Autumn Hair and Skincare ♥

Hey all, 

With the colder months starting to creep up on us, it's about time to start switching up our hair and skincare routines to ensure we stay nice and soft and supple, hahah!
So, I'm going to divide this post up into a few sections: hair. face, and body. It basically makes it a bit easier for you to read and understand, and a lot easier for me to write! 

Hair

Shampoo and Conditioner: Sometimes with hair care products, I just use what my mum buys, so that can be anything from Herbal Essences to the (really nice!) Alberto Balsam range from Tesco. But, my favourites are as follows: 

Dove Intensive Repair shampoo and conditioner - great for heat-styled hair, it leaves your hair soft and shiny and smelling great.
Lush Daddy-O shampoo - smells amazing, again soft and shiny hair, and it also makes your blondes look blonder. Win-win!
Lush Fun - it's got a Play-Doh consistency, but it leaves a lovely sweet smell in your hair and leaves it so shiny! 

I also tend to use whatever shampoo and conditioner is on offer for just everyday, but the ones above are my favourites. I also heat style my hair a lot, so I use a VO5 heat protect serum which can be used on wet and dry hair, or the Superdrug heat protection spray if I've used a heavy conditioner or shampoo as I feel the VO5 one can weigh my hair down and it gets greasy quicker. Cool. 

Body

Shower Gel: I tend to use anything from the Sanex shower cream range for everyday, but my favourite treat-yourself shower gels are The Body Shop's Satsuma shower gel, or Lush's Plum Rain, as it smells amazing and leaves your skin really soft without moisturising. 

Moisturisers: I use a few, mostly on my arms and legs, and they are: Lush's charity pot (on my tattoo), Holland & Barrett's aloe vera gel, or Avon's family moisturiser. I have also recently started using a massage bar from Lush on my legs and it leaves them softer than anything else! (Pro tip: if you exfoliate after shaving your legs, and then moisturise too, your skin will be so soft, and it's a really nice self-care thing to do). 

Face

I'm trying to use up a lot of products that I purchased a while back, so I'm using a lot of products on my face right now. Here are my favourites...

Cleansers:

• Simple's Oil Balancing daily face wash
• Lush's Ocean Salt

Masks:

• Lush's Dark Angels (oil balancing)
• Lush's Mask of Magnaminty (gets rid of or reduces spots)

Moisturisers:

Simple's Light Hydrating Daily Moisturiser 
Simple's Oil Balancing Day Cream
Superdrug's Vitamin E Eye Cream
Aloe Vera Gel (good stuff this)
Nivea Soft Moisturising Cream
Nivea Creme

I use quite a few moisturisers because my skin gets really dry around my eyes, and really oily on my t-zone and cheeks, so I use the oil balancing one there, and the hydrating one in my dry zones. I use the Nivea ones at night, because even if you have oily skin, you do still need to hydrate it!

The last product that I have a lot of hype about is Lush's Tea Tree Toner Water. I use it after cleansing my face in the morning and after showering in the evening and it both removes any traces of cleanser left on my skin, and I feel that it's improved the appearance of my skin. Plus, the tea tree really helps with combating any spots which is a bonus! 

My skincare routine is something that I've been working on for a while, and these are just the products that work for me and my skin. Obviously everyone is different and what helps my skin might not help yours but it's definitely worth trying some different products and routines and finding what helps your skin. 

I hope this was an interesting read, I've linked all of the products that I use so you can check them out. 

Happy autumn loves ♥

Book Review: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine (Gail Honeyman)

"Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life.

She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. 

Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.

One simple act of kindness is about to shatter the walls Eleanor has built around herself. Now she must learn to navigate the world everyone else seems to take for granted - while searching for the courage to face the dark corners she's avoided all her life." 

This book caught my eye when browsing in my local bookshop; there was just something about the white cover and the title that I found intriguing. By the title, I assumed it would be a typical mental health type teenager-y story, but I was pleasantly surprised. 

Everything about main character Eleanor Oliphant is perfectly just-so, and the way the book is written is suits the story and character so well. I didn't find this to be a sad novel, it was punctuated by funny parts, and heartwarming parts that just seemed to make the more negative parts a little more bearable. 

I must say that it took me a little while to get into this book, as it sometimes does when my head is stuck in another story, but once I reached a certain point (I won't give any spoilers!), I found it impossible to put down - I loved it that much! 

It's almost written in the same style as The Perks of Being a Wallflower or The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, but with a much more grown-up feel to it (of course due to the age of the character). 

As you can (sort of) see from the sticker on the cover of my book, this novel was included in the BBC Radio 2 Book Club, and you can click here to download a free chapter to see if this is for you!

So anyway, this book was quite different to any other I've read, due to themes and the way of writing, the 'voice' of the character as it were. I did enjoy it, and would totally recommend it to my friends!