About Ruth Crilly

mr bear british shorthair

This is me, Ruth Crilly: bestselling author, dedicated beauty insider and veteran fashion model. I started this blog in 2010 after over ten years as an international fashion model and I’ve been a full time content creator ever since, making what I hope is highly entertaining and useful stuff for you to read and watch.

I write regularly about beauty and fashion but many of my most popular posts steam from completely random and mundane thoughts. Pondering the mystery of the free hotel loofah, for example, or listing the various creepy things that small kids do.

I was a Londoner for over a decade but now live in rural Somerset with my husband, two small children, house cat and crazy dog. And so I also write about my house (I’m borderline obsessive when it comes to interiors) and my family life and make videos on all of these subjects too – you can my videos on Youtube here.

I have spent an inordinate amount of time moving homes and renovating houses and you can follow some of my projects on my Instagram account – head to “HOUSE” in the highlights. One of my best projects was the renovation of a gorgeous seaside holiday cottage on the Dorset coast and this can be booked for short stays or longer holidays, you can find the bookings page here.

If you’d like to work with me, please use the contact page or get in touch with Dopamine; if you’d like to know a bit more about me then hang on just a second, I’m almost finished with a very short biography and I’ll put a link to that here when it’s finished.

Now on to the rest of the site and a marathon reading session. And if you don’t know where to begin then may I suggest clicking here for a selection of random tales?

December Favourites

Welcome to this month’s random selection of “things I’ve really loved”. There’s a full video version further down the page and I do highly recommend you watch it if you’ve a spare ten or so minutes. It gives you an extended ramble about each of the bits and pieces I’m...

November Favourites

It’s my favourite week of the year: birthday week. I’ve never really been one of those people who squeal on and on about their birthday for ages beforehand and demand that many different festivities are organised for them, who expect special balloons with their age on...

Useful Christmas Gifts

Here are some brilliant things that I use on an almost daily basis and would really miss if I didn’t have in my life. Would have to replace instantly, in fact, if they went missing. I’m telling you about them because they are all infinitely useful and therefore make...

My Ultimate Easy Christmas Gift: 2024

It’s time. For the sixth year running I bring you my ultimate, easy, budget-adaptable Christmas gift. The one that feels thoughtful and personal yet takes seconds to buy and is easy to wrap and cheap to post. Yes, dear readers, it’s the most popular post of the...

Why Is Vinted So Utterly Addictive?

A new, terrible era in my online shopping life has begun. One where any remaining iota of self-restraint has been completely banished, where there is an uneasy sense that the person at the helm of the Good Ship Buyalot (me) is, in fact, deeply unhinged. It’s a bit...

Powerful Skincare for Delicate Skin

In my post on seasonal skincare tweaks (you can read that in full here) I talked about some of the things I change in my routine when autumn gets into full swing. Swapping lighter moisturisers for richer ones, for example, to counteract the drying effects of colder...

Top Cleansing Balms for £10 (ish)

I’ve been writing about my skincare routine for the past couple of weeks. If you missed the first post, which was my easy-to-follow daily routine, then you can catch up here. My Skincare Routine at 43 That post also gives a bit of context when it comes to my...

Autumn Skincare: The Changes I Make To My Routine

Last week we had my general Skincare Routine at 43, this week I’m going to tell you about my autumn skincare routine and the all-important changes I make as the weather starts to cool. Weather starts to cool. God, I’ve made autumn sound romantic, haven’t I? Who am I...

My Skincare Routine (At 43)

This post was supposed to be about seasonal skincare changes, but in order to provide a bit of context I started writing about my usual skincare routine and then I went off on a tangent about how I feel about my face in my forties and then about eighty-seven years...

How I Stopped My Cat From Being Sick

I am loathe to write this particular post about how I stopped my cat from being sick because each of the three times I’ve attempted it, in the past six or so months, my cat has immediately gone and puked. Writing about him not puking seems to be an instant...

My Top 5 Recent Recommendations

Oooph. It has been a month of seemingly quite random online and in-person purchases but by God have these things tickled the collective fancy of my Instagram followers. From a pressure-relieving seat-pad to a face contour wand that creates instant cheekbones, here are...

The Uniqlo Ribbed Sleeveless Bra Top

Last week I bought one of the absolute best things I’ve bought all year. I genuinely don’t know what I was doing with my life before I had it. And the most amazing thing is that this purchase happened as a result of my own complete ineptitude: through self-created...

How Not to be a Supermodel: Photos

Here are the photographs included in the ebook and physical versions of my book, How Not to be a Supermodel. If you have downloaded the audiobook and for some reason cannot access the PDF then you can view the photos below. If you have arrived at this page and have...

How Not To Be A Supermodel: Exclusive Extract

Here’s an extract from my book, How Not to be a Supermodel. It’s taken from a chapter about model castings and the physical/sporting skills I lied about having in order to try and bag some work. Could I play the drums, for example? Sure: Was I a pro-level ice-skater?...

Mid-Length Hair: Is It Ever Perfect?

Is there anyone - anyone in the world - who procrastinates more than somebody who has mid-length hair but can’t decide whether to cut it or grow it? Jeepers creepers. It’s like a curse! Catch me with my hair at any length that ends between jawline and shoulder and I...

Clifftop Luxury Holiday House – Did I Mention The View? | AD

As I packed for a family week away in South Devon, the temperature where I live, near to Bath, was just tipping over the thirty degrees mark. I'm not usually affected by hot weather too much, not until it gets to "Egypt in August" level of unbearable, but on this...

We’re On The Move

If you subscribe to my blog posts by email then you might notice something slightly different about the next one, arriving tomorrow: it's being sent by a new provider. There's absolutely nothing to worry about because - for you - there is no other change. Oh, apart...

Laser Eye Surgery: I Have Questions

Last summer I had laser eye surgery to correct my vision and essentially free me from my daily routine of having to switch between three different pairs of glasses. I know that it has taken me an absolute age to write about it, but I wanted to get a few little queries...