Where's Rachael? Come find me!

Hello dear internet friends!

I am both happy and a little sad to announce that this is the last post here on rivasoave, my little blog baby of the last one 
and a half years. This may not be surprising to my followers who haven't heard from me in MONTHS! (sorry ♡ ) ....... but I'm not quitting blogging altogether!

The last few weeks I've been working on creating a new blog, and it's finally up and running! 

Yes! My new blog is named 'Wake Up Aurora' and you can find it HERE or by clicking my profile and getting the link there. Unlike rivasoave which was focused solely on makeup and beauty, this is a lifestyle blog, of a grown up nature (now that I'm a dab hand at this blogging business) and you shall see a wider variety of posts on there. I hope you guys click over and comment and subscribe, and I'm looking forwarding to getting back to interacting with you all again.
Love, Rachael. ♡

Wonder Forest warns of End of GFC | Post Share

Hi guys,
Scrolling through my blog feed I just came upon Wonder Forest's post on Google's decision to end Google Reader and - as an extension of that - that the Google Friend Connect Widget which most of you follow me on (and I use to follow all my subscriptions!) is probably going to be taken out of use soon too! *dramatic gasp*
Firstly, if you think this will effect you then please head over to her post HERE where she explains it all fully. 
Next step: cry. Then mop up those tears and choose a new method of following the blogs that you love. Even if GFC is not being taken away immediately (although as she explains, it looks very ominous for its chances) it would never be a bad idea having a back up now, just in case the change is brought on very suddenly.
Wonder Forest suggests checking out Bloglovin and Feedly, and says 

"Feedly let's you automatically transfer your Google Reader subscriptions over. Bloglovin' also set up a tool that lets you transfer your subscriptions over too!

If you are as unhappy about this as most of us are, you can sign this petition to try to get Google to continue running the service. "

Sounds useful! I'm going to look up Feedly in a minute (I've never heard of this blog reader before!) and theeeeen I'm going to think about future blog posts - because I'm aware this doesn't quite count!

Hope you're all well 

Rachael XX

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Freelance Makeup | Modelling

Hi Guys,
Yesterday I had the good fortune to meet up with my friend Georgia for a catch up, many many cups of tea, and to get two makeup looks done on me. Georgia is a makeup artist interested in properly starting freelance makeup (having already delved into this) and needed models for a new facebook site - which I will link once its up and running! 
So basically, she got her model, I got two very pretty makeup looks done on me (A win win situation).
Having arrived in the early afternoon we didn't actually start the makeup until the early evening, so my pictures below aren't in natural lighting. This did mean that I got to hang out there for the majority of the day, and get free tea and food! (Always a bonus for uni students). On that note, if you're going to make beans on toast do you a) put the toast on a plate and pour beans on top, or b) put the beans in a bowl and place the toast in the bowl with them ?? (A big life question which cropped up.. G says B but that messes with my mind so I made her do A instead!)
The majority of the makeup used is MAC, and I can't tell you what is what, buuuut I still wanted to post the two looks to show you guys :) (and for future re-creational purposes!) My favourite thing was possibly the shaping of my lips with the dark lipstick. I wear a lot of lipstick, have a vehement hatred of lipgloss, and so am used to lining and filling in my lips. But SHE MADE IT SO DAMN GOOD. Also, the shape of the eye makeup was perfect. Goddamnit I need to copy these techniques!

Look 1: Soft purples

Look 2: Bold Bronzed

 I'm unsure if you can tell with the flash lighting, but I recently dyed my hair dark purple - but more on that to come! After we took lots of photos on her camera we realised that single strands of my hair were positioned over my face for the majority of the photos! (doh!) I think since I dyed it my hair has turned more static-y or something!

You can find Georgia on YouTube, at Aushnakilops. She makes fantastic makeup tutorials such as this one here which is a take on the Hollywood siren look (which I really like!) as well as beauty vlogging and lifestyle vids. 

I hope you liked this post! 

Rachael XX

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Managing Priorities | Lifestyle

Hi guys,
I know - it's been almost a full two months since I've been typing something out here on the internet, scandalous really! And not only that, but recently the idea of posting product review after makeover look after make-up haul has just been a little off-putting! Not that I don't enjoy the beauty aspect of my blog, but something that my good friend Crecy said to me recently made me think about how the lifetsyle side of things is severely lacking. Writing posts where I get to talk about myself, reminisce about past times, reveal inner thoughts and share the comedic things which seem to happen on a regular basis to me is the reason this blog started (to be specific, with a mega rant about my experiences of close platonic friendships with the opposite sex) - so I'm going to go back to my roots a bit - and why not, it's my blog.

Prioritising. Something we all have to juggle every day, over and over and over again. Some people do it really well, the rest of us - well we remain in our procrastinating, self-satisfying, short-term pleasure seeking frame of minds. Oops. 
It feels great when you manage to prioritise something important successfully and gain your blessed result! Everyone knows this, so why don't we do this all the time? I'm going to say that its a big mixed bag here - laziness, lack of motivation, lack of self-belief, finding adequacy in things below your potential, not knowing your own potential, and confusion behind what it is you really want. I've had some success recently in priority managing - with some blunders along the way, so I'm going to share these with you:

1 ♥ My boyfriend was coming to stay with me for a week in February around Valentine's Day, and unfortunately this coincided with the deadline for two of my main subject's essays. Bummer. Anyone who knows my work routine is largely aware of my tendency to live on the wild side when it comes to deadlines, and leave it all till last minute, then spend five days in the library at all waking hours, stumbling home at 2am every night after breathing only artificially regulated air, in too-brightly lit rooms, sneaking food when the security guards aren't looking  - but this wouldn't work this time. My boyfriend basically lives at the other end of the UK from me - which sucks! So I don't get to see him nearly as much as I want to (and anyone else going long-distance will know that that is an understatement!) 

Image from weheartit.com

So I had my motivation: a week of un-stressful, essay-completed bliss with my boyfriend was in my grasp. And I did it. Both essays were finished the weekend before he arrived; though unfortunately this didn't extend to handing in the essays, which happened two minutes before the deadline .. nobody's perfect!
So what did I have to sacrifice? Well, my friends. I've always found my social life and close friends very important to me, but at uni living away from home this is mega emphasised! For one and a half weeks I basically didn't see my friends at all, having to decline pubcrawl after party after cinema trip. It sucked! But it was only one and a half weeks. A few missed events for me wasn't nearly as terrible as it would have been not to have been able to spend so much time with my other half.


2 ♥ Summer is finally coming round the corner (thank the lord! - this is Scotland we're talking about) and meanwhile I and my uni friends have been sat inside staring at screens, trawling the internet, and making awkward phonecalls to estate agents - one of which went like this:
"Hi, I'm interested in the five person flat at (says number and street name)"
"That's actually the address of our office.."
"Oh, um, well okaythankyoubye."
.. 

Image from weheartit.com

Luckily for us, this forced ignoral of SUMMERY FUN has paid off. Yesterday morning we viewed the most PERFECT flat in the world. It literally embodies our friendship group in a physical building. Bellissamo! Not only that, but we were the first to view it, and no one else has made a booking for a viewing. THIS SHALL BE OUR NEW HOME <3 A whole year of joy in a beautiful flat shall be much more worth it than a few days of missed sunshine now (Although lets face it, Scotland does only have a few days of blessed sunshine to share *sheds tears*)


3 ♥ I've taken up a new obsession - let me repeat - obsession, in juggling. Infact, I don't think that 'juggling priorities' comes any more literal than this. I physically have to stop myself from juggling just to get some work done. However, as a massive procrastinator, it's great to be learning a new skill in these moments of boredom. It's taken me just a week to get from being unable to juggle once (and I define a 'juggle' as when you do the three ball rotation once, and 'juggling' as 4+ ) to being pro and teaching all my friends the theory. It's amaze balls. Literally (snigger). 

Image from weheartit.com

I arrived at my friend Kerry's kitchen the other night - the home base of our friendship group, so to speak, and brought two sets of juggling balls. And then everyone stopped working (I'm such a bad influence, apologies guys!) and learnt how to juggle. It is beautiful when someone you're coaching manages to do it for the first time. It's the same reaction every time too: they do it, you both look at eachother shocked, the happiness begins to radiate from their face, and you both run at eachother screaming and hug. Priorities jackpot really - now if I drop out of uni I can start a juggling school, and all my dreams will come true. (They have unicorns at juggling schools, right?)


Okay so I'm glad to have gotten through this post! It took me a while today to work out what I could blog about (to the inamusement of my growing workload..oh the irony) and, more importantly, I sat through this whole hour or whatever of typing whilst THE EMPEROR'S NEW GROOVE dvd is sat right next to me. Priorities, eh! 

Rachael XX

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