Six Selfie Sunday

There's this thing going round Tumblr called the 'Six Selfie Challenge' and I was tagged to do it by two lovely people (see below for links to them). I really liked this idea because selfies are wonderful and so is storytelling. Therefore I decided to bring the challenge onto my blog because why not! 

1) This photo was taken at the Greek cookery night in Topping and Company, a bookshop, in Bath. We had gone to Bath for a weekend away and my was shocked to find out that my camera had a front facing camera, hence the ridiculous selfie.

2) I took this after I had been filming a youtube video because I liked my hair and makeup that day. And yes, that is a teepee in my bedroom. 

3) I was trying to take a selfie here, but accidentally took a ton of photos because I didn’t realise I was holding down the button. The selfie didn’t work out but I like this collection of accidents regardless. 

4) This isn’t actually a selfie, but I’m including it because I can. This is my favourite photo ever. It was taken whilst on a trip down the Great Ocean Road. We pulled into this little stop that was just a couple of trees and a tiny shop. But in the trees were hundreds of these birds (and a few koalas). These rosella birds would land on your hands to eat the food we were given and one even landed on my shoulder. Amazing.

5) This photo was taken a little while after photo 4. We were on the bus that was taking us down the Great Ocean Road and we decided to snap a selfie because why not. I was also covered in chocolate crumbs from the Twirl I had just eaten - classy.

6) This was taken before going out for a few drinks. I really liked my hair, makeup and outfit so decided to take a selfie. But due to my stunning lack of ability to take a good selfie this is the first time this has ever graced the internet. Check out that shampoo in the background though, crazzzzy! 

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I hope you enjoyed this post, and if you decide to do this too I'd love to see your selfie stories! Tweet them to me if you, @thegiddyelf :) 

I was tagged to do this by @justh0lly and @city-of-spooks on tumblr so go follow them, they're amazing - http://justh0lly.tumblr.com and http://city-of-spooks.tumblr.com

Have a great day. 

Byeeee! 

Spa Haul

For Christmas my dad treated my mum, sister and I to a day at Nirvana Spa! Nirvana is a UK spa which focuses on 'health through water' so after spending twelve hours (!!!) in the hot pools, saunas, steam rooms and floatation pool amongst other beautifully relaxing spa rooms, I left feeling very healthy and very relaxed! Whilst I was there I couldn't miss out on the chance to treat myself to a few of the Nirvana 'nspa' products they have to offer. Here's what I brought…

Micellar One-Step Cleanser - £5

The 'Nspa' products have four different steps that they recommend you follow for the ultimate beauty experience! So for step one, the cleanse step, I picked up this Micellar One-Step Cleanser. I thought it looked a little like the Bioderma cleanser and as I can't get that due to living in Britain, I decided to give this nirvana one a whirl. It removes make-up and any impurities, and as it is a 3 in 1 cleanser it cleanses, tones and protects your skin all at once; which is pretty perfect for me as when it gets to my bedtime I'm usually far too tired to do a long skincare routine! This cleanser is super refreshing and it really gently removes all my makeup fairly quickly - perfect!

Hot Cloth Polish - £7

Next up is the exfoliating step, and for this I brought the Hot Cloth Polish. This is a very creamy face wash which you wash off with the provided muslin cloth. In order to get the most out of this you need to get the cloth really hot, so I run it in hot water and then rinse the face wash off. This polish gently exfoliates your skin and clears it of any makeup and impurities. Just after using this once I noticed the difference in my skin, it was like a million times softer and it looked instantly clearer and healthier. I love this!

Spa Treatment Masks - £6

For step three, the treat step, I got these Spa Treatment Masks. This has three cloth face masks and two eye masks in it and oh my gosh, they smell amazing! They contain papaya extracts and apparently papaya smells delicious - who knew?! Not me, haha. These masks are a treat for your skin and help to improve the overall condition of your face, so are perfect for having a relaxing pamper night. I love having a little face mask session every now and then, so as soon as I saw these in Nirvana's shop I knew they'd be coming home with me. 

Night Repair Cream - £6

The final step is the moisturise step, and for this one I didn’t even have to think about what I was going to buy; the Night Repair Cream is literally my holy grail beauty product. I could not live without it. The night cream protects, repairs and moisturises your skin, and I never go to sleep with smothering my face with it first. I've really been able to see the difference in my skin since I started using this, it’s been so much clearer and if I have any problem areas, such as redness or spots, they’ve often reduced or completely gone when I wake in the morning. And as if this night cream wasn’t amazing enough, it smells great too! I love it, end of. 

And that’s everything I brought on this trip. But i’m sure I’ll be adding to my nspa collection on my next trip to the spa! 

I hope you enjoyed this post, have an amazing day! 

Byeeee :) 

Red and Pink Gradient Nails

I've been really loving gradient nails recently, and after seeing a photo on tumblr that used red and pink to create the gradient effect I had to recreate it. 

I used these three colours to create the look. They're from the brand Beauty UK which you can buy from Superdrug if you live in the UK. (Unfortunately they came from a set and don't have individual names on the bottles, sorry!) It's a pretty cheap brand - £2.99 for a larger bottle than I have here. They have a ton of colours to choose from and they go on really well, so I'd definitely recommend these to you if you're looking for something more affordable than some of the bigger brands. 

As you can see in the photo above, I used the red nail polish on my thumb nail, then moved on to the dusty pink shade on my index and middle fingers, and then the light pink shade on my ring and little finger. And then I did the same again on my other hand. 

I used two coats of each polish so that the colours were really bright! 

The best thing about gradient nails is that you can adapt it to make it look however you want. You can use so many colours to get the desired effect and so you can match it to your outfit, style or just whatever colours you're really digging right now. 

I hope you enjoyed this post and you should definitely try out the gradient effect yourself if you like it (black and grey looks super cool too, if you're interested)! 

Thanks for reading, have a lovely day. Byeeee! :) 

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PRODUCTS: 

Beauty UK polishes: http://www.superdrug.com/search?q=beauty%20uk:name-asc:category:nailpolish&page=2&pageSize=10&resultsForPage=20#.U8v5uom9Kc0

A Weekend in France // TRAVEL

A Weekend In France - 14/15th June 2014

So over the past weekend my parents and I tumbled into our car at 5am and drove down to Kent where we would take the Eurotunnel, and it was here our adventure started!  

After an uncomfortable sleep in the back of the car and a short drive once we had arrived in Calais, we reached our home for the weekend - Le Touquet! Now you can go to markets all over the world, but France really knows how to do a market, although it's quite common to see spare parts for dolls and barbies in boxes, which is just a little bit terrifying. Saturday is market day in Le Touquet, so after having scones and lattes for breakfast (yes I did have scones have breakfast and yes it's as good as it sounds) we wandered over to the market. You could buy pretty much anything there - shoes, fruit, books, antiques, home ware, fish and that's just a little selection of the stuff on offer! My favourite purchase at the market was the radishes we bought; not because I really love radishes or anything, but because we bought them off a French farmer who had real life green fingers! And he looked really pleased that we'd chosen him to get our radishes from - bless! 

After lunch and a little browse around the few shops Le Touquet has to offer, we headed back to our hotel. Now the hotel we always stay at when we're there is right on the beach. Like when you step out of the door you're on the beach, pretty great right? However that does mean that rooms with a sea view are a little pricey! So we'd settled for a room with a view of the sand dunes (which is just a nicer way of them saying that your view will be of the car park and if you really stretch your head out the window you can catch a glimpse of the sand dunes). But to our surprise we had been upgraded to a room with a sea view, woooo! Also they'd left a bottle of Le Touquet brewed beer and biscuits in the room, extra woooo! 

We had our dinner in the best fish restaurant I've ever been to, the food there is amazing! And then we finished off the day in the hotel bar, where we were joined by the most beautiful sunset. It was all oranges and reds and pinks and the reflections of it on the sea were breathtaking. I could have taken thousands of photos, but due to the fear that it looked like I was taking photos of the couple sitting outside, I didn't... hahaha.

Now hotel breakfasts are one of my favourite things ever. There's just so much amazing food to choose from, and also an endless supply of coffee and orange juice which is great. And as I said, this hotel is right on the beach, so I enjoyed my platefuls of pastries and scrambled egg and bowls of cereal with a lovely morning view of the beach... Perfect!

Sunday’s in France are very relaxed, most shops close or are only open until midday, but when you’re right by the beach, shopping isn’t really on the top of my list of things to do. Therefore, we walked along the beach instead. The beach at Le Touquet stretches for miles, so even though I’ve been here loads of times, there were still parts of the beach unexplored. So we walked along those parts, discovering a lovely little café that was placed right on the sand and loads of little beach huts that were all brightly coloured and adorable. After some cold drinks we emptied the sand out of our shoes and headed into the main part of town. We took a quick look around some of the shops before they closed their doors for the day and then settled into the local Irish pub for a coffee. 

So cute.

People watching in the Irish pub.

Before leaving the beautiful beach and starting our journey home we got lunch in the hotel bar. A club sandwich and chips for me, accompanied with a pineapple flavoured mocktail, yummmm! And then it was just about time to go home.

The mocktails, delicious!

It was a short but sweet trip, and I can’t wait to have more Le Touquet adventures!