Profile On Emma Watson

Hiya!! Today I'll be doing a profile on someone I greatly admire:

Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson.

If you don't know who Emma Watson is by now, you seriously must have been living under a rock. Still, if you don't know, she's an accomplished actress, model, and activist. Recently, she's been in the public eye for being an active feminist, which is a part of the reason I admire her so much.


Born in Britain on 15th April 1990, she was educated at Oxford and Brown University, where she achieved a BA in English Literature. As a child she highly valued education, as her parents were not well-off and therefore her birthday and Christmas presents were school supplies like pencils.

Nowadays of course, she is much better-off, and uses both her funds and her status to try and lessen the inequalities of the world. In 2014, she was appointed as UN Women's Goodwill Ambassador and helped to launch the UN campaign HeForShe, which tries to stress the importance of gender equality by calling for men to stand up for their female counterparts in order to create a fairer, more equal, kinder society for all.

With a filmography including 8 successful Harry Potter films, and high-brow awards including PCAs, TCAs, Trailblazer, and British Style, she has exceptional reason to be like the typical 'teen star' and waste away her time and money, caring for no one but herself. Instead, she has dedicated a good portion of her life to helping others in need, particularly those on the fringe of society, both in first-world and third-world countries.

In summary, Emma Watson is a caring and kind, beautiful and talented, and charitable individual, who deserves all of the success she has and more.

Meet... Wales

Hi guys! This week marks the start of the Meet The United Kingdom (plus Ireland) series. This week, it's Wales!

Wales

Cymru

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Capital: Cardiff

Anthem: 'Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau' (Welsh) 'Land Of My Fathers' (English)

Motto: 'Cymru am byth' (Welsh) 'Wales Forever/Long Live Wales' (English)

Population: 3 million (2011 census)

Official Language: Welsh, English

Patron Saint: St David (March 1st)

My Favourite Welsh...

Band/Artist: Tom Jones

Actor: Anthony Hopkins

Blogger: Jemima

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10 Mother's Day Gifts

Hi guys!!!
I hope you’ve had an amazing week.

I’m not sure if you’re aware (I certainly wasn’t until recently) but it’s Mother’s Day on the 10th of March (that’s THIS Friday. As in, in 10 days). 
CORRECTION: I have just been reliably informed (thank you Jemima) that Mother's Day in the USA is indeed this Friday, however in the UK it's not until the 26th. Don't worry, my British pals!! Back to the post.
 Finding an affordable yet decent present is always difficult, so I thought I’d help you guys out by compiling a lil list of easily-gotten presents for the woman/women in your life. (Also, before we start, can I just let y’all know that I’m writing this in a Nando’s. Meaning, I am alone in a Nando’s. With a laptop as my only friend. #sad.)

1. Candles
Candles are always a go-to present for the females in my life. They’re affordable, useful, and each smell is almost unique. You could go for a big Yankee-style candle, or what I tend to do is get a selection of the little (just bigger than tea light sized) Yankee candles, which are normally about £10 for 10. With this method, you can choose a variety of different smells, which I personally prefer.

2. Jewellery or Clothing
This is a little tougher than other gifts, because if it’s clothing then you have to make sure you get the right size, and with either option there’s always a chance that she won’t like it. Personal taste is especially prevalent when it comes to clothing and other wearable items, so don’t be disheartened if she doesn’t seem totally thrilled with the gift. Nevertheless, if you feel confident that you know her style (and size), then go for it! Pick a style or colour of clothing she seems to wear a lot, and keep the receipt! That way, if worse comes to worse then she can swap it for something else, and she’ll still appreciate the thought that’s gone into it.

3. Books
Does she have a favourite series? Favourite author? Favourite genre? If so, the newest book in the series/by the author is always a good shout. Plus, this is a little more personal than more generic (but still loved) gifts, which will show her that you’re thinking about her.

4. CDs
As with books, if she has a favourite genre of music/artist/band then their newest CD is always appreciated. Although us youths don’t tend to use physical music media anymore, drifting more towards online media like Spotify or Apple Music, the older generation are more prone to sticking by their guns and preferring to use music that they can hold, like CDs. Just make sure to check the CD shelf so you know she doesn’t already have it.

5. Tickets
Whether it be a sporting event, a concert, a play/musical, or anything else, buying your mother tickets to a day out for the two of you will always be a hit, just make sure that the tickets are for something she wants to do, not just what you want to do. Tickets are an easy way of dragging out the celebrations over more than one day, giving her something to look forward to, and bringing a really personal touch to a gift. (Although admittedly they aren’t too fun to unwrap.)

6. Meal
Booking a table at her favourite café/restaurant (and saying you’ll pay) is, like tickets, a way of making a gift more personal. Although, this could get expensive, depending on her taste! Once again, it’s gotta be her favourite restaurant for this to be effective. Plus, you could make a day of it, and do something fun before/after! My take on this was to book an Afternoon Tea for my mum and I, as it’s something we don’t often get to do, and it’s something she loves!

7. Art
If you’re really struggling for money, then use your talent(s) to make her a present! Whether it be a poem, a song, a portrait, a dance, or anything else you can put your creative-ness into, then I’m sure she’ll be touched that you put so much effort into a present for her! After all, where gifts are concerned, the thought is so much more important than the expenses.

8. Photo
If you have a really nice photo of you and your mum, then printing, framing, and hanging it can be an incredibly touching and thoughtful gift. (PSA: Boots print photos very inexpensively and at a v good quality.) Surprise her on Mother’s Day morning with the photo on the wall/her desk/the mantelpiece.

9. Star
Naming a star after her is not only AWESOME, but actually a lot cheaper than you might think. Go to Star Name Registry to find out more! I personally am OBSESSED with the stars, and if anyone did this for me I think I’d cry. Scratch that, I’d definitely cry. And possibly marry them on the spot (were they not my mum).

10. Gift Card
When all else fails, a gift card is the perfect present. If you’ve spent hours trawling through her favourite shop, and come out to no avail, then simply let her choose her own present by getting her a gift card. These can normally be found at the counter of the shop in question, or more general gift cards can be found literally almost anywhere, most notably in supermarkets.


If nothing takes your fancy, make sure you check out Not On The High Street for personalised gifts the are, as the name implies, not on the typical high street!
Good luck my friends.

Choices: Influences

Happy St David's Day! (Confession: I thought that February had 29 days this year as opposed to only 28, so I scheduled today's post as being the final Wednesday of Feb's series... Sorry!!! However, [spoiler alert] March's series, which'll start next Wednesday, is called Meet The United Kingdom (Plus Ireland). Each week I'll do a profile of one country in the UK+Ireland, as it's both St David's Day (Wales) and St Patrick's Day (Ireland) this month.)

Anyways, ignoring my poor counting/planning, on with February's final post! Today's is all about choosing influences in your life.



Rachel's Challenge (which I've mentioned a few times before) is a set of five personal 'challenges' for you to undertake. My favourite of these is number three: Choose Positive Influences. In our lives, we are influenced by an endless list of things; news, friends, the internet, social conventions, etc to name just a few. We don't choose whether or not we see some of these things in our lives, but we can choose how they affect us.

I personally think that taking time to reflect on your life and the things that make it up is essential. We need to analyse what's going on in your lives so that we can keep the good stuff, and better/remove the bad. One big aspect of this which can be very difficult is friendships. Some friendships are harmful and toxic, and may be changing you for the worse or withholding you from being the best you can be. It's a cliché, I know, but there's a reason for that - it's true. If you have someone in your life who you don't wanting your life, then remove yourself from them. If they're holding you back or changing you into something you don't want to be, then your'e under no obligation to keep spending time with them.

My personal influences that I choose everyday are Rachel herself, my best friends, and God. I take inspiration and instruction from the people who I keep myself around, and sources that I trust and have been proven to be what I want them to be. These choices help to form my ethics and moral code, as well as guide me in dictating how I live every single day. They've helped me more than I can express, and I've changed so much as a person over the past few months that I'm hard recognisable - and I couldn't be happier. Imagine yourself trading places with your current idol - whether that be a celebrity, a friend, or an image you have of yourself. Are you happy? Happier than you are now? Happier than you would be without those influences? Are you making other people happy? If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you may want to rethink your idols.

My challenge to you is to consider your personal influences, and if you feel you should, then change them. Remove yourself from the lives of people who put you down. Reach out to people you want to help, or can help you. Stop doing that one thing you hate about yourself. Start doing something productive, something constructive, something good. And be proud of yourself.

101 Cruelty-Free Makeup Brands

Hi guys! I hope you've had an amazing week off school/college! I'm flat-out refusing to think about going back to college tomorrow, so to distract myself I thought I'd talk about a topic close to my heart: animal testing. Many cosmetic companies (unfortunately) still test on animals, and the best way to fight this is to boycott their products, and buy form cruelty-free brands. These brands are as follows:


1. KAT VON D
2. ANASTASIA BEVERLY HILLS
3. HOURGLASS
4. URBAN DECAY*
5. ILLAMASQUA
6. TOO FACED*
7. NARS*
8. MILK MAKEUP
9. CHARLOTTE TILBURY
10. MARC JACOBS BEAUTY
11. BECCA*
12. JOSIE MARAN
13. TARTE*
14. COVERFX
15. OCC
16. BITE
17. THEBALM
18. PUR COSMETICS
19. IT COSMETICS*
20. FACE ATELIER
21. CIATE
22. BESAME
23. PERFEKT
24. NUDESTIX
25. BLINC
26. CARGO
27. DUWOP
28. BAREMINERALS*
29. BUXOM*
30. THEBODYSHOP*
31. LUSH
32. EYEKO
33. ARDENCY INN
34. EDWARD BESS
35. KORRES
36. CATRICE
37. JAPONESQUE
38. CHANTECAILLE
39. ELLIS FAAS
40. BY TERRY
41. ROUGE BUNNY ROUGE
42. ELF
43. HARD CANDY
44. MILANI
45. PHYSICIANS FORMULA
46. SONIA KASHUK
47. WETNWILD
48. NYX*
49. JORDANA
50. FLOWER
51. JANE
52. PRESTIGE
53. PIXI
54. PACIFICA
55. MINERAL FUSION
56. ESSENCE
57. BARRY M
58. GOSH
59. MARCELLE
60. ANNABELLE
61. W3LL PEOPLE
62. RMS BEAUTY
63. ILIA
64. KJAER WEIS
65. VAPOUR
66. RED APPLE LIPSTICK
67. JANE IREDALE
68. 100% PURE
69. SAPPHO
70. AU NATURALE
71. ALIMA PURE
72. EVERYDAY MINERALS
73. YOUNGBLOOD
74. LILY LOLO
75. INIKA
76. ANTONYM
77. BELLAPIERRE
78. ZUII ORGANIC
79. MAKEUP GEEK
80. COLOURPOP
81. GLOSSIER
82. BH COSMETICS
83. ZOEVA
84. NATASHA DENONA
85. RITUEL DE FILLE
86. AROMI
87. SUGARPILL
88. GABRIEL COSMETICS
89. MELT
90. DOSE OF COLORS
91. COLOURED RAINE
92. GIRLACTIK
93. CATE MCNABB
94. CAILYN COSMETICS
95. CONCRETE MINERALS
96. SUVA BEAUTY
97. SILK NATURALS
98. FAIRY GIRL
99. AFK COSMETICS
100. PUMPKIN AND POPPY
101. SHIRO

Clicking on the link to each brand will take you to their page on CrueltyFreeKitty's site - be sure to check out the rest of her site, it's so useful!

* = owned by a parent company that does test on animals.

Choices: How To Live

Happy Wednesday, guys! I'm actually on time today (shocker), so I hope you're all having a lovely half term if you're on it, or a lovely week if not!

Today's Choices post is more general than the past few; it covers a large area of life. I'll be focussing in on a couple of areas, but the gist of this post is that you have the freedom to choose your own path, so you should exploit that choice!

One major choice I've made is to know God. Nobody in my family has any faith at all, so religion seemed very foreign to me as a child. That is, until I realised that I could choose for myself what and who I believed in, and what that meant for me. No matter if you've been raised with or without faith, I'm of the opinion that you should choose for yourself what you really think. Question everything! Btw, that doesn't mean be unfaithful just because you can, but don't have blind faith; do your research (both in books/the internet and within yourself) and make an active choice to get to know yourself. To me, questioning faith actually ends up making it a whole lot stronger.

Another huge choice in my life was to be vegan. Again, this life choice is different from the rest of my family, so it was totally down to me that I became a vegan. Now, I'm not telling you all to go vegan (although you totally should), but I'm advising you to think about what you're eating, and maybe try it out! Also, being vegan has taught me to cook (really well, in my opinion), which is such an important life skill, and means that when I go to uni I won't be completely baffled by seeing a saucepan.

Other ways you can decide your own life as a teenager young adult or even as a regular adult, are as follows:

• How you treat people. It doesn't matter how you've been raised to treat others, you can always improve it! If you feel horrible when your parents don't tip at  restaurant, then tip them yourself! You're a strong, confident young person - act like it!
• Reading - do you? If you want to read more than you used to, just do it! I always have book recommendations, and so does the internet! It's such a simple way to change your life for the better.
• Your friendship group. If you don't like it, move on. It's tough, granted, but you may just find that you enjoy life a whole lot more with different people around you.
• Your attitude, and outlook on life. Be confident, be kind, be thankful, be appreciative of the things around you. These are literal choices that you can make, and they improve life not only for you, but for everybody who you meet!

... And so many more! Remember, it's cheesy as h@ck, but you really do control your own life. Act like it. 

Update On Psychotic Depression

If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you might remember this post, in which I explained how someone close to me had Psychotic Depression, and how it affected both his and my family’s lives. I’d now like to give you an update on how things are going, because a lot’s changed since I posted the last post. When I wrote the last post, things were very early on in the course of the illness, and therefore I wasn’t as informed about it as I am now. I’d like to share the benefits of this enlarged knowledge in order to inform, aid, and encourage everyone (in particular anyone who has struggled/is struggling/will struggle with illness of a similar ilk).

Firstly, the basics. He is no longer suffering nearly as much as he was in October - he was given the wrong dose of medicine which led to him unnecessarily deteriorating, but once this was sorted everything started going uphill again. The lesson from this is to always query something that you think is incorrect. My mum was the one who noticed the incorrect dosage, not any doctors. If she hadn’t done this, then I’m almost positive that his current situation would be different.

Secondly, my family is now a lot closer. This part of my life has made me realise that it is so so so important to work through issues with other people, as opposed to trying to solve everything by yourself. When tragedy strikes in the form of an illness (either physical or mental), sometimes it seems like you have to take it all on alone, especially if you’re the one who is ill. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Working together as a cohesive team is imperative in aiding both the sick person’s welfare and that of everyone else.

Thirdly, it is almost just as important to talk to other people about such issues. Whether those people be few or many, friends or counsellors or therapists or teachers or anybody else. When the problem first arose, I spoke to the counsellor at my college. If you’re considering counselling or any kind of therapy, don’t be afraid! These people are like qualified listeners. Their job is to help you, so believe me they won’t ever be inherently against you or your cause. The counsellor advised me to confide in one of my friends about my problem, which until then hadn’t even crossed my mind (I was still in the previously mentioned mindset; that I had to face everything on my own). You know what? I think that telling my friend helped me more than anything else did. We didn’t ever speak about it in person, it was solely one message that explained what was going on and why I was telling her. If you’re ever struggling with anything of the same ilk, I really do advise you to tell a friend. Or, if you can’t face that, tell me! Like I always say, my messages are always open.

Fourthly, I am now majorly more aware of mental illness in today’s society. It still seems to be abnormally glossed over and stigmatised more than any other form of sickness, but I’ve noticed that at my college there is a much bigger focus than there was at my secondary school, which I see as a huge improvement. The only way to prevent mental illness and to help people dealing with mental illness is education! If people don’t know what mental illness is, then how are they supposed to help someone who is suffering?

Finally, I am now so much better off from having this bad experience, which seems a really odd thing to say, yet still makes sense to me. I know what to do if this happens to my family again, and I know how to help if somebody I know starts to suffer from the same or a similar situation. And if you yourself or a friend is worried about anything I’ve mentioned today, or anything at all, once again please do not be afraid to contact me and I’ll do my absolute best to either help you myself or refer you to a helpful person/site. Thank you, and be safe!