My Everyday High Street Make-up

Hey everyone,

Now if you're anything like me then you enjoy going about your day to day life with a splash of make-up on. You don't have time to go the whole hog and contour, put eye shadow and bronzer on, etc (who does?!), but you always feel better about yourself when you have something on to cover up your insecurities or bring your eyes out. That is why today I have decided to share with you the make-up that I wear on a day to day basis that takes me around 5 minutes to put on, which is great if I'm running late to school (life-saver!) and is pretty easy on the old wallet as well.

1. Rimmel London Scandaleyes Mascara in Extreme Black - £6.99 I love this mascara as it makes your eyelashes look really long without making them stick together and go all gloopy. You can also get this make in black and waterproof, but I tend to stick with the extreme black as it is way more noticeable, so therefore it makes your eyes stand out a lot more.

2. Rimmel London Match Perfection Foundation - £6.99 Now I don't wear foundation on a daily basis as I find my skin is a lot less spotty if I refrain from wearing it and allow my skin to glow naturally. However, I know a lot of people do wear foundation regularly, so I thought I'd share with you what I wear when my skin is having a particularly 'patchy' day and all I want to do is cover it up. This foundation is SPF 18, so great for all weathers, and it comes in 11 different shades, although I just stick to the lightest as I live in fear of the slag line. It also gives quite a matte finish (well it does on my skin anyway xD) so you don't have to worry about looking shiny ever!

3. Rimmel London Stay Matte Pressed Powder - £3.99 This powder is such great value for money so I wear it every day with a bit of concealer as it manages to cover up my spots and blemishes without rubbing off within an hour or making my face break-out in a horrible mountain of spots- ew. It comes in 6 shades, but unfortunately you have to provide your own sponge to apply it:/ however don't let that put you off as literally EVERY drugstore sell about 10 sponges for £1.

4. Rimmel London Wake Me Up Concealer -  £5.49 Can you tell by now that I'm a bit of a Rimmel slut!? So this isn't the best quality for money concealer out there, but it does mean I don't have to bother visiting the other make-up stands if I'm running out of time and it sure as hell does it's job. It comes in 4 shades, and a small amount will make your skin tone look a lot more even and cover up dark, under-eye circles. FAB.

5. Seventeen Make Your Mark Liquid Eyeliner - £3.99 & 6. L'Oreal Paris Super Liner- Perfect Slim - £6.99 I also don't wear liquid eyeliner on a regualar basis, I usually just put a bit of whatever eyeliner I can find just below the lash line of my upper lid to make it stand out more as I really am a last minute sort of person. However, again a lot of people wear liquid liner on a regular basis and I use either of these two when I do. They are both pens rather than brushes/wands, which I find makes them sosososo much easier to apply, and they both last a long time without cracking or rubbing off like many other cheaper liquid liner do. I buy the Seventeen liner when I'm being a bit more frugal with my money, however the L'Oreal Paris pen is a better buy as it has a much thinner tip, so is easier to use when you want a much thinner line, making it a better 'all rounder'-although I must say both are good if you want to vary the thickness of your line from time to time.

There we go, these are the things that I use on a day to day basis. I excluded brow make-up from this as I simply use an old brown eye shadow which I'm not even sure you can buy anymore. Plus, you probably shouldn't use eye shadow on your brows, I just find it so much cheaper and it makes them look less fake. I also didn't include eye shadow as I only wear that on special occasions and NEVER on a daily basis. The way I see it that means I can have the extra wow factor when I go to something nice rather than appearing the same as I always do!

Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this style of blog. I'm thinking of doing something more 'booky' next week as I have a few ideas up my sleeve and I want to see if they will actually come together. Thankyou for reading,

Love Katie xo

MADEIRA

Hey everyone,

Two weeks ago I was on my summer holiday on the lovely island of Madeira! For those of you who have never heard of Madeira before it is a Portuguese island that's quite far off the north western coast of Africa (I think that was an okay description xD), and it's quiet, cultured and very very beautiful.

We arrived on the Monday and spent our days exploring the capital city- Funchal- going on tours of the east and west, levada walking, swimming in the pool, and of course doing a bit of shopping here or there. So here are some snaps we took along the way, I'll describe what's going on as we go along...

My sister sitting on a rock at the highest point on the island

We visited a fish farm, awwwww

 Me, looking mightily squinty, with my new bird house. This was an ongoing joke throughout the holiday, it's probably too confusing to explain :/

Some FAB photography skills shown here by me

There was a food fair a town called Santana, and I thought this looked really cool

We decided to play a game of 'spot the Emily'in the Botanical Gardens. This round may have been too easy though...

 My sister liked the trees a bit too much

 Evening drinks out, that's me on the left and my sister on the right

 A big thing in Madeira is tobogganing down the hill, unfortunately we didn't get to do this, but we got to sit in a nice replica outside of our hotel 

It was very windy on top of that hill

Some nice street decorations

This is a traditional house in Santana, there is only one person that actually still uses the houses as his home, and he very kindly lets people have a look around for free (as you can see in the picture below). I thought seeing the houses was great as it really gave you a feel for the history and culture of the island, plus they look freaking amazing am I right?!

Casual person hang-gliding 

This is one of the views from a levada walk we did. Levadas are the water system that they use on the island to transport water from the mountains to all the different towns and you can do guided walks along many of them which give you some stunning views and allows you to see things you can see from the road-side. 

This was the pool and bar area of our hotel at night time

We thought this tree was really cool

We had lots of coffee, and as Emily put it I needed to 'Instagram the shit out of that stuff', and like a good little hipster I did!

And of course there is always time for a good old selfie (ew that word makes me want to vom)

Obviously I have many many more photos that I'm not going to share with you guys because I don't want to bore you to death, but I thought I would share some to show you this snippet of my life. It honestly was an amazing holiday and if you ever get the chance to go I would really recommend it. It's not the usual sort of place for young people as it's not really a party island, but me and my sister really enjoyed it, so I guess it's down to personal taste, and what you want from your holiday.

I was so happy because I managed to read the whole of the first Game of Thrones book and Divergent whilst there which made me really happy, but that's not really important :3

Anyway, I've got quite a few book reviews I want to share with you guys pretty soon, which I'm excited to write, and as it is also the summer holidays I will probably be doing some baking pretty soon, because why not?!?

Thank you for reading,

Love Katie xo

Pudding Date

Hey everyone,

Today is Monday, which means it's officially a week since I came back from holiday, say whaaaaat? and it also means that it's been absolutely AGES since I last blogged, for that I am sorry. This past week since I got back has been Cr-A-zy, I've been volunteering every morning; trying to catch up with all my friends afterwards; and then I've been working all weekend, so yeah, no free time there! I promise that within the next few days I will upload a holiday post (I would have done it sooner but mum went away with the camera that had the majority of the photos on it, so it's been literally impossible for me to do!)

Anyway, onto some more important stuff. A few weeks ago my sister came up with the fab idea to go on a pudding date, and boy was it good. Today we went to a pub that was about a 25 minute walk from my house (which trust me is nice when you've had lots of pud), and searched the menu for what we fancied. We decided we wanted a chocolate chip cookie dough tray, which was covered in sauce, brownie pieces, whipped cream, ice cream, and many other delicious things that I can't remember. Unfortunately that was the one thing on the menu they didn't have *sobs*, but with plenty of other tasty treats on the menu we didn't find it hard to choose something else aha.

In the end we chose a Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Baked Cheesecake, a Sticky Toffee Waffle Cake and we shared a Strawberry Shortcake Ice Cream Sundae, although I didn't eat so much of the sundae as the cheesecake was so rich (but nice!) that I wasn't very hungry afterwards. Here are some pictures of our AMAZING puds:

Me with my Cookie Dough Cheesecake, nomnomnom...

And here's a close up of the beauty, it was so creamy and rich that I honestly felt like I'd gone into cheesecake heaven.

My sister and the Sticky Toffee Waffle Cake. 

This cake was sooooo scrummy, I only had a little bit but the cake was light and fluffy and filled with flavour!

The Sundae! My sister was upset by the lack of shortcake, at one point she thought there wasn't going to be any, but she found a bit right at the bottom so that made her happy:'3

aaaaaaaaaand a bit o' Crabbie's Ginger Beer to wash it all down

And there is the best lunch I've ever had. I think we're going to make this a tradition as we had some nice sisterly bonding time, and  we want seek out other nice pubs and cafes that do really nice looking puddings also. 

Thankyou for reading and stay on the lookout for my Madeira holiday post in the next few days!

Love Katie xo