Urban Decay wastage.

Perhaps about a year ago, I invested in an Urban Decay naked palette. I loved all the colours and have nothing but admiration for Urban Decay and their eye products. So I figured it would be a great investment. However I have fallen into the same rut that most of us do, where I only use the same few colours whilst leaving the rest of the palette unloved. Having said that, I do feel that I'm qualified to give this product a brief plug as I have used the others at some point or another.

Firstly I think the colour selection in this palette is great, it gives a good mix of gentle shades that would be suitable for both day or night or any number of events. They are all fantastic quality and last for several hours. They blend well and many of them are pigmented in a way that catches the light subtly. They all match with at least one of the other colours.

The packaging is simple but statemented in a way that only Urban Decay products are. It's lined in felt and has a small handy mirror inside. It also comes with a reasonable good brush, however they are used much better with a blending brush.

Below I've swatched the colours I use the most, especially in my day to day look that I can't seem to get of. From left to right they are called Virgin, Naked and Buck. Interestingly, these are all non shimmered colours, I guess I save the shimmer for more glamorous occasions!

Anyways if you are near an Urban Decay counter any time soon swing by and have a look. They now also have a Naked 2 palette which I've also heard great things about, but I won't be investing in that until I learn to actually use the colours in my first palette I think!

Puddy <3

Not my idea of a pick me up

The other day in my lunch break at work, I was drawn to an article on the capital website titled "21 ways to get you through a bad day". I wasn't having a particularly bad day, but it was starting to drag a bit and I still had four hours to go so I thought, oh go on, make me smile. Well colour me disappointed. Not only were most of the things just silly pictures of celebrities doing weird things, but then this came up.

Now, before I comment let me start by saying I am insulting Harry Styles, or any other of the directioners, I'm not stupid enough to do that. I realise that most of the female population of the world is currently in love with him, and I'm not the type to criticise other people's taste in men. However, it is only upon seeing this that I realise maybe I'm a little...hmm, different to other girls? Again, no offense to anyone, but the idea of Harry Styles in my bed really doesn't get me very excited at all. He doesn't really do it for me. I'm thinking it might be partly to do with the fact that he is a teenager, and as such kind of a little boy to me. Then again, I know women much much older than me that would do some very naughty things to him given the chance. Still, I look at this picture and kind of find myself doing the below expression. 

It kind of got me thinking about how wonderful and yet strange it is that we can all be so utterly different in what we are attracted to. I can see objectively that Harry Styles is an attractive young lad, but I don't feel like fainting with arousal every time I see his scraggly hair. Needless to say, this particular entry in the article certainly didn't succeed in brightening my day, it just made me feel like a very unusual breed of woman, which in case you were wondering, yes does happen a lot. Now maybe if it had asked me to imagine this view waiting for me, I may have felt a little differently...

Phwoarwoarwoarwoar....

Puddy <3

Smell sensation.

As many of you know, I recently turned 22 and as one of my many presents I was given a Ted Baker set of sented products. These were found by my godmother, who bought them for someone else due to the fancy butterfly packaging. On receipt of the present, she realised how absolutely awesome they smelt and bought them for me too! And I since have also fell in love with them.

The set included a body lotion, body wash and a body spray, all of which smell amazing. The combination of all three ensures that I thoroughly drenched in the smell that I love. Now, starting with the lotion, it smells gorgeous but I can't say it does all that much for my skin. It takes a while to sink in too which means you do have to sit and dry for a while before you can get dressed. This would be great to use in the morning before getting dressed, as long as you have the time to wait for it to dry, to ensure that you are smelly sexy and fresh for the day. However I would continue to use a deeply moisturising  or otherwise useful body cream in the evenings to ensure you are still kind to your skin. I would not recommend this product for someone with dry skin as you should probably be using a moisturising lotion twice a day. Note though that it shouldn't be a problem for troublesome skin as I am using it despite my eczema and it doesn't seem to be bothered!

Next we have the body wash that I really like. This lathers well and is very smooth on the skin. It has done a good job of keeping my skin moist and the smell stays in for a couple of hours. Best of all, it hasn't caused any irritation which I have experienced in the past with other strongly sented products. I don't know what else I can say about a body wash, but it smells awesome and I like it :)

Lastly the body spray. This stuff I have to admit I am totally obsessed with. I use it every day and a ton of it too. The smell is really strong and it stays in my clothes which is great for helping it last all day. I've had nothing but compliments on the product. The packaging is really pretty and the bottle is a decent size to keep in your bag. It's also plastic so you don't have to worry about it smashing when you keep it on you. This also has not caused any irritation to my skin which is just fab for sensitive people like me. All in all I've really enjoyed this set and it retails at around £15 which I think is a bargain!

If you do see it around, stop and have a smell, it's sweet, fruity and lovely! :)

Puddy <3

Perfect polish for summer.

So recently I decided I needed some new nail polishes, seeing as I hadn't bought any in many years and most of mine had dried up. I'm pretty sure I got my inspiration for an exceptionally bright couple of colours from Zoella in a couple of her videos. Anyway I popped into Boots and picked up the cheapest bright colours I could find and ended up with these.

They are all from Rimmel's 60 seconds dry range, which is great for me as I am utterly useless at painting nails as it is so something that reduces my chances of smudging is a bonus. Generally I look more like I've just dipped my fingers in the pot than actually painted my nails, but with a few cotton buds I can get them looking pretty swish. Here is a rather crap swatch on some kitchen roll :)

The baby blue and baby pink are my favourites, they are eye catching and very similar to the bright colours I've seen many other beauty gurus wearing lately. I was a little disappointed with the teal and lilac shades I must say, not as bright as expected but still something different from the norm. You can have some real fun with these, however they are not as brilliant quality as some of the better brands. They are rather smooth and last reasonably well but they chip sooner than I'd like. They are great quality for the price, £3.69 each in Boots!

Anyways, have an experiment and more importantly have fun!

Puddy <3

My latest favourite product.

Only a little post today, but I really wanted to write about this as I know how much I rely on word of mouth to try a new product. Recently, I purchased MAC fluidline eye-liner gel. If you are anything like me and are completely hopeless with eyeliner pencils, then you'll know how gutted I was when my allergic eczema started reacting to all forms and brands of liquid eyeliner. Mostly it was all drugstore brands, but it made me far too nervous to spend 3 times as much on an expensive brand that might do the same thing! Anyways, to cut a long story short I had wanted to try the MAC alternative for a long time and they gave me a tester pot. I used this for a couple of weeks and had no reaction. As well as no reaction, I found that I really enjoyed this eyeliner compared to the drugstore alternatives that I had been using. The consistency is much more like gel than liquid, which helps a lot with smudging and removing mistakes along the way. It spreads very easily without running down your face. It also seems to have incredible lasting power throughout the day which I love.

This may however be to do with the fact that I have been consistently using MAC paint pot peintures primer for about a year and a half which I also love. The one I own is in the shade bare study and it's not only great as a primer, but brilliant for brightening up dark eyelids on days that you can't be bothered to do a full face of make up. They also have a very pretty pigment which I love, I've tried to get a good view of in the photo below for you :) (Excuse the state of my nails here!)

 In combination, these two products work perfectly together and I could not recommend them more. I think they are around £15 each. I would also recommend MAC to anyone with allergic or problematic skin, as they assured me that when I bought the eyeliner if I had any problems with it, they would give me a full refund, so go nuts! :)

These are the colours I am currently using, but feel free to try the other variations, there are many and they are all awesome.

Puddy <3

If you can dream it, you can do it. - Walt Disney.

Change is really difficult. There's a reason we all get set into a routine, because routine is safe. We keep our barriers up to the world and stay in our set little movements where we can predict the same outcome to every repeated action and expect the same emotions from the same tried and tested people that we allow into our precious bubble. Change brings with it the unexpected, and all the terrifying consequences that our imaginations can conceive. To really embrace change is to be vulnerable to the world and it's vast opportunities, to experiences good and bad, and to relinquish control.

Sourced from google images.

The quote I've used to title this post is one of my absolute favourites. Every time I read it, it fills me to the brim with inspiration and I see a movie style mirage from inside the brain of the young unafraid PuddyGeeks; travel, photography, making youtube videos, road trips, falling in love, making new friends, going to fashion week, looking however I want, writing music, eating new foods, going on holiday with friends, having a shopping spree. All adventures that might seem thoroughly normal to most of you. Things that you have done as a young person, or small things that don't even cross your mind as a significant experience. But for someone riddled with anxiety, these things and many, many more have become bottled up in the jar of things that could make me so happy if they weren't so damn terrifying and impossible for "someone like me".

As you can see from the watermark, this was done at photovisi.com

This is one of my first mistakes. Labelling myself as someone different. Acknowledging that anxiety has changed the person that I would have become in all these years, and then accepting that this is who I am now. Allowing myself to make changes that make life easier for this weak, frightened person that has taken control of my body, and creating a safe, miserable routine where I don't have to be afraid. Somehow over the years I have become an "avoider", someone who avoids anything that I do not feel that "someone like me" can do so I make lame excuses. Instead I stay at home alone, thinking and feeling myself sinking further into anxiety's grips as I add one more dream to the jar.

It's an ongoing cycle of fear, avoidance and longing for something more. Recently, my mum suggested I do something new. I can't remember what it was now, but something perfectly mundane, like going out with my friends. I answered with "well that's easy for you to say, but that's just not possible for someone like me." And she said something that really reminded me of the Walt Disney quote, that I'm not "someone like me" I'm just someone, and that I can do whatever I decide I can or can't do.

Anxiety really is a prison that you build for yourself, you build the walls and set the perimeters with good intentions of keeping your heart safe from all the scary things in the world. It begins as your fortress, an existence without a few things that make you panic, a place where no-one can wound you, a way of living to avoid that tense feeling in your chest. Just making sure you are safe, happy. But as soon as you start to build those walls, your fortress takes on a life of its own and it expands, sometimes slowly but if you are like me it escalates quickly. Before you know it, you've built a enormous prison where you are the captive, and by shutting out all the scary things you have also shut out all the fun, all the people you love and all the opportunities that life could have given you in the time you have been prisoner. 

Sourced from google images

Breaking down the walls is a bigger challenge than you could ever have expected when you started to build yourself in. At first, the more you tear out of the prison, the more panic you experience. Things feel even scarier than they did before, the world is louder and brighter and busier and you get swept away in it all. They always told you it would get worse before it got better, but you couldn't ever have imagined it getting any worse than the empty hole you felt inside your chest from all the wasted time. Until you start to feel that familiar panic rising, the tightness in your chest, the block in your throat as your breathing becomes raspy. Your muscles ache, is that normal? Everything becomes brighter and louder in your head and you can barely hear yourself think or see a way out. It was so much worse than you remembered. Maybe you weren't ready for this? Was it too soon? Maybe your anxiety voice was right. You can't do this. You're not brave enough or strong enough. All you will ever be is that anxious little mess crying in the corner. You will never be normal.

Your first breakdown. Breathing is difficult. You can't move your body. You can feel the tears rolling down your cheeks but you don't feel like you are crying. Everything is so quiet all of a sudden, but the only thing you can hear is that jar of dreams smashing in your ears. It echoes over and over again, ringing around the room. You feel so small and broken, insignificant in comparison to every thing else big and powerful in the world. How dare you feel like this? People in the world are starving, dying, being tortured, raped, murdered. There are children that are born only to die of starvation. Women whose existence is only to be beaten. Men who are at war that shoot other men and watch their friends die every day. And you are on the floor because you are too scared to go shopping?

Sourced from google images

You try to use guilt to motivate yourself but now you just feel worse. You try to use dreams to inspire, but they are broken too. You think about how sad every one would be without you but right now you are a burden. You think of the woman you one day will become and how she looks down on you, but you don't care because what does she know.

If you reading this and have experienced anxiety you are likely familiar with a lot of this already. No guarantee, as we all suffer different kinds of pain, but this is for the people who have not experienced it. The people who don't know how it feels to be too terrified to go to the shops for some bread because of the million things that could go wrong if you do. To be too afraid to sleep because the nightmares are almost worse than staying up all night worrying about what will become of your wasteful life. Almost.

Sourced from google images

The rest of this post is for everyone, but mainly for those who can relate. NOT. THIS.TIME. This year I concur my demons. This year I look back on that first break down, and I thank the occurrences and life choices that bought me to it for giving me clarity. For me, it took that break to see how far I had really crumbled, I had to have my dreams broken to remember that they were still there, waiting to be loved. I needed to come home to remember the girl that lived deep inside my head, that dreamed of adventure and of all the things she could do with life. I needed my family to remind me of the woman they raised, the woman who could do anything she set her mind to.

In 6 days, I have my first CBT session. Today I had my consultation on why I needed it. It dug up some nasty demons, but I barely struggled to squeeze them back into their box. CBT may not be the magic cure, but that's okay because I stopped looking for that a long time ago. It will give me the tools to fight the panic when I feel it coming, to re-write my brain without having to do a full reboot every time. Next time the demons escape their box, CBT will be ready to help me to fight them back in quickly and quietly, and lock it behind them so that I can continue to grow healthy. [When I think about this I kind of picture a little cartoon me with a little shiny sword, standing up to a big smoke demon like “Bwaha! Time to die demon!” It reminds me of a picture I saw a while ago of a teddy defending a sleeping child from nightmares and monsters. I think I still have it on my laptop somewhere, hang on. Ah, here it is. I love it very much :) ]

This year will be different, because I have decided it will. My jar is fixed and ready to burst with dreams from those painful years and I fully intend to experience as many of them as possible before my 23^rd birthday. Even more ambitiously, I have written a list of things to do before I die, and money permitting, maybe I'll make a start on that too. I'll keep blogging you along the way, with some beauty and fashion seeping over from my youtube channel too, because lets face it, if I talk about this every week I might just end up giving all of you depression! However I feel I should share my journey, because if it inspires just one person to keep on fighting then it's worth it!

As always, thank you for every read and comment, it all makes the journey easier. God bless you all and remember no matter how bad it gets, or how desperate you feel, it will always get better if you are ready to make change. You are the owner of your life, no one else. <3

Puddy <3

P.S If you feel like this post rapidly changed direction from the beginning, it kind of did. This wasn't the post I was planning on writing at all, I was planning on a much more light hearted post on struggling to change my diet and regular habits, but I just went off on a tangent. I feel like that is the best kind of post, where my heart takes over and I just write what I feel what needs to be said. I hope you like that too :)

“Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” - Joshua J. Marine

Well hello internet. If you've ever read one of my blogs before, I know exactly what you are thinking. Oh here we go again another new page and new promise of regular posting that you will abandon in a couple of weeks. I can make no promises that this will be any different to my previous attempts at blogging, or youtubing, or any other online presence. However I can tell you this much, I have made a concious decision to change my life, based on a turbulent couple of years where I have experienced a great deal of things, some that have been amazing, and some that I wish I could take back. At this point, I have found the inspiration to make a change, and I hope to inspire others to change too, and in this post I'm going to try my hardest to explain why.

Around 14 months ago, I experienced my first true complete mental breakdown. Approximately a year prior to that, I become rather sick with depression and got myself into some very frightening financial troubles too. And finally, 4 years before that was when my first taste of mental illness occurred. Mental illness is a strangely taboo term, something that people generally associate with 'nut houses' and 'crazy cat ladies'. But it's something that covers a broad spectrum of suffering, fear and poor genes. It's a term that I am trying to learn to use with pride, no longer a stigma that doctors and acquaintances can use to shame me with, but a battle scar that shows all the experiences I have survived to become the person I am today, while still remaining subtle.

It has taken me 14 months of slow but steady progress to become the cautious survivor that I am now. Although it has been a long and tiresome journey, there is no doubt that substantial progress has been made. Why, the crying, shaking, wreck of a woman hiding in a corner that I was last year would never recognise me now. This however does not change the fact that I have only taken baby steps in becoming the woman that I was destined to be. You see, somehow it is possible in these early days for me to be both proud of what I have survived, and private about divulging the details of the wounds that I am still licking.  I can comfortably state that the past 6 years have bought a unpredictable tsunami of trauma, and that the only reason I am not currently drugged up to my eyeballs, starving to death and living in a box is because of the people who have clung on throughout this roller-coaster of a ride to hell and back. If anything, it's because of them that I am able to write this today, instead of a single goodbye post.

If I'm making you feel like you may drop dead with depression thus far, that's the idea. Don't worry, I'm working up to the inspirational part.

This week, I have finally taken the utterly terrifying step of referring myself to CBT: Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. For those of you who don't know what that is, I'm not really sure if I do either. All I know is that for years of my life healthcare professionals, loved ones and even near on strangers have been telling me that I need help to take control of my life and my anxiety and that this was the place to get it. So there we go, one big step in the right direction.

As ridiculous as it sounds to have a midlife crisis at 22, when you have spent the last 6 years of your life hovelled up in your room afraid to go outside, hitting your 22nd birthday and realising you have achieved none of the things that you pictured yourself doing by this age is a shocking and terrifying revelation. At 16, I used to look at 22 year olds and I remember thinking that they were so glamorous. There was no doubting they had all their doo-doo together; the house, the car, the dream job, the husband, the amazing group of friends who shopped, holiday'd and dined at their houses each weekend. And there was no doubt in the world that I would become them. I couldn't ever have predicted that I would be living with my parents, experiencing my first 'real grown up job', only just learning to drive with my crap heap 12 year old falling apart car that cost me more per month in insurance that I have ever paid out and was my most single most expensive possession yet, and with no sniff of a boyfriend for 14 months.

And it's this revelation that made me realise that the only thing that was stopping me having the life I wanted was the fear that I couldn't have it. And clearly money because you can't do anything without money as depressing a fact as that is. So I have decided that by my 23rd birthday, I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror and see the girl that always lived in my head. The girl I would have been had I not experienced the past 6 years. The girl who isn't afraid of going into clubs, or public transport, or meeting new people, or going to work. I'm going to be the girl who has travelled extensively, a blogger and youtuber extraordinaire. I'll be in a job I am proud of and drive a car that I love, and maybe even find true love too. But most importantly, I hope I will inspire others to become the person they are inside too, without fear, or doubt, or the restriction of MENTAL ILLNESS. Because the truth about these conditions, the key thing about that term, is MENTAL. It exists only in your head, and it is only as bad as you allow it to be. Only you can take the relevant medicine, only you can fight for equal rights and treatment, and only you can decide what you will do with your life. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to look back again next year, and the year after that, and the year after that and see that my whole life has passed me by while I fret over the small things. I want to look back and be proud of the things I did manage to do, whether I was afraid or not.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's time to make a change. Not tomorrow, or when I get my new job, or when my meds change, or when I get to CBT, but NOW. TODAY. And if any of this relates to you at all, then maybe today is the time for you to change too. If this post helps even one person, then it's worth the time to open my heart, and change with you. Let's change together.

Take control of your world.

Puddy <3