26.11.13

Spotlight On: Gracie Francesca/Uglyfaceofbeauty

Hello!

Welcome to a new series I've decided to start on my blog called Spotlight On: basically these posts will be small interviews with bloggers, youtubers and anyone else that I feel inspires me when it comes to weight loss and being healthy. They aren't massively long but I think it'll be nice to get different answers from people that inspire and motivate me.

First up is the beautiful Gracie Francesca who is known as uglyfaceofbeauty on YouTube (her channel is here) and she has a blog as well at graciefrancesca.com I love Gracie, I've followed her YouTube for about a year now and I've been following her blog since she started it in August of this year. What you see is what you get with Gracie, she won't pretend to be something she is not. She's honest and to the point but she's also ridiculously nice and not bitchy when it comes to her opinions and thoughts.

I sent Gracie off an email asking if she would mind answering some questions for me to write up this blog post and she very kindly agreed (obviously, or I wouldn't be writing the post!). So on with the Q&A!

1. What made you decide to lose the weight?
I was painfully unhappy with who I was and my weight played a huge part in that. I just wanted to be healthy & happy. Its a HUGE part of my life now.
2. What were the initial changes you made to your diet/lifestyle?
I was suffering from mental health problems, so to start with I went into a 6 months treatment programme for that. Therapy made me realise, my weight played a huge part in my unhappiness so I decided to make a change. I joined a gym & began weight watchers.
3. What did you find the most difficult?
Trying to balance my entire life with eating healthy and leading a healthy lifestyle. I try to do everything all the time & then my health takes a back seat. It sucks! 
4. How did you motivate yourself if you were having a rough day?
My subscribers help me a lot with my crappy days but music and inspirational words help me a lot too.
5. Did you use any tools to help (myfitnesspal etc) ?
No - I know whats healthy now. I follow a lot of health pages on instagram though.
6. How much weight have you lost and do you plan on losing any more?
I have lost just over 4 stone and I would like to lose another 3. Apparently my lightest weight for my heigh is about 9.5stones. That is just too slim for me. I think I would like underweight, but you never know haha.
7. What tips would you give someone looking to lose weight/ be healthier?
Do it for you & it is never too late to become what you have been. Health is so important & you won't ever regret changing your life. GOOD LUCK!

Gracie has also written a blog post on her weighloss journey (it's the first post on her blog!) and you can find that here. As I said earlier, I love Gracie and whenever I'm having a bit of a shit day, reading one of her posts or watching one of her videos totally cheers me up. Gracie covers fashion beauty, mental health and is also a very funny woman! My favourite video of hers has to be this one and I hope you love it as much as I do!


I totally recommend you go check out Gracie's video and/or blog posts depending on what you prefer. Big thanks to Gracie for answering my questions and if you have any suggestions for other people I should get in touch with regarding this series, let me know below or email me at alanagetshealthy@gmail.com (if you yourself would like to take part as well, feel free to suggest yourself!)

Sorry for the change in font, I don't know what happened and I have no idea how to fix it!

24.11.13

Social and Cocktail | The best night in you could have!


Here at alanagetshealthy towers, we're allowed some time off and 'rest' (I've been having some time off for quite a while now though!) It's ok to have a break and cut loose so when I was contacted by Social and Cocktail and asked if I would like to throw my very own cocktail party, of course I said yes! So on Friday just there, a corner of my livingroom was turned into the very snazzy bar you see above.

The website http://www.socialandcocktail.co.uk/ is absolutely jam packed with everything you could want to know about cocktails whether you want to check out recipes (there are over 1000) or what bars in your area are highly rated; it's the place to go to get some cocktail knowledge! My favourite part of the site is the 'What's in your fridge' feature. You put in what you have to hand and you will be shown what cocktails you can make. Very handy if you're not too boned up on ingredients and don't fancy a 'what the hell' cocktail!

Everything is included in the Social and Cocktail Event, the bar, bartender, glasses, ingredients, ice, stirrers; everything you could possibly need and the best part you ask, all the mess is cleaned up and taken away so you don't have to deal with anything after the party is over. I don't know about you, but I dread the morning after the party tidy up.

On the night Damien and Patrick showed up to get set up and typically we weren't ready when they got here! As they got on with the moving furniture and setting up of the bar, we rushed about getting ready and in no time at all our first cocktail was being expertly prepared! Being that this was a cocktail party we decided to dress up for the event and as you can see, I am a top notch poser...


I thought my trusty floor length ball gown was appropriate attire, plus I always feel utterly fabulous when I wear it! I'll say what I'm sure we are all thinking, I wouldn't make it as a fashion blogger! Also for anyone wondering, that's not a real cigarette in my hand but my wee electronic cigarette that comes in very handy (especially when there is alcohol involved)

As part the cocktail party package, before your actual party, you can choose five cocktails to be made up on the night from their pre-selected menu of 25 cocktails (do not fear though, you get more than 1 cocktail each!) Plenty choice for everyone! As the party was going to be in the flat, I thought it would only be fair to ask Muj (my flatmate and bestie) to help choose the poison! The menu is split into five options; Dessert, Vodka, Rum, Classics and Non-Alcoholic. We decided to go with 1 Dessert, 2 Vodka and 2 Rum.


Clockwise from left we have the Toblerone Martini, Cosmpolitan, Raspberry Mojito, Strawberry Daiquiri and Sea Breeze.

Toblerone Martini is made with Baileys Irish Cream, Kahlua, Frangelica, a dash of honey, cream and chocolate powder. This by far was my favourite for the night, so creamy and so freaking delicious! I'll definitely be making these myself one day or at least attempting to!
Cosmopolitans contain Citrus Vodka, Triple Sec, Cranberry Juice, squeezed lemon and sugar syrup. The ultimate Sex And The City cocktail. This is the drink we started our night off with and I think it was a great first choice. Nice and refreshing, not too heavy and the perfect beginning of our soiree!
The Raspberry Mojito had White Rum, Raspberry Liqueur, lime juice, soda water, superfine sugar, raspberries and mint leaves. This was my first jump into the mojito pool and I have to say it was excellent! Crisp and fruity, a new firm favourite.
Strawberry Daiquiris, well can you guess the fruit they come with? As well as strawberries, we have Bacardi Rum, Strawberry Liqueur, lime juice and sugar syrup. For me this one was a bit too bitty. I'm not a huge fan of bits in juice, drink whatever, I don't know what it is. I still gave it a go though and it was a really nice flavour. I will try it again one day I reckon.
Finally Sea Breeze, with Vodka, cranberry juice, grapefruit juice and a lime slice. I'm not going to lie, I didn't like this one all that much. I think it was the grapefruit juice but it was too bitter for me.

The night was absolutely fantastic and I'm so happy that the girls showed up (of course they did, free alcohol!) I need to say a massive thanks to Damien and Patrick for going out of their way and making the trek through to Grangemouth for the party as they are based in Glasgow; look out for future expansion to other cities though!

To finish off this mammoth post, I'll leave you all with some more photos of our shenanigans!










If you are in the Glasgow area and fancy having a cocktail party of your own, don't hesitate to check out the website. Five cocktails for £25 per person, not really a price you can sniff your nose at! Considering the prices you'd pay in the city for the same quality cocktails I know what I'd rather choose!

Thanks again to Social and Cocktail for the fabby night and hopefully I'll be using their event package again in the future!

*I was provided this party for free by Social and Cocktail, all opinions are my own.

17.11.13

FOTD | #scotstreetstyle Harvey Nics Movember | Event

I can't remember but I don't think I've done a FOTD post before on here. Decided to use yesterday's shenanigans to break that! I attended the Harvey Nics Movember event organised by the lovely G at Scotstreetstyle. You can find out more about Scotstreetstyle over on their twitterfacebook or tumblr. G is doing such a fabby job building this great community. I'll be writing up an actual post about the event soon so today it's just to show you my face (before all the free gin!)


Products used: 
  • NYC Smooth Skin Perfecting Primer Shade 684
  • Yves Saint Laurent Touch Eclat BR10
  • MUA Cover & Conceal Fair
  • Seventeen Pressed Powder Nicely Natural
  • Hi-Brow Eyebrow Powder Dark Brown
  • Fashionista Blush Palette Custom Design Blush Milan
  • Eyeko Skinny Mini Liquid Eyeliner Black
  • Maybelline The Mega Plush Volum' Express Mascara Very Black/Noir
  • Nivea Volume Shine Lipstick Pure Diamond 66 Mauve Parure
I was quite proud of this face. I'm not the greatest person at makeup so when I saw how it all looked at the end I was quite chuffed with myself! I was especially pleased at how the eyeliner worked out. I'm still a total noob when it comes to liquid liner and tend not to use it that often; however I love the clean lines you get from it as opposed to a pencil (I know gel is an option as well but it falls under the liquid category for me - I'm rubbish at it!) so I will be using it more to get used to it and perfect my wings! I got the Eyeko as a freebie in a magazine but it's just so good that I think I'll be repurchasing it when it runs out!

Unfortunately it's still phone pictures which aren't the clearest of things but I suppose it's better than nothing! Now that I'm getting into a good life routine, I think I might try and do a FOTD maybe once a week. Gives me a chance to try things out and show you all as well!

12.11.13

Things are looking up!


This is pretty much all my news right now but it's fabulous news!

I turned the big 25 on Friday and celebrated it in a very drunken fashion! Plenty shots and a mahoosive hangover the next day. I usually pride myself on the fact that I don't get hangovers so I don't know if it was the copious amount of shots or the fact that turning 25 has now led me to get hangovers but it was brutal and I do not fancy suffering like that again!

After getting over the mystical hangover I received a phone call inviting me to an interview so of course I said yes! Luck was not on my side after that phone call however, I then developed the worst sore throat I can imagine, started hacking up my lungs, got really sore pains in my ears and sneezed more time in an hour than I think I have my entire life. I felt like a bag of battered crap! I sent myself to bed as my interview was at 9am the next morning.

My wish of getting a good nights rest and waking up feeling better was dashed as I woke up every two hours coughing or being absolutely freezing because I moved 1mm but I still managed to get up for my interview (albeit 20 minutes before it actually started although I still got there 5 minutes early.) Due to still feeling horrendous I didn't see any point in trying to throw makeup on to make myself look better so I went au naturale and really didn't think I'd have a hope in hell of getting it. I did explain to the interviewer how rubbish I was feeling though.

My worries of not getting the job were soon quelled however as the guy interviewing me ended with "I'm not going to beat around the bush. Do you want the job, it's yours" I then of course accepted and like the tit that I am, high-fived him. Why am I allowed outside?

Anyway, Monday rolled in and I decided to weigh in. I wasn't expecting anything great as it was my birthday weekend, plenty alcohol and naughty foods. I was fully expecting a huge gain. Imagine my delight when the scales told me I had lost 1.8lbs! What a great start to my week! I had already told myself that after my birthday weekend, Monday would be restart day so this was just the thing to perk me up for it. Let's not lie, if you say you're going to start on a certain day, weigh yourself and find you have gained weight, it makes you feel like crap (and sometimes you feel like it's not worth restarting, but it is!) then other times you find you've lost some weight and it just sets you up to continue!

To finish my turning 25 being awesome, I had my trial shift this morning at my new work basically to just show me the ropes, what I should be doing etc and although it was at 7am I was up, had breakfast and was out the door for ten to. I will enjoy living this close to work! It might take a while to get used to the early starts (my shifts will be 6.30-9am, eeesh!) but I am so bloody thankful to have even gotten a job let alone one that is less than 5 minutes walk from my front door!

Things are on the up and I feel great for it. I knew this move was the beginning of good things!

How has your week been? What's the best thing to happen? All about the positivity right now!

3.11.13

Quick life update

In case you haven't noticed, I'm getting back into the swing of blogging. About bloody time too! I love blogging, from researching products and trying them out to the painstaking task of getting the photos just right (I know what I like!), from hours of reading other blogs and tweets to pushing that publish button . I don't do this for the followers or the page views, but let's not lie, everyone loves getting some comments on posts and people interacting with you but mostly I do this for me. It makes me happy and it doesn't matter if I have 5 readers or 5000 readers, as long as I keep doing what makes me happy, anything else is a bonus!

Unfortunately I'm still trying to unpack and get the flat sorted out with Muj so posting won't be on a regular schedule but just the fact I'm trying to get something written down is making me feel so much better! To be perfectly honest I've felt a bit lost not being able to write anything. I have a fair few ideas for posts I'd like to do in the future and although I seem to been leaning heavily on the beauty side I will be getting back into health and fitness. I've been eating quite horribly since we moved because we don't have a routine for anything yet and I've just been lazy but I have been working on getting back into my healthier eating habits. Vegetables are your friends! I did put some weight on but then I got ill (I've had gastroenteritis the past week but think I'm getting over it all now) and I seem to have dropped those extra pounds gained.

Combined, Muj and I have enough exercise gear to open up our own gym so I'm not short on equipment, it's just motivation and space I'm lacking in! We are working our way through all the boxes though and once that's all finished we'll have space to haul out whatever we want to use that day and get on with it! My Aunt very kindly gave me her exercise bike and I've been after an exercise bike for ages so I'm really excited to get using that. Also, Muj has an air glider and I absolutely love them so that'll be getting used too!

I don't quite know how to describe my mood/mental state recently. I've had a couple down days but they were different compared to in the old flat. I think it's maybe because in the old flat I had so many bad memories to dwell on and in this flat I don't really have any memories yet so when my mood dips it doesn't really have dark places to go to just emptiness, which I suppose is better.

The main thing I'm going to focus on just now is getting this place looking fabulous, getting my eating back on track and I'll commit to at least one blog post a week until I'm properly back on track.

Apologies for rambling away, just wanted to get a wee update out there. I'll see you soon!

2.11.13

Specs Appeal

My attitude to glasses has changed so much over the years. I've been wearing them since the age of  7. At first yeah they were novel and exciting but as I grew up a bit I hated them. The frames you got in the 90s didn't have a patch on frames these days!


I rocked the Harry Potter specs for quite a few years and clearly I've always been fabulous.

I could go days, weeks or months loving the fact that I wore glasses then other times I would simply hate them. I'm still like that today. There are some days where I wish I could just have laser eye surgery and be able to wake up with 20/20 vision. That's just a pipe dream though and not because of the cost; due to the problems in my eyes, I couldn't get laser eye surgery even if I wanted!

Contact lenses are always an option, I tried them at 16 and loved them. Didn't mind touching my eyeballs all that much but at 16 I didn't really want to faff about taking them out at night and putting them back in in the morning. Quite often in fact I would fall asleep wearing them and wake up thinking I'd been healed in my sleep! 

So for now, I have come to accept that glasses and I should be pals and this is where the lovely people over at Specspost come in. They gave me the option to choose three frames to try out and then very kindly said they would put lenses in my favourite and send them back to me!

I've not sent the frames back yet because I just can't decide which pair I like the most so I'm taking a poll to see what everyone else prefers and hopefully that will help me make a decision!

(We are still on phone photos. I will find that bloody cable!)

First up we have the Fleet Street Twin Tone Clear and Black Retro. These are a bit smaller than I thought they would be but I still love them. They are totally different from what I would normally go for. Louis made me giggle as when I was trying them all on he said these reminded him of men from the 60s, personally I feel a bit Dame Edna Everage in them and that's no bad thing! I can't decide if maybe they are just a touch too small for my face or not but I really like how they look.


Next up are the Shuffle Black glasses. Again these are a bit different from what I would usually go for. For years now I have stuck to chunky rectangular frames so it's nice to try out something new! I love these frames on and so does Louis (he says they remind him of Laura Prepon from OITNB). Sometimes I think these frames are a bit too harsh against my oh so delicate features but then again I think I could pull them off.


To slightly stick with tradition I also chose some square/rectangular frames and these are the Hawaii Nights Duo Two Tone Geek Glasses. This picture doesn't really show off the two tone very well (curses to you camera cable!) but the bottom half of the rim is a dark olive green colour. I really don't like this whole 'geek' thing that's been happening the past wee while, I mean I used to get bullied for being a 'geek' and now it's cool and hip? But I just couldn't resist these glecs, these ones are a bit bigger on my face than I thought they would be but I think they still look good.

So now it's over to you guys, which pair do you think I suit the most? Leave me your comments below and hopefully I'll decide on a pair with your help!

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