Beautiful Food

Hi everyone,

So, my past couple of posts have been quite hefty so I thought I'd do a little fun one for a change, one that incorporates beauty and lifestyle! I'm going to show you guys my best FOOD related items that I own! Food and make-up?! Pretty much a girls dream!

So without further ado...

Ooh these bath bombs are so cool! The set actually comes with five but I've taken the two food-related ones out for you guys. These being a glittery pink gingerbread man bath bomb and a white and pink cake bath bomb... that actually looks good enough to eat. The packaging looks so nice as well with the candy cane design and red ribbon wrapped around it. I actually got these as a gift but I've managed to track them down on Amazon for £10.99 and they're called Bomb Cosmetics Candy Land Gift Pack.

Decorated with the cake motifs, this had to count! The Pampery products are decorated with such cute dot patterns and pastel colours! Again, I got this as a gift, so I've been doing pretty well with food related gift sets in my life! The gift set came with a Body Lotion, Cream Bath, Bath Sprinkles and Bath Fizzer. The body lotion is heavenly as it smells of cupcakes and the Cream Bath produced so many bubbles which made for a top bubble bath! I'm yet to use the bath fizzer and bath sprinkles but am very much looking forward to doing so in the future, I may even review the whole thing properly in the future if people are interested. As I got this as a gift I don't quite know where this came from but the brand is exclusive to ASDA and some people seem to be getting their The Pampery stuff in Wilkos too. Also, I've seen some of their products floating around on eBay if you feel like giving them a try!

How cute are these? As pre-teen/young teenage girls, me and my best friend used to shop at Claire's Accessories ALL the time! She bought me these and they're so cute! This seems to be a recurring pattern, that food products are always so cute! The thing I find coolest about these is the little swirly ice cream lids! The three I have are cherry, strawberry and lemon and they produce quite a thin layer of balm but they're not sticky or anything and do the job well. They don't really have the strongest scent either which I was expecting them to. You can find a three-pack of ice cream lip balm from Claire's Accessories (or their accompanying website) for £5.50!

Here's a few bits I found lying around too! Firstly, I own two of these 'Perfume Stix': a strawberry smoothie one and blueberry bubblegum one. I decided that they weren't really my thing and that I'd stick to perfume though, but they were nice enough to try. Just a bit too minimal, though. I can see why people would like perfume sticks though as they're very easy to carry around and disposable so you can keep topping yourself up throughout the day if you don't quite have enough room for a big bottle of perfume in your bag, they're just personally not for me. I don't think they make these particular ones anymore as they're pretty old and annoyingly I cannot remember where I originally got them from, but I had a look around for some 'copycat' ones in case anyone was interested and I managed to find out that Baroque do some good ones, and also AROMAS, too. 

I decided to include a little accessory in the picture too - it was originally a strawberry car air-freshner given to me by a friend that smelt SO good, and I decided to turn it into a keyring. That smell is unbeatable, literally just like strawberries. It's rubbery with a plastic bit on top and looks so nice amongst my other key rings! The fruit section of The Keyring Store is a must for really affordable and cute ones (http://www.keyringstore.com/131-fruit-keyrings)!

Aside from beauty, I thought I'd also incorporate a bit of lifestyle into this. One thing I've been doing lately to store little things like hairbands or pens is using sweet tube tins that I've received as gifts. Firstly, I got the 'retro sweets' tin that actually doubles up as a money box also! It looks so cool with all the sweets as well as tapes and stickers such as '80's' or 'retro' on them. I also found that the Love Hearts tube I received for Christmas looked so cute that I didn't want to throw it away! Love Hearts have always been aesthetically pleasing sweets and the light blue tube with the red bow was just too pretty so a use of storage it became! They look so cute in amongst the other things on my desk.

This isn't exactly food but drink is the next best thing!! This is by far one of the coolest things in my room - a life size Coca-Cola money box! Yes I was a very dorky kid, at about 10 years old I wanted this as my main present because I thought it looked that cool and retro! (Maybe retro things in my room needs to be a new post one day?) But yeah I know mine was originally from eBay, and there are always some of them floating about on there.

....And these are pretty cool, too. ;)

So that's it for now guys! I really hope you enjoyed this as once again it was something a little bit different from the last couple of hefty lifestyle posts.

Comment below what your favourite product was from this post, your own favourite food related beauty products or we could even go all out and you could comment your favourite food!

Thanks guys!

Jade xx

Liebster Award

Hiya everyone! 

Well, today I noticed that I had been nominated to complete the Liebster Award. I'd heard of it and found it very exciting that someone had actually nominated me! This fantastic blogger in question was called Karun (http://karunadvani.blogspot.co.uk) so cheers to him for that! 

The rules of the Liebster Award are as follows:

• You must answer all 11 questions given to you by the person who nominated you
• You must link back to the person that nominated you
• After completing these questions you must nominate 11 bloggers (with under 200 followers) and give them 11 questions of your choice
• You can not nominate the person who nominated you
• You must let your nominees know that they have been nominated and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it

So these are my answers to the questions that Karun provided me with:

1. Favourite dish?

Ooh it'd have to be a huge plate of spaghetti bolognese, you can never go wrong with that!

2. What kind of music do you like?

My music taste is extremely varied - for example, if you put my iPod on shuffle you could end up with The Beatles, followed by Chaccaron Maccaron and then Beethoven. But usually my favourite genres of modern music are dance and alternative.

3. What funny/quirky hidden talents do you have?

I can say "Jaffa Cakes" in a Scottish accent. Besides this, nothing in particular really jumps out, oops.

4. Do you love and subscribe to any YouTubers?

Well, the answer to this is a big fat yes! My absolute favourites are Joe Sugg (ThatcherJoe) and Zoe Sugg (Zoella) and I love a lot more British YouTubers too. Aside from that, I love the guy who does the "Your Grammar Sucks" videos and TheFineBros.

5. What was your new year resolution and has it been a success so far?

It was to eat healthier... put it this way, I had the greasiest kebab ever last night, so that'd be a no!

6. Favourite all time quote?

"All the people in the cheaper seats, clap your hands. And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewellery." [John Lennon, at a Beatles concert]. The man had so much wit!

7. Do you have any weird family traditions?

Well, my grandma is from Spain, so on New Years Eve, me and my brother usually go to hers and firstly watch the English celebrations and then an hour later the Spanish one. But for both of them we have to eat a grape for every second that's counted down! According to my grandma this is good luck.

8. What is special about the place you come from?

Well, the place I was born was also the birth place of Geri Halliwell. If you're a Spice Girls fan then this is pretty special!

9. How long have you been blogging?

Ooh well technically I have been blogging on BLOGGER since March with my music blog, starting up my lifestyle blog last month. I have had a tumblr since 2011 though and had to make a blog with my media coursework, but yeah I properly started on blogger in March.

10. Could you describe your blogging experience in one word?

Sublime

11. What are your plans for the near future?

Turn 17 next month, learn to drive, start my second year of A Levels in September, and then Uni next September. Gah!

The people I nominated to answer my questions in order to complete the Liebster award:

1. Regina Coxen - http://lovetostylexo.blogspot.co.uk

2. Lauren Gillies - http://laurengillies3.blogspot.co.uk 

3. Donna Berry - http://ardenttreasure.com

4. Jessica Louise Flavell - http://floralatomic.blogspot.co.uk

5. Alice Marie - http://aliceemarie.blogspot.co.uk

6. Anna Johnson - http://thecolorfulcloset.blogspot.co.uk

7. Lauren Riordon - http://laurenellen1.blogspot.com.au

8. Gillian Andrew - http://sincerelygill.blogspot.co.uk

9. Gemma Price - http://thefaultinourhearts.blogspot.co.uk

10. Zara Kealy - http://zarakate.blogspot.co.uk

11. Chantelle Louise - http://chantzlouisexo.blogspot.co.uk

Questions for my nominees:

1. What's your favourite song right now?

2. What are your plans for the summer?

3. What is the last movie you watched?

4. What is your favourite animal?

5. Do you like to read?

6. What is your favourite make-up product?

7. What things most remind you of your childhood?

8. How often do you like to blog?

9. Have you ever kept a diary?

10. What is your guilty pleasure?

11. What is your main ambition for the future?

Please do participate and continue the Liebster Award to your audience. It was really fun to do mine 

and I hope it would be for you as well! Make sure to leave a comment with the link to your blog post

on the Liebster award, I would love to see your answers to my questions.

Thank you!

Jade x

Work Experience

Hi everyone,

So, I noticed that it's now been over a week since I wrote my favourites post, so I thought it was time to write about something to keep this blog up and running, as I didn't want it to die a death pretty much just as it was taking off! Life has been pretty uninteresting as of late, so I had to wrack my brains a bit for something not only relevant but somewhat interesting. Now, I know the title doesn't sound quite as appealing as reviewing a beauty project or something along that line, BUT it is something I finally had to do despite MANY anxious thoughts that I thought I'd share, for younger readers who may want to know what the type of work experience I did was like, older readers to read and share their own experiences of work experience/work down below OR if it's late at night, and you are in a state of such boredom that you'd actually rather read my ramblings. As part of a lifestyle blog, I may as well share this. Fab, so I'll just get on with it now.

As I said, I had many anxious thoughts in my head. I'd pre-planned this work experience that I was going to do a few months in advance (After getting turned down by quite a few places, thanks guys!) and I was worried even back then, so it was even more daunting now the time had come. I guess it seems stupid to be worried since it was only EXPERIENCE that school wanted me to do, so it wasn't like I had a job at stake and the people would be showing ME the ropes anyway, not the other way round. Still, I'm definitely the type of person you could call a worrier, with all these irrational thoughts all the time! 

Anyway, the place I was going to do my work experience at was at the head office of Home Retail Group, who run both Argos and Homebase, and knowing I was into media I thought experience in different media-related departments would be worthwhile. 

The first day came around and the coolest part was definitely the pre-work experience stop off at McDonalds. Although a coke and a McFlurry was a really odd mixture (Still didn't stop me having it again the next day, though!). After this, I found out that I'd be spending the first half of the day with a lovely girl called Laura who was the marketing manager and was responsible for Argos' advertising, who I also later found out lived in the same area as me! Small world. The first challenge I was set with Laura was to go through tons of newspapers and cut out any relevant advertisements from rival companies. There were - I kid you not - about fifteen newspapers to go through. I like reading the news, but I think I was informed of Kate Middleton's new hairstyle about seven times! Still, it kept me busy and I was already getting to know just what it would be like to work in an office. 

Throughout the hours I spent with Laura, I noticed she was absolutely bombarded with emails as part of the job, and I thought the amount I got (albeit, a lot straight to the spam filter) was a lot! Anyway, it was so interesting finding out just how they create everything. Laura was telling me for example, that for the adverts they do, they even have to hire out the same voiceover lady each time, who comes in especially for allocated studio slots. She was constantly also having to make changes on adverts that involved the brand, whether the logo was too stretched or if the company's remit didn't quite fit with the advert, for example, an advert which previously featured... let's say a lady who wasn't afraid to flaunt it all, had to undergo several changes before it was just right, and appropriate. The hours absolutely flew by and I was learning tons.

After a lunch break, I then spent the remainder of the day with an absolutely wonderful girl called Emily, a social media and marketing manager for the company. The first thing I got to do excitingly was sit in on a meeting between her and three others regarding the company's Facebook and how to successfully advertise. I thought I was social-media savvy until now, they were bringing up so many points about the site intertwining with the company that I never would've even thought of! Still, it was amazing to hear the mature discussion and debate going on, and the pure madness mid-way that amusingly stopped the mature conversation - when a guy dressed as santa walked in the building! I kid you not, and in July, too. 

Anyway, after the meeting came to a close, Emily took me to the social media department and showed me just exactly what her role entailed. She helps to run the companies social media's by using innovative ideas to attract customers, as well as competitions. She was also showing me the vines they used too, and also the extremely cute 'my ideas for tweets' notebooks that they wrote their ideas in (Seriously google them, I want one so bad!). Not to mention that the twitter she was running for the company had at least 100 times more interactions than I would get. Daily. Not. Jealous. At. All. Haha! So as an avid twitter user in particular, it was so interesting to get an insight into how a company's social media sites are ran, and what kind of incentives are used. The last thing I had to do that day was listen in on a conference call, which was ever so professional and exciting! I listened to once again more adult discussion and debate and thought to myself "well okay then these people are EXTREMELY smart". Overall though it had been a super interesting day, and I couldn't wait for the next, either!

Even though I was excited, I was still of course anxious for the next day, because I'd be in a completely different department. Luckily though, I spent the day with another lovely person, this time going by the name of Caroline. She had the title of media relations manager. So cool PR stuff, and I was dead interested in this stuff. The first part saw me being pedantic, and got a chance to show off my inner grammar police. YES, those annoying people that annoyingly correct your spelling are doing it right because this job involved just that! I went through some press releases that the company were planning to hand out, after watching her type one out, and had to basically correct any errors or replace any words that were used more than once with alternatives so that it wasn't too samey. At first it felt a bit weird - I was a 16 year old sixth form student correcting this professional person's work, but I just went with it and actually liked it a lot! She was also showing me spreadsheets and how they were arranging to invite all sorts of people to a Christmas event - yes a lot of early planning to ensure things run smoothly! I also found out that pretty much EVERYONE in every department is bombarded with emails! That's working in an office for you, I guess.

I then spent some time with the lady who sat next to her, called Lexie. I already knew we would get on just from her snazzy desk alone - it was so retro and fab, with a picture of Audrey Hepburn catching my eye! Firstly I had a chat with her about her role, and what she had to do firstly was create layouts for the company's catalogues and make sure all the pictures were just right. After this, she also showed me the social media accounts she ran, such as the PR account for the company, and once again there was so much more that went into it than I would've thought. She showed me for instance what the trending topics would be, then having to create a selling point around that to attract buyers. She also used this site called Hootsuite, which let you write tweets but it also allowed you to pre-write them when you had an idea, only to then decide a time when you wanted them published, and they automatically would be when it got to this time, so cool!

Next, I sat in another meeting but this time with these girls, and mature discussion once flowed again. Caroline suggested that it'd be a good idea if I had a chat with a girl who'd joined that week on a post-graduate scheme called Molly. We went downstairs for a coffee and a chat, and she was telling me all about the last few years of her life. I found out that she had done a journalism and PR course at Uni, something that I was very interested in myself, and it was great to actually get to hear someone's own experience rather than just being told what to do without any actual anecdotes. This really made me determined for the future. 

Lastly, when I went back upstairs, I spent another hour with Lexie, and after more professional work experience-y stuff, she showed me something a bit more personal - the fact that she ran her own fashion/beauty/lifestyle blog! I was so impressed with this because I was so interested in all the big bloggers such as Zoella and Tanya Burr, and had always secretly wanted to start one myself. Well, she happened to be the motivation for me to finally start this blog, so I have her to thank! 

(^me & Lexie! Dodgy front phone camera FTW!)

So yes I had an absolutely brilliant time and it completely reiterated the fact that I definitely wanted to work in the media, but instead expanding my options from journalism to PR as well. Office work doesn't look as boring as they make out! At least I hope so anyway, haha. I REALLY hope you guys liked this, sorry that it was so long but it's night-time a.k.a the peak time of my rambling and there was so much to say that just could not be done concisely. This was very life-styley and I'll try to do more fashion/beauty stuff in the future as well too.

So yes, what has YOUR own experience of working or work experience been like?

Thanks,

Jade xx

June Favourites

Clothing

The clothes I wanted to talk about this month were my charity shop finds! I've noticed other bloggers that I've been following purchasing items from charity shops as well so I'm glad the stigma is being tarnished a little. The perks of volunteering in a charity shop to do my bit is getting to find the bargains before anyone else! Because I see what goes on behind the scenes and know that everything is washed/steamed to perfection, I don't care if something has come from a charity shop if it's something I love. Most of it is high street stuff for a fraction of the price! Anyway, I was on the lookout for some summery pieces and these three items pictured are my favourite charity shop finds this month! I was on the lookout for some summery looking jeans, and I love the mint colour of the jeans pictured on the left that I managed to find in my size, which according to the label are YESYES jeans, found in New Look. I don't think the picture does them much justice as they were a bit creased, but I assure you, in my opinion they're gorgeous! I absolutely adore the top in the middle, which is quite a formal vest design. The colouring is rather psychedelic, with a girly white flowery touch added. According to the label, the make is YUMI, sold at places like House of Fraser or ASOS.com. Lastly, I found the three-quarterlength trousers and simply had to have them! I adore monochrome and flowers, so what an ideal match! They are originally from M&S. 

Make-up

The lipgloss I use daily is quite a vampy purple one, but I usually do tend to experiment from time to time. This month there have been two I've been experimenting with. Firstly, like in the clothing section this month, I really wanted a summery lipgloss, so this month I've been using the Cashmere lipgloss available from Next. Secondly, I absolutely love YouTuber/Blogger Tanya Burr, and after purchasing the more subtle Afternoon Tea make in her range and loving the style and quality of the product, I wanted a more dark shade as I love more dramatic lip shades, so of course I went for the boldest colour in the range - the 'Vampire Kiss' one! From the packaging I thought it looked a very dark red shade, but when applying, it is more like a very dark pink, as you can make out from the swatch above. Still very nice though, bold is what I was looking for and that is what I got! Her range is available from Superdrug.

Music

If you also follow my music blog, then you'll know that for the past few months, I've been buying older Now albums to update my music collection with some more 2000's music. The editions I bought this month were Now 56 (2003), Now 57 (2004) and Now 58 (2004). They were all from That's Entertainment, I got 3 for £5 but usually they are £1.99 each. They brought back so much nostalgia when the likes of Britney, Kylie & Justin (NOT Bieber!) were at the top and reminded me of what I loved as a Primary School child, aw. In terms of more up to date releases, the only one I've got this month is 'Love Frequency' by Klaxons. I decided to purchase it after hearing the two stellar singles 'There Is No Other Time' and 'Show Me a Miracle' from the album. They're an indie-rock band, probably most memorable for their brilliant hit 'Golden Skans' which is one of those songs that you'll probably recognise, not ever knowing who it was by! I advise you to check them out! And yes, I do still buy physical copies of albums, I've always been such a collector and I just find it better to have a copy of the item itself, although admittedly they do take up a lot of space as I have so many over the years!

Book/TV/Film

Ooh I've been loving quite a few things this month! As a very typical teenage girl, I've been stuck into the Fault In Our Stars book by John Green (Only £3.95 in Tesco - result!). I finished it about a week ago because I knew that me and my best friend Emma were planning on seeing the movie and I adored it! A perfect balance of funny and sad, I was truly hooked from start to finish. The film adaptation did not let me down at all, the actors chosen to play Augustus and Hazel worked so well, they had such chemistry! It truly ripped my heart out and the minute it finished I instantly wanted to watch it again! Although some events/details were missed out, on the whole I felt it did stay true to the book! The accompanying soundtrack was fantastic as well, from more subtle tracks like Tom Odell to the more upbeat stuff such as Charli XCX's 'Boom Clap', a mixture of emotions felt, just like the film/book itself! Aside from the phenomenon that is TFiOS, I've been loving the latest series of Big Brother UK. This series, with a theme of Power Trip after last years Secrets & Lies, began on 5th June and we've already seen hate figures, drama and romances formed in just four weeks! My current favourite housemates are the intellectual Matthew and the ditsy but hilarious Mark, and their friendship is just fantastic to watch. Interestingly, I've been watching the first series from 2000 on YouTube as well, and it's changed SO much as you'd expect, from more of an authentic social experiment to more of a show that's aware of itself, but far more entertaining. 

Games

Well, the games I've been loving this month are decidedly old! Firstly, I dug out the sims 3 a lot earlier this month thanks to my favourite YouTuber Joe Sugg (ThatcherJoe) starting a gaming series! He is making it so entertaining and infectious, so I immediately got my game out and started playing it for quite a while! I started playing the Sims way back in primary school with the Sims 2 so it was a very nostalgic experience! I've seemingly forgotten all the cheats though! The other game I've been playing this month was another charity shop find this month, for only £2.50, and my family are quite quiz addicts, always watching shows like the Chase or playing trivial pursuit, and because I love music so much, I bought this and roped my brother into playing it with me! Annoyingly our sibling rivalry makes us very competitive, so when my brother beat me the once I received a range of 'I WON' snapchats from him! The questions were admittedly quite difficult, so it wasn't as fun as the NOW music quiz game, but I still felt I knew a fair amount and if anything it expanded my knowledge by not being very good! It's the 2007 edition if you're interested, so it helped that it was fairly new.

Songs ♪ 

----

So that's it for my June favourites! I sincerely apologise that this was so long but I wanted my first blog post to be impressive in content - and length ended up following that! But I hope everyone enjoyed, it was a lot of fun putting it together! Any suggestions for future articles please comment below or if you want me to check out your June favourites then also feel free to link and I'll comment on it!

Thanks,

Jade x x

Welcome

My name is Jade Williams, I am currently 16 years old and have a huge passion for writing.
The name of my blog therefore derives from my name and the dream of being a journalist.

I am a huge optimist and a lover of music and junk food.

I'm currently studying Media Studies, English Language, Psychology and Sociology.

Hope you all enjoy what is to come from my blog in the future!

Jade x