Hello, I'm Lottie!

Winter is in full swing and with the weather drawing in, it can often be hard to stay warm while also looking nice. As for me, I am always cold so staying warm is essential because as soon as it gets to October I find myself reaching for my chunky knit jumpers and layering up. I think my style could best be described as 'stylish yet practical' as I like to look nice but need to be warm and dressed appropriately for the weather so I have created this post to show how I layer up and stay warm while still getting the most out of my wardrobe...

Jumpers
Who doesn't love a good jumper? I have quite a lot of jumpers as they are one of the main things I wear from about October - March, every outfit has a jumper with it and I find that helps me to stay warm. There is nothing better to me than snuggling up in a warm jumper while it is cold outside. Since I wear jumpers a lot throughout winter I find that I get bored of them quite easily which is why I buy a lot from Primark as it allows me to tire of the jumper without feeling guilty that I spent a lot of money on one jumper, and also they are warm too so why not!

I love this turtleneck from New Look, it goes with everything and I like the cropped body which changes it up a bit

This chenille jumper from Primark is SO WARM and soft. It's one of those jumpers where you look like you've put in a lot of effort while really not trying. The purple colour is also gorgeous which I love.

This jumper is from Primark and I love the mustard yellow colour. I think it brightens up your outfit in winter when there's not a lot of colour around.

You might recognise this from the Dog Rates Twitter account. My friend bought me this jumper for my birthday and I love it so much! It is slightly baggier and it is so comfortable, pair it with some jeans and you've got a casual look for every day.

Longsleeved T-shirts
Now these are essential for me during winter. Worn simply as a t-shirt or under a jumper they add so much warmth to my outfits. I also have a couple of thermal t-shirts that I wear in snowy weather. I love layering up under my jumpers to stave off the cold but if I get warm there is always the option of wearing something cute under my jumper. All of my long-sleeved t-shirts are from Primark as you can get a lot of colours and styles on a budget which I love!

I love this t-shirt. I often wear it under my mustard jumper and with my denim skirt as seen here.

This is my fave t-shirt at the moment. I love how the light blue makes my outfit a little bit more special than just a plain t-shirt, and I also love the neckline which pokes above some of my jumpers.

Thermal tights
I don't know about you, but I always found it so sad that I couldn't wear my skirts and dresses during the winter months as my 40Dernier tights would never keep me warm enough and I found winter to be really boring without the option to wear something other than jeans. Well, that was until I discovered thermal tights. I get all my tights from M&S and stumbled across their 100Dernier tights one day and just knew they would keep me warm, and they did! I wore them on my birthday when there was snow on the ground and the temperature was below zero and I was actually pretty toasty. They're so thick and comfortable that I would recommend these to anyone and they are my trusty warm tights in the winter months.

Please excuse the pose, it's the only one I know how to do apparently lol

Jean Substitutes
Winter gets so boring when you wear jeans every day but when you need the warmth that trousers give what else can you wear? Well I love wearing my leather-look leggings because they add a bit of edginess to my outfits while being surprisingly warm. They also kinda make me feel like Sandy from Grease and as they are black they go with everything!
The next jean substitutes are technically still jeans, but they've got a little bit extra that elevates them from being plain old jeans...
They are, of course, dungarees! I absolutely love my dungarees and they are made out of really thick denim that is perfect for colder weather. I love how they're a bit different from jeans so you don't feel like you are wearing the same thing every day but how I can still stay in my comfort zone with what I like to wear.

Boots!
Finally, the piece de la resistance, boots! If you know me, you'll know I love boots and that's practically all I wear so here are some of my faves that help keep me stylish yet warm.

First up, my sparkly boots. I wear these when I am going somewhere nice as the diamantes make the boot a bit more jazzy than I'd like for every day. They are really comfortable though and I love them when I am wearing dresses.

These are my every day, go with everything boots. I wear them with skirts or with jeans and they are so comfortable. I love how they lace-up as I have narrow feet, meaning I can form the shoe to my foot but they also have zips meaning I can get them on and off easily.

I love my Timbs so much! They are properly insulated and are practical yet stylish. Winter would not be the same without them as my feet would constantly be cold which isn't good!

Finally, my over-the-knee-boots. I absolutely adore these boots as they make jeans look so much nicer. I had been looking for over-the-knee boots for a while when I stumbled on these lace-up ones from Missguided but don't worry they have a zip up the side so I can get them off haha

So that's it, my top tips for staying warm in winter while looking nice, hope you enjoyed.

Lottie

Every year we have a tradition where we visit Cannon Hall and have a christmassy walk around the gardens. Cannon Hall is a local stately home that has been turned into a museum, complete with sprawling grounds and working farm. With that in mind, I couldn't resist taking some pictures* so here they are...

When you study at university as much as the time there is about having fun and gaining worldly experience, it is ultimately about what you are going to do after your degree. You spend 3+ years studying a subject that you love so that you can end up in a career you love after you graduate. Basically, there is a lot of emphasis placed upon the 'after' part of university life but many, myself included, aren't really all that prepared for when the end does come, and it's time to leave university and enter 'the real world'.

The real world hit me like a ton of bricks.

My life until 4 months ago was, as I like to call it, 'pre-adulting', the kind of adulting where you're only half doing it. Yes, I paid rent, did my own food shops and lived independently for three years but I was always somewhat sheltered from the real truth of adult life. My bills were included with the price of my rent, I didn't pay council tax, and every three months I would get a handy sum of money in the form of student finance. So yes, I was adulting, but I also felt like I was living inside a huge school trip where the real world didn't really exist and I was in my own little bubble, which of course I was.

During my third year, there was a lot of talks based around what our options were post-graduation. I went to these talks and promptly decided that I didn't really know where I was going in my life. Not only did this terrify me, but it threw a spanner in that idealistic image I had been clinging onto for three years where I would leave university and magically fall into my ideal career and boom, I was off. I thought that I was going to hit the ground running and be some sort of weird Wonder Woman and would be a billionaire by the time I was 22.

What I did was come home. For me, the hardest part of leaving university was that huge, looming question of 'what do I do now?' Every moment until June 1, 2018, had been carefully structured for me and now I was dropped into the big, wide world and I didn't, and still don't, have a clue what to do next. I haven't experienced that feeling of knowing what it is I want to do with my life and so I feel that I'm in a sort of limbo until that happens.

So, I did what any normal person faced with the prospect of choosing the path their entire life will take does... I took a minimum wage job and buried my head in the sand. And that's where you find me now. I graduated three weeks ago and I am no closer to figuring out where I'm going in my life than the squirrel from Ice Age is of holding on to his acorn.

Friends and family keep trying to tell me that 'something good will come along, you just need to be patient' but the thing is, I'm only human and one of our biggest flaws is that we aren't patient. I am seeing people I went to uni with getting their lives together and embarking on that next adventure that takes them one step closer to their dream career while I eat cereal bars and watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine at midday on a Tuesday. For them, life is going smoothly but I feel that post-graduate life has hit me like a ton of bricks. Now I know I'm not the only one to feel like this, many of my friends are also in the exact situation that I am and similarly don't know what to do or where to turn.

This is the part they don't tell you about at Uni. They make it seem that once you leave you'll become a jet-setting career type who lands their perfect job straight out of uni; and while this may be the case for some, that certainly isn't the case for me. Now I don't want this post to turn into something bleak and miserable because there have certainly been good times since I left uni, but no one talks about the 'oh' moment when you realise uni is over and it's time to be a real adult; one that pays bills and gets frowned at for being drunk at 8pm on a Tuesday while you watch Bake Off and cry into cupcakes. So I'm putting this out there right now; don't expect life after uni to be all rainbows and sunshine and that you'll land your dream job straight away. Things that are worth having are worth fighting for and while I'm still trying to get to grips with my new way of life and while I search for jobs that are connected to my degree I keep trying to tell myself that as a mantra. I didn't work hard for three years to work a minimum wage job forever so I need to make sure I get the life I want. But all I am saying is, be prepared to move back into your old room, and live in your old town while you figure that out because for the majority of people that's the real truth about life after uni.

Right now I'm at a point in my life where I'm feeling quite, well... lost.

Which path do I take?

I've spent three years of my life having the best time, living away from home, meeting new people and studying something that I love. But now that all that has ended, and I've returned home, I've been forced to stop and think 'what next, where do I go from here?'

For most people, this would be exciting; an opportunity to try new things or visit new places, but for me, it's a source of constant worry. Up until this point, my life has been incredibly structured; for 5 days a week I would go to school and on the weekends I would dance or see my friends, and then I had 6 glorious weeks of summer before it all started again. For the past 16 years my life has had relatively the same pattern, and now that's ended I really don't know what to do with myself.

During my last year of university the main focus (aside from dissertation, and, you know passing your degree) was the Future; what are you going to do after you leave university? Where is life going to take you? What is your future career? Quite frankly, I have no idea. I don't have one clue what I want to do, and my third year has been and gone.

In September, the question of what I was going to do after university wasn't really a problem for me; I'd just returned to uni and hit the ground running. By March I was simply trying to finish my dissertation and had no room in my life for pretty much anything else and by June it was already too late; the Future was coming, and I had to see where it took me.

Where it took me was home.

I left Lincoln and moved back into the bedroom I've had since I was two years old and somehow managed to fit three years of my life into a smaller space. I found a job and I'm kinda just burying my head in the sand. Is the job I'm doing my amazing future career? Probably not, but to be honest I have no idea what that is.

I'm a very indecisive person so making decisions, however big or small is not fun for me. I find it hard to choose what I want in a restaurant let alone the path my entire future is going to take. This, combined with the small bedroom in a small village, has left me feeling sort of stuck. I'm stuck in the limbo of wanting to take action to start my journey to my career path, but not really knowing what that is or how to get there. I feel like I'm reaching for some vague concept that's really unobtainable, something people have taught me to strive for from a young age.

Will I ever know what I want to do, or will I just settle for something that comes my way? Who knows! I certainly don't. I'm not really sure where my life is going at the moment, I want to say that's ok but, quite frankly, it's terrifying me. Not having a plan is extremely scary for me. I feel like Phoebe from Friends when she doesn't have a 'pla', me neither!

Unlike Friends, however, I don't have a team of writers behind me making sure my story progresses and evolves, I have to do that myself which is the part I'm most terrified about. What if I make the wrong decision? What if I never know what I'm going to do and end up working a job I hate for the rest of my life? Where am I going? Help!

Hopefully, I'll look back at this post in a year's time and see that things have indeed worked out, or I could look back at this post in a year and see that things are exactly the same. I don't know what will happen, and I don't know where life will take me. Frankly, that terrifies me but I guess, to quote Ferris Bueler; 'life moves pretty fast sometimes. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.'

As I've mentioned previously, I have dry skin. However, it goes a little deeper than the occasional patch of dry skin, I have eczema which means my skin is always dry and in need of some serious moisture.



I've had eczema since birth and I've never known life without it, so it doesn't bother me too much but aside from being careful about what I put on my skin, I am always on the hunt for products that make my skin feel amazing. While my skin is constantly getting better (as I now take care of it rather than just leaving it to be dry and cracked) I have experienced a period of bad skin which could be down to any number of things and isn't at all uncommon for me.

It's at times when my skin is bad that I search for new products to try, again like I said, I have to be careful of what I use but I gravitate towards products aimed for my skin type to avoid any unnecessary allergic reactions. As I've grown and gotten older, I have found that my skin is more accepting of products, meaning that I can now wear makeup and perfume with little-to-no fuss which is great. However, I am still wary of certain products, bath bombs for example, as I know I'm still allergic to some of the ingredients and no amount of persuasion by staff is going to make me voluntarily give myself an allergic reaction (sorry, Lush but it's not happening!)

With that being said, I have gotten into a pretty good skin routine which I thought I would share in case any of you suffer from dry skin and are in need of recommendations. I'd also love to hear your tips for treating dry skin as I'm always willing to try something new.

Tip #1 - Find a good moisturiser:
When I was a child I hated putting on my moisturiser; they were thick, greasy, foul-smelling concoctions that I was prescribed by the doctor and I hated putting the gelatinous gloop on my skin. I must've tried every moisturiser under the sun when I stumbled upon Aveeno. Featuring natural ingredients such as Colloidal Oatmeal, and having no chemical-ly smell, Aveeno was an instant hit for me.



When I was smothering my skin in the other creams (such as Cetraben in comparison) I had to let the cream sink into my skin overnight, and it often left a greasy residue on my pyjamas and even bedding as it was so strong. This meant that moisturising in a morning when I had woken up was out of the question, and so my skin got worse. With Aveeno, however, I found it easy to get into a routine of applying my cream in the morning so that my days were generally way more comfortable.

Aveeno's light formula allows it to sink into the skin really quickly and the moisture lasts all day. By lunchtime, my skin still feels soft and I'm not in danger of needing to re-apply which is great as no-one wants to have to take time out of their day to reapply moisturiser, especially when they've got a job or life to attend to.  Also, Aveeno has no strong smell, in fact not much of a smell at all which was amazing to me since all the creams I had used previously had a strong smell associated with them. I use it all over and on my face which is great as then, I don't need to buy a specific face moisturiser. Also, Jennifer Aniston is the face of Aveeno so it can't be all bad!

Tip #2 - Vaseline is a god-send:
Vaseline is essentially the best moisturiser on the planet, and it's not just for lips.

I use Vaseline on my dry spots (knees, elbows etc) and I also use it to prevent cracked skin on my feet. Ew I know, I just mentioned feet, but when they're in need of some TLC I use Vaseline to pump so much needed moisture into them.



Whenever my skin is so dry I rub some Vaseline on the area and then leave it overnight and voila, instantly better skin!

Tip #3 - Face scrub:
Your body isn't the only place that gets dry, your face does too. Usually, I wear a light layer of makeup during the day, and with this year's unpredictable weather I found myself in dire need of a face scrub that wasn't going to be too harsh on my skin.



I came across this St Ives oatmeal face scrub in Boots and I became instantly hooked as soon as I used it. The product can be used either as a face mask or as a face wash, and I alternate between both. When I want to have a pamper evening I apply the product as a facemask and leave for 10 minutes, the ingredients in the mask allow it to dry in a salt-like texture which gently exfoliates your face when you take it off. When used as a face wash, which I do as part of my shower routine, the exfoliant is slightly stronger I feel, but both applications leave my face feeling very moisturised and soft.

Using this face wash means I can target the dryest areas of my face and even out my skin tone which in turn makes my makeup sit better on my face, and makes me a lot more comfortable.

Tip #4 - Micellar Water:
By now, everyone knows about or uses micellar water. I find it so much easier to take my makeup off with instead of makeup wipes which, if I'm honest, always used to burn my eyes when I took my eyeliner off.

I used the Garnier micellar water for a year or so before I, again, stumbled across the micellar water with oil in Boots. It smells amazing, it removes my makeup better than the original formula and the best thing... It hydrates my skin!



I used to hate taking my makeup off as I could feel the moisture leaving my skin with each stroke. I'm also someone who loves to apply eyeliner and eyeshadow so taking my eye makeup off after a night out was, to put it mildly, painful. My eyes felt like they were shrivelling up and I'd wake up with mascara under my eyes the next morning as it was simply too painful to take my mascara off.

Now, with the added oil, I can take my makeup off knowing that my face will be hydrated at the end. No more mascara-related agony as I take my makeup off, I'm comfortable. Yes, it does leave a thin layer of oil on my skin, but I rub it into my skin with my moisturiser so it's all good. I honestly would recommend this to anyone suffering from dry skin as it really does work. And the large bottles last me months, so good value for money as well!


Tip #5 - Body Wash:
This last product is new to me, having only used it a few times, but I found that regular body wash formulas were drying my skin out, and I needed something that put moisture back into my skin while I was showering. My mum suggested buying the Aveeno body wash (here I go again with Aveeno) which I did and I now love!



The formula is very thick and produces a thick lather when worked into the skin. I feel like I am washing with moisturiser rather than soap and I really like how my skin feels when I step out of the shower. The only downsides to this product are 1) the price. Costing nearly £10 it's pricey, but that's for 500ml, and for the peace of mind that your skin will be nice and soft. Also 2) there's no real smell to the body wash. I don't get out of the shower smelling as bad as I went in, I'm clean, but there's no perfumed smell that lets you know you've been in the shower. But that makes sense when you consider that perfume dries the skin, so the lack of smell means more moisture is allowed back into your skin.

My skin will change as I change and I know I will have good moments and bad moments but for now, I know that I have a strong base of products which ensure that enough moisture is reaching my skin as is possible. My skin feels a lot better and looks healthier which is great; if only I could go back in time and tell my 8yr old self that there is a better alternative to smothering Cetraben on my skin...