Chip free for the party season ....Yes please!

It's that time of year when everyone is having their nails done. The question is, do you attempt to paint your nails or do you treat yourself and get them professionally done? If you do decide to pay to have them done you then have to work out what is the best brand/salon to go to, the dilemma's! That's why I've decided to write this post to help you achieve the best result whichever you decide to do.

Let's start with how to make your nail polish last longer...
Having performed many a manicure in my time being a therapist, I've used A LOT of different brands, my favourite's being OPI & Essie, which I find last well and recommend highly for chip free nails. My secret, which many of you may already know, is to make sure you use a good base coat to prevent staining and an even better topcoat to seal the colour. In my opinion the best on the market by far is Seche Vite, which I find stays well for approx 5days (dependant on what you do) some of my clients have gone as long as 2-3 weeks! It's also important to know that prior to painting your nails it's good to give them a little buff and wipe prior to applying and give each coat enough time to dry before putting the next on. I've done a little step by step on how to manicure nails if you would like a copy let me know!



Now if you're going to give yourself a treat and pay.....
With so many gel and acrylic products on the market it's hard to know what the best brands are, it's a minefield to be precise! For those of you that follow me on Instagram or Twitter you will most likely have seen many a photo of nails. The brand I personally use and recommend highly for a beautiful chip-free manicure is a South African brand called Calgel. I truly love the results I get with it, unlike other products it allows your natural nails to respire, which means they won't get damaged providing you don't pick them off! It lasts for up to 4 weeks (depending on how well you look after them) with the added advantage it helps to protect your nails helping them to grow! Plus there is well over 100 colours to choose from, There are so many positives! Although be warned it's addictive, I can guarantee you will never want to be without again!
I've chosen a couple of my favourite autumn nails If you want to know the colours, feel free to drop me a line :) x

Back living at the parents

I wanted to post something slightly different to what I typically write about and decided on writing about moving out of the parents home and back in..... Hope you enjoy!

It's true what they say when you meet the one - you know (I know that's terribly cliche!) After about 3 months Nick moved into my parents and shared my rather box-like room with a small double bed! Although we both get on with my parents well, you can imagine it wasn't the most ideal situation. There's only so many times you have to have a cold shower or hold it in when you're busting for a pee! So a year in and we decided to look for our own place, unfortunately for us it was right in the midst of the credit crunch so banks weren't giving mortgages out as freely as they used to.

As Nick and I didn't have a hefty deposit and at the time we were both in low-paying jobs, we decided to go for a shared ownership scheme with Hightown Homes, on a new build flat situated next to the Kodak building in Hemel Hempstead. At the time shared ownership was a new scheme that had been introduced by the government to help first time buyers, only problem with this was that the only bank that we could get a mortgage with, with a 10% deposit of 25% of the flat was Leeds Building Society, which meant the interest was a little on the expensive side. Once we had got through all the stress of the paperwork, If you haven't already been through this, it's a little on the stressful side (understatement!). The sale went through really quickly and we had moved in within 6 weeks. Now - to furnish the flat, I learnt very quickly not to leave a man in charge of getting furniture....I returned home from work to find a 46inch LED TV and 3 bean bags, oh but wait he had pre-ordered a hoover! We spent most of the next few weeks in IKEA (the place of divorce!) and Wilkinsons, kitting the house out in the most affordable way. I'm glad to see the back of flatpack. I have to say I loved the flat, it was the perfect start and great to have our own space, plus it was only a 2 minute walk into town. A year in and we had a few problems to say the least,  the main one being that the boiler was installed incorrectly and took 10 months to fix, which wasn't ideal as we had a no heating, but they did provide 2 small electric heaters to compensate and a reduction on the rent £30 a month to be precise! 

Word of advice: Although shared ownership seemed like a good idea at the time, had we looked into it a little better, I'm not sure we would have gone for it, as Hightown Homes really are not the most helpful people to deal (understatement) with and they put the service charge up by 100% in 1 year!

Back again!

4 years down the line and planning a wedding! We decided to sell the flat, Luckily for us we sold the flat relatively quick thanks to Navigation Estates, however it took over 3 months to move.

Hightown homes paid nothing towards the legal costs or the estate agents fee, which are based on the total cost of the property not just the 25% that we owned and they charged us £500 to move out! I thought the paperwork was bad when we moved in, well it's probably on par if not worse when you sell a property! Solicitors really are a pain in the backside!  Packing up the flat was a joy as I'm sure you can imagine, a lot of broken nails and bruises. You really do accumulate a lot of rubbish over 4 years, A fair few trips to my parents to offload our boxed up flat and many a visit to the charity shops the flat was nearly empty except the furniture. As we didn't have anywhere to store furniture, we decided to donate it to the YMCA, who were fab they came and collected everything which was great! Once the flat was empty, we spent the next few hours cleaning and of  course it was only right to order our last ever takeaway in the flat! I found moving out of the flat really emotional and dropping the keys off to the estate agents was awful! I'm not quite sure whether it was a combination of knowing that we were back living at my parents where we started or all the lovely memories we had from the flat.

The idea of moving back to the parents was to save some money towards a deposit for a house, 3 months in and we are only just starting to save, who ever knew organising a wedding could be so expensive. The enjoyable parts of living back with the parents is my mum and dad's cooking and the fact they do the washing (I don't miss doing this at all!) The disadvantages are the fact my sisters is back living at home now as well, so there is 5 of us and 1 bathroom, which often leads to arguments in the morning before work! 

Hopefully the next blog post I write about my life will be that we've saved and found a house!

x

Wedding invites........the decisions!

So planning a wedding isn't all glitz and glam, it can actually be a little more on the stressful side to say the least! I'm sure for those of you planning a wedding you'll agree. It helps massively when you find companies that are easy to deal with. I've been looking at invites for some time, but was having difficulty finding ones that I liked and were within the price range. I ordered some samples from Norma & Dorothy, which I loved.

I honestly thought at this point that these were the ones I wanted, but when the quote came in at nearly £400. I had to have a slight rethink as much as I loved them, I couldn't justify spending that

amount of money! After looking at several websites my mum came across Tree Of Hearts. They offer a wide range of invites with some cute and quirky designs with envelope stickers to match and they offer two free samples. They arrived really quickly, which was fab. The invites were lovely, the hardest part was deciding between the two! 

I decided to go for the birds and bunting as I thought the design was slightly more Nick and I. My mum took charge on the wording, after all the invites are from her and my dad.  Once the wording was sorted, a few emails were sent back and forth, all of which were dealt with efficiently by Tree of Hearts. My mum is such a stickler for perfection, needless to say that we had received a fair few proofs! I can't fault the service we received, they were so efficient in getting back to us with updated proofs. We decided to go ahead once everything was perfect.  As we were ordering so many invites, we received free delivery and a 5% discount. The order consisted of day invites, which opened out and then for the evening  guests we went for a double sided postcard design along with some matching stickers to seal the envelopes. We received the order within 3 working days and they looked beautiful. I would highly recommend purchasing invites through Tree of Hearts - www.treeofhearts.co.uk