July favourites and life update

Another hot hot month has been and gone, and I'm just as hay-fever riddled as ever. At this point I'm wondering how I've managed to avoid dehydration what with all the sniffing and the sneezing and general snot. Delightful.
July has been a sweaty month full of avoiding any physical exertion whatsoever. I did however do a LOT of driving. It was my first full month of being insured on a car after passing my test and I went through some pretty big hurdles. I did my first long drive (an hour and a half of a trip to Devon!), drove in a massive rain storm and drove with no one else in the car for the first time. I'm feeling v proud, so now if I could go even a week without stalling that would be GREAT.
As I mentioned, I went down to Devon for a little getaway. My boyfriend's family were having a big family holiday and we popped down for a few days. It was lovely to get out of the office and relax for a bit, as it was our only summer holiday, but I was glad to get home and be reunited with the pets again. 
Other than that, July was a pretty quiet one. Between endlessly trying to keep plants alive and watered, and being permanently reliant on a fan, July's not been that wild. August however, I'm excited about ...
The favourites

Beauty
I don't have masses of favourites this month, but the ones I do have are things I absolutely adore. The v pretty gin and tonic lip balm was a little birthday present from my Grandma and it's been keeping my lips so soft. I expected it to be a novelty thing that would only dry out my lips more, but it's genuinely moisturising and is something I keep reaching for. 
The Body Shop's pinita colada shower gel has to be my ultimate favourite of the month. It smells sweet and fruity and fresh and is pretty much just summer in a bottle for me. I can't get enough. It makes me feel completely clean and smelling nice, which is the mood I needed on sticky July days. 
An added bonus is that both of these are cruelty free! I've found myself looking out for the leaping bunny on products much more often recently and I'm becoming more and more passionate about it.

Lifestyle
I think you can *just* about make out the red frilly earrings in the first picture on this post. These are my number one summer earrings this year. They're what I'm using to jazz up all those denim short and t shirt outfits to make it look like I've actually put some effort in. They're from Matalan, and there were so many other beaut ones in the store that I think I'll have to do another jewellery run soon.
Finally we have two very different books that I adored this month. A Game of Thrones is something I've wanted to read for ages, and I actually enjoyed it more than the TV series if I'm honest. I love a good bit of excessive detail in a book and it's full of it. 
Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie is my favourite book I read this month, and in fact the best I've read all year so far. It is just absolutely incredible. I'm going to write a full post on it soon, but in short the plot revolves around what it's like for a Muslim family to deal with prejudice in the UK when a member of their family has links to terrorist organisations. It's eye-opening and so so powerful.
What were you loving in July?
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