SOCIAL MEDIA



trick - or - treat yoself

for starters we have a pumkin shaped vanilla bean rice krispie treat, stuffed a with brown butter semisweet chip cookie dough pop. finished with a pretzel stem, green candy melt vines and an m&m leaf. 

this beauty is truly a mouthful to eat. the cookie dough is stuffed with chocolate chips that cut through the sweetness overall and stop it from being overly sickly.


hallowqueen

halloween spinkle cake batter sugar cookie, finished with candy melts and assorted halloween sprinkles.

 i took a bite of this and told myself i would savour it. as i write this all i can see is the few stray sprinkles that seemed to escape my mouth. i love anything birthday cake flavour but this is on another level.


creep it real


cookie monster

this colourful cutie contains mini chunks of sugar high's OG cookie, crushed oreos, milk chocolate coated edible cookie dough balls and handfuls of semisweet chocolate chips, topped with halloween coloured piping, sprinkles and edible eyes.

i'm not a massive oreo fan but this has definitely changed my mind. i could eat them stuffed in a sugar high cookie any day of the week. with so much going on you may think that each individual element would get lost but it really doesn't. 


a bunch of hocus pocus

a fudgey blonde with swirls of salted caramel chocolate spread, coated in milk chocolate and piped with black candy melts, finished with an edible eye.

honestly look at that inside and tell me you wouldn't demolish the whole thing? blondies are my absolute favourite, especially when they look this gooey on the inside. there are no words that would accurately describe how good this - but trust me when i tell you it is amazing. so simple but so good.








sugar high london - trick or treat halloween box.

Thursday 29 October 2020


at the grand age of 31 i thought i would have grown out of acne, it's something most people suffer with in their teenage years whilst they're going through puberty and their hormones are all over the place.

over the last two decades the number of people who are suffering with adult acne has gone up significantly. it's thought that 85% of adult females are suffering from acne. that's including mild acne including whiteheads or blackheads. to more severe cysts that settle deep under the skin and everything in between.

there are many things that can trigger acne as an adult, it's quite common for it persist past our teenage years. most of the time it's from one of the following factors -

hormones is a biggie. excessive oestrogen or testosterone can lead to acne because they create changes in the entire body. this leads to a ph imbalance, inflammation and excess production of sebum. there are many things that can cause hormonal fluctuations such as menstruation and pregnancy. this also includes poly-cystic ovary syndrome which means you can have a higher testosterone levels, again leading to a change in your skin.

contact irritation is something that is becoming more popular due to lots of countries and states having rules around wearing face masks in public places. if something irritates the skin it can lower the skins defences and cause a protective reaction that leads to inflammation. harsh cleansers and using razors on dry skin can also cause this to happen.

stress. another main cause, be that emotional or physical. emotional stress causes changes in the body as your body produces more cortisol and this can lead to an imbalance in the skin. i find my acne can be a lot worse when i stress so my skin gets worse, i then stress about that and it gets even worse. it's a vicious circle that i'm trying to break. then there's physical stress such as lack of sleep, dehydration or extreme weather as well as air pollution. lack of sleep and being ill can cause your immune system to be lowered so if you're not feeling so good, your body is usually trying to fight that off and it makes you more susceptible to getting acne.

clogged pores is usually why spots form, excess sebum (oil) can clog your pores and cause an outbreak. a quick turnover of skin cells can lead to blocked hair follicles, which again results in acne a lot of the time.

bacteria is something that can be present in the skin, this isn't down to poor hygiene. however if it accumulates underneath the skin it can be difficult to reach and get rid of as surface cleansing won't help this. the only thing that can work for this is usually a round of antibiotics but that would be something your doctor or dermatologist can discuss with you if that's the reason it's causing your outbreaks.

certain medications can trigger breakouts. whilst contraceptives are often used to treat adult acne, they can also be the main reason you are suffering. antidepressants can also have acne as one of their more common side effects.

there are numerous ways it can be treated but from personal experience it involves a lot of trial and error. you will often have to trial a formula for a few months as they may take up to 8 weeks to start showing the full results. your skin can get worse before it gets better so you need to make sure you've given it a fair try before moving onto something else.

if you feel you are suffering from adult acne and are struggling to get rid of it, the best thing to do would be speaking to your gp or dermatologist. there's a lot of advice out there on how to get rid of it but as everyone's skin is different what works for one might not work for someone else. this leads back again to the trial and error aspect of things.

i plan on posting further about my journey with acne as it's something that i'm dealing with everyday and a lot of those days can be a struggle. when you grow out of you teen years years you think you put acne behind you but for myself and many others that is not the case.

understanding the causes of adult acne.

Tuesday 1 September 2020


if someone had told me in january that i'd have to stay in my house for three months, that i wouldn't be allowed to see my boyfriend or friends, i wouldn't be able to nip out for a little peruse around town - i would have laughed at how ridiculous that sounded.

2020 is going to be my year, i said to myself as the clock struck midnight and it turned over into a fresh new decade, along with many others i expect. i knew what i wanted to get out of the year and how i was going to go about it. i had a plan and i was ready to smash it.

that was until we got put in lockdown. it's funny when you look back at the initial announcement and think about how they had hoped it would only be a couple of weeks, a few months later and certain industries are only just beginning to open their doors again. with a lot shops and companies not working at full capacity due to social distancing restrictions.

brilliant - i thought to myself, i can really crack on with my animal crossing island now. but the anxious thoughts slowly began to creep in and the ocd tendencies of wanting to have control over a situation that no one knows anything about started worming themselves into my constant thought flow. would i still have a job to go back to? what would working be like when we go back to the office? how would we cancel all the appointments we'd arranged?

i think i speak for most people when i say i've never had so much free time all in one go. time to do whatever i'd wanted - be that set up a new business, take up a new hobby or even working on being the best version of yourself that you can be.

i opted to go for the latter. mental health is something i have always struggled with and i knew that being in lockdown could potentially exasperate those issues and make them unmanageable if i didn't deal with them quickly. after working so hard to get off medication, it was not something i wanted to slip back into but that's another post for another day. routine is one of the first things i rigidly stuck to at the start. i was working from home at the beginning of april so was getting up at a regular time and sleeping fairly early, i managed to keep this up for quite a long time after i was eventually put on furlough. though the same can't be said for the tail end of the lockdown period!

i had time to just read, i could read all day and not feel guilty about not having done anything around the house, there's always tomorrow. i read numerous books, both fiction and self help books. the term self help gives me the creeps, i don't know what it is but it just makes my skin crawl. i read books on intuitive eating, i read books on how to better manage anxiety. i was consuming as much as i could to become the best version of myself that i could.

it made me appreciate being outside. my one weekly shopping trip was my highlight of the week, getting to be out of the house and seeing people. i'd always said that i never got out much but when you're forced into a situation where you're not allowed to just nip out to go and have a nosey around the shops to see what's out, what's new. it really makes you realise how those little trips where you just go to town for an hour or two, really add up and make the world of difference.

i became more grateful and appreciative of what i already have. i was thankful that the people i surround myself with managed to escape catching the virus, that i myself also didn't catch it or at least if we did - we didn't show any signs or symptoms.

it made me reevaluate my life choices - a lot! it made me think about who i was spending my time with, what i was spending my time doing. was i putting my energy into the wrong things? i knew straight away that my perspective needed realigning so i was focusing on the good things, the things i wanted to channel my energy into it. i tried to cut out as many negative behaviours as i could, i made sure the people closest to me were the ones that bought out the best in me. they were the ones i wanted to focus my attention on.

at times it felt like the lockdown period was never ending, when was i going to be able to go out again? when will things go back to normal? i don't think things will ever go back to normal, not the way it was before all this happened. it's the new normal and we just have to roll with it and make the best out of a bad situation.

after all - there's always next year, right?
 

 

how lockdown changed my outlook on life.

Wednesday 19 August 2020

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