When I get older, I want to have skin like my nan. She is in her sixties, and she has the healthiest looking, peachy complexion. Her secret is Nivea, she could literally be their walking advert. Unfortunately, I am not that lucky just yet and it has taken me a while to find my skincare routine so I thought I would share it with you guys.

The first thing is first, don’t stress over it, instead, listen to what your skin is telling you. Your skin just like your self, it has mood swings and you need to learn how to deal with them and why they happen.

1. Determine your skin type – There is seriously no point in wasting money on products which are going to be useless or may harm your skin even more. Our skin is the biggest living organism and a lot of us forget that. Pop into your local dermatologist or buy a test kit. A lot of skin care stores also now do a skin type test for you when advising on products. Bodyshop is a really good one for this and it only takes 2 minutes. The one thing I would suggest is going in with a makeup/product free face to get the best results. This leads me to my next point…
2.  Let it breathe – how good does it feel to take your clothes off at the end of the day? Well, imagine how good your skin will feel when you take off that whole layer of makeup. And please, I beg you, do not fall asleep in it. I know it’s difficult especially after a long day but makeup is makeup. It’s not supposed to be on 24/7  😛 Even if you don’t wear makeup – run a makeup wipe across your face after getting or the tube or blow your nose! – I am not going to comment any further 🙂
3. Drink plenty of water – Water clears all impurities. Feel like a glass of coke or fanta? Swap it around for some water. I personally struggle with this. In the beginning, it was rather difficult but I make sure that I wake up and water is the first thing I see. I also got around this by caring a smaller bottle of water with me everywhere and refilling it and always having water in the boot of my car. – You never know when you’ll need it!

So now saying all of this, my routines took me absolute ages to actually find. My skin is pretty sensitive and often a combination of everything. It fluctuates throughout the month and I’ve now figured out what it needs.  SO here goes my everyday routine:

1. I wash my face with the Bodyshop vitamin E facewash. Its a small tube but it actually last for ages. I have had my one for about 2 months now and I use it every day twice a day. I find that its really good for all types of skin and doesn’t dry it out but rather keeps it hydrated and feeling fresh and soft! I won’t lie and say that it removes all makeup because it doesn’t. I don’t tend to wear much makeup so it doesn’t bother me.
2.  I use a natural pore cleansing exfoliator made from seaweed for combination skin from Body Shop. If not then I do like the St Ives Apricot scrub which is gentle and smells sooooo good! I’ve literally used it for years. I don’t like to scrub my face so I only do it when I feel like my skin needs it or when I have worn heavy make up just to make sure that all of it has come off. Apparently scrubbing your face every day isn’t very healthy for it as it stops your skin from producing natural oils and can throw the natural PH off balance – but again I am not an expert and you know what your skin needs!
3. Toner is essential. Funny enough, it’s not something that I’ve used all the time and only started in the last year or so. I’ve noticed a big difference with home my skin feels and doesn’t break out as much. It’s also from the seaweed combination skin range at Body Shop and is really easy to use.
4. Sudocrem & Nivea – keep your skin moisture! This is most probably the most difficult thing! I constantly forget to do it and then wonder why my skin is looking rough. I only use sudocrem on areas that I’ve developed or am developing a spot in. I try not to use my fingers and instead apply it directly with an earbud. Nivea is of course inspired by my nan but I can’t use the original because it’s just too think and clogs my pours up so I use the light moisturising version!
5. Chose a face masked based on how your skin is feeling that week. Mixing them up can always do a little more justice. For example, if your chin has broken out, use an oil balancing mask on that area of your face but maybe a moisturising mask on your cheeks. At the moment I love the Garnier SkinActive range that is out. Its a simple sheet mask so no messy business!

The main thing to remember is to look after the skin. You might as well invest in good skin care products rather than cover up the issue with expensive makeup. Once your skin feels good and you’ve tackled the underlying issue, everything else is so much simpler and you will feel much better.

Okay, I’ve taken the plunge! I’ve moved in with the Mr. Now this should definitely be an interesting journey. I’ve actually come to realise, I’ve never had my own room haha! Oh well, at least I’m sharing a bed with someone I like ;P

Our first actual mission was to figure out where to fit my stuff. Believe me, I did not know that I own that many things. Books yes, but other stuff, no!! So It was definitely an IKEA trip in the making. We don’t actually have very much space to play about within our room so we also had to be clever with what we were getting. Luckily enough, we already had a huge wardrobe with a mirror so that was an expense that we didn’t need to cover.

The next thing on the list was essentially a bed. We had one, but it needed a little bit of upgrade. Beds.co.uk actually so some pretty sweet deals and we didn’t end up spending very much. On the side note, I decided to put the bed together by myself to surprise him, and it may have ended up falling apparent a month later…not a manufacturing problem…more of a Magda problem – Me being me didn’t end up screwing in the screws properly ooooppppsssss!!! I am still considering getting a new mattress but this is taking me a while. I don’t mind spending the cash on it, but the issue I’m having is finding the right one. I am a firm believer that good sleep sets you up for a good day! I’m happy to wait 😛

Now the major thing that I needed to tackle was where all my books would go. I have close to a 1000 books, for some, it may not sound like much and to others, it may sound like a crazy number. It really depends on what your hobbies are. I ended up finding some cool Kallax shelving units. We bought two and made them into an L shape. I only have one complaint, they are black, the collect dust like crazy! I see why Mrs Hinch has so much white and grey furniture! Wish I knew that earlier.

My last top splash was a Malm chest of drawers. These are really cool and come in different sizes. We went for a 3 drawer chest but we should have most probably gone for 4. We do have a bit of a storage issue which I am currently working on but I feel like 4 may have been a little too high. Let’s just say I have a lot of stuff…which girl doesn’t though? 😉

So this brings me to accessories. I have absolutely fallen in love with plants! I have several now. I didn’t get anything too hard to take care off as I am not an expert but just some plants that I can water and they will do their own thing. I feel like they bring a lot of colour into the room and keep the air a little fresher. Pus, they are pretty! The tree that is, however, giving me the most trouble is my Bonsai. It seems to be dropping loads of old green leaves but growing new healthy ones. I have repotted it recently and it does seem happier in some new soil. Feel free to let me know how you feel about them and if you have taken care of these before. Any helpful hints will be very much appreciated!

I can’t say that these past few months have been easy mentally. They have most probably been some of the hardest months that I have ever had. I went through a lot of changes and stuck my head in the sand. Constant ups and downs and my mouth constantly shut. 

Initially, my job was getting the absolute best out of me. I was tired, broke and unmotivated living the dreamed of “London Life”. As I came to realise, this is not for everyone. Hence I ran. That seems to be my thing apparently, running. One of my good friends told me that I always run away from stuff and I never agreed with him, when NOW several years later, I realised that it is most probably true.

The second thing bugging me was where I lived. Don’t get me wrong, I love my family to pieces and I would do anything for them, but, there comes a time where you have to spread your wings and fly. So I moved out. I have to say, I see my parents more now then I did when I lived with them. Life has a very funny way of throwing things at you. ❤

Thirdly, I had no time to actually relax and enjoy doing what I do. Like writing this blog!! Can you believe it, we are almost halfway through the year and I have hardly written anything even though I have 101 ideas running through my head!!! So I’m working on this as we speak.

But the hardest this for me to get over and is still a struggle is not being where I “imagined myself to be”. This the one thing that keeps creeping up on me when I’m driving back home and have nothing but the M25 and the empty space in my head. No one ever tells you what life after uni or travelling is going to be like and it took its toll on me. My own worst enemy is me over thinking. Well, guess what Magda, wanting things are all good, but cherishing what you have is what makes things you worked hard for even better!!

I was with my girls when it hit me, I am not the only one going through this. It’s amazing what a bit of wine, pizza and being surrounded by the best gets out of you. With a few kind words, my worries disappeared. Everyone has a different path to cherish and I am walking through my own field of grass and making my own story.

Now go have a read of  Stoptheworld because my good friend Lauren is what inspired this blog!! She is one of the strongest and bubbly women I have in my life! xx

Happy New Year Everyone!!! The long awaited 2019 has come and the dread 2018 has finished.

Okay, it wasn’t dreaded. It was a learning curb of ups and downs, fun, tears, laughter and joy. I have definitely had several highlights this year and thought that this will be the perfect time to talk about them. I also decided that travel isn’t going to be my main focus anymore as unfortunately, I have several other commitments which have put my travelling on the shelf (just for now though, don’t worry, I will come back and grab adventure by its wings again someday!)

Travelling (dah, of course!)

My Highlights this year were being able to travel South East Asia, America, Bulgaria and actually, visit Poland for the first time 16 years. I was only a little child when I moved to the UK so I have forgotten a lot. It’s an awkward feeling when you go back to a country where you originate from but you feel like an outsider. For some reason, however, it has sprouted roots and I feel like it is a trip that I will have to do again, less rushed and more destinations.

Relationships

Well, this year has been both difficult but interesting when it comes to relationships. When I talk about relationships I do not mean the romantic type.  I mean the type that leaves footprints in your lives. I have found very interesting characters along the way, some that will stay with me for a while and some who have run in and ran straight back out, but all very memorable, funny and annoying at times too. I have learned a lesson from all of them.

“A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.” – William Shakespeare 

Independence

I remember this was a huge goal at the beginning of 2018. It was also difficult as doing things by yourself can often be very hard. However, I have fallen in love with it. To be honest, there is no better feeling grabbing a cup of coffee your favourite book and chilling in a park or a cafe and enjoying the 30minutes you have all to yourself.

I have also noticed, that a lot of people find this weird! They very often question me about how I’m comfortable doing things all by myself. The question I ask back is… “If you aren’t comfortable with yourself, then who will you ever be comfortable with?” – Food for thought 

Smaller things I learnt but more significant:

1. Don’t Rush – Things do truly come to those that wait
2. I am not invincible – I honestly do feel like sometimes I could take on the world and then I drop – rather funny at times
3. Keep your head up – We all have our ups and downs
4. Don’t let other people write your story – Only you know what you want
5. There is always something new to strive towards 

So for 2019, I could write an endless bucket list of the things I want to do and achieve this year but that never seems to happen. Does anyone know at least one person that makes a plan, follows it through and without any hiccups along the way? Well, I don’t! So I’ve decided that I am not making new years resolutions. Blah.

I honestly do wonder how this will work out. I’m a crazy person who likes ticking things off a neat list and knowing. If something doesn’t go well or if the last minute plan doesn’t work out I do freak. Others never know, but a little bubble of spasm bursts inside me yelling for help! Okay, Okay, I know that this sounds like a very negative attitude towards a new year and you all know that I’m just not that kind of person to be negative. I find a way around this eventually.

So no New Year’s resolutions are my way of testing the waters. I did actually get a pretty good vibe about this year. If you believe in the gut instinct (I very strongly do, it’s never yet failed me) then this one will be a much better one. This, of course, doesn’t mean that there aren’t things that I don’t want to achieve or do this year. It just means that I won’t get att humped up about them and frantically worry if things aren’t going right. I would say that they are overall very broad goals like getting my life together. LOL.

Getting Out of Your Comfort Zone can be very difficult specially when you’re alone when you’re travelling. So as today’s weather was completely horrible and we sat in relaxing and eating pizza I thought I would talk a little more about my experience.

Talking to people and starting a conversation is something that I have always found difficult. As a kid, I used to be the one that only had a couple of friends and had my nose stuck in a book. I was never popular and I never felt the need to be. However, I did make it difficult to go up to people and start a conversation with them. I used to always listen and observe my surroundings and then decide who I could potentially be good friends with (this sounds pathetic I know). In the long term, being conservative saved me a lot of trouble and observing my surrounding created a 6th scent for sussing out people who would cause me trouble.

To those who know me for years, know that I am a chatterbox and find it difficult to keep quiet so when I tell people that I can be very socially anxious at times they don’t believe me. On my first ever job interview, for a customer assistant job, I was so nervous that my eye wouldn’t stop watering! On my first ever uni presentations my mates laughed and called me “flash”! I was literally on and off I a matter of 60 seconds. Over the years I have definitely learned some stuff that has become useful but I still get the jitters and butterflies in my stomach every time I have to present or meet someone new.

A thing which I recently found really cool was the awkward lift moments. The awkward few seconds that you have between getting into a lift full of people who you never met and getting off on your designated floor. You’re trying to not look or make contact with all the other people so you pull out your phone, or look at your shoes or pointlessly examine the ceiling hoping that the ride is over ASAP. In one of my training sessions, I got asked: “what would you do if someone that you looked up to got in the same lift as you and you had to make yourself memorable?” – I honestly never thought about it like that before. So what would you do?

The one thing I would most probably do before is just standing there and not say much because I’d feel ridiculously awkward. But it’s a lift and you don’t have much time so you cant strike out a whole conversation. Instead, I’d ask a question as simple as how was your weekend, or any good plans coming up? Or how their day is going? Asking someone questions like these makes them feel a lot more comfortable. You’re not asking anything too personal but making small conversation. It also makes you more memorable because you actually asked them about them rather than blabbering random stuff and the conversation will run a lot more smoothly.

What I also found helps most is to find a subject that you feel comfortable chatting about, whether that is your hobby, something that you recently saw on the news, a book you’re reading or even a Netflix series that you’re currently watching. What you will find is that whoever you’re talking to, you most probably have something in common and the odds are that all of you are most probably feeling just as awkward. Talking about something that you are passionate about will help you come across as comfortable so why not chuck it in!

Travelling has definitely helped me come our if my shell. I have had to become a lot more aware of your surroundings and I had to push myself to ask questions. I no longer feel uncomfortable asking the UPS guy for directions or making friends with a new person at a hostel or air b’n’b. If anything, I try to lead the conversation which helps me figure out people. Believe it or not, a lot of people won’t come up to you because they feel just as awkward about having nothing more than a chat. But being in a new country and not having anyone to turn to will push your comfort zone and that is always the best way to tackle your fears.

Prepare but know when to wing it. I have to be honest with you. Recently I had to do a presentation about something of interest to me to get into a new position at work which I really wanted. I HATE PRESENTATIONS! Despite this, I decided to do a presentation about fingerprints and DNA. I have not touched a criminology book since my last exam before graduating in 2017. I managed to prepare and looked at most up to date information. However, when I was presenting my mind just went blank like I know it always was. Yeah, I had the facts and figure written down but I honestly didn’t want to look at them because I felt like I’d come across as unprofessional. I decided to wing it and it was most probably the best thing I’ve done. I started talking about what I found most interesting about my presentation and managed to get some engagement from the people involved too! *super proud moment*

I will not lie to you and say that my anxiety has now gone away because it hasn’t but I have learned to control it a lot more and I have found ways to tackle some of the problems I have. I still get butterflies in my stomach and sweaty palms but I definitely feel a lot more confident with what I am doing. What I will say is that the more you put yourself out the and the more practice you’ll get the better you will become. For me, it was a confidence thing. Everyone has their own issue, but as long as you know what it is, there is nothing stopping you from bettering it.

The High Line

Our main objective today was to see New York from the High Line – I admit that I didn’t know it existed until Jodie found it. It is literally a park in the sky and a pretty long walk. We started from Gansevoort St. as we wanted to make pit-stop at Chelsea Market (boy the food there is good!) The thing that we found most enjoyable about this walk was pretty much the art you got along the way and the views of the traffic. I know it sounds kinda lame, just sitting there and watching as cars drive past. It’s also pretty awesome that people can build a park over all of that and still get the green plants literally in the sky. I honestly believe that if people used a lot more creativity like this we would have much less of a problem when it comes to the preservation of everything that we’re killing off.

New York Public Library

Anyway, enough of my nature tantrum! Our walk leads us to one of the places that my geeky-self has wanted to explore for a while, New York Public Library and WOW it is HUGE!! I always see it in movies but I never really realised how big it is. I honestly feel like I walked into a museum full of books. The building itself is beautiful and pretty easy to actually get lost. You do get checked at pretty much every turn but funnily enough, its to make sure that you haven’t stolen any books that you weren’t supposed total out, for this reason, I would highly suggest taking a smaller bag rather than my backpack which I was carrying around.

Central Park

As the weather was pretty perfect we also managed to pop into Central Park. We did sit around in the Grand Army Plaza for a little bit because our feet were just completely dead by the end of it so we didn’t actually make as much out of the central park as we should have. It also doesn’t help that we got bitten by horse flies aka I’m allergic to bites so my wrist flared up and that marked the end of our day. I should have really been more prepared and bought along some antihistamine but I was being lazy and thought that I would be fine without it.

All in all, today was a pretty perfect day for exploring the outside. I think that the one thing that we really did need to do more was to explore the museums. What I did find a little too late, was that some of them such as MoMa actually do a free entry at certain times and days and we completely missed it. Next time I will definitely fo more research around it!

So today we killed it with a whopping 23,417 steps across New York! There is a very good reason for this. There was a lot to see and a lot to do so we decided to plan ahead of the game and make a list of all the things that we wanted to do.

Brooklyn Bridge

I never really understood why bridges were of such great significance but this one is actually pretty cool! It is 1.1 miles long (1.8 kilometres) so I guess that’s where most of our steps came from. The views you get are pretty awesome as you’re walking along it too. You can look out to the Statue of Liberty and take a pretty good picture on a clear day. The only thing that actually frustrated me was the cyclists. They are literally offing and swearing for no particular reason. I definitely haven’t heard “fuck face” as a curse word before. It did remind me of an all American High school movie. It’s kind of sad that a full-grown women can’t buy a bell for her bike but is happy to swear without giving a care in the world at people who don’t actually know she’s right next to (yup guys, we weren’t even on the bike lane, we were next to it).

The highlight of this is that I actually managed to grab some cute gifts as we were walking along the way and they weren’t worth an arm and a leg so even better!

Wall Street

Naturally, our walk from Brooklyn Bridge leads us to Wall Street! The architecture of the buildings there is pretty amazing. I managed to meet up with some colleagues from the NYC office. Getting to know new people is something that I adore doing! Being a chatterbox helps but to be honest, I still get butterflies in my tummy from time to time when I meet new people. Yes, it can be awkward, but the best thing to do is ask loads of questions which will help along with finding a common ground. You’re bound to find something that both of you enjoy doing. One topic I always reply on is food. What can I say, I like good food, who doesn’t?

Battery Park

Okay, so battery park is pretty cute!! It’s about an 8-minute walk from Wall Street and its right by the river. It’s nice to sit down and have a picnic or even just grab a coffee and relax with the view. It has a load of people running through it and loads of food stalls. Grab a hot dog and enjoy the weather whilst you can.

Time Square

Our Next stop was the all well too known Time Square. Please don’t kill me for saying this, but hell it looks so disorganised during the day! The shops there are pretty cool but nothing that I haven’t found in London so far. The billboards are pretty cool though. I tried taking some night shots but I just couldn’t get the right camera setting, I definitely need to play around with it a lot more. I also don’t think that my go pro is the right camera for this night shot. If you have any tips to aid my night photography then please shoot across your suggestions at me. I already played around with the ISO and shutter speed. My picture just comes out completely white.

Rockefeller Center

This was a pretty cool shopping centre. It definitely reminded me of my childhood with the Nintendo and Lego stores! They also have a pretty big NBC store which hit a soft spot when it came to friends! Did I also mention that we actually went to the flat where friends was recorded? ;P Spoiler for my next post!

See you there 🙂

Maggie xo