Hello everybody!

Welcome back to my blog and to last day of blogmas! I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas day and that all of you got what you asked for from Father Christmas! I can't believe that Christmas is supposed to be over already, like where's the time? Seeing that Christmas is over, means that blogmas is over as well, sadly. I have to apologize that there wasn't a blog post going up on Thursday nor Friday, but due to some technical problems I just wasn't able to upload anything at all.
Anyways, let me stop rambling now (I always am!) and let me get started with today's blog post.

For today I have decided to share the goodies that I got for Christmas this year. I'm not doing this to show off or anything in that direction, I decided to do so as I have been seeing a lot of videos on YouTube on that category and everyone always seems to like them.





I was a very lucky girl to receive all of these amazing things, and I am grateful for everything I got. Still I hope all of you had an amazing Christmas, do let me know what you got in the comments down below. If any of you're interested in more details then keep reading!

Things mentioned:

Necklace - Swarovski
Olaf Slippers - from my sister
Worlds cosiest PJ's - from my sister
The Vampire Diaries Season 6
Pure DKNY Perfume
Urban Decay Naked Smoky Palatte
Canon EOS 700D Camera

Mary tobogganing offline xx

Hello everybody,

and welcome back to Blogmas Day 8! Can you believe it? Christmas is in two days, how crazy is that? I can't really believe that Blogmas is supposed to be over in just two days. Anyways, let me stop rambling and let's get started with today's blog post.

Today I'm gonna tell you all about my hair care routine, as well as my hair story (let's pretend that that's an actual thing, okay?). Seeing as I have shared my skincare routine with all of you I felt like it was only right to share this one with you too.

I'm a curly haired girl, so don't think that I have it easy like the girls who are blessed with beautiful straight hair. Uh-uh I'm not, so I'm gonna tell you how I try or attempt to deal with that frizz mop of mine on my head.

Onto my story first. I have tried out pretty much every single brown tone, redy browns, hazelnut brown,  nearly black, I think you get the idea now. And the worst of them all I had my hair bleached two years ago. I looked like the ice queen, even some of my friends called me like that. Probably has been the worst decision of my life, as my hair was just so damaged afterwards that it took a lot of exactly two years to recover again. But as well as I have tired nearly every single colour on my hair, I have tried nearly all of the products that claim to help with damaged hair, that is out there. Let me tell you, nothing and I repeat myself, NOTHING helped my hair to recover except one thing: STAYING AWAY FROM THAT HEAT! In all honesty after I have pushed my flat irons to the very back corner of my drawers, my hair looked like new, so if you suffer from really damaged hair then please, put that hair dryer, flat irons and curling irons away, you will thank me after that. Of course i had a lot of trims as well, as the split ends just needed to be chopped of, I even chopped nearly half of my hair of because I was that annoyed already. Now I'm trying to grow it very long and healthy.



Some products that I love to use at the moment, which I have discovered a few months back, would be the Bumble and Bumble Invisible Oil range, TG S-Factor Smoothing Shampoo and the Serious Conditioner. These are my favourite shampoos and conditioners ever! They all leave my hair silky soft, and I usually switch between them just so my hair doesn't get used to any of them.

Around two times a month (at least I try to do it that often) I use some coconut oil and leave that in my hair for as long as I can. I always wash my hair twice with shampoo to make sure that all of that coconut oil is out of my hair as well as all of that gunk that was in the air and by now in my hair.



For styling purposes I only ever use some hair oil to make sure that my hair remains looking soft and healthy, but nothing else really. For that I've been using the Dove hair oil for absolutely ages.

Most of the time I just let my hair air dry nowadays, but if I'm feeling like I want to have straight hair then I will use a method which requires no heat. Yes, you've read right no heat straight hair, those curly heads out there will know my joy about my discovery! I will link the video to it down below for all of you who are interested in trying it out!

That actually is all I do with my hair so I guess that's going to be it for today. I hope you enjoyed it and let me know some products that you use and you think I might be intrigued to try out. Stay tuned for tomorrow's post, the end of blogmas is near us.

Products mentioned:

Straight Hair Without Heat

Bumble and Bumble Invisible Oil Range

TG S-Factor Smoothing Shampoo

TG S-Factor Serious Conditioner

Mary tobogganing off xx

Hello everybody,


and welcome to Blogmas day 7! If any of you are slightly confused about me writing day 7 instead of 10, as it's the 20th of December, I count the days after my blog posts just so you know.

For today I decided to have a little chat about the real Christmas time with you guys.

Seeing as Christmas is only 5 days away from us, so nearly upon us (which is so exciting!) I thought it would only be right to talk about a real problem in our society.

Nowadays when people hear "Christmas is coming" they freak out and get stressed out. Why? Because the only thing that the majority of people are thinking about is that they have to buy presents, money, stress, a lot of people in the streets and again stress, stress, stress. But was that the case all the time? No, it wasn't, actually not at all and there we can see that people have lost the real knowledge what Christmas time is about.

Pre-Christmas time is all about spreading love and joy. The quote "It's the most beautiful time of the year" is true indeed. People need to be reminded again that spending time with your family and friends, being happy and enjoying the sight of the beautiful things of this time of the year is what Christmas time is all about. Just imagine all the Christmas lights, mulled wine, mince pies, and smiles on children face's when they receive their most wanted toy they asked for from Father Christmas. Walking around the streets in London, Brighton or wherever you might be, looking around you and seeing the Christmas decorations and happy faces of people must be a few of the most beautiful things to discover.



So how do you prevent stress situations when buying Christmas presents? I thought I would include some tips that I think are useful to know when going to the malls.

• Write a list 
  This can be so helpful, especially when you aren't too sure what to buy some people, as well as it can be really handy getting it out during shopping so you can tick off the things you've already got.
  
  
• Think positive
  
  Sounds odd, but when you go shopping with the thought "Oh my god, there are going to be so many people, so much stress." already in your mind, then things are more likely to actually get stressful. So instead of thinking like that, plant some thoughts in your head that are positive, just like "Yes, I'm gonna get some presents for my friends and they are going to be so happy about it!".
• 
  
• Make a plan
• 
  Somewhat related to the point writing a list. If you want to avoid stressful situations then making a plan is a really important step. Just walking outside without knowing where to start is only gonna add bad to a stressful situation so make sure you have planned where to go and where to get some presents.

Keep in mind that these tips are only going to help yourself, and not reducing the amount of people in the streets.

Hello my loves!

Long time no see, well at least longer than it should've been and I am apologizing for that with all my heart! But sadly I wasn't able to upload this Wednesday out of personal reasons. I do hope that all of you are still enjoying Blogmas as much as I am, so let's get started with today's, shall we?

Today on Blogmas Day 6, I have come up with the most delicious Hot Chocolate you will have ever tasted, and you can trust me on that one. It's not that I pretend to be any better than Starbucks or Costa for that matter, but I have attempted to be nearly as good as them and personally think I did a good job! You know that time when it's all cold outside and the only thing you want to do is snuggle up in the blanket, watching Christmas movies and drinking a Hot Chocolate, well this is a tastier and Christmas themed one for you instead of your standard Hot Chocolate. And if you are anything like me and always wanted that one Hot Chocolate of Santa Clause of the movie "The Santa Clause", then this one's the one I imagine it to be!



What you will need for the ultimate Christmas Hot Chocolate:

1 cup Hazelnut Milk (or any milk you prefer)
3 heaped tbsp Cocoa or Cacao Powder
1-2 tsp Ground Cinnamon
1/4 tsp Ground Cardamom
Rice syrup
Vanilla Extract

Tools:

Whisk
Medium sized sauce pan
The most Christmasy Mug you can find!

How to create a Father Christmas style Hot Chocolate:

Put the hazelnut milk into a sauce pan on a medium heat, and wait until it's hot. Then stir in all the dry ingredients first with a whisk and make sure everything is nice and blended and that there are no clumps. After that add as much rice syrup as you want and a little drop of vanilla extract to give it even more flavour.

And there you have it, wasn't that easy? It honestly tastes so good, even my family likes it and that says something as my mum is usually not a fan of Hot Chocolate at all (crazy I know!).
Please can we all take a moment to admire this mug? Because I am in love with it!



Now that's going to be it for today guys. I know it was a short and sweet one but for the next Blogmas blog post I have some exciting things coming up so don't miss out on these one's and make sure to come back for the next days! As always I hope you have enjoyed today's blog post make sure to tag me on Twitter, Tumblr or Pinterest if you recreate it!

Mary tobogganing off xx

Hello everybody,

and welcome to Blogmas Day 5! Well time's running away and there is only a bit more than a week left until Christmas, how crazy  is that? But we are making the most out of it and enjoying blogmas together, right? Right, so let's get started with the baking.

As you may have already guessed by the title today I am going to share my absolute favourite recipe for gingerbread cookies/biscuits with you. This recipe is from one of my most favourite persons, Tanya Burr, she made a video about these last year which I will link down below. So grab yourself a pen and paper, and start writing down your shopping list.

You will need:

110g Butter
100g Brown Sugar
1/2 cup Golden Syrup
340g plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom

Icing:

400g Icing Sugar
1 Tbs melted butter
3-4 Tbs unsweetened almond milk

Plus some extra decorations, you can get all  creative at this point!

Method:
Preheat your oven to 190° Celsius.

Firstly beat the butter and brown sugar together in a large mixing bowl, after that is all combined add the golden syrup and stir in with a wooden spoon until it's looking very soft. Now add the flour to your mixture, I did this in two half's as everything can get a bit messy and hard to stir, so take your time with it! Add all of the spices and the bicarbonate of soda and stir in as well. At this stage it should get quite hard to stir, so now your hands will have to get involved to form a dough, when you have formed the dough put it in the fridge for ten minutes.



In the mean time you can play Mother Hulda and let it snow on your surface so later the dough won't stick to it. You can also do the washing whilst you're waiting for the dough.



After 10 minutes it's time to roll out our dough on the surface and start cutting shapes out with cookie cutters, you can go for a theme here and only use stars I decided to use stars, a snowflake, a Christmas tree and a gift. Make sure that your dough isn't thicker than max. 1 inch, otherwise they won't bake as quick. Keep rolling the dough out and cutting out your cookies until there is no more dough left. Put all of the cookies on a baking tray lined with some grease proof paper and put them in the oven for 10 minutes, this is depending on your oven yours could take longer or shorter, so have an eye on them!




When finished baking let them cool completely or the icing will just run off. Speaking of icing, it's now time to make it. Just simply combine all of the ingredients and mix them together until a paste forms. Make sure that the paste is more on the thicker side and not as runny so it will stick to the cookies. Take a piping bag or just a freezer friendly bag and put the icing inside and pipe the icing around the edges of the cookies, or fill them out completely. If you have any decorations that you want to use then put them straight after the icing on as this icing dries hard very quickly!

And there you have it, your finished gingerbread cookies/biscuits. They taste absolutely amazing, my whole family are huge fans of them just as I am! If you give them a go please let me know over on twitter, I would love to see all of your recreations and make sure to tag Tanya as well as she is the owner of this recipe! Also if any of you know an expert for icing or you are one yourself, please tell me how you do it or just let me know someone who has some good tips as I am rubbish with that and probably the worst icing decorator ever!

 Like, how adorable is this mug? I am in LOVE!

Tanya's video: Cute DIY Christmas Gifts

As always I hope you've enjoyed this blog post, if you have got any wishes or suggestions for Blogmas then let me know in the comments down below.

Mary tobogganing off xx 

Hello my loves!

How's everyone doing? Hope that the lot of you are in a very festive mood because today it's time for Blogmas day 4! *insert melody of your favourite Christmas song here*

We all know how tempting Christmas time can be with its christmas movies, the hot chocolates, gingerbread and cosy blankets to snuggle up on the sofa, right? But sometimes it's nice to get out of the house and share your joy of festivity with everyone else, Christmas parties are perfect for that. So I created a makeup look for a Christmas party which I would wear and already wore to a Christmas party.



Starting off with priming my eyes using the Urban Decay Primer Potion in Eden and setting it with Mac's Brulé. For eyeshadows I'm using the Naked 2 palette and the Collection (is it still 2000?) Little Mix Love palette. As my base colour I'm using the shade "Suspect" from the Naked 2 palette, by placing it all over my eyelid. To deepen this up I'm taking the shade "Dazzling Brown" from the Little Mix Love palette and put it over 2/3 of my eyelid. Then I make sure that there are no harsh lines by taking a fluffy blending brush and start to blend the edges. After that I curl my lashes and put on my favourite mascara which is Benefit's Roller Lash. That's the eyes done, easy wasn't it?




Onto the base: I already applied my moisturiser (if you're interested in which one I used, my last two blog posts will tell you all about my skincare routine) now I am taking Mac's Studio Finish concealer to cover up all those nasty blemishes and putting a little bit on my nose as mine tends to get red quite easily. Then I'm taking the L'oreal Paris True Match foundation and start off with a thin layer all over my face and blending it in with my Zoeeva Silk Finish Brush. This foundation is great for daytime wear by putting just one thin layer over your face, as well as it can be night time appropriate by building up the coverage!

To cover up my dark circles I'm using the Rimmel Wake Me Up concealer in Light, I'm putting this in a triangle shape under my eyes to highlight a little bit, to blend it in I'm using the Real Techniques Expert Face brush. To set all of the base I'm taking the Bourjois Healthy Balance Powder and put a sheer layer of it over my T-zone and a little bit on my cheeks so it's easier to put the bronzer and blusher on. Speaking of bronzer, I'm using the Sleek Contour Kit and apply the bronzer in a 3 shape around my face, forehead, cheekbones and the jaw line. Now I'm taking Rockateur by Benefit and apply it to my cheeks by brushing it backwards and not onto the apples of my cheeks, this will help to slim your face as it's the same trick that a bronzer does. Last step for our base is highlighting, here I'm using the same Sleek Contour Kit!

For my brows I take the Soap & Glory Archery pencil, and a bit of brown eyeshadow from my Urban Decay Naked 2 Basics palette. To set those as well as everything else, I'm using the L'oreal Brow Artist Plumper in Dark.

Now it's lipstick time! If you don't feel comfortable with wearing a red lipstick you can just go for a nude lip, but as it's christmas time I think it's only right to crack out the red one's. I'm using an oldie but a goodie, Mac's Viva Glam 1.



That's the finished look guys, I do hope you enjoyed it, if you're interested in seeing another Christmas party look then leave your suggestions in the comments down below!



Mary tobogganing offline xx

Hello everybody!

I hope everyone's enjoying Blogmas with thegoodway so far, as I am really putting all of my heart into this and thoroughly enjoying it myself. Have you already watched a lot of christmas movies? I did for sure, you might know this already if you're following me over on twitter. But anyways let's start with today's blog post!

Today I will tell you all about my night time skincare routine, last blog post was my morning routine so this is the following for that!

Now at night time you have got a lot more time than in the morning, so here you've got more time to spend on your skin.

First things first I take out my contact lenses to make sure that I don't get any dirt or makeup on them whilst removing it. (No photo needed for that, as I am disgusted by it myself!)



To start off with removing my makeup I'm using the Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish Hot Cloth Cleanser, phew that's a mouthful, this stuff is my absolute favourite of all time, though I have to admit I haven't tried that many cleansers, actually the only things I used to use where micellar waters which I have gone off massively now. Though I like using the Simple micellar water if I have been wearing a lot of makeup that day just to make sure that all of the makeup's gone and my skin is squeaky clean. I massage the cleanser all over my face and remove it with a damp cloth to get the most use out of it.

No shame for my panda face, please!




Next step is to wash my face with the Body Shop Tea Tree Facial Wash, the same that I use in the morning, I always double cleanse as I think it's way more effective and better for your skin. As I am still in my teenager years I'm naturally prone to getting blemishes and this wash helps a lot with cutting those down.



At this point I love using the Simple Kind to Skin Toner, it's really soothing as the name would suggest and calms my skin down.



Another great thing for reducing blemishes is the La Roche Posay Serozinc toner, I use this every night and I have noticed a dramatic difference ever since I started using it.



Then for obvious reasons I am brushing those teeth again with my Colgate toothpaste. After that I jump into the shower and moisturise my body.

When my body is all moisturised and I've got my PJ's on it's time to do my skincare.
If I have got any blemishes that night then I will use, again a La Roche Posay thing, the Effaclar Duo Plus. A few months back I used to use this all over my face as I had really bad skin but now I only ever use it when really needed as my skin just got really used to it and didn't work for me properly anymore.

After that I put on my eye cream, and again my trusty Kiehl's Creamy Eye Treatment with Avocado, I just absolutely love this stuff!

Then it's time to put on my oil, I am using the Kiehl's Midnight Recovery Concentrate which I am loving at the moment. This is again a product that I didn't really know how to work with but I think I have found my way how it's best to apply. Now where it's winter time I use it every single night but if my skin doesn't feel that dry then I will use my Origins Make A Difference Plus moisturiser.



For the very last steps I use a lip balm, usually the same as I used in the morning, and the second before I go to bed I use a hand cream, as my hands get really dry during winter and actually all year round.

So, that's it for my night time skincare routine, I hope you enjoyed today's blog post, as always. Please let me know what you use at night I really do want to try out some new things, so leave your suggestions in the comments down below!

Mary tobogganing off xx