Some Good Tings

A recommendations list, if you will

I made the executive decision not to record a voiceover for this piece because you kind of need the visuals to see what I’m talking about! Pls forgive me xo

This is going to absolutely shock you (if you’ve never read anything from me before or if you, like my friend Nessa, hate and avoid my money diaries) but I buy a not-insignificant amount of stuff. There’s no way to categorise it more succinctly than that but, yeah: stuff.

I buy good stuff and I buy bad stuff, and every now and then I think to myself, wow, that was a great purchase. (The percentage of purchases that fall into this “great” category probably sits at <5% of all of the things I buy, in case you wondered.)

Anyway! I thought it would be nice / fun / helpful / informative / a way for me to write something without having to be super thoughtful or insightful or creative (because I’m still in quite a bad period with my mental health and they all seem like bars that are far too high for me to leap right now) if I shared with some of the good tings I have bought recently, and why I think they are good. Feel free to disagree (in the comments, because engagement).

3-in-1 Magnetic Wireless Charger

I really love the caveat; who is buying this $40 charger and thinking, wow, what a bargainous way for me to get an iPhone, an Apple Watch and a pair of Airpods!?! But anyway, this is quite possibly the best thing I’ve bought in the last 12 months. Maybe even the last 24 months, that’s how much I love this thing.

It’s just so convenient, and I say that even as someone whose Airpods have died (RIP Airpods) and who only uses it for her watch and phone. Every night, I wake up approximately four times to pee / glare angrily at Brandin, slumbering away happily / check the baby monitor (should I stop monitoring my almost-three-year-old? At what age did you get rid of the baby monitor? How could I ever go to sleep without being able to take a little look at him first?), and with this I simply lift up my phone and take it with me! There’s no unplugging to worry about, and then, when I come back to bed, I don’t need to fumble around trying to find the charger in the dark! It’s truly great.

I know this seems like such a small, stupid difference – I do know that – but it just seems like such a lovely, compact way to charge my phone, and it minimises the number of cables I have on my bedside table, jostling for space with the 10,000 books on my TBR.

Buy it here for $39.99 (affiliate link)

The Somerset Pull-On Linen Pants

I first got my hands on a pair of these trousers with my Nuuly order (the less said about that rental service, the better, honestly; I spent so much money to essentially wear one pair of trousers, which I then ended up buying, secondhand, from Nuuly for $88 because Anthropologie was sold out of my size) and fell in love with them.

They are incredibly comfy, very flowy, perfectly airy for the hot weather we’re having in Fort Wayne, and I think they look very cool with, truly, almost all footwear choices (except for the kitten heels Anthropologie has given the poor plus-sized model on their site to wear with them, they look terrible).

I love them so much, in fact, that I subsequently went on to buy them in hot pink from Anthropologie (colours sell out super fast, but they come back in pretty regularly, so if you are interested I’d recommend you join the waitlist), and am now considering the yellow ones, too… (although I’m worried about them being see-through and I simply don’t have enough nude undies for the see-through life)

They wash really well, have survived our turbo-speed American dryer no problem, and I’m finding them really comfy in month four of pregnancy (imagine a six-month pregnant belly). I obviously don’t know how the next few months will go, but I’m imagining I could just hoosh them down below my belly when the time comes (because God knows I won’t be giving them up until the first snowfall, and even then… would they look good with tights?! ONLY TIME WILL TELL). I’m a (pregnant) UK 18 and I wear a 1X.

Buy them here for $98 (affiliate link)

Maybelline Lash Sensational Sky High Lengthening Mascara

Okay, so, full disclosure: I bought this because it was less than a tenner and I was ordering other things from Target at the same time. I mean, I did need a mascara, but other than buying Dior Show mascara whenever I go through an airport (because holiday spending doesn’t count), I can’t bring myself to spend actual money on mascara because (a) I have shitty, spindly, short lashes and (b) mascara gets clumpy and useless within two months.

The first thing I will tell you about this mascara is that it has a very satisfying click to it. When you close the tube and you twist it around, it clicks into place so that the sky and the high of the name are perfectly aligned, and there is nothing more satisfying to me than the “click” of perfect alignment. A rare, but incomparable, joy.

The second thing is that it is a really rather decent mascara. Does some of it end up under my eyes after about 10 minutes? Yes! But that’s every mascara! What matters is that it does a great job defining and separating my lashes (I cannot with the spider lash effect of Maybelline’s Great Lash, for example) and this morning when I put it on I thought, lovely. That’s lovely. And that is exactly what I want from my $10 mascara.

Buy it here for $11.98 (US affiliate link) or here for €15.99 (Irish non-affiliate link)

Knix Modal Nightgown

When I tell you I am enraged by the fact that these nightgowns are now reduced to $30, a mere week after I spent $90 on two of them… ENRAGED. But also: I’d do it again! So there!

Some time last year, I bought myself a nightgown from Knix (they’ve sent me some free bits in the past, but I’ve also since bought some stuff at full price myself, and paid for these nighties out of my very own pocket) and when I tell you I have never felt so luxurious going to bed!

I’m not sure what they put into these nighties (modal, apparently, “a semi-synthetic fabric made from beech tree cellulose that is often marketed as a more sustainable alternative to cotton and synthetic fabrics”, according to Google) but they are like crack for the body. They feel so soft, and light, and airy (that’s clearly a theme for me). My boobs don’t pop out (v important) and I don’t wake up with the entire nightie bunched up around my neck (also important, but less so, honestly) and they come in a host of cute colours.

Plus, they wash and dry excellently – no shrinking, no pilling, none of the kind of “roughening” of the fabric that I feel like I see happening with a lot of the cheaper “stretch” fabrics I tend to fall for. And now they’re just $30 each, so really, you’ve no excuse.

Buy yours here for $30 (affiliate link)

The Nespresso Vertuo Next

Yes, I’m back to being a Nespresso girlie and I’M NOT EVEN REMOTELY SORRY. Sure, there are a lot of independent coffee roasteries out there that I could and should be buying my coffee from, but I am so far from a discerning coffee drinker that it’s not even funny. You know when people say things like, “ugh, how can you drink their coffee?! It’s disgusting!” I literally just have clouds circling over my head, like, what are these people talking about? All coffee tastes the same!

I know that’s not quite true, but I do believe there are two types of people in this world: those who can taste (and care about) the subtle differences in coffee beans, roasting techniques and brewing times… and the rest of us.

When my Dad arrived in the US a couple of weeks ago, it didn’t take long for him to start complaining about my habit of brewing a huge pot of coffee and then… drinking from that same pot for approximately six hours. Is it right?! No! But some things are wrong and also fine, like drinking six-hour-old coffee and storing pizza in the cold oven overnight.

Anyway, Dad offered to buy us a Nespresso machine, and despite my being slightly insulted by the insinuation that our coffee wasn’t good enough for him, I also know not to look a gift Nespresso in the mouth, so off I went on to nespresso.com and spent the guts of 72 hours trying to decide which machine to get.

In the end, we went for the Vertuo Next, which has the roundy (awkward!) coffee pods, which are a bitch to store, but it does give you the option of brewing several different coffee sizes, from an espresso all the way up to a carafe of coffee.

And let me tell you, it hasn’t even been a week and I just don’t ever want to go back. I’ve been making myself little lattes like it’s going out of business (yes, we got the milk frother, obviously) and today I even purchased a toasted marshmallow syrup (for Brandin because that’s disgusting) in my attempt to begin to build a little gourmet coffee bar on the six-inch-square corner of counter that is still available to us. At $180, it’s not cheap (and the coffee pods work out at between $1 and $1.50 per coffee… so actually it’s really not cheap?!) but man, is it convenient, and that’s what I need in my life right now.

Buy yours from Nespresso here (but tbh I would wait for a sale, we got 20% off our order in their July 4th sale so I’m sure those discounts come up pretty regularly!)

…And Some Not-So-Good Tings

Various maternity sets from Amazon

I’m not even going to bother showing you what I bought-and-returned from Amazon because they’re terrible, but also kind of stupid, cheap, useless things. Basically, this is all part of my quest to find something cute and fun and colourful to wear while pregnant and bloated and hot but let me tell you it is hard out here for a pregnant, plus-sized princess.

I can’t tell you how many shorts-and-T-shirt sets I’ve bought and returned (okay, fine, they’re in the back of my car, I stg I’m going to do it tomorrow okay?!) now but it is too many and I am so annoyed by it! And I can’t give up because I truly believe that my perfect pregnancy co-ord is out there, but every time I order one and it arrives and it smells like petrol and is way too small or looks like PJs (or both), I feel more and more despondent.

Let me tell you, if I was Mr Ortega I would be ordering the Zara designers to come up with this very thing because the plus-size pregnant girlies have to be screaming out for them!!!

Adidas Gazelle trainers

I was, I confess, hashtag influenced to buy these Gazelle trainers when I saw a stylish gal I follow buy and share them on Instagram, and honestly I was shocked when I tried them on because Gazelles have been so trendy for what feels like five years now and I’ve never seen anyone say they didn’t work for them?!

But, gentle reader, I am here to tell you: these did not work for me! A potent combination of fat feet and cankles (about to get canklier) meant that these very flat, simple shoes just looked kind of like Adidas flippers on my feet, in the worst way possible.

I tried them with my beloved Anthropologie pants. I tried them with dresses. I contorted myself and pointed my foot and flexed my toe and did everything, honestly I have never tried so hard to get a pair of shoes to love me back, but I just knew that they would end up languishing in my wardrobe and so, with great disgust and disappointment, I returned them.

I think, for me, the chunkiness of the Nike Air Max works for a reason (it provides a nice little bit of balance with the cankle, you know?) – and I am now trying to find the perfect pair of chunky white runners to wear with the perfect pregnancy co-ord I am going to find any day now…

Buy these here for $100 (affiliate link) and I wish you luck

This Target bikini

Look at how cute this woman is in this bikini! JUST LOOK! Well, let me tell you, I was not that cute, or maybe I just didn’t feel that cute? But it all works out the same because what I wanted was a cute bikini I would feel cute in, and what I got was a bikini that just felt like it was constricting me in all of the wrong places (there is no right place to be constricted, obviously) and I was most displeased by it.

Do I still love the print? Yes, it’s adorable! Do I still wonder if maybe I should have kept it and I would have grown to love it once I got used to the fact that it wasn’t the high-waisted bikini bottoms I’ve become very accustomed to over the past five years or so?! Yes, of course!

Anyway, it’s still available in some sizes and there are plus-size bottoms to go with it and if you’re in the US and in the market for a bikini, I would recommend you go for it because one woman’s trash is another woman’s treasure and all that jazz.

Buy the top here for $18 and the bottoms here for $18 also (both affiliate links)

Now tell me what you’ve loved, loathed, kept and returned lately!