The Empties Challenge - October Edition

I realised while moving, that I have an obscene amount of toiletries that I've managed to collect. Toiletries that I am not in the habit of using, so they just pile up in boxes and drawers...which is an issue when moving from a 3 bedroom house into a 2 bedroom flat with limited storage space...

I thought it could be fun to challenge myself to try and use some of them each month to firstly, empty them and create space; and secondly to get back into the habit of looking after myself.

Through October I've been collecting my empties, and this is what I've managed to clear out:


1: Nivea Invisible roll on deodorant



I bought this roll on to use when travelling via airplane. I've actually had this for a while because I prefer sprays, so I'm glad I've finally used it all up!! I like Nivea - it's good to my skin and causes no irritation. This product is advertised as 48h deodorant which is invisible on black and white clothing. I didn't notice any marks on my clothing at all, however I wouldn't say this lasted for 48 hours...so I'd give it a solid 3.5/5.





2: I Love...Strawberries and Cream shower gel

I received this shower gel as a gift, and it was one of the deceptively biggest bottles of shower gel I have ever seen. It has taken months to finish it! However, I am finally to the end of it. I love the scent of this product - it smells sweet, but not too overpowering. It foams up nicely on my sponge, and creates a silky bubbly wash for my skin. There was nothing I disliked about this product, and it's excellent value for money! (PS - It's available from Superdrug...)




3: Neutrogena Visibly Clear Pore & Shine face scrub

I love face scrubs. I'll always go for a face scrub over a face wash - I really enjoy the clean feeling after scrubbing all of the dirt and dead skin off my face. I've never used this scrub before, and at the time there was a 3 for 2 offer so I bought a couple of them plus the pore & shine face wash. I have combination skin, so my face gets quite oily through the day and causes breakouts. This scrub actually did help. It's a mattifying scrub, so thankfully it did the job it was designed to do! I noticed my skin was much clearer when I used it regularly, however overuse made my skin dry out - as you would expect. I liked this product a lot, so I'm glad I have another one to get through!







That's it for October - barring hand wash and toothpaste. I haven't made much of a dent in my mounds of products, but I'll keep you updated for the end of November!

Life Updates

Hi!

It's been a while. No fault but my own on that one - soz.

I feel like a lot has happened in the past couple of months...here's a rundown of what I've been up to:

• I moved out of the house Andrew and I were sharing together.
• I moved halfway across the country into a flat (with Andrew).
• The move was not very well planned out, and took a lot of time over several weekends to get everything moved across.
• I successfully hired, drove, and crashed a transit van.
• Lots of reading - so many reviews to write up and post!
• Work got very busy very quickly - peak trading season is upon us.
• I joined a gym
• Found and joined a new Slimming World group
• Went to Ireland
• Made several Ikea trips to kit out our flat
• My car failed her MOT and is for sale...Click here if you'd like to adopt a wonderful little runner... 

  

  I love my little Tallulah! Sad to let her go.

• Found & bought a new car
• Named new car. 'Hogan' in case you were wondering.
• Had a spa day
• had a couple of haircuts - discovered a hairdresser who is really enthusiastic about cutting curly hair, epic win for me!
• Did, and am still doing, a hell of a lotta unpacking

Thought I might have a small pitiful list but actually it turned out to be quite long! Go me. Busy bee.

You can expect some more regular posts from me now that I've settled into our flat, there's not too much more unpacking to do! Let me know if you want me to elaborate on anything above, happy to throw in a random life post!

Anywho...I promised to get a box unpacked tonight...SEEYA.

Boop's Bookshelf: The Outsiders by S E Hinton

The Outsiders checks of 'A book by a female author' in my 2015 reading challenge.

The Author

S E Hinton was born in Oklahoma, and had always had a love of reading. However the reading material was not to her liking, so she wrote young adult stories that did reflect what she thought they should be. The Outsiders was her first novel, and a great writing career followed it. 

Synopsis

The outsiders tells the story of two rival gangs - the Greasers, and the Socials (Socs for short). The story is told from the perspective of Ponyboy Curtis - one of the Greasers. A gang rivalry goes too far, and Ponyboy finds himself on the run with his friend, contemplating what differences there really are between the two groups; and the importance of family. Despite the similar unhappy situations of both groups, nothing changes and the rivalry continues between the two groups throughout the book. Some huge scale events transpire, and we follow Ponyboy through these, and into his reconciliation with his brothers.

My Thoughts

I like this story. Once I became familiar with the dialect of Ponyboy and the way things were described, I found it to be a quick and enjoyable read. Things escalate very quickly at the beginning of the book, which took me by surprise, and the rest of the story is generally dealing with the fallout from the beginning of the book. I found myself drawn into the world depicted in the novel, and wanted to find out what happened next. Needless to say, because of this I flew through the book. I was a bit disappointed with the story ending. More or less everything about the characters situation stayed the same, except for some changes in the way the brothers relate to each other and look after each other. I left the novel feeling a little dissatisfied with the ending, but otherwise I enjoyed it. 

My Rating...

3 stars
Enjoyable but unsatisfactory

Boop's Bookshelf: Sex and Bacon by Sarah Katherine Lewis

Sex and Bacon checks off 'A nonfiction book' in my 2015 Reading Challenge. 

The Author

Sarah Katherine Lewis is a previous sex worker, who turned to writing about her experiences, and writes for a sex advice column. She has written two novels - Indecent: how I Make it and Fake it as a Girl for Hire and Sex and Bacon: Why I Love Things That are Very, Very Bad for Me. In both she writes about her experiences in the sex industry, feminism, and body confidence - interspersed with battles with her demons and favourite recipes.

Synopsis

Similar to a memoir or biography, this book is written by the author looking back on their life. Lewis reminisces about a time when she was working in the sex industry, and moving on from that into writing. There are interwoven themes through the book, most notably body image, depression, and sex.

My Thoughts

When I first started reading this book, I loved it. It was scandalous, candid, and funny. I enjoyed reading about the author's experiences and found her views on the beauty industry really interesting. However, The more of it I read, the more contradictions I noticed...One moment Lewis would say one thing, the next she would say the opposite. Which was irritating after it happened a few times. The writing style is short and choppy - almost like it was thrown together as she thought of things, or it was several short articles put together to form a book. Having said that, I still read it cover to cover and enjoyed it regardless!

My rating....

3 Stars

Entertaining, but a little inconsistent!

Boop's Bookshelf: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

The Luminaries check off 'A book by someone under 30' in my 2015 reading challenge.

The Author

Eleanor Catton is a Canadian-born New Zealand author. Her second novel The Luminaries won the Man Booker Prize in 2013, crowning her the youngest person to have won the award. Other than The Luminaries, Catton has also released the novel The Rehearsal, and some short stories published in various works.

The Synopsis

The Luminaries is essentially a mystery novel. Set in 1866 at the goldmines in Hokitika. We enter into the story with Walter Moody, who is new to the town and the strange affairs that have been occurring. He happens across a secret meeting of 12 men, and is pulled into piecing together events as each man recants his tale. What follows is an erratic story told from several different points of view, giving an overview of the crimes that transpired and who is actually responsible for them. The crimes in question, all revolve around the disappearance of a young, rich gold digger, a prostitutes multiple collapses, and the murder of a poor man. Everything points towards a ship's captain, or at least seems to.

My Thoughts

I really liked how the reader is brought into the story with another character. It's a good technique used to pull the reader in, and it worked with this novel - without this it would have been extremely difficult to get involved with the story. As each man in the meeting tells his tale, we see several different events that transpire around the same period of time. however, this was not in chronological order. there was a lot of back-and-forward and filling in gaps other character's stories had left. I found it difficult to keep track of this at first, but after spending a lot of time reading - I recommend dedicating an hour or more to it when you first start! - I finally got an overview of how each character's story fits into this mystery up to the moment we entered the story. And there was still a huge amount of the story left to go...

The zodiac signs and other heavenly bodies play a large part in this tale. Each main character represents a zodiac sign, and other essential characters represent the heavenly bodies. each section in the book (there are 12) start off with an image showing what stage all of the zodiacs are in. This probably had relevance to what happened to the characters in the story, but I didn't read too much into that and read the story instead. This novel had in interesting little quirk - each section was half as long as the preceding one. The beginning felt like a mammoth to read, then the further along I got the quicker I flew through the story - some of the chapters were only a few lines at the end!

I found this novel hard to read at the beginning, then the more I read, the more I enjoyed it, and the mystery of the story. My only main niggle with it is the unaddressed question of how two of the characters were inexplicably linked in the way that they were. I wont go into more detail - as it would give away some of the story - but it felt unresolved because there wasn't a satisfactory explanation.

My Rating...

3.5 stars

Not something I am likely to reread, but enjoyable and interesting regardless.

Boop's Bookshelf: Close Range by Annie Proulx

Close Range checks off 'A book of short stories' in my 2015 reading challenge 

The Author

Annie Proulx is an American journalist and author. She writes several collections of short stories, and her most well known work would be Brokeback Mountain - which was adapted into a film. (However, many people who have seen the film wouldn't know it was originally a short story). Incidentally, Brokeback Mountain is included in this collection of short stories.

She has won several awards through her career, including a Pulitzer Prize, the Dos Passos Prize and the O. Henry Prize twice - both for stories within the Close Range collection. 

Proulx currently lives in Wyoming, the area in which Close Range is set.

The Synopsis

How does one write a synopsis on a collection of short stories? 

Close Range is a collection of stories all set in the Wyoming - a mountain region in the West of America. The stories are set at different time periods, however there are common themes throughout such as life as a rancher and the open spaces of Wyoming. All of the stories and all of the characters revolve around life in Wyoming.

My Thoughts
It's very rare that I read a book of short stories. In fact, I don't think I have ever read a book of short stories! Annie Proulx was able to create scenes in rich detail, no matter how short the story was. each of her stories were written differently, some very differently which I think is an impressive talent - usually an author has a recognizable style that comes through in their writing, but with Proulx this was not the case. I found that engaging and impressive.

The hardship and moral ambiguity of the characters and their situations really stands out through all of the stories. The immoral situations that they find themselves in are often written in as throwaway comments, and treated as normal or expected - especially the rape of women through the different time periods. It made an impact, and helped to make the reader understand how things were and the character's attitudes to life. It made an impact.

All of the stories really drive home the feeling of an open, sparse area where you don't come across many other people. The characters all seemed to be stuck in Wyoming, or always coming back to it.

My Rating...

3.5 stars

I enjoyed reading it, I admire the authors writing skills and it's a collection I may reread in future.

A New Thing

I have two blogs, this one, and my health and fitness blog. I usually try to keep them separate, and not post about weight etc on here. However, I have undertaken a big change as of Thursday, so it seemed relevant to write about it on here too.

After struggling to battle my weight on my own, I finally took the plunge and joined Slimming World. This is going to be a big overhaul and I'll be acclimatizing to different eating habits. I would go so far as to say this is a lifestyle change...I'm commiting to attending the weekly meetings every Thursday, and to following the Slimming World eating plan.

I'm going to have to put in a lot of effort to plan out my meals - especially lunches at work...

I feel apprehensive about everything at the moment, so I'm not entirely sure how I feel about doing this. A part of me is looking forward to it, another part of me feels apprehensive about sticking to a plan - I'm worried I will fail and waste everyone's time. BUUUT there we go. I'm doing it and changing my food choices.

Today was day 1 of Slimming World, I'm finding it a bit confusing to work out how many syns things are actually worth, especially when the starter pack book says one thing, and the website says another. Annoying...Anyway, that's what's been going on with me recently.

Happy Friday!