Recently I’ve discovered a big interest in nail polish so this ‘posh’ event was the perfect time to experiment with some glittery nail polish. I’d really wanted to get “birthday” by Deborah Lippmann, but it costs quite a lot and on a student budget, I don’t really have £14 to splash out on just one bottle of a confetti like glitter nail polish. The other glitter nail varnishes I’d seen in the shops are either not dense enough with the glitter particles, looking more like a clear varnish or they are in a foul colour. In any case you have to put many layers of the polish on if you want the nails to be evenly and fully covered. I did consider dipping my fingers in actual glitter at one point because I was so frustrated that I couldn’t get the effect that I wanted with ordinary glitter polish!

However GOSH came to my rescue!! They have created a fine glitter for nails which is perfect for completely covering your nails in just one application! It comes in a little pot which you dip your nail in after a clear coat of nail varnish. You then just dust off the excess with a brush, then you’re done!

 I added a couple of coats of a clear nail polish over the top when I did it because I wasn’t sure if the glitter would come off, but in hindsight I don’t think I needed to do that, and the clear coats slightly dulled down then glittery effect which was a shame. Also because you a putting the topcoat over a rough surface, it sort of gets absorbed and doesn’t really make it glossy like it would do over a normal smooth nail polish. If you apply 3 coats of a top coat it starts to look glossy but seeing as I’m only going to be wearing this polish for a couple of days (need clear nails for work) it’s a bit OTT to put so many coats on.

glitter nails with glittery topcoat (from ASDA!)

One thing you have to make sure of when you’re using the nail glitter is to make sure the coat under the glitter is very thin or else the glitter clumps like a pre-school child has had a go at the craft table….

Something I’m keen to try when I get a chance is to paint a design on my nail and then dip the nail in the glitter so that only the design is glittery….

Has anyone else tried GOSH nail glitter before? What about the other colours? I cant wait to try the rose pink colour!

x

The Keswick branch of the Good Bag shops has been up and running since last October and is situated just off the roundabout on Main Street.

Sorry for only having the one picture of the Keswick shop- I haven’t got around to taking more- and the buckets of rain we’ve had the last couple of day when I’ve been in the shop haven’t helped me get inspired to take any!

I’ll try and get some pictures of the cards tomorrow when I’m in the Grasmere shop. As for the Brand new shop/ office in Manchester I haven’t been able to visit there yet- so no pictures as yet I’m afraid!

Right better be off- got lots of things to do, like getting orders in- the convention has made the Keswick shop rather busy the last few days!!

Just one last note- this is NOT the Bag Shop’s website so please dont try to place orders on my blog! got to the website at the top of the page and you can place your orders there! thanks! x

My housemate hasn’t exactly helped. He has a habit of screaming and swearing at the top of his voice at his computer and his work- anything that remotely annoys him. Every time I jump and get on edge.
Today he even made me late for my exam-I was boiling my pasta 20mins before I had to leave- 10mins to cook, 10 mins to eat. I came back down stairs when I thought it would be ready to find it had been turned to the lowest setting possible- it wasn’t even boiling! The pasta was still hard too! He said that it was wasting energy if I had it on any higher- it would still cook just as quick on a lower setting- well it obviously didnt did it!!!
I couldnt believe this- he said that i was wasting energy cooking my pasta when he’d left the cooker on for over 1/2hr because he’d forgotten it was on, after he’d taken his food off! I had to turn it off for him only 10mins before!!! Anyway… I tried to turn my pasta up, but it didnt really work because we have a rubbish cooker- once you turn it down- you’ve had it, it wont turn up anymore. So I ended up bolting half cooked pasta and then running to my exam.

I digress…
Sometimes all you need to hear when your upset or stressed or worried is “I love you”. Sometimes hearing it from anyone will do, but other times you need to hear it from one person. Well that one person hasn’t said it properly for a week now, when it’s normal to hear it a couple of times a day- that makes you worried. Especially when you’ve messed up with them, your away so cant properly talk to them about it, and your horrendously stressed with being away, so that you turn every molehill into a mountain.
I have half an idea why it hasnt been said. I’ve tried my best to retify that problem, but it hasnt helped not even a bit! I feel like all my efforts (and they have been huge efforts for me even if it hasnt seemed like it to that person) are for nothing. They tell me to stop over thinking- but what can I do when I’m shut up in a room on my own with only text books and notes for company! Revision doesnt distract me! I’m trying- but it really is so difficult when I’m given no reason to believe anything will get any better.

Oh I just want to go home. I want to fix everything, make it better again. I cant do well if I feel like crying every minute, and I have to choke back tears before I say anything to anyone.

Half of me says- just go on regardless. You’ve made it this far, it’s only 7 days, 4 exams till you get to go home again.
The other half says- why bother, the things that are really important to you are falling around your ankles, if you are failing at life- why bother trying to do uni. Go home now.

-big breath and a moment to reflect-

As much as I dont want to, as much as I want to just fall to pieces, I dont think I can risk it. If I do- I really will lose everything I’ve worked for. Worked REALLY hard for. Not just academically.

These exams have brought the worse back out of me. They have made me feel like I did over a year ago, and it hurts SO much. But that’s just why I’m going to have to fight it. I got out of that situation by hard work- all be it with family around me supporting me… I can do it again, this time on my own. I have to. These exams will show the best of me- maybe not academically this time around, but mentally. I will get through this, and when it’s over, and everything is back to rights- I will wonder what all the fuss was about. I can tell it’s not going to be easy though, but I’m going to give it all I’ve got!

Unfortunately at the moment I’m feeling rather down. I know everyone has ‘one of those days’ where everything seems to be irritating you and everyone is generally too busy with their own thing to spend time with you! Annoyingly this for me seems to coincide with when I’m feeling rather “off” and then everything seems so much worse!
I seem to be having ‘one of those weeks’ where this happens every day! Such a  silly downward spiral- with no one around to really talk to so I thought I’d have a bit of a rant on wordpress!

Last weekend I went to Wales (picture post to follow!) and since then I’ve been at work/ trying to revise. Living in the middle of the countryside, near none of my friends (who are mostly away at uni at the moment due having holidays early as Easter is so late!) means that I haven’t been able to see anyone. And as the trip to Wales overlapped with my boyfriend’s only day off I haven’t been able to see him either!

It’s really bugged me the last couple of days, not being able to see my man because when the ‘holidays’ are over, I wont see him for over a month, and wont really be able to talk to him either, as I’ll be bogged down with exams. Not seeing each other for 2 weeks is bad enough, and I know we really miss the time we have together! 4 weeks seems such a long time! I know that a lot of people have to cope with much longer times apart and so I should be grateful, but I don’t seem to be able to cope very well- particularly when I know I’m going to be very stressed!
I do understand why my boyfriend doesn’t really have the time to see me at the moment though… He works all day, 6 days a week, and then in the evening he’s been busy with his car- which has very kindly committed suicide on him! (I’m sure he will have/ will do soon, a blog post about it should you be interested in finding out more!) He also wants to see his friends who are back from uni for a short time- I cant blame him for wanting that can I!  Just sucks a bit, as we will hardly get any time together, especially as our good friend is going to stay at his house for a couple of weeks (the last 2 weeks of my holiday)- I cant just exclude him, and nor do I wish to! No one want’s to be gooseberry! However it does mean I wont really get to see my man alone. =/ Ah dear!

I can’t really mention this to my boyfriend, as the last thing I want to do is make it seem like I want ALL his free time (what left he has of it!) especially as he’s so tired from his full days! I don’t want to make him feel guilty for being busy either!
When we do see each other it feels like everything has to go perfectly as the little time we have together is so precious. It’s a very tricky situation. I dont want things to go belly ups in our relationship either, so I have to just be “okay” with how things are going to be and accept that he’s busy now, when I’m not, and later when I’m busy, he wont be! Oh but that’s so hardddd!!!!!

I did have a lovely evening with him the other day though- chilling out watching TV and playing on the xbox! Was great because I was shattered and so was he, so neither of us felt like doing anything productive and energetic! Bliss!

I think what I need to do, is de-stress! I’ve been so uptight about not having enough time to do the things I want to/ aught to do, that I get nothing done at all! Getting out of the house would be a good start. It can be pretty tense when your shut up with other stressed people!
Hopefully I’ll get to see one of my friends tomorrow for a coffee- a nice change from the normal busy days I’ve been having.

Tomorrow is a new day- lets hope things get better from then on. I shall work to make them better, as  things don’t do it by themselves unfortunately!

I hope to see my boyfriend in the evenings, but I can tell now that I’m not going to have as much time as I hoped with him, partly due to me having to revise so much, and partly because he’s working pretty much every day. All this is going to leave very little time for blogging, baking and doing photography! *pulls very sad face*

However, I’ll try get at least one blog post done this holiday, as I’m going to Wales this afternoon- somewhere I’ve never actually been to before, although I’ve driven though it on the way to Hereford. I hope to share some pictures! Apparently the area we are going to is very beautiful, and as this weekend promises the best weather of the year so far (20 degrees C, and gorgeous sunshine!) I want to make the most of it! Having said that… in all reality I don’t actually want to go…
I know when I get there it will be nice.. but I’m really not in the mood, and I’ve got quite worked up about it! Can’t really tell my Mum though, as I know she’s really really looking forward to it, and would be upset if she knew. =/ So wish me some optimism about this trip!!

xx

What frustrates myself and the other 3 people on the course is that the departments in our uni don’t talk to each other properly so we often find that we are set work which is all due on the same day, they don’t realise that the people who bridge across 2 departments could possibly have a large work load from the other department! At the moment this has resulted in 4 large pieces of coursework all due on Tuesday 29th March!

I’m trying to get those particular pieces of work out of the way as quickly as possible, I don’t want to end up having large parts of all of them to do on the Monday night! However this is made tricky as I cant concentrate on them because I have an exam on  Tuesday- which covers all the work done, done in the past semester in one of my modules(- the hardest module!) and I am totally unprepared for it!

At times, I feel like this huge amount of work could be achievable if I plan my time correctly… time management isn’t one of my best attributes at the moment but I’m learning fast (I don’t have a choice not to!). Other times, normally when I’ve been at something for hours , but haven’t seemed to achieved very much at all;  I feel totally overwhelmed and want to back down, but have no corner in which to do so- as they are all filled with piles of papers relating to assignments/ revision!

As a sort of break from the work I’m going out, on a night out, for the first time this term, tomorrow! Half of me says I really shouldn’t, as it’s valuable time that I could be revising or working in, but I don’t think realistically I’d actually achieve anything between 9pm-2am would I? Also it will mean that I’ll lose out on my most productive time of day- the morning, as I catch up on the night’s missed sleep! But I’m really looking forward to going out, as going to FAB- in the guild (our uni’s version of a SU) is one of the things on my “wish list of things to do this year”.  Talking of which that’s a post I want to do (at a later date of course). I have lots of different wish lists of goals I want to achieve- in the academic year, the calendar year, and my life.  But I’ll leave that for another time as I really have to get back to my assignment on Zirconia…

x

However, I do have a little bit of news- I got a pet goldfish at the weekend! Okay, it’s not the most exotic of pets, and not really the most interesting but I really like it! I’ve called it Apricot and it lives in the tank with my sister’s fish (no name yet) at home in the lakes. Couldn’t really bring it to uni as it’s unfair making it travel so much!

I also went to the cinema at the weekend with my boyfriend, his brother, and his brother’s best friend. We saw True Grit. Fantastic cowboy film, although I’ve never seen the one with John Wayne in it. I really enjoyed the film, but I did find it rather hard to understand the thick American accent! They spoke very fast using old fashioned words which made it very hard to follow at times! Not really a film you go and see to relax as you had to listen hard!

The rest of the time I’ve been the boring kind of busy- just doing uni work! I’ve had an extortionate amount though! We have 4 assignments due before the Easter holidays (which start on 1st April) and 2 exams before then too. The we have 3 assignments due straight after the Easter break, but you need to use uni software to do them, or at least need help from tutors to do them, so they have to be done before Easter too! So that’s 9 assignments/ exams in the next 2 weeks, and there isn’t a single piece of work even nearly half done! I’ve been trying to prioritise things but that’s mostly impossible as a lot of them are due all in the same week (3 pieces on the same day!).  I’m going to see my tutor see what he thinks is the best Modus operandi.  I’m not sure that extensions to deadlines will work what with needing tutors help to do the work, and they wont be available over Easter anyway! I guess I shall have to do my best, keep plodding on and hope that that is okay!

Must go and do some work now (or at least make a list of things to do when I have the computer software that I need (only available in the computer room at uni)! night!

In the evening (Saturday) my boyfriend and I met a friend, Jack for a Thai meal at the Star of Siam. Jack was really worried that he’d end up being a ‘third wheel’, but in the end I was the ’3rd wheel’ as for most of the time I didn’t really understand what they were talking about, so just sat quiet eating my green curry (which was excellent as usual!).

When we got back my boyfriend’s parents got my boyfriend to show me their wedding album. It’s amazing how much more things cost now than they did then!  I love the way things were worded in the 80s too. The modern then is now retro, but again it’s in fashion still!

Talking of retro things being rather cool, on Sunday I went to see my boyfriends next project to be a Jiffy!
According to him, there were only 70 of them made, and they’re a pick-up truck on a mini chassis. So cute! Needs a lot of work doing to it, but I reckon he’s more than capable!  If you want you can take a look at his blog He’s new to wordpress, well blogging in general actually, but he’s got a great writing style!

While he was checking the pick-up out, i wondered off to do some random photography. We were supposed to go and do some photography with Chris, another friend of ours later on so I thought I better get in some practice after not really using a camera for months!

As it was I needn’t have bothered bringing all my big camera equipment because we didn’t do any serious photography in the end, instead we caught up in Costa, a nice way to round off my busy weekend!

I hope this wasn’t  too much for everyone to read I will try to get a couple of posts done in the next couple of weeks… Without too many words in!

xx

As this post has turned out to be rather lengthy to say the least, I’m going to turn it into 2 posts

I went home the weekend before last  to see my family and my boyfriend, as I try to do every second weekend during the term. Normally I don’t get home till around lunchtime on the Saturday, and work from 10am-4pm on the Sunday before returning to Uni in the evening, so it ends up being a very short weekend home. However this weekend I didn’t have work, and travelled home on the Friday evening so relatively speaking I had a ‘long weekend’ away!

I had a pretty stressful week prior to going away as I had a maths test last thing on a Friday afternoon, and had alot of revision to do, which I had to fit around labs that I’d forgotten about!

I was really happy when my friend from school rang me up on the Friday afternoon and said that she was picking her sister up from the station in town and would I like to meet up with her- de stress with some shopping before catching the train? Errr yes please! Although I didn’t manage to get the bracelet chain I’d wanted to get while there, it was really nice to see my friend and her sister who I’d never met before. Then on the train I saw a boy from my secondary school who I knew so spent the journey with him catching up with news of what everyone was doing since I’d last saw them before Christmas.

On the Saturday my parents had planned a surprise for my sister, and had instructed my boyfriend and I NOT to tell my sister what we were doing. My sister did have suspicions that we might be going to the zoo, so we told her IF we were going there it would only to lock her up with the naughty monkeys (where she belongs! ) or to give the hungry tigers some food; while we went on the surprise trip out!

Although my sister is 8 she still cant read properly because she is very dyslexic so when I was texting a friend in the car I didn’t think to cover up what I was writing so she couldn’t see. Oh boy, was that a mistake! She read what I wrote, word for word “…I’m going to the zoo now though”.  Because I was so surprised that she had read what I’d written, I praised her lots, not realising that unintentionally I was also praising her for discovering where we were going! Totally spoilt the surprise but she was thrilled non the less!

We stopped off in the sweet town of Ulverston on the way where we had fish and chips and looked at the market for a little while. If I’d been going home (back to Brum) that day, I would have bought lots of yummy things to eat from the market!  There were some really scrummy looking cakes I’d have liked to have bought, even though I know I could have made them myself.

I won’t say too much about the zoo as I’ve already blogged about the time that we went for my sister’s birthday in the summer, but there were 2 things that really stuck out that I have to say about this trip. Firstly, the giraffes! I know they are tall- I’ve seen them before, but I’ve never been under them- WOW! Their heads are HUGE!!!! These pictures really don’t do them any justice at all!

Secondly was that my sister found a £10 note on the floor! Lucky thing! I guess someone else lost out though! Mum said she didn’t deserve it however as she had been really apathetic the whole time while we were at the zoo, not being bothered by anything and just having a grumpy face the whole time! She was allowed to keep the money though, and she bought a small stuffed  (toy) penguin for an overpriced amount, leaving her very little change. 

Final picture to end this post- how amazing are these peacock’s feathers? I love this picture I took