{2017 favorites}

I thought I would put together a list of favorites—what I bought, watched, listened to, and did—in 2017.

{small steps to clean beauty}

Everyone is all about CLEAN these days—from food to beauty. And since my sister works for goop, I've been introduced to many clean, organic products that I've slowly started investing in over the past few years.

Clean products can tend to be more expensive, but I believe spending a little extra money is worth using products that aren't harmful to my body. I didn't replace everything in my beauty bag all at once, but started with one product at a time to see what works, what I like, and what I wanted to prioritize. (And save money!)

All of the products I use need to be gluten free as well, so luckily everything below is celiac-friendly. (As an example, if I'm using shampoo that has gluten in it, there's a high chance I'll swallow soapy water and ingest gluten. Not good!)

This goop article is a great resource if you don't know where to start. It highlights the most important products to swap out first and aligns with what I've done so far.

FYI: I'm not being paid to write this by any company, my sister gets nothing out of it (she doesn't know I'm writing it!), nor am I posting affiliate links.

Okay, here's what I swapped out:

{2017 year in review}

JANUARY
–Rang in the new year at our beach house.
–On 1/4, I spent the night in the ER... for medical issues that would eventually haunt me the rest of the year.
–Work was crazy busy.

FEBRUARY
–Car troubles.
–Dylan and I planned our English countryside road trip one night, on a whim, and I started studying for driving across the pond.
–Went on my last shoot ever for the account I've worked on for 3+ years. So bittersweet!

{england: road trip tips}

That photo above was taken when we were still in the rental car parking lot.
So many pamphlets. So much jet lag. So little makeup.

Did you think I was finished writing about our England trip??

I thought I'd write a post on renting a car and driving in England, from an American's perspective. It may have been our favorite part about the whole vacation, so I couldn't recommend it more. We can't wait to do it again.

Here are my big tips:

{england: from tea to gluten free}

To wrap up our trip, I wanted to write about our tea experience and eating gluten free in England.