My Boyfriends Birthday Surprise!

As my boyfriends 24th birthday is fastly approaching, I realised I have/had no idea what to buy him! For his past birthdays/christmas it's always been to do with stuff we were pretty obsessed with at the time, for example in the past I've bought him a Thor action figure, an Iron Man action figure and a Captain America action figure, I do need to finish this set of Marvel figures but I thought it'd be too easy to just buy him another. After weeks of thinking what to plan, he mentioned booking in with our tattooist Beany to get his Marvel sleeve finished (will post a link to Beanys facebook at the end of this post!)

I decided to message Beany and see what she said, I just wanted to know when she could best fit him in and give me a quote. After a few messages I booked him in and started to plan how to surprise him with it. 

As his birthday is 9th October, our tattooist couldn't tattoo around that date as she is moving studio, so I booked him in for the 25th September & told him I had planned a day out for us so he had to book it off work. I struggled trying to come up with ways I could surprise him with this present but I couldn't think of anything without him being able to guess what it was. Once we got into town & near the studio he would know straight away! 

As Captain America: The Winter Solider has been out on DVD for a while now & we still hadn't got round to buying it, I bought the DVD, wrote a little note inside saying I'd book him in with Beany and wrapped it up. I also bought him some cream to help his tattoo heal & wrapped that too. 

On the 25th September, I told Luke to meet me at the metrolink stop as I had just finished work. We got into town & that's when I gave him his little presents. He seemed to really love the surprise & really loved the fact that he was finally booked in to get his next tattoo coloured. All in all it turned out really well!

That night we bought Chinese food and watched Captain America till we fell asleep. Perfect! 

https://www.facebook.com/secretsocietytattoo

My Favourite Season!

As October is approaching I'm getting more and more exciting for Autumn/Halloween/Bonfire Night/CHRISTMAS. Autumn is seriously my favourite time of year. I'm not gonna lie; I hate cold weather & rain (and as I live in Manchester we get far too much of it!) but I love the festiveness of this season leading up to Winter.

Whilst I was in Lush buying some bathbombs the other day, I was talking to a lovely member of staff who told me the Halloween and Christmas bath bombs etc will be in stores from the 1st October. This got me SO EXCITED. As I get my student loan in 6 days (yay!!) I am definitely going to be visiting Lush to buy myself some Halloween bath and skin care goodies.

https://www.lush.co.uk/

I've decided that this year I'm going to buy lots of little festive treats to get me in the spirit of this time of year. As my favourite day of the year (apart from my birthday obviously!) is Halloween, I've been searching different websites for Halloweenie stuff. Last year I remember Topshop had the most amazing section of Halloween inspired clothing, I literally wanted to buy it all! Sadly, I never had the money to buy anything & when I did; the leggings I REALLY wanted were all sold out. wah!

http://www.topshop.com/

Another place I am really excited to buy from this Halloween; is the Yankee Candle shop. I usually pop into the one right next to my University in Salford. They have the most amazing candles & always have such a great selection of Halloween themed candles. This year I'm definitely going to treat myself to a few of these!

http://www.yankeecandle.co.uk/en/uk/halloween-candles-2014/happy-halloween/invt/1312280

This year my Halloween is going to be very different to one I've ever had before as I will be spending it in Amsterdam with my boyfriend & a group of my friends. We planned it for my friend Leannes birthday which is the day before so we decided to stay there until the 2nd November. Very excited! But I still cannot decide what I'm going to dress as yet!

Now I'm off to spend my evening searching the internet for cool Halloween inspired clothing/items!

Oversized Bat T-shirt

Last week, after a hard summer being so skint I basically couldn't afford to leave the house (except to go to work, poor me!) I finally got my first payment from my new job. I was SO happy. I ordered myself a few new items of clothes offline to feed my online clothes shopping obession. 

My favourite in particular was an oversized bat tshirt from ASOS. As the top arrived today, I thought why not make a blog post about it! You may, or may not know what style of clothing I like. I LOVE the clothing this time of year, halloween asociated clothing is just the best! Bats, Skulls, Ghosts, Skeletons, it is seriously my favourite. When I spotted this oversized bat tshirt, I seriously couldn't say no. 

When the top arrived, my first impressions of the top weren't exactly great, considering its a size 14 I expected it to be much smaller (I realise it's oversized but this top is HUGE.) I considered sending it back as I thought I wouldn't really like it on myself. After a trying it on a few times I was very much undecided.

I first tried the top on with a black skater skirt. I actually like this look, even though the top is big and baggy I still enjoyed the way it looks tucked into my skirt. Thumbs up! I think this type outfit I would wear with my flatform boots, some tights and either a kimono or my trusty leather jacket. This is an every day outfit for me.

The second item on clothing I tried the top on with was my midi skirt. Now, before trying it on I really hated the thought of how I would look in this outfit, I've never really been fond of wearing big baggy tshirts until just recently. Surprise Surprise, I genuniely like this outfit, although I feel it makes me look quite short, with my docs and my leather jacket, I definitely think I could wear this to a family meal or going to the cinema.

The last item of clothing I tried the top on with was my leggings. I basically LIVE in leggings, this outfit I would wear on a daily basis, to Uni or out to meet with a friend. 

These outfits have definitely changed my view on the top, I think its going to have to stay!

Selfridges Beauty Event

So last night was very exciting! I got invited (by my friend Leanne) to go to a Selfridges Beauty Event. I wasn't exactly sure what to expect as I'd never really been to this sort of thing before, although when I was asked did I want to go I jumped at the chance as I've always wanted to go to something like this.

When we arrived there were guys handing out mini bottles of Prosecco & also holding grey slates with mini lip shaped chocolate on (all for free!). We had a wander around, just to see what was going on really. We decided to get into the queue to see a beauty talk with Sali Hughes (a journalist/beauty expert). The talk we were in was all about Foundation & different types for different skin, I must admit I thought I was pretty up there on knowledge about make-up, especially foundation but apparently not! I definitely learnt lots of new tips and techniques which I found really interesting.

If you ever get to listen to a talk with Sali Hughes I recommend you do so as I enjoyed it.

After the Sali Hughes beauty talk, myself & my friend Leanne went for a wander around the different make-up brands, testing new make up and basically just seeing what is out for autumn. I noticed a lot of dark/berry lip colours, these are a must have for autumn. We also had a look at some Bobbi Brown, Illamasqua & we decided to have a foundation consultation with one of the girls that worked at Mac.

Leanne had her face make-up redone completely & it looked so lovely. We asked the girl at Mac to advise us on different things to do with how we do our own make up & the girl was really lovely and very helpful. I decided to also have a foundation consultation but in this case I just wanted her to tell me my skin tone and get me a foundation that would suit me well. Turns out that me and Leanne have completely different skin tone, Leannes is number 25, this is due to her olive skin whereas I am right down at a number 15 due to my pale/red cheeks.

One of the things I really liked about the event was the 'selfie printer' we uploaded a photo to instagram with the hashtag #SelfridgesBeauty and the picture popped up on a screen where we could view it and print it. Very cute!

After a few too many mini bottles of Prosecco and chocolates, we decided it was time to go home. We headed for food & got a taxi. All in all was a very fun night, looking forward to a few more of those evenings! Thanks Leanne!

MUA Velvet Lip Lacquer

I’m just going to throw this out there… I am currently LOVING MUA Velvet Lip Lacquer. 

I first bought the colour ‘Halcyon’ a few months ago after really wanting a nude lip colour. I had heard that this product was good & after using it for a couple of days I realised just how great it really is.

As it’s a lip lacquer not a lipstick, it’s much thicker meaning it stays on your lips for a lot longer. Also means you have to stand few a few seconds until it dries (otherwise it doesn't look as smooth on your lip). The lip lacquers are matte which is another thing I really like at the moment, even though; I do find that matte lipsticks tend to dry my lips, these MUA lip lacquers don't. Once dried they literally stay on for hours, unless eating or drinking but that's pretty obvious.

So for a while, I’ve been looking for a dark purple lip colour, literally searching in every high street store I could find (I do have Kate Moss' dark purple lip Rimmel lipstick but I was looking for something abit different). When I looked in Superdrug I noticed MUA had the perfect colour, unfortunately it was sold out, I actually got slightly obsessed and looked at the MUA section every time I went in, but still it was completely sold out. 

I decided to order some online and at £3.00 per tube, you literally cannot go wrong with these (soo cheap!). First place I looked online was Superdrug.co.uk I found the colour I wanted (Kooky) but also saw a dark red which I thought was really lovely too, the name of the dark red I wanted was Reckless. All together including delivery this came to £9.00. I decided to have a look on the MUA website (muastore.co.uk) & found all lip products were 3 for 2! I decided to choose another colour (Aflush) to go with this deal, I also realised that with every order a free blush was sent out also, so for the same price as Superdrugs website I got myself 2 extra products. I was very happy with myself!

I definitely recommend these Velvet Lip Lacquers.

Hello!

I’m Katie, I’m Twenty Two & live in Manchester, England.

I am currently going into my 3rd year of University where I study Media Technology (I learn how to use Camera’s and lots of Production equipment, it’s really good). In my spare time I like to use my Nikon D3100 & go out; taking photos of pretty things. 

On this blog I will be posting whatever is on my mind, reviews of products I buy and just general daily blogging.

I hope you enjoy!

Katie