Wind it up and unwind

It feels like a very long time since mine and Ollie's first quarantine date night back in April and I'm impressed that we've managed to keep it up this whole time! But with lockdown now over (on paper), I think it's time to end our lockdown at-home date night series. I can't say I'm ready to go to a restaurant or bar or pub or anything yet (I've got stranger danger at the moment from being removed from society for so long) but I am looking forward to getting out in the world a bit more. My mental health has taken a massive hit over lockdown, especially the last month or so since Ollie has been back at work and I've been on my own. It's weird what being isolated all the time does to your brain and your emotions. The last month has also been the time when everyone else has been allowed to go back to pubs, bottomless brunch, hairdressers, holidays, restaurants and all the rest of it, so it's been especially hard to still be at home when everyone else's lives have resumed again. But I'm hoping that getting out and about a bit more will start to help me heal. I've got my fingers crossed that the weather stays lovely to allow some outdoor activities - a nice stepping stone! But before I start to look ahead, let's wind up this lockdown series by telling you about the final 2 date nights.

I'm actually almost running out of palettes at this point (I never thought I'd see the day) so I'm on to some that I haven't used in a long time. I'm talking like the ones I used to use in my rock-city-thursday days! I've got a couple of these Sleek palettes and they have such gorgeous colours in them, but with them being full shimmers, I don't often make the most of them because I normally reach for a matte for the crease. But this time, I did things slightly differently (more like how I used to do my eyeshadow in the olden days). I pressed the lid colour on first (in a kind of cat-eye shape) and then darkened it afterwards. I chose the bottom one, second in from the left, and took it under my lower lashline too. Then I used the black, which might seem scary but just takes a bit of patience and a lot of blending. I added this to the crease and outer corners until I had the preferred finish. And that was it! Lashes, mascara, lipstick, done.

Outfit wise, I reached for a newbie! You should recognise this if you read my last blog post, as it was a part of my latest shein haul and I think it's just perfect for date night. I added black strappy heels, black belt and intricate silver earrings.

You would've thought that we would've ran out of cuisines by now, but equally there are 195 countries in the world so there should technically be plenty of food cuisines to keep us going. This time, we went with Thai food and we got a spicy beef dish, some rice, chicken pad thai (my fave) and thai fish cakes. Maybe I'll have do a definitive ranking of all the lockdown date night food we've done? This one came middle-bottom (me and Ollie both agree that the Mexican was the best and the American was the worst).

Ollie obviously knows how much I've been struggling lately and how desperately I've needed something nice to look forward to so being the babe that he is, he treated us to a belated anniversary night away. Like I said, I'm not comfortable with restaurants or being around people yet so a hotel was a no-go, but we managed to find a beautiful little secluded private lodge with a hot tub that we could escape to! And hopefully escape my depressive mood at the same time in exchange for some quality time together.

Well I'd say it was just what the doctor ordered. We took supplies with us (translation: plenty of wine) and popped the prosecco almost as soon as we got there. It was drizzling a little when we arrived but we weren't going to waste any time so it was straight into the hot tub in the rain. I wore my lemon print bikini because life keeps giving me lemons right now and I'm really trying to enjoy some lemonade.

Also in our little hamper of supplies was a cheese and meat picnic of dreams. Unsurprisingly, we had some weird dreams after all that! Again, I thought I'd take some of my new clothes out for a spin so I wore my new skorts with this one shoulder green bodysuit (also shein, but not from my most recent haul) and black strappy heels. I had planned to get done up a little more fancy but after an afternoon in the hot tub and drinking lots of wine, I was less precious about it so my hair remained shoved up!

Keen to make the most of the hot tub, we were straight back in it again after dinner with a third bottle of wine! And that's where we stayed until it was pitch black! Spending the quality time that we'd been hoping for, so it was lovely. And then we ended the day with dessert in bed - what more could you want?

We finished our little trip with breakfast in bed before heading back home. We honestly had the loveliest time and I'm so grateful to have someone like Ollie in my life. Someone who has dealt with all my lockdown crying and miserable moods, and still wanted to treat me and spend quality time with me at the end of it. While I'm nowhere near comfortable enough to go anywhere exotic yet, it feels like we can finally start to get excited for our future again.