I was recentley contacted by Nickelodeon about the upcoming premier of their new show The Other Kingdom, which premiers on the 8th August at 6:30pm on Nick! I personally love all things supernatural, be it fairies, vampires or ghouls - so this is a show I can get behind! (I will also probably use the excuse of my little brother to watch it, sue me.) So without further ado, let's start this unboxing!

Finally I received this BEAUTIFUL moonstone choker, which I am in love with - you'll be able to see me pairing this with a plain outfit to jazz it up.... just not too jazzy, though.

*Products in this post have been sent to me for an honest review, you can see my full disclaimer here.

Hi guys! I don't know if you can tell from the title, or the photo of me in a stupid hat - but I graduated this week! And I thought what better time for a life update post than this? I graduated from Manchester Met with a first class honours in English literature and I am so proud of myself!! I was also given the subject award for graduating at the top of my class. I'm just so overwhelmed and shocked by the whole thing. If you were to ask me 5 years ago if I would ever have thought that this was possible I'd have laughed in your face. 

I finally know what it is I want to do with my life, I have a part time job and a place on a masters degree from a university that initially rejected me because my grades in sixth form were too low. That alone just shows how happy and content I am in my subject. It's this drive that is going to propel me forward in both my career and academically. If you were to ask me now what I want to be doing in five years time, I'll tell you that I want to be will be a lecturer of English literature, with a PhD and still blogging alongside this.

I originally planned for this post to be a post about my past and some of the stupid decisions I made, but I'm looking forward today. I cannot wait to see what academia and the blogging world have to offer me in future! I'm excited, and I'm ready.

Have you got a five year plan? Have you recently graduated? How did it go? Let me know in the comments!

Hi everyone! The past few weeks have been a hectic mess for me so I just wanted to sit down and write. Normal service will resume shortly, this is just a quick little life update,

First up I want to apologise for the lack of posts recently, as some of you will know from twitter I have recently gained, quit and then gained another job - a whole other post in itself right there! I have been working full time and that has definitely taken its toll on my blog, so as a result I have dropped down to part time work in order to keep my blog updated alongside making them dolla, dolla billz yo.

I am also graduating on Wednesday, so there will definitely be a post up with my outfit and makeup in the coming weeks - which I am super excited about. I will be graduating with a first class degree as well as getting the Award for English. Safe to say I cannot WAIT! I  hope that you've all been good, and normal posting will resume with a box opening post tomorrow! Yay!

*Products in this post have been sent to me for an honest review, you can see my full disclaimer here.

Seeing as though my post on why I think we should stay in the EU went so well, I thought I'd throw caution to the wind today and react to the outcome of this referendum. I am still adamant that we should have chosen as a country to remain, and the fact that we are going to be leaving is really disheartening to me. As many of you know, I am from Liverpool. A city, which before the EU was placed into a "managed decline" by the government, essentially left to rot. As a scouser, then, I have seen MANY of the benefits that the EU had to offer, and for that to be taken away - I just cannot get my head around it. 

I'm about to graduate university, on the 20th July actually. I find out what my degree classification will be on Monday, I should be worrying about that. I shouldn't be worry about what is going to happen to my future now, whether or not I will be able to pursue the career that I've set my heart on -or whether I'm going to be able to afford a mortgage. But here I am, worrying about all of that - because politics is unjust. I feel cheated by the older generations selfishly casting leave votes because "oh we won't be around for much longer, so it doesn't matter" (actual thing I overheard on a bus). I feel cheated by David Cameron, for resigning (never thought I'd say that) and leaving us in the middle of all this - with the thoughts of an unelected PM. And finally I feel cheated by the fact that this generation, now, thanks to those older than us are graduating university with £30k+ fees, we have no pensions, we can't afford to own homes and we've now lost the right to live and work in 27 countries. Please note I'm not trying to start a debate here, I'm just gobsmacked by this outcome especially when 75% of my generation voted to remain - the generation who have to live with this decision for the longest.

We have had our futures decided by those who won't be around to see the majority of the fallout, and that is what saddens me the most. 

*Normal posting will resume tomorrow, promise!*

I know that a lot of people going into their final year at university are starting to think about their dissertations now. And as someone who has just finished uni, and got a first in her dissertation I felt like I could give some advice on this topic! So here are my tips for getting a good grade on your dissertation at least in English lit (though I'm sure some of this stuff is transferable), and how to deal with the work load that envelops it!

Ever since I can remember I have been in love obsessed with music, and I have wanted to bring this into my blog. I have wracked my head for ways I can do this, and thought up of a new series, 'Rachel Loves', once a month there will be a new post listing a few of my favourites of different things, be it music, movies, beauty products or books. Basically a monthly favourites, that isn't a monthly favourites because it spans the course of a few months... Hopefully that made sense. As some of you may know, I was a MASSIVE emo kid in school, and that taste in music has followed me to this very day. Though I am impartial to a bit of One Direction every now and again. Anyway, here goes, here are twenty of my favourite picks in music at the minute!

My first attempt at a flat-lay, I don't think it came out too bad! Recently I've seen a surge in posts like this one and was interested in seeing just how much a full face of my own makeup has cost me! So without further ado, I'm going to scare myself into not buying any makeup again. My day to day makeup consists of everything from the picture above plus a Rimmel BB Cream, the Rimmel Wonder'Full mascara and the Soap and Glory Kick Ass concealer. 

This all comes to a whopping total of £58.10 - and this is just the makeup I reach for the most on a daily basis... It's scary, then, thinking about how much my whole makeup collection adds up to! Now, I'm going to spend my day thinking about what else I could have actually spent that money on! 

How much does your face add up to? Are you shocked or surprised at this total? Let me know in the comments below!

As you may know, I recently completed my undergraduate degree in English Literature and will be going on to my postgraduate degree in the same subject come August. I was thinking the other day about how I didn't really enjoy any of the texts on my course unless they were ones I had chosen to read myself anyway - Dracula and Edgar Allen Poe's stories come to mind. I thought it would be interesting then to revisit some of the texts that I really disliked and see if my attitudes towards the books changed now that I'll be reading for pleasure rather than work. 

I feel a good place to start with this series would be Wuthering goddamn Heights. There is no book on my entire course that I hate more than this - but I'm aiming to go into each post/reading with a fresh mindset and no bias. I'm going to forget that Heathcliff is a right weirdo and that there is about 7000 Catherine's within the book. A few other novels I want to look at are Northanger Abbey, Mrs. Dalloway, Jekyll & Hyde and The God of Small Things - and then I think I'll go from there! There wont be a regular posting schedule with this series, as I don't want to force myself to read when I'm not feeling it - as doing this will just make me look at the novel in a negative way. I'd expect my post on Wuthering Heights to be up in about a week or so, though. You can keep up with me on Twitter here where I'll probably post (moan) about my progress with each book!

Are there any books that you read in school/college/uni that you would like to revist? Let me know in the comments!

In my most recent post I told you of how I went to my boyfriends house for a week to take my mind off the impending doom that is adulthood (you can read about this here). I love going to my boyfriends house, he lives in Snowdonia and it's just so picturesque. Granted I got dragged up a mountain and actually fell in a river during my week there - but it was such a good week in which we just hung out, met some more of his family, barbecued drank and walked about a bit. Standard. 

I'm going to do something a little bit different on my blog today and talk to you about politics! I can feel the eye rolls already but just hear me out! The EU Referendum is happening this month and some of us will have by now received our postal voting forms (I have!) but are unsure as to how to vote. There seems to be a lot of information floating around from both sides of the argument and none of it is seeming to make any sense. That is why I'm making this post, to tell you why I am voting IN in this referendum. Don't forget, if you are eighteen or older and in the UK you can register to vote up until the 7th June in order to get your voice heard!

(Normal posting will resume tomorrow, also - beware the meme).

Hi guys! I felt like sitting down and writing a little life update today. As you may know I have recently left university and will be graduating in July! This period in-between has been full of uncertainty and confusion and I can only imagine any recent graduates will only be able to sympathize with these feelings of doubt. Will I ever get a job in a field I enjoy? How am I going to fund my MA? Will I ever move out of my parents house? I just feel the need to get all of this out now that my boyfriend and I are back from his house in North Wales. The trip was a way of taking both of our minds off of the looming future - and also included a wedding, lots of beer, a barbecue and me falling into a river. A post on that week away will be up shortly!

Leaving university has been both exciting, confusing and disheartening for me! Exciting in that I have had the time to recollect on my time at uni, start planning on my future and in turn start blogging again. However, I have been for a multitude of job interviews to no fruition, I can't get work in certain places because the interviewers think that I'll move on as soon as a better job comes along now that I have a degree - which granted they aren't wrong! I can't be a bartender my whole life, but it will sure as hell keep me content whilst I finish my studies!

Another thing that is is SO weird about finishing university, is going from living on my own and seeing my friends and boyfriend every day to living at home and over fifty miles away from my nearest friend. It's such a culture shock and one I'm going to have to get used to over the next few weeks - and hopefully by then I'll have a job to add some routine back into my life!

Have any of you guys recently finished university? How are you finding post-student life?

After finishing my undergraduate degree I have found that for me the best way to stay organised is through bullet journaling. This post is going to showcase how I set up my bullet journal for a new month and a general weekly spread layout I tend to use! I'll also include some shots of me actually using this journal so that you can see how it works for me. I first came across bullet journaling on tumblr, and it has honestly changed my life and made me a much,  much more organised person. If you're like me and like crossing things of to-do lists - then this method will definitely work for you!

As a student, I thought that this would be a good little series that I should (hopefully) be able to carry on over the course of a few weeks! Budgeting is a huge part of my life, even though I constantly find myself within my overdraft - god damn you student loan company. Student diets are perceived as unhealthy and mainly pizza-based. This prawn stir fry is one of the many cheap and easy recipes I've lived off during my undergraduate degree, it's super yummy and as easy as chips! (No chips were harmed in the making of this stir fry).

I'm going to start with one of my more recent embarrassments that I am comfortable enough to share on the internet for all to see - Halloween last year. I had been dating my (now) boyfriend for about a month and dressed up in what can only be described as a sexualised red riding hood costume for Halloween, which was mistake number one as I am THE least sexy person in the world, EVER. So I was wearing this outfit and I think I looked pretty damn good. So we had a massive Halloween party in my flat, decorations and everything (only poundland stuff, student problems) I had my super spooky playlist playing and everything was going great, especially between myself and Sion so that was good. It was when we came to going out to the SU that things went wry and I basically made a tit of myself!

I thought I would kick off my first blog with a recount of one of my favourite holidays to date, Amsterdam 2016. My boyfriend and I went for my twenty-first birthday for a weekend and it cost us £180ish flights and hotel! I was so buzzing with the price and the timing and just everything about it! That is until I got ill, really ill! I couldn't walk past one of the coffeeshops without a lung coming out of my mouth. Non-weed-smoking aside, I really had a great weekend in Amsterdam and cannot wait to go back next year (hopefully)! Here are a few of my favourite pictures from  the weekend, much to a lot of peoples surprise there are loads more things to do in Amsterdam than going to coffeeshops, so in a way - I'm glad I was to ill to even walk past one, even if it might have put a grey cloud over the weekend.