Ice Cream on the Beach

I am absolutely in love with the pastel shades in stores at the moment, these being a few of my picks for the beach or poolside. There's T-Minus 17 weeks until I jet off to Florida and despite the obvious goal of losing loads of lbs to look fab by the pool, I also have a goal of collecting the most impeccable holiday wardrobe. I always feel that when I go on holiday I have to have new clothes, new accessories, new toiletries, new everything. There's just something about escaping from the mundane of home life that makes holidays a new place for re-invention and pure luxury.

So with this in mind, every time I mooch around the shops I do 'holiday clothes research' and mentally prepare my bank balance for the weight transactions that might fall upon it in the near future.

1. How fabulous is this bikini? If I want to channel my inner Mrs Whippy I need to look no further than River Island. For £10 for the bottoms and £15 for the top it's an inexpensive way to inject some fun onto the beach!
2. Topshop, as ever, have some fabulous beach cover ups. I am particularly drawn to the salmony pink of this plain shirt dress. Love. 
3. Essie's Mint Candy Apple is something I recently invested in from eBay, it looks pretty enough to eat on swatches. 
4. My all time favourite colour combination screams cutesy, marshmallow girlie goodness and these flip-flops are a steal at £6 from Accessorize. 
5. The perspex and jelly trend may soon be in the sales, but I still love this pink bowling bag from New Look for £15.99.
6. Gummie bracelets, fab for the beach to add a splash of colour, and most importantly, they're waterproof. Definitely going to invest in these from Asos, £8.

Roll on September I say! 

Are you loving the pastel trend?

Seven Successful Things: April

1. I received three 2.1s and a 2.2 in my essays from last term - whoo!
2. I began the CS diet (again, I admit) but feel more determined than ever. Week 1 complete, -9lbs! Now I just can't wait for my body to start changing shape and physically reflect what the scales say.  
3. I paid off our Disney holiday so I am going for sure!! Just need to accumulate lots and lots of spending money now! $$$
4. Also managed to finish our mini dissertation project on time, yay! Scary to think that I have to do it all by myself from now on :/
5. I received my dates for working at the Olympics with Macs, 5th-12th August. Don't know which store I'll be in yet but I'm hoping it's in the Athlete's Village of course!
6. Dissertation got started, officially 11 months until hand in date. So happy I know what I want to do though :) 
7. I lived with Joseph for a week, we've not really done that before, and it was hard work sometimes but super fun, love him to bits!

£102.99 of Stila products for £25.94!

To say that today was a cosmetic success would be a bit of an understatement. I urge you now, dear readers, to hot foot it to your local TKMaxx and hunt for Stila...it will be there somewhere, with some mad prices attached! You see all this cost me a mere snip of the individual price tag of all the products. Yes, I only paid just over £25. Can't believe your eyes? No, me neither!

Stila are a brand that I have been eyeing up in Plymouth Boots for a while. I'm a sucker for pretty packaging, and especially love the swirly whirly floral designs on the Stila products. However I have never before taken the plunge and purchased.

I was in Sunderland's TKMaxx today, just on a whim as it's on the way to the bus back to Durham, and of course my first stop was the beauty shelves. I found some fab Essie nailpolishes, £9.99 for 3! But all the names on the bottles were wrong and mixed up so I refrained. And then I spotted the little brown boxes of Stila packaging, grouped into bags of 3 products costing only £7.99 or £9.99 for each bag of 3 products.I went a bit mad and bought three bags, so received 9 products in total, with a whopping £77.05 saving! I was a bit apprehensive that I'd receive products in shades that do not match me, or colours that I don't like, and considering you are buying blind boxes some might not like the risk of that, so beware.

But in the end I was very happy with all of the colours except two, the concealer was in Shade F, and I am more a Shade B, and the long wear lip colour was in 'Treasure' which really was not up my street at all. I am, however, in love with the convertible cheek/lip colour in Petunia and definitely loving the lipstick in Chelsea (further reviews to follow). I also received a Lip Glaze in Apricot (which is nice, but oh so gloopy), a Smudge Pot in Brown, Tinted Moisturiser in Medium (perfect match!), Petal Infusions Moisteuriser, and a black mascara. So my first dabble into Stila has been very positive thus far! I believe I received almost enough products to create an entire look!

So TKMaxx really stood out to me today. I'm not one for clothes shopping in there, too much effort on my part, but you can find some brilliant bargains in the beauty, home, and kitchen section. I also picked up a make-up bag for £3.99, a Orla Keily for Britta Water water bottle for £3.99, a fitness guide book for £2.00 and an amazing smelling candle from EnglishEccentrics (whom I had never heard of until I got their Tigerlilly candle for £7.99 (RRP £22.95 I must add) and it smells devine :) Are you a TKMaxx fan? Will you be hunting for Stila? Let me know!

If you'd like a more detailed review on any of the products please let me know that too :)