Pizza, makeup, and homework of course

Thought I’d do a quick ‘what I’ve been up to lately’ post seeing as I’ve been posting mainly OOTDs recently! My little brother has a german exchange student staying with us at the minute, and last Friday evening we took him out for a meal as a family. Everyone loves pizza so we went to a favourite Italian, Tiggis.

As well as the early birthday present I treated myself to, my mum also bought me this Clinique Black Honey Beauty as a little early gift. Even though this product is said to suit everyone, I was a little skeptical of the almost black lip colour at first (Halloween was over last week after all) but after trying a sample in Boots I fell in love. The shade is beautifully sheer and goes to a lovely warm plummy tone. ‘Black Honey Beauty’ as a set includes a matching nail varnish, lip gloss and mascara for only £7 or so more than the individual lipstick, so in my mind it was a perfect birthday gift!

Now back to the less exciting stuff I’ve been up to! As I’m in my final GCSE year, spending quite a bit of time revising/ doing homework is unavoidable, but I enjoy my subjects so I hope revising shouldn’t get too painful. As revision goes, I’ve found that mindmaps in some shape or form work by far the best for me in terms of solidifying information in my brain. Their ‘add as you go’ nature and logical format (e.g. Writing examples and case studies as ‘branches’ from a particular topic) helps me to link everything together and check my knowledge. Colour coordinating types of information is really useful too, and I’m far more likely to remember something if it looks pretty! This method has worked for me in the past, and I’ll probably share more about how I do and don’t revise nearer exam time.

And yeah, as you can see plain exercise books isn’t an option for me! I’d been doodling all over the front covers for years, thinking I was being original and all, then I stumbled upon the phenomenon that is Zentangle. Maybe I wasn’t so original after all! Still, I find these kind of geometric drawings kinda therapeutic to do, and somehow I concentrate better with a wandering pen in hand!

You may have noticed I’ve changed the layout of my blog; still fairly minimalist but I’m working on prettifying it a bit more and adding a few things! I was wondering if you guys could help me a little. What type of blog layout do you like best? Do you like to see Instagram feeds etc in the sidebar or do you prefer to stick with just blog posts? Are a search box and categories menus etc. helpful? Please leave a comment and let me know what you like to see on a blog – I’d love for jolihouse to be as nice to read as possible!

Lily x