3 ways you can use your 'My Little Box' bags

3 ways you can use your 'My Little Box' bags

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

I've always been a bit of a hoarder. Not one of those yoghurt lid collectors that end up drowning in their own filth, but the kind of person that often says to themselves 'I might need that' and adds yet another trinket to their endless pile of bits and bobs. Surprisingly, that means that I have rather a lot of items lying around that may not be all that useful. One that shows a lot of promise, however, is my collection of cool little fabric bags that you get included in the My Little Box monthly deliveries. As a long time fan of this hugely creative and versatile beauty and lifestyle box, I've collected quite a number of these cute little bags and have come up with a few ways in which they serve me well. Let's take a look, shall we?  

Use them to contain all of your chargers when you go on holiday

These little sacks are the perfect size to contain all of your wires and chargers when you're off travelling, whether for a long weekend or a month abroad. Wrap us your USB cables with a plastic band and shove your adaptor plug in there and you're good to go! There's no satisfaction like a neat and organised suitcase - for me, anyway.

Use them to store sanitary products

Bulky boxes - who needs them? Pads and tampons (that I like, anyway) always come in bulky cardboard boxes that take up far too much room in my bathroom cupboard than I can afford (it's a cupboard for ants, I'm telling ya') These bags, however, are quite literally the perfect size for hoarding all of your sanitary products in and they take up much less space, as well as being generally less awkward to squeeze into tight spaces.

Use them to organise your handbag

One way that these nifty bags have really come in handy for me is when it comes to adding a bit of order to my handbag. Whenever I switch my preferred handbag around, I often end up just throwing my bits and bobs in willy nilly, which ends up in a huge, unorganised mess and I usually forget or misplace something. As of late, I've been collecting all of those little things that plague any normal handbag - Nurofen, plasters, lip balm, etcetera - and gathering them up into one of these little MLB sacks. This makes for much easier bag switching as I know my basics will always be in the right place. 

What would you use these bags for? Any suggestions? Do let me know!

Isobel x

Want to see what else comes in the MLB deliveries every month? Make sure to follow me on Instagram, where I share the contents of each box every month.

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If I got offered a book deal…

If I got offered a book deal…

Friday, October 28, 2016

As is* quite common these days in the vlogging/blogging community, book deals are being handed out left and right to anyone who publishers consider to have a vast enough audience. Estée Lalonde, Zoella, FleurDeForce, Deliciously Ella - I could go on for days listing the latest ‘internet celebrities’ to sign their own deal. Some of their choices have seemed a tad strange to me in the past - not because said bloggers/vloggers haven’t worked hard, but because generally to write a non-fiction book (which the majority of these new books are) one would first need to be considered an expert in the field about which they are writing, for example, Lisa Eldridge or the Pixiwoo sisters. This has made me wonder - if I was offered a book deal next week, what would my book be about? 

Being in the same age bracket of many of these stars, I have a similar level of life experience as them, and yet I am racking my brain to find anything that I could possibly know enough about to write a whole book on. Surely I haven’t done or learned enough in my 23 years to compile a whole book’s worth of knowledge? It still puzzles me as to why celebrities like Zayn Malik feel that they can even begin to write an autobiography at the tender age of 25.

However, that’s not the point - I’ve got an imaginary book to write and I need to find a subject to cover. Browsing through what I consider to be my strengths and weaknesses, my areas of expertise and any useful life experience that I might have, I’ve come up with the following ideas for my imaginary book:

How to prepare for moving abroad: what you do when you get there, settling into a new way of life/culture/language, etc.

OR

Tips for learning a language

These are the only things that I can think of that I might have enough experience of to advise or guide others. At such a young age I don’t really feel like I have any authority to write about anything else with any conviction - I don’t even feel like 5.5 years of blogging provides me with the knowledge to advise anyone on the subject, even in the form of a blog post, never mind a book that they would need to pay me money for. Maybe that’s just me. 

So, now I pass the question to you. I’d love for you to write a comment below telling me what kind of book you’d write if you miraculously signed a book deal tomorrow, no strings attached. Go into as much detail as you want, I’m dying to read your answers!


* For some bizarre reason Blogger won't let me put a space between 'as' and 'is'. I've racked my brain all day and I can't seem to figure it out, so that's what this little annotation is for!

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Mid year reflections.

Mid year reflections.

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Every year I set myself a 'bucket list' of sorts - fifty goals varying in difficulty, commitment and theme to help me to make the most out of the twelve months that lie ahead. It's been a while since I've visited 2016's list, which happens to be neatly squashed into the last few pages of my (sadly underused) diary, so I thought it was time today to revisit and reevaluate to see how much I've been able to accomplish in the last eight months. 

Some of my completed goals:

1) Read 15+ books (completed 01/06) & 50) Read 25+ books (completed 15/08)

When I was a student, I hardly had any time to sit down and devour a good book of my choosing, so I went years without ever reading a book simply for pleasure. As soon as I graduated last year, I went on Amazon and bought at least a dozen books to enjoy at my own leisure and I haven't stopped reading since. I originally set myself the goal of 15 books knowing that I fell short of that last year with half of the 12 months spent as a final year student. Now that I'm out of education, I've been racing through books at a rate I forgot was possible, and as of yesterday, I've finished my 26th book of the year. I've achieved this by simply reading a few chapters a night (which helps me to fall asleep easier - bonus!) as well as on the odd commute. My next goal? Fifty before the year is up.

12) Keep a job

This was a big deal for me at the beginning of the year because I was being held back by some serious anxiety issues that were preventing me from working full time. Fast forward 8 months and several testing hurdles and I've managed to complete that goal.

13) Complete a spending ban (January and July)

As a long-time beauty addict, I often have the tendency to go a bit crazy and buy more unnecessary products to add to my life-long supply of beauty bits, which is why I try to complete one (if not two) month-long beauty spending bans a year. January was easy because I had received lots of lovely bits for Christmas so my beauty cravings were satisfied, but July was a tad trickier. 

20) Finish the ASOIAF books (completed 21/01)

As I mentioned above, I piled my kindle up with books as soon as I graduated from university and this was the first series that I wanted to tackle. Being a huge fan of Game of Thrones, I knew that I wanted to read the books that inspired the show. Six months after my initial purchase, I turned the final page of the final book and joined the angry mob of fans virtually poking and prodding George R. R. Martin to get the next book published.

23) Visit 5 new areas of London

Even though I was born here, growing up abroad meant that, before this year, I had only been exposed to a few, fairly limited areas of my home city. This year I was determined to change that; I vowed to be more adventurous and within a month or two I had ticked this goal off my list.

31) Improve my Instagram page

Although I haven't had a huge amount of luck with increasing my followers, I've definitely improved my Instagram aesthetic and I have become much more selective about what I post. There's always room for improvement, but I'm happy with the direction I'm taking.

32) Learn a new hairstyle

I've never been good at doing anything with my hair, so I set myself a goal every year to try to learn something new. This year, I've been mastering the art of the dutch braid! 

44) Watch all of the Star Wars movies (completed 21/02)

After watching the newest Star Wars, I decided to go back and watch the previous six movies to complete the set. A handful of nights in with popcorn and wine and I was done. Easy peasy.

So those are some of the goals that I've completed thus far this year. I still have plenty more to go, but I've also been working on some longer term goals that I won't be able to officially complete until the year is up. I'm feeling pretty good about my progress and I love how this list gives me a bit of focus and motivation to concentrate on things other than my career and blog. 

Have you set yourself any goals this year? How has your progress been? Enlighten me in the comments section below :)

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The spark.

The spark.

Friday, July 15, 2016

A spark can come from anywhere. "Y su cabello es largo, son un sol que te antoja" translating to "and her hair is long, it's the sun that you crave" - a line from a new song by Carlos Vives and Shakira called La Bicicleta, another song from Shakira that has managed to captivate me and made me want to get back to using my Spanish to its full potential. It's extremely easy to lose motivation and sometimes it takes something random to put you back on track. I don't know why I always forget, but translating songs always get me excited about a language. Just like in English, I like to actually understand what the song is trying to say rather than blindly singing along to it - it makes me proud to participate in such a colourful, cultural aspect of a language that I have studied for half of my life. 

Sometimes you just have to think back to what inspired you in the first place. I bet you it'll be the spark you've been looking for to get you back on track.

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An antisocial slumber

An antisocial slumber

Monday, July 4, 2016

It has somehow been over a month since my last post and there's been a few reasons for that. Firstly, I didn't want to do any work or blogging whilst I was away for a week in June, but also I felt a certain relief when I didn't push myself into writing and promoting posts. As time went on, I realised that I was blaming myself for not being creative or motivated enough, but in reality, I wasn't really trying. I was (and still often am) filling every silence with stimuli - whether it be a new season on Netflix, an interesting book on my kindle or listening to the same album over and over again - I seem incapable of just being, of allowing my mind to wander. The problem? All the best stuff happens when you aren't trying to distract yourself, but instead are letting thoughts manifest as they will. It's where the magic happens, you see, but our overwhelmingly technological world often keeps us too busy to remember to step back for a minute and let our minds run as they are intended to. I've talked about mindfulness before and how it helped me during my period of unemployment earlier this year, but ever since I started working I've had less time to devote to caring for myself which has led to the practise of mindfulness flying out the window. I guess the lesson here is that no matter how much free time you have, you need to make yourself dedicate some of it to stopping, thinking and 'simply being' (as corny as it may sound) for as little as five minutes a day. Keeping yourself busy is good, but keeping yourself so busy that you don't ever stop and let your thoughts run free can be extremely detrimental for not only your productivity, but your emotional state and pretty much every other area of your life.

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