January Favourites | 2021

Hello 2021! Oh goodness, doesn't that feel strange to say! I think I mentioned in my last post, although I was going to take a little break from blogging at the start of the year I did plan to return in January. I won't lie, I wanted to return a lot sooner than this however I've been having a difficult time with my head and feeling quite low. It's been a busy month and I've been trying hard to keep myself going and take one step at a time to help my mind but some days it just grasps me harder than I can manage and knocks me down. Alas, here we are at the beginning February! As I noted in my A List Of Aspirations For 2021 | My Goals post, doing my monthly favourites was something I was really excited to commit to and something I had wanted to do for a long time so it only felt right to return post-January with my first January favourites post! I won't lie, I was a little worried I'd have nothing to talk about come the end of the month but I seemed to have loved and collected a lot more favourites than I imaged I would have throughout January. From beauty picks, to vegan food finds, style pieces and a TV show (she says with amazement, being the girl who is rarely ever into watching a TV series). 

Without further ado, I give you, all the things I have been loving this January...

Zao Aloe Vera Mascara

As I've mentioned in a couple of posts previously and as featured in my My Christmas Wish List | 2020, the Zao Aloe Vera mascara has long become a holy grail of mine in my makeup collection. Throughout January I've been wearing it on it's own, bare faced, to perk up my lashes and add a little bit of life into my face on busier days or days where I haven't felt like doing my makeup (most likely when I'm in work). It adds such the perfect length and curl (helped by another favourite mentioned below) for me to my lashes and just adds a little bit of 'lifefullness' to my alien naked-faced self! Some days it's lasts and holds a curl really well but it does depend on the weather and it has been a little hit and miss with some of the extreme Winter weather conditions we've been having lately. Never the less it is still my most favourite mascara to date!

Kiko Lash Curlers

As nodded to above, my Kiko lash curlers have been making the perfect combination for my bare faced and fluttery lash days. They just give my mascara that extra level of oomph. As The Anna Edit often describe her lashes, I too am the owner of a pair of straight cut, elephant like lashes that you'll never see a natural curl in the light of day in. I've had my Kiko lash curlers for quite some time now and remember purchasing them after seeing Amelia Liana rave about how incredible a dupe they were for the, at the time, holy grail Shu Uemura lash curlers. I'd hazard a guess they've been with me maybe seven years now and they're still as good as new! I've been using them most days to lift and curl my lashes pre-mascara application and even sometimes on busier days just to add a curl to my lashes and nothing more. Out of the handful of eyelash curlers I've tried in my life my Kiko ones are by far the best I've used and my stubborn lashes hold the curl they create very, very well - and that's quite the achievement for my lashes! At the moment, the Kiko eyelash curlers are £4.19 on the Kiko website and that's with 30% off so even when not on sale I would say they are a great bargain!

UpCircle Coffee Face Scrub - Floral Blend

Another beauty product that has truly wowed me this month was a new product I have been trying, the UpCircle Coffee Face Scrub - Floral Blend. In the market for a new facial exfoliator I was looking for something a little more budget friendly to try in replacement of my Body Shop Drops of Youth Youth Liquid Peel. The new vegan and zero waste conscious skincare brand my friend had recently introduced me to came to my attention and I decided to give their products ago, while on the hunt for a new exfoliator to try. The results did not disappoint! They reviews were a little mixed but mostly as people found the scent of the coffee scrubs a little unusual and the product a bit messy to work with, plus otherwise a small minority seeming to dislike the grain of scrub, saying they felt it was a little too harsh. Other than that the Floral Blend scrub had rave reviews and I decided to give it a chance. 

Well was I wowed! 

It's definitely a uniquely scented product, with the coffee and floral mix, but there's something about it I find quite lovely and relaxing. Although a little messy at first (as highlighted in a few reviews) I soon mastered the knack to successfully extracting product from the tube in an easy, mess free fashion so that was not a trouble to me at all. Albeit a little on the rougher side of facial exfoliators I have tried, the UpCircle Coffee Scrub leaves me with THE most gorgeously baby smooth and supple skin post use. I was bamboozled after my first try! The scrub works wonders and I find if applied gently can be gentle on the skin. The essential oils seem to leave a beautiful, plump nourished barrier to my skin post use and, being very much acne prone, the essential oils in the product don't seem to cause any fuss with my acne too! No flare ups, hallelujah! Acne prone person bonus! At the moment I'm trying to use up the last of my Body Shop Youth Peel but I am really missing using my UpCircle scrub. It's a little pricier than your average drugstore priced exfoliator but still a more affordable choice than my decently (but slightly more luxuriously priced) Body Shop Youth Liquid Peel and with offers (I purchased mine from Holland and Barrett) I feel you get a decent amount of product for the price.

The Purbeck Apothecary Rose and Frankincense Rejuvenating Hand Cream

Well it wouldn't be Winter without a hand cream! Or any time of the year for that matter when it comes to me. My hands have been a real pesky pain lately and although I'm not so much battling plastic glove-induced contact dermatitis anymore, frequent alcohol gelling has left my hands worn out and thread bare. The Purbeck Apothecary Rose and Frankincense Rejuvenating Hand Cream was a very kind gift I received from Mr. Clause (my mum) this Christmas just gone and it has been a absolute dream to use! I had never heard of the Purbeck Apothecary before and my mum chose it because it was a small Etsy-based shop and for it's links to one of our most favourite places, Dorset. The cream had a lovely thick yet water-based and light texture. It absorbed swiftly into my hands on application but left a really nourished lipid-like barrier to my skin. It was soothing in tired cracks and bleeding places and helped things heal together. Coming in a glass jar made it feel extra luxurious too as well as being marvellously waste conscious. The Rose and Frankincense gave the cream the most blissful scent and every time I applied it I just found it so relaxing to use. This has been my dedicated desk and night-time hand cream of the month and just a dream to use. It is comparable to some of the best hand creams I have tried in healing up and protecting my hands and just luxurious every use. I most intrigued to try more from The Purbeck Apothecary after how splendid their Rose and Frankincense Rejuvenating Hand Cream has been.

Satin Pearled Headband

My satin pearled headband had been on my wish list for quite some time since I saw it at our local garden centre. Since very kindly being gifted one for Christmas I have been nothing but obsessed to wear it. It's so easy to style and so effortless to wear, I adore the vintage touch to it, which has paired perfectly with the undertones of 1940s hints and styles for Autumn Winter 2020/21. It's also been the perfect pick me up for those days where my hair is a little on the flat side and adds that perfect touch of put together, without stress. I've been wearing it at almost any given opportunity! It has become a staple of me!

Aldi Vegan Chocolate Melt in the Middle Puddings

Oh and I digress back to the Christmas food. ❤ Being mine and my boyfriend's second Christmas very much alone this last year we did pretty well at evenly distributing the Christmas food shop for 2020. Although we were much more reserved with our Christmas food treats we still very luckily ended up having lots of treats left over to enjoy, including these Aldi vegan chocolate melt in the middle puddings. I picked these up for myself and there was the choice of chocolate or caramel. A melt in the middle chocolate pudding has long been my Christmas pudding of choice of years gone by with my family for and since going vegan I have missed them dearly but alas, Aldi answered my prayers! And they did not disappoint! Although dinky, they were the perfect cosy choc sponge with a warm melted molten middle and every bite was a treat. I'm sure these didn't have a limited edition sticker on and I'm still seeing them in the shop on our weekly food trips so I've already planned to get some caramel ones to try for either valentines or my birthday.

Oh, being vegan just gets more and more exciting every day in the food department these days!

Aldi Chocolate Churros

Another Aldi bite-sized dream I tried for New Years (and also ended up having left over as a little treat for the dreary January month) was Aldi's accidentally vegan chocolate churros. Well first of all I've never had a churro in my life so this was quite the delight. Other than that, prepare for warm, light, doughy, sugar coated goodness with warm melted chocolate just waiting inside to surprise you per bite. I have no words. I am now churro obsessed and so made up I can now have them being vegan! I would highly recommend these for a cosy chocolatey indulgence and to maybe possibly hide them at the bottom of the freezer all for yourself (lips were licked). 

Exploring with Fighters - YouTube

Other than beauty, style and good food (the blogger's holy trinity 😇 ) I've actually had a couple of lifestyle favourites, in the form of things to watch! Of course YouTube is no surprise and urbex exploration is something that probably not many people, even those who know me really well, know that I LOVE. I've been subscribed to Exploring With Josh for years now and he is still my all time favourite exploring channel. Recently though, following a collab Josh did, I have been obsessed with Exploring with Fighters. I haven't watched one of their videos in a couple of weeks at the current (side note - I currently have one on now in the background now while proof reading this post, it didn't take long!) but I think that may be due to the fact that I've watched almost every video of theirs over the month of January! I think I'd watched them briefly in the past but never quite got into their videos and in all honesty thought they were a little gimmicky but rediscovering the channel after seeing Josh's collab with them has fuelled my obsession and I have been hooked! Dan creates some of the very best urbex exploration videos I have seen on YouTube. I love the history in each of their videos, whether it be forgotten asylums or an old abandoned house, the history Dan shares of each place in his videos is mesmerizing. There's a little bit of something for everyone, with a bit of paranormal, a bit of "light entertainment" shall we say, and just spooky forgotten history in documenting all these lost abandoned places around the world and right hereon our doorstep. I've always had a slight obsession with all things haunting and the terrifying and the eerie nature of old hospitals and the old fashion phenomenon of mental institutions. If you're into things a little spooky, exploration and eerie history I would highly recommend you check out the channel. There's quite the comedy factor to some of the videos too and some moments just have me in stitches and more than often than not it's usually Andrew trying to climb through something, haha. I love that their based in the UK and especially so up north! (It's too exciting when I stumble across a video of theirs and they are exploring close to home!).

Wandavision - Disney Plus

Another also slightly eerie and vintage one to watch that I have been LOVING - and I mean loving; it's everything Ellie in one; vintage, a little bit spooky and The Avengers - is Wandavision. As I summed up in one sentence, it's everything I love stitched together in one eye candy of a show to watch! Captain America has long been my favourite Avenger, with my favourite story (all things vintage and a little bit of classic romance), since I was introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the vintage focus in Wandavision likewise screams to my vintage loving heart! Again there's a touch of romance, of whom I'm now I'm obsessed with Wanda and Vision's relationship, and of course that very creepy, spooky twist, the type that messes with your mind a little and no one can quite decipher what exactly is causing all the mystery. If you're a little bit obsessed with Marvel, all things vintage or a good creepy, almost haunting twist to a show I'd highly recommend giving it a watch if you have Disney +. It's a treat I can assure you!

And that's everything I have been loving in January!

Well cheers to my first every January favourites post and here's to a whole year of my monthly favourites to come! As the year goes on and I continue to work on myself and my mind I'm looking forward to playing with more beauty each month and am excited to see where my creativity takes me and the happy moments I have to document and treasure ahead. A little side note and ode to a certain blogger I love, who just so happens to be a very lovely friend of mine, ... Miss Hanna Mai very kindly and very marvelously remembered I commented on one of her blog posts late last year (40 Blog Post Ideas Beauty, Fashion, Lifestyle & Dance to be precise, yes I did have to go back and search through when she reminded me!) that I was planning to complete my monthly favourites for each month this year and hinted that we should commit to doing it together. Before I was planning to share this post, Hanna asked if I would like to collaborate with her in posting our monthly favourites together. Unfortunately due to the unforeseen circumstances I noted at the start of the post I wasn't able to collab with Hanna for this monthly favourites however I would love nothing more than you to still go and check out her January favourites post regardless. If you've enjoyed mine it'll be an additional little treat hoping over to hers to read too! 

Okay, one question for you now. What's one thing you've been loving this January? Comment below!

Until my next post,

Ellie Xx

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