Are you ready for a chatty ramble with an ootn thrown in there to cement my point? Get your morning tea/coffee and turn your computer monitor away from your boss so they can’t see you perusing. Good.
I’ve always been a bit of strange one, I never really “got” or enjoyed Summer. I found the Summer holidays at school stretched out for what felt like months and months and with only one week abroad for a family holiday, I found it difficult to fill my time. Obviously, I spent hours on end playing with my barbies (I didn’t stop playing with barbies until just before my 13th birthday sshhh) and I did go to the odd few weeks of tennis camp or something similar, but I just didn’t enjoy the lack of routine. Since I went away a few weeks ago I’ve found it particularly difficult to get back into the Summer city swing of things; events, meetings, sticky tubes, full coverage foundation, hair spray, hair dryer, tongs (!) and so on just felt so unappealing when I was able to conduct my life and business from the comfort of a beach for 7 blissful days without having to deal with the faff of any of that.
However, making a few physical changes to my appearance, weirdly got my but into gear and now I feel more focussed than ever, and truly thriving and loving Summer in the city. As I’m off on holiday in two weeks again I will have had just under a month of a true London Summer and this is how I managed to rid myself of my beach chick vibes and get seriously productive.
As I have a ton of old highlights and balayage in my hair (I went for the ombre look and got progressively lighter starting early 2010) when I go on holiday I return with golden beachy locks no matter how dark the last batch of dye I threw on it was, add a tan, a minimal makeup routine and a whole load of tatty threaded and beaded bracelets picked up locally and needless to say I don’t come home in the right frame of mind to tackle London.
By darkening my hair back to the dark brown that I’m trying to now maintain, starting to adopt a uniformed makeup look (Chanel Vitalumiere Aqua, Makeup Forever Full Cover concealer, Maybelline gel liner and Smashbox Full Exposure palette), painting my nails a Summery but not holiday colour (light peach, coral,nude, cherry red – no neons) and wearing Summer appropriate but not holiday attire, I’ve managed to really embrace being home and getting my teeth sunk into not just work on my blog and youtube, but wedding planning and going to Russian classes twice a week. I feel less like a mopey teenager for wishing I were elsewhere, and more like a productive adult! Luckily, the spell of September should be enough to break me out of my next post holiday blues (more on September magic coming in a few weeks though – post and video 😉 ).
Above outfit –Â Dress Zara (similar below), shoes Zara (similar below) bag CHANELÂ
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I’m glad you’ve got your groove back. I really love that second pic of you. This hair colour suits you perfectly.
I absolutely adore summer, I drink it in greedily and in Europe I definitely cannot and do not get enough ;). I am from South Africa, enough said.
I love how quiet the Netherlands gets during the summer and strangely enough that helps me be super productive…far fewer distractions. I generally catch up on quite a few things I haven’t had time for during the rest of the year and just feel so chilled doing them. And because the days feel endless, there is still plenty of time for relaxation.
Different strokes for different folks, uh?I look forward to seeing what you get up to for your next holiday. Finaly, my three weeks are also coming up!!