When I first started Forever Miss Vanity, my aim was to make it a beauty blog. I used to be incredibly passionate about beauty, skin and hair care. I used to spend a large proportion of my salary on beauty products and wouldn't think twice about splashing out on Chanel, Bobbi Brown or Nars. As time went by, I started falling out of love with beauty. I found products weren't as good quality as they used to be and so many things on the market felt too similar. Nothing really stood out to me and the further invested I became with vegetarianism and veganism, I also realised that there are t ..read more

My life has been quite hectic lately (in a good way though). I've left one job, started another, been on holiday and started again. Whilst I've enjoyed all the excitement and the hustle and bustle of a busy life, it has been difficult to keep on track of everything - from scheduling time to go to the gym, to writing entries on here. When leading a busy lifestyle, it's incredibly important to learn how to effectively prioritise - not only so you can stay on top of your workload, but also so that you don't burn out or miss out on the things that you enjoy. I've always been told that I ha ..read more

There's nothing I love more than having a picnic in the sunshine with lots of food, drink and the people I care about the most. Picnics are a great way of enjoying the great outdoors, whether you're going on a long hike in the countryside or looking to relax somewhere close to home. When you live in urban surroundings, it can be difficult to find somewhere with a plot of land, but many cities do have wonderful parks like Park Square in Leeds, you just need to hunt them down. Robinson's recently challenged me to enjoy a picnic in my favourite inner-city park. To help us enjoy our pic ..read more

After a year of saving up for a house deposit, back in April, my husband and I became homeowners for the first time. It has been an exciting few months, planning out every room, turning these four walls into somewhere special that we can call our own. However, there's also so much that we discovered about home ownership that we naively never thought about. Owning a house definitely outweighs all the cons listed below, but for those looking into buying their first property, I thought I would put together a few of my key learnings from the last few months. There's so much you have to tea ..read more

If you asked me last year if I could go a week without social media, I would have quivered at the thought. For the last seven years my life has revolved around social media, so much so that I've spent family occasions glued to my phone, missed out on spending time with my friends as I was too concerned about picturing the moment than speaking to them and every evening instead of enjoying precious time with my husband, I would be on my phone from the moment I got home to the time I went to bed. Social media is a great way of staying connected, but at times it can turn into a bit of an obses ..read more

There's nothing more thrilling than walking around old landmarks, discovering the history behind them and trying to picture yourself in the shoes of the people who once walked there. One of the most exciting parts of a holiday for me is sightseeing, learning about the culture and being immersed in a world so much different to my own. Instagram is often filled with exotic snaps from faraway countries, giving the illusion that most of the best landmarks are on the other side of the world, but this isn't always the case. You can travel less than four hours to places like Spain, Bulgaria and Gre ..read more

When I mention to people that I'm vegan and that I cannot eat milk chocolate, I'm often confronted with shocked and confused faces. "How can you live without Cadburys", they say and, "how can you even like dark chocolate." The truth is, before going vegan I never really liked dark chocolate. I would always avoid the Bournville in the box and I would sniff my nose up at dark chocolate even though people told me all about the health benefits. However, since becoming vegan I've discovered there's a lot more to dark chocolate than people realise and a lot of variety. With the booming vegan mark ..read more

Stock image After a long, emotionally draining twelve months of saving, two weeks ago my husband and I officially became homeowners. It has been a strange process for us as we haven't been down the traditional route of buying our first home, our landlord several months ago came up to us and said he was selling the house we were renting and we just didn't want to leave. We have a lovely spacious garden - enough room for a house extension, the neighbourhood is lovely and quiet and five minutes one way we're in the countryside and another five-minute drive in the opposite direction and w ..read more

I'm not usually one for eating junk food, but when I was invited to review Knaves Kitchen in Leeds and saw their vegan junk food menu, I knew it was an opportunity that I couldn't pass up. As a vegan, I'm always looking for exciting, unique dishes that challenge the perceptions of what vegans actually eat - we don't always eat salads and large plates of vegetables. Knaves Kitchen, situated in Oporto on Call Lane features a creative vegan menu, consisting of a vegan favourite 'seitan', which is a gluten meat substitute that can be made into a variety of complex dishes. Dishes on the Knave ..read more

Many of us are often guilty of rushing around at 100mph and not thinking about the consequences it could have on our health and wellbeing. It can be hard to face up to the facts that we need to take a break from the things we love, especially when it can be detrimental in some cases to our careers and the things we enjoy in life. Over the last few months, my body has been telling me to take a back seat and I wouldn't listen. I thought I could continue living life in the fast lane, but my health began telling me otherwise.  When I was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid just over a mo ..read more