Goodbye 2014, Hello 2015

image from weheartit.com edited by me

I can't believe we are at the end of the year already. I was just looking through my blog for links to add to my previous blog post, and couldn't believe that some of my reviews were that long ago! So now it's time to sit down and reflect on the past year and think about what we all want to achieve next year, and I thought I'd share my thoughts with you.

My Favourite Beauty Discoveries of 2014

Apologies for the absence of the last few days, but I've been feeling a bit under the weather, and unfortunately had nothing scheduled for post-Christmas. Rather than force myself to sit at the computer (and probably spout utter nonsense to you!) I thought it was best to just leave things quiet of the blog front for a while. I had a couple of posts I wanted to get up before the New Year though, so I'm back again today with my favourite beauty discoveries of the year, This was initially going to be a "favourite launches" post, but I realised there were quite a few things that I discovered this year that, although new to me were not new to the market, and I really wanted to share those with you too. I won't go into too much detail on each product here, as there's a lot to get through, but if any of these products have a full review post on my blog, they'll be a clickable link in the product name.

What I Got For Christmas 2014

Is it weird that after the holiday period is over, I love to scroll through my Bloglovin feed and check out what everyone else got for Christmas?! These are my favourite posts to read at this time of year - I guess it's the nosey girl in me! I think it's safe to say I've been pretty spoilt this year, and I'm extremely grateful for everything I've received. I'm in no way trying to brag but I know some of you love these posts just as much as I do, so I thought I'd share with you what I received this year.

My Sales Picks

So Christmas has been and gone, and whilst we all nurse our hangovers and over-full stomachs, it's time to make ourselves feel a little better by hitting the sales. I personally hate the chaos of the sales - overcrowded shops with products laying around all over the place just really doesn't appeal to me. One thing that does appeal though is the comfort of online shopping whilst cuddled up on the sofa. The sales started really early this year, so my card's taken a bit of a hit already. Here are some of the best bargains I've found whilst browsing the web.

Christmas Day OOTD

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you're all having a great time with your loved ones. Please excuse the mess in the background, I was in a bit of a rush to get these pictures done this morning, but I thought I'd share with you my outfit from today.

How I Spend Christmas Eve

How exciting, it's Christmas tomorrow! How did we get here already?! I hope you all have a wonderful day, whatever you are doing. To end Blogmas I thought I'd share with you what I've been up to this Christmas Eve and what I'll be doing this evening before the big day arrives.

The Pre Christmas Pamper

I love a good old pamper session at any time, but that one just before Christmas just feels that extra special, with all the festive scents and colours. The pre Christmas pamper has become routine in my build up to the big day in recent years, and I usually carry it out just before I go to be on Christmas Eve. Here's a rundown of some of the products I'll be using this year.

News Year's Eve Outfit Ideas

So we're just over a week away from the end of 2014 and I'm starting to think about what I'm going to be wearing for my friend's NYE party (I know, I'm sure many of you had this planned ages ago!). I've been having a little browse online recently and thought I'd share with you a few ideas I've put together.

My Routine For A Good Night's Sleep

Getting a good night's sleep can seem virtually impossible at times, but it's so important for us if we want to look and feel our best. Since becoming ill earlier this year, I've found it even more vital to get a good night's rest as often as I can, so I've developed my own little routine that I follow in the evenings to make sure that I unwind before bedtime and give me the best chance possible of a good night's slumber. Although I'd love to say this is a routine I stick to every single night, but that's not possible, so I try to follow it as often as I can, especially if I've been feeling run down.

Festive Red Lips

A classic red lip can look good on a night out at any time of the year, but it's only ever really around Christmas time that I get my full use out of my collection. They are the perfect product to add something a little more festive to your look, and I love teaming them with a very basic eye to really make the lips stand out. I've had a rummage around in my makeup drawers and pulled out eight of my favourites.

Dr Jart+ V7 Relief Vita Drop

Dr Jart+ is a brand I've heard a lot about but not really tested out that much. I bought one of their BB creams last year and absolutely loved it - it become my go-to base last summer, but as far as their products go, that was it, so I was really happy to receive the V7 Relief Vita Drop in my November Birchbox and began testing it the same day.

Revlon Colorstay Foundation

Move over Rimmel - I think I have just found my new favourite drugstore foundation! After seeking recommendations for a long lasting foundation for dry skin, Revlon Colorstay is one that was mentioned to me many times, so I popped into my local Boots whilst a 3 for 2 offer was on and into my basket it went.

A Bit Of Festive Sparkle

Masque Bar Pore Refining Creme Mask

One brand I've seen quite a lot of since it launched in UK stores recently is Korean made Masque Bar. They have a range of four different masks - a brightening sheet mask, anti-blemish mud mask, pore refining creme mask, and an anti-wrinkle sheet mask. After seeing them very strategically placed by the tills at my local Boots, I got sucked in and decided to give their Pore Refining Creme Mask a go.

Birchbox - December 2014

I've been a little bit worried that the Christmas Birchbox wouldn't live up to my expectations. You always expect it to be the best box of the year and I know when I've been subscribed to beauty boxes in the part, I've been left feeling a little disappointed. However, Birchbox has done really well with their December box and I'm really pleased with the contents. The design of the box, a collaboration with Sophia Webster, is lovely, though I was expecting something a little more festive.

Festive Nails By Elegant Touch

As far as nail art goes I'm pretty rubbish, though I am trying! I always see so many beautiful nail art designs around Christmas and wish I could imitate them myself. Maybe next year, but whilst I'm still perfecting my technique, I think press on nails are the way to go!

Lush Yog Nog Soap

Introducing my favourite body product of Christmas 2014....Yog Nog might not be the most aesthetically pleasing of products, but boy does it pack a punch in the scent department. This stuff is like Christmas in a bar.

Hand Decorated Christmas Stocking

Today's post is something a little different from me. I've been getting a bit crafty recently and decided to make my husband his own stocking this year. That was the intention anyway, but when I saw Hobbycraft has plain red stockings for just two pounds, I decided it was probably safer that I bought a ready made one and just decorated myself! I think this is a great idea if you're struggling to think of things to do with the kids whilst they are off school in the run up to Christmas - or you could even make your own.

Charlotte Tilbury Fallen Angel Palette

Oh my this palette is simply stunning. I spotted this on the Selfridges website around a month ago which I was looking for Christmas gift inspiration. The Fallen Angel palette has been launched as part of the Supermodel collection for Christmas 2014. Whilst the entire collection did look beautiful, £200 for the entire set was a little out of my budget, so I opted for the item that had me lusting after it the most and grabbed this palette.

What's On My Bedside Table

I really enjoy reading people's "What's on my bedside table" posts. I like having a good old nosey at parts of peoples homes  (which is why I love makeup storage posts too!), and quite often some of your most reached for products are kept beside your bed, so I like to see what others recommend as part of a night time routine.

Benefit They're Real Push Up Liner

The blogosphere went wild about this liner when it was first released earlier on in the year. It appeared to be a bit of a revolution in the way we apply gel liner. Having always had issues with gel and liquid liner application, I was quite intrigued to see if this would actually improve it in any way. However, I had also bought into the hype of Benefit's They're Real Mascara in the past and been hugely disappointed, so I was a little reluctant to give this a go straight away, especially as it's priced at £18.50 - yikes! When I saw that last months issue of Elle magazine came with a free mini version of the liner, I thought it was about time I gave it a go - at least if I didn't like I'd only wasted £4 instead of almost five times that!

Festive Home Pieces

I love decorating the house for Christmas, and seeing everything so festive and sparkly! I think if I wasn't living in a rented property I'd probably go all out, perhaps a little OTT with the Christmas gear. Here I've picked out a few homes pieces just to add a bit of a Christmassy feel, without going overboard.

Primark Haul

I feel like I've haven't done a big clothing haul in quite a long time, so when I went shopping with my friend Alison last weekend, I was really ready to take on Primark and see what they had to offer. I'd watched a few Primark hauls on YouTube to look out for anything I might fancy and - surprise, surprise - my local Primark didn't have a lot of the things I saw in stock, but I still managed to pick up a few nice pieces.

My Hangover Essentials

With us now heading into the festive party season, I'm guessing a few of us will be nursing hangovers at some point over the next few weeks, so I thought I'd share with you some of the products I like to use to get me through the morning after the night before.

Christmas Gift Guide: Gifts For Men

My husband aside, I find men ridiculously hard to buy for at Christmas. If you share my pain with this predicament, hopefully you will find some of these ideas useful.

Christmas Gift Guide: Stocking Fillers Under £10

If you're looking some more budget friendly gifts, or stuck for what to get as your Secret Santa gift this year, then this is the guide for you. There's a good mix of beauty and non-beauty items, and each of them comes in at £10 or less.

Christmas Gift Guide: Non Beauty Gifts

I had great fun finding ideas for my second gift guide. I think beauty gift sets are so easy to trawl through and pick out a few good ones, but finding a bunch of alternative ideas was slightly more challenging. Hopefully I've found a good mix for you, and they'll be something to inspire your own shopping.

Christmas Gift Guide: Beauty Gift Sets

I'm so excited about today's post! I've had my gift guides prepared for a few weeks now and I've been dying to share them with you. I have four in total, but I thought I'd kick things off with my favourite of the bunch - the beauty gift sets. I love to receive sets like this, and I think I've found ten of the best available this year to treat a fellow beauty lover too, or perhaps stick on your own wishlist.

November Beauty Favourites

Welcome to Blogmas everyone! I'm going to be blogging every day this month in the run up to Christmas, and today I'm kicking things off in a not-so-festive fashion with my round up of my monthly beauty favourites (fear not, you can look forward to something a lot more Christmassy tomorrow!).

The Christmas Tag

So Blogmas is starting tomorrow and I'm really excited for the countdown to Christmas to begin. I thought I'd kick off the festive feeling a day early though and do this years Christmas Tag, which I found on Becky's blog, Milk Bubble Tea, a few weeks ago.

Max Factor CC Sticks

I've been intrigued by these CC sticks since they were released but, being unsure of how well they would perform and knowing I'd need to buy more than one for my skin concerns, I decided to sit back and wait for an offer to come up before making my purchase.

L'Oreal La Palette Nude Rose

Yes ok, I've bought another eyeshadow palette. But, in a refreshing change from my usual palette purchases, this one doesn't come with a whopping big price tag, and is actually quite different to any other palette I own, so I feel like this one is totally justified! The drugstore seems to be catching up with the nude palette craze now, and this offering from L'Oreal is a real beauty.

My Favourite Autumn/Winter Nail Polishes

I love painting my nails in the winter. With the festive season coming up, it's seems to be when I get most creative with my nails (expect to see a festive nails post during blogmas!). For most of the season, I like to whip out more darker, vampy colours, but they're not always appropriate, and I think I have found my new favourite nude polish to wear on those days when something a little more subtle is required.

Satin Taupe Versus....Satin Taupe!

I was flicking through one of the recent Avon brochures, when I noticed that one of their True Colour Eyeshadows was called Satin Taupe and looked very similar to one of my favourite eyeshadows, MAC's Satin Taupe. With MAC's single eyeshadows costing a whopping £10 each, I decided to order Avon's cheaper alternative, just £4, and compare the two. Have I found a good dupe?

My Pick Of The High Street's Winter Coats

Autumn/Winter Yankee Candle Haul

I'm a huge fan of burning candles all year round, but there's nothing like snuggling up under a blanket on a dark evening with a festive candle burning. Yankee Candle's festive fragrances are my all time favourite, especially the spicy ones, so it's around this time of year that I like to stock up (even though I still have a few left from last year!)

Hydrating Face Masks For All Budgets

As winter draws nearer, more of us are reaching for hydrating face masks to give our skin the extra boost of moisture that the cold weather is taking away from us. Unfortunately, I'm one of those people who suffers from dry skin all year round, so I've well and truly tested the market and found what I think are the best hydrating face masks available. No matter what your budget is, they'll be something here for you.

Birchbox - November 2014

This month's Birchbox theme is "Cosy at Home", to get us all set for those cold winter evenings where we'd rather snuggle up under the duvet than venture outside, They've kept to the theme very well, on the whole, this month with some great little pampering products, And what's really great is there were two full size products in my box this time. I may be wrong, but I don't think that's happened before. If it has, they certainly weren't this good...

My Top 5 Autumn Lipsticks

You may remember me featuring these products in my Muji storage post a while back and, as promised, here is a more detailed rundown of my favourite lip picks for the autumn months.

The Body Shop Christmas Range

The Body Shop is one of my favourite places to go for festive goodies. Their gift sets are always good value for money and filled with great quality products. They never fail to make it onto my own Christmas wishlist (a little hint towards my Christmas gift guides, perhaps!), but today I'm focusing on their limited edition festive scent range.

An Alternative To The Beauty Advent Calender & Giveaway

Beauty advent calenders a rife this year, but not everyone is a fan of them. Whilst they are a great idea for discovering new products, you do get left with your stash being cluttered up with a tonne of samples, some of which you may never end up using. I was having a little wander around my local New Look store recently. when I came across an ideal solution for those of you who are not fans of lots of mini beauty products, but want something a little more than just a tiny piece of chocolate in your advent calenders this year.

New Rimmel Lip Products

I've actually had the pictures for this blog post for around a month now, so technically these aren't really new products anymore, but I thought I'd share them with you nonetheless. I really liked the original Apocalips range, so when I heard a matte version was being released, I was excited to try them and see how they compared to the Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvets. I wasn't quite so excited about the Provocalips because of the glossier finish they claim to have, but I was still curious.

October Beauty Favourites

I've not been too experimental with my beauty products this month (if you read yesterday's Life in October post, then you'll probably have gathered why!) and I've been mainly sticking to the same things, so choosing this month's favourites was pretty easy, as the majority of them have been used pretty much all month long!

Life in October

Ok, so this post is a couple of days later than normal, and there hasn't been a great deal of activity on my blog over the last couple of weeks. I've been really ill recently (yes, again, hopefully I'll get some answers in the next week or so, so that I can start to get better), so I've not had the energy to sit and think about writing any blog posts. So I would firstly like to start with an apology for the lack of action on here, Twitter, Instagram - anywhere! I never thought it would get to the stage where I was too ill to blog for a whole two weeks, and I'm really gutted about it, as there was a lot I wanted to write about this month.

What's In My Muji Storage - Autumn Edition

You may remember a couple of months ago, when I first picked up my Muji drawers, that I showed you what was going to be in there for my summer everyday makeup stash. Well, the days are starting to get colder, so I thought it was about time I had a rummage around in my collection and switch up the contents of my Muji drawers, so that it was more autumn/winter appropriate.

Birchbox - October 2014

This post is a little late in coming to you, as my Birchbox got to me a bit late this month. I then had a few internet issues over the weekend, as you can see there was no post at all from me yesterday! Ah well, it's better late than never I guess. October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, so Birchbox have teamed up CoppaFeel to provide you with information on how to check your breasts and spot the early signs of cancer, as well as providing your beauty goodies in this cute pink zip-up bag.

The Autumn Tag

I've seen this tag around a lot on my Bloglovin feed and I've really enjoyed reading them, so I put this on my "to do" list. Since I can't do my scheduled Birchbox post today (mine appears to be lost in the post!) I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to slip this tag post in.

New Look Jewellery

If you guys follow me on Instagram, you'll know that I've been doing a lot of shopping recently for my new autumn/winter wardrobe. I've already shared with you a few clothing items that I've picked up, so I thought today I would share with you some of my accessories, namely New Look necklaces. New Look have some really pretty pieces in at the moment, I really could have bought more than I did, but luckily I showed some restriant and just have three items to show you.

Benefit Cheeky Sweet Spot Gift Set

I'm always looking for good value for money when it comes to the Christmas gift sets, and boy this one is good! I was having a little look through Benefit's festive sets on a recent trip to Debenhams but was disappointed to see most sets had the They're Real mascara in, which was a real let down of a product for me, so I didn't fancy picking any up. That was until I saw the Cheeky Sweet Spot set....

Perfect For Autumn - Charlotte Tilbury Dolce Vita Palette

This little beauty has been sat patiently waiting in my drawer since I bought it back in July, but now it feels like autumn is finally upon us, I've decided to whip it out and keep it in my everyday makeup stash. This was my first delve into Charlotte Tilbury makeup, which I'd been dying to try ever since the launch and whilst I had a little play around with it when I first purchased the palette, the autumnal shades meant I wasn't going to get this best out of it until now.