A few days in London with Tayyibah!

Hi guys! 

I've just got home from spending an awesome few days with my lovely friend Tayyibah in London. I took the train down on Saturday morning and I got in to London in the afternoon.

Tayyibah has started a YouTube channel which is super exciting - You can check it out here, so after a couple hours of frustrating editing and uploading, the Q&A vid was finally uploaded and we headed out, taking the bus to Camden. 

Camden Town is a part of London I have never experienced before, I've heard a lot of the markets there so I was excited to check it out! It was quite overwhelming, the amount of people there and the overall vibe was cool! There certainly were a lot of characters! The shops were very quirky, with huge shoes attached to the top of the buildings - it was insane! 

We browsed the markets for a while, I spotted a few cool jewellery stalls that I was interested in but I came back with a cute dress from a store called Lily-J (may do an OOTD with that soon) 

We also visited this amazing store called Cyberdog, it was dark with neon flashing lights and pumping music! Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures in there but we did take pics with the huge robot and it makes me laugh how this lady just casually photobombed Tayyibah's photo heheheh....

After hanging around Camden for a few hours we took the Tube to Tottenham Court Road and stopped for sushi at Wasabi.. We also vlogged a little in there so check out Tayyibah's channel to see that. I think it may be uploaded towards the end of the week! 

We ended the day at home with hot chocolate / tea and a late night movie - Daybreakers which was somewhat gory and disgusting but overall pretty good! 

DAY ii:

After getting up at 10 it took us a couple of hours to decide what to do.. We did think about visiting the National History Museum or Madame Tussauds but instead we hopped on the tube down to Holborn and from there we had a helluva awesome journey walking around Central London.. (Be proud of me Tayy for using 'helluva' lol) 

Starting from Holborn, armed with a DSLR in hand, we started walking to Convent Garden. Tayyibah is building up her photography portfolio so the photos were mainly focused on architecture and such.. 

At Convent Garden we stopped at Laduree and I bought some of their world famous macarons for my little brother who has been talking about them for a while! My god, are they heavenly, my favourite is the chocolate flavour!! 

Tayy's awesome photography! 

After browsing Convent Garden we walked to Leicester Square, passed the M&M store.. the smell was just beautiful! Taking in the sights, vlogging and photo taking we walked down Piccadilly down to Hyde Park corner, Buckingham Palace and strolled through Green Park, we were blessed with beautiful weather! The sun was shining so it was a great day for London adventures! 

If anyone has been reading since last year you may remember Tayyibah and I went to the Trocadero last year! 

We bought lunch and sat in Trafalgar Square to rest our feet (my feet were killing but Tayyibah was still going strong! Perks of climbing Ben Nevis!!). I love the atmosphere around Trafalgar Square, its so chilled and amazing.

We vlogged a little, took more photos and I sat in the crowd and played 'Where's Wally' or in this case.. Wheres Mary!? Hehe.. Can you spot me?!

From Trafalgar Square we went up to Southbank and admired the views of Big Ben and the London Eye... It was so chilled and ahhh amazing, I'm missing the vibe already, just writing about it! 

We also spotted the Snog frozen yogurt bus which was pretty cool.. 

At this point my feet were almost dead haha.. So we walked in to The City and took the tube from Bank to Oxford Circus. It was around 7pm and probably the quietest I've witnessed Oxford Street. Most of the shops were closed but we stopped at Costa (of course!) to relax and then headed home...

The day was finished with the movie Grown Ups which was pretty hilarious!

Today was my last day in London, we chilled around the flat and I helped Tayyibah film a video for her YouTube channel so watch out for that! I also got a high five from the cat which was awesome hehe! 

Thanks for reading, I know this was a long one!

Don't forget to check out Tayyibah's Youtube channel and send her lots of love ; ) 

https://www.youtube.com/user/XxSmileyMiaxX/

 xxx

DIY Earring holder - Easy & Inexpensive!

Hey guys! 

 The other day I was browsing Pinterest - one of my favourite online sites to gather inspiration and get creative! As you may know, my latest obsession has been to collect earrings ever since finding out I'm not allergic to them! When I used to wear them a few years ago my ears would go lumpy and really sore - all spare you the details but it wasn't the most pleasant experience I have to say.. 

Over the past few weeks I have collected quite a few pairs and have needed a place to store them so I saw this idea on Pinterest and decided to try it for myself. It's really easy and very cheap also. 

Here is what you will need: 

- A frame: I bought mine from Tiger for only £2! 
- Chains: I bought mine from eBay for only 99p
- Pliers 
- Tape or Superglue 
- Your earrings (of course!) 

How to make it: 

1) Turn your frame around so you are working from the back and remove the cardboard and glass pieces. 

2) Measure how much chain you need from one side of the frame to the other and use your pliers to cut the chain

3) Use either your tape or superglue and secure the chain down on both sides. It doesn't matter how messy this is because it won't be shown. As you can see mine is very messy! 

4) Place the glass back in and secure it using the four metal pieces on each side of the frame. 
I didn't put the cardboard back in but if you want the frame to stand on a desk put the cardboard back in. 
You can even add a picture to personalise it! 

5) Turn the frame back around, hook your earrings through the small holes of the chain et voila! 

An earring holder. The only problem is it doesn't hold studs, but if you're like me and prefer to wear dangly earrings then this is perfect for you. 

Hope you enjoyed reading and let me know if you try this out! 

Tag me on Instagram: @m4ryam
Tweet me a picture: @_m4ryam_

Take care

xxx

Sibling OOTDs - Off to Birmingham!

I've seemed to be exploring the Midlands the past few days as yesterday I had visited Nottingham and today we visited my hometown of Birmingham! 

I lived in Birmingham for the first 10 / 11 years of my life and when I first moved to Leicester (7 years ago) I missed it so much! But when I went today, I felt like a stranger in my hometown and Leicester feels like home now! Which is great because I was quite unhappy back then..

Anyway today we ventured in to Birmingham and before we left I asked my brother Usama to take my blog pictures and he insisted that he also be featured so it was fun doing a little photo shoot in our garden! 

The saying usually goes ladies first but seeing as Usama is a guest on the blog I'll post his pictures first ; ) 

Details: 

Shirt: John Lewis

Jeans: River Island

Shoes: Converse

My Outfit..

Details: 

T-shirt and Skirt: Zara
Long sleeve T-shirt underneath: Primark

Headscarf: Local store

Scarf around my shoulders: Unknown (sorry)

Earrings: Atomic Gifts

Watch: Michael Kors

When it got cold I wrapped this scarf around my shoulders..

So I'd say we had a nice relaxing day, mainly spent in the Bullring. I bought some little organising boxes for my makeup from Muji, a couple of folders for college from Acessorize and as my earring obsession continues I bought a few pairs from Topshop and Forever 21 along with a few scarves and Usama bought a shirt from Hollister! 

We finished the day at Akbar's Restaurant for a cheeky curry! XD 

I'm off to Manchester tomorrow, so if I have a good day you'll probably hear about it! ; ) 

Thanks for reading 

xx

Nottingham Haul - clothes, lipstick & earrings!

Hi guys! 

Today me and my lovely mother ventured in to Nottingham (more like got stressed by the SatNav multiple times!) The aim of the trip was to buy some decorative pieces for my bedroom as my furniture has now arrived I can finally start doing the room up! 

But it turned in to more of a clothes haul! Which I'm not complaining about! Although I did buy a rug from Urban Outfitters for my room but it turned out to be too small so that's been moved to the kitchen. 

From ZARA I purchased this cool beige top with the lace detail. This was reduced in the sale for £9.99 and the skirt is this shimmery brown maxi number at £25.99

I can never be bothered to try on clothes in store so when I got home just a couple hours ago I tried them on and they look pretty good! ; ) 

We also stopped at Jack Wills which I was really excited about. It is quite expensive in there so in the sale section I found this nice camel-ish coloured shirt and my favourite thing about it is how shimmery it is, it has silver thread running through it which makes it extra special. And this was reduced to £14 from £39.50 which I probably would not have bought if it had not been in the sale! 

In Space N.K I got this lipstick called Medieval by Lipstick Queen. It looks pretty dark in the  packaging but on the lips transfers to a nice sheer red. In store it was described as being the perfect red for everyone and I really love it! It's a very balmy texture but leaves a nice subtle red stain to the lips. See picture below for how it looks on the lips. 

And finally we stopped at the Atomic gifts store. This is one of those stores full of knick knacks - things you don't really need but can spend ages looking through their variety of quirky items! They also sell some lovely jewellery and I spotted these earrings which I probably spent about 10minutes deciding whether to buy them or not and so glad I did. I was hesitating because of the price tag - at £32 they're not cheap especially for earrings (or how much I would be willing to pay) but they were 20% off & I really loved them so I snapped them up for £26! 

Earrings are my current obsession, I really want to purchase a few more pairs and then I will show you in another post hopefully soon : ) 

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed :D

Tiger Haul!

As promised, a Tiger haul! 

I've only ever been to a Tiger store once in Surrey and I was really excited to hear it would be opening near me. If you haven't heard of Tiger before it's basically a shop that sells a LOT of stuff that is cute but stuff that you probably don't need! They sell wacky little things from stationary, kitchenware, party supplies, phone accessories, even spices and different herbal teas! And a major bonus is that everything is inexpensive! 

First few things I got were quite a few notebooks & I just got these to personalise with the patterned tape which I went crazy with! I actually didn't realise how much tape I had bought until I got home and took it all out the packaging! 

And this is how I personalised the notebooks using the tape. As you can tell I did mess one up but hey ho, not all goes well! 

Next few things I got were this super cute little hand fan, I've been after one all summer and I'm a bit late seeing as we are almost at the end of summer. I also got a pack of cards and this star ring which was only about a pound or two!

I also got this mirror for £4. It's just a tiny little mirror for when I do my makeup

And then the last few things: 

Some fine liners and a silver and gold marker. 

I'm also including some things my mum bought because they are soo cute! This awesome printed foil - I have never seen printed foil before! And some cute little fridge magnets. 

We spent quite a while in there circulating the shop fascinated by what they were selling! It's quirky, unusual and I'm so glad it has finally opened near me! 

Hope you enjoyed reading : )