My first encounter with MAC

I have never owned any beauty products from MAC, but for Christmas I received two gorgeous eye shadows and a quad palette, and I'm in love.

The two colours I got were Satin Taupe and Smut. Satin Taupe is a beautiful shimmery purple colour. Most of the eye shadows I own are a brown/gold colour, so I was on the look out for something purple/silver. This shade is perfect.
Smut is a dark matte purple, which I use for my crease. I think these two colours compliment each other really well, and the pigmentation is amazing.

Now all I have to do is look for two more colours to complete my palette :)

Does anyone else have any MAC eye shadow colours they would recommend?

H x

Accordion Potatoes

First exam down, two more to go!

Just a quick post today to say that I tried a new method of cooking potatoes the other day and they were so yummy. I got the recipe from A Beautiful Mess, which is a fantastic blog about everything homemade and DIY.

Source: A Beautiful Mess

The recipe was accordion potatoes (or hasselback potatoes) which was a delicious twist from the usual roasties. Super simple to prepare and looks great for dinner parties. Get the recipe here

Does anyone else do anything yummy or different with their potatoes?

H x

How to make a long distance relationship work

How I make a long distance relationship work? This is a question I get a lot.

To catch you up, my boyfriend and I live in different countries. It's not permanent, just for a year. I'm studying out in Malta, and he's working back home in England. We have been dating for over a year now, and met at university. He was completely supportive of my choice to come abroad, which made things that little bit easier when leaving home.

Source: Pinterest

So how do we keep our relationship going when we're over 1000 miles apart? Here are some of my thoughts and tips.

1. First of all, we'd been dating for a while before I moved away. This meant that we'd built up a lot of trust with each other. For me, this framework has been really important. I have pictures up on my wall of us together, each one a fun memory and a reminder of why I love him.

2. Skype has been a massive help. Thanks to this brilliant piece of technology, I can see and talk to my boyfriend pretty much whenever I want, via a webcam. I should mention that WhatsApp is also great, I can text home for free through our wifi.

3 .A good tip if you are going abroad is to keep busy. Luckily for me, even though I miss home, I'm not one to get homesick. I've been travelling before, so I guess I'm used to being away, and I've never really had a problem with homesickness. But my advice would be to keep busy. The busier you are, the more fun you'll have and the less you'll miss home. This way when you do Skype or talk to your boyfriend you'll have something fun to say. This is helpful for him as well, as he'll feel like part of your new adventure if you include him.

4. Surprise him. Something as small as sending a postcard lets him know that you're thinking about him.

Another helpful factor for me is that I'm not alone. One of my housemates also has a boyfriend back in England. Stacey wanted to pass on some of her experiences:

“My boyfriend and I officially got together mid-July, so more or less two months before I moved to Malta. We’d know each other from our first year at university and started ‘seeing’ each other half way through our second year. Moving to Malta was such a last minute plan, but as soon as it stated to become real, I told him about it. We weren't ‘boyfriend & girlfriend’ then, but knowing we were going to be living in different countries didn't scare him off. He supported my decision and he has been my rock ever since. We text (well, WhatsApp) every day – without fail, and Skype each other at least twice a week. Speaking to each other every day is so important, even if it’s just a text; it shows that you’re thinking about each other. Trust plays an essential role in any relationship, especially long distance ones. I trust my boyfriend more than anyone ever, and I know the feeling is mutual. And the one thing that keeps us going, is knowing that we are going to be seeing each other soon in the future, even though it does seem a while away, we always have something to look forward to together. ”

So I hope that was helpful, or at least interesting. Are any of you in a long distance relationship? If not, would you consider it?

H x

Essie: Thigh High

A quick post today (as most of mine will be over the next few weeks due to coursework deadlines and exam dates fast approaching), about one of my new nail varnishes I received this Christmas. It's an Essie one in the colour Thigh High.




I love this colour. It's a gorgeous cranberry colour that is perfect for winter. I know it's just a nail varnish, but when I'm wearing it I feel made up, even if I'm just chilling at home in jeans. Is it sad that a nail varnish has such an effect on me..hmmm..probably.

I really like Essie nail varnishes in general as the colours are just gorgeous, but they don't have the best lasting time on my nails for some reason. They aren't terrible, they just don't seem to last as long on my nails as other people rave about.

Does anyone else find this, or is it just me?

H x

Happy New Year (and a 'little' chat)

Happy New Year everyone and I hope you had a really good Christmas. I had a lovely time back at home with my family but sadly I was ill over new years so didn't get to see as many people as I was hoping to. Having said that I still feel like it was non-stop at home, but now I'm back in Malta (and the sun is shining! ..well for the moment at least) I can sit down, relax with a cuppa tea, and spend some time with my blog. Christmas is a family time and for me that meant a majority of my time was spent playing silly games and eating amazing food so my blog was pushed to the background. But now it's the new year and time to organise and throw myself back into the world of blogging.

This year I've decided I'm going to have a little shuffle around of my blog. When I first created Becoming Hugo it was just for me. No one was reading it, none of my friends or family new about it, it was just something I enjoyed doing for me. None of my friends have a blog, so it was just a tester to see if I enjoyed it. I can honestly say I love my blog. It's sounds silly and soppy but I'm very proud of it. Now some of my friends/family check it as a way of seeing how I'm doing abroad, and I've started gaining a few followers. This is boggling to me. That some people that I've never met might actually be interested or want to read what I write. Crazy!

However, I don't want to lose sight of what this blog means to me, and right now I think its a little disorganised and it is time for a new years change. Here are my ideas:

Interactive
I want to welcome my new readers by making my posts interactive. I'm going to try to reply to most of the comments that people leave and listen to any feedback or ideas suggested.

About Me
I want to create an about me section on my blog so people can find out a little more about it and maybe understand my blog better. I love reading about other people on their blogs (yes, I'm nosy like that) and I can't be the only person.

Content
Most of the blogs I read are beauty blogs (with a couple of fashion ones thrown in too) so in my mind I tried to follow that path too, but looking through my blog I can see I have a real mix of topics. I used to get a bit stressed about whether or not I'd posted enough 'beauty' posts rather than just posting what I wanted to talk about. So this year there's going to be a change. I'm still going to blog about reviews and products but there will be lifestyle posts thrown in too, all guilt free. I'm a real foodie and love to cook, so I might start a cooking feature or talk about recipes I like. Basically what I'm trying to say is that blogging is a big learning curve, and my blog hasn't quite found itself yet. But throughout this year I hope to find that out. I understand the things that I post might not be as interesting for some people to read, but if I'm passionate about what I'm writing then I hope that will show through.

So what do you think? Did you know exactly what you were going to blog about before you started? And has it changed at all since the beginning? 

H x