Opinions on Low Back Dresses

Hi everyone! So I went out recently to celebrate one of my friends birthday which I had missed because I was away in Europe at the time. We decided to go to TGI Fridays in Bath, which is not a particularly posh restaurant but we decided to dress up a little for the fun of it!

I decided to wear a dress I bought from Forever 21 which had a pretty low back (I actually included it in a haul which you can see HERE) with some wedges as I am one of the shortest in our friendship group!

Before going out I did a bit of a search on low back dresses to see what people thought of them when I came across a Wikipedia article on backless dresses which stated:

"The wearer usually had to be slim to be able to pull off the effect"

I'd never really thought about about what body type people had to be in order to pull of this kind of dress but when I searched for 'Low back dresses plus size' literally nothing came up! I don't really see myself as being thin as I wear a size 10/12, but then again I'm not particularly plus sized either, yet I thought this dress looked okay on me?

Lots of people also seemed to dislike the idea that you had your whole back on show. I know Fleur (FleurDeForce) mentioned in one of her haul videos that she didn't like dresses that had the lower back cut out as it wasn't very flattering, but I don't know if she meant a dress like this or I've seen some dress that just have a piece cut out just above your waist. Granted this dress isn't fully exposing my back but there is still a fair bit on show.

I know this is a very short post but I just wanted to know your opinions really - do you think you have to be super slim to pull of a backless dress or can it suit anyone? Let me know and I hope you enjoyed reading this!

EuroQuest: Day 4 - Budapest

Hi everyone! So we are still in Budapest! The day started where our leaders had gone to the local shop to buy some stuff for us to make our own breakfast in the hostel kitchen on our floor. It was a bit of a mismatched breakfast but still lovely! We ended up talking to another English girl who was staying there with her friend and they were travelling around Europe as well (although I think it was their gap year), whilst the others eating breakfast in the living area were talking to a guy who was (correct me if I'm wrong) born in South Africa but lives in Australia? It don't know if it was because we were staying in a hostel so pretty much everyone was around late teens/twenties, thus were happy to talk, but it was so nice yet strange as you just wouldn't talk to random people in a hotel in England!

Budapest in the morning

It was still super hot (around the high 30's!) so we went to a park, where we hired out these bubble car things (again due to my awful ability to describe anything I'll put a picture below) which we were able to pedal around the park. Frances took the wheel of our one and I think we were the most sensible drivers! As soon as we came near the others the drove straight at each other then swerving last minute to avoid a crash!

Awesome sculpture in the park

Driving around

After we had driven around for an hour, we returned them and went to the fountain to eat lunch. It was so refreshing to dip our feet in the water and watch the fountains. On the hour, suddenly music blasted out and the fountains began to synchronize to it which was awesome! We then split into our 2 groups and went to explore.

Nice and cool

Fluffy the fish having a swim

Our first port of call - ICE CREAMS! I played it safe with a lemon sorbet, but after we had eaten them we went back for a slush puppy. I got a bright green one which was green apple flavour but turned my tongue a brilliant green colour! We did try to find somewhere to sit and drink them, but we were pestered by flies everywhere we went.

Yum!

Oops

Consequently, we gave up on the idea of sitting on the grass and headed back to the fountain. On the way we bumped into the other group who were all sat on benches enjoying a variety of brightly coloured mojitos. (non alcoholic of course!) Despite already having an ice cream and a slush puppy we went and got one! They tasted as amazing as they looked, although many had the same effect of the slushie by turning our tongues various colours!

We headed back to the hostel for an early dinner so we could go exploring the city in the evening and the lovely people at the hostel  cooked us a meal of traditional Hungarian food! I think we were supposed to cook it ourselves but they ended up doing it for us which was very kind of them! The veggie option was sort of like gnocchi and scrambled egg put together which was actually really nice, although very filling!

Pin board in the kitchen

That evening we headed up to the old town (Buda) on the funicular railway and got some stunning views over the rest of the city as we were heading up. Up there we went to the presidents office took loads of photos of the view!

Then began the long walk back down! According to Hayley's pedometer there were over 10,000 steps just on the way down so it was safe to say my feet hurt just a little!

When we got back to the hostel Sara made the biggest cup of tea I think I've ever seen! I tried to take a photo of it next to my deodorant can to give you a comparison but it was huge!

If you want to see more I filmed a bit of what we were doing so you can check that out below.

The video is a montage of several clips and pictures throughout the time we spent in Budapest as apposed to these blog posts which a split by day.

BUDAPEST VIDEO: COMING SOON!

I hope you enjoyed reading this and feel free to leave any comments!

Review of 'MUA Nail Constellation' in 'Pisces'

Hi everyone! So as you know I normally just do plain nail varnish reviews but I thought I would try something different! I'm also thinking of doing some patterned nail tutorials and things like that in the future, if you are interested in that?

This isn't mine by the way, it's actually my sisters and she kindly let me borrow it so I could try it out. I believe you can buy them at £3 from MUA which is a brand you can only find online or in Superdrug and I'd not heard of this brand until pretty recently but they basically do super cheap make up and from what I've heard most of it is actually pretty good!

So I am using the colour Pisces (which is actually my star sign) but I think I am right in saying there are 4 other ones in a variety of colours. This one is mainly green with bits of pearly pink and white infused into the mixture.

I have already painted my nails with a colour I found to match the green balls best which I got from the NYC and you can read a review of that HERE . I didn't have any that matched the pearl or white but I think it would have looked more effective if I had been able to use a pearl colour as my base.

So what you have to do is paint your desired nail with your base colour and whilst it is still wet and tacky pour the small balls onto you nail. This can be a bit messy so make sure you have something underneath to catch the mass of stay ones! Once your nail looks fully covered gently push the balls down onto your nail and then apply a clear top coat on top to secure them.

My whole nail is covered! Honest! It's just that the green balls blend in the my base colour

I only chose to do one nail thus acting as an accent nail because I had never tried anything like this and thought it might be a little bit too much if I did all my nails like this!

Although the bottle is very well designed to pouring the balls out it is a bit tricky getting them back in. For some reason I couldn't remove the funnel part of the bottle as you are supposed to do so I have to try and pour the stray balls back through the tiny hole they came out of! I managed to get there in the end but it was a bit annoying.I'm sure by removing the funnel it is a lot easier to pour the balls back in but I was just unable to do so.

Excess balls 

I quite like the overall effect although I did find it strange to have things sticking out of my nail! Considering the price of £3 I would recommend this as it is a great way to jazz up your nails although personally I would try a different colour out as I don't think this one was right for me!

Let me know if what you do to spice up your nails and also if you would be interested in me doing some tutorial/nail pattern design things in the future! Thanks for reading.

GCSE Results

Hi everyone! So I picked up my GCSE results yesterday and they were a lot better than I expected! I achieved A*'s in English Literature, Maths, Statistics, Biology, Chemistry & ICT. A's in History, Spanish, English Language, Physics & ICT and a B in Art! This means I have all the grades I needed to get into my schools sixth form where I want to study Maths, Further Maths, History, DT Product Design and Physics (although I might swap it for a different Science?)

So basically it means that I now have loads of prep work for those subjects to do before I go back in September. And when I do go back I know I'm going to have so much work to do as so many people have told me the gap between GCSEs and A levels is huge (yay!).

On top of all my school work I also now have a job! I'll be working at Boots as a Christmas Sales Assistant from the end of September until January and then they will review it in January as to whether they will offer me a permanent job there! I'm super excited to start working there as they all seemed so nice when I went for an interview and my Mums first job was actually working in Boots too!

You are probably wondering how all this will effect you and my blog? Well with 25 hours of lessons in Sixth form plus god knows how many hours at home doing extra work and 16 hours working a week I won't have as much free time as I've had the past three months on holiday so there is just no way I can post every other day/ more than once a week as I've been trying to do!

I will still be posting once a week and I will of course try to do some extra ones but I obviously can't guarantee anything! But stick around because I have loads more things to write about and it will just grow!

So thanks for reading and if you've just got any results let me know what you're doing next!

Review of 'NYC Quick Dry Nail Polish' in 'East Village'

Hi everyone! It's been ages (over a month!) since I did a post about NYC nail varnish so I thought I would pick one out from when I went through the mad phase of buying every single one and try it out! So the bottle on it's own is £1.79 but I picked all of mine up on a 2 for £3 deal is Superdrug.

So, this is a sort of bluey green shimmery colour as at the moment I'm going through a blue/green stage instead of playing it safe with pinks and purples like I usually do. I'd probably say it was more green in colour than blue - sort of turquoise although the picture doesn't seem to support my opinion!

Firstly I applied the base coat I always use which was £2.99 from Barry M.

I applied the first coat of colour and I was so shocked! I've used nail varnishes from this brand loads before so I know you always tend to need more than one coat but this was ridiculous! It has so transparent it was almost like it wasn't even on! I do apply thin coats but even so it was just unbelievable! This was when I realised it was going to take a fair few more coats than usual before I got anywhere near the colour in the bottle!

As it was so thin it dried super quick which was a bonus so I applied the second coat a little more thickly and as you can see it is starting to look a little better, although it's still not great! It's sort of the colour transparency I would expect from one thin coat from any NYC nail varnish not two!

Third coat now! It does look a lot better but I think it's ridiculous that I had to apply 3 coats before it got to this stage!

As it still wasn't the colour I wanted I applied one more coat of colour! 4 coats now! You shouldn't have to be applying 4 coats of any nail varnish regardless of price to achieve the colour it was intended to be.

I didn't apply a top coat because I honestly couldn't be bothered waiting for yet another coat to dry and I figured that 4 coats is anyway more than I normally do with the top coat included so it should be strong enough not to chip! I also didn't apply a top coat because I wanted to experiment with some nail beads!

Although I did like the colour and absolutely love the brand as it's so cheap I wouldn't really recommend this particular colour due to the sheer amount of time I had to wait between each of the 4 coats!

If you've tried  this or any from the NYC collection I'd love to know what you thought of them so leave a comment! Thanks for reading!

EuroQuest: Day 3 - Zagreb/Budapest

Hi everyone! Third day and we're moving onto our second country: Budapest!

The day started with a little bit of a train polava! We had reserved seats but unlike the trains in England the carriages aren't numbered and the few that were labelled weren't in the right order. So instead of pacing up and down the platform looking for a carriage that possibly didn't exist we just got on the train and tried to look around. Now the trains over there again aren't like our but more like the carriage on the train in Harry Potter. There are a couple of cabins and a very thin corridor to walk down and we were there with a giant rucksacks on and had no idea where we were going.

Budapest

We then found almost straight away what we thought were out seats in the first carriage. We unloaded and then I believe someone told us that this wasn't the carriage we were looking for. So we all had to put our bags back on and push our way into the next carriage which we were assured was ours. But alas, these seats weren't ours either. No it turns out we were right with the first seats we sat in after all!! So we tried to get back along the narrow corridors but it just wasn't working so we had to sit by the doors. This was when we started moving. Now, in most places there is a conductor on the platform that goes and makes sure all the doors are shut properly, but not here! As we began to pick up speed Attie turned around and said "Should I shut the door?" which resulted in a mad panic to pull this door shut before the train got any faster!

The train

The train journey was... well... interesting to say the least! To start with it was boiling hot and there was no air conditioning and the windows were open but the air outside was so hot it made very little difference. Half way through the journey we discovered that you could pull out the chairs in order to turn them into beds! All the seats in our cabin were pulled out (apart from mine & Emiis due to the bin being in the way) and it was basically like a giant mattress! Evie took full advantage of this and spread herself out and drifted off into a deep sleep - something she managed to do throughout the trip in some peculiar positions!

Fast asleep

We finally arrived just over an hour late into Budapest due to there being a huge number of lengthy stops along the way. It was still so hot even though it was quite late in the evening. The heat would have been fine if we were just relaxing on the beach or something but we weren't. We were walking carrying giant rucksacks around the city in an attempt to find the Maverick Hostel. We did find it eventually and the lobby was architecturally gorgeous!

The stairs

We were a few floors up so we had to climb up quite a lot of step which got my thighs burning! Once we got there there was a comunal living area with a huge TV and a computer. Our room was beautiful as well! There was a sort of balcony upstairs in the room! It's pretty hard to explain so I'll put a picture in. But Emii and Tash were soon singing 'When Will My Life Begin' from Tangled acting like this balcony was the tower!

Our bedroom (although my bed was by the window so you can't see it)

We then went for a little explore of the city. Instantly, it was obvious that this was a much more touristy city compared to Zagreb and there were loads of bars, restaurants, nightclubs and they all were in English.

Fountains at night

We went for a quick easy dinner at Burger King and I'm a vegetarian so we asked if they did veggie burgers. They assured us they did and I was looking forward to a veggie pattie kind of thing like the ones you can now get in McDonalds. So my burger arrived and I opened it up and it was literally salad in a bun!! But to be fair to them it was literally a veggie burger!

Burger King!!

If you want to see more I filmed a bit of what we were doing so you can check that out below.

The video is a montage of several clips and pictures throughout the time we spent in Budapest as apposed to these blog posts which a split by day.

ZAGREB VIDEO: COMING SOON!
BUDAPEST VIDEO: COMING SOON!

I hope you enjoyed reading this and feel free to leave any comments!

Review of 'Lush Karma Komba Solid Shampoo Bar'

Hi everyone! As you might know I have spent 2 weeks of the summer backpacking around Europe (travel diary sort of things will be coming soon!) and as I had to pack all my stuff into one bag there was just no room for shampoo and conditioner bottles. Then one day my Mum came home and she had bought me this shampoo bar from Lush and I have to say it is one of the best things I own!

It at first seems a little pricey at £5.25 as you also have to buy the tin if you are using it for travelling purposes which adds on £2.50 but I honestly think it is worth it!

Picture from www.lush.co.uk/product/247/Karma-Komba-Solid-Shampoo-Bar

It made my hair feel really clean (which was great considering my clothes were hardly smelling of daises by the end) and it smelt amazing and fresh! I also found I didn't need to use the small bottle of conditioner I had managed to squeeze in as after using the shampoo bar my hair was very manageable and felt so soft and lightweight when it was dry (which of course was it drying naturally as we had no hair dryers!)

It's also really simple and easy to use. You can either rub it into a lather in your hands or you can rub it directly onto your hair until it lathers. You then just use it like normal shampoo ie. you rub it in and then wash it out. And mine has hardly gone down it size despite using it everyday for the last 2 weeks!

It doesn't normally look as slimy but I had just used it - sorry!!!!

However, there is one thing I don't really like about this product and it was something I discovered the second day in. After using it I put it straight back into the tin as we were moving onto our next location and when I opened it the next morning I couldn't get it out of the tin. Turns out you need to let it fully dry after using it before placing it back in the tin. This wasn't something I could easily do as we were moving around so much but I came up with a solution! I put it into a small plastic bag and then into the tin whilst travelling and then got it out to dry properly when we got to the next hostel.

But I think it's a minor fault with the product and it's quite easily overcome if you have a spare plastic bag!

I would whole heatedly recommend this product, and the range they have is pretty good so if you don't like the smell of this one (not sure why you wouldn't but anywho) or if you want one specific to your hair type there are plenty for you to choose from!

Hope you enjoyed reading this and let me know if you have tried any of the others as I'd love to know if they are as amazing as this one!

EuroQuest: Day 2 - Zagreb

Hi everyone! So onto day two! We got up pretty early (or at least by my standards) because we were going SEGWAYING!!

Clearly I hadn't planned my outfit well - green top, green helmet & pink hair!!

We first got breakfast from this cute little bakery place near our hostel and ended up eating our pastries in the shade of a statue in the main square before embarking on our journey to the segways. We had to go to this really fancy hotel to get the segways and it was so pretty with a fountain near by. We split into two groups as there wasn't enough segways for us all to use and I was in the first group. So we went up to the terrace of this hotel and the guy was really nice and gave us a little demonstration and then once we were all happy with the basic controls we went off!

On the terrace practicing 

It was basically a tour around Zagreb on segways! We were on the pavements, which he assured us was legal there (it isn't in England) although not many people seemed to understand that as we got a few angry word thrown in our direction as we went along. We then stopped in one of the many parks and he took us off beginner mode. This basically meant it was easier to steer and we could go faster - much to Saras delight!

After about an hour we went back to the hotel to swap with the other group and we were let off to explore the area. We didn't really do much exploring but we did however find a new flavour of capri sun: Mystic dragon! I think it was some sort of dragon fruit concoction but it tasted really nice!

After the other group had finished we had lunch and had a little rest in one of the parks we had segwayed through before deciding to head over to the zoo.

An actual Zebra crossing!

We didn't actually go into the zoo as it was quite expensive and none of us were particular bothered about going in so we were let loose in the huge gardens next to the zoo in our groups of 5. However, we basically sat in a place called the Palladium of Echos for two hours and talked, where we found out we all basically spent too much time on the internet!

We had to meet back at the cafe afterwards where we performed our beloved pony song where 2 waiters (who didn't have a clue what we were doing) joined in and added some... interesting dance moves (!) rather than copying what we were doing!

Walking to the top

We headed back into the center and went to find the funicular railway which to our dismay was out of service meaning we had to walk all the way to the top! But it was definitely worth it! There were so many hand made craft stalls up there and the views across Zagreb were amazing. I really liked some tables that belonged to the bar which were covered in maps. They looked like something you would normally find on pinterest!

Market stalls

Cute table covers

The builiding in the old part of the town were also so beautiful. When I first saw the roof tops I honestly thought they were knitted?! They of course weren't - but they were so well made and everything was so clean compared to England which we decided was due to the lack of cars as there were so many trams you just didn't need a car.

Pretty roof tiles

View over Zagreb

On the way to the restaurant for dinner we went into to this adorable handmade shop that the other group had discovered the day before and it was amazing. I ended up buying a candle that looked like a glass of beer but there was so much cute stuff in there I wish I could have bought more!

Then came one of the most eventful nights of the whole trip. The night we were serenaded by drunk Spanish boys. At least, we think they were Spanish - the couple of us that took Spanish could pick out a couple of words but I'm not sure how accurate we were (although I believe Emii did get and A*/A for GCSE). Anyways, they basically kept knocking on our door asking us to let them in and then they started singing some random English songs to us. Eventually they left but I don't think they realised our age (these suspicions were confirmed when we were met with their guilty faces in the morning)

If you want to see more I filmed a bit of what we were doing so you can check that out here:
The video is a montage of several clips and pictures throughout the time we spent in Zagreb as apposed to these blog posts which a split by day.

ZAGREB VIDEO: COMING SOON

I hope you enjoyed reading this and feel free to leave any comments!