Part 2. Top 10 money saving tips for uni

Hello everyone! I hope you've all had a lovely weekend. I am going back to uni in about 3 weeks now eek, I really cant wait to get back into a routine again after a 4 month summer! Anyway, if you read my blog you will have seen my first of a series of university posts on my guide to surviving freshers week. Now i am sharing with you my top 10 money savings tips for uni,read on if you have an expensive beauty,clothes and shoes habit...or if you just like spending money!

1. Loyalty cards! So many places do loyalty cards these days, they enable you to gain points on each purchase,then the more points you build up the better the rewards are,it tends to vary from store to store. The best loyalty card for me is boots,especially if your'e a beauty addict,they are the best of the bunch at 4 points for every pound spent,also look out for their special events in stores and coupons in the post where you can get double points and extra points on certain products. What i do throughout the summer is save all of my points up and then when i'm at uni and if i want to treat myself or cant afford something one week i just use my points to purchase the item.Sorted.

2. Don't immediately go to boots for all of your beauty needs, the places that do the best savings on decent hair care brands/toiletries are actually Wilkinson's, savers and poundland, you can usually end up getting good quality products for little more than a pound. But if you cant bear to shop anywhere other than  boots then look out for the 3 for 2 offers.

3. The Vouchercloud and vouchercodes apps are lifesavers,just because you're at uni it doesn't mean you cant go out for nice meals. With these apps that i have on my Iphone i have saved so much money, you can get 20% vouchers for restaurants, buy one get one free, the list goes on,its definitely worth a download.

4. Save up your pennies! Its crazy how much you end up having if you save your pennies for a while, before i go back to uni i always stash my pennies and any odd cash lying around and before i'm due to go back i go to my local Morrisons where you can change your pennies into a credit receipt that you can spend in store on that day, and i use it to buy some of my toiletries with, saving me a little bit of money!

5. Magic freebies UK is an amazing website that lists the most recent offerings of free samples and competitions. I have got so many free samples from this website, i then save them all up and take them to uni with me. Here are just a few of what I've collected below..

6. One of the well known reasons people go to uni is the nightlife. Yes its fun,but it costs an absolute fortune if you go out a lot(especially freshers week). This is a well known tip, but pre drink before you go out meaning you don't need to keep buying drinks when you're in the club,and believe it or not you can have fun without drinking as well! Add your names to the guest list of the club beforehand and you can usually make quite big savings with free entry before midnight etc.

7. Student discount, Carry your student ID everywhere,so many shops offer student discount now and also sign up to Unidays. They offer such great discounts across a wide variety of shops. People ask whether its best to get an NUS card too but you really don't, as most shops just ask for a valid student id nowadays.

8. Student railcard, if you're living away from home you really should buy a student railcard. They cost £30 BUT you save a 1/3 off all train fares and that totals up to a lot in the long run, i dread to think how much i would have spent without this beauty!

9. Funding that expensive clothes habit is hard, i should know! Use your student id to get discounts as mentioned before,also try looking on eBay for cheaper alternatives and look out for student lock ins which are usually held at shopping malls, these events entitle students to an evening where everything is so much percentage off,so look out for these(not all shops participate)!

10. And finally, cutting open what you think are empty bottles. This may sound straight forward but a lot of people don't do it! When your toiletries and makeup get low,for example creams,foundation cut the tube open and you will be surprised just how much of the item you have left, decant the remains into a spare bottle or wrap cling film around it to stop it drying out!

I hope you enjoyed reading my tips and i hope they help some of you! Do you have any other money savings tips? Do you already use these tips?

OOTD - 1 Denim shirt,3 looks

Denim Shirt - Urban Outfitters// Bodysuit - Asos (look 1)//White jeans - H&M// Grey top - H&M(look 3)// Shoes - Sperry// Necklace - Primark

Today i'm showing you this ultra versatile denim shirt and how to style it as 3 different looks. As a student i'm always looking at ways to save my money but to still be fashionable, and with this one shirt i think I've mastered that. However,for these looks you can pick any shirt you want!

I originally got this idea of turning the shirt into a skirt from the amazing fashion influx , i love her blog so much! It looks amazing and you can't tell its a shirt unless you look closely. For me it only worked with slightly over sized shirts because else it wouldn't fit around my hips. I did the buttons up to the length that i wanted it and then you simply tie the arms into a knot around your waist, meaning there is no chance of it falling down and its a quirky alternative to the normal way you wear a shirt.

Look 2 and 3 are fairly simple but i just wanted to show you how i put the outfit together. I am still obsessed with these skinny jeans i picked up in the H&M sale as they go with everything!! As you can i am still loving the neon look with the necklace i am wearing, it adds a splash of colour to the other clothes that i am wearing and it was only £2.50 from primark too!

I hope you enjoyed reading this outfit post, these different looks will literally suit anyone and save some money,more looks for less! What do you think of these outfits?

Part 1. My Guide to surviving freshers week

Its nearly that time of the year again when all of the fresh faced first years will be starting university,to say i'm sad that i'm going into my third year is a massive understatement. But with basically two years spent being a fresher, once in Southampton and then again on my exchange year in Finland i've experienced and learned a lot as well as having had a huge heap of fun! My short guide here is me telling you what i wish i knew before i went to university,in the hope to help you survive the craziest and funnest week of your life!

Here are some of my top tips;

-As soon as you arrive and have unpacked/settled in make an effort to get to know your housemates, leave your door open so people can come in and chat, try and get involved with some of the events going on and befriend people on your uni course, i was unfortunate to be put with some people in my house that didn't really make an effort but because i had made friends with my course friends i always had that group of people to do things with! 

-Make sure you find out when your freshers fair is on and go there early! I got soo much free stuff,including food, cooking stuff,vouchers,sweets,discount codes,free entry to clubs as well as hearing about any exciting events that were going on that week,i recommend going down early because the stuff goes fast and most people who went towards the afternoon went away empty handed!

-Sadly the myth about freshers 8 pounds (where you gain 8 pounds in this crazy week) during freshers week/fortnight is true to some extent(not everyone)!Before i went away i was naive and knew that someone as fit and healthy as me wouldn't gain weight . Well i did. I drank more than i ever had before, i actually ate takeaways and could have as much pic n mix where and when i wanted(sweet deprived child), had many late nights, never exercised and i wasn't really looking after myself! You want to enjoy your freshers week but don't drink to excess and know your limits as no one likes to be the embarrassed housemate on the first night,yeh, I've been there!

Don't be this person in freshers week

-Be careful on nights out and stick together in a group, to me its strange that its your first few days in a strange place yet you allow yourself to become drunk in this group of people you don't know very well,so be careful on the first week,never leave your drink alone,leave the club with someone else and if in doubt get a taxi home!

-BUDGET! So many people i know didn't budget and blew all of their money in the first week partying, every year i save up before i go back so i know i have that to fall back on if needed. I also budgeted for each month on food,mobile contract,gym memberships,alcohol.... and then the rest definitely goes on clothes and makeup,boring but its best to know where you stand with money.

So skint he resulted to drinking alcohol spilled on the floor..

-However hungover you are, don't stay in bed all day! Have a look around the place and get your bearings, i spent so many nights out getting lost! Make sure you know how to get to all the uni campuses(if more than one),register with the local doctors, know where the hospital and police station is and the nearest food shops,takeaways and night clubs!! It it is worth knowing where the hospital is just in case you or someone else needs it! Also make sure you have a local taxi number saved to your phone,some taxi companies even offer discount to students.

-Do dress up! I took so many fancy dress costumes to uni and used the majority whether it it is for the notorious Carnage bar crawl(my fav) where there is a different theme each time, Halloween or a birthday occasion.Plan outfits to take so you don't end up spending more money while you are away.

So do dress up and look more orange than the entire cast of towie,geordie shore etc you get the idea..

-Lastly have fun!! That's what freshers week (fortnight) is all about and i had the best time ever and wish i could relive it all again!!! Be safe,take care,make friends and don't exceed your limits and you'll have the best time!

I hope these tips are helpful and if you have any other questions about university life please leave a comment below i would be more than happy to answer it for you! Is anyone going to either of the Southampton unis?

Winter Wonderland!

Since arriving back in Tampere this is the first day of constant snow fall and since this morning about another 3 inches has fell meaning that the paths aren't as icy to walk on and it makes walking more enjoyable! My friend went ice skating on the lake yesterday and said it was so magical and everything in the distance is just white. I bought some ice skates from a flea market in the summer for 4 euros and i'm so excited to try them out! So I headed down to the lake today to have a look but the sky was so white and you couldn't see anything in the distance so I really don't think i would have found my way back as well as there being loads of  snow on top of the frozen lake so I didn't want to take a chance !

Lake Nasijarvi, where it leads no one knows...

The opening in the lake for the users of the Rauhniema sauna

Again Lake Nasijarvi

Anyway from my pictures you can see how beautiful it looks and I went for a walk along one of the trails by the lake and there was no one about and all you could hear was snow falling and I couldn't think of a better place to be in the world. I really am so lucky to have a chance to live in this beautiful country!

A walk along the trail,it felt like Narnia

As for the lake there has been people even skiing on it this week which is crazy!!! I love cross country skiing but I don't think i'm quite ready to try it out on the lake haha. There was also a few Finns dotted about doing ice fishing, how there would be any fish in the cold temperatures I don't know!

A Finn ice fishing

Who else likes cross country skiing? Would love to hear from you :)

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Moi Moi Nicole xo

Helsinki Company visits - Nokia & Aditro

Last year for my course Tools For Organisational Change we went to Helsinki for the day to visit two companies Aditro which is a consulting company and the headquarters of Nokia.

Only until recently I even found out that The company Nokia was from Finland!This was the first visit of the day and as you can see from my pictures the building was amazing ! It was built with practically all glass as the outer face and the inside was just as impressing with spiral staircases, wooden floors,a view of the sea and various floors of offices built with glass! we all got our own name badges as we entered and we were led to a conference room where are host led us a talk about driving change within their company. The whole point of the talk was linked to our studies in this course and it was how the company drives changes with their projects. They provided us with tea and coffee and the BEST Finnish pastries, they certainly taste nicer than English ones anyway!

My name badge

The amazing architecture inside the Nokia building

The topic in our lecture at Nokia

After this we had a short time to get lunch from a local shopping centre in Helsinki. I really would have liked a longer time to spend in Helsinki but it was a tight turn around because we had to go from company to company.  But i shall definitely be spending a day or two in Helsinki to properly look around the city!

We then went to our last stop for the day which was the Aditro consultancy company, not as impressive by any means but it was still nice to see another Finnish company and how it works. This talk was taken by two male employees and this was about Lean management which also complimented my studies in Operations Management. We were put into groups and we had to watch a video of their boss making a cup of coffee, we had to list all of the processes into a value stream map and then we had to see which ones were waste and could be eliminated to make it a quicker process. It was nice to do something interactive in the day and dare I say It I think I learnt more about lean management in 1 hour than I have in 8 weeks of classes of operations management!

So that was the end of our trip which I thoroughly enjoyed! It was nice to see some Finnish companies and makes me want to aspire to maybe do something like that when I finish my degree ! I just wish I was fluent in Finnish :( 

Moi Moi Nicole xo

Stockholm or booze cruise?

I went to Stockholm on a trip back in September but I thought I would share and look back on the time there.The first organised exchange trip for last year was a boat trip to Stockholm,3 days in total. But we would technically Spend more time on the boat than in the city!

There were about 100 students on this trip and we took the coach from Tampere to the dock in Helsinki. As expected, on the boat we would all be staying in the economy cabins which are in the bowels of the ship beneath the cars even! Our cabins were for 4 people and we were mixed with people we had never met before on exchange but my cabin were all really nice luckily!

The small cabin for 4

The duty free shop on the boat at 5pm and all the students were queued up waiting to get their alcohol for the journey. As soon as some of them had purchased their drink people who hadn't already started drinking on the coach to Helsinki started at 5pm!!! It was so crazy,I certainly didn't  In the evening there was various entertainment on the ship including and ABBA tribute in the nightclub,bingo and a guitarist in the Irish bar. But I think everyone had the idea of just drinking in the corridors of the ship and annoying other people on the boat. I felt so sea sick so I retired to my cabin to 'try' and sleep....so that didn't happen,everyone was so rowdy. I just thought it was ridiculous that the majority of the other exchange students are ages 25 plus and they were all behaving like under aged teenagers,I like to think I'm more classy than drinking on the floor of the ships corridors anyway. I think most peoples morals for the trip were 'its all about the journey, not the destination' But This part of the trip I did not enjoy...

Corridor drinking,so much fun....

Anyway, we arrived at Stockholm the following day at 10am and we had to be back to the ship by 4pm meaning that we only had 6 hours in the city. However, by the time we got the bus into town this only left us with 5 hours which is not enough time to do anything! No one really had a plan as to what to do so we headed straight into the centre where all the shops were. The city really reminds me of a French city, it really was so beautiful. The shops were very upmarket and I was surprised to see shops such as American Apparel and Urban Outfitters! After walking through the shops we found a local market selling fruits and vegetables which was a refreshing change from the shops.

Gorgeous fruit market

Beautiful Cathedral

In the afternoon we headed into the old town and had a look around a cathedral which had gorgeous design work  inside. The weather was so gorgeous on the day so we spent some time sat in the sun also by a water feature in the old town. Sadly this is all we managed to do in our few hours time that we had in Stockholm! The trip only cost 55 euros so I got what I expected, but I shall definitely be visiting this beautiful city again but perhaps by air this time! The next exchange trip that i went on was  St Petersburg which was for 5 days and i will be getting a post up on that soon! Thanks for reading :)

Sat by the water feature in the sun :)

Moi Moi Nicole xo

Half way there, spring semester

Well I am half of the way through the year now studying as an exchange student in Tampere, Finland. Everything feels completely different to when i first arrived here back in the summer. The corridors in Lapinkaari which used to be noisy and where there was always someone to chat to are now deadly quiet and since I have arrived back I haven't seen one person here. Hopefully some more people will start to move in in the following weeks. Because I have been so bored I thought it would be best to be productive with my time and start my blog up again!

The weather here now is cold but I thought it would be a lot colder as it is only just reaching into the minus temperatures again. However, there is still a lot of snow on the ground and there is forecast to be more on the way for the rest of the week. Because the temperatures have slowly risen a bit its meant that the ground outside it pretty slippery and even with the best grips on my snow boots i'm still at a risk of slipping over. My mum gave me some spikes that can be fitted onto shoes so i'm going to definitely try those out. Has anyone else used this and do they work?!

The snow in December in Tampere

Also in my accommodation there is no freezer space at all so last year I really struggled with cooking a variety of foods but because the temperature is freezing now I have put up a make shift freezer outside which is working brilliantly! So easy to use and its right outside my window!

Freezer complete with a Stockmann bag-you don't get more Finnish than that!

My classes aren't due to start until next week either so I have a free week to myself so i'm hoping to get right up to date with my blogging and also start going to the swimming pool a few times a week again. The only thing so annoying about swimming in this weather is if you go outside with wet hair after it freezes straight away, its pretty funny but must be awfully damaging for your hair I can imagine!

Feeling sorry for myself in bed writing this after picking up a horrible cold while at home in England for Christmas,typical really as I haven't been ill once since living in Finland.I really do think the air is so much fresher and healthier here, I don't suspect any viruses would be able to spread in this cold weather anyway!

Would love to hear from fellow bloggers out there about any winter survival tips!

Moi Moi  Nicole xo