May Favourites

First, a little note on progress that I've realised in May:

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together” Vincent van Gogh

Sometimes it's necessary to take a step back and view your progress over a series of months. For a long time I've felt as though roots have been grounding me down in one place, and that I wasn't moving forward in my life. And I cannot tell you how incredibly disheartening it is to look upon someone else's life, as they achieve and do amazing things, to feel as though you are stuck in one place. However, those little day-to-day changes I made, so minor and insignificant but constant, built upon each other like red bricks. When I took that step back, I saw that it had formed a magnificent structure, and that my life could not be more different than it was at the beginning of the year. 

So whatever your goal may be, don't monitor how you have changed since yesterday or since last week. Look back at how you've changed in a much bigger picture and you might be surprised to find you haven't been wading through black treacle this whole time.

Onto the favourites: 

Does anybody else suffer from that post-amazing-read depression, where you feel like no book could ever quite compare to the one you've just read? After I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns, I thought I'd never enjoy another book again, but The Girl In The Red Dress exceeded all expectations. It's a truly unique and page-turning read. I snuggled up many an evening in May with this book and a mug of Bluebird Tea Co's Honey Bee Beautiful tea - an antioxidant rich tea with sweet honey notes, and skin calming ingredients like camomile.

Typically my foundation ran out this month and pay-day seemed like an age away, so I started using the Revlon 24 Hour Colorstay Foundation, which is a great dupe for Nars Sheer Glow. I've been using a combination of this Crazy Rumours 100% natural lip balm in Mocha (which smells incredible), with MAC's Morange layered on top for hydrated, bright summer lips. And then I set all my make-up with the Smashbox Primer Water, a product I swear by and have used everyday since December to keep my make-up from melting off my face. 

An amazing discovery in May was this Sweet Pea Pantry Grainy Brainy Pancake Mix which is full of amazing ingredients for the body and mind, like buckwheat flour and flaxseed. Not to mention it contains absolutely nothing artificial and no added sugars or salts. Another discovery was the Grown Ups Read Things They Wrote As Kids podcast (not pictured), which is hilarious and makes me feel slightly less embarrassed about my own tragic pre-teen years. 

And lastly, I haven't stopped wearing these Sweaty Betty Urdhva palm tree print leggings, mainly because I like to pretend I'm actually sitting on a beach in Bali sipping from a coconut when I'm wearing them, not in the stock room at work - a girl can dream.