Saturday 30 January 2016

Review of the Lumie Bodyclock

Hi everyone, if you read my What I Got for Xmas post a couple of weeks ago, you'll know that I was very kindly given a Lumie Body Clock.  I've been using it for exactly a month now so thought I would tell you a bit about it and what I think of it so far.


As some of you will know I have a health condition called Fibromyalgia, (you can read about my health story here), and one of the main issues for me is over sleeping, waking up feeling exhausted, lethargic and generally groggy, as well as not being able to wake up easily and sleeping in till very late in the day, which is something I hate and affects every day of my life making getting anything done, near impossible at times!

I also get something called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) over the colder darker months, which amazingly affects around 20% of the population in the UK alone!  This means that it's even harder for me to wake up, I fall asleep in the evenings too and I generally feel more lethargic and depressed that usual, not fun times!!

So, when I was given this Lumie clock and found out all about the possible benefits of it, I was really excited to try it out and prayed that it would work for me.  Lumie claim that the clock mimics the sunrise, it's gradually lights up 20 minutes before the alarm goes off, so that your body tells your brain it's time to start waking up before you get abruptly woken by an alarm.  They say it decreases Melatonin the sleep hormone and helps increase Cortisol, the hormones that hep you wake up more naturally.  They also say it naturally helps boost your mood, energy and productivity levels throughout the day.



After a full month of using the lamp, I can definitely say that it now helps me wake up feeling far more refreshed than I ever have before, which is really great and for that alone I love it.  As for helping me wake up straight away it worked really well for the first week or so but lately not so much.  I don't know if to put this down to the clock, or just to me.  I've been going to bed a little later than usual and that never helps, but also I've found that no matter what alarms I use or how many, after a short while my brain just gets used to the sounds and I don't even hear them anymore!!  I really hate this and I've tried everything I can think of, I have several alarms on my phone using various loud songs which I change every day.  I have an electric alarm clock that I use too as well as the alarm on the Lumie clock!   And yet sometimes I still don't hear them :-(  If anyone has any ideas of what else I can try, please, please let me know!!  I've found if I can get all my alarms to go off at the same time, that helps and avoiding the dreaded snooze button!!

All in all though I do like the Lumie clock and I'll definitely keep using it, I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that over time It will help me wake up earlier too :-)

I hope you liked this post and found it helpful.  Do any of you have problems waking up, have you tried this clock and did it work for you?  Let me know in the comments!

Until Next Time Stay Happy

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Friday 22 January 2016

The Liebster Award :-)

Hi Everyone, just before Christmas I was very kindly nominated for the Liebster Award by the lovely Tania Michele, you can read her post here.  I was actually nominated to do this in 2014 as well, you can check that out here if you'd like to have nosey at my old answers/questions and who I nominated :-)  For the original Liebster Award, you had to nominate bloggers with 200 followers or less which was actually quite a challenge, but now it's 1000 followers, so finding 11 bloggers to nominate this time was nice and easy, so please do go and click on them as they're all really great blogs, some of my favourites and deserve some blog-lovin' :-)


Ok, so on with the Liebster rules -

The Liebster Award is for blogs that have less than 1000 followers and it is designed to give some smaller blogs a little bit more recognition. The rules are:
  • Thank the person who nominated you
  • Answer the 11 questions set by the person who nominated you
  • Ask 11 questions to 11 bloggers who also have less than 1000 followers
  • Let them know on their blog that you have nominated them
Tania's Questions
1.       Where is your favourite place to go with friends?  Costa, we practically live there some days!
2.    What celebrity would you love to meet?  I confess I have a huge crush on the extremely sexy Norman Reedus (aka Daryl Dixon on The Walking Dead), I actually think my friends are started to get sick of me talking about him lately lol, but I would love to meet him one day ©©© :-D


3.    Fave drugstore makeup brand?  I've been really loving Collection lately but Rimmel is probably my general all time fav.
4.    Last holiday destination?  I literally can't even remember when I last went anywhere, I think it was Llandudno about 7 years ago!  I need a holiday, someone buy me a plane ticket to somewhere nice and hot!!! :-)
5.    If you could be an animal, what animal would you be?  A Toy or Miniature Poodle, because Poodles are the best, either that or a beautiful horse.


6.    What time of year do you love the most? Late Spring, because it's finally getting warmer and the summer is yet to come.
7.    Do you currently have a job? If yes, where?  I'm a freelance designer working from home.
8.     Fav book you've ever read?  The Witch in Winter trilogy is really good by Ruth Warburton and I love all the Twilight books and The Host by Stephanie Meyer, also really enjoyed the 50 Shades trilogy (who didn't) but my favourite has to be a book called Old Magic by Marianne Curley, it's an amazing story about magickal powers and going back in time to break a family curse, it's so well written, interesting and intriguing, I love it!
9.    What do you do when you're not blogging? Crafts mostly - cardmaking, jewellery making and other papercrafts, watching YouTube'ers and watching The Walking Dead :-D
10.   What item of clothing do you love?  Slippers, I have so many pairs now I think I have a problem lol

I need these in my life, so adorable!

11.      What blog post are you most proud of?  I think my more personal ones, like my last new years post.  I also love the baking ones, because they take a lot of work and I'm always pleased if they come out well :-)

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Now for My Questions:

1. If you could have one wish in life, what would it be?
2. What would your superpower be?
3. Tell me one thing that you really enjoy in life?
4. What's one thing that really gets your blood boiling?
5. What made you choose the name of your blog?
6. If you were given a million pounds/dollars, what would you do with the money?
7. During a zombie apocalypse, what would be your weapon of choice (mine's a sword btw)?
8. Tell me something that really scares you (apart from loosing family etc)?
9. Tell me one interesting fact about yourself?
10. Who inspires you the most?
11. What's your most favourite ever song and why?

and finally . . .

Blogs I am nominating 

What Amy Did Next
Rebekah Koontz Site
Carpe Diem Emmie
Poppy Field
Holly Days
Glittery Fridays
The Creative Geek
February Stars
Hannah Notes
Sounds Like Sofie
Sarah In Wonderland


Well there you go, there's my answers and questions for my nomination, I'd love to hear your answers to all these questions in the comment too :-)  Until Next Time Stay Happy

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Friday 15 January 2016

Better Late Than Never - What I Got for Xmas!

Hi everyone, well after a very busy 2 weeks, I finally have another post for you; a little late on the Xmas band wagon but even so, I still wanted to share with you all, the lovely gifts that I was given for Christmas :-)


As with last years post, I didn't want to mention who gave me what and I am in no way boasting or showing off etc.  I love reading these types of posts and watching youtube videos to see who got what, basically because I'm nosey and it's just a bit of fun.  So I hope you enjoy this post and please let me know in the comments, what was your favourite gift that you were given this Christmas!



As some of you may know, I love making jewellery and so I was thrilled with these gorgeous beads from Hobbycraft, I love the colours and can't wait to make a necklace and bracelet set with them.


This necklace is just so me, it's black, it has spikes and I love the layered chains too.


I've been wanting this Tanya Burr book for ages and even though it was one of the items I specifically asked for for xmas, I was still really happy to finally get it :-)


Waking up is not an easy job for me, so I was very happy with this clock.  It has a record button on it so you can record your own alarm tune, which is so fun.  I used to have one similar to this years ago but sadly it broke and had to be thrown away.   I can't wait to find some good loud music to record on to this one :-)



Yes I've added to my ever growing slipper collection!  But aren't they cute!!



This was something that I really wanted, it's a turntable for when I decorate cakes.  I love baking so I'm really looking forward to trying this out.


This next gift will also be really useful, it's an icing gun and a cookie press.  I've been looking up videos on how to use this and it's so easy, so I'm really happy about this one too.



I was given this book called The Silver Witch by Paula Brackston, I absolutely love books like this, so I'm really looking forward to start reading it, although I'm currently half way through The Host right now so it may take me a while lol.  My lovely gift-giver even had it signed by the author while they were in the book store :-)



I am in love with this beautiful keepsake box that was kindly handmade for me, it has really pretty floral paper on the top, a little paper lace border around the sides and they have even decorated the inside with pink script patterned paper.  It's so lovely and just the right size to put all my knickknacks in.


You may have already seen this picture which I uploaded on my instagram account back in December.  Being a huge (slightly obsessed) Waking Dead fan, I can honestly say this was one of my absolute most favourite gifts and I use it all the time (even right now as I type), I absolutely love it :-D


I was also thrilled with this fleecy jacket, I love the little ears they're so adorable and omg it's so comfortable, I've hardly taken it off since Christmas day (apart from washing it of course!)


I was sent this Makeup Revolutions lipgloss which I'm very intrigued to try out, it's a lot darker than what I would normally wear but it's always fun to try something new!


This little owl manicure set is so cute and the perfect handbag size, love it :-)


This beautiful Rainbow Moonstone necklace was also another favourite gift.  The gemstone shines beautiful colours and the delicate silver chain is so pretty.  I've added a link to the Etsy shop here, so you can check out the other items Sora sells, as they are all so beautiful.



I was very excited when I received this particular clock and couldn't wait to try it out as I've heard a lot about the benefits of these sunlight clock lamps.  I've been using it since Boxing Day and I've already noticed a difference.  I won't say too much now as I'm going to be doing a full review on this in the next couple of weeks.


Chocolate!!  Always good :-)


And finally, it's kind of been a very long running tradition for me to have a teddy bear at Christmas, so the new addition this Christmas, was this little cutie, I've called him Benjamin and he's adorable :-)

Until Next Time Stay Happy

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All images are by me apart from the extra icing gun and turntable.  The beautiful handmade fabric flower used in some of my pictures is available from Stitched Blossoms

Monday 4 January 2016

A Sad Look Back and A Hopeful Look Forward

Hi everyone, first off Happy New Year!!! :-D  I hope you all have a great new years eve and are having a good start to the year so far.  In this post I want to have a brief look back over my 2015 and mention a few of the things I'm hoping for in 2016, so grab a cuppa and get comfy, it's a bit of a long one!


I'm sad to say I didn't have the best year last year (ooh feels weird to say that already).  After quite a reasonably good start and a positive outlook, my ex broke up with me in May and things went steadily downhill from there.  Another major bad point was when one of my close family members was rushed into hospital in July and at one point we didn't even know if they would be here now, you can read more about that here.  It was a very difficult, stressful and worrying time and I literally ran myself ragged going back and forth to the hospital, helping them recover afterwards and generally worrying so much for about a month.


After that my health took a nose dive too, I obviously over did things and ended up having an epic fibro flare up for about 2 months, where I just felt constantly ill all the time and ultimately got more and more depressed, disheartened and stressed about everything!  My health was a big worry, I was feeling constantly tired all the time, I didn't feel like doing anything especially work of any kind and was sleeping way too much too, I felt like all my 'get up and go' got up and went!  Sadly that all carried on right up until a few weeks ago and I feel like I pretty much lost most of this year with trying to cope with life, the time just disappeared and I have nothing to show for it.  So needless to say, I'm quite glad to see the back of 2015 and I'm waving it off with a 'good riddance' look on my face! :-)

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The last few weeks however, have been a blur of working on Christmas posts and buying gifts, having a very quite Christmas and NYE, and eating too much chocolate.  However I do already feel different, I feel I have a little sense of hope for this coming year, especially in the way of it being a more productive time.  For a long while I've had several plans and dreams and have wanted to make a few particular things happen but honestly, I've never put enough effort in to making them happen, other things always seem to get in the way and during this past year especially, I've really lost out on opportunities and have let people down in the process which I'm not proud of at all!  So this year it's time to change that!  I have several exciting projects that I'm hoping to tell you about over the next few months, as well as this I just really want to put more effort into living, getting healthier and being happier.  Spending more quality time with my friends, a lot less time on my pc and drinking more water is definitely high on the list too lol :-)

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I do have several good things to look back on from this past year - even though my ex and I broke up, I still have some nice memories from when we were together like having the best Valentines day I've ever had.  My birthday was made very special too by having a really lovely birthday dinner with him and all my friends.  I also overcame some of my social anxiety last June by going to my best friend's birthday party, the first one I've had the courage to go to in years, I had a really good time and met some really great people.  We also held our own Halloween party with some of those people and had a really fun night :-)


And finally, last year my blog had it's 2nd blog birthday in November.  I ran another giveaway which is always fun to do and I had loads of really lovely comments and support from you guys.  I'm always so grateful for your support and for every follower, so thank you so much xx

I hope you all have a really wonderful year to come, fulfil your dreams and don't let time pass you by, grab every opportunity and make each moment count :-)
Until Next Time Stay Happy

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