LauraHadley.co.uk: youtube

18 Goals For 2018

Be more adventurous with photography.
Last year I bought my third lens for my Olympus Pen, and a Macro Converter too. I'm hoping this year I can use my photography kit to take better beauty shots, photos of food, travel pics and just so much more. I want to push myself outside of my comfort zone and take some incredible photos.

Manage my pain better.
I have my own techniques for managing chronic pain but I'd like to try new things out to see how they affect my body. I've already tried Pilates but I think trying out Yoga would be great for my body and my mind.

Daily blog.
Since I work on the blog full time, it doesn't always mean I'm posting every day. I'm setting myself the goal to write every day, even if it's a photo diary with a bit of text. I'm hoping to write about more beauty releases and travel features too.

Begin to freelance more.
I started my freelance journey in December and I'm ready to research into more opportunities and see what I can offer the world. I really enjoy writing and transcribing so I have my fingers crossed that I can make my own place in the freelancing community.

Start writing about wedding planning.
If you haven't seen my Twitter or Instagram, last month I got engaged! I'm over the moon and I couldn't be more happy right now. I've done a few pieces on weddings but now that I can plan my own out I'll definitely be featuring it on this blog soon.

Get a proper skincare routine in place.
This is one of the most difficult goals for me. I have combination skin that got really unhealthy when I was sick for the last quarter of the year. I need to set a proper routine in place to clear my skin up and balance the hydration/excess oil situation out.

Push for what's best blog-wise.
It frustrates me so much when bloggers accept sponsored posts (with dodgy links too!) for like £10 as it makes a ton of brands/prs offer really low rates. This year I need to stick to my guns - if people want sponsored posts on my blog then I need to be firm with my rates. Quality over quantity I say. Plus I shouldn't be spending hours on posts without good pay..

Buy a house.
Possibly the biggest goal for this year is to my a house with Andy. We had a little flat when we were in uni together but since moving home to my Dad's we've been saving for our own house to hopefully stay in until we're old and grey. We'll be staying in Liverpool and we've already seen a few houses that we're keeping our eye on. If you have tips for first time buyers feel free to let me know!

Have a weekend away.
I prefer little weekend trips compared to week or two-week long ones, but I'd love to just go to one place this year so we can still save money. As much as I want to go back to Berlin I think I need to explore Italy or maybe somewhere else in Poland.

Wash my makeup brushes more.
I was so bad at this last year that this is kind of like a guilty admission to make me wash them more. It's probably one of the reasons that my skin has been bad in the past few months too, so I need to make use of my beauty washing tools.

Vlog more.
I already vlog along with Andy for our travel YouTube and we need to start filming more. We don't do chatty vlogs, they're more showcasing different places and filming some arty shots so it's not like we have to prepare ourselves for what we have to say.

Track blog stats monthly.
I have done this on and off the past few years and the blog turns 4 next month so I need to keep track of stats more to see what works and what doesn't. I mean I know roughly, and you'd hope so by now, but with plenty of social media accounts to look at I could do with a more detailed chart.

Adopt 2 dogs.
This comes with getting a house but I'd love to adopt two dogs once we have a place. My family dog Charlie was adopted from the RSPCA in 2008 and she's still living her best life but I did wish she had a friend. My Dad can't accommodate another so I hope when we're looking for dogs we're able to have two at the same time.

Practice calligraphy.
My best friend bought me two calligraphy books for Christmas so that I can start practicing in order to make our wedding invitations. I'd love to create cards and prints too so the quicker I start, the better.

Host an engagement party.
Hopefully in April we'll be able to host a party with both of our families together to celebrate. Despite being together almost five years there are still quite a lot of people who haven't met eachother yet and I feel like this needs to be done before the wedding!

Take photos on my phone more.
This goes without saying that my iPhone 6S doesn't really cut it, and I'm going to get an iPhone 8 Plus if all things go to plan. I've seen that the camera can take some amazing photographs on it, and with this I'd be able to post on Instagram more often.

Start driving lessons.
I've said this for the past 7 years now but I really need to learn how to drive. I'm 25 this year and I should have already learned by now. It would be great to be driving around in a car by myself, just imagine all the blog prop shopping I could do!

Save up for a new laptop.
I've been sharing a laptop with Andy since 2015 and we really need two to both be able to blog. I was thinking about getting a Chromebook as it could be used just for typing posts up, but I've seen laptops with good storage on them for a fair bit cheaper. I'll have to look out for some good deals.

UK Travel Vlog

It's been a long time in the making and we've wanted to wait until we had enough bits to include, but these are some of our favourite bits from our travels around the UK over the past few months. We've been to a number of different places including theme parks, the coast, Cadbury World, raising money for charity with the Big Fun Run and exploring more around the Liverpool area. Check out our vlog below to catch up with what we've been doing!

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In Real Life Channel | Guest Post

Hi Everyone, It’s Becka here, you may have known me from Becka’s Beauty Blog, Love Becka or more recently - the In Real Life channel! I’ve been ever so kindly allowed to guest post over here to spread the word about my new venture and YouTube channel and let everyone know a little more about it!

One thing that I feel YouTube is still sorely lacking is a community. Unless you’re up there with the big guns such as Tanya, Zoe or Alfie, there’s just not the same sense of togetherness that you get with blogging. How to rectify this? People have tried and failed at twitter chats and they almost always come back round to blogging, you can support each other until you’re blue in the face but it’s never quite the same as looking down the #bbloggers hashtag to see oodles of new blog posts. I then looked to try and join Mums Eye View, ha, fat chance! Maybe Channel Mum? No, they weren’t interested in me either. Then I had a Eureka moment, why not create something similar myself?!

I certainly didn’t want to create a carbon copy of the pre-existing YouTube communities made for Mum’s as even my own channel doesn’t focus solely on being a parent. I wanted to create an inclusive channel that features YouTubers from any and every genre, who are free to post about whatever it is they like. I wanted to create somewhere where any blogger in the blogosphere could subscribe and find something that was relevant and interesting to them, no matter what point they were at in their lives or what they were interested in.

From there, the In Real Life channel was born. It didn’t take too long to decide on a name as I’d already decided that I wanted it to be relatable and real, I love watching the big YouTubers but often their advice just isn’t something I can bring to my everyday life as we’re worlds apart. Pretty much overnight I set up an email and twitter account and started spreading the word. The next morning I sourced hosting and a domain to create our website and to my surprise the interest came rolling in!

I set up a giveaway (which has now closed, sorry!) to get our name out there and I was thrilled that within three weeks I had over 40 bloggers and YouTubers genuinely interested in joining my channel! Of course not everyone got back to me but in the end we started with 24 of us. One male and the rest of us female, all a mixture of parenting, beauty, fashion, lifestyle, travel, weddings and so much more. We have a calendar full of video ideas right up until November and our December calendar is full to the brim of fantastic Christmas Videos!

There is now 22 of us who are uploading regularly, filming collaboration videos and chatting almost all day on twitter. I’m so lucky to be working with some real gems who are always helping me out by taking over the Twitter or tweaking bits of our website or newsletter that are beyond my capabilities! It’s certainly fulfilled it’s duty to me, I feel like part of a fantastic community, nay, family of YouTubers and I really wish everyone within it the success they deserve.

For August we are uploading every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at 8pm and then every Sunday at 11am. We host the #IRLChat every Friday night at 8pm on our Twitter account and our uploads will increase to six days per week come September. Once we hit 500 subscribers on our YouTube channel we’ll be doing another giveaway to thank everyone for their support so far and I’m afraid the rest of our plans are a secret for now.

I know many people say this but I honestly appreciate every single person that follows us on Twitter, watches our videos or subscribes to our YouTube Channel. I’ve said that this will be my last furore into the blogging and YouTube world and to see that it has a real chance of being a success is so heartwarming, every time our subscriber count climbs by just one person it makes my heart swell with pride. The people involved in this channel deserve so much more than I could ever give them as they are all genuinely lovely people so more than anything I want to make this channel great for them!

Thank you so much to Laura, for letting me guest post today. It was lovely to “get my blog on” again and spread the word about something I’m super passionate about!

Until next time,

Love, Becka xo

Coffee Breakthrough*

I can't believe my little sister starts school in September which makes me feel even older, with me having graduated from uni last year. It got me thinking back to my primary school days and how life was so much simpler and easy. I used to love the creative elements to school where they made you do a piece of writing but had give it the appearance that it was supposed to be a really old scroll. For this, I remember having to use a teabag of all things and gently press the teabag into the paper to turn it the light brown colour and then let it dry to give it the appearance and texture of a dated piece of parchment. Although using a technique like this had no 'real' use except for making something look different, there are becoming more and more innovative ways to make use of waste products and turn them into something else. Channel 4 have created this short video below explaining how coffee waste can have alternative uses. The show is involves well know TV personalities Jamie Laing, Rachel Riley and Alex Brooker being the Reverse Engineers, and the use of a mystery box to see what new ideas they can come up by using a jar of waste coffee. Some of the items that are already created with waste coffee are those well known to many beauty bloggers such as the coffee scrubs. The reason behind this is down to the texture of coffee helping to exfoliate, and the oil content helping to moisturise the skin. I never really thought about the reason they use coffee for this, so when I saw it explained on the video the penny kind of dropped. Channel 4 have got a few different videos in their webseries about Reverse Engineering based on how ordinary things can help make the future. Check out their Coffee Breakthrough video below. *This is a sponsored post.

Los Angeles Photo Diary & Vlogs!

Last week you may have seen on Twitter and Snapchat that I was in the sunshine state of California with my boyfriend Andy. I was incredibly lucky to have won the trip from Soletrader and Adidas and are eternally grateful for giving us this once in a lifetime opportunity. Whilst it hasn't been in the making for that long, we saved and saved to make sure we could put as much towards our spends as possible to full immerse ourselves in a different culture. Aside from the packing which seems to take ages, we made a huge list of things to do and see and with things to buy too. Without making a million posts about the trip and all the photos we decided to create a blog post each and down below you'll find both of our vlogs that we put together too. Keep your eyes peeled for a huge makeup haul that will be on the blog later on this week!

* Contains PR samples unless otherwise stated.