Dealing with Dark Shadows Under the Eyes

Hi everyone! I've always had problems with dark shadows under my eyes for as long as I can remember and yes you can cover up with concealer but prevention is better than cure right? I'm no professional but these seemed to have worked for me so I wanted to share some products and tips for reducing those dark shadows.

The first tip everyone tells you is to get more sleep, which yes will help reduce those shadows but especially for me at the moment with my exams starting in less than a month and procrastination levels hitting an all time high, sleep is becoming a bit of a luxury! According to research as a teenager you should be getting 8-9 hours sleep a night... I'm lucky to get 7 most nights! You should also try and make sure you keep your skin hydrated by reducing the amount of caffeine and concentrated fruit juices and switching to water or squash.

A quick fix to dealing with dark shadows is before you go to bed run two spoons under the tap and put them into a freezer. When you wake up in the morning run them under some water again and gently pat them on the area under your eyes. You do have to be careful with this as sometimes the spoons might stick to you skin if you push them on too hard for too long.

As well as keeping healthy I've found a couple of great products that have really helped me! The first is the Revitale Collagen and Q10 Anti-wrinkle eye gel patches which I found on Fragrance Direct for a bargain price of £0.99!!!! I was a bit hesitant because I hadn't heard of the brand before but the reviews seemed to be good so I thought I would give it a whirl! Although they are designed for combating wrinkles I found they were really good at reducing the puffiness of my under eye area which in turn reduced the dark shadows. You just leave them on for 20-30 minutes before I go to bed and when I took them I could actually feel the difference straightaway!

Another product that I also picked up from Fragrance Direct was the Pretty Perfect Rejuvenating Eye Roll On also for £0.99! I tend to use this in the morning but I found it takes quite a while to dry/ soak in so I don't use it every morning because I don't really have enough time (I'd prefer the extra time in bed!) but when you first roll it on it does feel pretty good! The stick itself was a lot thinner than I had expected and you have to tilt it when you roll it on otherwise the liquid doesn't come out but it's got a very ergonomic design which makes it easy to hold. There are probably better products like this on the market but for the price I really can't complain!

I know this post was very short but I hoped it helps if you too are suffering for huge dark circles! Hope you enjoyed reading and let me know if you've got any tips or products that you use!

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!