Here is a post I should have uploaded about a week ago! I have my friend Aga to thank for this trip. She had a ticket for a festival on the 7th and invited me to come and experience it with her. I made a few work arrangements, booked the flights and told her yes, I would be up for it.

The steps are pretty simple:
1. Buy some rose iron on patches (scroll down for links)
2. Put a pair or two of rolled up socks inside the shoe to keep the shape
3. Find a desired location for your patch
4. Use a heated (preferably, otherwise the wait might not be worth it) iron to attach the patch to the shoe
5. Call your mother because you are an artist and need recognition

Here is the end result:


No but seriously, this is such a cool way to personalize any piece of clothing. I added some on a plain camel hoodie I got recently from Boohoo (10£ / link):

VSCO S2 ft. a dirty ass mirror

And on your jeans? (spoiler, this isn't actually ironed on, I was just playing with the idea)

My Levi's processed with (of course) VSCO Levis 3

Doesn't even have to be roses. They sell all kinds of cute patches pretty much everywhere now with the embroidery trend going on.

I found my roses from Etsy:
- white iron on roses
- small red roses
- larger red roses

Get crafty!

**
EDIT: I ended up stitching a few corners of the patch onto the actual shoe because the glue on the particular patches I got was not strong enough on its own to keep up with my pace.

This poet has been all over social media for a while now. I had come across a few of her poems before, and really enjoyed her style of writing.

A week or so ago I was roaming Waterstone's with a friend and randomly came across this book. I decided to pick it up, as for me poetry tends to be an easy read before bed, or something to skim through when I want to stimulate my mind with something inspiring.

Milk and honey did not let me down. It exceeded my expectations if anything. I haven't bought a poetry collection in a while, and this was the perfect way for me to kickstart poetry reading again.

The poems within the book are divided into four sections; the hurting, the loving, the breaking and the healing. Rupi Kaur takes you on an emotional journey, and does not fail to not only swallow you into the pain, but to bring you through to the other side, somehow renewed.

There are no capital letters to steal attention away from the meaning of the text. The book does include illustrations alongside every other poem, which often feed into the imagery of the poem they are accompanying. Few poems are titled, and the titles follow the text, allowing the reader to go through the experience first before providing clarification. Beautifully crafted.

I adore the absolute honesty and emotional-density Rupi Kaur employs in her text. I will argue that this collection includes at least four texts everyone can relate to, and at least two that hit you hard. I enjoyed falsehood, and p. 95, p. 132 and selfish, alongside many many others.

I strongly recommend everyone to get this collection if you are even a little bit interested in poetry, or even if you are not. It is a very good collection to start with. I am sure I will keep coming back to it repeatedly when I want to be reminded that all emotions we go through are valid.

9.6 / 10 📖

Is it just me or did February last for about a week? Anyway, we are well into March by now, deadlines are piling up, exam dates have been released, and the socials of the year are still rolling. The pile of stress seems to be too big to ignore; perhaps so big, it is starting to reflect itself upon your complexion. But you still Skype your parents every week and want to do everything you possibly can to assure them you are still out here making them proud, that you are handling both your academic and love-life with ease.

So, here I have featured my March Birchbox (get your own monthly goodies!), a new eyeshadow palette from BH Cosmetics + some tricks to keep you looking like a well-functioning adult on camera.


1. Rituals - the ritual of sakura zensational foaming shower gel / organic rice milk & cherry blossom
2. Batiste - invisible dry shampoo & conditioner / vanilla & passionflower
Furthermore, here are some honorary mentions for products that have definitely earned their place on my weekly routine.


1. Soap & Glory - Drama Clean micellar cleansing water
We've all been there; regardless whether its a ons with a person or an essay, sometimes makeup removal is just an obstacle between the love affair that is you and the inviting sheets of the bed. The next morning however, I'd apply some of this stuff on your face with a cotton pad. Damage control baby.

2. Inecto - Divine Shine coconut hair oil
Literally just ran out of hair oil and picked this up from Superdrug or Bodycare, cannot remember which. Does it's job; that's all I'm saying, and no bunnies were hurt in making this product.

3. BarryM - Flawless Mist & Fix (matte finish) makeup setting spray
Have a 9am-6pm kinda day ahead of you? Do not forget to keep this in your bag. It keeps your face looking like a 'yes I can' instead of 'sorry I'm five minutes late, I had to go print a thing before this tutorial for my next tutorial, but I'm here now so I'm just gonna sit down and try to look like the three flights of stairs didn't just kill me I actually do go to the gym sometimes...'

4. Lush - H'Suan Wen Hua hair treatment


5. Soap & Glory - The Fab Pore facial purifying mask + peel
I actually do not have anything clever to say about this product. Just a little something for people (like me) who enjoy space aesthetics, but do not like to rock craters on their face.

This post was inspired by the stress that is university and the poor attempts I make every single day to appear as a functioning member of society. All of the individual products featured in this post are cruelty free, unfortunately I do not know about the ones included in the Birchbox... As this post is aimed at students like me, these are all affordable-ish items.

I will be back with another post probably closer to April, as I have deadlines coming up soon.

Focus on the good you see in yourself instead of always pin pointing the "faults"

The term ‘body image’ includes the perceptual, affective, cognitive, and possibly behavioral aspects of the body experience of an individual. (Cash & Pruzinsky, 1990 as cited in Tiggerman, 2004) Meaning the appearance, functionality, feel and the cognitive sides of one's body experience.


The western culture tends to idealize thin or "skinny" women when it comes to the female body; curves are only allowed on your chest and behind, god forbid anywhere else. As Tiggerman points out, society tends to shame us on the shape of our bodies and our weight in an absurd way. Anything and everything about the female body is under a microscope called the media. Easy example; snapchat. I use snapchat quite a lot, and the trending news articles tend to follow the same pattern. Most of the news regarding women are focused only on their bodies. This ranges from a nipple-slip to "horrible"/sexy beach pictures - of course this depends on what articles you read, Buzzfeed tend to know what they're doing (example). But overall, women are still (it's 2017!) being objectified to an incredibly unhealthy standard. Every day we are fed articles on how unsatisfying our current body-shapes are, how we can and should be “better versions” of ourselves by changing the way we look;

Online advertisements (as well as in magazines and television, are mainly targeted to make us feel like our bodies are lacking somehow; shape-wear that presses your inner organs but gives you a nice hourglass-shape, tea to help your digestion but essentially gives you diarrhoea, lotions that magically increase the size of your ass, etc. The list goes on. We are being brainwashed into thinking we will never be good enough the way we are.

I’m not saying this is how all advertising is done, luckily people are getting smarter about these things. But sadly most of it still feeds on our insecurities. Ironically, these insecurities are often created by the media. They tell us we are only desirable if we look a certain way, only accepted if we dress a certain way and only worth it if we fit a specific mold. Companies take advantage of this "need" created by the media, by selling products we didn't even need in the first place.

My journey

Most of my body image issues come from figure skating. I was never genetically designed to be the ‘optimal’ body shape for the sport. I’m not saying there is a right body shape, my body just tends to collect fat and create muscle very easily and figure skating requires a balance between having muscle and being lean. Everyone tended to strive to be as skinny as possible, we were being weighed from as young as 12-years-old. I now know they always did it with my best interest at heart, but I suppose I was never in the right mindset for the following. Years and years of nutritionists’ lectures, coaches telling me I should lose weight, weight loss being glorified, an adult squeezing my fat rolls (which in retrospective were nonexistent at the time this happened) and telling me ‘this is not what an athlete looks like’, I was done.

I had spent a good 10 years focusing on how my body was not perfect, how it kept failing me every single day. My relationship with my body image was unhealthy. Constant focus on how I looked poisoned my mind in a way, pushed me into a shell and prohibited me from making friends freely. In high school I was not happy. I was not happy with my life, my life revolved around my body image, I kept thinking everyone else must see it too, it cannot all be in my head. I have no idea how it got to the point it did, but I got tired of being angry at myself, at my body, for not being the unrealistic image what I wanted it to be.

So, I quit. And I was relieved. It took time, but once I got further and further from the feeling of not being good enough, I felt freedom I’d never felt before. I did not have to strive to be perfect anymore. I did not have to conform to this ridiculous standard I had created for myself in my head. I have now realized looking back, that even when I tried to lose weight it never worked when it came from a place of hate. Weight loss for me was always a result of joy, I went on runs because I felt strong that day, I used the exercise bike because I wanted to feel how well my leg and ass muscles worked, I craved for the exhaustion and pain it brought the next day because it made me happy. All the positive feelings weight loss has ever given me where the ones that came from me feeling strong and powerful, thus exercising, rather than feeling like I needed to get rid of something on my body – fat rolls, cellulite whatever it might have been.

The 'non-quick' fixes

I don’t think there is one specific way to rid yourself from the expectations society has given you, and the ones you've given yourself. For me, not giving an f works. My body maintains a relatively healthy weight all on its own. I trust that it knows what it’s doing. It does amazing things to keep me alive every single day. Least I can do is appreciate and love it just the way it is. As long as I make sure I give it the vitamins and nutrients it needs, I tend not to worry about stuffing myself with candy and ice-cream. I have some whenever I crave some. I exercise when I feel like exercising. But all of it comes from a place of happiness. I no longer binge eat to comfort myself, nor do I escape the house to go on runs where the rain tastes sweeter than the tears on my cheeks.

I tried to avoid getting too serious with this post. It is merely the tip of the iceberg of my thoughts on the subject. The body image pressure on all sports is high. I got once told by an adult, when I was about 15, that I didn’t have ‘enough discipline to be anorexic’. Now I wish I would have opened to someone more about the pressure I felt. And I wish someone would have taken me seriously. I know way too many cases of eating disorders within my field of sport, within my small circle of acquaintances, it is insane to think about how many more are out there. While some sports require you to be lightweight and small to essentially succeed (or the contrary), we should teach children that it is more important to be happy with yourself than to win medals.

Even outside sports, the media pushes ridiculous body standards on young children. I find it odd and slightly disturbing that young children walk around in heavily sexualized clothing. And this is all because of the media. We cannot teach young kids, or older ones for that matter, that the most important thing for a woman to be is "sexy" or "attractive". What happened to being smart, compassionate or funny? The social media is obsessed with the image of ‘self’, and these young millennials are learning this behavior. I love social media, but I am old enough to understand it is not a representation of reality. I know enough not to compare my behind the screen material to someone else's finished film. Social media is essentially self-advertising, not a representation of the reality.

Disclaimers and stuff:
I know I targeted most of this towards women, I guess it was an easier way for me to arrive to some kind of conclusion. This does not mean men are excluded from the body image pressure created by the society, quite the contrary. I have written this post now about five times over, and my thoughts still seem to be all over the place. And I still have a bunch of thoughts on the subject that might never see the light of day. Generally, I think it is important to be aware that there are many companies that use the social media and ads in a certain way. These companies feed you insecurities you do not need to have, and then try to sell you “quick fixes” for them. They’re just trying to gain money, that's all.



Anyway, you do you girl (or boi). Make sure you’re doing it to make yourself feel happy. Do not let anyone, and I mean anyone - your partner, family member, coach, peer etc. convince you you're not good enough just the way you are. Love your body, it’s your home, its where you'll spend the rest of your life. Being in war with yourself is not only dangerous and exhausting, but stupid. I think the right approach is to let everyone love their bodies first, and then educate them on what is considered healthy and what isn't.

References:

This post was inspired by a TED Talk by Iskra Lawrence. She is an amazing model breaking the beauty standards within the modelling industry. (link below)

We decided to make a road trip to Cairngorm, which was about a 4 hour drive there and 3 hours back, due to the snowfall over the previous night. We left Dundee at 6am, stopped at Tesco Riverside to get gas and check the tires, and started the journey.

Icy Hauklampi

Now umm... Let's not talk about 2016.

The image is not exactly New Year related in any way except for the fact that I took it on the 31st of Dec. I decided I wanted to have a quiet NYE this year; spend the day with my family, watching movies and eating chips (or crisps), like I used to do when I was 13. Boring? Perhaps. Maybe next year I will do something a bit more interesting. Or not, it's not really that big of a deal.

I used to think fireworks worked like shooting stars, granting wishes every New Year's Eve. But fireworks do not work like that. Now (that I'm not 13 and stupid) I know that New Year's resolutions won't come true unless you act upon them.

In 2017 I have decided not to focus on too many things at once. I want to focus on a few smaller things I hope to improve over time. More specifically – two. I already promised one of my house-mates that I will try to be more optimistic and nicer towards others this year with him. So that's one. The second thing I want to do is be more organised. Because when you're organised, you'll  also have more time to be productive (and more time to procrastinate but let's ignore that). I'm starting that resolution by picking up a bullet journal (of which I might do another post once I actually receive it and start drawing down months and other pages).

In 2017 I also want to rely more on instinct. This is not so much a resolution for the new year as it is for the rest of my life. If something doesn't feel a hundred percent right, I won't go for it, or I will let it go. This way I will save time from myself and others. I genuinely have no idea what 2017 will bring us, but I'm hoping it will be solutions to the problems/mess 2016 left behind. While the year will mark the start of Trumps presidency, hopefully everything won't follow this lead set by 2016.

This was a relatively short post I've been working on since last year (ha ha very funny). Ah well. Overall I have never done as much self-reflection as I did in the course of what was the year of 2016. I have a feeling this year will be good.