Category Archives: personal

Hello 25

Well well well, a long overdue blog post to celebrate another year of me.

I’m quite open in my feelings on my birthday – I’m not the biggest fan, but 25 feels like a kinda significant one and I’m full of thoughts today.

For starters, this is the first birthday I have not spent with my family, which is a pretty big deal for me. It’s the first birthday I’ve spent in our current house, and given that we’re moving house very soon (another story for another time, I don’t think I’ve shared that on here yet), it’ll also be my last. Someone was *nice* enough to remind me yesterday that 25 is half way to 50 – I mean, just want I wanted to hear, right? But that got me thinking.

We often see the new calendar year as a new, fresh start in our lives, but not so much when we move into an actual new year of life. So here I am, officially at the mid-20s point of my life, and I’m ready to take some things into my own hands.

I want this to be the year that I will actually do all of the things that I have told myself I’ll ‘do this year’ for the past however many years. I want to properly look after myself after years of overlooking my physical and mental wellbeing and really make 25 year old me the best Lottie I’ve ever been.

Just over 4 years ago, I wrote a small bucket list of things I wanted to do before I turned 25, and I’m pretty proud to say that I’ve achieved all of them except one – with that one being that I didn’t read all the books I wanted to have read – and one changed slightly as my life has but was still achieved, so I’m pretty proud of myself for making these things happen, and now I’m ready to carry this momentum on for another wonderful 25 years and then some!

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What Come Next?

Yes this is the second blog post in the last few months where I’ve taken the title from a Hamilton song and yes it was intentional but it also does have a lot of bearing for this post so there.

How many times in the last year or so have I said that I’m going to get back on tracker properly with my blog? I mean I could go back and count but no one actually needs to know that figure; it’s a lot.

I feel an incredible sense of attachment to my blog, but I just haven’t felt the urge to write at all lately. Every now and then my blogging brain kicks in and I mentally draft blog posts in my head, and I think about putting my thoughts onto the metaphorical paper that is the internet, but when push comes to shove I’ve just not been bothered to do it.

So I don’t know exactly what to do.

This blog has been with me through the most important time of my life, which is probably why I feel such a sense of connection to it, but the fact of the matter is that my life is very different now, and I do struggle to find the time, or if I do find the time, I struggle to find the want. The blogging world is changing a lot, and maybe I just haven’t been able to keep up. Maybe this blog doesn’t fit into my new and different life.

I can tell you for a fact that my blog won’t go anywhere. If nothing else, it will hang around on the internet for people to stumble across when searching for some of the strange things that my analytics tell me brings people to my site. But will I keep posting? I want to, sure. I do have a big feeling of want in my to keep things going, and I think there’s definitely still a part of my brain that’s dedicated to it, but the honest truth is that I don’t know if I can, and all I’ve done in the last year is build myself up to then only end up disappointing myself, and there’s just no fun in that.

I guess the purpose of this post is to clear my head of some of the negative, in the hopes that positive stuff will fill it up. Side note: man it does feel good to sit and type out a whole blog post without stopping, maybe the reason I’ve not been so dedicated is because I forgot what this buzz was like? I’ve distracted myself.

Anyway, I’m hopeful.

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‘Where Have You Been?’ Uh, France.. and other places

If anyone out there is still with me after all this time, then hey. Also, I hope there are a couple of Hamilton fans out there that appreciate the title of this post.

Six weeks. This has been the longest semi-accidental blogging break I’ve ever had, and I call it accidental because I didn’t really intend to take all of this time away, but the fact is there has just been a whole lot going on and in all this time I haven’t had the time, motivation or inspiration really to be writing 4/5 posts a week. I’m not going to apologise for this – I doubt anyone cares that much anyway. I call it semi-accidental because I did realise this a few weeks back, but I decided I’d wait for a new month, clean slate, fresh start etc, and for me there’s nothing more satisfying than a month that starts on a Monday.

So I’m back. Is this an April Fool? Who knows, we’ll see if I can actually keep it up this time, y’know, after I’ve been saying for the best part of the last year that I would get back on top of blogging and failed every single time I tried, but I think I’ve got a good feeling about this one. Blogging certainly doesn’t hold the same place in my life that it used to, but I still think its a pretty big part of who I am and I’m not ready to let go of that just yet.

All jokes in the title of this post aside, since the last time I touched base on the blog, I have actually been to France, and by that I mean Disneyland Paris. I’ve also had my best friends come to stay at my house for a weekend for the first time since we moved in, I’ve been on a little staycation in Kent with my family and Matthew and I went on a weekend trip to Berlin a week ago, so I have been all over the place really, and even when I haven’t been moving around, I haven’t exactly had time to stop. My business has truly taken over my life, but its been super exciting and I’ve spent the last two weeks working on my very own shop website, which launched on Friday.

Time to relax now? Well, I’m pretty excited to say that next week I’m headed for Disneyland! I don’t yet know if I’ll be live-blogging or will post trip reports once I’m home – I’m trying pretty hard to live in the moment right now – but I’ll definitely be sharing everything that will be happening on this trip, including my first ever Dapper Day! It does mean that this week I might do a little ‘pack with me’ type post showing you some of the outfits and park essentials I’ll be taking with me, but honestly I’m just becoming super overwhelmed with excitement as its been almost 2 years since I was last in Disneyland, which seems insane to me.

What else? To be honest, I’m not too sure if I’ve missed anything out – I know this post has been kinda super rambly – but the long and short of it is that I’m still here, and hopefully I’m back for good this time *crosses fingers*

TTFN

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February Focus

I tell you what, if you ever want January to go quickly, go on holiday. I’ve never been so shocked to find that we’re at the end of the month.

February is always a decent month in my eyes. Its just 4 little weeks that always seem to fly by, not to mention one of my favourite national holidays (I know its not a real holiday) Pancake day. Its just really manageable, y’know? And much like how I feel about Mondays, I always enjoy the fresh start that a new month brings, and having come back from an amazing holiday with a renewed sense of motivation and drive for the rest of the year, I’m bringing all that energy into February with some new goals and plans for the 4 weeks ahead.

Reorganised office

Towards the end of 2018 I was so caught up with finishing up Christmas orders and then making sure I had everything ready for our trip in January that I let my office get a little chaotic and a messy work space is not helping my productivity BUT I am already in the process of sorting it all out. I’ve got shelves that I still haven’t put up since moving in, so that’s first on the list and then I just want to streamline and tidy everything up so that I can take the rest of the year by storm.

House to-do list

In the last week Matthew and I have been trying to make a dent in the to-do list for the rest of the house – basically the stuff we’ve been putting off because its not vital – but there’s still quite a bit left to do and I’d really like to get through as much of it as we can while momentum is on our side.

Mini-goal weight

One of my New Years resolutions was to regain the body confidence that I lost in 2018, and for the first time in ages I’ve actually been successfully losing weight over the last few weeks. I’m already 5lbs down on what I weighed at the end of December, and although I know that the number on the scale isn’t everything, I’m also feeling so much better. I’m not following any particular plan, just eating better and hitting the gym as usual but I seem to be doing something right, and although I’m not going to divulge the number, I have a particular weight that I would like to hit by the end of Feb and I’m feeling pretty positive about getting there.

Work and save

If there’s any month that’s best for setting a spending ban, its February. January sales are over, there’s no more parties or presents to buy, and if nothing else, its shorter than every other month so you’ve got a better chance of sticking it out for 2-3 days less. So the plan is to get my head down and be too busy with work to spend any money, and just pray that I don’t stumble across anything that I’ll want to break the ban for!

Happy times and happy habits

With January being a bit of a blur for me, going into February I am ready to hunker down and get myself into a good routine with self care, positivity and life in general. They say it takes 21 days to make a habit, and I’ve got 28 to get it right, so let’s go February!

Are you up to much this coming month?

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My 2019 Resolutions and Goals

The clock struck midnight, and just like that all the pumpkins in the world turned into carriages as we all become shiny new versions of ourselves in some weird reverse Cinderella story.

Ok, so that sounds a little weird, but honestly I do love a new year. It always brings so much hope and excitement for a bright new future, a new page to our life stories. And while the world is often divided between those who make resolutions and those who make fun of those who make resolutions, I am firmly the former. Even if they don’t stick for the whole of the year, the intentions are always good and I always love believing that I can do it.

So here they are, a bunch of things I hope to achieve in the coming 365 days, and even if they don’t, I’m gonna have a blast trying to make them happen:

Personal Resolutions

  • Choose happiness always – In the last few weeks I’ve been working on my happiness, and I think I’m going to get the hang of it this year, so stay tuned
  • Get my body confidence back – as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I left my body confidence back in 2017 which made 2018 a little bit sucky. I’m not about sucky in 2019, so I’m just gonna skip past the last year and work on getting it back.
  • Wake up earlier – I had this one last year as well, and it worked for the most part, but with the addition of a puppy to our household, mornings have become slightly more about cuddles in bed with Finn..
  • Enjoy cooking and baking again – I’ve always loved making food, but recently its become more of a necessary chore than something I’ve enjoyed doing, so I’m gonna get back on Pinterest and find some amazing food I’m excited to make again
  • Watch more movies and read more books – y’know, all the ones I keep saying I’ll watch/read and then never get round to or end up going back to ones I’ve seen/read before..

Fitness Goals

  • Complete the marathon – its the only one that I’ll be doing in my lifetime (I can already say that with some certainty) and by the end of next week it will be done, and then I can focus on the rest of my goals..
  • Get my 5K back below 30 minutes consistently – its been a little while since I’ve run a 5K in under 30 minutes as I’ve been fighting injuries and working towards other things, but once the marathon is done and dusted my focus will be back on shorter distances!
  • Reach 50 ParkRuns – considering I’ve been taking part in ParkRun for several years now, you’d think I would have hit this already, but I’m going into 2019 with a solid 30 runs under my belt, so let’s do this!
  • Set a new half marathon PB – nope, I’m not going to set myself a definitive target for this one, I just want to beat my current PB and even if that’s only by 10 seconds then its still a win for me.

Business Goals

  • Keep pushing my limits – this time last year I wrote in my 2018 resolutions that I wanted to learn to sew more things. Well, I did, and that’s exactly what turned my little side business into my full-time job, so let’s keep pushing.
  • Keep loving what I’m doing – being a full-time small business boss makes me so happy and I just can’t believe I get to do what I love every day, so I want to keep it that way!

Blog Goals

  • Make 2019 my best blogging year yet – last year I let my blog slip, and that was ok for my life at the time. I’m going to try and stay away from specific blog hope and targets, because I know that so many things can get in the way, but I just want to feel better about my blog and make it the fun outlet that I’ve always loved so much.
  • Reach 8K on Instagram – for 2018, I set myself the seemingly modest target of reaching 2500 from 1900, but with the algorithm as it is, that could have been impossible. I did, however, smash that, and I finished up 2018 just over 5000. This year, I’ve got my sights set a little higher but we’ll see how it goes..
  • More travel writing – Matthew wants to visit a new city every month in 2019, and I want to do more travel writing, so it was a match made in heaven, right?

Wow, when I sat down to write this I thought I’d only do a few for this year yet here we are 700 words later! I guess all I can say to that is that, cliche as it sounds, I’m so ready to make this year the best one ever. All the ingredients are there, I’ve just got to make something with them, and that’s exactly what I plan to do.

Happy 2019 everybody!

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2018: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

It would seem that this end of December break from blogging has become somewhat of a regular occurrence, but honestly it does me a whole lot of good, and here I am, back and ready to take 2019 blogging by the metaphorical horns.

I’ve probably said this a hundred times this year, but 2018 has been a total whirlwind. Its been full of major highs and also some pretty sucky lows, and while I’m not normally one for looking back at the end of the year, there’s a lot to be said about the past 364 days.

The Good

Well, its been a year of BIG things. Matthew finally finished his pilot training and started flying, we bought a frickin’ HOUSE and we got the most beautiful puppy in the world. We visited San Francisco and spent a week living it up in the beautiful Aulani Resort in Hawaii, as well as becoming Disneyland Paris annual pass holders.

This year I also took the leap into self-employment, turning my small business into a full-time job which has been an absolute dream come true, I’ve managed to grow my Instagram more than I imagined would be possible and I’ve spent some of the best times with my closest friends.

The Bad

As I’ve mentioned several times throughout the year, blogging has taken a major back seat for the majority of 2018. I started of the year stronger than I ever have before, but life and many other things got in the way and although it wasn’t easy for me to admit, it was easier for me to let blogging go a little while I focused on the new things that had become more important.

There’s also been a whole lotta change that will take me a little bit of time to adjust to. I’ve moved so far away from my hometown and my family, and that’s still something that I need to work on getting used to, and there has been so much going on that we’ve hardly had time to stop and breathe, so there’s been a lot of feeling constantly overwhelmed.

The Ugly

2018 has also had some pretty sucky times. I’ve struggled a lot with body image, which after such a positive 2017 felt even harder than it could have. I haven’t always talked about it as much as I could have done, but its done a real number on my mental health, and breaking my ankle back in April only made things worse. Honestly, I’m fed up of feeling the way that I do, and I’m determined that 2019 will be the end of it.

I’ve also spent far too much time in 2018 comparing myself to others, so much so that I let an incredible achievement – being nominated for the 2018 UK Blog Awards – go practically unnoticed because I was so sure that compared to the other nominees, I stood so little a chance that I didn’t even think I should ask for people to vote for me.

The Future

I’ve decided that 2019 will be the good, the better and the best; no bad, no ugly, just happiness. I already know that its going to be so full of magic and love and friendship, so I just have to keep filling it with only good things and positive energy. Tomorrow I’m going to be sharing my New Years Resolutions and goals and these are just going to be the stepping stones that make 2019 the best year yet.

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Rebuilding

You ever see those funny triangle diagrams floating around on the Internet, where each side is labelled with something we aspire for in life, like ‘good job’ or ‘social life’ or something similarly cliche, and then it’s captioned something like ‘you can only have two, what do you choose’?

These viral posts tend to have their comment sections full of people saying how much they relate to the ideas suggested by it, that we can’t ever seem to really have it all, but I never subscribed to that belief myself.

I always thought that I could have it all. I was *that* person who prided herself on working full time AND maintaining a blog AND being able to go to the gym every morning and while I’ve never really had much of a social life, that was mainly down to the fact that I never lived near to any of my friends, but I still found the time to go and see them and we still talked every day, but I also lived with my boyfriend and I saw my family every weekend.

Reading that, you’d think that I did have it all; it sure as hell sounds like it. But behind all that, there are some shortcomings: I still lived with my parents (not that I ever really minded that), and I worked in a job that didn’t truly make me happy, and that wasn’t a career for me.

Fast forward to today. I now own a home with said boyfriend, we have a puppy and I am living my self-employed dream. The social life aspect hasn’t really changed, although I am a little bit closer to some friends now so I do get to see them more often. This is all wonderful, and I am truly happy for all of this, but some of the walls of that triangle (or more like a hexagon) are crumbling. It would only take you a few minutes of scrolling back through my blog to see that I’ve gone from posting 5-6 times a week to going over 3 weeks without writing anything. I now live 250 miles away from the family that I adore, and as for going to the gym every morning, I can’t actually remember the last time I got in a workout.

I don’t want to seem like I’m complaining, because my life is incredible in so many ways, but each one of these things is an aspect of who I am, and I feel like by losing these things I am losing sight of who I am, and I’m now becoming one of those people retweeting that triangle diagrams saying ‘I feel attacked’. I don’t want to believe that these silly little sketches are true, I want to go back to feeling that little bit smug thinking that really I do have it all.

My life has changed a lot in the past 6 months, and I guess if anything I was naive to think that it would all be easy, because nothing about it has been, but what’s the fun in things being easy, right? There’s no shame in being vulnerable, but I’m ready to start rebuilding these aspects of my life, and rediscovering the person that I used to, and want to be.

She’s in here somewhere, just under a nice little layer of comfort podge, y’know, from avoiding going to the gym for too long, but she’ll be back, just you wait.

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Doing Nothing

In recent months, I’ve noticed an interesting shift in myself. Obviously there’s been so much change in my life in the last few months, and I know that that’s exactly the reason why, but this has felt like such a significant change that I haven’t really known what to do about it.

That change? I’ve learnt to enjoy doing nothing.

I know it seems totally harmless, and probably a little strange too, but pretty much since I was 16, I’ve always filled my time with as many things as I possibly could, and for the last few years even more so. For the last (almost) five years, I’ve been blogging alongside working full time, as well as running my various small businesses, so when I wasn’t working, I was working for myself or writing. Days off were never really days off, but I was cool with that. In order to fit everything into my days, I would be up at 5.30am most mornings, and I had no problem with that at all because I was doing it for me.

Since we moved, all that has changed. As I’ve taken my small business full time, I haven’t needed to cram everything into every hour of the day because I now spend my 9-5 doing all the work I used to fit into evenings and weekends. Suddenly I have all the free time I used to complain about not having – but would always fill with stuff even when I did get it – and the thing is, I’ve started to like it. This might seem totally ridiculous to some, but its such a new thing to me that its thrown me a little.

While it may not seem like a problem, its starting to become one, as the motivation and drive that used to push me to do everything I loved is ebbing away. I now LOVE having lie-ins, so I don’t get up and go to the gym in the morning. I now spend my evenings watching rubbish on TV and scrolling through Instagram videos for longer than I care to say. Its wonderful and frustrating at the same time, because there’s still something in my head that feels like this is wasted time when I should be doing something else, but I also don’t really have that much else to do. Its like I want to be doing more but at the same time I really love the nothingness, so there’s a constant conflict in my head.

Am I being crazy? Well probably – only I would feel guilty for enjoying myself! I know that I still have so many things to adapt to, what with turning my life upside down a little bit, but everything takes time and as Winnie the Pooh said in Christopher Robin: doing nothing often leads to the best kind of something.

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Things I Am When I’m Not A Disney Fan

Because its what I talk about 90% of the time, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Disney is all I really care about. Truth is, though, there are actually a lot of other fandoms that I belong to, and while I might not always talk about them as much, many of them mean as much to me as Disney does.

I have loved Lord of the Rings since the first film came out. I was only 7 when the first movie came out (2001), so no, I hadn’t read all the books before seeing the films, but I have read them all now. The movies were a HUGE part of my childhood, and once we had them on DVD, me and my sister would watch them at least once a month, if not most weekends – all extended versions, for any other fans who care about these things. As well as the story itself, we became obsessed with all of the behind the scenes features on the DVDs (there are two discs worth for each film), which we’ve watched way more times than is probably considered normal.

The last Lord of the Rings film, Return of the King, was actually the first film I ever cried at. I was 9 years old at the time, and I wasn’t crying because the end of the film was sad, I was crying because I was sad that it was the last Lord of the Rings film, and there wouldn’t be any more movies; this was way before any of The Hobbit films had been announced.

I also LOVE musicals. Its probably the only thing that makes me wish I lived in London because I could quite easily go to a show every night. I saw a lot of musicals as a young kid because my parents have always been musical fans, but it wasn’t until I was about 11/12 that I really got into them. I’m super lucky to have seen a lot of musicals on West End, and even a handful on Broadway, and my all time favourite musical is Rent, with other favourites including Avenue Q (which is actually the musical I’ve seen the most times), Wicked and Spamalot. I’ve also seen a lot of the classics, like Phantom of the Opera, Les Mis, and I even saw Cats when I was very young.

And even though I’ve actually seen more musicals than I can even remember sometimes, I’ve still got a list as long as my arm of more shows that I would love to see, with the top of the list being Legally Blonde and Hamilton.

I’m also a Potterhead, I love building Lego and doing sudokus and I’m a sucker for a crime/detective show on TV (I’m patiently awaiting the return of Death in Paradise). Disney is a huge part of my life, but I am more than just a Disney fan.

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The Reality of Relocating

Moving house can be a stressful time for anyone, whether it’s your first or hundredth time. Ok, so maybe you’ll have it nailed by your hundredth time, but you know what I mean.

You are, quite literally, packing up a life, and all of the moments and memories that go with it, into boxes and bags, and taking that life somewhere else. For a lot of people, that somewhere else probably isn’t all that far from where it was before, but when you’re relocating, that life of yours in boxes has got a hell of a way to go.Choosing to relocate wasn’t actually a difficult decision for me because I always knew it was coming, I just didn’t necessarily know exactly where it would be to, but quite honestly, the relocation side of things got a little bit lost in the excitement of buying the house, so it’s only been since actually moving in that the reality of relocating has actually dawned on me.I have to use a satnav to drive EVERYWHERE. The only place I can get to without it is the supermarket and even then I’m lucky because I only have to drive down two roads to get there. I don’t actually know where my nearest A&E department is, so here’s praying I don’t need it any time soon, and I also need to find a GP surgery, dentist and opticians nearby because I can’t really drive the 4 hours back to my current ones..I also have an endless list of things I need to update, from my driving licence to my bank accounts, credit cars, car insurance plus delivery addresses on all of my regular online stores. I’m quite lucky that my previous address is my parents house, so if any posts ends up there it’s not the end of the world, but it’s such an important thing to sort out if not.Criminally, I now have no idea what the good takeaway places are. So far I know we have a Dominos, and we’ve had a decent fish and chips, but there’s been one awful Chinese and that makes me quite sad. I do feel a little isolated. It’s the first time I’ve lived away from my family ever, and as even Matthew’s been working away over the last few weeks I have been somewhat on my own. I mean, I’m pretty good with my own company, but it’s a little bit hard not knowing where I am too well and also not having anyone to explore with, but these things will come with time.Now none of this is to say that this has been a bad experience for me at all, in fact I’ve relished the challenge of it, but it is a completely new life that I’m having to make now, and I think until that life is built properly I probably will feel a little displaced, but you know that they say, all good things to those who wait..

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My Life With A Lisp

So something that hardly anyone will know about me, because you only read what I say and don’t hear it, is that I have a lisp, and as far as I’m aware, I have done my whole life.

I say as far as I’m aware because if I’m being perfectly honest, I can’t remember what age it was when I realised I had it, but it was a LOT later in life than you’d think; I’m pretty sure it may not have been until I was in my teens. Now I’m sure you’re thinking ‘how on earth could you not know you have a lisp for all those years?’, and well, I think I thought the same thing, but when I started to think about the reason why, its actually pretty amazing. Quite simply, I never knew, because no one ever made a fuss of it. My family never mentioned it, or treated me any differently (with the exception of my nan, who I remember trying to train me out of it when I was very little, except at the time I had no idea that’s what she was doing), and I think that’s a pretty great thing, because I think had I been treated any way but normal, I’d have been so much more conscious of it, and felt a lot worse.

Fast forward to the point that I discovered my lisp, and I felt a lot of questions got answered. I knew there was something about the way I spoke that wasn’t quite right, but I could never put my finger on it. I had been teased a little in primary school, but never understood why, and I just became increasingly nervous about talking in front of people that I didn’t know. When I realised that I’d been speaking with a lisp all these years, it made sense, but it didn’t solve my problems.

I have what I guess is considered the ‘normal’ lisp, where I don’t quite pronounce the letter ‘s’ correctly. Being aware of it only made it harder. At this time, I was doing a lot of singing, and I quickly found myself worrying about song lyrics, trying to avoid songs that had too many words starting with an s, and I even started doing this with general conversation. While talking, I’d be rapidly thinking ahead to the next few words I knew would come out of my mouth, and often rewording phrases on the spot so that I wouldn’t use words starting with s too often. My brain was like a constant thesaurus.

Being aware of the ‘problem’ meant I was also that much more aware of the little comments or jokes that I’d previously been able to naively brush over. As a teenager I had a lot of guy friends, and while the majority wouldn’t dream of making fun of me, there’s always a few teenage boys who think they’re funny to make little digs, and of course I’d never let them see that it was bothering me, but it did, and this just drove me further into avoiding the letter as much as I could.

I also can’t remember at what point I got over this. Who knows, maybe I haven’t and I’ve just got better at it, but I certainly don’t feel in any way as self-conscious as I used to. I do also think I’ve maybe started to grow out of it more over recent years; I’m certainly not going to kid myself into believing its totally gone, but I do feel like I notice it less. But the fact is, there is nothing wrong with the way I talk. It my voice, slight hiss or not, and I’m learning to accept it. I think back to the many many years when I had no idea I even had a lisp, and I’m actually so grateful that I was never treated differently, or taken to speech therapy, because if anything I’ve owned it for so long that I’m not going to stop owning it.

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Moving In Update #3 – I’m In!

Well gang, after all this time I have officially been living in our new house for almost two weeks now, yay! I had my last day at work on July 6th, and moved up on the 9th, so here I am, official northerner now.

Since then, however, I haven’t had much of a chance to stop and breathe. The first week was a blur of multiple Ikea and B&Q trips, drilling holes and going through so many packs of wall plugs and command strips I lost count, but all that work means that we are now pretty much finished with every room in the house!

There’s still a few bugs to work out; we still have no internet which is part of the reason I’ve not been blogging in all this time, because I’m having to tether my laptop to the 4G on my phone which has DRAINED my data allowance – its crazy to think about how reliant we are on wifi now! We’re also still lacking a dining table and chairs, so we’re still eating on the sofa or off the coffee table, but in reality that’s just because we keep forgetting to order them, and we have yet to get a washing machine, so laundry involves either going to Matthew’s mum’s, or as I’ve been going back to Bournemouth on weekends for hospital appointments, taking a basket of washing to do at my parents!

Apart from these little things, our to-do list is getting considerably smaller, and is mainly small things like shelves needing to be put up, actually unpacking the boxes that are building up in our garage and getting more decorative items up and around, but this has really become our space now.

I’ve still not really had much of a chance to stop and relax, but I’m hoping this next week might be the week I can actually start working through the list of things I wanted to get done once I moved in. I’ve got so much house content planned, including full before and after posts on some of our rooms, how we got some of the amazing bargains that we did and so much more, so I really hope you’re not getting too bored of this stuff yet because it has only really started!

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The Test of Time

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I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately. This is mainly because I’m leaving the town I grew up in, and am faced daily with the question of ‘aren’t you gonna miss things?’. If I’m being honest, leaving Bournemouth has always been a fairly easy decision for me because other than my family, I haven’t felt like I have that many other ties to this place. I’ve quite honestly felt like I’ve had no friends in Bournemouth for quite some time now.

I was one of the only people in my group of friends who didn’t go to university after sixth form, and I maintain to this day that that was the right decision for me, but it did mean I isolated myself quite early on. Even before we left school, I was getting a bit sick of hearing everyone talk non-stop about what uni they were going to, sorting things out etc, and although they’d probably never admit it, I know that my friends judged the decision that I made in choosing not to go.

So I left them drift away. I kept in touch with a few, and there would be the occasional gathering when people were back at Christmas or in the summer, but again I tended to steer clear for fear of that inferiority feeling I would get around them. Just over two years ago was the last time I went to a party with these friends, and to be honest, it was great, and I was starting to feel a little more confident about being around people again, but then a personal situation messed everything up, and I pulled myself away again because there were two people in the group that I couldn’t face seeing again. I’m still in a group chat with all these people, but I stay silent, and I can’t bring myself to show up to any of these gatherings.

But that’s just back story, and not what this post is really about.

Yesterday I ran into an old friend in the supermarket. He was one of my best friends during my last few years of school, but he went off to uni and although we’d occasionally chat on Facebook, it’s been about 2-3 years since I saw him last, and even those times would have been fairly brief.

So when I saw him in the supermarket my head went two ways. The first was ‘oh my gosh I need to go and talk to him’, and the other was ‘he probably really doesn’t care about seeing me’. Luckily, the first won out. We stood and caught up right in the middle of an aisle in Sainsbury’s, and d’you know what? It was so good to talk to him again.

We talked like old friends, which is exactly what we are, but it wasn’t one of those conversations you have with someone you used to know, where you just blurt out whatever’s happening in your own life and don’t really pay attention to what they’re saying back, it was a proper conversation. Old jokes from years ago were being thrown about, nothing was fake or forced and I walked away at the end of it with the biggest smile on my face.

I guess through all the recent years where I haven’t felt like I had that many friends, I forgot about the friends that are still there even when you can’t see them. The true friends that no matter how many miles are between you or how many months or years go by will still always consider you to be a friend, and treat you like a friend, and sometimes it just takes an unexpected moment to remind you of those things.

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Tackling Self Doubt

I think you’d have to be pretty damn confident to not ever suffer from just a smidgen of self doubt every now and then. Or this just might be how I, a severe lacker of confidence, feels about the matter. You tell me. Anyway..

Self doubt is that little voice in your head that pops up from time to time and tries to knock you down a peg or two (or a hundred) whenever you’re feeling good about yourself, or an aspect of your life; for me, the subjects that hit me hardest are related to my blog or my businesses. In fact, I’m so used to these little episodes now that at the same time as totally sucking, I know that they’re just a phase that will inevitably pass, but I’ve also started to develop my own little coping tactics for when that sinking feeling starts to take over.

Firstly, I vent

Self doubt is absolutely no good bottled up, so I tweet about it, or stick something on my Instagram story. It might look attention seeking to some, y’know, the whole ‘I feel like I’m rubbish at everything I do’ sorta thing, but I honestly am not fishing for any compliments when I do this, its just better out than in. Sometimes I don’t even vent publicly, and its a message to a friend, or a quick chat with someone, just to get it off my chest and out of my head, where otherwise I know it will fester into an endless pit of suckiness.

Then I take time out

Because a lot of my self doubt is about my small business, if I’m having a bit of a time of it, I step away, and its the same with my blog. Forcing something out doesn’t often lead to the best results, and sometimes stepping away gives you a chance to miss what you love, which motivates you to get back to it after a little bit of time. This doesn’t even have to be a vast amount of time; it can be as small as 10 minutes to go and get a drink or check your phone.

Next, I remind myself I am awesome

I don’t often compliment myself, but its always when I’m struck with self doubt that I find myself being nice to myself. Its a bit cliche but I give myself a proper pep talk and really hype myself up, but not to the point that I’m big headed, just enough to kick myself back into gear again and then I let my actions do the talking again.

And then I back it up with proof

Often, I need more than just the hype to really see my worth again, but I think that’s just because I’m a proof-liking person. So I pull up my Etsy sales, or my blog stats, or I look back at something to show how far I’ve come, and suddenly all the words I’ve been telling myself to make me feel better are actual truths, not just motivational rubbish.

Then, I can get back and smash it

I always like to come back fighting, so I get back to things with all guns blazing. Sometimes that means I have to fake a little bit of confidence, but as the old saying goes, you’ve gotta fake it ’til you make it, right?

And remember, just because you doubt yourself, doesn’t mean anyone else doubts you.

Self doubt is just that – yourself. These feelings can come and go and come back again over and over, but I bet through all this you’ve got your own little cheer squad who believe in you no matter what you think of yourself. These people will be your rock through these moments. Believe what they tell you.

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Long Distance to Close Quarters

They say time flies when you’re having fun. Well I’m here to tell you that it frickin’ rockets when you’re in love.

Two years ago today I wrote a super personal post, telling the internet about this guy that I had been on two dates with that was flying out to New Zealand for at least 4 months, and that we had taken a fairly big leap of faith in committing to try and make it work. That was the day that I became Matthew’s girlfriend.

Two years later, we have been living together for almost a year, and in only a week’s time we’ll officially be moving in to our own home after a couple of stressful months.

I’m in no way the perfect girlfriend. I can be stubborn, I get hangry and I steal the covers sometimes, but I want to be better because I’ve never been happier. I’ve found the person who shares in my excitement of going to Home Bargains, who reminds me at 9 o’clock every evening that Love Island is on if I’ve been distracted by something, and patiently (and sometimes not so patiently) takes 400 photos of the same outfit until I’m totally happy with them.

We didn’t get to where we are today on the same normal path that most relationships take, but I wouldn’t change it for the world, and our adventure is still only just beginning. I don’t believe that anything in life is easy, but it’s a whole lot easier when you’ve got the right person standing there with you, no matter what.

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My Best Self

I’ve been thinking about myself a lot recently, but not in a narcissistic sort of way. You see lately, I haven’t always been liking myself that much.

Its no secret that there is a lot going on in my life right now. Matthew and I have just bought our first house, and I am in the process of moving away from my home town, which has been massively drawn out as I’m still working my notice period in my current job. I’ve felt in a real state of limbo over the last few weeks, and honestly its been getting to me a bit. I feel so on top of certain aspects of my life, while simultaneously drowning in others, and this position has been messing with me more than anything else. To put it simply, I just haven’t felt like I’ve been my best self lately.

I’ve not been doing the things that make me happy. I love going to the gym in the morning, and normally that’s at least 4 times a week, but lately I’ve been struggling with managing twice a week due to just feeling overwhelmingly tired and unmotivated most mornings when my alarm goes off. There’s a little voice in my head that tells me I should go back to sleep instead of getting up, and it just keeps winning out.

I haven’t even been making an effort with my appearance lately. Makeup has been absolutely non-existent on my face, with the exception of a little eyebrow maintenance, and instead of dressing how I like dressing, I’ve just been throwing on whatever I can find, which primarily has been baggy, stretchy trousers and loose tops, and I tell myself that it’s more comfortable but I just end up feeling like a slob all day.

This just isn’t the me that I want to be. I’m losing confidence and it’s all my own doing – like another part of me is sabotaging everything that the good part of me is trying to do. I keep telling myself that it’s just a phase that I’m going through while everything is up in the air, and I just hope to god that that’s true and that it will all sort itself out very soon, but I’m not going to stand by and wait for it to happen; I’m making changes.

Sometimes it’s not always possible to be your best self, and that’s completely ok, but when it’s making you unhappy, you don’t have to just stand by and watch it spiral out of control. I’m going to do my best to by my best from today onwards.

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To My Former Best Friends

They say the average friendship has a lifespan of about 7 years, and while this seems like quite an upsetting figure, I’ve come to accept it.

What this fact doesn’t really seem to consider, however, is that just because a friendship ends, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing left behind. Some friendships end for the wrong reasons, leaving sadness or bitterness in their wake, while others just fade away, leaving happy memories and nostalgia, and I really think that no matter what causes a friendship to become a thing of the past, that person will have always played a really important part of your life, and there will never be any truly hard feelings left behind, especially when it comes to the best friends.

To my childhood best friend..

I don’t even remember how we became friends. We met at school and things must have just clicked. We did so many things together, both in and out of school, and we were inseparable. I felt us start to drift when you moved schools, and I didn’t get to see you every day. You made other friends, and even though we still saw each other most weeks, I just knew that these friends were a bigger part in your life than I was. It was ok. You were destined for popularity, and I just wasn’t, and when we made it back to sharing a classroom again in secondary school, I just decided to stop clinging on. We were still classmates until we were 16, but all the years of friendship seemed to be forgotten, or at least we made it seem that way.

I still think of all those years with happy memories. We made a girl band, we knew each others families, and for so many years we came as a pair. Nothing changes that, and I really just hope that you’re happy.

To my teenage best friend..

You were the first person that I thought would be in the running for my maid of honour whenever I got married. We met through mutual friends, and although we were part of a larger group, we gravitated towards each other and there was just no stopping us. We went through boy troubles together, so many school exams, first nights out and so much more. But we were two very different people, we always were. I always thought that was why we worked, but over time our differences took over. I think we both tried to stay friends after we finished sixth form, but when we only saw each other a handful of times in that first year, I think we both stopped trying.

I saw you the other day. In fact, I think we’re working in the same building, and I think you saw me too. I don’t know if you didn’t recognise me or just didn’t want to say anything, but either is ok. I have so much to thank you for, you were my rock for so many years and I have accepted that our friendship faded out. I think it was best for both of us, but I still think of you often, and honestly with you all the happiness in the world.

To my first ‘adult’ best friend..

I thought you were a little crazy when I first met you, but I quickly got past that, or at least I liked the crazy. We made quite the pair. Despite being adults, the friendship was very similar to my younger friendships – we dealt with the boy problems, work problems and everything else along the way. You cut my hair in return for baked goods, and taught me how important it is to fill in my eyebrows. I never minded that you started going out with my ex. It had been so long since we’d been a couple and you were much better suited for him anyway. But I warned you what he could be like, and every time you came crying to me about it, I couldn’t help but think I told you so, and then you’d just run back to him anyway.

I let you drift out of my life because it was easier for me. You stopped showing any real interest in my life, and only wanted to come to me with your problems, or to make a competition out of things. I don’t like the term toxic but I felt like you weren’t in it for me anymore and it was draining the fun out of it. You don’t need me anyway, you’re headstrong and independent and it makes you stronger than I think you realise sometimes.

We had so much fun, and I’m sad it had to come to an end but it did. You seem happier now anyway, and I hope that continues for you.

My best friends now are very different to the ones that have left my life. I feel like I’ve got it right now, and have friends in my life who are gonna make it past the 7 year mark. I am happy, and I hope that my old friends have found friends who make them feel the same way that I do now.

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Moving In Update #2

Its been just over two weeks since we got the keys and spent the first weekend in our house, and although Matthew went up the following week while I stayed down south, this weekend we spent our second weekend in the house together.

Being totally honest, I’ve found it really difficult being away from the house, and having another 4 weeks until I finish work and we can move up properly means that the few weekends we can go up between now and then are packed with us doing as much as we can to make it ready so we don’t have to do too much once we’re in for real.

Our main focus this weekend was our bedroom, as Matthew spent the previous weekend painting the wall behind our bed, which meant we could set to work in building the furniture, and by that I mean the wardrobe. The wardrobe was a real test of our relationship and our patience, not so much with the building but trying to put up the sliding doors on it.. But we did it, and it looks good now and we’ll never have to do it again.

The bed went up (even though we don’t have any bedding for it), my dressing table went into place and we hung the mirror and put the lights on the wall, and although there’s still quite a finishing touches to put in the room, its actually a proper bedroom now.

In the last week our sofa also arrived, so we finally have something other than a beanbag to sit on, yay! The living room still needs to be painted, and we’re waiting for a rug to arrive, but we did buy some really nice little plant pots from Ikea to go across the sideboard once we’ve put the TV on the wall. Unfortunately, however, in the last week half the grass in the garden has started to die, so we did the adult thing of buying a hosepipe and a sprinkler and spent Sunday trying to revive it!

The offices haven’t seen much action, although my little pink armchair arrived which I’m super happy about! The ratio of stuff in the garage seems to be tipping more towards having more cardboard and rubbish than boxes of our stuff, which means we might actually be making some progress, and definitely means that a tip trip is in order, but we’ll save that for another weekend.

I won’t be in the house for the next two weekends now at least which makes me sad, but I’m so happy with how its looking already!

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Things I’ll Miss About Bournemouth

I’m currently sat in our new house, on our new sofa that was delivered on Wednesday. I am content, but a little sad to know that we’ll be driving back tonight and that its still another 4 weeks until I can officially this place home.

Whenever I’m at home in Bournemouth, I miss our house so much, but I know that in a month’s time when I’m done with work and Matthew and I permanently move up north, besides the obvious things that I’ll miss like my family, I will miss the beautiful south coast that I grew up on.

The beach

Growing up in a town with one of the UK’s most beautiful beaches, I think I’ve taken living by the sea a little bit for granted. People always ask me if I spend all my time at the beach in the summer, and quite honestly I really don’t, and tend to actively avoid it in the summer because its so busy, but it is one of my favourite places to run in the evenings and I do think I’ll feel that little twinge from not being a 20 minute walk away from the water.

My gym

It seems like a really silly thing to miss, but I love my gym in Bournemouth. Its a 25 minute walk away, which I love doing, and I love knowing my way around the gym and seeing familiar faces every morning, and although I know that a gym is a gym, I’ll be really sad leaving.

Local shops

As a good little millennial, I do most of my shopping online to avoid too much human interaction, but there are some stores in Bournemouth that I won’t be able to visit anymore, like my two favourite fabric stores.

Bournemouth Air Festival

Every summer the world of aviation lands on on Bournemouth beach, and even though in the last couple of years I haven’t always made it down to the beach itself, the whole town gets to experience the festival as the planes fly over, so I’ll miss randomly spotting the Red Arrows, or feeling the ground shake from the engines of the Eurofighter Typhoon when it goes over.

Southern weather

Sure, the UK doesn’t always have the best weather, but its normally always just that little bit warmer down south at least, and now I’m heading further up the country I think I’ll miss those few degrees, especially in the winter!

I know that I’m going to have such an adventure living somewhere totally new, but Bournemouth will always be a very special place to me.

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Five Things I Learned From Jobs I Didn’t Get

They say if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. Well, I’ve worked a number of days in my life. And while I’ve learned a lot of things in my working life, many of the things I have learned have actually been from the jobs that I didn’t get along the way.

Just because its your dream company, doesn’t mean its your dream job

A few years ago I squealed for joy when I found out my local Lush store was reopening after a huge shop refurb, and were looking to hire a whole bunch of new staff. I smashed out a cover letter that very night and was absolutely buzzed when I was not only invited to a group interview, but also invited back to a trial shift/second interview. Where I fell down was the trial shift, because I wasn’t as totally in your face as your typical Lush employee (if you’ve ever been in a store, you know what I mean) and because I didn’t jump on shoppers the second they walked in through the door, I wasn’t Lush material. I was semi-devastated at the time, but then I realised that the pushy sales assistant thing is definitely not my thing, and I would have felt really pressured in that job.

Passion counts for a lot

You can prepare for an interview all you like, but some interviewers want to see how much you want the job more than necessarily having all perfect answers. Feedback from one interview that I didn’t get hired from was that while I had great answers and they said I could have easily got the job, but other candidates showed more enthusiasm about the role and were more passionate about starting a career in that field, and that was just something that I couldn’t beat.

Just because you don’t get the job first time, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reapply

Technically, this isn’t about a job that I didn’t get, because its about the job I have now, but that’s exactly the point. I interviewed for this job once, and when I didn’t hear back for a while, I assumed that it was a no, which was then confirmed when I heard back about a month later, but I was invited to a meeting to get some feedback. During this meeting, I was told that there were two positions to be filled, and three people that they were torn between, one of which was me, but they settled on the other two. However, another role had just become vacant, and while they had to advertise the role again properly, they asked me to interview again, and well the rest is history!

Ask for feedback

Whenever you here back from a job that you didn’t get, don’t be afraid to ask the question of why you didn’t get the job. Take any ‘negative’ reasons as constructive criticism and learn for the next time, but also listen to the good things they will inevitably say about you, and also don’t feel hard done by if the reasons are that other candidates had more experience or were better suited – that’s not a problem with you!

Sometimes you’ll just never hear back

Unfortunately, there are some jobs that won’t even reject you, they’ll just ignore you. A lot of companies now even put it on their job applications to say that they won’t respond if you’re unsuccessful, leaving you completely in the unknown as to if you’ll ever hear back, and why you didn’t get it if you never do. I’ve learned not to take it personally and just move onto the next, their loss!

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Our First Weekend In Our New House and What We Got Done

So even though it feels like we’ve waited forever, in reality its only been 2 1/2 months since we saw our house for the first time, and on Thursday we officially completed and its now ours! We picked up the keys on Friday and the weekend has been the first phase of our moving process – I don’t actually leave my job until July 6th, so until then we’ll only be able to visit on weekends, but that hopefully means by the time we’re up there permanently, it will be mostly finished in terms of unpacking and decorating! (This is a bit of an unedited photo dump so apologies that some pictures are a bit dark)

We went up with my parents in a one car, one van convoy, both packed to bursting with the stuff we already have, and then once we’d unloaded that all into the garage, it was on to Ikea for the big furniture shop. I won’t bore you with the details, but 5 trolleys and one delivery coming on Tuesday, and we’re actually still not completely done as we realised we’ve picked up a few things in the wrong sizes and forgot a few little but key things like hinges and legs for cupboards.. As that was a fairly manual labour filled day, we didn’t build anything that night, and Matthew and I had what I believe is a traditional ‘first night in new house’ evening of takeaway pizza on the floor because we don’t have a dining table/chairs or even a sofa, and slept on our mattress on the floor because its our bed being delivered on Tuesday..

Our current living room set up

Saturday morning my parents brought round some food for breakfast; we got to use our toaster and kettle for the first time with toast for Dad and a cup of tea for my mum. Matthew and I then headed off to do a bit more shopping with Mum while we left my dad to start building some of the Ikea stuff. We hit Costco (for mainly cleaning supplies at this point), B&Q for paint and decorating bits and then went to DFS to order our sofa, which was a pretty easy job as we’ve had it picked our for ages! On our way back to the house we decided to try out our first local chippy to see how it was (a solid 7/10) and then after we’d eaten, again on the kitchen floor, Matthew and I set to work painting the feature wall in our guest bedroom. (I’ll be doing a full post on how we did this later on this week!)

Once the wall was painted, we could then build the bed in there and position all the furniture, and then my parents headed home. Matthew and I drove into Crewe for another B&Q trip, this time for paint for my office, plus some screws and wall plugs and a few other bits and bobs, and I spent the evening painting the feature wall in my office.

Sunday morning was another coat of paint in my office, then we headed back into Crewe and hit Home Bargains and Dunelm for some things for the bathroom, grabbed lunch in Nandos and headed back to the house where the Sky man had just arrived to set up our Sky box. I built all the bathroom bits, then while Matthew screwed them into the walls, I built the desk for my office and got that all set up.

The rest of the afternoon was spent doing some finishing touches in the guest bedroom, which is now pretty much finished apart from a mirror needing to be put on a wall and a few other little decor additions, then tidied up all the mess into the garage.

So one weekend in, we have pretty much finished the guest bedroom and the bathroom, bar a few little details, and made a start to pretty much every other room. We still haven’t decided how we want to decorate our bedroom or the living room, but as neither have that much furniture in them right now we’ve got plenty of time to decide! If you want to see how some of these rooms looked before, check out the first look at our home here.

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Sixty Seconds of Self Care

With mental health awareness increasing by the day, self care is becoming an ever increasingly more important part of day to day life. Quite simply, self care is any act in which you do something to look after yourself, either physically or mentally.

Too often though, we think of self care as a bit of a big deal, and I know that I for one am guilty of ignoring self care with the excuse that I don’t have enough time, when in fact we should always be finding the time to make sure that we are happy. Self care doesn’t have to mean spending 2 hours in a bath with £20 worth of Lush products, it can be as simple as a minute here and there, and sometimes the smallest things can make a big difference to your day.

Here are a few self care practices that I’ve been doing lately that take no time at all:

  • Taking a little more time brushing my hair after washing it, rather than just enough to get any knots out
  • Instead of gulping down my hot chocolate while I’m trying to get work done, I’ve been stopping to sit back and enjoy it
  • At the end of each day, taking just a small amount of time to write down, or just think about all the good things that have happened that day
  • Sitting to eat breakfast, rather than standing
  • Using an in-shower moisturiser to keep my skin happy with minimal effort
  • Drinking at least one glass of water every two hours
  • Deciding what to wear to work the night before so I don’t have to rush around in the morning and feel cuter
  • Taking a little bit of time each morning to comment on Instagram posts instead of just liking, and also replying to comments on my own posts
  • Using my Fitbit’s ‘relax’ feature for breathing exercises before bed
  • Applying BioOil to my stretch marks after showering
  • Reminding myself why I love what I do when I’m feeling stressed about it
  • Retweeting cute animal videos to brighten up my (and others) timelines

These might seem like insignificant little acts, but just by doing them and knowing that I’m making a little effort towards looking after myself, they have been making a big difference!

Do you take time to look after yourself?

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A First Look at Our First Home

So after what feels like forever and also no time at all simultaneously, yesterday, for the first time ever, Matthew and I got to step foot into our first house.

Its been just over 2 months since we fell in love with this plot and put down our reservation fee, and ever since then its been a whirlwind of mortgage applications, legal documents and everything else that comes with house-buying, but its all coming together in time for us to get the keys next week.

Us being in Bournemouth (my home town) and the house being in Winsford has been an obvious logistical nightmare, so while most buyers would be able to check up on their new build as and when, we’ve only been up to see it a handful of times, all of which up til now have been while work was being carried out, so we’ve never been able to see the inside of the place that we’ll be making our home.

Well its safe to say I’m in love. I fell in love with the house from the first time we visited a showhome, but this one just seems so much shinier and more beautiful because its ours. Because we bought so late in the build of the house, we didn’t get to make many choices – the kitchen and the bathroom tiles had already been picked – but we did get to pick the carpet and the flooring in the kitchen and bathrooms, and while it was pretty hard when you’re just looking at samples, we managed to nail it and everything goes perfectly!


I can’t wait to get in next week and start the slow process of transforming this empty (but beautiful) shell of our house into our home, and I’m planning on doing before/after posts for each room as and when we finish them, plus everything else along the way, so be prepared for a whole bunch of house posts in the coming months!

Oh, and on top of having a beautiful house, we have the most amazing back garden! I’m feeling really super blessed that we managed to get this house, and even though I’ll probably never have savings again, it seems absolutely worth it.

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A Pledge to Myself, Right Now

The last few months for me have been a bit of a rollercoaster. Hell, the whole of 2018 has been a total blur. To say I’ve been overwhelmed would probably be an understatement, and the probably with that is the good old saying: something’s gotta give.

So I’ve been letting things slip. I’m not proud of it, but I know that its true, and the problem hasn’t so much been that I’ve been dropping a few little things from my schedule, its that I’ve been dropping some things that are actually pretty damn important, not necessarily for other people, but for myself.

My skincare routine has diminished to me just barely washing my face in the shower, and there are days where I don’t even fill in my eyebrows. My face has hardly seen any makeup in the last few months, with the exception of when I was on holiday, and when I went to a wedding a few weeks ago, and while I have no problem with not wearing makeup, I really enjoy doing my makeup, and not doing things that I enjoy has really been affecting me.

More recently, I’ve realised that I’m not even wearing the clothes that I love to wear. I’ve gone from wearing outfits that make me feel cute to wearing whatever I can throw together that morning and avoiding looking in mirrors. Suddenly I’m finding things like posting on Instagram feel like the biggest chore on some days, and my blog has been suffering massively because feeling under pressure really hinders my ability to write. I’ve also been neglecting my body; not eating well, avoiding exercise some days and feeling totally sluggish as a result. I’m not ok with this.

So here it is, a promise to myself:

I must remember to take time out for my own happiness. If something’s gotta give, then that’s ok, but don’t let the things I love disappear.

I will look after my body, from getting back on track with eating a balanced diet and remembering to stay active, even if that just means taking a walk at lunchtime. I will drink more water. I will take those extra few minutes each day to look after my skin.

I will not let myself get caught up in negativity, and spend more time reflecting on positive, happy moments in my life, and looking forward to the amazing upcoming events that the rest of this year has to come.

I will try to always be better than the person I was yesterday, because lots of small steps are just as effective as one big one.

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How A Beach Holiday Actually Boosted My Body Confidence

I’ve not kept it entirely secret that I’ve been struggling a lot this year with negative thoughts about my body, and while they lapsed in February/March time, when I broke my ankle at the start of April and was unable to walk without pain, let alone go to the gym or continue my marathon training, I started to gain weight and the negative feelings came back worse than ever, as the time when I really wanted to be ramping up my training before my trip to Aulani, was now time I had to spent with my foot elevated and iced.

The hardest part in all of this was that I’ve always been a firm believer in body confidence, and if anyone I knew was feeling the same way I felt, I’d be heartbroken, so part of the reason I’ve not talked all that much about it is because I didn’t want to seem like a fraud, or make it seem like I think gaining weight is an awful thing, because it isn’t. I just couldn’t listen to the reasonable voice in my head.

So there I was, with my dream beach holiday getting ever closer, swimsuits and outfits planned, becoming equally more excited and more upset every time I caught a glimpse of my stretch marks in the mirror, and I was starting to worry that this perfect holiday was going to turn into one big panic attack.

Well, I was wrong. The first day of our stay, I put on the bikini that I was most worried about wearing, and we headed to the beach. I was nervous to take off my cover-up, but it was so hot that we had to get into the sea asap, so I whipped it off and ran across the hot sand into the water. No one stared, no one whispered, hell, little old me was probably the last thing that all these people enjoying their holidays probably cared about.

The next day, I put on my favourite bikinis. I hadn’t wore it in about 8 months and I was nervous that I’d look like I’d been stuffed into sausage casing. Sure, it didn’t fit as well as it has done in the past, but I’ve also looked worse in it, and I was actually pretty happy with how I felt in it, and I held my head a little higher than the day before as I walked around the pool area.

Besides my own body bringing me a little more confidence, I also started feeling super empowered seeing other people out in their bathing suits. People of all shapes, sizes and colours out loving life on their holidays, who are too busy having the best time to stop and worry about whether they’ve got any wobbly bits. I took this energy and rolled with it.

And the confidence grew exponentially. Each day I felt the worry subside and the sass build, and by the end of the third full day of our stay, I posted a photo of myself in my swimsuit on Instagram, which is something that I’ve only ever done once before in my life. The response? Incredible. The nice comments from people made me feel amazing, but what made me feel even better was the people who were relating with the message, because unfortunately the way I feel is a way that a lot of women feel. My caption said that all women’s bodies are amazing, and the number of people who thanked me for telling them that made it all worth while, and to be honest, I just felt like a million bucks in that photo.

So all that worry about how I would look in a swimsuit? I guess you could say I’m over it.

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Monday

Howdy folks! Its been almost exactly a year since the last time I did a week of daily blogging, so I figured this was due (plus I had no other post inspiration for this week..). So each day I’ll be sharing what I’ve been up to, and I hope to keep it interesting enough that you’ll still be reading by Sunday!

This morning started with a 5:30am alarm, up and out the house by 6am and making my way to the gym on foot – its a mile and a half, so about 25-30 mins to walk each way. I did a 30 mins of mainly leg focused cardio with a bit of weight training in there too, then walked home, which is a workout in itself as its mainly uphill! On the walk home I tend to get some conversation going with the #HappiestFitbitClub as Monday is always the start of a new challenge and motivation is nice and high.

When I got home I spent some time commenting on Instagram posts while having breakfast, then washed and got dressed for work. I went barefaced today, apart from filling in my eyebrows – I’m a Benefit Ka-Brow kinda gal, in case you were wondering. Grey smock dress, tights and black chelsea boots later, I was good to go!

Work was a little mad today. We were all sent home early on Thursday and the office was closed on Friday due to the crazy snow, so there was a lot of catching up to do, plus the regular month-end panic that comes with the territory of financial accounting, so there’s always a little bit of tension in the air for the first few days of a new month. I’ve been in this job for about 4 months now and although there are some things that I am very comfortable doing, there’s a few month-end jobs that I’m not so confident with because I don’t do them as much, but I was pretty happy that I managed one of the most complicated things today without needing anyone to check it over, so that was a win, but I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of my job, don’t worry!

Whenever we can, Matthew and I take our lunch break together, and as is fairly normal for me, the first part of my lunch hour was taken up by walking from the office to the high street in order to take any orders Happiest Fitness Co or Etsy orders to the Post Office, then back to the office to eat lunch and catch up on social media. Lunch is normally the time that I’ll post on Instagram, but it varies between whether I think it will be a good time or not – some days seem to be better than others.

When there’s only about an hour or so between my finish time and his, I’ll normally go for a run to the beach from the office and back in time for him to leave, but the weather was a bit poo today so I just went home, hung out with the cats for a bit and did a little bit of writing before going back to pick him up.

Dinner consisted mainly of fish fingers (yes I am a child) and we ate while watching Friends re-runs on Comedy Central, then I spent some time working on yet another new skirt design that I’m hoping to bring to my Etsy this weekend (although its been a semi-torturous process!) so stay tuned for that. I generally work with some sort of movie on in the background, and today was back to back Miss Congeniality 1 and 2 on NOW TV.

And that’s pretty much been my day! My evenings are pretty much always spent either sewing or writing or packing up orders, or a combination of all three, as today was. Sorry there haven’t been many photos today, its been pretty grey for most of today and I only really like taking photos when its nice and bright, but here’s a photo of Ronnie looking particularly adorable instead!

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Proud Moments in February

And just like that, this weird baby month is coming to a close, but its actually been a pretty great one. Its been a while since I did a monthly reflections sort of post, mainly because I prefer to look forward at what’s to come, but February has brought me so many wonderful moments this year that I figured why not look back at some of the things that I’ve been so incredibly proud of this month, and celebrate myself for a change.

Approaching a brand and getting a response

For the first time in my 4+ years of blogging, I took the plunge and contacted a brand that I really wanted to work with. I had no expectations, other than assuming that I’d probably be ignored or shot down, but just sending the email gave me a little boost of confidence because I felt I’d written a great pitch. Well that boost was then completely skyrocketed as I not only got a response, but it came back to me the very next day, and it was the loveliest response I think I could have been sent. Despite not meeting their usual requirements for sponsored work, they said they thought my email was so personal and thought my blog was so bright and colourful that they wanted to send me something anyway, and I’ve been squealing ever since!

Launching the #HappiestFitbitClub

I’ve been sitting on the idea for this for over a year now, but a few weeks ago I put out some feelers on Twitter and Instagram and I got the most amazing response! Now I have over 30 lovely club members who participate every week in my challenges, and I’m blown away by how well everyone is doing. And not only has it been a good motivation for my members, its really challenging and motivating me, and I’m feeling so good because of it! Wanna join? Sign up here!

Getting out of my comfort zone with custom orders

One of my New Years resolutions was to push my sewing skills a bit more this year and get away from just making skirts and accessories. Well, I’ve had some pretty cool custom order requests this month and I’ve got to make some amazing things that have really challenged me, but I’ve had the most fun creating them and I think they’ve turned out so well! Here’s just one of my makes from this month:

Managing at least one meat free day every week

I didn’t doubt my ability to go meat free one day a week, but I did think I would very easily slip up accidentally, but nope! I’ve been enjoying all sorts of different meal options and doing my little bit to help.

Defeating the negative thoughts

I’ve mentioned a couple of times now that I’ve been struggling a lot recently with some pretty strong negative body thoughts, but I bought myself some new swimsuits for my upcoming Aulani trip and when trying them on I actually felt pretty good. Its slow progress, I still have some not-so-good days, but I’m getting my brain and body back to where it should be.

Insta-growing!

Call it luck, call it progress, call it completely random, but I’ve finally been seeing my follower count on Instagram steadily climbing – I’ve gained over 100 followers this month and the number doesn’t seem to be dropping back like it normally does, yay!

Have you had a lovely February, or are you ready for another month to start?

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On Why Finally Putting Myself First

One of my main New Year’s resolutions for this year was to put myself first more often, and while I did put that into practice a little bit in January, now I’m really ready to commit to this, and myself.

I’ve always been the person that picked up the extra shifts that needed covering because someone else was sick, or that stayed late dealing with a customer while others ran for the door. You see, I have this awful affliction where I find it almost impossible to say the word ‘no’, and the thought of letting someone down just seemed impossible to me. Now there’s nothing wrong with being a good, reliable person, but the problem for me is that after years and years of doing it, its starting to take its toll.

Despite having started my new job, which I absolutely love, over 2 months ago now, I’ve still been doing overtime in my old position to try and earn a few extra pennies to put towards various things this year. It always seems like a good idea at the time, but in reality I end up getting super stressed out and over the last few months this stress has actually led to me being fairly unwell – in fact, I’ve been off work twice already this year due to illness which is just so unlike me. So on Saturday, I finally finished the last of the overtime I’ve pledged, and while I’ll no doubt miss the extra cash landing in my bank account each month, I think this is going to be so much better for me. I went from working 12 hour days in my old job, to going back to normal 9-5 hours in my new job but still doing overtime in between, and now I’m ready to just work normal hours, in a job that I actually like getting up for.

Ultimately, I know that I need to work on my health and my happiness. The migraines that I suffer with have been becoming more frequent over the last month or so, I keep getting coldsores, and I’ve also been battling somewhat silently with some body image issues that have been really getting to me as well. Now I have more time on my hands, I can not only get myself feeling better physically but also mentally and I think this is going to be so good for me.

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Hello February

Well if it wasn’t enough that we’re in 2018 now, we’re already into month 2, wowzers.. I’ve seen a lot of people on Twitter saying how January felt like it went on forever, and I felt that a little bit but I also have no idea where the time has gone.

It wasn’t the totally stellar beginning to the year that I hoped for; I’ve been ill quite a lot and my mental health has been quite up and down, especially in the last few weeks, plus my family got some bad news this month, so I’ve dropped off the high of the new year buzz a little, but now I’m ready for the fresh start that a new month brings. That said, January wasn’t all blue – we celebrated Matthew’s birthday, had a weekend away in Bath and I’ve been so happy with blogging and my small businesses this month, so I can’t complain about that!

I always think that February is such a funny little month, I mean, its only 2-3 days shorter than any other month but it seems that way. It just seems more manageable, y’know?

Well I plan on filling February with fun and positivity, and here are a few things I’m looking forward to..

Harry Potter and The Cursed Child

I am FINALLY seeing The Cursed Child in London in a few weeks time, eek! I did read the book, so I know how the story goes down, but even that seems like so long ago now that I can’t remember every little detail, and I’m not going to refresh myself so I can experience it all on the stage.

Meat free days

With it being a little bit shorter, I thought this would be the perfect month to put myself to the challenge of doing at least one completely meat free day each week and expand my food repertoire with some more veggie options and dishes.

No more overtime

This Saturday is the last day of overtime I will be working for the foreseeable future, yay! This is despite having said the same thing every few weeks for the last 8-9 months, but this time I mean it because technically I left the job that I’ve been doing the overtime for two months ago, and its been causing me so much stress in the last few weeks that I’m just gonna put myself first and work normal days and normal hours from here on out.

More creations

I’ve launched a brand new product on my Etsy store today, and there are some fab deals and other new products that will also be appearing in the coming week or so, so stay tuned! January was an incredible month for sales and I’m so proud of that, so bring on another month!

Another Instagram milestone, maybe?

After what feels like the longest time trying to get there, I finally hit 2,000 followers on Instagram just under a week ago, and by some miracle I’m already up another 50 from there! I set myself a fairly modest, although still potentially unreachable goal of 2,500 for 2018, but if I keep going like this then maybe February will at least see me at 2,100..

Booking another Disney trip

I have no Disney park trips on the cards for 2018, but January 2019 is gonna be a good’un! DVC home resort rules means that we can book our stay at Disney’s Polynesian resort 11 months in advance, so hello booking time!

A big push for fundraising

On said 2019 Disney trip, I’ll be running my first full marathon, and I’ve decided that I might as well do something good with this madness, so I’ve set up a Just Giving page where you can sponsor me, with the money going to Cystic Fibrosis Trust, a charity very near and dear to me – even if you donate just £1 you can help me make a difference, and if you fancy it, click here.

Here’s to a great month!

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Getting Monday Ready

Call me crazy, but I’ve always kinda liked Mondays. I see them like a fresh start, a mini New Years every week, and this liking of Mondays has only increased since starting my new job because I don’t also dread them a little bit anymore.

I also like to think that by starting off the week right, it will mean that the whole seven days will go off without a hitch, and with that in mind there are a few things that I like to get sorted every Sunday in the hopes of a smooth coming week.

Cleaning my makeup brushes

I find cleaning my brushes really therapeutic for some reason. I don’t quite do this every week as there are some weeks I just don’t wear my makeup as much as others, but its always a Sunday evening task regardless! All my brushes are Spectrum, and I use the Freedom Cosmetics brush bath to clean them, and then let them air dry on a shelf above my radiator overnight so that they’re nice and fluffy in the morning and ready for action!

A good skincare session

Over the winter months especially, I have been making much more of an effort to be more on top of my skincare regime as the weather can drive my skin crazy, so I do have a daily routine, but Sunday’s are for a bit of extra love. Sometimes that’s a face mask, sometimes a long hot bath, and sometimes its just a longer session with my Magnitone and a few extra or more special products thrown in.

The food shop and meal planning

Sundays are normally the day that Matthew and I do our Sainsbury’s shop and decide what dinners we’re going to have in the week. We keep our weekly shop below £50 as we each get vouchers through a salary scheme at work, and we like quick and easy meals that we can throw together after we both finish work, so typically we have things like chilli, soup, curry etc, but also like to mix things up with whatever else takes our fancy. There’s also a little bit of meal prepping done on a Sunday night, but now I’m back working 9-5 I don’t have to stress about it too much.

Packing up orders

Any Etsy or Happiest Fitness Co orders that I’ve sorted out over the weekend end up in a little pile of boxes and packages by the door by Sunday night ready for me to take to the post office during my lunch break on Monday – no rest for the small business-er!

Tweet scheduling

Every Sunday night I try to get my whole week’s worth of scheduled tweets sorted so that I don’t have to think about them for the rest of the week. Its a slightly boring task but I know that if I get it out of the way, at least its done!

Ironing and outfit planning

I don’t completely plan out my outfits for work, but I try to think ahead so that I have the key items ready, washed and ironed so that I don’t have to worry about getting the ironing board out in the week.

Do you do anything specific to get ready for your week?

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About My Younger Self

This was me, aged 15. This photo was taken about two or three days after I had been dumped by my first long-term boyfriend – we’d been together around 8 or 9 months – by text, at around 2 o’clock in the morning. Yeah.. My two best girlfriends had slept round mine, and we had gone to a local summer festival where we tried to get as many free things as we could, ate food that came from trucks or stalls and just had some fun.

In those days I always carried a camera. More often than not it was my dad’s because he had much better ones than me, and phone cameras still took grainy, low quality photos. My phone at the time was a slid-up LG thing with buttons. Yep. I would take so many photos, most totally silly but every one a memory that I would painstakingly upload to Facebook in groups of 5, caption individually and tag, so that everyone could see. I still have every single one saved on my computer.

My two best friends were everything. Our lives revolved around sleepovers at each others houses and trips to Primark. We sat together in every class but still text each other under our desks, and we were there for each other through every breakup, fall out or family problem. We all had our own style and our own likes and dislikes, but we all respected each other. I never thought there would be a time that we wouldn’t be friends anymore. Well, we drifted apart in the end.

In those days I knew very little when it came to makeup, and I certainly didn’t wear it every day. When I did it was probably just blue eyeliner and mascara – I think by 15 I had given up on my Dream Matte Mousse in 3 shades more orange than my face actually was. My eyebrows were never filled in, nor did I ever pluck them (but that was partly because I’m quite lucky with my natural shape), but my nails were always painted. My nail varnish collection was my pride and joy and every week at school was a challenge to see how long I could make it before a teacher eventually noticed my navy blue tipped fingers and made me go to the office to take it off. Most gave up bothering.

Even back then my style was different. I wore skirts and shorts with knee high socks and high-tops – Converses were basically the only shoes I owned, and still are. I wore dungarees and band t-shirts, and actually knew who the bands were. I knew what I was wearing wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I almost thrived from it. I guess the fact that I didn’t try and blend in back then is what makes my style what it is today. To be honest, when I look back I still love every outfit.

Younger me went through a lot. I look back at some of it and wish some things had been different. I wish I could have told myself so many things about how life would be in 5-10 years time but I also applaud that version of myself for getting through it all. I almost feel like I don’t know that person anymore, but she was great, despite not believing it herself.

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Let’s Talk About Luck

Luck (noun)

“success or failure apparently brought about by chance rather than through one’s own actions”

I feel like this says it all, but because you don’t know the point I’m trying to get across, here’s some backstory..

It doesn’t matter who you are or what you achieve, there will always be someone who says ‘oh wow, you’re so lucky!’. Whether you’ve just tweeted about a promotion at work, or you’re Instagramming beach pics from a fabulous holiday, so many people jump to luck. Now don’t get me wrong, 9 times out of 10 this is probably meant as a compliment, but that’s just the thing. Unintentional as it may be, claiming luck invalidates the accomplishment.

Take bloggers for example. I follow so many incredible bloggers on Twitter, all of which produce great content, take photos that could easily appear in magazines and pour so much effort into their posts that they deserve every opportunity they get, but whenever they tweet in gratitude about one of their favourite brands reaching out to work with them, so many of the responses that come flooding in are ‘oh my gosh, this is amazing! You’re so lucky!’. Yes, it is amazing, but look at the definition of luck (see, I put it there for a reason), these things came about through hard work and determination, so that’s far from luck.

Personally, I hate being told that I’m lucky whenever I go on holiday. Sure, I guess I’m fortunate to have a job that pays well, but I earnt that job and I work hard in that job, plus I put in so much overtime for the very purpose of being able to pay for said holidays. And I suppose it helps that my outgoings aren’t too high, but again, that’s because I’m very careful with money, budget like a pro and know how to find a bargain. Yep, these are all sounding like my own actions..

I’m not saying that I’m not grateful for every opportunity that comes my way, because I am. I am so grateful and so thankful for everything I have, and there are so many things that I do think I’m lucky to have, such as my amazing family, incredible boyfriend and wonderful friends, because apart from somehow convincing them to be in my life, my actions had nothing to do with them being who they are, I just wish that we didn’t devalue accomplishments by suggesting luck has anything to do with it.

What do you think?

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Things My Travel Disasters Have Taught Me

I always say I’ve had the travel bug from a young age. I was very lucky as a child that my parents took my sister and me to so many different places and I have experienced so much of the world already, and that need to see it all has never gone away.

Now in all my years of travelling, you wouldn’t expect that everything’s always gone 100% smoothly, and you’d be right, it hasn’t. There have been plenty of slight holiday malfunctions and mishaps over the years, but as a child a lot of these didn’t seem like problems – probably because my parents always did a pretty good job of covering them up – but in more recent years, my travel nightmares have led to a lot of discovery.

Even if you’re travelling hand luggage only, make sure its a suitable bag

This is a fun story from a year ago now. I went on solo trip to Disneyland Paris and after a wonderful weekend away I got to the airport to discover my flight home had been cancelled. The airline were nice enough to get my on another flight, but this was at a different airport which I had to get a coach to, and then after walking the entire length of the airport to the gate for the second flight, that one was also cancelled. Long story short, I spent the majority of my day walking back and forth through a huge airport, and the bag I had chosen for my weekend’s worth of stuff? A shopping bag, kinda like a bag-for-life/Ikea blue bag style thing with a little grab handle, so I couldn’t put it on my back or over my shoulder, and my hand hurt so much by the time I got home – 9 hours later than I should have.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help from airport staff

On a flight to Japan, my sister and I had a VERY tight transfer time in Dubai, and by very tight I mean too tight. Thanks to a delay in our first flight, we wouldn’t have had enough time to make it to our next gate, so we did the somewhat sensible, someone stressed-fuelled thing to do and ran through the airport shouting for someone to help us. Well, we ended up on one of those little golf-cart things that the airport staff use and got shuttled right to where we needed to be, just in the nick of time!

Just because trains are reliable, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t check the timetable

This is another Japan story. Japanese trains are the most reliable in the world; they so rarely run late that you actually need a note from the train company to take to work with you to prove it was actually late. Well we never experienced a single late train, but we did assume that all trains ran super regularly, when in fact the train to the airport only ran once an hour on the day we needed to take it, and we got there 5 minutes after a train had just left. Another mad run through the airport..

Set yourself a reminder alarm on any train journey

So I don’t know about anyone else, but when I’m super stressed out my body likes to shut down and make me sleep whenever the opportunity arises. Well this occurred once after I stressed about my Eurostar home from Paris being late once, and as soon as I got on the train, I fell asleep. Luckily, I kept my phone in my hand the whole time, and a friend of mine who was sat in a different part of the train had text me to ask if I was ready to run of the train at our connecting station, which woke me up, but had I not I would have missed it altogether and rode that train all the way to Brussels. Oops.

Always check the pockets of bags you haven’t used in a while

This is one of my favourite stories going back to when I was in secondary school. I was in cadets, and had used the same rucksack to take away on a cadet camp early in the summer that I used as hand luggage for a family holiday. It goes through the scanner and gets pulled for inspection, where the security guard asks if I would have anything sharp or metal to which I proclaimed that I just remembered that there were some safety pins I’d forgotten about that I would have had in there from camp. Well it turns out I also had forgotten about the pen knife that I took to camp, which the guard then pulled from my bag. Yep..

Well I certainly hope you’ve been entertained by my little cautionary tales, if you haven’t learned anything from them yourself! Have you ever had any major travel faux pas?

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Creative-18

Have I mentioned that this year is going to be my year? Well, I’m certainly gonna try and make it that way.

One thing that will always make me happy is creating things. I’ve always loved turning my imagination into reality, and nothing makes me more proud of my creations than when I see other people loving them, but sometimes just taking time out from a busy day to sit and do something creative can make a world of difference. So I’m gonna try something a bit different this year..

I’m not calling it a challenge, because then I’ll feel under pressure, and end up feeling bad if I can’t do it, but it may just be that. I guess I could call it a goal, or an aspiration maybe. Hmm..

The aim is this: in 2018, I want to take time to do something creative every single day. 365 little moments of making. These can be however big or small, whether its spending a whole day baking a masterpiece to rival the GBBO winner, an evening spent cranking out Etsy orders or just taking 5 minutes out of my lunch break at work to do a quick little sketch or some colouring.

Its a way for me to keep my creative juices flowing, and obviously I also hope that it will benefit my small businesses, but primarily I’m doing this for me, so that I can spend more time doing the things that I love, from baking or sewing to drawing or photography, and of course I hope to share a lot of what I do on here too, so stay tuned to see what I produce!

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My 2018 New Years Resolutions and Goals

And just like that, another year is upon us, and I think there’s something extra satisfying about January 1st being a Monday, anyone else? New week, new year, new set of resolutions and new goals to try and smash.

Resolutions

When it comes to resolutions, I’ve learnt that the key to success is being realistic, and being positive. This year, I’m focusing more on the things that make me happy, and continuing to become the person I really want to be. So here goes:

  • Put myself first more – I’ve always been the sort of person to put others needs first, and of course there’s nothing wrong with that, but it can mean that I end up run a little bit ragged. Well, I’m learning, and this year will be more about making sure that I don’t put too much pressure on myself.
  • Start asking for what I want – I’m often too shy or nervous to put myself out there and tell other people what I want – I won’t even ask my boyfriend to take my blog photos sometimes cos I feel like its too much to ask. Long story short, it means that sometimes I miss out on things that I want to do for no reason other than my own lack of confidence, and I’m tired of that.
  • Learn to sew more stuff – when it comes to my sewing creations, I’ve got a little comfortable with making the same kinda thing. This year, I want to branch out from skirts and teach myself some more advanced patterns like tops, dresses and shorts so I can start creating more wonderful things!
  • Wake up earlier – 2017 was the year I learnt how to have a lie-in, following years of being an early riser. Well, I could really do with that extra time in the morning again, so I’m gonna get myself back into a routine of getting up and getting stuff done.
  • Learn to love photography again – as soon as autumn/winter kicks in and the days get shorter and darker, taking photos starts to seem like such a chore, especially when it comes to blog photos and Instagram. No more! I’m saving for a new lens for my camera, and I’m gonna be bringing bright and beautiful back to your screens very soon!
  • Keep being braver with makeup – I’ve been having the most fun recently playing around eyeshadow, as well as generally improving my makeup skills, and I’ve been loving it. Here’s to a more colourful 2018!
  • Hang out with more amazing people – they say you should always surround yourself with positive people and people who support you, so I’m gonna do just that.

Blogging Goals

2017 was another incredible year for this little blog of mine. Despite a few ups and downs from my end, my blog has held fast as it hit its 4th birthday. I hit all but one of my targets for last year (stupid Instagram), so I’m hoping this year will be just as successful!

  • Targets
    • 1500 Bloglovin followers
    • 3500 Twitter followers
    • 2500 Instagram followers
    • 100,000 page views
  • To achieve
    • Improve flat-lays and product photos
    • Include more photos of myself
    • Help other bloggers by retweeting posts and commenting more
    • Try my hand at proper makeup posts
    • Remember to take more little breaks
    • Just generally chat with more lovely bloggers!

Who else is feeling like 2018 is gonna be a great year?

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Working 9-5

It doesn’t feel like all that long ago I wrote about how I ditched regular working hours in favour of 12 hour shifts, but time’s a-changing again folks! No, I didn’t get fed up of the hours – in fact, I really did love doing the whole 3 days a week thing – but your girl’s gone and got herself a new job!

I’m still working for the same company, in the same building, but I have finally clawed my way out of customer service and I’m pleased to announce that I will now be an accounts administrator in the finance department, and that means Monday-Friday, 9-5, and for the first time ever in my working life.. NO MORE WEEKENDS! The job comes with better pay, better hours and more opportunities, and I already love the work.

And while I did love my old shift pattern, I finally have total stability; no more working Monday-Wednesday one week, then Monday, Thursday and Friday the next, and then throw in a few random weekend days each month. I’ve also been given the gift of some flexibility – if I need to come in a little later one day, I can do that and stay a little later. I’m not having to be in for an exact time and take my breaks at the set time I was given, and better still, I don’t have to speak to customers anymore, yippee! (I have worked in customer service for over 5 years and while I somewhat enjoyed the work and like the majority of customers, some can be downright rude)

I normally hate change, but this change is going to be so good for me. I’m already so much happier to go to work every day, and excited to get back to a proper routine of eating meals at normal times, and not being totally exhausted when I get home. I’m excited to have time to go to the gym in the morning and still have time to do my makeup rather than just running out of the house with my eyebrows just barely filled in. I’ll have time to catch up with people on social media and promote my small businesses and just feel a little bit more like my life is together.

This is going to be good for me.

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Can We Please Stop Making Our Pleasures ‘Guilty’?

This is something that I see on a near daily basis. ‘Listening to X is my biggest guilty pleasure!’, ‘I have an unhealthy obsession with X!’; we are constantly putting down the things we love. This is the official definition from Google:

‘guilty pleasure (noun)

something, such as a film, television programme, or piece of music, that one enjoys despite feeling that it is not generally held in high regard.’

Now I don’t know about you, but I can’t actually see anything in that definition that implies we should feel in the slightest bit bad about what we like. Sure, what we like might not be commonly appreciated, but that doesn’t mean to say we shouldn’t like it anyway.

So why do we call them guilty pleasures? Do we really feel bad about liking them? We certainly don’t seem to be too embarrassed by them if we’re tweeting about them or putting them our online profiles, so why not just own the fact that its something you like?

Its far from a secret that I love Disney, right? Well that’s because I talk about it all the time. I love talking about it, I even take pride in it, so when I see people claiming that Disney is their ‘biggest guilty pleasure’, I can’t help but take a little offence in the fact that they think its something that they should be embarrassed by or feel guilty about. I’ve talked before about referring to certain food as ‘guilty’ or ‘cheat food’, and personally I don’t think its any different when talking about other aspects of life. We’re imposing our own negative connotations, rather than just enjoying life.

If you love listening to Spice Girls, good for you! Like to put ketchup on pancakes? Ok! Just be confident in who you are and what you like.

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Why I Can Never Enjoy ‘Down Time’

I love keeping busy. This is handy, because I pretty much always am.

They say Rome wasn’t built in a day..

I have a full time job, but I only actually work 3 days most weeks, opting for 12 hours shifts over a regular 9-5, and this gives me quite a few days off in the week, which is great, right?

To the untrained eye, yes, but as well as my job, I also publish 5-6 new blog posts a week here, as well as running two small businesses on my own, both of which involve designing and creating the products that I sell, so my days off are dedicated to those commitments first and foremost.

Any blogger reading this knows exactly how much time and effort goes into blogging. A single post can take hours to make perfect, from the writing to photography and editing, and even when the post is live, then comes the promotion. In fact, I reckon its not inaccurate to say that probably 50% of a bloggers work is done on social media, rather than in the actual writing. There’s the tweet scheduling, Instagram posts, flatlays, PR emails, networking in the community and so much more.

Then comes the small business work. I have stock and supplies to order and products to design and create, then there’s packaging and post offices runs to go on, and again all the promotion work that goes alongside it all.

Great things take time..

Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do but it can be exhausting. I often feel like my work is never done, or there’s more I should be doing, so if I ever take time out for myself, I end up feeling guilty, or feel like I’m forgetting something important. For this very reason I feel like a lie-in is a waste of time, I can’t just sit and do nothing and if for whatever reason I can’t get any work done – hello creative blocks.. – I end up feeling guilty and stressed.

I know that this probably isn’t healthy, and I’m trying to work on it, but I just really want to be successful in the things that I do, and for me success comes from hard work. I don’t expect things to just be handed to me, and I’m more than happy to work for what I want and I just hate wasting time..

Does anyone else suffer from this problem, or have done in the past?

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How My Blog Planning Has Changed Through The Years

It’s always October that I find myself thinking a lot about my blog and how much it’s changed. In just over two weeks this little space of mine will be 4 years old, and I will never stop being grateful for all that blogging has given me.I look back to the early years with a lot of fond memories. I wouldn’t like to call myself naive but I think that’s exactly what I was, but innocently so. Back then I wrote how I thought I should be writing, and when I look back I cringe over how the words don’t even sound like they’ve come from me, but back then, same as I do now, I wrote because I loved doing it.

Back in the day I had no idea how to schedule a blog post, and in fact there were a few days within my first years of blogging that I published about 6 posts in a day because I had no concept of the importance of staggering my content. In those days I didn’t even know how to check my blog stats, let alone worry over them, and I didn’t think I needed a Twitter account – cute right?

For the first year or so of my blog, I just wrote whenever I had the chance. There was no real pattern of much of a schedule, and pretty much everything was posted on the same day it was written without much of a thought. It was simple and I was happy doing that.

When 2015 came around, I wanted routine. I was still LottieDoesDisney back then and I still thought all I could write about was Disney, but came up with an ingenious blog plan and routine for the coming year. For each week I would honour a particular Disney movie, and represent said movie in various inspired posts through the week – I think Monday was an intro, Tuesday was fashion, Wednesday was DIY Thursday was food etc. I don’t even think that lasted two months.

The problem with this is I felt too restricted, and by this stage I was wanting to branch out and write about more topics, and this sort of schedule wasn’t allowing me the ability to do that. I quickly ditched that, although I never stopped writing about Disney, and change was creeping in, but it wasn’t long before I was introducing new schedules that were just as tight as the old ones.

2016 came and again I planned the year out carefully with a bunch of series that I was sure I’d see through, some weekly, some bi-weekly and others monthly. At the time I loved thinking that I was so damn organised, but if for any reason the posts couldn’t be written, I felt like I’d failed the system. Knowing I had to have a certain post written by a certain day of the week made everything feel forced, and I fell out of love with the writing, so I decided to let go.

I still plan, and I always aim to keep at least a week ahead of the game, but I’m far more relaxed with my blog schedule. I am, in fact, writing as many posts, if not more than I ever have done, but I don’t pressure myself and the words just flow much better that way. I try to have 3-4 posts for each week planned at the start of each month, and that allows me to fill the spaces with the spontaneous and off the cuff posts, which often tend to be the most popular.

I’ve always said it and I always will: I just enjoy writing and being a blogger, and what’s funnier still is I always say I’m grateful for what my blog has given me, but I guess really it’s what I’ve given myself.

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My Birthday Haul

Well that’s another birthday done with for the year! The day itself was fairly chilled – I had the day off work and just spent it hanging out at home, baking cakes and then had the family over for a Chinese takeaway for dinner. Nothing special, but just the way I like it.

But you didn’t come here to hear about my day, you wanted to see what I got, right?

The first presents I got to unwrap in the morning were from Matthew. He was pretty smug about what he’d got me, and even wanted me to open them early because he wanted to see my reaction, but I patiently waited until my actual birthday.

I was not disappointed. I opened what felt like the heaviest box of goodies all the way from Sephora – seven sheet masks, a cream highlighter palette and this whopper of an eyeshadow palette from the Sephora Pro collection. I’ve already searched every shade and fallen in love with it and I can’t wait to play with it some more!

Also tucked in my box of goodies, although not from Sephora, was a bottle of Pixi Glow Tonic, which is a product I’ve been dying to get my hands on for a long time now, so I’m excited to see if that lives up to all the hype.


How amazing are my parents?! I had absolutely no idea that I would be unwrapping this beautiful little bag from the Disney x Coach collection, but I’m so in love with it and I’m so grateful that they managed to find one as I thought the collection was no longer available. I did also get a cutting mat and rotary cutting tool from them but it doesn’t look as cute in photos!

The rest of my family just stuck to the usual tradition of money, and I’m planning on putting some of that towards a Lush shop, and the rest towards my upcoming Florida trip at the end of the month.

A huge thank you to everyone who wished me a happy birthday on here and on social media, it means so much to me!

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Things I’ve Done Since 22

Happy birthday to me, happy birthday to me, happy birthday to meeeeee, happy birthday to me!

I’m not really one for celebrating my own birthday too much; I actually share my birthday with my youngest cousin who’ll be 9 today, and I’m more about making sure she has a great birthday than caring about mine. For me a birthday just means another year older, and another year to fill with adventures and achievements, and this last year has been pretty great. Shall we reflect?

  • I quit retail – after 4 years in the same job, last year I finally said goodbye to my B&Q orange apron and traded it in for an office job, hello change!
  • I’ve been on bunch of incredible holidays with my favourite people – Walt Disney World, Disneyland, a Disney Cruise and Disneyland Paris, plus some mini adventures in between
  • I went on my first solo venture to Disneyland Paris – while I did see some friends while I was out there, my DLP trip back in January was the first time I’ve fully done DLP by myself and I had such a lovely time.
  • I got to work with the Disney Store – I know it was months ago now and I keep going on about it, but it was an absolute dream blog collaboration for me and I had the best time doing it!
  • Another 3 half marathons – that’s another 39.3 miles, not to three 10Ks and any training runs in between
  • I’ve become more comfortable in my own skin – my body confidence has been up and down for as long as I can remember, but I’m finally accepting and learning to like how I look, and I have even been confident enough to post photos on social media of me in a bikini on holiday which is something I never would have done a year ago.
  • I launched yet another small business – after umming and ahhing for ages, I finally opened LottieBounds, where I sell my Disney inspired creations and I’ve been so happy with it!
  • Our first anniversary – not only did I reach my first one year anniversary ever, but I did it with the most perfect guy
  • Matthew moved in – sure, we haven’t got to the stage of moving out just yet, but we’re finally living together and we have our own little space to be together in after so much time apart

A few of these may seem small to some, but for me they are the defining moments of the last year, and I’m excited to see what I’ll do before I’m 24..

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When I Grow Up..

Next week I’ll be turning 23. I’ll be another year older, and maybe wiser, but I’m still just as unsure about the rest of my life as I’ll ever be.

Remember when you were little, and you were so sure what you’d be when you grew up? Sure, you’d probably change your mind every couple of years, but at the time it seemed like anything was possible, and you’d probably be excelling in your field by the time you were 25. Childhood innocence meant you weren’t thinking about what degree you’d need to get, or how you’d pay off astronomical student loans, and your main concern when it came to housing was whether your house would have a bouncy castle room or a room made of chocolate. You were free to dream.

Over the years, I’ve wanted to do and be a number of things, and as another birthday approaches, I’ve been reminiscing a little..

‘I want to be a vet’

This was the first job I remember wanting. I was animal obsessed as a kid (some things never change) and to me being a vet meant playing with animals every day. Apparently I specifically wanted to be a vet for cute animals such as cats, dogs and hamsters, and refused to work with snakes or anything else that I deemed yucky or not cute.

I can’t remember at what stage I stopped wanting to be a vet, but I think it came along with the realisation that its not all playing with cute fluffy animals, and that I’d probably be traumatised the first time I was faced with having to put someone else’s pet down.

‘I want to be a fashion designer’

I think I was around about 9-10 when I started drawing clothes. I’d always loved being crafty and attempting to ‘customise’ stuff, and I got a sketchbook and started to create my first ‘portfolio’. This wasn’t a career I was overly vocal about, and I think the only person that I actually told this to was my sister, who I seem to recall told me it was stupid.

While the ambition faded fairly quickly, my love for designing and creating apparel never did, and today I’m selling my creations on Etsy, not to mention frequently wearing them myself.

‘I want to be in a girl band’

Toward the end of my primary school days, me and my two best friends at the time formed a band. I created the music on some PC software I had on my computer, and we’d sing along over and over and dream about performing in front of audiences.

The band probably lasted all of a few sleepovers, but I continued to write songs and perform until I was about 15-16, but I knew nothing would ever come of it. My confidence was knocked by some goings on in my personal life, and now I save my singing for solo car journeys and being home alone.

‘I want to be a photographer’

I’m fairly certain this one fizzled out as quickly as it came on, but I have always loved taking photos. I remember creating a website and some crappy little business cards, but at the time the only photos I ever took were probably on my dad’s little digital camera.

Photography is still a huge part of my life. Its a huge part of my blog and its something that I genuinely love doing, so while I won’t be making any big bucks out of it, me and my camera are always going to be firm friends.

‘I want to be a forensic scientist’

This was probably my most serious career aspiration. Inspired by my love of detective type TV shoes and my love of chemistry at school, I had really thought that this was going to be my career.

It stuck with me through my GCSEs, but during my first year of A-Levels I was starting to discover that university wasn’t the only path I could take after sixth form, and I was itching to be out of education and in the real world, and forensics just became another pipe dream that I was now over.

As for where I really am today, I’m just coming up to a year of being in my first proper salaried job, albeit still in customer service. I don’t love my job, but there’s a lot of change coming up in my life and I know that my time will come.

One day.

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August Achievements

Do not ask me where August has gone because I genuinely have no idea, but I thought rather than wrapping up the month with my usual ‘favourites’ post, I’d go for something a little different and finish the month in a more positive way by talking about some of the things I have achieved this month!

Blog blog blogging

Over the last few months, my blog has taken a little bit of a hit as a result of other commitments, but I really feel like I’ve gotten back into the swing of things and I’m super happy that my stats are reflecting that too! I was absolutely blown away with the response to ‘A Bloody Shame‘, which is definitely the most controversial and personal post I think I’ve ever written, but the number of people who agreed with the points raised in the post just proved to me that putting myself out there and sharing my experience was absolutely worth it.

Work work working

Over the last few months I have put in so much overtime at work, and I’ve finally completed all my pledged hours – yay! While I’ve probably done nothing but moan about it while I was actually doing it, the money I’ve made from giving up days off and weekends has meant I’ve been able to pay of my Walt Disney World trip in November and finally have enough money to book the flights, so definitely worth it!

What I’ve made

I’ve been busy at the sewing machine getting outfits ready for upcoming Disney trips, and this month I’ve made the cutest coral polka dot skater skirt, which will feature in one of my Disney Cruise Disneybounds, as well as accessorising some items with my new patch designs which you can buy on my Etsy!

Bikini body confidence

Despite saying that I wasn’t going to buy any more swimwear this year, I slipped while on Asos and bought two bikinis, and not only do I love them, I actually like the way I look in them. It may take a little push to wear them in public, but baby steps, right? Plus, I stepped out of my comfort zone last week and actually posted a photo of myself in a swimsuit on Twitter!

Milestones

This month I finally cracked the 1.7K follower mark on Instagram – yippee! While I doubt I’ll be hitting my goal for the year, just hitting the next milestone seems like such a mission on Insta at the moment so I’m pretty happy. I also pipped the 2.4K on Twitter and 750 on Bloglovin, and am now creeping up to 800!

What have you been up to in August?

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Moving In

Despite talking yesterday about Matthew and my plans to move out, today’s post is pretty much the opposite – let me give you some backstory.

Following on from all the long distance, back in July Matthew finally completed his pilot training, and just over a week ago was offered a position to start with easyJet. Its safe to say we’re both thrilled; I’m so proud of all the hard work he put into his training and its such a relief that its all paid off and he’s got a job lined up. The catch? He probably won’t be starting the job until February/March, and until he starts, we don’t know where he’ll be based, aka where we’ll be moving to.

The thing is, after over a year of him being here, there and everywhere, and me being stuck firmly in Bournemouth, we’re kinda done with the whole being apart thing, so we’re moving in together. Well, he’s moving to Bournemouth, and I’m upgrading from my bedroom to the loft in my parent’s house, turning it into our own sorta studio apartment.

Its going to be a bit of a working progress – while our loft has already been converted into a habitable room, its since become a bit of a dumping ground, and there’s some work for us to do before we can officially move into it. We’ve spent the weekend clearing out some of the accumulated junk – deciding what’s being donated to charity or sold and then we still have some old furniture that’s destined for the tip – then we’ve started the process of cleaning and repainting to freshen the place back up so we can start to move our furniture in and make it our own.

So in the time between now and whenever Matthew starts with easyJet, we’ll both be Bournemouth based. He’s got a job at the same place that I work so that in the meantime we can both get saving for when we do eventually fly the nest, and of course we’ll get our first taste of what living together permanently will actually be like – the DIY is already proving a good test of our relationship strength, haha!

Wish us luck!

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Introducing Ozzy and Ronnie

Hey gang, I thought I’d brighten up everyone’s Mondays by introducing you to our family’s fuzziest new additions.


Meet Ozzy and Ronnie! They are 8 weeks old and we brought them home on Friday, so they’re just starting to adapt to our mad house and find their tiny ways around.

They came from a litter of four which were found abandoned in a shed and were rescued by the Cats Protection League, and their mother was nowhere to be found – they were only 4 weeks old when they were rescued.

Ozzy is the fluffy one in the back of the photo, and he was the largest of the litter, but also the most shy, and he’s taking a little bit of time adapting to home life, spending most of his time hiding under the sideboard in our living room, but he’s slowly finding his paws.

Ronnie was the smallest of the bunch, but makes up for such with his big personality aka he’s a total nutter. He goes from sweet and snuggly to moving at 100mph with only a seconds notice.

Like I mentioned earlier, they have only been with us since Friday and they’ve still got a lot of acclimatising to do, but we’re already very much in love with them both. We’ve also never had our own cats so this is quite the learning experience for us too! 

As for the names, any classic rock fans might recognise them as two members of Black Sabbath, and you can thank my dad for that. He had one job..

Keep an eye out on here and my social media for kitty updates!

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Things About Me That Bother Other People

Let’s face it, no one’s perfect, right? Fact is, you’re never gonna please everyone. You can be the nicest person, the best at your job, be a style icon and make the best cakes in the world, but there’s always going to be one person who doesn’t agree with something that you do.

Its ok to have different opinions – they’re opinions for a reason – and chances are you’re not gonna lose friends over liking or disliking something small, but you might be met with a few ‘what?!’s and ‘I can’t believe it’s. I’m no stranger to these reactions to certain things, and these are the ones I get the most ‘backlash’ from:

I don’t drink tea or coffee

Simply because I don’t actually like them. Coffee is something that most people don’t really seem to care about, but being British and not liking tea seems to be some kind of treason for some..

I haven’t seen that movie

There are a whole lot of movies I’ve never seen. I mean, no one’s seen every movie to have ever existed, but often when it comes to films that most consider to be ‘classics’, I haven’t the foggiest. To name a few, there’s Pulp Fiction, Slumdog Millionaire, any of the Bourne or Rocky movies and most films based on Nicholas Sparks novels..

I can’t do anything above lemon and herb at Nandos

I have such a low tolerance for spicy food and for some reason this really ticks people off. I’m a straight up lemon and herb or mango and lime, and when it comes to curry I won’t stray from a tikka masala or a korma, and even then I’ll probably drink a bucket of water.

I’m not really a drinker

I’m not tee-total, but I hardly drink anymore. When I do, I’m a total lightweight and I’m not even kidding when I say I feel the effects of one Koppaberg quite quickly, and to be honest that’s part of the reason that I do say no to that first drink. I’m totally ok with not drinking, but when I’m out with others there always seems to be at least one person that isn’t happy about it.

I can’t stand reality TV

With the exception of this year’s Love Island, I can’t cope with reality shows. Big Brother, I’m a Celebrity, even X-Factor, they all just drive me insane and the rest of the world’s evenings seem to revolve around them.

I’m not big on Halloween

While I like to carve a pumpkin, that’s pretty much the only thing about Halloween that I enjoy. I’m not a huge fan of Halloween films, I don’t much like spooky stuff and I definitely am not the sort of person who wishes away summer waiting for it.

I like the TV volume on 17

I do not feel the pressure of the whole ‘tv volume ending with a 0 or 5’ thing. On our tv at home, 17 is the perfect volume for daytime telly watching, or if its something that needs a little bit more then its 23-24. Soz.

Do any of these bother you at all?

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A Bloody Shame

Normally I would start a post like this apologising for the content. I’m not going to do that today because this is something that I don’t think I should be sorry for talking about. PS I will apologise for the awful pun of a title.

Two hours into my shift on Saturday, I realised that despite being fully prepared given the situation, I had bled through my pants and my trousers. I realised this while I was stood at the desk of one of my team leaders asking for advice on a situation with a customer, and I was mortified. I quickly adjusted how I was stood, rushed the conversation and dashed to the toilets, where I promptly burst into tears in a cubicle.

Two minutes of hormone and embarrassment fuelled sobbing later, I pulled myself together enough to attempt to think clearly. Despite all the team leaders in being women, which is a wonderfully rare occurrence, I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone what had happened. I wanted to go home, but there was no way I was going to admit the reason for needing to leave, so instead I cleaned myself up as best I could, and thanked my lucky stars that I was wearing loose trousers with a fairly jazzy pattern so the patch of red on my crotch wasn’t visible unless someone was paying close attention to it. I wrapped my big cardigan around myself and went on with the rest of my day.

As the day went on, and with every time I had to leave my desk for whatever reason, only to be very careful of how my cardigan was hanging and if I was walking quick enough that no one would be able to focus on me long enough to potentially spot my red spot, I couldn’t help feeling ashamed on more than one level.

Why could I not just admit to someone at work what was going on? I could have gone home, changed and been back within 15 minutes, but the fear of having someone that I work with know about my little ‘accident’ meant I sat and spent my day on edge. But on the other side I couldn’t stop thinking: why should I be ashamed?

Periods are a natural and normal part of life for women, yet for as long as I can remember, I’ve been made to feel embarrassed by them. It was embarrassing learning about them at school, and embarrassing when you had to miss swimming because of them, or when you had to ask around to see if anyone had a spare pad or tampon when you got caught out.

And don’t get me wrong, I’m not really ever embarrassed to be on my period. I’ll tell my friends if I’m having really bad cramps, and have no issue asking for supplies from people in the office these days, but that’s not what this is about. Its not to do with how we see our own periods, but how other people do. While no one at work seemed to notice my stain today, I would have almost liked to see how different people reacted. Would I be met with pity and support, or would there be whispers when I walk away? I shouldn’t have to question this. I was too ashamed to share my problem with someone else, and that’s not ok.

No its not ideal having a patch of blood on your trousers but also why should it be a problem if you do? Its not your fault if Mother Nature calls early, or you’ve sat awkwardly and therefore a leak has occurred. Its not by choice, its just life and I’m so done with people being judgemental about it.

Let’s end this stigma.

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Improving My Sleep Habits

Sleep and I are fickle friends; its a love/hate relationship really. The fact is, I really cannot function without it, and while everyone says this, I am the kind of person that can rarely make it to midnight, and more often than not is in bed by 10pm, if not earlier. I am also a napper, and if I am tired and need sleep, it doesn’t matter where I am or what I’m doing, if my body decides its time to sleep, I probably will – I think my finest moment was falling asleep while standing on a train in Japan. Oh yes.

The hate part of my relationship is that sometimes sleep doesn’t like me. I can be a fairly vivid dreamer, and while some nights I’ll sleep like an absolute baby, other nights I’ll be awake on the hour every hour. I’m not an insomniac, I’m just fairly restless, and some nights actually feel more draining than they do refreshing and restful.

So I’m in the market for anything I can do to improve my shut-eye, and I’ve already identified a few changes that need to be made in the hopes that I can see some real progression, and from here on out, I’ll be doing my best to stick to these new habits.

Clearing the clutter

I have this awful habit of leaving things in my bed when I’m about to go to sleep. Chances are my laptop will be on there somewhere, and probably a notepad or two, plus my iPad and maybe even some clothes that I haven’t got round to putting away yet – no more! From here on out my bed will be a place for me to sleep and just me.

Not getting into bed until I’m ready

I also have this horrible habit of getting into bed as soon as I get in from work, fully dressed with a full face of makeup, grabbing my laptop and getting a bit of writing done before I go to sleep, or putting on Netflix for a bit. The problem with this is that I then rarely want to get back out, so sometimes I’ll end up going to sleep without taking of my makeup and sometimes even sleeping in whatever shirt I was wearing that day so I don’t have to get up and change. Yikes, right?

Now, while I still have no issue with getting straight into bed when I finish my day at work (so much more common now I’m working 12 hour shifts), I won’t do it until I’ve eaten dinner, brushed my teeth, getting fully changed and all makeup off. I’m even making more of an effort during this time to get everything for the next day out and ready for the morning!

Having actual pyjamas

As I mentioned above, pyjamas are a bit of a fluid concept for me. I do have them, but sometimes I’ve been known to just grab whatever comfy top I can find rather than using actual pyjama options. Yes, I do have a few t-shirts and tops that I still have designated as pj options rather than day-to-day wear, but I’m training myself to remember to reach for these instead of any old shirt I can find.

Setting a pre-sleep skincare routine

More than just remembering to take off my makeup before bed, I’m actually working on sticking to a proper skincare routine before bed: makeup off, cleanse and tone face, moisturise etc. As well as being so much better for my skin, its actually a great way to wind down before getting into bed, and a little bit of self-care goes a long way!

Reducing the number of screens I’m on

I can be that person who is on my phone checking Instagram while trying to write a blog post on my laptop and also Netflixing on my iPad in the background. I like to consider myself a multi-tasker but really I’m just overstimulating myself. Now I’m on 12 hour shifts, I’ve found that I’m not reaching for my laptop anymore as soon as I get home, so I’m trying to make it more of a habit to leave my laptop for my days off, and instead just watch a movie or plan blog stuff in my notebook in the evenings after work – which also helps towards not sleeping with a laptop in my bed!

Doing distracting jobs

I’ve written before about the strange things that are the only things that I can stay awake doing, so rather than being on my many screens right before bed, I like to mix things up a few nights a week by getting other things done, like cleaning my makeup brushes, sewing or writing to-do lists for the coming days.

I’ve been trying to do all these for about 2 weeks now and I feel like I’m already seeing small improvements, so here’s hoping for the best!

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An Open Letter to Anyone

Dear stranger,

Hey, how’s your day going? I’m asking you this in case no one else does. If it’s been great then I’m so happy for you, you’re incredible. If it’s not been such a good day, I’m here if you ever want to talk.
I may not know anything about you and your life, but I bet you’re a good person regardless. I’ll always believe the best in you. I know it’s not always easy to see the best in yourself.

I want you to know that you are always good enough. Your hair looks great and that outfit looks amazing on you, and if anyone doesn’t think that then they’re just being ridiculous. You can look and wear and do and say whatever you want. Never apologise for being you.

I also want to remind you that it’s ok to not feel ok all the time. Whether your glass is half empty or half full, you can always top it up. Please never feel alone.

Whenever you can, recycle, turn off anything electrical that’s not in use and don’t litter. These might seem like insignificant things but in doing so you’re saving our planet and providing future generations with a life. One person can make a difference and you can be that person.

You will always be unique. Try not to compare yourself or your life to another person – they are just as unique as you are. Life is unpredictable, and that’s ok.

Tomorrow is always a fresh start.

I wish you all the best, always.

A stranger

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Would anyone miss me?

I’ve always been a firm believer that numbers aren’t everything when it comes to blogging. I write because I want to write, and only write about what I want to write about, and that’s how it always has been and always will be.

The last year has been incredible for my blog. I’ve seen such massive growth since I started almost 4 years ago, and the start of this year brought even more; more content, more quality, more readers. I was riding high and smashing record after record, growing not just in terms of my blog stats but also in my confidence. Then June happened.

As my life outside of blogging changed, I was struggling to keep up. I felt under pressure to produce new posts, and I felt myself slipping into a less prepared and more haphazard version of myself. I was banging out posts the night before, or even on the day, and reusing photos because I hadn’t had the time to take new ones. If I’m honest, I wasn’t proud. I decided to step away from my blog and take a break, but with that came the inevitable guilt; the feeling of failure.

I pushed myself back into blogging after just a week away from the keyboard. In all fairness, I felt at the time that I’d given myself enough of a break, and threw myself back into 5-6 posts a week, but while I went back in on a high, this last week has seen another low.

Despite feeling more on top of my life and having fresh new content that I was proud of, and was working ahead on my schedule, the numbers just weren’t racking up like they used to. I feel crushed. While I write because it’s what I love to do, I feel like a chef who’s cooked a beautiful meal but everyone’s already full. It feels wasted. It’s not that I don’t feel appreciated, it’s just that I feel that I’m not entertaining anyone anymore, and ultimately that’s what I want my blog to be doing; making people happy, inspiring people, or just giving them something to read on the train home from work.

I don’t know if I could ever bring myself to give up this blog – I’ve worked long and hard to make it what it is, and I am still seeing some small progression, but I can’t help but think: would anyone notice if I wasn’t here?

I hate being a negative ninny, especially on here, but I just needed to vent. If you have any thoughts or have ever felt similar, I’d love to hear from you.

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