January 2015

I'm thinking of starting something new on here where I take a picture of my calendar at the end of every month and talk about some of the noteworthy things that happened to me this month - what do you guys think?

The Netflix Tag!

This tag was created by Alice Spake at Annie Writes Beauty as a way for fellow Netflix addicts to share what they’ve been watching and discover new shows that others love. Thank you Alice, as Netflix is my obsession right after beauty! And thank you to Jo at Miss Josiana for tagging me (and also for unknowingly letting me steal your introduction!)

Chanel Coco Mademoiselle Perfume Review

 Does this make me a grown-up lady now? 

Getting To The Gym!

(If you cannot tell by how tiny I am and also how long my hair is, this is quite an old picture, but it's one of the most recent photos of me actually working out in the gym!)

Ever since I started going to the gym over a year ago, I've really grown to love it! I'll be honest in saying I didn't warm to it instantly, but now it's one of my favourite ways to spend 'me' time. So today I thought I'd share a few of my tips, now that it's the middle of January and you may be lacking in that 'New Year, New Me' spirit that made you join up in the first place and encourage you to keep going!

The Children Act

This one is a bit of a cheat as I've already finished it, but I've decided I want to try and do a post about every book I read this year so I thought I'd do one anyway!

Mr Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore

If you follow many Booktubers on Youtube, you may recognise this book. A lot of people started reading it last year so I added it to my Christmas list as a lot of the people I followed recommended it, but once I got it, I never actually got around to reading it! I think I started in the weeks following Christmas but then distracted and never made it past about Page 50... I've been awful with my reading lately and I figured that a book all about bookshops would help kickstart me into doing it a bit more, right? Well, yes in a way, I'm well over halfway through the book now so it's definitely helped me get back into the swing of things, but I was so wrong with what this book is about!

The Little Princess Trust!

I mentioned in this post last week that I've been trying my best to keep my hair in good condition whilst it grows out again, and I thought now might be a good time to do a post explaining why I decided to cut my hair off in the first place!

When I was about 13 years old, I discovered a charity - and I can't remember what it was called - that accepted donations of hair to be turned into wigs for people who had lost their hair due to illnesses such as cancer, but the one flaw was that they were insistent that the hair had to be free of any chemicals like hair dye or perms etc. At the time, I had highlighted hair and I was gutted that I couldn't donate it, as it was something that really interested me! 

Candy Canes Candles in January?

Personally, I absolutely adore Christmas candles but I do think they have their time and their place. That's not so much because I don't want to smell the candles in the middle of July, but I associate scents and memories really strongly together so I don't really want to make my Christmas candles less special by mixing them with summer memories, if that makes any sense?

December Photo Challenge

For those of you who did not catch it, I thought I would create a post of all of my pictures from the December Photo Challenge, created by the lovely Katy from The Lilac Scrapbook who also did the challenge on her Instagram but I decided to do it on my blog instead (I also did a #ChristmasCountdown on my Instagram and just generally post very often if you're interested in seeing more of my life!)

Day 1 - Selfie

I'm not usually a selfie kind of gal but wearing my new Christmas jumper on Saturday when I was going to a Christmas market? I just couldn't resist! This was my only Black Friday purchase that I made from Peacocks, and I think it ended up being about £12! Gingerbread men are my favourite image this year (last year it was reindeer!) so I just couldn't resist these cuties.

Day 2 - The Sky

This is the view from one of the window's in my gym, where I was sat yesterday waiting for one of my best friends to finish his exercise. It was a surprisingly pretty view considering where my gym's located, and the sky in this photo is pretty much typical of how the sky will be for all of this month! 

Day 3 - Black and White

It's amazing how magical this photo is in real life, yet it seems so chilling in Black and White! I guess it's one of those things that all depends on the perspective you take...

Day 4 - Your Pet

I'm not really an animal person, nor do I have any pets, so this is a very old photo (2012?) of my best friend's cat, who is still one of the very few animals that I love. She always knows when I'm in need of a cuddle!

Day 5 - Candles

My favourite Yankee scent for 3 years running! Unfortunately it's been discontinued now. Does anyone have any recommendations of new scents to try, or better yet - a brand that does a similar scented candle to this one!?

Day 6 - Nature

Basically any of the photos that I take at work could be used here, since I work in the middle of a wood! However none of the wildlife photos that I take can beat this one of a real reindeer that I took a couple of weeks ago!

Day 7 - Something Red

Had my first Christmas party of the year and my mum gave everyone party bags - I felt like I was 5 again (in the best possible way!) It was a really lovely night, a great excuse to get everyone together and I may have spent the whole night snuggled up in a Reindeer onesie!

Day 8 - Throwback

Yesterday's photo was of the party bag from this year's Christmas party and this is a photo of me and my best friend Sophie at last year's Christmas party! As a family, we've always had big Christmas parties as my parents own a company so they like to get all of their employees together - but we all bring along friends too. It doesn't feel like Christmas without them!

Day 9 - Your Fave Food

My favourite comfort food - especially at this time of year - is a good old fashioned Terry's Chocolate Orange! Any bad day can be reversed by one of these bad boys, they remind me of Christmases as a kid and my mum would be in serious trouble if she ever gave me a stocking without one in!

Day 10 - Artwork

I watched a YouTube video a little while ago (I can't remember who from, sorry!) of fun ways to make your bedroom look a little more festive and one of them was to wrap up any picture frames you have in your room, so currently my only artwork looks like this!

The wrapping paper was from Asda last year, the 'Baby It's Cold Outside' sign is from Matalan, the book is 'My True Love Gave to Me' which is a collection of short stories and on top of it is my little Husky Ty that I got from Hamley's!

Day 11 - Family Picture

I think this picture sums up my family quite accurately! It's hard to get a picture of all of us kids together now that we're growing up (my older brother - right and his girlfriend - third in on the right are currently in South-East Asia!) so it's just typical that the most recent one I can find is from last Christmas, when we're all wearing hats themed from The Simpson's! We make hats themed on something different every year - this year, we're going for Cluedo!

Day 12 - Music

Am I the only one who struggled to find a photo of music?!

This is my Spotify Christmas playlist (which actually isn't my most-listened-to at the moment since I have mock exams and Christmas music makes me far too happy to revise!) and I would go through the songs on it, but there's 74...

If you want to check it out yourself, click here and it'll take you to the playlist on the spotify web player!

If I had to name my top three Christmas songs... I don't think I could! But some of my favourites are Pennies from Heaven (which reminds me of Elf - is it even about Christmas?!), all three of the Band Aids, the Glee Cast version of Baby It's Cold Outside, Santa Baby, I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, Winter Wonderland, Step Into Christmas and Michael Bublé's whole album!

What's your favourite Christmas song? What songs are you loving that aren't Christmas related right now?

Day 13 - Fairy Lights

Usually, I go crazy with decorating my room at Christmas, but these are actually the only fairy lights I have this year - crazy! I moved bedrooms over the summer so I'll blame it on the fact that I'm still not used to this room! 

Day 14 - Quote

(image from here)

Personally, I love any quote that encourages you to keep trying and congratulates you for doing what you've done so far, so I love this one from Neil Gaiman!

Day 15 - Hobby

I'm not sure if most people would consider it a hobby but one of my favourite things to do in my free time is to go to the gym! I love the feeling of breaking a new personal best or being able to see progress in myself, it's so addictive! Ideally, I like to go 2-3 times a week but school's been a bit too hectic for that to happen at the moment. Oh well, hopefully January will give me a bit more time to go.

Let me know if you would like me to do a post about my favourite work out clothes, or my gym routine! 

Day 16 - Relaxing

Having possibly the most busy week ever so I'm spending the rest of the evening in a mountain of cuddly toys - meet my reindeer, gingerbread man and loch ness monster! Sorry if there's a lack of posts over the next few days! Make sure you're following my blogging Twitter @MeganMcMahon022 for updates on when I do post.

Day 17 - Something New

My latest purchase has been a Vanilla and Cranberry candle from Wax Lyrical - my second one! What are your favourite candle brands that aren't Yankee Candle? 

Day 18 - Today's Shoes

Today I went bowling so this was quite a good photo to have but the only problem was, I didn't realise that's what the challenge was for! The most annoying part is that I even took a picture of my bowling shoes and sent it to my friend on Snapchat, but didn't save it. Oh well - here's a slightly cheating picture of the last time I went bowling but I swear it's the same shoes! Side note - if anyone knows where I can get a pair of these let me know, they're so cute!

Day 19 - Sunshine

I live in England so there's been a distinct lack of sunshine in my life lately! Instead today I'd do a #throwbackfriday (that works, right?) to when I went to Majorca in the summer with my friends!

Day 20 - Handmade

If you follow me on Instagram, you may have seen that I accidentally found this hiding under the Christmas tree last week, but it's just too cute not to post! This is a joint present from my three little siblings and I can't wait to open it on Thursday. Usually I hate finding presents before Christmas but this has made me really happy knowing that they care enough to get me a present even though they're all under 10!

Day 21 - Your Fave Book

I actually did a giveaway for my two favourite books for this season on my blog earlier this week so I could share them with some of you! My favourite festive books are Let It Snow by John Green, Maureen Johnson and Lauren Myracle and My True Love Gave To Me, which is a collaboration of 12 different authors and I've done a review here!

Day 22 - A Circle

This is the first circular object I saw when looking through the photos on my phone, so sorry if this seems like a bit of a weird one! This is a chocolate cookie that my maths teacher's children made for us last week and I thought it was soo cute! They used yellow, green and red fondant icing to create this really cute Christmas Pudding design, plus the cookie itself was soo good!

Day 23 - From Your Window

Admittedly, I completely forgot to take today's picture and it's pitch black outside now so here's one from a few weeks ago - pretty similar to what today has looked like to be honest! Bit wet and miserable here in England, I'm still waiting for snow!

Day 24 - Christmas Tree

My mum may have taken the 'Merry Christmas' sign off this tree since this photo was taken but I think it looks so cute with it on! Our tree is already surrounded by presents from friends and family, and Santa hasn't even been yet! 

Day 25 - What Made You Smile Today?

Merry Christmas everyone! I hope you've all had a lovely day. I've had a brilliant day spent with my family, we even got a chance to FaceTime my brother for a bit which was the best moment of the day, I can't wait for him to come home! We spent this evening snuggled up together in our pjs eating too much chocolate and watching Elf, it was lovely. 

I decided to finish it after Christmas Day as things got a bit busy (and by busy I mean I started to watch a lot of Homeland!) and I started to lose track of the challenge. It was a really nice challenge to do in the run up to Christmas, and I really enjoyed doing it, so thanks for posting it Katy!

2015

2014 was a huge year for me. Huge. It wasn't a particularly great year, but a whole load of important things happened to me and my life certainly wouldn't be the same if they hadn't! I'm so grateful to everyone who has entered my life in the past year and I'm sad to see most of the people who have left it go. As a person, I've grown up and matured more than I would have ever imagined, which I hope is a good thing!