One year ago, I was heading off on an adventure in which I would...
... fly for the first time (my first flight was a 10-hour long haul to Houston... talk about throwing myself in at the deep end!)
... trek through a cloud forest
... view breathtaking scenery across two countries (Honduras and Guatemala)
... try new food (yes, that is a banana, just wild one with giant black pips)
... discover a whole host of wild and exotic creatures
... climb an insanely tall tree
... make new friends (Chepe!)
... sleep in a hammock
... a hammock over a river!
... learn to scuba dive
... experience a new culture
... discover that McDonalds is literally EVERYWHERE
Looking back at these pictures now makes me desperate to go back there. The brief 2 and a half weeks I spent there do not seem like long enough, and if I ever get the chance to return I will jump at it. Any reservations I had about the trip before I went turned out to be completely unjustified, and I can honestly say I it was the best experience of my life. It really opened my eyes, and it's made me long to get out and discover the world.
I still can't quite believe it's been a whole year, the time has just flown by. Makes me wonder where I'll be and what I'll be doing this time next year...
After moving everything into the new house on the 1st of July, all that was left was for me to get everything out of my room and head home. On the 2nd of July, after many, MANY trips up and down the countless stairs from my flat to the car and much squishing and rearranging of boxes to make everything fit (which it did, just) the car was packed up and we were ready to leave.
My room looked so horrible and empty with all my stuff gone :(. Even though I felt like I didn't enjoy most of the year, I was still sad to leave somewhere where I lived for 9 months. Knowing that I'll never set foot in that room or that building ever again is a really bizarre feeling, and it makes me feel strange and a bit choked up whenever I think of it. That's probably a bit of an overreaction, but I've never experienced something like this before so I don't really know how to deal with it. But it's going to be exactly the same at the end of next year, and even worse the year after that when I finish uni, so I guess I just have to man up haha.
Mum and I then headed off to Devon to see Alan for a few days, in which the glorious weather of the previous couple of weeks disappeared almost completely and we were left with the typical British rain. Didn't stop me cramming in as many Hocking's ice creams as possible though!
I think this is one of those "the picture says it all" moments...After pulling out bags of clothes from the very stuffed car when we arrived in Devon, saying we had trouble getting everything back in again would be an understatement. The puzzled expressions on the faces of Dinny, mum and I are priceless, all of us wondering how on Earth all of my junk was ever going to fit and the car still be drivable. But we managed (phew!), and we made it home in one piece (after getting the car stuck on a huge rock when we pulled over to let someone pass on the lane... it took the 3 of us in the photo plus another neighbour to move this huge rock far enough away from the car for us to be able to move again, argh!).
Lessons learnt: 1) Don't own so much crap 2) Don't try and fit all of said crap into the back of a car. Endless headaches will be caused.
Going back to lesson number 1, I've been home for 9 days now and said crap is still swallowing my bedroom floor because I'm too lazy to unpack. *sigh*. I really need to downsize...
Armed robbery at Barclays bank on Ashford High Street, about half a mile from home! This made it as 'breaking news' on Sky News, and there were reports being given every 5 or 10 minutes on the situation.
It is believed he entered the bank at 4pm brandishing a sawn-off shotgun then handcuffed the staff and customers using plastic cable ties and made them put on white boiler suits. One of the hostages said he ordered them to blackout the windows of the bank using spray paint. When police responded to the scene and told the suspect to surrender he is understood to have shouted to them that he had “dynamite” with him inside.
Thankfully he came out and was arrested before anyone was seriously hurt. The whole thing did drag on for 3 hours though, it must have been unbelievably horrible for the poor people trapped inside.
You hear about things like this all the time on TV, yet it really hits you and feels so much worse when it's so close to home.
The chaos you see behind me is what's left of my uni room. Most of it's hidden under the desk though, but the quantity of stuff is pretty horrific. I never knew I owned so much stuff!
For the past week or so I've been busy packing up my life ready to move out of here and back home for the summer. Some of my stuff (kitchen stuff, duvet etc.) needs to be moved into the new house (and left in a corner while as someone else will be occupying my room), but the vast majority of it is coming back to Ashford with me.
To anyone who reads this blog, I'm sorry I've been absent. I'll be back soon, I promise. (Also, why don't you leave a comment and say hello? I don't bite :P)
Saturday night was our end of year uni garden party. Much fun was had, including childish games of hook-a-duck, blowing bubbles, a bit too much Pimms, fireworks, and dancing. The good weather held out (just - it was miserable yesterday and has rained non-stop today, typical Britain), making the garden part of the evening lovely and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I even enjoyed the Stannary party too, possibly because of the consumption of a bit too much alcohol, but also possibly because of the relief of one year being over and done with.
It still seems so surreal that I'm 1/3rd of the way towards completing my degree - I still feel so young and like university should be far away in the distant future, yet it's now and I've already completed a full year. My inner child also isn't helping me come to terms with the fact that I'm less than 4 months away from hitting the big 2-0 and no longer being a teenager. Yikes! Here's to this year, my 15th year in education, and to all the things the next two years will bring!
... I met a man with seven wives Each wife had seven sacks Each sack had seven cats Each cat had seven kits Kits, cat, sacks, wives How many were going to St. Ives?
Now that exams are over I've got four months of doing whatever I please before uni starts again, so as the sun has been shining for the past few days I decided to take a trip to St. Ives yesterday. The train journey there was beautiful, miles of countryside alive in vibrant greens, pinks, yellows, reds, blues... just the way summer should be. As it's half term St. Ives was packed with families who flocked to the beaches, and I assumed that squealing kids and swarms of people would ruin the day slightly by making it impossible to get anywhere. Thankfully that wasn't the case, as a lot of people had set up camp on the main beaches leaving the small beaches and the shopping streets at a bearable crowd level.
I started off my day by having a wander round the shops. As well as the usual chain shops and shops selling touristy things there are lots of little gems of shops tucked away in side streets which would be easy to miss if you weren't looking out for them. There's a fabulous shop selling handcrafted Russian items, including some beautiful matryoshkas. I may have to go back and treat myself to one if I've done well in my exams! I found a knitting shop which also sold bear-making kits, and I bought myself a kit to make a little 7cm tall bear. After a bit of searching I also found a bead shop (I can never go somewhere new without knowing if there's a bead shop nearby! haha). The shop's called GJ Beads and they have a huge selection of seed beads as well as other beads, and they're all sorted by colour turning the shop into a beautiful rainbow. Make sure you have a look if you're ever in town! I bought a kumihimo kit from them which I'm going to try out once I've finished this post - from simply looking at the instructions it looks a bit daunting, but hopefully, as I often find, doing it will be a lot simpler than looking at a bunch of words on paper. After I'd finished looking round the shops I was feeling a bit peckish so bought myself a pot of crab meat. I love it and would eat it more often if it wasn't so expensive, so for now it'll just have to stay as a holiday treat. Then I went to an ice-cream parlour and got some mango sorbet in a cone (which was absolutely delicious) and took a stroll along the beach while eating it. I managed to avoid getting attacked by seagulls who were after my food, even though some swooped down scarily close to my head! I had such a lovely day, even though I did spend it by myself. I was able to take things at my own pace, and there were no arguments or insults like those that seem to have become custom when I'm out with "friends". It made a refreshing change to go somewhere other than Falmouth of Truro, especially as it was somewhere beautiful and picturesque. I'll definitely be seeing a lot more of St. Ives this summer!
I decorated this bird house to use as my "jar" for the the Jar of Whimsies swap on Craftster. I decorated it by hand, hunted high and low for tiny treasures to put in, packaged it up with love... only for it to get lost in the post somewhere between here and Pennsylvania *sobs*. I'm so disappointed that my partner never received it, I found so many cool little bits and pieces in charity shops that I'm obviously never going to find again - things like vintage postcards that were written and sent decades ago, tiny little photo frames, a tiny ceramic bird, a little wooden owl... all lost and alone somewhere unknown in the postal system. Both packages for this swap got lost, so we're sending replacements. I'm sure I'll still be able to fill the replacement container I'm sending with lots of nice things, but it won't be quite the same and my heart's not completely in it any more. Oh well, such is life. I knew I was risking it not getting there when I posted it by surface mail, but because the house is made from thick wood it made the package unbelievably heavy so posting it by air mail (the more reliable option) would've at least doubled the postage making it cost over £20 to post!
Anyway, that's enough of that. Back to the craft.
I originally thought about painting the design on with acrylic paint, but my painting skills aren't that great yet so my design would've lacked the detail I wanted it to have. In the end I opted for good ol' coloured pencils. This meant I could put in the shading and details needed to stop the tree and grass looking like a brown squiggly mess and a monotone green blob. It was pretty hard drawing on the wood as I couldn't get completely smooth lines because of the ridges of the wood grain. That wasn't a problem for the tree and grass, but it made it a lot more difficult to do the swallows, especially their tails. I was really pleased with how this turned out as I've never done a project like it before. I'm really tempted to make another one for myself, it would look lovely hanging in the apple tree in the garden in autumn. I think next time I might try sanding the surface slightly before drawing to see if I can make my lines more smooth.
I've been inspired by other crafters on websites like Craftster to try and complete 50 projects this year. I know, it seems a little crazy starting nearly half way through the year, but I've got a nice long summer break coming up so I'll have plenty of free time for crafting. Plus I'm going to count projects I've already done this year, so it's not a whole new 50 projects from now on. I've only got 29 projects down so far but I'm sure it won't be difficult to come up with more amazing things I want to make.
I'm going to number the projects as I complete them (number 1 is the first project I finished, number 2 the second and so on), and the unfinished/not yet started projects further down the list will just be in a random order and each one will be moved further up the list and re-numbered once it's completed.
On to the list:
Completed projects: 1. Bird house 2. Tree of life pendant
In progress: 3. Daisy chain beaded bracelet 4. Crochet arm warmers
Still to come: 5. Beaded butterfly 6. Jane Austen bracelet 7. Wave bracelet 8. Sophia holdall 9. Beaded poppy 10. Altered jigsaw 11. Photo cube 12. Sock pig 13. Fused plastic sandwich wrap 14. Button necklace 15. Button earrings 16. Knitting needle roll 17. Salt scrub 18. Face mask 19. Bird embroideries to decorate my room 20. Curling ribbon coasters 21. Jewellery holder 22. Knitted Sackboy 23. Recipe book 24. Wool dryer balls 25. Temari 26. Pin cushion thread catcher 27. Decorated tissue box covers – one for home room and one for uni room 28. Turtle pincushion 29. Apron to wear while crafting
Watch this space for info and photos on the finished items!
I’d love to hear from other people who have set themselves the same or similar task this year, it would be great to see how people get on and the variety of things they create.
I got out of the habit of posting, again. I keep thinking of things to post though, so I'm going to try my best to stick at it this time.
So, what have I been up to for the last month?
Digging for buried treasure and seeing what's out at sea on the beach at Westward Ho!, 10th April
Visiting Jane Austen's House, 12th April
I also spent far too much time and money at the Big Bead Show at Sandown Park (but it's to make pretty things so I think I should be excused!) - my first project with my new goodies is underway, so more on this later when it's finished! I went go-karting with Chris and family and was spectacularly terrible at it - I managed to spin off the track on my first lap! Chris and I saw Diversity from Britain's Got Talent that evening. They were pretty good, dancing isn't really my thing but they pulled off some pretty impressive moves. Chris and I saw Derren Brown the week after. It was amazing, I would love to know how on Earth he comes up with his stuff because the amount of little details that only fall into place at the end are incredible. I know it's all just tricks, but I still cannot imagine how he does it all.
I finished off my Easter holiday with a trip to Longleat with Chris.
Holding a Royal Python (who's 18 years old but for some reason just didn't grow to the size she should've) and a tarantula - Chris was too scared to hold either of them but I jumped at the chance!
Now I'm back in Cornwall, procrastinating studying hard for exams. I've done one already, but have three more to go. After that though I am free until October, I can't wait!
I've just been so incredibly busy over the past few weeks that I've had no time to sit and write a decent blog post.
Things that have been happening in my life since I last posted:
Finished all of my lectures in my first year of uni, yay! Went out on the SJA night exercise on Dartmoor which was really fun. We did a bunch of different team building and first aid task, all while taking care of an important box of eggs (which were meant to be a swine flu cure so it was vital that we didn't break them). We got to use ambulance equipment like a defibrillator and stretchers which was pretty cool, and I'm excited to do more training to learn how to use all the other stuff. My team won, obviously :P. We came first out of 6 teams - we broke no eggs whereas 3 of the other groups broke at least one, and out of the 3 groups who broke no eggs we were then given points on how well we did for each of the tasks. I was impressed that we scored higher than teams that were being assessed for qualifications 2 or 3 levels above us!
Made the epic trip home, and now I'm here until the beginning of May until I have to travel back to "lovely" Falmouth. I'm holding out hope that when I get back the weather will be glorious so I can finally get to the beach and go on nice long walks. I only have 4 exams in May and I'll possibly stay until July (when I need to sign the contract on the new house, pay rent and collect keys), so I need something to keep me occupied until then, and I've done pretty much every wet weather activity there is!
Went out to Zizzi and Revolution in Richmond for Kat's birthday. I ended up swapping bits of my dinner in Zizzi (my avocado (which I hate because it's tasteless and mushy) for a slice of Jen's pizza, not exactly healthy but better tasting!), but the parts of my meal I did actually eat were yummy. I tried parma violet vodka in Revolution which was soooo good, and I had a couple of cola pear cocktails (cola cube and pear drop vodkas with lemonade) which were really sweet but still yum.
The next day I trotted off down to Portsmouth with Kat and Rachel for Kat's birthday. Not goona lie, Kat's halls are rubbish compared to mine (even she thinks so so it's alright) - they're tiny, with one toilet (that doesn't flush properly, I got left a lovely "present" in the morning, eww) between the 5 of them in the flat, and they're right on a public street and surrounded by loads of noisy people. On the plus side though, she is literally about 5 minutes away from everything - train station, shops, places to eat, lecture theatres... all of them are a short, gentle stroll away. And there are no hills - I hate that about Falmouth, nothing is on flat ground and even after almost 7 months my legs still burn any time I walk up a hill. Anyway, back to the story of Portsmouth... We had a look round the shops in the afternoon and then saw Madina Lake in the evening. They were amazing, as always, and reminded me of why I loved them so much over a year ago. I managed to nab myself a guitar pick which was a highlight of the night I reckon. The next day we just lazed around singing the duck song (before you watch, it's stupidly catchy and gets stuck in your head for days - you have been warned!)
Thennn the next day I went down to Devon to see Alan. I'd packed for rubbish weather but it ended up being beautiful the whole time we were there and the sun was shining every day. We even managed to go for a walk on Westward Ho! beach yesterday which was really nice. I've had a sore throat since Friday though which kinda spoiled it. I have no idea what it is, I thought it was a cold but it's a different kind of sore throat to the one I normally get just before a cold, and I've had bad headaches and severe tiredness too. Hopefully it'll clear up soon.
Anddddd I think that just about covers everything! Being ill and tired has probably made me ramble on a lot, so I'll probably read this in a few days and wonder what on earth I was on about haha.
Possibly off to Jane Austen's house tomorrow which should be interesting. When my mum went years ago she said you had to take your shoes off before you could go in to stop the floor getting wrecked. To be honest I'd be more worried about people making the whole house stink with their naked feet, eww!
Not your typical 21 year old student currently living in Cornwall, UK but hailing from the suburbs of London. Just about to graduate uni with a degree in Zoology, but now feeling slightly lost and not knowing where to head next in life. I love to craft and spend most of my free time making pretty things.
... fly for the first time (my first flight was a 10-hour long haul to Houston... talk about throwing myself in at the deep end!)
... trek through a cloud forest
... view breathtaking scenery across two countries (Honduras and Guatemala)
... try new food (yes, that is a banana, just wild one with giant black pips)
... discover a whole host of wild and exotic creatures
... climb an insanely tall tree
... make new friends (Chepe!)
... sleep in a hammock
... a hammock over a river!
... learn to scuba dive
... experience a new culture
... discover that McDonalds is literally EVERYWHERE
