1. Northern lights

It goes without saying that you need to visit in Winter in order to have a chance of catching a glimpse of the elusive Northern Lights. You will also need to travel far enough North to be within the Arctic Circle for the best chance to see them. They are truly a bucket list moment and we were lucky enough to see some really good Auroras during our trip to Norway.

2. Snow

There's something so magical about snow. Especially when you're from the UK and it snows so rarely here. When it does the whole country shuts down and it makes life quite difficult. The Norwegians don't get stressed about it because they are totally prepared and can just enjoy how beautiful it makes everything look.

3. Snowmobiling

With all the snow there are unique activities on offer that you just cannot do back home. If you love all things outdoors and adventure then you have to try snowmobiling. Its so much fun and so long as you are properly kitted out you won't feel the cold.

4. Dog sledding

If there was one thing I dreamed of doing when I visited Norway it was going Dog sledding. There is no better way to experience the landscape then racing through with a pack of happy dogs. Again, you need snow to do this properly so no good visiting in June!

5. You feel like the only visitors there

Not only was every Norwegian we came across exceptionally welcoming and friendly but during the winter there are a lot fewer tourists. Considering the population is only 5 million and only 2% of those live in Northern Norway I can imagine it feeling quite crowded. Go in the winter and you practically have the place to yourself.

6. Ice hotel

Visit during the winter months and you can visit (or even stay!) in one of the Ice hotels that are built entirely out of snow and ice. We went to have a look round one and they really are incredible. The owner told me that rooms start at around £230 a night which includes dinner and breakfast which was a lot more reasonable than I was expecting. If I ever get the chance to go back I definitely want to spend the night in one.

7. Its not actually that cold

Thanks to the Gulf stream the west coast of Norway is far milder than other places of a similar latitude (such as Finland). The further inland you travel the colder it gets but along the coast the coldest temperatures we experienced were around -10⁰C. It can get colder than that of course but as long as you have the proper clothes you will be fine. It can easily get that cold if you live in a rural area of the UK so its nothing most people can't handle. In some of the more southern places we visited it was no different to the temperatures we had back home.

8. Nor is it that dark

Almost everyone who found out that we were going to Norway in winter asked me if it would be dark all the time. Norway does experience the Polar Night but if you go when we did in mid February the sunrise/sunset times are similar to what we experience in the UK during November/December. The sun rises at around 8am and sets at around 4pm. If you are further south then you obviously get more daylight. There's plenty of daylight hours to see and do everything. 

9. People sled everywhere

They have special sleds to carry your shopping in and ones that have a seat for children to sit on. Absolutely awesome.

10. It feels like Christmas all the time

Even though we visited in February with all the snow, and the cold you really get the cosy feeling that I always associate with Christmas. After a long day out in the cold soaking up the magical landscape and all the mountain views you can come back into the warm and get all snuggly again.  

You can read all about my trip to Norway here

Major new addition to my skin care routine: Clinique Sonic Brush

Say hello to my new Clinique Sonic Brush I promised I wouldn't get. Whoops, well I did. Today is my first day using it and its pretty damn great.

I'm justifying this as a reward for finishing my dissertation and as part of my 'doing what makes me happy campaign' I said I would do once the work was done. And taking care of my skin makes me look great, and that in turn makes me feel amazing.

My plan is to continue to use this alongside my normal 3 Step routine for 1 week and then we'll have a little review of what I reckon the results are.

So far I am impressed with it, it has added a grand total of 30 seconds to my morning routine (although after a month of use I plan on upping this to a minute) and its so simple to use. The reason I was attracted to this face brush over many others on the market is it does not have a rotary head. This makes it very gentle and it feels like a dream on your face. I do not want something that feels like it is scrubbing every last cell on my face off and this does not have that affect at all.

I used it in the shower with my normal Clinique cleanser for oily skin as part 1 of my 3 step routine. I followed this up with step 2 (exfoliate) and step 3 (gel moisturizer) before using All about Eyes cream and Superdefence SPF 20 Moisturizer. In total this whole process took about 4 minutes which is hardly an excessive amount of time. Plus its nice to leave the house each day feeling pampered.

Here is my mug after my first use today. So watch this space for the second part in a weeks time where we will have a look to see what the results are.

I'm really hoping its going to be as good as the rest of my Clinique Products.

2014: My year

So this year has literally zipped by me. Quite scary really. Probably means I am getting old.
Its been a very busy year that has seen some huge changes for me and not all of them have been good. However I am proud that I have managed to get through what has been a tough year at times.
So here are some of the biggest things that happened to me over the past 12 months.

1. I got really ill. Like really ill. Back in January I had Urosepsis which is where an innocent little bladder infection gets totally out of control and gets into your blood stream causing blood poisoning. This was probably due to stress as it was right in the middle of my January exams and I felt horrific. My temperature was so high I was delirious and I just couldn't eat anything. Luckily some strong antibiotics from the doctors (which also made me feel like shit) got rid of it and I avoided being hospitalized. So yeah, that was me being all dramatic.

2. I went on a lot of field trips this year and I won't pretend to have enjoyed all of them. But I have been lucky enough to travel to some really cool places that I would never have seen otherwise so for that I am grateful. Some of them I would really love the chance to go back and explore again but for fun, and best of all a lot of them were in amazing parts of the UK.

3. I didn't compete in carriage driving at all this year. This is the first time since I was 8 that I have not been out and about on the carriage driving scene. At times I have found it liberating and at other times I have found it heart breaking as I was so disconnected from a sport that has shaped my life so much. The reason I had to take a step back was because of all the field trips I had to go on (looking at you, stupid geology degree) as I just couldn't do both. Now I am back and I can't wait to see what 2015 brings.

4. Back in June my Grandad passed away peacefully in his sleep after fighting a strong battle against cancer. This was a very tough time for all my family and I think we are all sad that we didn't get to spend much time together over the past few years. Grandad, you are sadly missed and we think about you all the time. I hope you are looking down from heaven watching all the madness and mischief we get up to. I now look at life very differently and have a greater appreciation of what really matters to me.

5. I'm not ashamed to admit I've had a bit of a confidence crisis over the past year. I've allowed certain feeling of being inadequate to get the better of me and it's time for that to stop. I've let people walk all over me and push me down and I'm no longer ok with it. Over the past month or so I've been feeling much better about myself and I think thats something to be proud of.

6.  This summer I completed my 5 week Independent Mapping Project which is probably the most challenging thing I've ever done. When my dissertation is finished I will sit down and write a post about it, but for now I will just say it was a huge achievement and I will be relieved when it is all finally handed in.

Trip to Mangoes for Cordelias birthday

A massive happy birthday to my flatmate Cordelia! Feel like I'm posting about birthdays a lot but apparently all my friends have theirs close together.

She started her birthday in style with a trip to Sobar which was great fun. Sobar if you could play good music like that all the time I would go every week like I used to. I had to leave earlier than I would have liked as I had a massive load of work and errands to do the following day. 

We started the day off with everyone nursing hangovers and blowing out the candles on the delicious carrot cake baked by my flatmate Nicola. Then after a frantic day of scurrying around getting stuff done we went for a lovely trip to the Thai restaurant mangoes. 

Despite living just down the road from this little place for over two years I had never managed to actually go, even though many people have recommended it to me.  I think I've always been a bit put off by how busy it is (always a good sign with a restaurant) and felt like I would never get a table. 

The decor is lovely and I like the cosy intimate feel of the place. It's actually much bigger than I had realised as it has an upstairs and substantial area behind the restaurant you can see from the street. 

The food was sublime and I had deep fried beef. Enjoyed every bite! I hope to go back in the new year, I feel like it would make a really fun date night. 

My Birthday!

 Now in case I hadn't milked the fact it was my birthday enough, it was finally the actual day!

I went home for the weekend to see my family and we had a lovely meal out at a local pub, getting very drunk on bubbly and just generally being rowdy and mad.

I received some absolutely beautiful gifts, mostly of amber jewelery which is all stunning and I cannot decide what to wear first. My mum made me an incredible basket of happiness (alcohol and chocolate). Also had some generous money gifts (big thanks to relatives for that, I am totally skint at the moment, so MUCH appreciated thank you!). My boyfriend bought me a beautiful ring (FYI we are NOT engaged, its just a casual ring that I had my eye on) and put up with my mental family for the weekend.

Spent the Sunday messing around on the farm with the horses, trying to get better at archery and attempting to shoot ducks with the air rifle. Proud to say I won this :D

Afraid I didn't take that many pictures as I was too busy having fun but there are a few. Big thank you to my parents, I had the most incredible 21st. There I said it, I'm old now. Its official. Heres to getting a million cats and being a mad old lady.

Wild Lime Birthday Meal

Went out to Wild Lime Bar for my birthday meal. A massive thank you to all my friends who made the effort to attend. we had a lovely evening with yummy food and even tastier cocktails.

After the cocktail party the night before it was a great chance to catch up on what went down the night before!

Had myself a fantastic pizza and some scrummy cocktails. The others had really incredibly looking burgers, kebabs and hot dogs.

Everyone had a chance to sample the really great cocktails they do there.

If you ever get the chance to go to Wild Lime I would recommend it. The cocktails are two for one, the food is yummy but reasonably priced and they also have a great breakfast menu which is even better when hungover.

Just a few causal pictures of the evening. Had such a lovely time and so grateful to have such wonderful friends.

Christmas Cocktail Party

Bit late for this post but who cares, life got busy as I am currently drowning in work.

Last week was the Geology Society Christmas Cocktail Party and my god was it fun.

I've been to this event every year since being at uni and with each passing year I remember less and less of it and they seem to get better and better.

Kicked the night off with girly predrinks at mine getting ready. Found myself doing everyones make up and hair which was great because I LOVE playing around with make up. I also treated myself to a pair of hair curlers so got to work on making my hair EVEN curlier than usual. Fun times.

My housemates (who are not geologists) joined us as I decided to combine this event with my birthday night out as they are so close together. We all headed over to my boyfriends house as he lives just round the corner before heading to the venue itself.

The music was excellent, with yummy cocktails and I had a lovely evening chatting with my lecturers, socializing with my course mates and dancing with my housemates. My non geology friends did ridiculously well on the raffle and someone won a bottle of fizzy red wine. Yes it is as disgusting as it sounds.

The night was only slightly marred by high heel pain as I decided to wear my highest most uncomfortable (but sassiest) heels so I decided to drink to numb the pain. This works but also means you can't stand up in them very well.

Anyway I think the pictures of the night speak for themselves. Big thanks to my housemates for coming and I think we can all agree it was the best night we've had in ages.


But then again any chance to get glammed up is good with me!
Pictures courtesy of SU Photographic Society events team

A super cringy, yet funny pic of the dance floor.

Winchester Christmas Market

Do I look like a tit? Probably.

Spent today exploring the quaint city of Winchester. Having only ever been there on a (stressful) trip to drop off my sister who was visiting a friend I was taken aback by how beautiful and quintessentially  English this little place is. The cathedral is simply breathtaking and the narrow, winding streets with historic buildings made me homesick for my own little city: Salisbury.

While I often rate Salisbury as one of the dullest places to live today I remembered why I love it so much. When visiting Winchester I looked at it through a visitors eyes and was immediately charmed by its comforting familiarity to home.

I visited with a group of friends from uni who mostly consisted of my housemates and after a quick 15min train journey (that only cost £4.50 for a return!) we arrived.

Our main reason for this trip was to visit the Christmas market as Southamptons is a bit shit and it did not disappoint. We've had such a lovely festive day browsing the little shops and admiring all the lovely things that we couldn't afford haha.

All the pretty things...

We've also had some festive food which for me included one of the creamiest hot chocolates I've ever had and doughnuts drowned in chocolate sauce and sprinkled with cinnamon. It was literally heaven. The others had everything from mulled wine to roasted chestnuts.

I meant it when I said they were drowned in chocolate!

I've also fallen slightly in love with the fur headband pictured above but can't decide it I look like a moron in it or not.

While we were there we decided it would be super cute for us to pose in the nativity scene and that we would look cool as opposed to ridiculous. But still, it was fun.

Looking like knobheads #whocares

Winchester, I will definitely be back. There are lots of delightfully preppy shops (ie. Joules) that scummy Southampton does not have and a wide variety of really nice looking cafes and bars to visit.
Also go to the market while its still there. It has an ice rink which we were all too poor to have a go on but it just doesn't get more Christmassy than this!

My new Autumn/Winter Lipsticks

Here are the three new lipsticks I've invested in for Autumn/Winter 2014. Best bit was I bought all three of these using my Boots points, so they were essentially free! How I love getting stuff for nothing. And I'm sure you guys are gonna love my make up free, just woke up face and bedhair. Enjoy that.

1. Lancome L'Absolu Rouge in Rose Nu £21.50

I've struggled forever to find a nude lip colour that actually suits me and I've come to the conclusion that it's because my natural lip colour is quite pink so brown shades look weird me on me. I'm literally in love with this colour as its such a subtle pink you can wear it everywhere. Also its so silky and nourishing yet barely there. Its such a classy, timeless colour and instantly makes you look more polished and out together. So far I've worn it out for dinner, out shopping and to lectures. Still loving it!

2. Clinique Long Last Lipstick in So Sweet £17.50

I love Clinique make up as I think it gives you the quality of designer brands but at a slightly more affordable price. This is a lovely soft red and the warm colour makes it perfect for Autumn/Winter but it's still toned down enough to wear in the daytime which is a massive plus. I've worn it to lectures a few times and got several compliments on it.

3. Rimmel Lasting Finish in Starry Eyed £4.99

This is a different shade to what I would normally go for as with my olive skin I tend to buy a lot of red lipstick. I've been following this vampy lipstick trend for a while now and have recently found myself pinning quite a few on Pinterest  so I've decided to take the plunge and have gone for this warm, wine coloured one. The price is incredible and the colour lasts a long time and it's clearly perfect for the long dark nights ahead. Probably more of a night time lipstick (unless you're brave) and I wore it out last week. Only problem is its a bit drying but as it only cost a fiver I am not complaining.