Geld & Roses

Hoorah hoorah student loan day has arrived. The first thing I did (at 1am this morning) was pay my phone bill, what a luxury it is to call and text people, not to mention having 3G back (I'm addicted to the game Gardens of Time at the moment [don't judge me]), and paid my best friend for my share of our Berlin trip at the end of June.

The count down to this day had been running for quite some time, and over the past few days especially time could not have gone any slower; my loan was spent many times over in my head browsing websites and making fantasy shopping baskets, but now it's here I can't bring myself to spend it! Everything I put in those shopping baskets has now lost its shiny glow and I don't want any of it anymore.

The thing is, I need new denim shorts, they are what I wear pretty much every day and I have repaired mine one too many times and they are only a few threads away from completely disintegrating, I need new jeans because, well, you can't have just one pair can you? I need new shoes, my beloved Fred Perry shoes, which I wear pretty much every day too, have lasted me well but the right one now has a hole in the sole and with the current weather, which promises to stay around for a while, they need to be replaced. They were so perfect, I have problem legs - in that I am very short and my legs aren't stick thin so I have to be careful when buying shoes that I can wear them with shorts/dresses/skirts and they don't 'cut my legs off' and the Freds were perfect! I've been browsing websites for a couple of hours and I want to buy things but ... I ... just ... can't. ARGH.

I'm going to ease myself in with some charity shop hunting today - giving to charity, paying low prices and, fingers crossed, finding some hidden beauties is the best way to start, I think!

In other news, I have some roses which I bought in Lidl on Thursday last week. It is now Monday (obvs) and they are still looking beautiful [as they are from Lidl I wasn't expecting much of a shelf life]! I'm very impressed Lidl, good roses.

Snaps

Well well we certainly are having our share of the ol' April showers at the moment! Good job I've got so much uni work to do that going outside isn't even an option for me at the moment eh. Oh well, indoor distractions are more than enough for me. I'm embroidering a bluebird on to a white vest top at the moment, picture to follow once it's finished. Also made a top yesterday, will have to pop that up on here some time soon.

At the moment my bed is covered with pages of notes and 6 books flopped open about Anglo-Saxon churches and, even though I am interested in them, I need a break. So, as I haven't written, properly, for over a week it's time to update this bad boy.

Holiday in Germany was beautiful, Dad had a brilliant 60th and we ate amazing food. The whole holiday was about food pretty much. Nom nom nom.

We were in the middle of the Black Forest so everything looked like this. :D. 

And the day after we got back we drove down to Padstow to leave my sister to her new job. We weren't there very long but whenever I'm by the sea or, in this case, river, I can't help but take pictures...

In other news, I must stop biting my lips. 

Tick tock

So much to catch up on! Catch up on my reading list on here, my reading list for uni..., friends, essays etc etc etc.

No time to post properly now about my holiday as we are just about to leave Cardiff to take my sister down to Padstow where she will be starting her new job tomorrow, exciting!

For now though, the clock in my bedroom has been stopped for about a week, I come back from holiday and it's started working again... weird.

Seeds

Today was a rather productive Easter Monday. I had a super breakfast made by my sister and then went out to the greenhouse with my mum to plant things, we planted courgettes, chili peppers, cucumbers and something else which I can't remember. It was lovely being in the greenhouse while it was raining, it was lovely and peaceful and was so fun! I loved getting my hands dirty and writing the labels, it was brilliant! Here's my handiwork

During Midsomer Murders I did lots of reading for uni, specifically for my 'independent study', which is a creative writing piece about Aristophanes. We got to choose the format and subject of it which is pretty cool.

I needed a break so I thought 'a ha!' I'll do some knitting and I'll get my mum to teach me how to cast on and cast off; and she did. It's easy! I've just never been shown how before. I thought I'd make an iphone case as it's quite a simple shape and so quite easy to get started with. My mum and grandma are such elegant knitters, they have a certain way of holding the needles, whereas I am all fingers and thumbs and look really clumsy when I knit but the end result ended up looking ok. Here is my finished piece

The little bird is my first attempt at embroidery and I'm quite pleased with it! It's completely free hand and was a lot easier to do than I first imagined. So 2 hours after I started my 'break' from reading this little creation was finished and I made a salad for dinner and no more reading was done - oops! 

Also, in other crafty news, I bleached a pair of shorts over the weekend, inspired by my housemate Betti (see her bleach blog here). They came out even better than I could have imagined, I will post about them tomorrow night. 

For now, it's definitely time to sleep, I turn in to such an early bird when I'm at home!

Paşti

(Title is Easter - will google translate get old? Hm. This time it's Romanian, which is fitting as my grandmother was Romanian!)

So, what's new today? Not much. Had a very relaxing Easter Sunday, hope everyone did.

We had our Easter egg hunt as normal after dad managed to get outside and hide them. I had a number of chocolate bunnies and this beauty

I'm going to have to start eating boiled eggs now, can't let it go to waste! Either that or keep it in my room and use it to hold jewellery or summat. We'll see, I do like a good boiled egg. 

Also this evening I saw the bats for the first time this year. We think they live in our roof but we're not sure, even if they don't our garden is definitely their home, I saw one big one and one baby one tonight; I checked with my parents, I'm the first to see them this year, yay! I'm very attached to the bats, plus once they're out it means it's nearly summer. 

It may be nearly summer technically but we've been checking the weather forecast and the place we're going on holiday next week is forecast snow!! Which means I'm definitely going to have to re-think my suitcase. 

I'll leave you with a rather novel picture of an owl I came across in my reading today - it is ancient Greek so does look a bit odd, but I love it nevertheless.

Mifuko ya

(The title is 'bags', I put 'bags' in to google translate and clicked on random languages, I ended up choosing Swahili, it sounded the best. I said bags {in English} too many times and it started sounding like a made up word, hate it when that happens).

Anyway, I've had a nice few days at home and will be lazing around here until Monday. I'm off on holiday on Wednesday and have two days at work and packing to do between Monday and Wednesday, not to mention uni work blaaaah.

I have had 3 perks of today:

1. Michael text me and said he'd found some books at a market he went to, Sophocles and Virgil! Yay!
2. I got an early Easter egg

3. I went down to Cardiff to pick up my parcel, the Jack Wills Rustington bag hurrah! I couldn't wait until after the Easter bank holidays so my mum kindly drove me all the way to Cardiff and back, love you mum! It is beautiful, if a bit smaller than I thought it would be. 

I do love it, it's a lovely light-weight summer bag which I think will see a lot of wear. It's 100% cotton which feels canvas-y (?), which can get grubby, especially as it's white, but that also means it's easy to wash, so even if I do end up spilling ice cream, or some other summery offering (like beer, in a beer garden :]) then it's nothing to woz about!

Another great thing about parcels from Jack Wills is the packaging, three lovely layers of reusable tissue paper, hurrah!

I'm really bad with bags, when I get one I use it non-stop. Now I have this bag it means that my beautiful Mulberry will have to become a part timer. My tan Mulberry Mitzy Hobo has been in constant use since I got it for my 21st birthday... almost 3 years ago, eek! She is looking a bit worse for wear, she's a bit battered and bruised so I think a rest will do her good...( it's weird that I refer to her as a her, isn't it?) Ne'ermind. But it is a wrench not to use her all the time!! She's so beautiful.

On the way home from collecting my lovely bag we stopped off at Tesco for my mum to 'stock up on berries'. While we were there I saw a pair of shorts I saw a few weeks ago and alas they did not have my size. Today however they did, so lovely mum got them for me - a steal at £6 I think!

They're blue - yay - and dotty - yay. 

Time for me to go and do some cooking, I'm making another Delia dish today. Delia's blackened gammon with salted caramel crackling. Mmm thanks Waitrose. It is smelling delicious, 18 minutes to go until I take it out to rest.

Mum and dad are in for a treat.

Lemon Curd

Today I got my exam timetable from uni and my sister got a new job, in beautiful Padstow of all places  - is that fair?! No, I didn't think so either.

She is now going to move to Padstow to join Rick Stein's clan. JEALOUS MUCH?? I'm super jealous, had you guessed? She's going to be living in a beautiful gorgeous place where you can get Tribute ale (my favourite) pretty much everywhere, while I'm going to be stuck in a hot, sweaty SU hall writing essays about Late Anglo Saxon grain supplies - UGH.

Anyway, one of the good things about this amazing opportunity for my sister is that she went down to Padstow with my mum today for her interview (yes, they called her not even 15 minutes after she left offering her the job, even though they said they'd be in touch within 2 days) which meant my mum went and got some super delicious bread from Rick Stein's deli, which I can't wait to have at Easter, and this beauty

We've been to Rick Stein's quite a few times, it's where my dad likes to go for his birthday trip, and the food is always super super good, but I've never seen them do doughnuts before! It had lemon curd in it. Phwoar it was good. 

That is all.

Zoom

Cor blimes that weekend went swiftly! At least I am on Easter break - hooraaaah!! No uni for a little while. However I have 12,000 words to write across 4 assignments over the next two weeks so I've got that little lot to look forward to, great (!). We are going on holiday for my dad's birthday during that time as well though, so that makes everything bearable.

I drove over to Bristol on Friday evening and we had a lovely weekend. On Saturday we skipped down to Weston Super Mare to visit my family. Weston was great fun! Unfortunately that one day out of the last I don't know how many decided to be cloudy and miserable so I didn't take as many pictures as I would have liked. Here are a few:

Michael and Nicholas tried to have a go on this bad boy but it wasn't working! How rude!

Left to right: Katie, Auntie Trish, Michael, Nicholas and Uncle Peter behind.

I spent a grand total of £1 on the 2p machine, I got so bored by the last few coins I was hoping to lose, which I eventually did - Michael was on there for ages, loving it. Katie and Nicholas absolutely loved the pier, I had never seen anything like it, there were so many machines and games! Makes Barry Island look even worse than I already thought it was. 

I wore my dress as a shirt again on the weekend, I love it but it definitely needs more buttons, using safety pins all the time is way too much effort! Still don't know whether to have it as a shirt or dress...

Apologies for the awkward photo - I don't take photos of myself hence it's a bit pants but that's how the dress/shirt/whatever it is, is looking at the moment. 

Also, I had a couple of Jack Wills vouchers lying about and thought they'd been there long enough and with my lack of funds it was nice to buy something that didn't involve any money! This bag is on its way to me: the Rustington Duffle Bag. It's so beautiful, I can't wait to have it in my grubby mits. 

How did I forget to mention last night?! I met my friends Betti and Jenny for a drink yesterday afternoon in Bristol as they were going to a gig there, I was super jealous as I loved the band they were going to see, D.R.U.G.S.. Anyway as we were sitting there Jenny only managed to get bloody guest list! Which meant Michael and I got to see them and it was brilliant, they were super. So thanks to Jenny and her well connected friends.

I did a little bit of sewing today, I made myself a skirt from an old dress that just didn't look right and I taught myself how to do button holes on my machine - yes! Only tried two and they were both pretty poor but it's a start. 

I'll leave you with a picture of the magnolia tree in my parents' garden, it's just bloomed and looks beautiful

Mister Magnolia has only one boot.