Lovely Sundays

 I've lived in London for a year and a half now, and yet there are so many places I haven't been. One of my New Years Resolutions was to get out and see more, I'm only here for another year and a half, so I need to make the most of it!

I love a good lazy Sunday, when I have no plans but have a good day. The boy and I had a long lie in this morning, then got up and headed out without much of an idea of where we were going. With it being the first sunny day we've had in weeks, we definitely wanted to get out of the flat! We ended up at Warwick Avenue (queue singing Duffy songs for the rest of the day), which is the closest tube station to Little Venice. I've wanted to go to Little Venice for a long time, but to be honest it was a little disappointing, I expected there to be loads of cafés and bakeries for us to have brunch in, but no such luck. We ended up walking along the canal path, where I snapped a few pretty pictures of the boats. Walking along canals brings back a lot of good memories for me, where I grew up we pretty much had a canal in our back garden, and I spent a lot of time with my family and friends walking along the canal, and even once pulling our dog out of the canal. 

As we walked further along the canal path we came across these big black chalkboards where people had filled out what they wanted to do before they die, everything ranging from "make my children proud of me" to "have my own plane". I love these kind of installations, you never get anything like this back in Bournemouth, they really warm my heart to see!

We followed the Canal up to Regents Park, which despite my uni being approximately seven seconds from, we'd never been to before. We strolled through watching the ducks and the birds, and admiring the surrounding London skyline. I love these parks, they're right in the middle of the hustle and bustle, but they're really peaceful, even when they're busy!

We ended up walking for three hours around the parks, so we stopped for a well deserved smoothie at the end! Word of advice, don't put Pomegranate in a smoothie, I kept picking out hard bits and ending up ditching the end!

Not a particularly exciting day, but hey, I never said this blog was going to be about me abseiling down the Chrysler building.

What's your favourite way to spend a Sunday?

This Week's Most Loved #6

Another week, another selection of product picks. This week has been a complete mix of makeup picks, the beginning of the week was spent with long days at Pure London, so makeup with lasting power was necessary, the middle of the week was a time of "Urgh, I'll just chuck on a tinted moisturiser and a bit of mascara and be done with life", and I rounded off the week with a date night look, something natural but with a slightly smokey eye. However, there were a few standout products for me, so I thought I'd mention them anyway.

First up, the polish I've been rocking this week. As we all know, my nail art capabilities extend to not getting polish up my arm, if that happens I consider my at home mani a success, so despite seeing a ton of gorgeous Valentines themed nail tutorials on my Bloglovin' feed this week, I went for a one coat wonder. I picked up the Models Own Glitter Polish in Pink Fizz in their January 50% Off Sale, and it's love. One coat delivers an opaque glitter nail, in a beautiful pale metallic pink. Perfect for Valentines day!

This week I rediscovered my love for the MAC Paint Pot in Constructivist, a deep chocolate brown with a hint of metallic sheen. As a general rule I use my Painterly Paint Pot as a base for shadows most days, but I was enjoying a darker, smokier eye this week, and used Constructivist as a base. It made the shadows appear darker and smokier on my eyes, and I really liked the change of pace (it reminded me of my former scene kid self). I was pairing this with the MAC Eyeshadow in Sketch over the top, and it looked gorgeous (if I do say so myself).

The last product I wanted to mention is the Topshop Lipstick in Beatnik, a muted berry pink shade. It's a creamy lipstick so the lasting power isn't the greatest, but it's one of those colours that looks great with every look, and is super easy to wear.

I hope you've all had a great week, let me know in the comments what you've been up to, and what products you've been loving!

Some Exciting News!

Your eyes are not decieving you! Yes, that looks just like this blog here, but not quite the same!

I've been excited to tell you guys about this for a long time, but I wanted to wait til it was ready to launch, but guess what?! I have a new blog!

I've wanted to start a new blog for a long time now, somewhere to share lifestyle posts, and use almost like a diary! That means right here can be reserved solely for beauty, sound good? 

I explained a little more in my first post on the blog, but you can find it at jayerockett.com, it would mean a lot to me if you could all go check it out! 

Thanks guys! 

Click here to visit my new blog!

Welcome!

Welcome to my new blog! For a long time now, I've wanted to branch out, have somewhere to write about something other than beauty (I know, shocker), but I didn't want to change what I've created over at Bed In The Kitchen, I love being a solely beauty blog, but the writer in me wanted somewhere else too!

So this place is going to work quite differently to my beauty blog. Over at Bed In The Kitchen, I have a post go live every single day, scheduled and ready to go so there is constantly new content for you guys to read. I don't want this to be as strict, for starters, I just don't have the time to create that much content, and I don't want this to feel forced either. There is constantly something new for me to write about on my beauty blog, there's always new products, new looks, new ideas, but sometimes, I just spend the day at my desk working, and you don't want to read about that, do you?

So the idea is that this blog will be updated as and when, at the very least twice a week, but it will change, so the best thing to do is follow on Bloglovin' so you can be updated each time I upload new content!

So what can you expect to find here? This is going to become something like a lifestyle blog, but also kind of like a diary. I'll share my daily goings on, things I'm loving, and random brain musings that I feel like sharing. I want this to be something of a creative outlet, but also somewhere that you can see a little more of my life! I rarely leave the house without my DSLR these days, so I end up with a ton of photos languishing on my computer just longing to be shared!

You can follow this blog here!

I really hope that you enjoy what I have to share! I can't wait to get started!

The Drugstore Dupe #5

This week's drugstore dupe isn't so much an exact dupe as a product that does a similar sort of thing. I'm totally obsessed right now with the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders, and that's a mighty expensive obsession to have. 

There isn't really anything else on the market as universal as these powders, they can be used to highlight, some counteract redness, some add colour, but their main use is to set makeup and blur the look of pores and imperfections. In a recent peruse of the Topshop makeup counter at Oxford Circus I came across the Finishing Powder in White Lies, a white translucent setting powder with shimmer running through it. Curiousity got the better of me and I picked it up. After getting over the awful smell of this stuff (think old lady perfume and talcum powder) and getting to grips with it, I really like it, and it has a very similar effect when used to set makeup, in that the subtle shimmer helps diffuse the look of skin, blurring pores. No, it's not as universal, it's not the same colour, and it's not quite as good, but if the Ambient Lighting Powders are out of your price range, this is a nice alternative to give a go. It's a nice product and I've been reaching for it day after day this month.

Have you tried the Hourglass Ambient Lighting Powders? What did you think?