Tag Archives: life

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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‘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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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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10 Things Before 10am

Something that I, and many others, I expect, am more than often guilty of is focusing on all the things that I haven’t done or achieved, rather than celebrating all the things that I have done.

And d’you know what? It’s draining.

Whether it’s thinking about work or tasks that I haven’t done, or things in my life that I’ve left to achieve, it leaves a constant nagging feeling of negativity hanging over me, and quite honestly I’ve had enough of it.

So the other week I had quite a productive morning, and naturally as the millennial that I am, I tweeted about all the things that I had managed to do before 10am. I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but then this week I found myself mentally taking stock of things I had done that morning and I had somewhat of an epiphany – I achieve so many more things than I don’t, I’ve just conditioned myself to overlook them all.

So I figured it’s time for a reconditioning, and that’s where the title of this post comes from. Every day, no matter how productive, or seemingly unproductive, my morning has been, I take a few minutes to stop and think of ten things that I have done or achieved. Sure, sometimes this list might be padded out with things like getting dressed, brushing my hair or drinking a glass of water, but all of these things count as successes, we just don’t tend to see them that way.

Today’s 10 for me are:

  1. Going for a 5 mile run
  2. Hitting 10,000 steps
  3. Washing my face properly with nice skincare products
  4. Eating a healthy breakfast
  5. Finishing up 2 skirt orders
  6. Scheduling my tweets for the day
  7. Writing this blog post
  8. Planned my meals for the day
  9. Brushed my hair
  10. Moisturised

Now obviously I’m not saying that you have to name ten things, or have to do it at 10am, that’s just what works for me and my schedule, but it’s just so nice to focus on something positive rather than letting that cloud of negativity float about.

I’m working a lot on creating a more positive mind-frame for myself, so watch this space!

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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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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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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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Just Because

I can’t imagine that there’s anyone who hasn’t been told at least once in their life, and most likely by their mother, that ‘just because *this person* did that, doesn’t mean you have to. If they jumped of a cliff, would you follow?’ while you rolled your eyes because it really wasn’t a big deal.

These were always things that we wanted to do; places we wanted to go or styles we wanted to copy, not things that we felt obliged to do, but as you get older, everything suddenly becomes more about what you feel like you should be doing, rather than what you actually want to do. Sure, some of these things are things that we think we should be doing for good reasons, but then there’s also a good number of things that might not always be good for us, and these are the things that we should maybe give a miss, at least every now and then.

Just because other people stay late at work, it doesn’t mean you have to

When I started my new job, I thought that just because the guy who sat next to me came in an hour before me, and often stayed past when I left, it meant that I wasn’t doing my job well enough, and frankly that’s just not true. So long as I come into work, do the hours I’m contracted to do and complete all the work that needs to be done, that’s good enough. If others want to come in early, stay late or take on extra work, that’s on them, but I did enough of that in my previous jobs and now I like that I’m able to walk away when 5 o’clock hits and not have a care in the world.

Just because you’ve made plans, it doesn’t mean you can’t cancel them if you’re not feeling it

If you’re tired, having a bad mental health day or for whatever reason you don’t feel up to it, you shouldn’t feel bad about cancelling plans. People might not always understand it, but that doesn’t matter. Put yourself first.

But as well as the things you shouldn’t be doing just because you thin you should, there are also things that you can do even though you didn’t do what other people did..

Just because you didn’t go to university, it doesn’t mean you can’t get to the same place as someone who did

I’ve actually just started working with a girl I went to school with. She went to university, and got her job through a graduate scheme. I went straight into work after sixth form, and after gaining skills and working hard, I am just one level below her, and with another year of experience and study support through work, I could move up into the same position she works in with a university degree. Sometimes there’s more than one path.

Just because you haven’t got a huge following, it doesn’t mean you don’t a good following

You could have a million followers, but if one a few hundred actually bother to support you, then you might just be better off having a few hundred followers who cheer you on at every possible moment. I mean, the Instagram algorithm is screwing us all over anyway..

There are however many billion people in the world and every single one of us is unique, so just because one or two people make you stop and think you’re missing out on something or doing something wrong, do you think that’s right?

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Friday

It’s Friday guys, we made it! Last 5.30 alarm of the week, which was torture as I actually went to bed pretty late last night and I was super tempted to just reset it for 7am and skip the gym, but I knew how much I’d regret that if I did it, and as per usual as soon as I stepped out of the front door I found my motivation.

I was really feeling the effects of a good week of solid workouts, so I kept it relatively easy at the gym, hopping on a bike for a bit, then spending some time on the resistance machines and TRX and focused on chest and back. In a week I try and make sure I’ve hit every area at least once during my various gym sessions, and this week I definitely feel like I’ve done that.

This morning was a little grey so I decided to wear my new yellow jumper from Tu Clothing at Sainsbury’s, and I got a bunch of compliments on it during the day so I figured it was a hit! Work was a totally regular day, although at one point there was a very heated debate among my team about fried breakfasts – I don’t even know how it started but it got quite loud..

While I waited for Matthew to finish, which today was only half an hour after I did, I nipped to M&S and grabbed us a pizza to cook for dinner as we were in and out as quick as we could when we got home.

I’m coming to you from the drive up to visit Matthew’s mum who’s just moved into a new house in Middlewich, and because Matthew and I also have some business to attend to in the area (this is very exciting and I will tell all tomorrow!). The weather is absolute poo so the drive will probably be slow and we’ll arrive quite late, but the last time we saw the house it wasn’t completely finished so it’ll be nice to see how it is now – although it was only today that they moved in so it certainly won’t be in a completely normal state!

Hello weekend!

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Thursday

Happy Thursday gang! Now in theory, today should have started with another 5.30am alarm, but I was actually so tired last night that I forgot to set an alarm.. Luckily for me, I can be quite a restless sleeper, waking up quite a few times most nights, and it just so happened that I had a little wake-up moment and remembered that I hadn’t set an alarm, and this was actually at 5.37, so my day wasn’t actually affected!

This morning I had another session with Steph at the gym, but today’s session was a strength session – lots of heavy weights and pushing myself which I love because I’ve discovered just how strong I can really be when I put my mind to it. I was lucky that my legs weren’t as bad this morning as I thought they would be after last night’s run, so the squatting wasn’t complete torture!

Sassing up Thursday in my favourite pink ASOS trousers

After the usual walk home, shower, change malarkey, it was a pretty bog-standard day at work for me, although part of my brain was busy thinking about my San Francisco/Aulani trip which is now only six weeks away! I hadn’t packed a lunch, so I popped out to get some soup from the M&S Simply Food across the road from the office – butternut squash, for those who were wondering – and spent the rest of my lunch break in the little kitchenette area on my floor, which is where I normally spend my lunch, and today that meant scrolling Instagram and Pinterest!

After work I headed home and spent some time working on an Etsy order that I have for my famous* (*ok, its not so famous) Chip Disneybound skirt, and I did this with Wonder Woman on in the background, cos it is International Women’s Day after all! After an hour of working, I had to go and pick Matthew up, and we headed to B&Q to have a look at a few things, then went home and cooked a chilli for dinner, which is a favourite of ours because its quick and easy but also super flavourful and filling, and I made proper tortilla chips to go with it.

Thursday night I would normally be busy with the #disneybloggerschat, but unfortunately the shopping and cooking of dinner took a little longer than I thought so I missed out tonight, but there’s always another week!

Who’s ready for Friday?

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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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Are We The Next Generation of ‘I Remember When..’?

Last Saturday I walked into the Apple Store in Southampton’s West Quay shopping centre to pick up my iPad Pro. Said iPad Pro had been ordered online the day before, and courtesy of a Black Friday deal I had been emailed an £80 gift card which I was going to use to buy an accompanying Apple Pencil.

Upon entering the store, I approached a staff member with an iPhone, who simply entered my order number and within minutes another staff member appeared from a back room with my iPad (pre-paid) and an Apple pencil. He scanned the barcode for my gift card straight from my email using his phone, and I paid the remainder by putting my card into a device attached to said phone. I entered my email address on the screen, my receipt was sent to that email address, and I was free to leave the store.

During my entire time in the store I did not have to go to a single desk. There was no collection point or checkout, no lines or waiting areas, but also no chaos, and I couldn’t help but think, is this the future of retail? Will shopping become as simple as walking up to someone with a handheld device and getting an email confirmation of payment before I’ve even walked away?

Naturally, my brain went to all sorts of extremes, and I started to think about all the other things that have changed in my relatively short lifetime. As a young child I had cassette tapes and experienced the struggle of going to watch a movie only to find that no one had re-wound it back to the start after the last time it was watched. Now, I have DVDs and Blurays that I’ll often ignore if I can watch the same movie on Netflix.

We spend our childhoods listening to our parents and grandparents telling us to be grateful for x, y and z because they didn’t have that back in their day, yet already we’re saying the same thing to those who are as little as 5-10 years our junior.

Now don’t get me wrong, there’s always going to be things that don’t translate across age groups. There will always be TV shows that only aired for a few years, or crazes and fashions that died out as quickly as they appeared, but think of the enormous lifestyle changes that technology has brought us – I’m talking going from brick-phones to flip-phones to smart-phones, from the days where you could probably only pay by cash or cheque to now not even having to carry your purse because you’ve got ApplePay..

Things are moving so quickly that I can’t even fathom how things will work in even just another 10 years time. Will we even have to consciously pay for things or will technology become so advanced that you can just pick something up from a shelf and walk out and be charged automatically? We’re moving so far past what we’ve known so far, I don’t think we can even try to predict the future anymore..

Sorry for the ramble but does anyone else ever think about these things?

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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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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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8 People You Need to Befriend in your Office

Its now almost been a year since I traded in my soul-crushing retail job for my first taste of office life. Time flies, huh?

I’ve learned a lot about office life this year, but I think everyone knows that a key part in any job is finding how to survive the daily grind with as little stress and with the minimal effort required, and I’ve discovered that there are certain people in every office that are worth keeping on the good side of to help with this.

The smoker

You don’t have to smoke to appreciate the perks of being friends with a smoker. These are the people who normally have a good supply of chewing gum, mints and perfume, should you be in need, and are also equipped with a lighter for that inevitable moment when no-one’s thought about how they were going to light the candles on yet another office birthday cake.

The grazer

You know how there’s always that person that seems to be munching on something whatever time you look at them? Yep, that’s the grazer, and they’re gonna be your saviour on the days you’ve skipped breakfast. (I am definitely a grazer – I have a whole drawer in my desk dedicated to snacks and you can hit me up any time for some Belvita, rice cakes, nuts or hot chocolate powder!)

The scary senior

In my experience, in any workplace there’s one supervisor/manager who most people will tread very lightly around for fear of any upset. Now I’m not saying to be a total suck-up, but earning brownie points and being on the good side of this person can put you in a very good position should you ever need their help or a favour!

The tea addict

Know of someone who can’t go more than about half an hour with an empty mug? They’re back and forth from the kitchen doing tea/coffee runs all day, and generally they’re more than happy to fill up an extra cup if they’re going that way..

The part-timer

There’s nothing worse than trying to find someone to cover a shift that you can’t book off, especially because chances are everyone else in the office is probably already working the same day. Enter the part-timer – their reduced, and therefore more flexible hours means they tend to be happy with swapping as chances are it’ll benefit them too.

The know-it-all

For the times you’re stuck in a certain situation and aren’t entirely sure how to proceed, its handy to be fairly tight with that one person who seems to know every procedure and practice inside out and back to front to help you with the next step.

The great debater

Is there someone in your office who loves the opportunity to jump in on a debate, or just has to get there side across in an argument? Well it might be annoying as hell sometimes, but in other situations they can be particularly handy. There’s a guy on my team who’s like this, and if I ever have to call back an unhappy customer and don’t particularly fancy it, he’s normally more than happy to take it over.

The optimist

There is nothing worse on a bad day at work than being surrounded by people who are just constantly negative. Whether you’re in a bad mood yourself or not, its draining and it sucks for general morale. Find the sunny people and stick with them!

What gets you through the 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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Things That Happen When You Start to Think About Moving Out

So I’ve hinted a lot recently about big changes coming up in my life, and undeniably the biggest of these changes is that very soon I will be flying the nest, and Matthew and I will be moving in together.

While this might not seem like a big deal to some, it will be the first time I’ve ever left home; I didn’t go to university, and places in my town are so expensive even to rent that I was much happier living at home and saving up for when this time came. With that in mind, now we are in the process of not only trying to find our own place, but also brace for all the adult stuff that comes along with it – mortgages, show home visits and what not – a few more things start to happen..

You sign up for an Ikea Family card, and any other loyalty schemes you can find

The B&Q Club, Tesco Clubcards, you name it – anything that could either get you some money off or earn a few reward points suddenly seems like the best idea in the world.

Pinterest boards appear

Rather than spending evenings scrolling for holiday destinations or beauty tips, suddenly its all about decor, furniture and kitchens, plus any home DIY pins you think you’ll actually be able to accomplish successfully.

You start to evaluate your DIY skills

Suddenly thoughts like ‘how do you even put up a shelf?’ and ‘can I be trusted with power tools?’ pop into your head at random times and you fear that everything might just have to be held together by duck tape..

Important discussions occur

If you’ve never permanently lived with your soon-to-be new housemate, you’ll end up having long conversations about whether you’ll be a ‘shoes off at the door’ kinda house, or if you keep ketchup in the fridge or in the cupboard.

You start to panic over hosting people

Having your own place means that inevitably people will visit from time to time, and in these times its always vital that tea and coffee is stocked and there’s milk in the fridge, and does this mean you should always have biscuits in too? Is it rude to not have biscuits?!

Cashback websites become everything

Now that you actually have to worry about your own bills, when weighing up which companies to go to for things like power, broadband and insurance, its all about who works out as the best deal when it comes to that all important cashback.

You realise how many things at home you take for granted

Sure, you’ve thought about what furniture you’re gonna need, and you’ve basically decided on your dream home’s decor in your head already, but did you think about the fact you’ll have to remember to buy an ironing board, a dustpan and brush, batteries and ziploc bags?

If you’ve recently moved out and have any tips, please drop me a comment!

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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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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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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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12 Things I’ve Learnt from Working 12 Hour Shifts

So two weeks ago I binned off the 7.5 hours, 5 days a week working routine, and traded normality for a 3-day week rota. Now I’ve not cut down my hours, so it doesn’t take a genius to work out that to be able to fit the same number of hours in, I’ll now be working 12 hour shifts. It also says that in the title of this post, so I kinda gave that one away.

At first, I thought I was mad for even considering the change, but two weeks down the line I’m settling into this routine pretty nicely, and I’ve already discovered a few things, and noticed a few changes..

I achieve nothing with my evenings anyway

It turns out that it doesn’t matter whether I finish work at 5pm or 8pm, I still get the same amount of stuff done when I get home from work. Spoiler alert, I do pretty much naff all.

I never have to worry about what shift I’m on

Its pretty impossible to forget 8am-8pm..

I never get asked to stay on an hour or two anymore

When you work from open to close, the plea for people to stay on for a little bit of overtime doesn’t get sent my way anymore!

I’ll still always get asked if I’m doing overtime

Whenever someone finishes before me, I can guarantee I’ll get asked ‘aww, how much overtime are you doing today?’. Nope, just my regular shift, thanks..

Snacks are essential

My desk drawer is stocked with Belvita, nuts, hot chocolate powder and a bunch of spare spoons for when I inevitably forget to bring one in for my morning yogurt. Gotta keep those energy levels up!

And I make myself much more comfortable

I’m talking shoes off under the desk, dressing a little bit more casual, and I’ve recently acquired a fleece blanket which I wrap myself up in on colder days and evenings. Snug as a bug in an office.

Anything to break up the day is welcomed

Team meetings, extra training sessions, one to ones, pretty much anything that takes a little bit of time from my regular work is an absolute blessing!

Suddenly regular length shifts seem easy peasy

On the weeks were I also do weekend shifts, which are only ever 6-7 hours long, those days seem to absolutely fly by.

I’m actually a lot more patient with customers

I don’t know if I’m just resigned to the fact that I’m stuck at work til 8pm anyway, but I’ve become a lot more patient with customers and a lot more relaxed about the parts of my job that I used to find a bit stressful.

I have way more stamina than I thought

When I first agreed to switch to these new shifts, I honestly thought it would kill me within a few days, but I actually took to them like a duck to water, and even my manager said she’s impressed with how little I’ve moaned during the transition.

Its not as tiring as I thought either

Sure, its an office job where I’m sat in a chair so it was never gonna wear me out too much anyway, but I still expected to feel a lot more worn out than I do, so yay!

The extra days off are so worth it

Ultimately the reason I took the change was because it means most weeks I have 4 days off a week, so I can dedicate more time to my blog and my small businesses. It also means if I do want to work overtime I don’t have to work 7 days a week to do it!

Sure, I am only 2 weeks in and adjusting to the change, but I’m already so happy with how this is working out for me, and it should mean much more content here, so watch this space!

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Apparently Glasses Aren’t Cool

I’m gonna straight up admit that I will probably rant through this whole post.

I am a proud wearer of glasses. I was 5 or 6 when it was first discovered that I was short-sighted; I was in year 1 of primary school and I was the only person in my class who needed them. I remember the conflict between being annoyed about needing them, and the novelty of having them. I had a bright yellow case that popped open at the press of a button.

I grew up with glasses on my face. My eyesight grew steadily worse, and my style in glasses grew steadily better. I went from round pinky-purple frames (aged 5-7) to blue ovals (aged 8-14) before I started discovered the classic black square frames that I’ve worn to this day.

Never once have I ever considered wearing glasses to be a problem. Sure, I have to awkwardly balance 3D glasses on top of my regular ones at the cinema, I occasionally have to take them off for some rollercoasters, and I wear them into swimming pools so that I can actually see, but I’ve just grown accustomed to that. I have no memory of what it feels like to wake up in the morning and be able to see clearly straight away – unless I’ve fallen asleep in them! – and I forget that normal people can actually see what they’re doing in the shower.

Yes, typically glasses are associated with nerds or older people, but I remember the days when girls in my secondary school were cutting out the 3D part of 3D glasses to wear the frames, and its pretty safe to say that over the last 10 years or so, glasses have become as much of an accessory as they are a necessity.

Both my mum and my aunt got laser eye surgery years ago. I remember my mum having to wear these crazy plastic things over her eyes that made her look like a fly, and I remember them raving about the results. Mum even offered to pay for me to have it when I turned 18, but I didn’t want it. My glasses are part of my look, and I’m quite open about the fact that I prefer how I look with glasses on to without. It was still a relatively new procedure when they had it done, but now laser eye surgery is becoming more popular and advertised, and this is where the spark from this post came from..

The first advertising campaign that came to my attention was for Acuvue contact lenses, and featured BBC presenter Sara Cox. Billboards and bus stop ads were created using phrases like ‘[glasses] wasn’t the look I was going for’ and ‘If I didn’t wear contact lenses.. I wouldn’t be as confident or outgoing’. This stuck a chord with me. I have always been happy wearing glasses, and the implication that glasses isn’t a ‘good look’ isn’t one that I feel companies should be using to try and sell their products. This was just the start though..

While watching some light afternoon TV, I found myself having to pause and remind an advert several times because I could not believe what I was hearing. Optical Express, a UK-wide laser eye surgery, have created an advert that has left me truly offended. As part of their ‘real people experiences’ style approach to TV advertising, the ad describes people wearing glasses as ‘unattractive’, ‘tired’, ‘old’ and ‘restricted’, while post-surgery you can feel ‘free’, ‘sophisticated’ and ‘happy’.

I actually felt my face go red with annoyance. How any company can be degrading to those who have absolutely no say in their eyesight is beyond me. Its like telling someone in a wheelchair that they’d be cooler if they walked around.

I am not restricted. I am not unattractive. I am not unsophisticated and I do not look tired or old. What I am is thoroughly annoyed. Sell your surgery to someone who cares.

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Its Okay to Have an Instagram Life

Everyone knows there’s two sides to life: the life you actually live, and the life you share on Instagram. One is polished, with perfect lighting and edited to highlight the best bits, and the other is all the messy stuff in between. We all know which is which.

People spend a lot of time joking about things being ‘Instagram-worthy’ or having an ‘Instagram life’, but life isn’t always Instagram-perfect, and that’s more than just common knowledge; its fact. Even if you don’t have a carefully tailored theme, you still choose to share exactly what you want on your profile, and let’s face it, has anyone seen someone post a photo of them doing laundry or 8 hours into a Netflix binge.

And d’you know what? That’s ok.

There’s nothing wrong with cultivating a perfect Instagram feed. We all know that no one’s life is perfect, but its nice a small outlet where you can put together all the pretty and happy moments of life. Now I’m not talking about being false – especially with all the recent blogger photoshop drama – I just think its part of our nature to show only the good bits, and I don’t think there’s any problem with that. Its an outlet, not a documentary.

Putting together my Instagram feed gives me so much happiness. Sure, it comes with the annoyance of the constant follow/unfollowing and the struggle with growth, but I would still say its my favourite social media platform because I’m a visual person and I love taking photos and posting them to Instagram. I love finding Instagrammable spots, or putting together cute shots just for the purpose of posting. It makes me happy, and whether its all entirely accurate to how my life actually looks, ultimately happiness is the goal, right?

On the flipside, I think I’m probably the most honest when it comes to Instagram stories. Sure, I’ll put the photos that I want on there, but recently I’ve also been using it as a way of sharing my venting my feelings through chatty Insta-stories, and I love seeing other people doing the same.

I’ve learnt over the years to not compare myself to the lives that I see on Instagram for this very reason; I know that the life I put on Instagram doesn’t reflect, so I don’t expect everyone else’s to. I just hope everyone is happy.

My life might not be totally together but at least my Instagram feed is cute.

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Things that Make Me Proud of Myself

I don’t know at what point in the development of society we started to focus more on our flaws than our strengths, but it almost seemed programmed into us these days. It almost seems easier to pick ourselves a part than it is to say nice things, and it feels like if you do look on the positive side of life and do build ourselves up, the fear is that it may look cocky or big-headed. Well that’s just not true.

I am definitely guilty of looking too hard at my flaws, and I think that part of me will always be that way, but there are some things that really do make me feel good about myself and my achievements, and d’you know what? I’m gonna shout about them a bit today.

When I wear an item of clothing that I made myself – or someone else does

When I was a kid all I ever wanted to do was create clothes, and now not only has it become a real hobby, but I’m even starting to make money out of my creations. I frequently wear stuff I’ve made to work and I actually love responding to ‘I love your skirt, where is it from?’ with ‘Oh I made it’.

This amazing feeling is doubled when I see someone else in something I’ve made!

Whenever I hit mile 12

In the last 2 years I have run 5 half marathons, and every single time I hit the 12 mile marker I can’t stop myself from shedding a little tear (or just having a minor cry to myself) because I can’t believe how far I’ve come – and I don’t just mean in that one run!

Being able to pay for something using money I’ve made from my small businesses

Most notably, my car’s MOT was paid for using money made from my Etsy store, as was a lot of the repair work needed. Its such an amazing feeling!

When I think about how much weight I used to lift

It wasn’t that long ago that I wouldn’t pick up a dumbbell more than about 3-kg, and now I don’t think I’d touch one that weighed less than double that. I am so much stronger than I ever thought I could be and that’s pretty amazing.

Comparing my blog stats

I get the same page views in a day now than I use to get in a whole month, and my blog is only growing. This little corner of the internet of mine brings me so much pride, and I still love every day when I can call myself a blogger.

Spread a little positivity, and tell me something that makes you proud of yourself!

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Getting Out of my Comfort Zone

For someone who puts a great deal of their life and opinions online, in reality, I can be a painfully shy and awkward person, and I can really struggle with low confidence and self-esteem.

My blog, and the community of people that I have met through blogging has played an enormous part of bringing me out of my shell, and while it might sound silly, I actually surprise myself with some of the things I’ve achieved. So I’ve decided to push the boat further!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been coming up with a list of things that I want to do, or start doing, to push my comfort zone limits and boost my confidence – call it a comfort zone bucket list, if you will..

Take part in a different Twitter chat every week

I’m so bad at remembering Twitter chats! I used to make such an effort to take part in a few, but over the last year or so I just haven’t had the time and lost my confidence a little. I always see a bunch of great chats going on, or being promoted, so I’m gonna make a real effort to try some new ones out and get chatting to some more lovely bloggers!

Post a photo in a swimsuit on my blog/social media

Last year was the first year in a LONG time that I wore a bikini in front of my friends, and it felt so good, but I definitely think my body confidence has dropped again since the start of this year. I absolutely LIVE for seeing people on Twitter and Instagram strutting their stuff and loving their bodies in summer outfits and swimwear though, so I want to become one of those girls.

More Insta-vlogging

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been doing a lot more vlog-style Instagram stories – unboxings, general chats etc – and I’ve really been enjoying them. It might not seem like much of a step for confidence, but I have struggled with listening to the sound of my own voice for as long as I can remember; the reason I tend to turn to a keyboard rather than a microphone is courtesy of the lisp I’ve had since childhood, and while in day to day life I forget it exists, when I have to hear myself back it can be hard for me.

Sharing more workouts

This year I have LOVED my Glass Slipper Camp series. I had so much fun creating the workouts, filming and writing these posts, and better still is the great response I’ve had from my amazing readers, so I want to do more! They might not all be blog posts, maybe photos, Instagram stories or even live streams from the gym, I just want to share more of my fitness journey and show what I’m capable of.

Post more selfies

On the rare occasion I do stop to take a selfie, it rarely gets shared. Normally it’ll sit on my phone for a little while until I decide to do a photo clear out and then will get deleted along with the random screenshots and weird photos that appear in my camera roll courtesy of strange Whatsapp group chats. No more! Now its time to put my face out there, whether people appreciate it or not..

Blog more about what’s actually going on in my life

The last time I did a Twitter poll asking what content people would like to see more of, the unanimous winner was ‘Personal/Life’ posts, and while I feel like I do publish a lot of post where I witter on about topics that pop into my head, I haven’t posted much recently about what’s going on for me at the moment, and change will be afoot very soon so I’m gonna make sure I’m sharing a lot more.

Experiment more with makeup

While I can go weeks without putting on any makeup (other than my eyebrows, duh), I do love doing my makeup. And while I love playing around and trying different looks with makeup when I’m sat at home, I rarely push the boat out when it comes to my day to day face, so I want to mix things up a bit more; find the courage to do brighter, bolder looks, wear different lipsticks etc.

If you have any tips for getting out of the comfort zone, drop me a comment, and if not, wish me luck!

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Car Insurance Renewal Myths Busted

I think we can all agree that there is nothing exciting or interesting about car insurance, right? Its a legal requirement, and considered by most to be a hassle or a chore, and what’s worse is that a number of people feel like they have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to it, which can really cause problems further down the line.

So while this might not be the most exciting topic to be blogging about, I thought I’d share some advice and information from my experience of working in the car insurance industry. I’m not sharing any industry secrets or naming/shaming any particular companies, I’m just hoping to clear up some of the myths or beliefs, and hopefully help a few people out! Here goes..

I’ve had another claim free year, why has my insurance gone up?

Its a common belief that every year you go without making a claim earns you a drop in your renewal price, and while this may often be the case, there are a number of factors that could mean you see an increase. This year especially, there have been a number of changes in industry factors that have been totally out of the companies control, namely the increase in Insurance Premium Tax (IPT) and changes in legislation on personal injury compensation, both of which have hit car insurance hard.

On top of this, insurance rates are calculated based on a whole tonne of information and statistics, so while you might have another year of driving with no accidents, things like your car being another year older, or if there’s been an increase in the number of accidents or claims in your postal region, are all things that are factored in during the underwriting process.

What about my no claims discount?

No claims discount (NCD) can of course reduce the cost of your insurance substantially, and within your first few years of earning NCD, you should be seeing a general reduction in your insurance quotes, but the further up the years you get, the discount percentage increases by smaller increments, until you eventually hit your insurance companies maximum, which in most cases is 9+ years. At this point, while you may feel like your insurance should be dropping every year – which is may do! – you’re already benefiting from the highest discount you can get, so you may find a bit of a plateau.

My insurance company will give me a discount if I tell them I’m going to cancel

Sure, a lot of insurance companies will be able to offer you a discount if you express unhappiness at your renewal price, but I urge you to think about the amount of discount they give. If they can knock £100 off the price the moment you question the price, why is it they can do that without second thought? You may find you’re only offered £10-15 off, and while this may seem a little stingy, what it actually suggests is that you were sent out a pretty accurate price in the first place, rather than an over-inflated price designed to make you feel like a winner when they half the cost.

I shouldn’t have to shop around to get the best price

One of the biggest reasons that people see their insurance prices go up and up and up is because they allow their insurance company to renew the policy time and time again without comparing the market. Most insurance companies do have a preferred customer, be that based on age or any other factors, and while you may think that you’re being a lovely loyal customer staying year after year, it is possible that you can get a much better deal elsewhere. This has actually become such an epidemic that the insurance regulator has mandated that insurance companies must now put a statement on their renewal quotes encouraging their customers to shop around, so don’t be insulted if you notice this!

On the back of this, insurance companies can vary massively in how they assess your details, so one company can quote you £300 while another quotes you £600 for exactly the same cover!

Do I really need to review my insurance every year?

YES. I urge you to check through all of your documents every year, as well as being sure to update your insurance company to any changes throughout the year. Even small changes, such as a different job, becoming a homeowner, going from living at home to living with a partner or getting married; these are all factored into the calculation of your insurance premium, and its so easy to forget about informing your insurance of these changes, but they can make a difference!

What should I do if I’m uncertain about anything on my policy?

If you ever have any questions about your car insurance, the first thing you should do is speak to YOUR insurance company. While friends and family may be keen to give you advice, if they’re insured with a different company, there could be a big difference in what their insurance covers to what yours does, so bear this in mind when seeking a second opinion.

I’m sorry to bombard you with quite a lot of information, but I really hope that I’ve been able to help a few people out with this post! If you have found this helpful, please let me know as I’d love to know if you’d be interested in seeing more posts like this!

This post is primarily based on facts, but any of opinions stated in this post are my own personal views and do not reflect the views or opinions of any insurance companies.
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London After Terror


Yesterday, I went on a little day trip to London. It was something that I’d had planned for a good few months, and I was really looking forward to it. Then the attacks happened.Even after seeing the news of the attacks all over social media before going to bed, it never once occurred to me that I shouldn’t still continue with my trip, but when I woke up in the morning and read more and more tweets about the situation, I started to feel a little nervous about my day, but I still did my makeup, put on a nice dress and walked in the sunshine to the coach station.

I must admit, I’m always a little cautious when I’m in London. I know the underground system well, and I have no issue getting around, but after having my purse stolen about 18 months ago, I tend to stay a little bit more alert than I used to, and yesterday was no different. I walked from Victoria coach station to the main train station, went to Costa to grab some breakfast and sat people watching while I waited to meet Sarah. And what did I see?

I saw Londoners and non-Londoners, all going about their Sundays as if it was any other day. I didn’t hear anyone panicking or worrying about their day, and I didn’t feel like the station felt any different to how it has on every other trip I’ve made to this place. I saw families with small children enjoying the last day of their half terms; running, laughing, smiling. I needed to see this. I instantly felt calmed by the calm of a Sunday in London.

The recent attacks in Manchester, London, and all over the world are horrifying. It breaks my heart that innocent lives are being lost, and it breaks my heart seeing innocent people blamed for the actions of a few sick people, but we must remain strong. While we still continue living our lives, and loving those around us, they will never win.

I saw someone on Twitter refer to the scene in Harry Potter when Dumbledore dies, and everyone raises their wands to outshine the Dark Mark in the sky, but there’s another quote that for me seems more appropriate:

‘You have a power that Voldemort has never had. You can love.’

Don’t let terror defeat love.

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A Tinderella Story

One year, and a few days ago, this one swiped his way into my life, and changed it forever.

I’ll be totally honest, I was very late to the Tinder game, and when I finally did get it, I don’t think I actually had any intentions of taking it at all seriously. I guess I was just curious to see what the hype was all about, and it quickly became clear that I was probably not the target demographic, as I found myself just endlessly swiping left passed stupid profile after stupid profile. Maybe there just weren’t any decent guys left in Bournemouth?

I dabbled on and off over the course of a few months, having the occasional conversation here and there, but nothing ever came of anything, and it never bothered me because it all felt so forced.

On May 23rd, I came across a profile where the bio read ‘Looking for someone to help me reach the minimum order amount for delivery’. I mean, there were a few other things too but that’s what I remember laughing at. I swiped, we matched, and the next thing I knew, a gif-off began..

It took one evening for the conversation to move from Tinder to Whatsapp, and I guess the rest is history! I’ve been pretty open about our relationship on here; I try to write something on the 28th of each month, and although I’ve missed a month or two, next month will be a year of writing – our one year anniversary.

I’ve never been ashamed of the fact that we met on Tinder. What shame is there in finding the person you’re meant to be with? The fact is, there’s no shame in using any of these apps or websites. I found my prince charming, and we’re living happily ever after.

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My Summer 2017 Bucket List

It may not still be able to quite make up its mind, but the sun is finally shining in Bournemouth today and I’m hoping and praying that summer is finally on its way at last!

I have zero holiday allowance left at work, so this will be the first summer in a good few years that I haven’t been jetting off somewhere on a grand adventure, but I won’t be letting that stop me from filling my free time with as many little adventures and activities as I can. I wrote a summer bucket list last year, but I hardly scraped the surface with that list so I’m starting anew and hoping to actually complete this years!

  • Go to a music festival – no, I’m not gonna be hitting Glasto or V-fest, but we have a few great local festivals and I really fancy spending a day on a picnic mat listening to good live music and eating from food trucks in the sun.
  • Pick your own – I’ve always fancied going to one of those farms where you can pick your own berries and stuff
  • Bingo night – I have never been to a bingo club before, and I’m a little dubious, but so many people say its a good laugh so why not?
  • Go to an outdoor cinema – something on the list from last year that I never managed to do, here’s hoping for success this year
  • Take Matthew to the air festival – Bournemouth Air Festival is a pretty big deal, and Matthew’s never been before and put a pilot at an air festival and I’m pretty sure he’ll be happy
  • Actually get a tan – I normally spend too much time indoors to see any sort of colour change in my skin, but after a bit of a top up on my trip to California, I’m keen to spend as much time outdoors so that my legs stop reflecting light.
  • Tale as Old as Time Afternoon Tea – late to the party, but I’m finally going to the famous Beauty and the Beast afternoon tea at the Kensington Hotel with two of my favourite people in June and I can’t wait!
  • Go Ape – I’ve been saying for ages that I want to go back to Go Ape at Moors Valley, and I need to actually get round to swinging in the trees again
  • Celebrate our first anniversary – when I wrote my summer bucket list last year, one of the things on that list was my first date with Matthew. Well that was almost a year ago now, and I can’t wait to celebrate a whole year with the love of my life.

I’ve kept the list a little shorter this year in the hopes that I’ll actually achieve all of them! Wish me luck!

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March Life and Blog Update

Happy Friday y’all! Last day of the working week, last day of the month, and a quarter of 2017 is up already! With that in mind, I thought I’d do something a little different to my regular monthly favourites, and do a little update on this first section of the year.

Happy moments in March:

Matthew has finally moved to Bournemouth this month, yay! After 8 months of long distance, we’ve both been looking forward to being in the same town for the first time in our relationship and a chance to be a proper couple. I’ve been taking more time to read, I’ve been baking more and I’ve also had a chance in the last couple of weeks to get back to my sewing machine and get some creativity flowing. Creating things gives me such a sense of happiness and pride, and I would love to be able to do it all day every day.

Products I’m loving recently:

  • Benefit Dandelion Dew liquid blush – a total whim purchase from Sephora, but this has become a daily staple for me as we start heading into Spring
  • Too Faced Sweet Peach highlighting palette – there is just so much about this palette that I love; I feel like it was made for me
  • Bite Matte Creme lip crayon in pastille – this was one of my Sephora freebies, but after saying ‘I don’t really need another lipstick’ I’ve totally changed my tune and I need more of these in my life!

What’s coming up:

I’m not very far away from my next trip and with that, my next 10K and half marathon, so the next 6 weeks will be spent planning and training. I’m also going to get my butt into gear at work and try and put in as many extra hours as I can without driving myself mad because I want to save as much money as I can in the next few months on top of my regular saving plan.

2017 target update:

(Figures as of last night!)

  • Bloglovin followers
    • 2017 goal: 500
    • Current: 545!! I actually hit 500 at the start of this month, which makes me so happy to have beat my target for the whole year already!
  • Twitter followers
    • 2017 goal: 2500
    • Current: 1972 – I’m finding growth is happening slowly, whether or not it’ll speed up by the end of the year is a different matter..
  • Instagram followers
    • 2017: 2000
    • Current: 1445 – I have gone up about 100 from the start of the year, but with it being such a fickle platform for numbers, I’m not getting my hopes up too much!
  • Page views
    • 2017 goal: 65,000
    • Current: 43640 – I’m so happy to have seen a big growth in my blog starts since the start of the year, and I know that if I can keep it up, I’ll be hitting this goal before the year is out!

And if you want to help me out with any of these numbers, you’ve got my links below!

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15 Facts About Us

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know that I generally save the 28th of each month to write a little relationship post, and well would you look at the calendar..?

Matthew and I have now been together 9 months, and today I thought I’d share a few fun facts about us as a couple, y’know, in case you wanted to be nosey!

1. Our first date was to the Oceanarium, and lasted 12 hours

We ended up getting kicked out of the cafe we had spent the evening in when it closed at 11.30pm

2. We’re both stupidly indecisive

Deciding where to have dinner takes an age!

3. I sleep on the left side of the bed, and he sleeps on the right

And I’m a blanket thief

4. We both love a trip to Ikea

I think we’ve been twice in the last month

5. We’ve never seen each other drunk

8 months of long distance means we’ve never had the chance for that embarrassment just yet!

6. We love McNuggets

I mean, who doesn’t, but still..

7. We have a shared Pinterest board for planning our adventures

Its mainly full of cute Pomsky photos that I put on there

8. I’m a Hufflepuff and he’s Ravenclaw

If anyone was interested to know..

9. We regularly argue over how to pronounce some words

There’s a north/south divide that often leads to debates..

10. He does all the singing on car journeys

I just sit back and.. enjoy.. 😉

11. He also spends more time on his hair than I do

Owns more hair product than I do too

12. We still argue occasionally over who pays

Only cos we can both be as stubborn as each other

13. Every day I make him pinky promise not to tickle me

I am crazy ticklish and I will have a panic attack if someone tries..

14. We already have a future sofa picked out

Probably not the most normal thing for couples of our age, but we both agreed on the fact we really liked it!

15. He might not quite be at my level, but we both love Disney

And I think he’s even more excited than I am for our WDW trip in November!

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Sunday

After another crazy night of falling asleep way early into a movie, I was surprised that Matthew was awake before I was. He was going in for sim training this morning, so I left quite early and went back to mine, where I got started on usual weekend work: writing blog posts, a stock order for The Happiest Fitness Co etc, while catching up on a few missed weeks of The Great Pottery Throwdown.


Lunchtime seemed to roll around pretty quickly, and resulted in my sister and me ordering Deliveroo and watching The Lorax, which managed to successfully distract me from the appointment I had at the Apple Store to get my phone fixed, so looks like I’ll be going another week with a cracked screen..


After lunch I hit a bit of a creative block, so I decided to remedy it by taking a break and having a bath. I used the Lush Autumn Leaf bath bomb, which was my favourite from the autumn/Halloween collection and I’ve been saving for a day like today, and I also took the opportunity to try out my Sephora eye mask, and had a good long soak while scrolling through Pinterest on my iPad. Question: am I the only person who won’t take a book into the bath for fear of getting it wet, but has no problem using my phone or iPad?


After a little bit of an afternoon slump, I got back to work, this time budget planning for my upcoming Disney trips (very important part of my life) and also writing up a new training plan for my next 8 weeks of running. More tweet scheduling done for the week, then back to writing for a bit! Dad decided to make pancakes for dinner, which felt like a win.

The rest of my evening will be spent tidying up my bedroom a bit, and getting started on a mass wardrobe clear-out that I want to get done this week, then I’m gonna curl up in bed with my book to wrap up the weekend.

Huge shoutout to everyone who’s followed along with me this week, its been quite fun doing something a little different from the usual! Normal blog scheduling will resume tomorrow, but if you ever want a nosey in on my life, there’s always my Instagram story!

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Saturday

It’s the weekend, yay! I kicked mine off with a fairly rare lie in, then dropped Matthew off at a friends before going home to shower and get ready for the day. My sister arrived home this morning from two weeks in Thailand, so we went out to lunch at Toby Carvery with my nan, then round to my gran’s house for a catch up. Doing the rounds of the  grandparents on a Saturday is a fairly normal part of our family routine, affectionately known as the grumble run!

Post grumble-run, I took Matthew on an exciting trip to the car wash because my little car was long overdue a clean, and after clearing all the rubbish out of the inside earlier in the week, I figured I’d complete the job properly and now she’s all shiny and perfect!

Once we got back to Matthew’s, I knuckled to some serious Disney trip planning – we go to WDW at the end of October and our dining reservations will be coming up in about 6 weeks so with nothing thought out, we decided this afternoon would be a good time to start! I’ve got about 8-9 days of park/dining ideas sorted, so it was just a start but after a while I got a little stuck so I threw in the towel and instead got some blog work done while Matthew was doing some work of his own.

Our evening consisted of Haagen Dazs and movies in bed, starting with Rogue One. Normally I’d be forced to watch Saturday Night Takeaway, but we conveniently missed it tonight so ah well..

What have you been up to this Saturday?

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Friday

So after my crazy early night last night – I was asleep before 9pm – I woke up way earlier than I needed to.

I arrived at work bursting for a wee. Staying at Matthew’s basically means being in a house of 5 guys with only two bathrooms and one never has toilet paper, so you can imagine the struggle in the morning, so I opted to wait until I got into the office before I had the chance to relieve myself! 

Being on an early shift, the day went by pretty quickly. I went out at lunch to go to the post office to send out some Happiest Fitness Co orders, and picked up a pastry from Bennetts as a Friday lunchtime treat before returning to the comfort of my desk and my book (you’re sensing a theme with my lunch breaks, right?).

After I got home from work, I walked round to the local delivery office to collect a missed parcel from yesterday, and when I got home the cats were in. Now, I don’t actually own cats, but we have a semi-casual agreement with the neighbours cats that when their kids are annoying them they have a tendency to come hang out at ours.. Anyway they weren’t feeling very playful, so they quickly disappeared back out into the garden.

I got changed and headed round to Matthew’s, where we did a little bit of Disney trip discussion, then headed into Bournemouth to the new cinema complex to see Beauty and the Beast – and of course I had to wear my Chip skirt again. The new cinema has only been open about a month and everything is still very shiny and new, and has these crazy reclining seats in the screens, but we just opted for regular premier seats.

The movie itself was SO GOOD. Honestly, I’m not gonna post any spoilers and I will have a proper post up in the next week or so but if you’re umming and ahhing about seeing it, just do it because I fail to see anyone being disappointed.

After the movie we got a few more cinema treats – ice cream for Matthew and a frozen Fanta for me. Also note to self, and anyone else: the new car park underneath the new cinema is PRICEY. But we are getting a Five Guys so I think I’ll let the place off..

So I’m all done with work for the week and ready for a fairly chilled weekend, stay tuned for more!

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Thursday

I’m not gonna lie, today has been relatively normal in the grand scheme of things. Alarm went off at 7am, got up, got ready for work, the daily grind.

As per usual, I spent my lunch break with my nose stuck in a book; it’s the furthest I’ve ever got into The Fellowship of the Ring without my brain hurting, and I’m determined to fight on with it, and having an hour at lunch to dedicate every day is really helping and reminding me just how much I do love reading!

When I got home from work, I decided to clear some of the rubbish out of my car – it’s been building up for a while now and as Matthew and I might be driving up to Manchester this weekend, I figured a tidy car would make the journey a bit happier! I then made a failed attempt to go to the post office, courtesy of nightmare staff who close the counter when they can’t be bothered to do it, so came home, shut up the rabbit and the chickens and jumped in the shower.

The plan was to go to Matthew’s for dinner, but that kinda fell through due to a frozen fridge situation, so instead he came round and I whipped up a classic dinner of fish fingers, sweet potato mash and peas – it’s actually the first meal I’ve ever cooked for him, and I think it truly displayed my domestic goddess skills..

We’re gonna spend the rest of our evening watching Harry Potter movies in bed, and I’ll probably fall asleep by 10:30. Rockstar.

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Wednesday

I feel like this week is much more interesting than most weeks in my life, which makes the timing of these posts pretty perfect, ha!

After an early start, I got down the gym and kicked off leg day with a mile on the rowing machine, followed by 100 reps on the leg press and 3 sets of 20 reps on both the abductors and adductors. I had moved over to the mats to get started on some more work, but due to rather embarrassing circumstances (ladies know where this is going), instead I decided to give the rest of my workout a miss, opting to go home for a shower and breakfast before work.

Work felt like a very short day, being that I spent two hours of it in a presentation, and my entire lunch break was spent at my desk with my nose stuck in my book. My team is doing admin work all of this week, which makes a nice break from the regular day to day, and an even nicer surprise was walking out of the office to find Matthew waiting for me with some pretty yellow roses!

From work, we headed into town to get dinner at Skinny Kitchen, which I haven’t been to in AGES and I was pretty excited to try something different from the menu. I got the Seriously Stacked Burger, which was a cauliflower and quinoa patty with grilled halloumi and came with a pot of amazing sweet potato fries and it was SO GOOD. Skinny Kitchen never fails to impress me, its always just the best food that makes my body so happy!

After I dropped Matthew back to his, I got home and was straight into my pyjamas before hitting the sofa and cracking on with my usual evening activities: tweet scheduling, emails, packing up THFC orders, editing photos and getting started on a few more upcoming posts, all while watching Legally Blonde and munching on microwave popcorn. Wild life that I lead, I’ll probably end up having another early night, or at least getting into bed to read for a bit before I do.

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Tuesday

Happy Tuesday everyone! Its been a particularly happy day for me because I’ve had a day off work, and I’ve got so much done, yay!

Now while most people would probably kick a day off with a lie in, I was up at 5am, courtesy of a 6am gym session with my trainer Steph. I usually walk to the gym, which is about 1.5 miles and takes about 25 minutes, and even in the dark I love the walk because Bournemouth is so pretty when its quiet out, and I can watch the sun rise over the beach from the gym. My workout was a lot of upper body isolation, with supersets of shoulders, biceps/triceps and chest and back, and wrapped up with two of my menaces – burpees, and 25kg overhead press – which while I hate it at the time, it reminds me of how far I’ve come from the days of 10kg.

I was home just before 7.30am, and kicked off the start of my productive morning by getting a batch of brownies in the oven – today is a baking day! I figured its been ages since I’ve done any proper baking, and any baking posts for that matter, so I spent my whole morning flitting back and forth from the kitchen and my laptop, getting each post written as the recipe cooked/set. After the brownies it was meringues, then marshmallows and orange curd, so keep an eye out for this in the coming weeks!

After a quick lunch break – turkey salad wrap – I set about getting all the photos for the posts taken, as well as some photos for other upcoming posts, then I took a little bit of time out from blog work to do a little DIY experiment for something that might be coming soon to my Etsy shop.

Back to writing for a little bit, with my classic background noise of Friends re-runs on Comedy Central, then I headed over to Matthew’s and because the poor boy is stranded in Bournemouth with no car, I was a top girlfriend again and took him to Staples and Currys PC World to pick up a few bits before we got in for the night, and gave up on the idea of cooking dinner, instead opting to order Pizza Hut delivery, oops!

Because he goes back into training tomorrow, he’ll be spending the evening revising, so I’m set up with my iPad and book – I’m starting The Fellowship of the Ring for what feels like the hundredth time, but I actually feel like I’m getting somewhere with it this time for a change! We’ve got an early morning tomorrow so I predict there’ll be a pizza induced coma and early night!

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A Week in the Life of Lottie – Monday

So a little while back I asked on Twitter if anyone would be interested in me daily blogging to share a little insight into what a typical week looks like for me, and the response was pretty good, so here we go! This week seemed like the perfect time because having worked yesterday, I’m actually only working 4 days this week, so lots of time for activities!

This morning kicked off with a 5:30 alarm, which was quickly reset to 6:30 as I was still exhausted and didn’t want to force myself down the gym. It might seem like laziness, but I’m a firm believer in listening to how my body feels and not pushing myself too far, and the extra hour in bed was glorious! It also meant I could spend a little bit more time doing my makeup this morning, yay! Today’s face featured my new Too Faced Sweet Peach highlight palette and ABH glow kit – two of my favourite Sephora purchases!

Breakfast was had at my desk: Belvita and a mug of Peanut Hottie from my favourite new Disney mug to brighten up my Monday morning. I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of my job, but I worked overtime today, doing an 8:15-18:00 shift, so I took myself myself to Costa for lunch as a treat, where I had a halloumi and pepper foccacia (YUM) and a fruity yogurt, and sat in the window enjoying the sunshine which has finally hit Bournemouth. My lunch break is normally used catching up with social media – Twitter, Instagram etc – and then a bit of blog reading, courtesy of the Bloglovin app on my phone. We also had a team meeting at work in the afternoon which we had outside on the roof, and all the fresh air has made me feel so much happier!

Matthew came and met me from work, and I took him down to John Lewis to buy a tv, then dropped him home so that I could dash home, shut up the chickens and the rabbit for the night, then headed down to my local shopping centre for my long overdue hair appointment. I love my long hair, but I haven’t had it cut in about a year, so I had to get a good few inches off to get it back in a good condition, but I’m pretty lucky to have fast growing hair so I’m sure it’ll be back properly in no time! I also nipped into Asda to stock up on a few baking supplies for tomorrow (stay tuned!).

The rest of my evening will be spent catching up on some tv, getting tweets scheduled and generally chilling. I’m up early to be at the gym for 6am tomorrow so it’ll be a fairly early one – a girl’s gotta sleep!

What’s your day been like?

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Taking Pride In My ‘Flaws’

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So I was thinking, why is it we spend so much time concentrating on what we believe to be the negative aspects of ourselves? Whether its a quirk that the people around us have picked up on, or something that we overthink on a daily basis, we all have ‘those things’ that we internally cringe over. Well I’ve had enough of that.

Towards the end of last year, I wrote a post about putting positive spins on aspects of our lives that we frequently put down, and today I’m gonna share some of my personality traits that I’m gonna start owning, rather than seeing as a flaw.

I’m a know-it-all

I don’t know where it came from, but I’ve always had a ridiculously good memory for facts, figures and information, as well as totally useless things like what I wore to my year 5 school disco. My family have always had to put up with it, and they actually rely on it sometimes, but even the people I work with have started noticing, earning me the nickname of Sponge – I absorb and retain information like there’s no tomorrow.

This almost always works in my favour, but it can be annoying sometimes as I often worry about coming across as a ‘know-it-all’, but in reality, this is in no way a flaw. It meant I did well in school, helps me excel in my job and I’m also a pub quiz BOSS. Win win, I am Sponge.

I have a need to please people

I need to be liked, and I worry constantly that people don’t like me. I doubt I’m alone in this feeling, but here’s the thing: I actually think it makes me a better person. As a result of this, I’m always great at trying to cheer people up when they’re down, or throwing out compliments like sweets at Halloween, and I notice little details (and sponge them up), which mean I get to know people better.

I’m a sensitive soul

I’m really easily bothered by conflict, whether its directed at me or not. I hate seeing other people fall out, and sometimes I genuinely feel like that girl in Mean Girls who just wants to bake a cake filled with rainbows and smiles. I’ve been told that it makes me naive, but there’s nothing naive about just wanting people to get along and be nice to one another – its idealistic, but I hope to God the world gets that way one day.

These are just a few things that I’m gonna start embracing. They are parts of my life and my personality, and regardless of how the rest of the world sees them, I’m gonna own it.

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I Quit My Job

Yep, the title gives the game away a little..

If you keep up with my Twitter, firstly bless you, I’m a real rambler and mainly tweet absolute rubbish, but more importantly, you’ll have seen that I not only had a very exciting job interview last week, but I’ve been invited back for a second interview/initial training this coming week, eeek!

You’re probably trying to put two and two together right now and getting three. I don’t know if I’ve got the job yet, but I’ve still handed in my 2 week notice at work; you’re thinking this is a silly move, right? Well yes, its risky, but the reason for handing in my notice was two-fold.

For starters, I need to be able to start training for my new job next week, so in order to serve a 2 week notice, I had to hand it in when I did, but the major factor was this: I wasn’t happy, and haven’t been for a little while now.

This is a job that I’ve been at for four years now. It was meant to be a temporary income-bringer while I figured out the next phase of my life, but I got comfortable, and if I’m being totally frank, I was good at my job and I liked that. I developed and progressed through the ranks of staff, and while I loved a little moan here and a funny annoying customer story there, I was, on the whole pretty ok with where I was.

Like all people, I’ve been through ‘I hate my job’ periods, but in recent months that’s been my constant feeling for many reasons, and I’m not going to get into all of them, but with the possibility of the new job looming, I decided to take the plunge and call it a day. It may seem naive, but even if I’m not successful at my second interview this week, I still feel like I’ve made the right decision; I struggle a lot with change and periods of uncertainty, so it wasn’t easy and it was a big step for me.

So yeah.. I’m really nervous about my interview this week, but also super excited about the possibility of getting the job as I think it will be so much fun, and if I don’t then I think it was still a good thing for me to get out of my current job and I’ll have to work out my next move!

Has anyone else been in a situation like this? I’d love some positive words!

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20 Facts About My Disney Life Tag

So a little while back the gorgeous Amy from Cocktails in Teacups tagged me to do this awesome Disney tag, and I must admit I fangirlled just a little. Amy was one of the first bloggers I followed and I’m so lucky to be able to call her a friend now, but sometimes I still get a little swept up in how much I admire her!

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The tag is simple, 20 facts about Disney in your life, so here we go:

  1. Disney love is a family affair, and I’ve been on trips to the parks with almost everyone in my family.
  2. When I was a kid, whenever I met Pluto I used to pull on his tongue. Looking back on it, it seems a little cruel, but it was always meant in a playful way!
  3. The character I identify most with is Honey Lemon from Big Hero 6
  4. I don’t collect pins, but I do have a fairly extensive collection of Vinylmations and Tsum Tsums!
  5. I own all of the Disney animated classics on DVD
  6. I’d love to cosplay, but I worry that my glasses would hold me back
  7. I love all of the Disney parks, but Disneyland CA will always be extra special to me.
  8. Disney princes have never appealed to me really, with the exception of Flynn Rider (and maybe Kristoff)
  9. I have a huge collection of Mickey ears, and I’m forever wanting more!
  10. I have a tattoo of the castle on the back of my neck.
  11. Whenever I book a Disney trip, I’ll probably spend more time planning my outfits than I will on anything else
  12. I never used to think much of Merida as a princess, but since I met her in Disneyland Paris last month and had the best time with her, I’ve totally changed my mind!
  13. The first mac and cheese I ever ate was in a bread cone from the Cozy Cone in Disneyland back in January!
  14. If I could be in any Disney park show, it would be Mickey and the Magical Map
  15. We have Mickey Mouse cutlery in our house
  16. I never used to like Tinkerbell, but since watching her spin-off movies I’m kinda obsessed with all of Pixie Hollow!
  17. I’ve run 4 RunDisney races, with 2 more to go this year and a potential 6 next year!
  18. The only time I like Starbucks is in the Disney parks. I never go into them otherwise.
  19. I pretty much can’t watch any show or parade without tearing up.
  20. I’ve made some of the best friends through Disney, and I’m eternally grateful for that.

I tag Lizi, Jade and Kayleigh!

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Am I an adult now?

Later on this year, I’m finally gonna be able to understand how Taylor Swift feels. 22..

I mean, I’ve been an official adult for over 3 years now, and an even more official adult for almost six months, but seriously guys, does it ever really sink in?

I have, however, already done some things this year that have made me feel like a bit of a grown up, so does that make me an adult now?

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I bought health insurance

Ok, so I definitely don’t think I’m adult enough to get life insurance just yet, but I did decide in January that having health insurance would benefit me. Being blind as a bat since I was six, plus with all the injuries I sustain from running and inheriting the family bad ankles, knees, back etc, putting money aside each month for treatment actually does make sense. I’m now with Simply Health, and bought it through Top Cashback to get £42 back, as well as there being an offer for the first two months free, hello savings!

I threw out my underwear

I started the year by chucking out pretty much all of my underwear and buying new stuff. I’m not gonna lie, it was time. I kept one or two bras and the odd pair of pants that were fairly recently bought, but everything else went – all the poorly fitting push-ups and anything with holes or exhausted elastic. In doing so, I made the grown up discovery that the underwear my younger self thought was the best really wasn’t; sometimes comfort and support comes from undies you never thought about.

Saving money for my car

I’m super lucky to have my dream car already: a sunshine yellow Fiat 500, bought second hand two years ago. While in relatively good nick, she does need a few things doing, and while I haven’t got round to getting them fixed just yet, I have been putting money into my savings to cover the costs of the work.

I didn’t cry at a pet’s death

After coming back from America, I decided it was finally time for me to replace my beloved hamster Flynn who I lost back in October. Unfortunately, I chose a psycho hamster who didn’t cope with the stress of moving very well and sadly passed away after two weeks. Normally I’d have taken one look at the poor thing, burst into tears and called my mum to come and remove it, but not this time; I carefully scooped it up and dealt with it tear free.

Now where’s my medal?

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NEW New Years Resolutions

Tomorrow is March. MARCH.

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We’re already two months down this year, and in classic form, I’m looking back at my January New Years Resolutions and wondering what I’ve managed to achieve so far this year, and for a change, I’m pretty happy with where I am.

In the last few weeks though, I’ve been taking a bit more time to think about myself; improving my mindfulness, habits and general thought processes, and I’ve decided to make some new resolutions, which are a little more about me and my happiness.

Be more creative

I’ve always been a creative person, even if its not in the classic sense, and creativity makes me feel good, so whether it be spending my lunch break with a colouring book or taking more pretty photos for Instagram, I’m welcoming it. I’ve even started being more creative with my weekly organisation, and I love it!

Take more time for myself

Last year I took a pretty huge independent step going on holiday by myself, and it taught me that me time is totally ok and that I don’t always need company to enjoy myself. I spend so much time at work surrounded by people and helping others that its ok for me to take time out.

Improve myself in little ways

I always want to be my best self, and while going back to school holds no interest for me, I want to learn new things, even if its just something small like a new cooking technique, or something a little bigger like an online course; I’m planning on learning something new every week.

Keep dreaming

I have so many thoughts, ideas and dreams, but I’m also my own worst enemy when it comes to shooting them down, so I’m going to stop seeing all my dreams as ‘pipe dreams’. Anything is possible if you just believe!

Be positive and share it

I can often jump to worst case scenarios, but I’ve had enough of that! I’m going to be working on thinking more positively and sharing this positivity with those around me. Watch out guys, I’m gonna be throwing all sorts of happiness your way!

Be more open to change

Whether I like it or not, change is a part of life, and I’m working on being ok with that. I used to hate cheesecake and now I think its delicious, and if all change is like that then I’m cool with it!

Are you sticking to your New Years Resolutions, or are you rethinking like me?

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The ‘If I Could..’ Tag

I was inspired by Danielle‘s perfect responses to the ‘If I Could..’ Tag, and she suggested that I gave it a go myself, so I thought why not!?

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If I could live anywhere:

I really love Bournemouth, and I don’t think I could really picture myself living anywhere else, but I guess it would be kinda cool to live in Orlando or Anaheim if I had to choose somewhere else.

If I could have any home:

I really picture myself in a modern build house, with lots of light and space and quite an open floor plan. I’d love a big kitchen and a sewing/craft room, ha!

If I could have any garden:

I’d love a big garden, I’d love to be able to continue keeping chickens, and maybe a dog or cat so plenty of space would be welcome! I wouldn’t want anything too fancy or difficult to maintain, grass space, and an area to grow vegetables, and maybe an awesome tree for climbing!

If I could be on holiday right now:

All I can think about right now is my upcoming Disney trip, so if we could just fast forward a few weeks that would be fab! I’m looking forward to Disneyland California the most!

If I could have any job:

I’m still on the path to my dream job: I’m a cake decorator and would love to open a cake shop with tea-rooms because it would mean I could do what I love every day, and would also be able to put time into my blog and other hobbies, as well as making lots of people really happy!

If I could have any talent:

I’d love to be able to draw and do graphic design. I can draw a few things, and am creative in plenty of other ways, but I’ve always wished I could translate what I see in my head to paper.

If I could live any day again:

I don’t know if I would want to relive a good day again, or go back and change a bad day, but I must be pretty lucky because no day in particular stands out for me! Why look back?

I tag Amy, Shawnee, Lizi and Sammie, and anyone else who fancies it! Can’t wait to hear everyone’s responses!

xoxo

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