◊ April-so-far Haul ◊

So far during the Easter holidays I've received my student loan and therefore gone crazy on spending, as I do at the beginning of every term. 

I'm going on holiday to RHODES in July (July 8th) so I clearly need to stock up on supplies for that trip and I may be going ahead with it a little early but my excitement is cancelling out any thought for caring. I gave up on the list making as I left all my holiday lists in my flat in Liverpool whilst I visit home but I sort of have a mental list down. 

The following stuff is just a collective of things I've been buying so far in April, it doesn't look like a lot but along with all the Starbucks pit-stops, it really adds up. 

So as I'm sure many other people so too, I often look to Youtubers and often find myself itching to buy whatever they swear buy. This was one of those times. So I don't really have any toiletries bags big enough to cart around all the hair products and sun block that holidays require. I also needed a little baggy to put my 100ml hand-luggage products in. SO I popped into Superdrug and hunted down this three set of clear wash-bags. Perfect for cleaning, perfect for finding what you're looking for if you have a lot of junk and also I heard Zoella and Sprinkleofglitter raving about them in various travel-themed videos....

Now, I would call the reason for purchasing this next product peer pressure but some would call it Rachel-being-weak-willed. With the bags I got an offer at the till to get this L'Oreal mascara for only £6.99 and I actually need a new mascara so how could I refuse? It's actually a bit of a faff having to use a two ended mascara and takes twice as long but it has bloody good staying power.

The second item is this eyeliner from Soap & Glory. I'm actually a bit obsessed by their products and i don't know if it's 'cause of the packaging or what. I was perusing the isles of Boots and I noted that this was the only liner left so I had to nab it. I wore it yesterday and again has great staying power. I've never been a fan of pen-liners because I always found the fluid never comes out too great but this one is PERFECT. So easy to apply and it's a lot easier to apply a thinner line of liner than it is with a liquid. 

Popped into Primark a couple of days ago in Glasgow and found this lil cute bag just hanging around on a hanger it shouldn't have been hanging on. I'm a massive fan of bags but I find all the ones I currently have are either too big or too small but this is a perfect medium size that has just enough space to fit everything you need. It has a small zipper at the front where I like to pop my tissues, pens and lip-balms etc. Then two bigger pockets either side of the bag. In one I like to pop my purse, wordsearch book (yes, I carry a book full of wordsearches...) and my body spray, things like that. Then in the back pocket I just pop my keys in there and stuff I won't constantly be grabbing for when out shopping. The only bad thing is that where the strap attaches, I do think that will break quite easily (and pretty soon) but what can ya expect with Primark prices. 

Now, I've gone all practical regarding clothes. These shorts were bought in prep for my holiday and I just think they are beaaautttifull!! they have this kind of speckled effect on them which you can see far better in real life. The fabric is also loose and they aren't tight so I won't get all sweaty and uncomfortable! I love H&M basics and these are exactly the reason why.

Ok so before this dress I had never ordered anything from Missguided before and after the polava that I experienced ordering it, I'm dead apprehensive about going back, even though I do adore their stuff. I ordered this dress (with my hols in mind) on Friday night before 8pm which made me eligible for next day delivery for £1.99, even though std delivery was available for free. I waited on Saturday yet no delivery came. I thought "oh it is Easter weekend so maybe delivery is slow" but also I kinda expected it to come too. I waited all day Monday for it to come, yet it didn't. I demanded my delivery fee back and although the dress didn't come til Thursday evening, I am very very happy with it. 

It's a sort of flowy material with this lovely leafy print on it and a sporty neckline. I love the juxtaposition of the neckline and the patten and I also love the scoopy shoulder-holes (nice technical language). 

(Before we begin let me start by saying they are not my nipples they are the pointy bits of fabric you get on the front of bras sometimes.............just saying)

Lastly, I have these two crop-tops from Topshop. The first is a beautiful green and white pattern that makes me want to say crochet but it isn't crochet and it looks kinda Greek but it isn't Greek at all.

The second is just a plain white, and a little shorter, crop top.

I love the necklines on both of these yet I don't really know the name for them, just high neck I think? But I think they are super flattering on all people even though these pictures don't suggest it (I am a lil flatter-chested than they make out...).

I hope you enjoyed this lil haul I did for you. It took me absolutely forever to get round to photographing the items because I can't find anywhere in my house with lighting good enough or a wall plain enough so this will have to do for now. I have work later at 2pm so I'm probably going to hang around til then and I hope you have a cool weekend.

xxo

"No, what kind of bird are YOU?"

As evident by the page URL and Title, I decided to altogether change the name of my blog.

I hadn't planned it I was just sat on Pinterest, spending my time organising and retitling my files and I kept replaying this line from Moonrise Kingdom over and over in my head til I thought I better do something with it.

I've always wanted a cool and not lame title for my blog but I always tried too hard and I like this one because it was spur of the moment and it's from one of my favourite films. 

I have some blog posts lined up for sometime soon so keep ya eyes peeled.

A film by Jacqui Getty

I like Palo Alto a lot and I found this cool behind the scenes video shot by Jacqui Getty (Gia Coppola's Mother) and uploaded by Vice. 

It's beautifully shot and I really enjoyed it so I'm sharing it now.

Also if anybody knows of any of the songs featured then let me know.

xxrachelhelen

MOVIE REVIEW: The Theory of Everything

Like many other people out there, I never really ever thought I had some deep, emotional personal connection to Stephen Hawking. I knew of his work and I knew he was an amazing and inspiring person yet my eyes had never really been opened up to him properly. 

I saw the trailer for this movie in November some time and I cried. I then watched it about a billion more times and again and again, I cried. Not, as I said before, because I have some deep personal connection to Hawking himself but because the movie allows you to have some perspective on him prior to his illness and how it affected him throughout the years to follow. 

The movie of course follows the development of Hawking's Motor Neuron Disease (or Lou Gehrigs disease) but also follows his wife Jane and the struggles she faced as Hawking's full time carer as well as looking after their three children. What I noticed is that the film, although obviously focused on Hawkings struggles with his disease, didn't centre on one specific aspect of his life but rather brushed over a lot of them, sort of giving you a little information on a lot of stuff. The beginning of the movie had me expecting to see a little more of his discoveries throughout university however when Redmayne's character because suddenly aware of his condition the movie jumped to a montage clip of Stephen and Jane throughout their marriage and the birth of their first child. I felt like I was on a tour of Stephen Hawking's life yet being hurried through this section because there were so many important bits for us to see before the movie ended.  

Although I will never have a single clue of the specifics surrounding Hawking's discoveries, the film did teach me a lot about his life that i didn't know before. I was unaware that he and Jane actually divorced in 1995 and that he later remarried. I also didn't know of Jane's struggles and her affair with Jonathan, of course the film is actually an adaptation of Jane Wilde's own novel 'Travelling to Infinity'.

The overall appeal of the film was no doubt aided by the ridiculously dreamy Eddie Redmayne himself who, I gotta say, has an absolute likeness for Hawking that is totally uncanny. 

I think people get obsessed with the bildungsroman, they get attached to the characters and become obsessed with seeing them grow. When the character that you're following is negatively affected and you get to see how that changes them some kind of overwhelming sadness surrounds you so it no longer matters that there wasn't a prior emotional connection. The magic of this film is that anyone can relate to Hawking in that everybody has had to at some point overcome all odds to achieve something amazing, be that on any scale small or large.

A definite must-see for January, uplifting and certainly had the rest of my day set out to be a good one.

xxrachelhelen

London Weekend

When I received my scholarship in November the first thing I thought to buy was a weekend in London because, well, why not? I love London and I thought It would be a cool thing to go solo and seek out all the cool places I haven't yet been. Unfortunately London is too big and far too cool for me to see all of these places in just two days so I only saw little bits, however I seek to return this June! 

Sadly for me, when I arrived at 9am on Friday I hadn't yet heard of baggage storage and so I was burdened by my (actually quite compact and handy) suitcase however I just set off wandering and visited a bunch of places. I passed through the super cliché sight-seeing spots that I've seen every other time I've come to London but it's always nice to do them again. 

[1) The Mall 2) Big Ben/Westminster 3) Horses Guard Parade, Whitehall 4) The Women of WWII memorial, Whitehall]

I'd never been to Brick Lane before so I decided to get off at Liverpool Street Station and take a wander round. On the way I bypassed an All Saints and an Urban Outfitters (it is incredibly hard going clothes shopping whilst carrying a cappuccino in one hand and an umbrella in the other). I find it super weird how many little areas London is and how they dot these big-name brand stores all over the place. I found myself wandering down a lot of Jack the Ripper-esque side streets and lanes, it was so authentic. A lot of the shutters on houses like those above are actually recently painted and quite new but it still looks super eerie. I enjoy the scuzziness of Whitechapel and Brick Lane has some cool shops, I even popped into Rough Trade and picked up a couple records. 

After an hour or so I decided to pop to the natural history museum but the line was so incredibly long. Instead I (rather glumly) strolled through Knightsbridge, popped into Harrods and purchased a couple of (disgusting, absolutely disgusting) macaroons, for which my taste has not quite come around, and a lil gift for my Mum. 

I also decided to check out Shepards Bush Westfield shopping centre but it was so warm wandering around that I could barely enjoy myself. I searched through about a million different clothing shops but nothing took my fancy, not even you Topshop, sorry Topshop. I didn't make a clothing purchase that whole weekend!

Later that evening I ended up coming out of London Bridge station knowing I was somewhere near the Shard however I was surprised to see I was actually stood right at the foot of it. It's so incredibly huge I actually fell backwards trying to look up. Tower Bridge was also on my to-do list so I took a nice stroll along Southside water-front, avoiding crowds of foreign tourists and about a billion selfie sticks almost hitting me in the face, until my phone died and I began my search for a tube station to take my sleepy-self home. 

Sunday finally saw my Natural History Museum dreams come true! It also saw me figuring out that baggage-storage was indeed a thing. I got down super early at 10am and got rather overly excited about dinosaur bones and displays of creepy-crawlys. Despite all the other cool stuff, this immense wall of different constellations was my favourite thing to look at, simply because it was so huge and pretty. 

It's safe to say that a measly 50 ours spent in London is enough to wear anybody out and boy am I glad I don't live right in the middle of it all (yet). I have spent all week trying to recover from some sort of super cold London seems to have sent me off with however I had a fabulous weekend. 

Cya June Ldn.

xxrachelhelen