You know those days when you have a plan and you are utterly determined to see that plan through, no matter what obstacles you may come across?

Last Bank Holiday Monday I was utterly determined to enjoy a cold drink in a beautiful park, ideally in glorious sunshine, with good company! I'm happy to report we managed 3 out of 4 - the sunshine eluded us as always...

My bestie Geo lives in Enfield, a mere stone's throw from the rather lovely Forty Hall. I had lovely memories of a cold frappuccino in 30-degree heat last time we went, so we decided to try our luck again! Unfortunately it was extraordinarily chilly (I really hope the next bank holiday is considerably warmer...eep!) so we dashed round the gardens, took some quick snaps with our rose lemonade, and hotfooted it back to the car to warm up! The sun did emerge for a few brief minutes, but it was simply too cold to lounge on the grass for hours as planned. We did manage to grab the most amazing (and enormous) lunch at a little place called Miracles - believe it or not, mine was a salad! I couldn't finish it...

Now I must be truthful, the whole reason for this little excursion was to test my new baby - the Sony a5000 camera.

I can't pretend I didn't have any guilt at all over buying a new camera when we're saving for a wedding, but I've wanted a more compact camera with vlogging capacity for quite some time... around six months to be exact. My reasoning behind it was as follows - we don't have a videographer, so we need some sort of camera to capture little moments of our big day - our honeymoon is taking place at Disney World, where the big DSLR isn't always the most practical option - I'm currently obsessed with the Saccone Jolys and their daily vlogs, and love the idea of being able to look back at snippets of your life, years from now. It was a fairly easy sell, especially considering the fact I had some birthday money left over...

It's such a useful little camera, with a flip out screen (perfect for selfies as you can see!), a Wi-fi hotspot so you can upload images straight to your phone or computer, 20.1MP and a rather fabulously crisp lens. I'm still getting my head around the fact there's no viewfinder... but overall I'm quite pleased with these snaps! I'm really looking forward to more excursions with this cutie, and may even venture into the world of vlogging soon, as soon as I can muster the confidence to talk to the camera!

How did you spend your bank holiday?

Love Dani
xoxo

I go through phases with MAC - sometimes I am utterly obsessed and want to buy all the things, sometimes I am too easily tempted away by high street bargains. Right now though, I'm definitely going through a bit of a love affair with MAC eyeshadows and finally managed to put together my first quad palette some weeks ago. As an aside - it is exceptionally hard getting swatch photos with a 50mm prime lens... This was the best of a terribly out-of-focus bunch...

My chosen colours are (swatched left to right):

Charcoal Brown - a lovely matte brown, I use this to fill in my brows. It also works really well to define the crease and some days I even take it under my eyes (how daring!).

Shroom - my first ever MAC shadow, Shroom is a lovely delicate highlight, perfect for the inner corners of the eyes. I sometimes use a light dusting on my cheeks too.

Expensive Pink - purchased at the very start of my rose gold obsession, this is an absolutely gorgeous warm pink shade. I love wearing it in the summer with a lick of brown liner.

Sable - this was on my sister's birthday list last year, I had literally no idea what it was but fell in love as soon as I swatched it. Thus followed the old tradition of "one for her, one for me" that generally seems to occur when buying gifts for my sister... she has good taste! This is such a beautiful shimmery copper shade, I love wearing it alone, especially in winter.

I really love their little £5 quad palettes, they're so convenient for on-the-go make up and fit nicely into a make up bag! My only niggle is I accidentally bought Woodwinked when doing another back-to-MAC swap... I just feel guilty going in for a free lipstick, I always feel like I have to buy something! But really this gives me an excuse to build my second quad palette... And the best part is, if you de-pot them as I did, you have more packaging to swap for a fabulous new lipstick!

What are your favourite MAC shadows? Anything I absolutely need to add to my collection? I'm easily convinced...

Love Dani
xoxo

Hi my loves,

Over the Easter weekend my siblings and I were whisked off to Vienna as a treat from our lovely dad. Three of us had never visited before and Vienna is rather firmly entrenched in our family's history as my grandmother is Austrian - her aunt even attended the official reopening of the State Opera House back in the 50s! I have always felt a yearning to visit which I can't fully explain - I just knew I would fall in love with the city! I thought it would be particularly fun to share my photos with you ahead of this Saturday's Eurovision song contest which will be held in the city.

We stayed in the rather delightful Hotel Bristol, situated opposite the Opera and only a short walk from the city centre. We did end up walking almost everywhere... I was clocking in around 20,000 steps a day, but there are delightful horse carriages on every corner to ferry people around, should your legs get too tired! We didn't take a carriage but I had so much enjoyment taking snaps of them everytime I saw them... what can I say, once a horse lover, always a horse lover...








On our first day we visited Schönbrunn Palace and the Tiergarten (zoo) - I'm not usually a huge fan of zoos as I feel sorry for the animals (safari parks are a different matter!) but with the revelation that the Tiergarten housed several pandas, we had to go see them! We left feeling partly saddened for the animals in their enclosures, and partly delighted that we'd seen pandas at last. Such a bittersweet moment...



We also took in a performance at the Spanish Riding School - now this culminated in one of my childhood goals being achieved. I've always wanted to see the Lipizzaner stallions in action, as a child I used to pore over books and read all the history, and it was incredible to see their dressage "dances". If however you aren't incredibly horsey, I'd give it a miss - my siblings enjoyed it but weren't as impressed as I was! You can also sneak a glance at the enormous stables, situated opposite the School - one stall is about the same size as my flat! Unfortunately they don't allow any photographs during the performance but I had a great time snapping all the horses around the city instead.

Another highlight was the Austrian National Library, one of the most ornate rooms I have seen, stuffed with ancient texts and artefacts. It was simply stunning and I took far too many photos!




Our visit concluded with a luxurious tea at the Sacher Hotel (where we somehow managed to order lunch without sampling the famous Sachertorte - such a fail) - I'd say this a must-do if you visit Vienna, as the cakes are sumptuous, the surroundings stunning, and the hot chocolate was one of the best I have ever tasted.







I'm already planning my next visit - I'd love to walk around the Prater, go on the Riesenrad, and track down the biggest schnitzel in town!

Have you ever been to Vienna? Would you like to go? I'd definitely recommend it, it's only 2 hours away from Gatwick by Easyjet!

Love Dani
xoxo

Well hullo there!
So, er, this is my first outfit post in 3 months. Not sure what happened there, I seem to have been experiencing a bit of a blip. My go-to outfits have essentially been jeans, Breton stripes and Converse - all perfectly comfortable but not much to write home about really. There's only so many times you can style the same tee after all...

Something odd came over me on Friday, it had been building after months of scouring online shopping sites, filling my basket, then exiting my browser before checking out (I've actually had to delete ASOS from my bookmarks as it's just too tempting). I've been telling myself that as I'm trying to tone up and lose weight there's no point in adding anything new to my wardrobe, but I guess I just cracked. Before I could fully appreciate what I had done, I'd spent £50 at Boohoo and a parcel was winging its way to me with next day delivery.

I've since decided to return a few items but this cold shoulder dress was just too comfy to pass up. It's actually from their plus size range, but they don't seem to do it in smaller sizes (I hate when this happens, ASOS Curve for example has some amazing designs but don't go smaller than an 18!) so I ordered the 16 and hoped for the best. It is admittedly a bit on the large size but when belted it seems to work and I like the length, it's perfect for my summer work wardrobe. I am rather obsessed with the off shoulder/cold shoulder trend emerging - perfect for staying cool whilst still looking appropriately covered up! Other larger-chested girls will no doubt appreciate this as much as I do...

The gorgeous setting for these photos just happens to provide you with a sneaky glimpse of our wedding venue as they were taken at the open day event on Sunday - I'll do a more in-depth post, perhaps after our final meeting or even after the wedding itself. We're approaching the 100 day countdown a little too quickly for my liking in terms of organisation, but I have to be honest - I can't wait to get married! Roll on August! And if we can have the same glorious sunshine we've had the last couple of days in the South East, well, that would just be perfection.

What's your favourite trend at the moment? Any new buys you're dying to show off? Share below!


Love Dani
xoxo

Oh hey there!

It's been a while since I last showed my face over on the old blog - I blame a nasty bout of tonsillitis which left me pretty much bed-ridden for a week (although I did develop a wee obsession with Outlander in this time, burning through the TV series and 2 and a half books in a matter of days!).

But enough of Scottish kilt-wearing burly warrior types, let's move on to all things wedding and beauty! For the longest time I was convinced I would do my wedding make up myself, reasoning it would be a great excuse to treat myself to all manner of luxurious products, while staying true to my usual look. But, let's be honest here - I'll treat myself to products anyway, and the more I thought about it the more I started to think it would be better to have an actual expert step in and make my skin look better and my eyeliner more even!

Enter Louise Goodson, a friend of our lovely cakemaker (Flour Pots Bakery) - Louise is super experienced with shoots and filming, and I loved her portfolio, so decided to entrust my pasty face to her talented hands!

My brief was fairly simple - my main focus is always skin as I have such ridiculous spots and uneven patches! So I wanted clear glowy skin, with a golden smoky eye and a nice bright lip for the evening do (at this point I should interject that I already own said bright lipstick - weddings are such a good excuse for beauty buys...). Louise went straight in with one of my all-time favourite bases, NARS Sheer Glow in Deauville (read my review here), and used a mixture of MAC and Inglot concealers to brighten up my undereyes. Then she used a combination of Inglot and Charlotte Tilbury shadows to recreate one of my inspiration looks found on Pinterest for eyes, finishing off with a scattering of individual lashes at the outer corners of my eyes.

Overall I am so pleased with it, it's truly an amped-up version of my usual go-to look - I especially love that some of my usual routine products were used! There are a couple of things I want to tweak for the day itself - I want to use my own NARS Dolce Vita blush, which I stupidly forgot to bring with me, and I think I'll get my brows done properly so they have a nice neat shape. But otherwise it's exactly the look I was hoping for!

I'm so excited now and so glad I made the decision to get a professional to do my make up, it's taken such a weight of my shoulders and will leave me free to fuss about the decor and my bridesmaids, haha!

What are your thoughts? If you're getting married/ already got married, how did you choose to do your make up? Let me know in the comments!

Love Dani
xoxo

I can be a little bit of a geek sometimes. It's true - whilst I may be terribly confused by some aspects of the tech industry and still get headaches from HTML, I'm the go-to girl in our office for solving minor IT problems and I can natter about photography until the cows come home (quite literally - my hometown is a farming village and they used to walk the cows past our house every morning and evening... but I digress).

A quick sweep of our flat reveals an alarming number of gadgets and gizmos (aplenty, I got whosits and whatsits galore...) and I am often found waxing lyrical about my iPhone, so let's have a sit down and chat about our favourite tech bits!

Laptop
This was such an impulse purchase - as in, we literally went to buy some chocolate and ended up coming home with a laptop. In all fairness, we were in need of one (my old laptop needs to be plugged in to the modem, a keyboard and the charger at all times, so it's essentially a desktop...) and as we were shopping in Luxembourg the exchange rate meant we'd be saving about £150. It's such a luxury to be able to blog and watch Netflix in bed again, you cannot believe...not to mention having a working keyboard, albeit a French one!

Camera
I saved for months to get my Canon 1100d and eventually splurged in duty free! I've since added two prime lenses to my collection and I've become one of those people who trawls photography blogs for more advice and new releases! I've still got so much to learn but my camera is one of my most precious possessions, for sure!

External hard drive
Following on from the above... I take a lot of photos these days, and with such a dodgy old laptop I'm forever backing them up! This external hard drive is a lifesaver - it holds so much, I've not even used a tiny percentage of it yet! A must have for anyone with heaps of data like me.

Earphones*
I can't be the only person who abandons Apple earphones as soon as I receive them, keeping them only as a camera remote. Right? I much prefer little earbuds so I don't have to share yet another rendition of Let It Go with everyone on my commute (er, I mean, I don't listen to Disney music on my commute). These owl and flower earphones from Hawkin's Bazaar are just adorable and the beautiful bright colours instantly put me in a good mood! The sound quality is great too, and best of all, no one else can hear my morning playlist (there is literally nothing more uplifting than I'll Make A Man Out Of You, is there?)

Selfie stick*
My first selfie stick experience resulted in my mum's brand new iPhone 6 taking a nosedive next to the Bridge of Sighs in Cambridge ... thankfully this is a much sturdier contraption! It arrived just in time for a trip to the Harry Potter Studio Tour and my friends and I found it such a lifesaver for getting our must-have group selfies! It's a long way off yet (4 months and counting) but this is also going to be perfect for our honeymoon selfies as we mooch around Disney. I also think it would make the perfect gift, I'll probably be buying my mum one to replace the one that died in Cambridge... you can find them in the gadgets for men/women section on Hawkin's Bazaar!

iPhone 5S
Yep, I have to be surgically separated from my phone these days... I use Whatsapp, Snapchat, Twitter and Instagram constantly - such a social media addict! It just does everything I need it to - YouTube, music, all sorts... I did a run through of my favourite apps last summer if you fancy taking a look!I also find it super handy for jotting down blog ideas and posts on the go, although I prefer to do all my final edits on the laptop.

iPad
Ours is the oldest iPad version, kindly passed on by Jon's mum when she upgraded. Although annoyingly a lot of apps have made it impossible to use them on old iOs systems, YouTube still works perfectly so I use the iPad to watch all my videos! It's great for lounging in bed and catching up on vlogs, or propping against the wall for my yoga workouts. I've also recently developed an obsession with Outlander (anyone with me??) so have been loving the fact I can sit and watch episodes using the Amazon Prime video service.

ghd Eclipse stylers
Could I complete a gadget post without mentioning my favourite electrical item of the moment? Of course not! These ghds have revolutionised my hair straightening routine - it stays straight for longer, meaning I use less heat, meaning my hair is in a much better condition. I've been using ghds for years but these knock the original styler out of the park! I'll do a full review soon!

What are the gadgets you can't live without? Let me know in the comments!

Love Dani
xoxo


** this post was written in collaboration with Hawkin's Bazaar and contains gifted items, marked with an asterisk **