GET A CLUE

Periods. For most women that experience them, they are annoying, painful and for quite a lot of us, they are often hard to track too. This can make for some unwanted surprises when P-day finally comes around. Some women do find it easy to track their periods and find themselves to be fairly regular each month - I, however happen to be one of those women who are irregular in their menstrual cycles.

Why exactly irregularity occurs has several answers. The answer for me and the answer too for a lot of women is stress. Stress can not only be an emotional affliction but it can manifest itself in physical ways as well - such as causing late and subdued periods. So, I recently decided that I wanted to look into better understanding my cycle and I came across an app called Clue. When I looked into its purpose and what it allowed you to do, I thought it was an amazing idea and just what I needed. 

Clue allows you to input as much or as little data about your cycle as you wish. This includes variables such as emotions, food cravings, sexual activity and sleep. The more you record, the more accurate Clue is at predicting elements of your cycle. The app also provides helpful "Insights" along the way as you use the app which provide interesting pieces of information about elements of the menstrual cycle.

Whether you're having trouble tracking your period or not, Clue is a fabulous tool to allow you to better understand not only your period but your body and its inner workings too which I think is awesome. It serves not only as a useful tracking tool but as something that educates and informs its consumers.

 And even better? It's totally free to download from your phone's app store.

Friday Feelings | Being Where You're Supposed To Be

At the age of 22 - as a University graduate, there comes to be a kind of silent (and sometimes not so silent) expectation from the world that I should now know what I want to do and how I'm going to get there.

Unfortunately, life is not quite as easy nor as a clear as that and it's very easy to become disillusioned and disheartened with your life if you're not where you expected yourself to be. The bottom line is, not everyone realises their dreams or goals straight away, sometimes there's a lot of short term things and diversions in the road to realisation - and that's okay.

Imaged sourced from Unsplash.com

Don't compare your progress to others. Stop thinking that you have failed because you're not in the same place as your peers are. Keep trying, keep learning and keep working hard and you will know eventually where it is you need and want to be. It's very easy to compare you progress to others and to feel disappointed if you don't appear to be progressing as fast as everyone else. But life isn't a competition - nor is it a race with others.

AHA's and BHA's and why you should be using them

Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a good day today. In today's blog post, I'm going to be discussing chemical exfoliation and AHA's and BHA's. This post can be considered a pre-cursor to a review on a beloved skincare favourite in the beauty community - Pixi Glow Tonic.

A key ingredient in Pixi's Glow Tonic is glycolic acid - which falls under the category of an "AHA" - also known as an "Alpha Hydroxy Acid". In simple terms, AHA's are great at detaching dead skin - they help to loosen up the dead cells of the skin allowing them to fall away revealing brighter, healthier and plumper skin. This helpful subreddit explains the main AHA's and the uses and purposes of each. As an ingredient in skincare, due to their focus on the renewal of dead skin, AHA's are popular for those of us who have drier skin types.

You may also be thinking of other acids that have not been mentioned above such as salicylic acid. Well, that falls under the term of a BHA instead. Unlike AHA's, BHA's focus more on purifying the skin and deeply penetrating and cleaning out the pores. Due to this, BHA's and salicylic acid as an ingredient is very popular with acne, oily and blemish prone skin types and it will often be an ingredient found in skincare products used to treat these skin issues. BHA's however are well known to dry out the skin which is why adding moisture back into the skin is important in order to prevent skin from once again overproducing oil and breaking out. Again, this subreddit contains more information on BHA's and their uses.

COLOURPOP HAUL

I love lipsticks - especially liquid lipsticks. They're long lasting, highly pigmented and most of them are pretty comfortable too. So, being a product that I love so much, it's safe to say that I'm always in the market to buy and find more! ColourPop has been a brand that I have seen around social media for quite some time and for a while now, I have been wanting to try their products. An indie brand however, Colourpop is fairly difficult to get in the UK - at least it was before I discovered the site Glammua which stock a lot of difficult to find, independent beauty brands.