New season, new makeup. It's always at this summery time of year I start to crave a bit of simplicity. Perhaps it's just that I begin to think ahead and plan my holidays and how to pack light, but reassessing and streamlining my beauty routine is always top of the agenda right about now.
This time, I've revisited and updated an old favourite. In the Trinny London T-Stack I discovered a whole new way to think about my morning makeup routine. Everything is designed around simple, seamless melt-in cream formulas. The products are designed to be quickly swiped on and pack a punch without being complex to apply. This is vastly appealing to a working mum with small kids who wants to look polished in the minimum amount of time.
As I'm pretty much allergic to baggage carousels, over the years I've got packing for travel in hand luggage down to a fine art. And as I always look for inspiration with my own capsule vacation wardrobe, I also like to share outfit ideas from my own edit.
How amazing does it feel to be able to explore the world again?
For several years, the Covid pandemic has caused travel to grind to a halt globally and disrupted all our plans. And while it may not be completely over yet, most of us are now able to resume travel for both business and leisure. Never again will I complain about tasteless airport coffee!
Wonderful as it is to be allowed foreign holidays again, for a lot of people packing light or packing for a week away in hand luggage is a challenge.
Way back in March 2021, I did my last Life Lately post. Over a year later, and here I am again.
Most of these posts tend to start with me marvelling at how fast life seems to be passing by - especially since welcoming my kids. That hasn't changed. But I definitely have.
Bills, bills, bills. You can't escape the cost of living crisis right now. Everywhere you turn, costs are spiralling, from fuel to the weekly food shop. So what's a beauty addict to do?
Luckily, drugstore beauty products have come a long way since I first started experimenting with makeup as a teen. Back then, the quality gap between 'counter brands' and those you could pick up at the supermarket or pharmacy was huge. You really did get what you paid for.
That's ancient history now as the quality and range for formulations at accessible price points has boomed. In a lot of cases, drugstore products are as good as or even out perform high end. It's genuinely possible to get some great stuff without paying out loads.
Guess who has some new season loveliness to share?
There’s been lots more sunshine lately, technicolour blossoms everywhere and it really feels like we’ve turned a corner into spring. My life has also had some new beginnings lately, so it felt like time to hit the reset button on my wardrobe too.
This edit is workwear focused. After a long autumn and winter swathed in thermal tights and polo necks, I felt a bit lost about what to wear to the office and work events now the weather has warmed up.
If you feel the same, hopefully this edit inspires you to make a change too.
And just like that, we were halfway through March…
I can't believe how little time I've had lately. My job seems to have expanded to fill every available minute during the day as well as bleeding into my evenings - restructuring the team has been intense and we're so short-staffed we just ricochet from one thing to another, with the weeks blurring by.
Add to that the incredible amounts of lifemin and all the kids' activities and the weekend are just as busy.
Sometimes it feels like there just isn't a minute to ourselves, and my blogging has really suffered. Still, here I am, typing away on a Sunday morning in bed to share some of my current favourites making this whirlwind a little brighter…
Christmas is a time when we want to look good and feel even better.
From spending time with family to seeing friends we haven't caught up with in a while - plus, all the extra parties and socialising, it's a season where we crave a little extra boost and some added sparkle to counter that midwinter feeling.
So I'm sharing my thoughts on those beauty bits that are adding extra gloss to my life right now - a couple of old favourites alongside some newly launched items.
Tis the season to get glam - and after all the cancelled celebrations and lockdowns last year, we are ready to make the most of Christmas for 2021.
Opportunities to dress up have been limited for a lot of us, and working from home means casual comfort is still top of the agenda most of the time, so I couldn’t wait.
Getting ready is definitely one of the most fun parts of the night for me.
There's a special pleasure in taking the time out to do skincare, a full glam make-up look and something different with your hair, accompanied with a glass of pre-game fizz and a mood-elevating playlist before slipping into an Uber to drink and dance the night away somewhere.
It's the decadence we're all so ready for right now.
Sometimes we only recognise an icon in hindsight.
And if you happened to be an 11 year old girl in 1996 - like I was - then there were no greater icons than the Spice Girls.
They crashed into our lives on platform trainers screaming about girl power and pinching the bums of royalty. It was powerful stuff for impressionable pre-teens and I fell for them, hard.
From my precious copies of their albums to the Impulse spice world body spray I doused myself in, I loved them. And my very favourite of them all was always Posh Spice - Victoria Beckham.
Is it just me, or does being stylish get a LOT harder in the winter months?
As well as the practical issue of how to keep warm without looking bulky and shapeless, I just feel less inclined to try at this time of year. I'm usually extra tired, run down and just wanting to hibernate.
The show must go on though, and sometimes I manage to hit on a combination that is both snug, practical and a little on point. Then I wear it to death until next Spring!
It’s that time of year where there’s a chill in the air, darker evenings and we get to dig out coats and boots once again.
Autumn is definitely a favourite for me - something about it feels exciting - and it brings the opportunity to swap out some high summer favourites for finds that are more suitable for the new season. There’s a few things I’m really enjoying at the moment that I thought I’d share in this post.
Fashion should be all about feeling good. But for those of us with small children and a full time job, sometimes it’s also about being practical. Something that I can quickly throw on and go for the school run is a must, and that’s where a little pattern and colour can do a lot of the heavy lifting.
But thanks to the vagaries of the ever-changing ‘traffic light’ travel system in the UK and the threat of quarantine, we finally decided to stop holding out and book a staycation instead. But that gives us the issue of what to wear on a UK holiday!
This has been a looong time coming!
GHD, the undisputed OG of the hair straightener universe has just released Unplugged, it's cordless styler.
Probably prompted by the Dyson Corrale snapping at its heels, it was time to innovate and do the thing a lot of us have been waiting for by finally getting rid of that pesky trailing power cord.
GHD Unplugged offers all the sleek design, power and performance of the brand's corded models, with the freedom of being untethered.
It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I haven’t posted any fashion content for quite a while now but as the world continues to open up more, there’s additional reasons for getting dressed up and I am here for it,
Confidence is the secret sauce in life. It’s the one ingredient that can set you apart and really change your life and your prospects.
So why is it so freaking hard?
I’ve been doing a lot of learning around this very subject lately. It seems that not only is there a physical component to confidence (some people are literally genetically programmed that way) but there’s also a huge social component - to do with your upbringing and environment. A lot of this - mainly the societal part - actually makes it harder to be confident as a woman, which will surprise precisely no one female.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t ways to become more confident. The great thing about brains is that they can be rewired, with the right tricks and a little patience.
One of the quickest and easiest ways to elevate your look and give an appearance of being pulled together (even if you’re a mess underneath, like me!) is to stock your wardrobe with a few on-point accessories.
A bit of well placed tailoring or the right bag can give everything a bit of a sophisticated slant without any extra effort on your part. That’s why bags have always been one of my favourite pieces to buy.
Any bag capsule wardrobe should really contain a large, structured tote in black, but strangely enough this was the one thing missing from my collection.
It’s that rather seductive idea of the one bag to do it all - office days, trips to the gym, airport dashes. Everyone needs a large, smart tote that can cover all these bases and look good doing it. And I might just have found it in the beautiful ‘Stockholm’ bag from Azurina.
When we look back on the spring of 2021, one thing will define it. Huddling outside in the biting wind and lashing rain, determined to brunch, at any cost.
Life in the UK is very slowly creeping back towards some kind of normal and now that cafes and bars are allowed to open for outdoor service again after half a year of closure, we’re all keen to make up for lost time.
Sadly, the Great British weather has other ideas. It might be mid-May but the weather is saying October - not exactly the best accompaniment to enforced cafe culture.
Still, as Brits do, we’re making the best of it, shivering into our eggs benedict! And brunching requires a special kind of outfit - elevated casual.
