October Update 2016| It'sCarenzaB

Hey Guys!
How are you?
It's that time of  the month were I update you on how my life is going and how I am doing with my New Years Resolutions. Before I get into this post, I wanted to ask if you guys find these posts interesting. Do you like them being monthly? Or would you prefer them to be seasonally? I really enjoy writing them but I feel as though they don't go with any of the other posts on her. I'm debating changing them to seasonal posts in 2017.

1) Be more organised i.e. more tidy
I feel as though I was quite successful at being organised in October. I kept on top of my school work, as well as my reading schedule and my social media accounts. Some times it can be quite stressful having more than one form of social media, but I love being creative so I do it for fun. Again, like last months update, I used my bullet journal to keep on top of my work. It is really helpful and I think I am going to make a blog post on it in the new year. I also think I was quite tidy in October. I have found that I find it hard to work in a messy environment so I have been keeping my room quite tidy.

2) Be more confident
If I'm honest, I'm not sure how my confidence was in October. I feel as though I've been more confident at college and have been participating more in class. I feel that wanting to be confident is something quite important and can be seen as wanting to inflate our ego. I want to be more confident so I can have fun and talk to people and not feel bad about it. That's why I put this on this list.

3) To get fit and feel happy with my body i.e. drink more water
Yet again this one failed. Spectacularly. As I am a full time student, I spend most of my day sat down in class. I then come home to sit at my desk and revise. Then I have tea, sat down. And I watch TV, yes you guessed it- sat down. I'm finding it very hard to fit exercise time into my busy schedule and as we are so close to the end of the year, I see no point in trying to improve it. It is going to be something I try to prioritize in the new year.

4) Study more often
I feel as though I got better at this one in October. As I have started to get more work, I have been spending more of my time working. I do revision everyday of the week except Friday, and even then I spend my day reading books for class. I try to spend more time working as any time I'm not working, makes me feel bad.

5) Do more of what makes me HAPPY
I feel as though this one took a back slide in October. I still spent time doing things that made me happy, but at one point I really started to enjoy revising. That is a sentence I never thought I'd say. I've had fun writing all 16 posts I put up on here in October as well as finding time to read, which I always find fun. I've also been talking to my family more and have been really enjoying spending time with them.

6) Write and read more
I didn't do as much writing as I would have liked to have done in October, but I did read 6 books and 3 short stories last month. I have been really getting into reading recently, more than I have in the past few months. I find that I am really looking forward to the time when I can read.

So that is it for this update, I hope you liked it.
Love,
Carenza x

October Favourites 2016| It'sCarenzaB

Hey Guys!
How are you?
Firstly, I want to apologies for this post not being up yesterday. I've been really busy with college commitments and because it's winter here in the UK, the lighting has been really bad. Also, usually in my favourites I talk about three topics: Beauty, Books and Bits'n'Bobs. There will be no beauty in this one as I didn't have any beauty favourites.

Books

I have two favourite books of the month and the first one is Tales of the Peculiar by Ransom Riggs. This is a companion novel to the Miss Peregrine's series. This book restored my faith in the series. I haven't talked about it much on here, but I really didn't like the final book in the series (Library of Souls), but this book made me fall in love with his writing again. 5/5 stars from me. 

My other favourite book of the month was This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab. This is the first book in her Monster series and is a duology. I really loved this book, I plan on doing a book review on it at some point soon. I really liked the characters and the world it was set in. It was my second VE Schwab book and I can't wait to read more by her.

Bits'n'Bobs

I swear that every month this category gets bigger and bigger, but these last two months I am finding more and more new things I like.

The first thing is Halloween. I really like Halloween as you can have lots of different kinds of fun. You can watch horror films or decorate your house/ living space or just have fun getting in the spirit of the season. I really enjoyed carving pumpkins and have a whole blog post about my pumpkins, to have a look click here.

My next favourite is this Book of Grisha notebook I got in the September Fairyloot box, to read my review click here

I've started to use it to keep track of all my bookish thoughts and needs. I make lists of the books that are coming out each month and there are lists about books I want to get but haven't read. It's just a nice place to keep all my thoughts together and I will be buying more like this in the future. 

My next favourite has been Autumn. Autumn is my favourite season, I just love being able to wear jumpers and crunching on the leaves every morning. I love getting home and crawling into my Totoro onsie, I still do work but I can do it in my favourite onsie. 

I have two TV favourites, the first is The Fall. This is a BBC programme which I'm not going to explain as the explanation spoils it. But if you like murder mysteries like Broadchurch, then you will really love The Fall. I will say that it is aimed at older and mature people as some of the scenes are sexual and violent.

The other TV favourite is National Treasure. It's only got one season of four episodes but it's fantastic. It follows the story of a famous comedian who has some serious allegations of sexual assault put against him. It was a very interesting and moving show to watch. What was even better, was that you had no idea which way it was going to go right until the very end. 

 My final favourite is my new Harry Potter pop funko! It's Harry in his Tri-Wizard uniform holding his golden egg. Up until recently I believed this was exclusive to Forbidden Planet but I'm not to sure about that. He's just so cute and I love pop funkos so much!

So that concludes my October favourites, I am sorry that this post is a day late but recently I've not been very motivated to write these posts. I'm slowly trying to get back into the swing of it but college and life are a bit crazy at the moment so finding time to blog can be hard.

Love,

Carenza x 

September Wrap Up and October TBR| It'sCarenzaB

Hey Guys!
How are you?

It's that time of the month were I talk about what books I read last month and what books I want to read this month. In September I read a total of 8 books, which I am really proud of as I think it is the most amount of books I have read in a month. I read 2 books for school and 6 for pleasure.
Warning- if you are subscribed to Fairyloot and have not received your box, I would advise you don't read the TBR section of this post as it spoils what the book is.

September Wrap Up

The first book I read in September was Percy Jackson and the Last Olympian by Rick Riordan. This is the last book in the Percy Jackson series, I read the rest in August. I gave this book 5/5 stars. I won't go into detail as to why I like it as I don't want to spoil the story for you. I really liked how the series was tied up and getting to say goodbye to my favourite characters in a nice way.

The next book I read was Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth. I read this for school and I really enjoyed it. I gave it 5/5 stars. I'm not going to explain it myself but I am going to use a quote from the back of the book:

On St George's Day, the morning of the local country fair, Johnny "Rooster" Byron, local waster and modern-day Pied Piper, is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his son wants to be taken to the fair, a father wants to give him a serious kicking, and a motley crew of mates want his ample supply of drugs and alcohol.

The next book I read was Carrie Hope Fletcher's debut fiction novel On The Other Side. This was my favourite book I read in September. I had the pleasure of meeting Carrie at one of her signings and I really enjoyed myself. She was so sweet. I gave this book 5/5 stars. I'm not going to go into too much detail as my review of this is going up on Monday (10/10/16). This book tugged at all the heart strings and made you feel every emotion under the sun. I would love a sequel or a spin off novel to this as I need more from this world.

Left to Right:
The Lost Hero, The Son of Neptune, The Mark of Athena

The next 3 books I read were the first 3 books in the Heroes of Olympus series also by Rick Riordan. I still have the last two books to read and when I have read those I will post a series review. I'm so glad I'm getting round to reading Rick Riordan's books. Again I won't go into any detail as these books do spoil things that happen in Percy Jackson. I gave The Lost Hero 5/5 stars, The Son of Neptune 4/5 stars and The Mark of Athena 4/5 stars.

The next book I read was Ross Poldark by Winston Graham. This is the first book in a twelve book series called Poldark. I have had this book on my shelf for over a year and have finally picked it up. I do have the TV tie in edition because I love the TV series so much. I gave it 4/5 stars and plan on reviewing it once I have read the next book. 

The final book I read I don't have a photo of because I forgot I read it and that it Listner by Lemn Sissay. I read this book for school and I gave it 3/5 stars. I'm not a huge fan of poetry and I just didn't enjoy reading this that much. There were some poems I enjoyed but the majority were not for me.  

October TBR

In October I plan on reading 14 books. I am reading 5 for school and 3 of them are short stories. The other 11 books I plan on reading are all for pleasure. 

The first 5 books I am going to talk about are books for school.

The first book I plan on reading in October is the poem The Raven by Edgar Alan Poe. I'm reading this as part of a series of spooky short stories in the run up to Halloween. I have to read these as part of an extra thing I do at school.

The next book I plan on reading is The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens. I'm actually excited to read this as my mum is always banging on about how good this is and now I'm finally reading it.

The next book I plan on reading is The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. I have seen the film Sleepy Hollow and am assuming that this is what it is based off. I really liked the film, I remember watching it one Halloween after coming back from holiday.

The next book I have to read is Testing the Echo by David Edgar. This is a script that I have to read for one of my classes. I don't know much about this, so I am going to insert a quote from the book here:

Emma is a dedicated ESOL teacher (English for Speakers of Other Languages), teaching British citizenship to people from Somalia, Serbia, the Congo, India and Egypt. At the same time, Tetyana, Mahmood and Chong have their own, very different reasons for wanting to pass the citizenship test. As the Home Office worries away at the questions in the test, Emma faces a challenge to her deepest-held beliefs.

The final book I have to read for school is 1984 by George Orwell. I know that this was written in 1948 and is about the future.

This section isn't any particular order as I hope I get to all of these books. 

The first book I plan on reading is the Fairyloot September book and that is Vassa in the Night by Sarah Porter. I am currently about half way through this book and am really enjoying it so far. It's a modern day retelling of Vassilla the Beautiful. It's set in New York and in the present day. There is a Fairyloot chat taking place on Saturday 15th October at 9pm BST on Twitter, so come join us as we won't be spoiling the book. 

The next books I plan on reading are the last two books in the Heroes of Olympus series: The House of Hades and The Blood of Olympus (which I don't own). I can't wait to finish this series and get started with the Trials of Apollo or maybe the Norse mythology series, I'm torn.

Next I plan on reading This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab/ V.E Schwab. This book came out this year and I managed to pick up a signed copy for my birthday book trip. I can't wait to read this as I have heard nothing but good things about it. 

After This Savage Song I want to read Nevernight by Jay Kristoff. I also picked this up for my birthday. I'm so glad I got the UK hardback as it is so pretty! I don't know much about this but I saw it floating around bookstagram and knew that I wanted to read it.

 The next book I plan on reading is Tales of the Peculiar by Ransom Riggs, this is a spin off/ tie in novel from the Miss Peregrines franchise. I'm in a Miss Peregrines mood after seeing the film so I have decided to pick this up. My copy is also signed.

The next book is also by Ransom Riggs and that is Library of Souls. I started this in July and put it down as I wasn't enjoying it, but now I've seen the movie I feel as though I might enjoy it this time. 

The next book I plan on reading is the fifth installment in Throne of Glass series. I really can't wait to get to this as I love this series so much. I've been putting it off as I want to recap the other 4 books as it was almost a year ago since I read them. Also my copy is signed.

 The final book I plan on reading is Demelza by Winston Graham. This is the second book in the Poldark series and I'm really looking forward to reading it.

So that concludes my September Wrap Up and October TBR, leave me a comment about some of the books you want to read this month.

Love,

Carenza x

October Favourites 2015| It's Carenza B

Hello!
So here is my my very first favourite post! If you do not follow me on Twitter (@itscarenzab), you will not know that I had a bit of drama while writing my September Favourites. Basically, I wrote the entire post and for some reason it wouldn't save or let me upload it, so I refreshed the page and lost everything I wrote. I was so annoyed with myself, as I had spent ages writing it and it was gone. Anyway, here is my October Favourites and I hope you enjoy it!

Before I start writing, I would like to apologize for the not so great quality of my photos. As it's winter, the lighting isn't great and this means I have to use lights from my lamp and bulb. So I am sorry, but it turned out better than I planned as I used the flash for some of the photos.

Beauty

The first thing I have been loving in the month of October was the new Body Shop Foundation, I have a feeling that this is going to become a holy grail of mine. I am very pale and a lot of foundations, particularly from the Body Shop, are too dark and orange toned. Anyway, this new foundation is a perfect match, maybe even too pale for me. It applies wonderfully and doesn't look cakey, I would say that it's a matte foundation and that it isn't super glowy. I would recommend that you go and get it as it is an amazing product. It retails at £15 which is on the pricey side for a high street foundation but it's totally worth it.

Body Shop Fresh Nude Foundation in Chelsea Porcelain 

Next, we have another Body Shop product but this time it's a scent rather than a makeup product. It is the Glazed Apple scent from the Christmas range. It's a sharp apple scent that stays for the whole day, I apply this once a day before I leave the house and when I go to bed at 9 or 10 o'clock I can still smell it. I have had this bottle for almost a year and its barely gone down. It's a really lovely scent for autumn and Christmas, I would recommend that you go and get it if you love apple scented things.

Body Shop Glazed Apple Room and Body Spray

Recently, I have discovered I have a love for gold eye-shadows and as much as I love my Urban Decay Naked 3 palette, the eye-shadow palette I have been using lots recently is the Sleek Vintage Romance. I got this last Christmas as part of a gift set and never got round to using it till now.

My dirty but well- loved Sleek Palette

The plastic sheet of names

They all have super cute names like the purple one on the bottom row below the silver one is called A Vow in Venice, which is super cute. As you can tell the ones I have been using the most are the three gold ones.

Without the plastic name sheet

From left to right- Meet in Madrid; Court in Cannes; Lust in LA

Another plus is the mirror, although slightly dirty it is one of the largest I have. Overall this is one of the best eye-shadow palettes I own and I would recommend you get your hands on it. I don't know how much it costs as I got it in a set with a lipstick and a mascara.

We have another Sleek product, this time a lipstick. This lipstick is my new favourite lipstick of all time, it is a truly beautiful deep purple with red tones running through it. If you want to start wearing darker lipsticks but don't want to go straight in with the almost black toned purples this is the lipstick for you. The colour is called Dare and is a matte lipstick. Again, this lipstick is perfect for this time of year and I would say is an Autumn essential for beauty lovers.

Next in beauty we have a product from Lush, although it's not a bath-bomb it is from the skincare range which I feel deserves more recognition. The product I have been loving is Grease Lighting. This product is to be used on spots to dry the out, which sounds disgusting but it works really well. It contains witch hazel, which is really good for spots. For some reason this month I had a really bad break out and this product helped. Although over the £15 mark, I have had this for around a year and have barely used any of it, as a little goes a long way. It has a pump and you pump out a small bit, then apply it to the spot for a couple of days and wait for it to do its magic.

Lush's Grease Lighting

Finally, we have my new holy grail for applying foundation and concealer. It is a beauty blender that I got in the October Glossybox . It applies a lot nicer than a brush as it doesn't leave brush marks. However, it takes slightly longer than a brush does the final result is a lot better.

Books

The first book I read in October was The Amazing Book Is Not On Fire by Dan Howell (danisnotonfire) and Phil Lester (amazingphil). This book was massively hyped in the world of YouTube and to some extent it deserved this praise. It was an interesting book to read, finding out all the different things that were a part of the world of Dan and Phil. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed reading it and there were bits that made me laugh, the only issue with it is the price. I feel like its a tall order to ask there viewers to pay £17 for it. I do recommend you go get it if you love watching their videos, I just warn you that the book isn't cheap but then there are a lot of pages in it, it's hard back and there is lots of colour.

TABINOF front cover

Next, I read Throne of Glass by Sarah J Mass. If you read my birthday book haul, you will have seen this book. It is brilliant, I'm in the middle of writing a book review for it. I don't want to give to much away but I recommend you get it and read it. The main character, Celaena is amazing. You'll fall in love with her straight away. I honestly can't wait to finish the series, I'm on the third book and it's definitely getting interesting. The cover design is beautiful and the story is as well.

Throne of Glass by Sarah J Mass

Finally I started reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which is one of my favourite books in the series, as you will know if you read my Harry Potter Tag post from Halloween. I don't need to go into detail as the story is well known. I love it and I really am enjoying re-reading this series.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Bits'n'bob

My first thing to come under the character of Bits'n'Bobs are Tsum Tsums from Japan. These are a thing that Disney started doing and OMG I love them. They are so cute! I collect the small ones and am loving them. Every month they bring out a different collection, like in September it was The Nightmare Before Christmas in time for Halloween.  I have some of the classic Disney characters and some of the collections. The small ones are £3 each and are about the size of your palm. They're filled with beans like bean bags and can be used as screen cleaners, but I have never used mine as screen cleaners.  

Look how cute they are!

Since taking this photo I have got 3 more- Jack Skeleton, Zero and one of the 3 children called Shock, Lock and something I can't remember.

Next I have been loving my scarf from Miss Selfridge, I got it in January in the sales for £16 and love it. It is huge and has this lovely red checkered pattern on it. It also has tassels on it and is the warmest scarf I own. I wear it most days and when I'm doing long journeys either in the car or on a train, I like to use it as a blanket to keep me warm.

Miss Selfridge Scarf

Finally, I have been loving Christmas Magazines. I am getting excited for Christmas way to early this year but I feel like I have got some good ideas for my blog for the festive period and am looking forward to sharing them with you.

Craft and Home-ware Christmas Magazines

So those were my October Favourites, I hope you enjoyed this post and that it has given you some inspiration for the future. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram and Twitter @itscarenzab. Also you can click follow on here to be informed when I post. For business related questions, email me at itscarenzab@gmail.com.

Love,

Carenza B 

x