t an exact match. Its kinda hard to tell in photos, but the W7 is a much more silvery-gold, whereas Too Faced does have peachier undertones which gives it a little more depth.

Blush – Top – W7, Bottom – Too Faced

The W7 blush is also much pinker than its Too Faced friend, but the colour is pretty and it builds nicely. It also doesn’t have the slight shimmer than Sweet Peach does, but I don’t think blusher has to be shimmery so I’m cool with it.

Bronzer – Top – W7, Bottom – Too Faced

Again, the bronzers looked super similar in the palettes, but the swatches for these two probably have the most difference out of all of them. Personally, I’m not the biggest fan of the Too Faced bronzer as it doesn’t really suit my skin tone, so I prefer the W7, although it could maybe be considered more of a highlighter than a bronzer as its kinda light..

So is this a good dupe? Well, its under £10 (and under £5 in a lot of places), and its also cruelty free, so it ticks a lot of boxes for me straight off the bat, which is why I bought it in the first place. Given that I already owned and loved Sweet Peach Glow before this, I was maybe a little swayed by that peach scent I love so much. However, as palettes go, I think that the Cheeky Trio is a fab face set, and the slight differences in the shades mean that at least I’ve got an excuse to use them both!

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Why Can’t I Write Anymore?

I tell you something, the number of times that I have opened up a new blog post to write something, only to stare at the screen for 10 minutes, then find something else to do to distract myself from it and eventually close it again in the last few weeks is unreal. I even sit with my blog planner to brainstorm new post ideas and my brain is just empty. It sucks.

I swear this always happens when I actually have the time to write. Now I’m self-employed and working from home, I thought I’d have so much more time to dedicate to my blog, rather than just cramming it into evenings and weekends, but I’m actually just finding so many other things that are taking up my time, and even when I do sit down to blog, I’m hit with a brick wall of no inspiration.

I guess the fact is that maybe I just don’t have anything to write about right now. In the last month I haven’t really bought any new products to review, as most of my money has gone into house things, and I’ve been so back and forth between Bournemouth and Cheshire that I haven’t really got out and about either, plus with Matthew being away for the last 6 weeks, progression on house decorating has been fairly non-existent. I guess maybe my life has been too boring to be a lifestyle blogger.

The good news, however, is that next week I’ll be in Disneyland Paris, so there’ll be 4 days of live trip blogging, plus hopefully a trip away will bring back some inspiration for new content! I’m also taking a little bit of time away from working this week while Matthew is home, so maybe if I’m not using up all my creativity at my sewing machine I’ll have a little bit more juice to put into blogging. Maybe now I’ve ranted about my inability to write, the universe will send some ideas my way. Who knows, right?

Anyone else go through major writers block phases?

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