Motivation

Today I have spent my entire day inside in my comfy leggings, chain drinking green tea, trying to write. I have reached the stage in my education where noone is standing over me telling me to work, and whilst I really enjoy the responsibility, it can be hard to stay on track when you are all cosy at home and twitter is but a click away. I got thinking today, how do I motivate myself?
Obviously there is the 'imagine when you graduate, it will be all worth it' approach, and in the long term this does help. But lets be honest, that seems a far away goal at the moment and an extra hour in bed is right now. And my bed is so comfy.

Basically me right now

Eating is great for my motivation (although it might partly be that the making of the food allows me to take a break). Right now I am baking brownies for me and my friend to eat tomorrow when we are trying to write.Basically, any form of healthy eating has pretty much gone out the window at the moment, and it is not going to end well (especially with Christmas round the corner...)

I also think that getting away from work is helpful. I have decided to keep at least one of my days degree free, meaning I can have a lie in, go for a walk, meander round the shops, whatever. At least I have that one day to chill out so I don't loose the will to live.

Friends are also important. I have three really good friends who are also all stressing out over their dissertations, and there is no greater therapy than all sitting together at lunch moaning about a graph that won't do what you want it to. Trust me.

So whilst I am enjoying slowly becoming a hermit, tomorrow I am going to go and sit in a computor room without the distraction of food, twitter and facebook, and write. Wish me luck.

Dying my hair

Today I decided to dye my hair. I have been wanting to do it for a while, especially since the light brown lightened hair colour was starting to grow out. I wanted to change it up a bit and make it a bit more interesting for winter, especially since I just got a new haircut which I love (undercuts make me so happy). This is the first time I have dyed my hair and I didn't want to bleach it, so I decided to choose a dye that I could put straight over my brown hair. I decided I wanted to dye it an orange colour (although not too bright as I also have a bright orange coat and that would be a mistake).

I used the L'Oreal Paris Feria mango intense copper hair dye (no.74). I considered using the paprika power (no 78) colour instead, which is a shade brighter, but decided that for the first time dying I would stick to this slightly more subtle colour. My hair was probably a mix of very dark to light brown, so I expected it to come out a similar shade to the two shades on the right hand side of the photo above. 

This is the colour my hair was before. It was much darker brown underneath, the top part was lightened with sun-in a while ago.

 I followed the instructions exactly (with the help of a couple of friends!) and below are the after pictures: 

After! Without flash.

After, with flash

As you can see the dye is nowhere near as bright on my hair as it claims to be, but I actually really like the effect it gives my hair I think next time I dye it I will experiment for the 'paprika' colour to see how that turns out, but I am so glad I took the plunge! As for the dye itself, it smelt rather strong and we did have to open a window, but it was really to use and didn't stain anything. Also my hair feels really lovely and soft now, so I think it was a good choice. Yay for dyed hair!

A Weekend Away

Last weekend I decided to take a break from all my uni work (yes I know, its made me rubbish at updating this, sorry!), and travel to York to visit my family. It was so nice to get away from all the stress and just have some time relaxing, even if the journey was horrific (never trust trains). And of course it was amazing to see the family after over two months away from them.

Walking the walls around the city was lovely, although it was wet and slippy. Notice that there is no barrier to stop you playing a spontaneous game of rolly polly...

The Shambles is a cute little street of really old houses that overhang the street. 

York Minster is rather impressive

I loved these cute signposts

York itself is a lovely city, even in the rain. Everyone is really friendly, which surprised me (I live in Scotland. It has its own charms, but shop assistants having a chat with you isn't one of them..). Its also really pretty, and there is so much to do. I loved the fact that there were plenty of cute little boutique shops selling pretty things (and an Urban Outfitters, which I managed to go in twice in two days!). There are loads of museums and old buildings and ruins as well, so there was loads for us to do as a family.

So overall I had a lovely weekend, and it only took me seven hours to get home! Now I am back in the lab working on my dissertation, it all seems a distant memory already. Probably because I have had a really productive week, the break definitely helped me. Now I just need to remember to update here more regularly, I will I promise!