I've been gallivanting about to Sheffield and seeing my brother and family recently. But on my travels, I came across an article called 'Things every twenty something should realise'. Although it wasn't a great post, it got me thinking; if I were to re live these past couple of years, late teens to early twenties. What would I want to know that I didn't? And these are the things I came up with.
1. Spend less time getting ready in the morning - I distinctly remember getting up at six in the morning to leave the house at eight thirty, no one needs that much time.
2. Hit the snooze button less.
3. You are what you eat - don't fad diet, buy a really great cook book and learn to cook.
4. Run - everything gets better when you run. Less stress, more sleep, better skin, better confidence.
5. Realise that it's okay to take a break from partying, and read a book instead.
6. Know that reading a book is a lot better for you than reality TV, as much as you like it.
7. Always wear a condom.
8. Make a bucket list.
9. When you think you're missing out, you're not.
10. Sex is always better when you're emotionally involved with a partner.
11. Savings accounts are cool.
12. Stop expecting your relationship to be perfect, work at it, and if your other half doesn't work at it, ditch them and find someone who will.
13. Spend less time hating life and more time listening to people, because they're really interesting.
14. The most interesting people are those who are interested in others - so be interested in everything, art, music, media, criminology, aerospace engineering, business and accounting.
15. If you're going to get a tattoo, have an idea, then if you still want it in a month, then get it, because you know you'll still want it.
16. Don't raise your voice, better your argument.
17. Don't have secrets, if you have secrets, people can have power over you - my creative writing teacher told me this once and it stuck with me since, and he is the most emotionally healthy person I've ever met.
18. Live for a year in a big city, or abroad.
19. Make plans for the future, don't expect to stick to them, but make plans and get excited about things.
20. Don't be afraid to fall in love.
What would you tell your twenty year old self?
Love always,
I don't know why I haven't sung this product's praises before. This is the only product I've ever bought and then re bought, in a bigger size, because it's the bomb.
This is the Urban Decay Primer Potion, you stick it on your lids before your eyeshadow and it makes the colour last, without creasing, all day. This combined with a MAC paint pot like [PAINTERLY] gives you eye make up that is monsoon proof, seriously, that stuff will not come off for any tsunami.
It also brightens your eyeshadows, making them really pop, and helps your mascara stay in place, a win win situation if you ask me. You can also swipe it under your eyelids to stop your concealer creasing.
They've got a few variations of it too, so whatever your preference there's something for you!
Eyeshadow Primer Potion - (as shown in photo, goes on creamy, dries to translucent)
Anti Ageing Eyeshadow Primer Potion - (translucent finish)
Eye Primer in Eden - (tawny, matte finish)
Eye Primer in Sin - (champagne, shimmer finish)
Eye Primer in Greed - (yellow gold, shimmer finish)
The three coloured ones can also be used as highlighters too!
Each one is £15.00/11ml of product. I can't remember when I bought mine, it was so long ago, but it's still going strong!
There's also a little travel size one you can buy for £8.00/6ml - here which is great if you want to try before you buy!
Love always,
I'm sure every girl has a story to tell here, it's a sore subject for most of us and even looking back on distant memories of perms/colours/cuts gone wrong is probably enough to make you feel a little down, so sorry to bring up those memories - but it needs to be addressed.
This is a bit of a rant post, so please, feel free to skip ahead to the actual tips, (below the picture of Carol Brady from the Brady Bunch)
I have only been to one hair dresser all my life, but since I live in Bristol half the time, I thought it was time to be brave and branch out. Unfortunately, I had to turn to Groupon for a voucher because most hairdressers in Bristol tend to break my forty-pound-a-week budget. So I opted for a hairdressers called 'Hairticians', which wasn't the cheapest one on there, but at £26 for a half head of highlights, cut and blow dry, I thought I couldn't go wrong, boy was I mistaken.
I drove to the hairdressers, which has no parking anywhere nearby, and walked back to get there. I was booked in for ten o'clock, but when I arrived at the hairdressers at 10.10 it was shut, so I popped in to the Tesco express next door to get out of the rain and waited a good ten minutes before someone arrived to open it. I was then told I would have to pay extra if I wanted more than one colour highlight - which I had not been told when I booked the appointment - before being ushered to a chair. To give them their dues, it's a very nice hairdressers inside, all black, pink, white and chic, with floor to ceiling mirrors and pictures of people with fantastic hair on the walls. But over the next three hours, I witnessed my hairdresser shout at a man who came in to measure the floor of the salon, bitch about a client she had in the day before, and turn my shoulder length bright blonde straight hair into a khaki coloured mullet.
For serious, I came away with a mullet. Ever seen Noel Fielding's hair? That's what it looked like. And I am not even ashamed to say that I cried a little on the way home. My hair is thin anyway and she had cut the top layers to ear height and left the bottom layers wispy and shoulder length. I had asked for a trim and my layers to be tidied up, and her exact words when she pulled my hair up to do my layers were: 'Don't panic when I cut all this off' and as my mouth dropped, she severed four inches off.
Nothing could be worse about this haircut. She gave me a short fringe, which doesn't weigh down my unruly cowlicks, I have a round face and the top layers are at the exact length that they hit the widest point of my face, making it look even wider. And, well, I look like Carol Brady.
So what do you do when you have a bad haircut?
Well there is some great news, hair grows back. (About six inches a year)
And in the meantime there's some options to consider:
1. Tell your stylist. Usually, they'd prefer you to tell them if you don't like the hair cut, and they'll try and 'fix' it at no extra cost, or show you how to style it in to something you might prefer.
2. If you're like me, and are constantly afraid of offending people, you may wish to pop to a different hairdressers to have your barnet fixed, find a recommendation from a friend.
3. If you're not afraid of going shorter, try that. It will make the layers all blend a little neater.
4. Wear your hair up, try accessorising with headbands and scarves. You may as well mix it up a little, maybe you'll find something you love!
5. Wear it wavy. This will obscure the ends, and disguise the layers.
6. Stay away from heat as much as possible, this will encourage your hair to grow faster.
So for all you wonderful people who have suffered bad haircuts too, let's embrace the hair bands, top up our make up skills and hopefully distract away from the bad barnet, until our hair grows back!
Love always,
Hey y'all,
So I've taken this time off to attempt to sort my life out. In all honesty, this post is going to be a mix of happiness and sadness - because I found it difficult to sort my life out. I realise that I rarely take pleasure in doing anything anymore, and everything that I actively do is all to please someone else and not myself, so then I asked myself what do I want? And I couldn't come up with an answer, I don't know where I want to be in five years, ten years, twenty years, and anything that I did come up with was quickly quelled by the fact that I would never have the funds to do such a thing, or that I'd never have the determination. I have no goals, no aspirations and no determination to stick at anything I would half like to do, what kind of life is that? I'm 21 and I can't dream.
So I've decided to go back to basics because thinking about this was stressing me out, and as I said in my previous post Learning to be beautiful, I need to make myself happy before anything else.
One thing I decided to kick in the face straight away;
Fitness.
I used to work out quite a lot, but have drifted back in to couch potato mode. Exercising does you so much good that it seemed like a good place to start. I heard about this programme called 'Couch to 5k' run by the NHS, where in 9 weeks, you can get from being a couch potato to running 5k (or solidly for thirty minutes). You download a podcast each week, which you listen to whilst on your run, and they - the NHS people - have created a playlist with the right running tempo, and a lovely woman called Laura who coaches you, whilst you alternate between running and walking. I'm on week two, and so far it's going well.
So if you're feeling a little blue after summer, maybe this will keep you going through winter, give you something to aspire to!
You can find everything you need to know about the Couch to 5k here, and you can download the podcasts from iTunes.
All my love
I've never written a post like this before, it's not going to be about a payday product I've been longing to get, or my excitement over my new Mom jeans. It's about learning to be beautiful again.
I'm not really an emotional girl, I'm happy to listen, but I'm awful at advice, and when I'm sad I'll hole myself up in my room and not emerge for days on end.
Recently I've had to be human, which is why I've been away from SDT for so long, too long. Unfortunately, my better half and I broke up, we're still on good terms and have promised to be friends in the future, but in the meantime, I'm having to learn to live life without him, and after six years, that's probably the most difficult thing I've ever done.
Few people are content with who they are, what they're doing and where they're going, and it's important to learn to love ourselves before we can love others, and expect them to love us, otherwise there will either be this little devil, niggling away in the back of your head, which prevents you from living your days the way you really want to.
When you're next having a bit of a rough week, take some time out to remember why you love yourself, and if you don't know, then it's time to change a few things.
Often we spend so long in relationships, whether it be with your family or other half or friends, that we begin to take them for granted, make sure you remember the exact reasons why you love them, and go out of your way to do something nice for them, send them a kind text, meet them for lunch buy them a small gift, without a doubt they'll appreciate it.
It's not a crime to mope for a bit when bad things happen, sometimes we need to realise that crying and remembering are good ways to deal with it, we need to grieve to move on. Find someone to talk to, and if you don't have anyone to talk to, or don't want to talk to someone who's close to you, look in to finding someone impartial that can listen. And remember, you're not sick, you're getting better.
I like to imagine future me, like this really awesome super Sherry who's teaching creative writing, or writing for a magazine, happily married and travelling, with a cute little one bedroom apartment, and I think I have to go through these sad times to get to that point. And even if things change, it'll be okay because I'll love myself and be prepared for whatever life has to throw at me.
So I'm going to take some time out from blogging for a couple of weeks. I'm going to Estonia and Russia anyway, perhaps getting out of the country and seeing some new beautiful culture will help to clear my head. Until then, enjoy the sunshine and take care of yourselves.
Love always,
This month has been a limited spend month for me, as will next and the month after, which is getting boring, but needs to be done. So to occupy myself, I've been digging around in my make up draw and re discovering things I'd forgotten about.
I found this Givenchy Pop Gloss tucked away at the back behind various travel bottles of dry shampoo and moisturiser I haven't used in years and I cannot tell you how excited I was to find it again! I'd totally forgotten I'd had it, but the timing was perfect because it's such a summery colour!
Colour - 448 Pop Gloss Crystal
It's the most stunning coral colour with peachy gold flecks in it to give your lips a slight shimmer. And the smell is delicious, it's very faint, like MAC's lipsticks slight vanilla scent - but it smells of popping candy, which makes me nostalgic for the 90's. The doe foot applicator is easy to use and the product goes on in a beautiful thick layer.
So pretty! It's sheer, with the right amount of pigment to give a flush of colour, you can wear it alone, or I've yet to put it over a lipstick and not like it. The finish is high shine, but not at all sticky, which I often find is an issue with glosses.
Unfortunately, I think they've discontinued this gloss now, but if you like it, you can still find some on eBay here, or Amazon here. They start at £8.00 which is great for a high end product.
Well hello again, I've been away from SDT for too, too long now. I thought student summer holidays were supposed to be a time of R and R, apparently I was wrong.
These are two little gems that I received in my July Summer Splash Glossybox, that made promises to be similar to Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Lip Tars, and huzzah, turns out they fit the bill.
I know some people received the blue one, which may have been a little too nerve wracking for my safe tastes, so I was grateful to receive mine in Cloud 9 (left) and Rosette (right).
These little tubes contain some super highly pigmented lip stain, with a little notice on the back that states 'FYI a little goes a long way'. They are right, you can squidge the tiniest drop on to your brush and it'll cover your whole lips, so at £4.99, they're fantastic value for money. There's 11 shades, and they're made to be mixed and matched in whichever quantities you fancy to either brighten the colour or create a whole new one.
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| Cloud 9 - Ice White |
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| Rosette - Vibrant raspberry pink |
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| The two shades mixed |
They apply well, in a thick, rich consistency with beautiful pigment and opacity. Although they're beautiful colours, I wouldn't have classed them as a 'stain' as the colour didn't last as long as I'd hoped. But for the vibrancy and the price, I'd definitely re purchase again, and just keep in my bag for touch ups - I want to get my hands on the shades Milkshake and Mauve Over!
You can buy Sleek Pout Paints from Superdrug - RRP £4.99/8ml
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