Five Under Five Friday || Body Products

It is now t-minus a week until I leave for uni, and the life of a broke student. This means that my spending habits are going to have to change drastically, and I'm going to have to start running a tight ship with my budget! Let's all pause a minute whilst I shed a tear for all the beautiful products I can only lust over for the next probably one hundred years. Luckily for me, there are plenty of just (I keep telling myself) as nice products that come in under a fiver, which is about as much as I'll be able to spend! And so now is the dawn of the 'Five Under Five Friday' here on Babbles With Beth, a new series where every Friday or so I'll share five different products that are cheap but do a cracking job! 

My first pick is this Pump It Up raspberry scented dry shower/body wash, which was a godsend when I was travelling and you can pick up from Boots here for £3, which I think is a bloody bargain. It's also available in several other scents, and is essentially a foam which you rub on your body and it cleanses you without the need for water. Essentially, it's witchcraft, but incredible in situations like travelling when you feel a bit disgusting and just want to freshen up, or at a festival etc when your ability to shower is limited. Cracking little product I think. Basically like dry shampoo for your wobbly/sweaty bits. Bless you people who invent these things.

My second pick is from a brand I have developed an intense love for, and genuinely doesn't seem to get the love it deserves (more on that next week). Again a godsend in Europe is the KIKO foot and heel relief cream, which is actually sort of a cheat as it retails for £5.90 here, but I did manage to pick it up in a sale for around £2, and it's honestly one of the best £2's I've ever spent. This stuff works miracles on disgusting dry heels, and as my heels are some of the most disgusting and dry, I use this on a near daily basis to soften and protect them. Third, is the Supreme Cream Body Butter which is sold in Sainsbury's for £4, or you can pick it up here. Sold by Dirty Works (which seems to be a cheaper supermarket version of Soap and Glory with similar packaging and names), this is a cheap and cheerful, yet still thick and luxurious body butter chock full of lovely ingredients like shea butter and macadamia oil. The scent is lovely, and the product leaves your skin silky smooth. For the price, it does a blummin' good job.

My fourth pick is the Zoella Beauty Soak Opera, which is currently £4 in Superdrug, available here. It's been around for a while, but is a recent purchase for myself as I was in the market for a fairly cheap but lovely bubble bath product, and so I decided to treat myself to this as it comes in a mahoosive bottle and doubles as a shower cream. Basically it's like buying two products, but it comes in this one bottle with the prettiest packaging. The colour is a pearly pink, the scent is lovely and floral-y, the bubbles are cracking, and it cleans my skin. I mean, what more could you ask for? Nought, I say.

Fifth and final is a product I don't actually have to hand to photograph, but comes highly recommended by both my mother and best friend, and if you can't trust the recommendations of those two people I mean, who can you trust? No one, that's who. This product is Garnier Summerbody Moisturising Lotion in Deep Sun Kissed (also available in light), and it retails for £5 here in Sainsbury's. It's a gradual tanning lotion that also moisturises and does all the jobs of your basic body lotion. My friend swears by this to maintain her summer tan (and honestly, she's darker than when she came back from Ibiza, but in a lovely glowy natural way), and my mum has used this in place of a spray tan to look darker and glowing for a wedding, and she just looks like she's come back from a really sunny place. It's a lovely little product for the price, and a good alternative if you cannot afford to get a spray tan, or want something a little lighter and gradual.

And that concludes this first Five Under Five Friday! I hope some of these are useful to you, I know I'm not the only one who is on a tight budget! Come back next week for more 'Five Under Five Friday'!

Uni Room Essentials

I do love it when the universe conspires to give me the perfect opportunity to ramble on about pretty homey things. I was inspired by Parachute, a bedding brand who do the prettiest everyday bedding basics (alongside cute cashmere throws and candles), to write a post about my dorm room essentials, and seeing as I move into my new uni room very soon, I leaped at the opportunity!

I've been steadily packing for about a month now, and have split my 'essentials' into three categories: actual essentials, extra useful things, and pretty stuff I don't need but that is essential in my mind. Good categories, I feel. And so for today's post I am going to share a few bits from each category that are on my wishlist/I already own for 'The perfect, cosiest, prettiest dorm room'. Mmm, catchy!

Actual Essentials:

Obviously, tippity top of my list is bedding. My bed and I have a rather special relationship, and one that I plan on staying in for a very long time, even though life forces me to spend not as much time as I would like inside it. I love a good cosy bed complete with all the trimmings, and by this I mean a heavy cosy duvet, pretty covers, a throw or two, and so many cushions I can barely climb inside. Now that is my idea of heaven. Parachute have some really cute duvet covers on their website, and top of my wishlist is their 'Sateen duvet cover' in 'powder', which is the prettiest pale blue colour and makes me want to cry just a little with how gorgeous it is. The bedding I have bought is nearly just as cute, and from ye olde land of Primark (all hail the Primark gods!). I picked up a cute set in a graphic bear print, which is now forming the background for all these pictures, and a white set with some pretty embroidered flowers. Two different sets for two different moods.

Other actual essentials include storage solutions. Being a student, I have a room to myself and then share a communal living/kitchen area, which means that all my stuff (bar actual kitchen-y bits) are going to be crammed into one area. This means clever storage type things are come in useful. Ikea do some cracking storage solutions, but all I have plumped for so far is a cute tin I once got some cookies in to store essentials like makeup, and a set of little drawers my aunt bought me to store other essentials (like more makeup!). I am also taking along an old, slightly broken mug that will look adorable on my desk as a pen/makeup brush holder. Making the most of what I have already is helping a lot with keeping going to uni as cost effective as possible.

Useful bits and bobs (perhaps not as essential):

Lighting. Oh, lighting. How I hate harsh overhead lights and how I love warm candle light. Alas, candles are not allowed in a dorm room (it's a fire hazard, I know. But I do so love a good candle). And so fairy lights have become my new best friend. I've included them on this list because some may argue that bringing lighting isn't essential, there is already a lightbulb/lampshade combination going on, but I think soft fairy lighting automatically makes a room look cosier and more inviting, especially on cold wintery nights when all you want to do is snuggle with a duvet and a hot chocolate. I am taking with me two sets of lights, a cute fabric rose set, and a red plastic heart set. They weren't expensive, between £3 and £6 from Primark again, but go an awfully long way to making a barren student room look lovely and pretty. Cute lamps do the same trick, and I'm lucky enough that my aunt and uncle bought me a gorgeous heart shaped porcelain lamp which will look adorable on my new desk (and if you ask nicely, your family members may do the same for you!).

Stationary is another big love of mine, and by this I mean I would rather spend my money on a pretty notebook than food. I am a sucker for a pretty notebook (darn you Paperchase). And whilst for my actual useful stationary that I'll need for lectures and notes etc I went budget style and bought notepads and pens from Wilkinson's (total cost: about £6), I'm also bringing along some of my favourite pretty stationary, mainly because it makes me happy to look at it.

The notepad I was bought a few Christmas' ago, but have never used (and will probably never use, but I love it anyway), and I thought the notecards would come in useful for sending actual letters home. I know there's e-mail and skype and texting and calling, but nothing beats an actual letter that someone has written and sent. And these ones are particularly cute little notecards with butterflies on, and I just know my sister will love receiving one once in a while. Obviously, very essential! I'm also taking along a useful pad I found in paperchase, that looks like a normal notebook covered in unicorns, but inside has sticky notes for making to-do lists and jotting down notes and marking things. Handy mcdandy if you ask me. And of course, the usual suspects like a diary etc, for (hopefully) organising my life a little bit more than I do right now.

Not so useful trinkety bits

Love a good trinket me. And I've found one of the hardest things, whilst packing for uni, is deciding which bits to take, and which bobs I am leaving behind. I'm possibly overly sentimentally attached to a lot of my trinkets and pretty things, but I do think they make a room. Bedding and lighting and storage is all very well, but a room is not a room without it's little trinkets. And with going to uni, I'm going to be far away from where I've grown up and where my family is, and so having little bits scattered around that have memories attached not only makes for a pretty dorm room, but one that also helps with being away from home.

The above is just a selection of what I am taking, but a diverse selection to show the kind of thing I personally think is a good idea to take along. The bird cage and elephant were both presents (and technically meant for candles) but look so cute on a windowsill or bookshelf or desk, and make me happy when I look at them, which I feel is an important trait in a trinket. The milk bottle I found in a cute shop in town, and is my favourite flower holding vessel. I adore fresh flowers in a room, even if I've bought them myself, and so wanted to bring along something to hold said flowers.

The little hanging charm has a cute quote on it. Some people I know do not like these kind of quote-y things, but I absolutely love them, and thought this was particularly applicable for going to uni, as I am following my dreams! And finally, the tsum tsum eeyore and Cogsworth have sentimental value for me, because I was given them by friends who obviously put a lot of thought in, and I like having this kind of thing around when I'm away because it reminds me of the people I still have around who I love and who (hopefully) love me back.

And that concludes this snippity snapshot of the things I consider pretty essential for making a dorm room cosy and lovely for the year ahead! Feel free to share what you already have/are taking/would take to your dorm room.

A goodbye and a change for the better

Credit: pinterest

More on the subject of change today! It seems to be the topic of choice for me at the moment, which I guess is fitting with the time of year and my aims for myself, which do including becoming a better version of the person I am now. As you may have guessed from the quote above, the change I have made today is to leave my job. I worked my last ever shift at my first ever job today, and it was a bittersweet goodbye. I've worked there for over a year now, and it's a small shop so the people I worked with are basically like family to me. There's something about a busy, stressful environment which just bonds people for life. Unfortunately, it's the busy, stressful environment which has contributed towards me needing to leave.

I, like many other college and university students, went to work part time and my education is full time. Unfortunately for me, I happened to be pretty good at my job in an understaffed shop, and this led to working practically full time hours before the summer during exams, and even more so during the summer. Understandably, this led to me becoming very stressed towards the end of the year. And although things were settling down again now, we lost our management and the whole place feels a bit like the titanic on the verge of sinking, and I have never gotten my old love for my job back.

I stuck at it because I needed money, and my parents told me I needed something to keep me occupied, but I was getting desperately unhappy, and concocting the bizarre-st of plans in my head in the hope of not having to go to work, and this got me thinking. Why was I still there?

I didn't want to be, nor do I really need to be. I'm lucky enough that I have parents who will give me a small allowance now I am jobless, although I appreciate many people do not have this back up option. I loved working in this place before, but now it was impacting on my college work and my mental health, and those are two things I decided had to come before money and my love of buying unnecessary items. And so, after weeks of decision making, I handed my notice in, and immediately I felt better, like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

And now my last shift is done and free weekends stretch out ahead of me like some blissful holiday, and I already feel tonnes better. It's incredible how such a difficult decision can have such a big impact on the way I feel. I'm sad I've left everyone, but I'm so excited to start this next chapter in my life.

So I guess this post is just to say that if you really aren't happy with something in your life, it is possible to change it. There is always a way to change what you don't like, even if it's not leaving your job, it's something different like cutting ties with a friend, or not driving because it terrifies you even if you feel like you have to.

My question to you is then: is there anything in your life you would like to change? If there is, consider changing it. I promise, 99%* of the time you will not regret it.

*not a real statistic

x

The Liebster Award!

I have been nominated for the Liebster Award by the wonderful Emily! I love things like this (we all love talking about ourselves at heart, right?), and I think it's a great idea to help fellow bloggers starting out, and I'm very happy to have been nominated so soon in my blogging time.

The rules are:

1. Link to the person who nominated you

2. Answer the questions given to you by the nominator.

3. Nominate 11 other bloggers who have less than 200 followers.

4. Create 11 questions for your nominees to answer.

5. Notify all nominees via their social-media/blogs

My questions and answers are:

1) What would your perfect day consist of? I'm massive homebird at heart, so nothing that would involve straying too far afield. My perfect day is probably more likely to consist of a lovely long lie in, breakfast in bed with a Netflix binge (hooked on Merlin at the moment), probably a romp across the moors with the family and the puppy, and back home for crumpets, tea, and a movie marathon afternoon. And of course, because it's a perfect day my makeup would work perfectly first time, and my outfit would be on point (two things which never, ever happen to me!)

2) If you could only take 3 beauty things to a desert island, what would they be? Concealer for the terrible black under eye bags, mascara so I don't look dead, and deodorant so I don't stink and scare away and potential rescuers (deodorant is a beauty thing, right?)

3) What do you hope to get out of your blog? I just want my blog to be a place where I can splurge my thoughts and share ideas and things that I usually keep internal and they build up and build up. I'm not after a massive following or anything, I just want a little slice of internet that people can enjoy if they wish.

4) Do you have any tips for new bloggers? Being a new blogger myself, I guess my only tip is just to go for it! I've been umming and ahhing over starting this blog for ages, and I'm so glad I bit the bullet and did it. So yeah, basically just get on and do it if you've been considering it! And post about what you love, even if it's the worlds biggest jumble of things. Passion sells.

5) Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Hopefully still blogging! But I also hope to have achieved my degree at University, have completed whatever it is I need to do to become a speech and language therapist (much more research needed), and be in a steady job that I love!

6) What's your best style advice? Don't try to be like everyone else. Often I see groups of girls dressed almost identically, and half the time the majority of them look uncomfortable. Don't wear something if you don't feel comfortable! You'll look ten times better and more wonderful if you feel happy and comfortable, even if happy and comfortable is a massive hoodie and pair of comfy joggers/jammy bottoms.

7) Would you rather travel to the future or the past? When and why? The past, definitely. Probably the Tudor period? Or the Victorian or Elizabethan era. Basically any era where I can be the daughter of a noble lady, be happily married off and be able to wear all those fabulous dresses. And maybe flirt with a king. The next Mary or Anne Boleyn perhaps? Minus the head chopping off.

8) If you got a lifetime's worth of tickets, travel, accommodation and spending for one festival (music/film/fashion/anything!) anywhere in the world, which would you choose? Tricky one but probably the New York fashion week I mean, NEW YORK and unlimited spending, and pretty fashion like...what more could you need?

9) Would you not wear makeup for the rest of the year for £5000? At first I thought yes and then I was like...actually, that wouldn't even pay for one year of uni, and I look dead without makeup so...probably no.

10) Who is your role model? I don't know if I have one role model as such, I have several. I guess the first person who sprang to mind was Darcy Bussell, mainly because when I was younger (and now) I just wanted to be her.

11) What are the last three books you read? Did you enjoy them and why? I can't quite remember the exact last three I read.. I know I read The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella, which is my go to book for a lighthearted read, and I love it mainly because I too am a shopaholic, and it is a very good warning for when I want to splurge! I think I also read Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte recently, which is my fave fave faveest book in the entire world and sometimes I just want to be Jane. And right now I am reading The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory. Historical fiction is a big weakness of mine, and Philippa Gregory is my most favourite historical fiction author, and I love this one in particular. Good read, good read.

Being as I have only just forayed into the world of blogging and following amazing blogs and wasting half my life on bloglovin, I don't think I follow eleven blogs that have under 200 followers, so I shall just nominate the following lovelies:

http://vvln.blogspot.com.au

http://myseptemberdays.blogspot.com

http://catcheratetherye.blogspot.co.uk

http://fashionroad.co.uk

My eleven questions are:

1) Why did you choose to start blogging?

2) If you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would your last meal be?

3) Top three go to beauty/skin care products?

4) Three of the best books you have ever read?

5) What advice would you give to your 10 year old self?

6) Favourite inspirational quote?

7) If you had unlimited money to go travelling, which countries would you visit and why?

8) Top three favourite blogs?

9) Most beloved item of clothing and why?

10) Favourite way to procrastinate?

11) If you were trapped in a burning building, what celebrity would you choose to save you and why?

Enjoy!

x