Monday Babble.

After planning to do my monthly 'Sunday sit-down' post yesterday as a kind of round up and attempt to get back into blogging, I failed miserably. Instead I made brownies and spent the afternoon with my dad, which was so lovely and chilled and really what i've needed after a couple of weeks of feeling a bit shit.

If you've been following me on twitter recently, you'll have probably seen me talking about my mental health. I've never really struggled throughout my life with my mental health, but lately I've had so much going on that everything kind of got on top of me this past few weeks and i've been really struggling. I've felt like i've had someone sat on my chest, making it hard to breath and I almost work myself up until I feel like i'm going to have a panic attack. So this week I took the first step and booked myself in for a doctors appointment, just to talk to someone and figure out whats going on. This is probably the main reason for my lack of blogging recently, I just never felt like i had the time to blog when I have so much other stuff to do. I miss blogging hugely though and am constantly writing down blog post ideas in my notebook ready for my big return! But I do like doing these little posts to keep you in the loop and to know that I am still here, waiting to get back into it soon!

One of the main things I wanted to write a post about was my wedding, I've been trying to keep you guys updated with wedding posts but this past 2 months have whizzed by and I just haven't had the time to write something. So I'm planning on hopefully getting one of those out this week and letting you in on all the things going down!

As for everything else, I'm still chugging away behind the scenes for my Etsy shop, working on planning a Sheffield blogger event with The City Girls, and popping along to the odd blogging event when I have the time to venture out in the evenings. Lots of exciting things still going on which I'll be telling you about soon when I get a chance to write them up!

Then lastly, I'm pretty darn excited about the start of autumn. I know it's so cliche to be all about the autumn leaves and cold weather and hot chocolate but I honestly love autumn so much and I'm already excited about the dreaded 'c' word. Yep. I'm excited about CHRISTMAS..

So expect to see plenty of autumn themed posts coming your way soon! As I know I wont be able to control my excitement. I've already got the fairy lights up around my fireplace in the living room to make the evenings all cosy!

I hope to be seeing you much more frequently around here soon.

Get Date Night Box Review

When I saw the twitter handle for the @GetDateNight I was intrigued, I'm always on the look out for new things to do on date night and so this obviously appealed to me. When I saw that they tailor make a box for you and your partner with a surprise date night in it, I was immediately all aboard that train. Due to Nick and I getting married in less than 6 weeks (EEEK) we're pretty strapped for cash at the minute and anything new or fun to do together that isn't too expensive appeals to us massively right now, so I was over the moon when they wanted to do a collaboration!

We patiently waited a couple of days for our box to arrive and when it did we were really impressed with the box alone! It's black with the logo on the front and it looks really sophisticated and 'grown up'. Obviously I tore open the box sharpish to find out what was inside ours! We were first greeted with a sweet little note that said Tarnya and Nick on it, which is a lovely little touch and then we rummaged around inside to found out that ours was chocolate based. CHOCOLATE, PEOPLE! I'm a massive chocoholic and I was so redic happy that our box was based around chocolate.

In our box we had 4 different things to do. First of which was a taste test. We had a box of chocolates wrapped in different colours, there were two of each and a little score card. The test is to both try them and try and guess the flavours correctly. This was fun and all the chocolates tasted amazing! It was really funny to tell the difference between Nick and I's tastes. Nick is massive chilli head, so his taste buds are clearly half dead because he couldn't pick up any of the subtle flavours like I could. He couldn't even taste the chilli flavoured one! After checking out the score sheet we both failed pretty miserably with only 2 out of the 6, but we were pretty close on the others but couldn't quite pin point exactly what the flavours were.





The next thing in the box were 2 'hot chocolate spoons'. I've seen these were quite popular last year and never picked any up, so we were quite excited to try them. We both made ourselves one to snuggle up and watch TV together. I have to say I was a little disappointed, they took absolutely ages to melt into hot milk and we clearly used too much milk because it tasted only half of chocolate, but this wasn't the box's fault at all, I just wish there were clearer instructions on how much milk to use with the spoons was all!



Next up was a little box of dark, milk and white chocolate, I have to be honest and say that Nick and I just snacked on these really and ate them all in one sitting, hah! They tasted amazing though and were a nice 'pick me up' treat when we were both knackered from work one night.

Then lastly there was a bag of white chocolate buttons and a small bottle of champagne. We were instructed to melt the white chocolate and coat a wine glass with it so that you can "lick the chocolate and then taste the champagne" as it apparently changes the flavour of it. Now this sounded pretty cool but also, pretty impractical for us. We didn't have anything to melt down the chocolate with, never mind coat the glass, let it cool and then drink the champagne. So what we actually did was one Sunday afternoon, sit and eat the entire bag of buttons whilst drinking the champagne, close enough right? ha ha! I honestly don't really like champagne so this didn't really appeal to me anyway, but I was pretty happy with eating god knows how many calories in white chocolate!

I have to say with this box I wasn't hugely impressed, I love chocolate and I liked the little game to play, but there could have been something more to it, maybe another game or something to make it more interesting rather than just a weekend treat of eating chocolate together. That said I am still interested in getting another box to see what else they come up with! This is totally not sponsored but I am thinking about taking advantage of the 50% off the first box off when you sign up, just so I can have a second go at this. If that box isn't impressive then I wouldn't go back for a third but I honestly think the concept is quite cool and unique. If you are a couple that want to do something fun and new to spice up a date night then maybe this is the thing for you!

What are your thoughts? I'd love to know in the comments!

Ways In Which I Want To Improve Sweet Allure.

This post is something I've had in the pipeline for a little while but I felt with my last post, My Blogging Journey, it was only fitting that I followed on with this post about the things I'd like to improve on my blog.



First of all I'd like to go over a couple of things I'm really proud of around here and that is my content. I try really really hard to come up with original content for my blog, I like to stand out from the crowd and offer something a little bit different from the 'norm'. If I write a beauty review I always try to take a different twist on it, like with my 'to highlight or not to highlight' post and it's something I'm really proud of. Although this does mean from time to time content is delayed, as I'd rather wait and put out something I'm happy with, rather than churning it out for the sake of it, I do think when you come here you can find something a little different.

However the main downfall and probably my big weakness around here is my photography. I love photography but I just don't have the best equipment available to me at the moment to really give my blog that extra oomph. I am actively working on this behind the scenes, I'm squirrelling away money so that come the black Friday sales, I can buy myself a proper camera, some lenses and some blogging lights. This means I'll have everything I need to experiment and hopefully take my blog up a notch, plus it also means I'll have to go shopping for loads of blogging accessories, and this makes me very excited! A prime example is the photo on this blog post, why is it so blue!? Ugh.

The next concern I have with my blog at the minute is my schedule, I've blabbed on about it constantly but since starting my Etsy Shop I've been so crazy busy that I've had no real spare time to work on my blog, but this is something I'm really working on and I'm determined to get back to a 3 posts a week schedule. I didn't realise how much I missed writing until I made a return this past week or two and I'm excited to really get back into it. I've got plenty of things to talk about over the next few weeks, although do be warned, the week or two coming up to my wedding will be pretty sporadic on my blog, but that's pretty understandable!

Then lastly, I want to make much more of an effort to interact with people. I do try to reply to everything I get on twitter but I've been pretty useless at replying to blog comments. I ran a poll recently and a lot of people said they check back or expect a reply to blog comments, which I was quite surprised by, but it is something I've thought about since and will try to improve on. I find it hard to know when a blog comment needs a response? I'm sure I don't feel alone in this and I'd rather be honest with you guys, so this is me saying I will make more of an effort on that front!

I guess now I've told you guys about all of this I kind of have to stick to it? Balls.

My Blogging Journey.

When I read my friend Holly's post about why she started blogging, it really inspired me to talk about the reasons I started blogging, as I'm not really sure I've shared that here on my blog before.

About 2 years ago, I'd been in my job just over a year. Although the premise of video-game testing sounds like the best job in the world, but like with any job, it gets pretty repetitive and mundane after awhile and I started to feel really sad and uninspired.

I started trying to find ways to fulfil that need outside of work and I landed on going to the gym. I enjoyed the gym and it kicked started me losing the weight I wanted to lose, which was awesome. However I had started a little fitness blog along side my gym sessions, talking about how I felt, what work outs I was doing, how much weight I'd lost etc etc to help keep track of everything and I just found myself really enjoying writing it and reading other peoples journeys.

After the gym sessions fizzled out, not because I got bored as such but because I'd lost the weight I actually wanted to lose and felt quite happy with myself, but obviously my fitness blog kind of fizzle out with it and I started to slip back into being really bored and sad outside of work.

I ummed and ahhhed for quite awhile about starting a proper blog, I had no idea what to talk about, what to name it, how to go about being a 'blogger', until one day I took the plunge and SweetAllure happened. It started out for awhile being a beauty blog for people who was just getting into makeup AKA, me. I hadn't been into skincare or beauty for long and thought it'd be an interesting place to learn and grow, but after awhile I realised writing about one thing forever wasn't for me, I had so many other interests in life so why would I limit myself to one topic?

I slowly started introducing lifestyle and fashion posts and I just felt so much happier. It was keeping me occupied outside of work, thinking about topics and content, trying to take a none blurry photo and discovering the magical world of Twitter. I think becoming obsessed with Twitter and finding this HUGE community of bloggers was the turning point for me, before it was just a hobby but something changed and it became this huge drive and passion.

Talking to random people all over the world about everything to do with blogging was amazing and that was before I discovered 'Twitter Chats'. I remember just sitting on my sofa all weekend joining in chat after chat and talking to so many people about so many different things, it was just so new and interesting! I still do this when I get time and still love talking to new people about random stuff, it's the main reason I'm obsessed with Twitter.

After a few months I managed to somehow end up being invited along to a blogger meet up, where I met some people I still talk to now! It was so terrifying and bizarre but it was also pretty fucking awesome too. Before I knew it I was popping along to events and meets up all the time, meeting new people and making some amazing friends along the way.

I honestly could never have imagined the world that has been opened up to me from blogging. I've met so many amazing people in a city that I was so lonely in, I had no friends, no social life and writing about stuff on the internet changed that, how mental is that?!

I get invited to so many awesome places in Sheffield to try new menus or drink menus, check out awesome new venues that have opened up or try new products, it still blows my mind.

Even more recently, it's opened up another avenue for me with my artwork. I've always been creative, for as long as I can remember. Art was always my best subject in school, I'd sketch and paint or knit and cross stitch in my spare time. When I decided to share that artwork with you lovely lot, it just exploded. I really cannot explain how insane this last month or two has been on that front (and still is!). But I just don't know where I would be without all of this, writing, painting, events, meeting and talking to people, I'd still be sat being so sad and lonely crying to Nick that I just wanted some friends to talk to. But hey, guess what? those people are you. Every single last person that has spoken to me in real life, on twitter, in a blog post comment, it was every single one of you that lifted me out of a really sad hole that I thought I would never get out of.

So I want to say thank you. Thank you for being so fucking awesome, every single day. I hope I can always continue to carry on this wonderful journey with all of you as I change and grow as a blog and as a person! The support of the community has always been so amazing and I honestly wouldn't change it for the world.

I would genuinely love to hear your blogging story/journey, so please feel free comment below or tweet me a link to your blog post! (@sweet_allure)!

Advertisers Of The Month: September 2016.

Some of you might not know this but I've recently started providing ad space on my blog. I have and still do buy ad spaces on other peoples blogs whenever possible, it really is a great way to get your blog seen by new audiences and build relationships with other bloggers! I do think it's such a lovely way to support the bloggers you love too!

My first ever little advertiser is the lovely Kenzie. Now I want you to show him some big love, he's a new blogger around the block and we all know how hard it is to get started around here, so please give him a follow and check out his pages! It helps that he's super friendly and lovely too! 

Kenzieestyles.com is a fashion, beauty & Lifestyle blog set up in August 2016 it aims to provide mainly men's fashion, but will be mixed and also mainly produced based due to the fact I am obsessed with hair care products and deodorants.

Kenzieestyles has hopes of becoming a top male grooming/fashion blog, well I hope so anyhow. 

You can find Kenzie on all of his social media links below! 

Blog

Twitter

Instagram

Pinterest

Facebook

Bloglovin

Next up is my lovely friend Jessica! I've been speaking to Jess for awhile on twitter and she's so friendly and sweet! I love her blog, it's a mixture of health and fitness, beauty and home ware! So please head over and check her out, especially if you'd love to learn how to make a banging vegi chilli!

My name is Jessica, I am 28 and living in South Wales.

I started this blog as a way to share my thoughts & interests with like minded people - Focusing on beauty, fitness, fashion  & every day life.

You can find Jessica on all of her social media links below!

Blog

Twitter

Instagram

If anyone is interested in an advertising space for this or next month, please visit my advertising page or drop me an email at sweetalluree@gmail.com and we can discuss something!