Christmas, NYE and Growing-up.

(This is the third time I have written this post, so here goes!) 

Christmas is the time to see family, eat ridiculously unhealthy amounts of chocolate, to get very very merry and of course - if you're religious, celebrate the birth of Jesus. But this Christmas has ended up to be sooo much more than that. It dawned to me that when I get back to college, in January.. I won't have long left. Scary scary scary thought for me as for years I have been wondering what to do or if I am making the right choices in doing what I want to do. It's crazy when you look back on such a short space of time, even just a year and realise how much has changed within yourself and what's around you.

This summer I decided to take a big leap and move in with my friend. It was a little bit of a spontaneous thing and a definite leap into the unknown. Kate had a spare room in Exeter and since I go to college in Exeter and have lived in a small town my whole life, I decided to give it a go. I had a job promoting for night clubs and was having the time of my life, I learned lot's of new skills like, independence, money control, how to wash clothes and many other everyday things that had never occurred to me in daily life. It was such an amazing experience but I can't lie to you, it wasn't all roses. The bills started rolling in and the expenses started adding up and living in a city in comparison to living in a small town with your mum having everything done for you  was a big reality check! I was really having the time of my life but I was realising that money was not to be taken for granted and there were things that I couldn't do that all my friends were as I had to make sure I had enough money for little things like food or bills. I am incredibly lucky as I have an amazingly supportive family, and especially supportive mum, who I could always talk to about any of these worries and she would really help me. In December I thought it was time to go though, so unfortunately had to say goodbye to my very first flat, which was sad but also very happy. I had lots of very fond memories here and I knew Kate would continue to live here so I would always be back! 

My decision to leave was a very hard one, but I think it made the most sense at the time. I am only 17 after all and only work weekends as I am still in full time education so it wouldn't really be feasible to continue there. I also have uni to think about in September so the more money I can save, the better. I also have plans to go to L.A. In the summer to visit my brothers and gain new experiences with a couple of friends so that is another exciting expense I have to consider! (I will of course be blogging all through that!) 

The Cruise.

In 2010 I had gone on my first cruise with my mum. It was a bit of a tough time so mum spontaneously booked this holiday, and if I'm honest I wasn't too excited at all. I was at the age where 2 weeks away from my friends in the summer was a horrible idea and I didn't want to miss a thing. Still, we went and I had honestly had the best time of my life. I met the most incredible people ever and made some life long friendships. Completely unexpected. This time round my mum wanted to suprise my sister and take her with us. I was, this time, very excited by the possibilities of what could be ahead of us. It was once again an amazing experience but completely different to the last! We went on Royal Princess ship in its maiden season so everything was new and exciting. The facilities for every age are incredible. In all honesty I'm half Egyptian but have never really met any other nationalities in my life, not enough to actually befriend them. I know it sounds awful and completely ignorant, but I guess I had never really been given the oppertunity, so coming on this ship on Venice and meeting all of these people and being pretty much the only English teen on board was a total shock! It was an absolutely incredible experience  though and it really expanded my mind on these different cultures and people. Then, of course, there's the actual travelling part of a cruise, so going to these beautiful countries and seeing these historic landmarks that are hundreds and sometimes even thousands of years old is an experience I would suggest to absolutely anybody. It really shows you that there's so much more to life than your front door. 

 

The ship itself was beautiful and was stunningly made with the most happiest, helpful staff who really couldn't do any more for you. The food was international so they had pretty much anything you can imagine, with a burger and pizza joint out on deck (insane, right?) all in all it was such an incredible experience and if anyone is contemplating it, don't even think about it, do it! It is of course a lot of money, but so so worth it in every single way. 

Festivals.

Before this summer I had never reallllly been to a festival, other than local one day ones and I was determined to give it a go! I used to go camping when I was little, so thought I would be prepared for what was to come and absolutely love music, especially live music so thought it would be perfect for me and I wasn't wrong. I literally had the time of my life. The first one I went to was in Newquay called Boardmasters. Kate and I had worked in Newquay just before the festival doing some promoting so we knew where everything was and two other friends, Liv and Grace also came up with us. It was such an amazing time as I just love the freedom at festivals, you can do whatever you want whenever you want, listen to the music you want to listen to you and I find everyone is so friendly! The next one I went to was called Bestival in the Isle of Wight and that was a completely different experience compared to the first, but equally incredible. It wa very different as we took the car for Newquay but for the Isle of Wight we didn't so that was a little bit of a different experience not being able to have the freedom of driving into town or having absolutely everything in the car but it didn't really matter. We saw the likes of Snoop Dogg, Bastille, Rudimental, John Newman, literally, just to name a few. Unfortunately we did miss the man himself, Elton John as the girls had jobs to get back to but I'm sure there will be another time! I will do a full write up of the festivals I attended probably a bit closer to festival season with all the do's and dont's. I would say that if you're looking to go on your first festival, Boardmasters would be an excellent place to start as it eases you into it and it's a reasonable size, so you shouldn't get too lost and if you do it's not the end of the world. The vibe is very chill and fun and most of the festival goers I know, started off here.

All of these experiences I have had this year have been absolutely incredible and I'm completely aware on how lucky I am to have had these. I'm also very lucky on the people that I have in my life and have met or become closer to in 2013, all of these little things that have contributed to the year to make it so special. It's nice to take some time out sometimes and be a bit thankful of what you have! This year has really helped me grow as a person, realise the full potential to things and taught me to grasp every oppertunity that comes your way. So this is just the very beginning and I'm excited to see what becomes of 2014. 

 

Happy New Year. 

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Remember, Remember the 5th of November.



In front of the Bonfire
Coat&Jeans - Topshop, Top - New Look. Wellies - Hunter. 

A little bit overdue but something I need to write about! This has nothing to do with hair and/or make up and fashion. For some reason I have always loved Bonfire night, since I was a little girl, it always used to excite me wrapping up all warm and going to family friend's houses and everyone getting together to watch the fireworks and even make a Guy Fawkes. It was always a really nice family event and something fun to do whether it be mid week or as a weekend treat, but as you get a bit older I find it's hard to find anything to do for it. It usually landed on mid week and you'd have school the next day or exams or something which meant there wasn't alot you could do, and you're not at the age to let your friends do fireworks themselves and as I don't really have a proper garden there's no where to even make a bonfire. I text my roomate in the morning seeing if there was anything going on (as I have recently moved to a city, I assumed there would finally be something) then she told me about an event in a tiny village close to us, Ottery St.Mary called Tar Barrels. She explained a little bit about it and to say the least I was confused, but interested at the same time. It's basically an event held on the 5th November every year where these barrels are soaked/filled in tar and these guys run through the village shouting with these on their backs. This was pretty much the description I had on the event and had to think it was maybe slightly over exaggerated. Under exaggerated was more like it. It was mental. Kate comes to pick me up and has my wellies in the front - I became slightly confused. We turn up to this tiny village in Bertie - the mini and before we even get there, there's a huge queue of cars and a sign saying £10 for parking. I was pretty confused at this point but still really excited to see what it was about. It's dark when we finally get there and there's burger vans, sweet vans, Toffee apples, the lot and it's literally buzzing. Eveyone's all wrapped up and you walk past this big bit of greenery surrounded by trees and there is this massive bonfire lit - complete with Guy Fawkes! Everyone's stood around it and it was awesome. The field bit was pretty very so I now understand the use of wellies, tactical decision made by Kate, knowing I would be complaining if I got my white Converse dirty! We carry on walking and find there's a fair ground there too, I was so impressed by this and being the big kids that we are we went on every single ride. Later on we go get some food and enjoy the atmosphere and on this skinny, long street the wardens come over and tell everyone there's a barrel coming. I literally had no idea what they were on about so everyone stood in anticipation. Just as we were going to leave(as it was getting cold and late) we see these men running down the hill with a flaming barrel on their back - the crowd all splitting to give them an entrance. They came closer and all took in turns to have the barrel on their back. All shouting like absolute mad men. The atmosphere was crazy and completely full of adrenaline. It was honestly one of the weirdest activities I have ever seen but I absolutely loved it. It's such a perfectly English tradition with all the local pubs sponsering each barrel. I would a million percent reccommend that if you have never been to Tar Barrels before, go! The atmosphere is incredible and like nothing you would have witnessed before, for bonfire night. Only thing I might add is it's maybe not the best thing if you have small children or cant dodge/move out of the way quickly as you never know where the Barrel is going to go. I'll link the official website so you can read a bit more about what goes down. http://www.tarbarrels.co.uk/index.htm

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HALLOWEEN.

I get so so excited about this time of year, I think the older I get the better it gets for me. This Halloween I had a few thoughts on what to be, and I actually ordered a Cheerleader outfit off the internet and wednesday came (a day before Halloween) and it still wasn't here so I had to have a plan B. My roomate, Kate and I were looking over what we had and we came across old leotards that we had. We then put some tights on, facepaint and a pair of ears and we were all ready and scary!

As you can see there was a lot of fake blood and we used liquid latex to make the wounds and bloody up the bunny ears and our arms to make us look like reeeeal zombie bunnies! The only thing I would say is that the make up tended to look quite messy when it came to the end of the night as dancing wore it off and we couldn't bring clutches to touch it all up! The make up we used a liquid facepaint in a tube which we thought we would put in a small dish and add with water as otherwise it became quite thick and hard to spread when it dries a little which makes it become patchy. This was applied with a small make up sponge.For the eyes we basically did the same but with the black paint and used a paint brush this time to do a circular shape around the eyes from the eyebrow bone to just above the cheekbone to give the 'dead' look. As we were meant to be 'dead bunnies'/'ware-bunnies' we wanted to do whisker type things but not in the usual way that bunnies have whiskers so we painted out top lip black with a thin paint brush and did a flick from it to half way up our cheeks with lines going horisontally from it to create the look of stitches. The little black bunny nose was also very easy to do by just marking out with a thin brush how big you would like it to be then colouring it in. To finish it we just put a line going down from our noses to our lip to also give the bunny look.

For the Saturday night we took another approach to the whole Halloween look. Although it was fun to be completely covered in facepaint we thought we would go for a bit of a tamer look and were leopards, original, I know. This one was really fun as I did our face paint and did some spots on one side of our face along with the usual nose and had massively long and thick fake eyelashes, which was a bit of a 'prettier' look to Halloween, especially as the majourity went all out on the Thursday. We felt a lot happier with the minimal look and a little more confident so maybe if you're not one to go all out this would be a better look for you.
For the actual costume side I felt you don't really need to do too much as the make up says it all and going overbpard with leopard print can be very risky! I went for a simple black dress from H&M for £7.99 a Gold pointy necklace from Primark (to resemble teeth) £4 and my Nude shoes also from H&M a coupple of years ago which I think were only around £15, so you don't need to spend lots to dress up! Make-up wise it wasnt as hard to do as it may look. It's a sort of one sided idea which my friend originally showed me a picture of and asked me to recreate. Face. I started with the foundation and lots of bronzer to give off the colour of a leopard so orange was acceptable for once! Then I moved on to the nose and the line going down from the nose as a rough divider. after that I put some white paint on one side of my mouth/lower nose area in a kind of oval(ish)shape and painted on the holes for the whiskers. After that I painted the top lip black, some fake blood streaming down one side and then went on to the spots. The spots were just black splodges really, as I think the normal dots look a bit naf so maybe its worth looking up an actual leopard and try and copy the spots as much as you can as they're all different(sizes and shapes)I did those for half of my face - avoiding the white paint and down half of my neck. Eyes. The last thing that was done was eyes, my favourite part. I bought a set of Eyelure false lashes that were quite thick and put a bit of eyeliner on both eyes. I flicked the eyeliner in on the side closest to the nose and out on the farther side, this created a cat look. On the side without the facepaint from the eyeliner up to brow bone and did tiny little leopard prints as I felt it was a little bare.

Looking very moody with the stanadard toilet picture- sorry!

Two Leopards

Kate

I think this was quite late on in the night..

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The Beginning.

Hi, so my name is Lydia, but Falcons and Dreamers is my blog name, aka FAD.
The name came from messing around and putting words together and this is one I really liked. It shows the strength, wisdom and beauty in you - Just like a Falcon, as well as soaring through the skies being free with no limit - just like a dreamer. The sky IS the limit afterall. This blog has really been set up as I feel I have sooo much to share and need a place to share it, and I was never great with diaries so I can look back on this (hopefully) when I'm old and grey and can remember what I did and how I became who I am/will be.
I have also always been strongly interested in hair, make up, beauty, culture, music, pictures, fashion and performing arts, so I can put all these little things and reviews on here for likeminded people to have a little search through and maybe help some people out!
I'm 17 and live in Devon. I study Performing Arts at college and am currently in my second year. I have very big ambitions in life. I ultimitely want to become an Actress but not the generic way, I hate how theres so many egos in the business and it is something that I, personally don't want to have as I have already seen a lot of that already. I want to do it my way, I want to explore, travel, learn, gain new skills and new experiences, meet new people and do new things, not wait around for something that may never happen. I'd like to do journalism for a while. See the world and contribute. My brothers live in Los Angelese and my sister lives in London and I have plans to see them all as soon as I can. I have been out to the City of Angels twice and London, more times than I can even count. My sister is working at a pretty high up hospital (which I am very very proud of her for) and my brothers are currently working on a brand, Hollywon't which is a platform to help independent creators BE independant creators, so that may be worth a search! I currently work in Cosmetics and Fragerence, have done am doing a little bit of modelling work here and there and am currently hoping to start a Performing arts class for children who maybe have some difficulties in life so could express what they feel, have a friendly non judgemental network of people/friends around them without having to pay the usual tuition fee's, as I feel you shouldn't have to be rich to do what you love. I have such a curious mind that when I come across something new, something I don't know about, I study it. So this should be a place where I guess whoever reading this (if anyone is) can learn with me and see what I see. So I hope you enjoy reading this and have a loooooooovely day!
:)

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