June & July | Instagram Look Back

1. Just me |  2. Enjoying the sunshine, 'cause you know, it's pretty ok! | 3. Norfolks finest chocolate gateau | 4. Greatest t-shirt ever? River Island | 5. Last day drinkies with the college gang | 6. Awards night - 2 nominations and 2 wins | 7. Upside down cat | 8. A play suit kinda day - River Island | 9. 'Queen of Media' on awards night - Dress from Debenhams | 10. Sun, drink and relax. 

A little late, but looking back, in summary, two pretty great months!

I finished my last year of college with great results and also had the most amazing awards ceremony to top it off. Not to mention the weather was also a-mazing which I defiantly made the most of. 

I Hope everyone else had a great June and July too, and made the most of the British weather, haha. 

Anyway, August is now upon us and I hope to continue to enjoy my summer and do more great things before the start of Uni in September (eeek) 

          

Talking Blogger issues & DSLRs

Today my blog decided it would remove every single image I've ever  uploaded, I'm not sure why. I suddenly went to check on some lovely comments I was left and found myself with an image-less blog (not pretty).  Bit of a pain really, not to mention a frantic rush to quickly locate every image and reload them back onto my blog before anyone noticed haha. Don't you just hate it when technology doesn't go right? Nevertheless, the issue was quickly resolved and as you see my lovely blog is back up and running again, hurrah!

Anyway speaking of images, I've been looking into buying a new camera recently, as I feel my phone camera and Ipad aren't really cutting it anymore. I always come across such amazing blogs that have these striking photos and I wish I could produce such material, but lack of equipment. 

I really want to buy a DSLR to get my blog looking even better but at the moment can't quite afford one. I love using DSLRs as they can produce such great images when used correctly. Having done a photography course I know how to use all the settings and modes to get awesome images with nice effects, but frustratingly don't own a camera with such means to. Although you don't need a fancy DSLR to produce good images, (or a fantastic blog as a matter of fact) especially with many digital cameras having the same settings such as aperture and shutter control, I just feel I could get a lot of use out of a DSLR and learn a lot about photography along the way too. But hey, I guess i'll have to stick to what I have for the moment!

What equipment do you use bloggers?  Let me know your thoughts - I'd love to hear

   

Discounts, Freebies & Competitions | Tips for making the most of the web

There's no denying we all love a good discount nowadays to make our money go farther. It's such a good feeling to purchase items for a fraction less than what they are on the high-street or other stores for example, and with social media, emails and other online tools it's so easy to find discount codes and deals, not to mention freebies too! Yes that's right - there is such a thing as freebies still in this day and age. 

I myself when shopping online regularly use discount codes if available. And how do I get these you wonder? Well, if you're a student I cannot stress enough how you should be signed up to Unidays. It's the most fantastic student discount website, with over 2 million users, and discounts across a huge number of online stores such as Urban Outfitters, Asos, Apple, Topshop, Miss Selfridge, Lookfantastic and many many more!

It's free to signup and all you need to do to get saving instantly is verify your student status, and away you go.

Even better, Unidays has recently enabled you to get amazing, and exclusive discounts on the high street  by simply downloading their app, signing in and showing cashiers your Unidays verified ID to redeem offers that are available.

If you can't find the right discount with this site then needn't worry as there is other websites such as StudentBeans and also most online stores allow you to get discount by signing up to them using your college or university email, rather than entering a discount code at the checkout through a normal account. 

Now, don't worry if you're not a student as there's still plenty of other ways to finding great discounts, and I've listed some of these ways below.

1. Sign up to email alerts from you're favourite stores; they often send out discount codes, alerts of flash sales and also free delivery at times. 

2. Register with stores! It can often lead to receiving offers and discounts on your first purchase. For example I recently signed up to JustFab and after taking their quiz to find my perfect pair of shoes I was offered my first pair for half price at £17.50. 

3. Social media - Follow shops on Twitter, Facebook and  Instagram! This is such a good way of finding out about flash sales, discounts, and also competitions, which I will talk about a bit more further down. 

Freebies & Competitions

As I mentioned before freebies are still available in today's modern, money driven age. I myself I have occasionally received free gifts through following brands online and liking their Facebook pages. 

If you didn't know,  a lot of brands, especially those selling beauty products, offer free samples to customers. These are usually found through visiting their websites and official Facebook pages where simply by giving your details you can be sent free samples . Look out for new products released, as this is what's usually given as samples. 

Other freebies I have received have been found through using StudentBeans. This student website sends me emails with a list of free things I can obtain through doing questionnaires or simply giving my details etc, all great ways to receiving free stuff. Although take caution of giving too much personal information!! - That's not always a good idea.

Again social media is fantastic for the chance of getting free gifts, be it by simply liking a brands tweet or entering their competitions. 

A year ago or so I used to twitter to enter competitions and it worked great! I followed magazines, brands, shops, you name it. They often run competitions to win stuff and I successfully won two prizes, one by telling a magazine about my favourite celebs outfit and another just by simply retweeting a tweet to be entered. 

I won London Fashion week tickets (so chuffed!) along with some jewellery from Lola Rose and the other prize was two massive bars of Toblerone - Win!

So, there's just a few of the best ways of making use of the internet to get discounts and others nice things! I hope it's helped for any of you bargain hunters out there, feel free to comment with any other suggestions or what you think 

      

The 5:2 Diet

Hello readers!

Since breaking up from college I've not been as active as I used to be. Sitting home eating junk really had caught up with me so I decided I wanted to get back in shape over the summer.

After hearing about the crazily popular 5:2 Diet, which all the celebrities had been doing I decided to give it a go. 

If your not aware of the 5:2 Diet, basically it's this 'new' way to lose weight reasonably fast, and all that's involved is eating normally for 5 days, and by normally I mean within the daily calorie limit, which is 2000 for women and 2500 for men. Then for the other 2 days in the week you have to eat just 500 calories (600 for men).  That's it!

Now as a woman this means on one of the days you eat 500 calories you are effectively eating 1500 less. So in a week you should have totaled a loss of 3000 calories . 

3500 calories equals a pound of body weight, so theoretically  you should nearly be losing a pound a week if you stick to the plan and keep active.

With all this in mind I thought, great! sounds easy! - I mean getting to eat what you like within the limit for 5 days a week seemed brilliant. 

So let me explain how it all went for me.

My first week was really difficult. I didn't think it would be so hard to stick to 500 calories in a day, but it really was. I didn't worry though, as according to all the articles and stories I read on this diet getting used to eating this little was the hard part, but in time it got easier, apparently!

With a goal in mind, I didn't give in and I stuck to the plan and didn't eat over the 500. I spread the 2 days over the week so I could 'recover' kind of thing and it was great knowing the next day you could eat normally again. BUT, and this is a big one. This is where everything went wrong for me. 

After about 2 weeks of strictly following the diet I started to flag. After the days I was eating 500 I was feeling so hungry, not to mention moody, and I basically made up for what I hadn't eaten the day before, therefore defeating the object! Maybe I have no will power but I just felt like I needed to eat and eat. 

I think that maybe given time I would really have adjusted to the plan but for the first attempt, I didn't succeed. 

Nevertheless this doesn't mean it won't work for others - As I said there are many celebrities praising this diet and I have read many success stories; but it just wasn't for me. I think in future I will just stick to shaving a few hundred calories off my diet each day, instead of starving myself twice a week! 

For those wanting information on the 5:2 diet click here

Please leave a comment If you've tried this diet, or have any thoughts. 

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My Summer Playlist 2013

So Summer has arrived, and to celebrate I have put together a little playlist of some of my favourite summer tunes for this great time of year. x