Goodbye 2012!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! Yeah... I guess I'm a bit late to the party but I hope you all had a great Christmas and start to 2013 anyway! This post is going to be a catch up chat so grab a cup of tea and get comfy :).

I hate to start off my first post of 2013 with a moan but it is kind of an explanation to why I haven't posted since September. I have been really struggling with sixth form and especially the art course I'm taking - when I say struggling, I mean I HATE it. I tried to leave sixth form but that didn't work out so at the moment I'm just plodding along. A large factor of this art problem is that my illness (which you can read about here) has been really playing up with all the stress so that's a bit poo! Another health change is that I'm now a gluten free girl! Pretty much the whole of my Mum's family is allergic to gluten (and my boyfriend too which is handy!) so when I started feeling ill, we had a good idea what could be causing it. So expect some gluten free cooking posts from now on :).

In October, my boyfriend and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary. It was so lovely, we just chilled out and went to the cinema and had a gluten free domino's! So many people find it strange that we've been together for so long due to our age but it's just so normal to us, we've been best friends since we were 13.

I celebrated my 18th birthday in late November, it was great fun and I had a party with all my friends and we danced the night away. I got a tonne of lovely presents, everyone went so overboard! I felt super spoiled but this means I need to save up like crazy so I can repay the favour! My boyfriend and
his parents joined forces and took me to the Cologne Christmas markets as my birthday present (TOTALLY AMAZING BOYFRIEND ALERT) and it was so magical. I got lots of beautiful hand crafted gifts and it was just lovely seeing all the lights, Christmas trees and beautifully decorated gingerbread.

Christmas this year was really lovely, I spent half the day with my family, then half the day at my boyfriend's with his family. As usual, we ate way too much and just spent the day just enjoying everyone's company. Christmas is my favourite time of year, it just so lovely to just stay home, get all dressed up and just be with the people you love the most.

Now that 2012 is over, I have began to think about my New Years resolutions. I have a few cliche ones like - get fit and healthy, get organised and don't procrastinate. But my main one is just to enjoy life more :).

What are your resolutions and have you stuck to them so far?

On a side note, I've just painted my nails with Essie's Leading Lady after seeing it on my friend Emily's post, the colour is so gorgeous. If you have a spare moment, please go and check out Emily's blog as she's so lovely and has nail skills which put mine to utter shame.

Phew - that was a long one! If you managed to get this far then give yourself a big pat on the back, you deserve it :).

PS - Thank you so much to the lovely girl, Chloe who emailed me, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to reply. I love it when I get emails from you guys, otherwise I just feel like I'm talking to myself over the internet haha!

It's a Sunday #06

Well, it's official, the weekends just aren't long enough. I don't have enough time to do anything anymore, my entire life revolves around A Levels at the moment. Oh well. These past few weeks have been a bit mad, i'm constantly rushing about. I just need some pamper time, all I want to do is paint my nails, eat chocolate, read blogs and have a cup of tea.

On a lighter note, some of you may scream at your computer/phone/ipad right now but... i'm seriously getting into the Christmas spirit! I am literally OBSESSED with Christmas, people often say to me 'oh, you'll grow out of that when you have kids etc' but my obsession has just grown rapidly with age. I love every aspect of it. Anyway, i'll try and contain my excitement until nearer the time, but be warned, expect Buddy the Elf degree of euphoria.

Is any one else in Christmas mode or is it only me? :) 

It's a Sunday #05

Oh my gosh. I am SO tired. This week has been a serious shock to the system! I started back at sixth form on Wednesday and have been a very busy bee ever since.

I felt so stressed on Thursday because I had my first art lesson. I don't mind art, in fact, I even quite like it. Then why, I hear you ask, was I so stressed over it? Well, mostly because the art course I'm taking is equivalent to 2 A levels and guess what, I didn't even do art GCSE so I've well and truly thrown myself in the deep end. Well done Jess! Oh well, I've always been one of those people that always does things the hardest way. Lets just see how it goes eh?

Other than school, I've had a supremely boring week. I had a huge overhaul of my room and moved all of my school/blogging stuff into the spare room which is now my office. It's a small room but it's cute and cosy; I have lots of candles, books and my camera in there. It's my new little den and I love it.

I've been really into Essie's Forever Yummy nail polish this week, it's such a nice colour for the summer-autumn transition, it wears well too. On a side note, do you like the above image? I do, its all thanks to my dear Mother, she couldn't work the focus on my camera (bless her cotton socks!). I like the fact that the tree is in focus and I'm not, it's quite interesting to the eye.

Whats your favourite Essie colour? 

It's a Sunday #04

So the Summer holidays are drawing to a close and I really cannot face going back to sixth form, I'm dreading next year. It only occurred to me the other day that I'll be almost 20 when I leave - how depressing!

I've been super busy this week, I had my nails done on Thursday with two of my friends, we'd never been to the nail salon before and it was the worst experience! The man (who served all three of us at the same time, I thought this was weird in itself?)  was so rude and could barely speak English so he basically blanked us when we got there, he then proceeded to bark short and sharp commands at us for the following 2 hours. I am however, pleased that Shellac is becoming more popular, I've been having Shellac manicures for the past 6 months or so and I love them!

I also went shopping and picked up 2 of Revlon's Just Bitten Kissable Balm Stains, they're really lovely! They remind of the famous Clinque Chubby Sticks, for a fraction of the price which is a big bonus. I think I will do a post on them in the next few days.

This week has seen me fall back in love with Yankee Candles, with Autumn fast approaching here in the UK, I've been feeling the urge to drink hot chocolate, burn candles and grab some knitwear! I love the new Red Velvet candles, the scent is sickly sweet and I made myself feel rather ill sniffing them in the store but they're just SO yummy. My all time favourite Yankee Candles are Christmas Cookie and Fluffy Towels - such different scents but both are lovely.

What have you been up to this past week?

It's a Sunday #02

Hello, it's been a while hasn't it? What a busy past few weeks I've had.

Before I went out to dinner with the boyf, I look slightly weird and fake... Oh well.

I went on holiday to Norfolk last week, it was lush. I've been holidaying in Norfolk for as long as I can remember. Sooo many memories there, we stayed in the center of Holt if any of you know the area?

I also went out for a lovely meal with the boyfriend and his family and their friends, it was such and good night and the food was amaaazing. Nom.

At Cromer, the waves were splashing up over the walls, see the person hiding in the hood? That's me... Getting wet. Useless coat.



This past week ssomething pretty momentous happened in my life. I started sixth form. This may seem like a normal thing to most people, but not to me. I haven't mentioned much about my life on this blog, but here's some info on me. For the past 5/6 years I've been ill and trying to recover from M.E. M.E is a really crappy illness. Everyone who has it, has different symptoms and suffers differently. I can't say 'when you have M.E you get this, this and this'. It doesn't work that way, I can only speak from my experiences. I started getting symptoms in year 3/4 of primary school, I kept getting tonsillitis (all the time, literally), my ligaments would tear for no reason, I'd get so freakishly tired, stuff like that. When I got into year 7 everything took a big turn for the worse, to cut a long story short, I ended up bedridden for pretty much a whole 2 years. I lost all contact with friends, my family kind of forgot I was there, I never took part in anything. I just sat in my room, in the dark, on my own. I could barely talk, move or eat. Now, the good thing about M.E is it wont kill you and it can go away. Which thankfully mine has, mostly anyway. But no, the shittyness doesn't stop there. I may be well again, but I missed my entire secondary school education and all the socialising that comes with being a teenager. Brilliant. Fortunately, I found that all the school worky stuff came quite easily to me. I managed to get all C's and a B which I am immensely proud of! But the big struggle I've been having is the social side of things. Being out of the loop for 2 weeks is bad enough let alone 5 years. My confidence with people is shot to bits. But I'm working on that. I really hope this doesn't sound like i'm moaning, cos I'm not. I feel so lucky to have gotten better.

Ooh also, as a reward for my exam results, I got the Naked palette... I'm in love to say the least! Can't believe it took me so long to get it!

How's your week been? :)

Thanks for reading.

Jess xx