Weekend travels: beautiful Sheffield

This weekend me and my husband to be managed to get away from never ending house renovations and travelled to Sheffield to meet our friends. Before catching our train back, we had a few hours for ourselves so we wandered around the city.

It was our third visit to Sheffield, but the first one in the winter. I think I enjoyed the city more than I did during the summer! Sheffield is one of the greenest cities in Europe, but even without all the foliage it just felt very warm and cosy now in the winter.

Wintery Sheffield

One place that has become a must-visit for us is the Sheffield Millennium Gallery. It's a fantastic building and always has interesting exhibitions going on. We visited the Picturing Sheffield Exhibition and I think we found a contemporary painting we both absolutely fell in love with - it was The Longest Walk by Pete McKee. And I never even thought I liked contemporary art! Pete McKee's gallery, called A Month Of Sundays, is on the top of our places to visit list the next time we're in Sheffield.

Now we should probably go and explore art galleries in the city we actually live in!

Halloween makeup for wedding

This evening I stumbled upon this video featuring Ruth Crilly from A Model Recommends. In the video Amy Conway, a makeup artist for Bobbi Brown, does Ruth's glam halloween makeup. I love Bobbi Brown, I love Ruth, so I expected a great video. But it turned out to be more than great!

I always knew I wanted to do my own makeup for my wedding. If you google wedding makeup, all you see is very natural, rosy, barely-there looks. And I wear makeup much brighter than that EVERY DAY. I knew I wanted something really amped up, not sure exactly what, but I was certain that only I could deliver the oomph I wanted.

Now I know exactly what makeup I want for my wedding. And it's exactly what Amy applied on Ruth in the video. I am extremely excited now, even though I do feel a bit weird that I want a halloween look for a wedding. But now that I think about it - my dress is gray! It will look amazing!

Learning life skills, wedding planning, and the perils of exercising

Wedding planning - to tent or not to tent?

One thing I really enjoy is exercising. It is weird because one thing I really hate is exercising. I hate the  during but love the afterwards and the long-term effects of it: when I can't do any physical activity, it makes me feel very down and sluggish. However, I'm the biggest whinger when I exercise, I hate 'pushing myself'. Sometimes though I do get into the mood of 'let's try harder!'. Like I did on Monday. The outcome - I injured my back so much I struggle to walk. So the plan to grab my new life by the horns has been quite unsuccessful to say the least..

BUT despite the physical setback, I am moving closer to getting my driver's licence - I passed my theory part yesterday!! I couldn't be happier as I got maximum points for the multiple choice question part. When my fiancee took his theory test, he also got maximum points, and we do tend to compete a lot, so I am really glad we're even here. I already booked my practical test as well, so if all goes well, I will be able to drive by the time I turn 26. Which is very late I must admit, but better later than never!

Wedding planning hasn't been going that well. But hopefully we will book our venue in the next few weeks. I will share more wedding plans in future posts.

A fresh start

Feeding ducks in Coworth Park a month ago

Today was a good day - I felt like a stone was lifted off my chest. I spent the whole last year agonising over the degree I was doing, every minute of it made a tiny piece of my soul die. It was that bad. And today it's all over! Today I'm starting my PhD and I feel extremely happy. Ready for anything that might come my way.

So to mark this glorious occasion, I decided to bite the bullet and start a blog. I was toying with the idea for years now, have actually started a few blogs and deleted them few weeks later. And I suppose  that happened because I was always trying to start a niche blog - first knitting, then science, then beauty, then science of beauty, and I could write a few posts but I could never keep it up. I know that bloggers are advised to keep their blogs focused and on the topic, but once I stopped fretting over what 'my topic' was, I suddenly felt that I could indeed blog.

A very clever person once advised me to keep a journal of everything that makes me feel happy, so that when I'm sad, I can always open it and be reminded about all the wonderful things that happen to me all the time. Sometimes I get so consumed by sadness that all I can see is darkness, and tend to forget the happy things. 

When I look back at the last year, I think such a journal would have helped me so much, so finally I feel ready to start documenting all the things that inspire me and make me excited every day. And it's not just beauty, fashion, science, or knitting - all of these and many other things mean so much to me that I can't just pick one. So I won't. I have no clue which direction this blog will go, but I'm willing to give it a try and see where it will take me.

So what will you find in this blog? I don't know. I'm leaving that as a huge question mark, even to myself. If anyone ever reads it, I hope you will enjoy this journey with me!