2013: A Recap.

This is the last photo I published to my blog in 2012.
A lot has happened in the months since then, and many moments were captured.

So… here’s my recap of 2013 in pictures…

January

I took my first 50 Week Photo, named “Steaming Mug Of Ice”.

Grant came to visit and we frolicked in the snow…

And I used a 5×4 camera for the first time.

*

February

We celebrated our 1 year anniversary…

And Dom got me some lovely presents…

… and the sun shone for the first time in months.

*

March

We played chess…

Pulled stupid faces…

And spent time with my little girl.

*

April

Grant and I went to see and met Derren Brown.

And sipped free champagne for his 21st!

Oh… and I turned myself into a puppet.

*

May

I dyed my hair orange…

Sweep wore a coat…

We laughed… ❤

Spent time with friends…

And I watched a lot of Dexter… 🙂

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June

I started rereading all of Harry Potter… (In the bath… ahem)

Summertime started peaking out of hibernation…

I went to Download Festival for the first time…

Finally saw Slipknot live…

Plus Rammstein! (Among others)

And turned myself into an Elf!

*

July

We went to Oxford for my 21st!

Celebrated with Misty…

Tried Jason’s amazing cocktails…

Drank yet more free champagne with these rascals!

Jason, Tav and Grant. 🙂

We saw Cirque Du Soleil: Alegria in London…

I made my first piece of pottery!

And we sunbathed the month away!

*

August

I dyed my hair back to its natural colour for the first time in 5 years!

Dom and I went on our first holiday, and my first one in 7 years!

We went to Venice!

And we had an amazing time!

*

September

We went to Yorkshire and spent time with my “little” brother…

Plus Vladimir the Impaler!

My sister came to stay…

My laptop died right before term restarted…

So I got my first Mac!

Some friends came to Manchester…

And my precious little baby girl sadly lost her fight with cancer…

*

October

I got my new winter coat.

Found the first conkers of the season…

Developed a little obsession with them…

Got dressed up for the Manchester Zombie Walk…

And made brookies!

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November

I got a surprise present from Dom!

Shot my photographs for the exhibition…

Got the seal of approval for my images from my tutor…

Went to bonfire night at the Alma…

Visited Alton Towers with friends and saw the fireworks!

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December

I got my business cards…

Spent most of my time getting the exhibition together…

Put up my first Christmas tree in my own home…

Watched Elf with my friends…

Opened my first exhibition of my work…

Went drinking after the exhibition with my fellow photographers…

We had our first Christmas spent together!

And I got Christmas bow ties for all the animals!

I finally got Starbucks to call me “Gandalf”…

And we saw in the New Year in Reading with my lovely sister and her boyfriend.

*

2013 was an absolute whirlwind. Some incredible memories created, new friends made, and sadly some goodbyes too.

I want to wish all my beautiful followers a Happy New Year, and I sincerely hope you all have a great 2014.

❤

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Making A House A Home…

I moved into my new house for the second year of University 6 days ago now. Already some issues with the place have cropped up, such as the house being so beyond filthy when we moved in that we had to spend 3 days doing nothing but cleaning before we were able to even unpack anything, and the drains needing to be looked at by a plumber… However, as Dom and I have now effectively moved in together and are sharing a room, we managed to persuade our house mate Steph to swap rooms with us as she had the biggest room and yet is only a single person. 

Other than the general condition of the house and the silly mistake of bargaining away ALL of the furniture in our room to acquire a decent size bedroom, its been nice to actually be all moved in and settled. I’ve finally sound a solution to the ‘no furniture’ problem with my clothing too so finally feel nice and organised. 

The only thing to think about now is getting through the next few weeks on the money I have remaining after paying for cleaning products to sort out the state of the house that shouldn’t have been our job to do anyway, before our loans come through on the 17th. Also need to take it up with the landlord various issues we found with the house when we moved in, including mould in most rooms, the general condition of the house and the fact that there is a weird smell coming from the drains that will not budge, so we need a plumber in. I hope he won’t be difficult with it.

I feel happier now we’re all settled in now though. I feel like I can start getting into a good routine again with things. Its nice to be living back with friends again, I prefer being self sufficient to living under another’s roof by far. I’m too independent to not live in my own environment at this point I think. 

I’ve become worryingly addicted to scented candles now as well, I can’t seem to help myself if I walk past some, I just want to buy ALL OF THE CANDLES! Probably my desperation to extinguish any bad smell remaining in this house to be honest.

Next week my sister is coming to visit which will be awesome. So next mission is to tackle the spare room ready for her to come and stay in. We also need to be fully sorted out by the 29th as we are hosting a massive house warming which I am really looking forward to, as not only do I get to have my friends up who I’ve not seen in ages, but Dom’s best friend Hollie is able to come as well, and I can’t wait to meet her. 🙂

Right now, life is going alright. I hope it continues to go well. 🙂

 

*Picture Unrelated. It’s just fluffy and cute. 🙂

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My half awesome, half fail week & The Avengers Assemble.

Dom sent his old mac to a repair store to have a new logic board put in it, and we were going halves on the cost of repair, for him to then give it to me as a gift. It’s a 2007 model, and it’s awesome. We were charged £460 in new parts, £80 in labour, £80 for new RAM, plus VAT and various other things. It totalled about £700 in for it to be fixed. We got it home, and two days later, it’s broken. The logic board is dead. The thing we were charged £460 to be replaced. And the professional Apple repair team had managed to totally wreck the insides of the mac, including the very basic way new RAM is inserted, when we opened it up to check why it was that it suddenly wasn’t turning on after 2 days. Genius. I smell a refund. And a lost customer.

Another exciting part of the week is that I narrowly avoided going to hospital to be treated to degree burns, when the very safe and not at all outdated cooker decided to go haywire and burn the shit out of my hand and legs in a fit of sausage frying rage. I’ve got two very unpleasant blisters on my fingers, one of which could have compromised my nail, as it is directly on the tip, and several just as unpleasant burns on my leg. Luckily, I knew exactly what to do as soon as I was burnt, and saved myself from worse happening. Plus Dom is trained in first aid so he was able to assist me and get the worse of the damage seen to instantly without having to go to hospital.

However, there have been some definite highlights to this week. We are back at Uni so I’ve handed in a load of work, only to be given new assignments to complete. I’ve been given some good feedback on my work though, which is encouraging. Also, Steph and I went on a slight shopping spree, and I’ve wound up with new shoes, new tops, new leggings, and a really obnoxious new nail colour. (:
Dom also impulse bought me a new iPod Touch… which I was absolutely shocked by, and over the moon with. It’s awesome, I’ve hardly put it down since I opened it.

Another thing, was we went to see The Avengers Assemble yesterday. If you haven’t seen it… go and see it. Now. Stop reading this, and go book a ticket. It was fricking AWESOME. It has everything cool that could ever happen in a movie, and put it all together in a two hour long epic triumph. It has explosions, aliens, spaceships, super heroes, nuclear weapons, it was funny, it has the Hulk beating people up, Scarlett Johanson in a tight black outfit, it is a Marvel film, Robert Downey Jr, Samuel L Jackson has an eyepatch in it…. I mean come on…. the shit was awesome. In every way.
Highly recommended film. Full of epic win. From start to finish. GO WATCH IT NOW.

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Origami Unicorn.

Yesterday, after a day in Manchester doing some shopping with Dom, we stopped by Starbucks before going home with our haul.
We sat down with our drinks, discussing a friend of mine who called me asking my opinion on a decision he has made, to start up a ‘casual sex’ relationship with an ex of his. I warned him this wasn’t a good idea and that one of them would quickly start to feel something more again. I told him that if he didn’t want to restart a relationship with her, he should get out now before the feelings would be allowed to develop. He chose to ignore the advice I gave him, so Dom put a bet on with him that I would end up right, and that things would turn the way I predicted.
*EDIT* And, 4 hours after I originally posted this, I got a phone call from my friend. I was right. And Dom’s won £30 quid in the bet. I told him I was always right about this stuff.

We sat discussing this, while on the sofa next to our seats, was a man sitting on his own reading from his Kindle, and listening to his iPod. I pointed out to Dom that every time my friend made a decision like this, I always, without fail, predicted the correct outcome, and that I was positive this would be no different.
All of a sudden, the man who was sitting near us, who we assumed had been listening to his music, rather than to us, leant over and offered his own insight to the situation.
Surprised, we listened to what he had to say, and agreed with his opinion on the subject. Once he had finished talking, he went back to reading his book.
Bemused, we continued our discussion, moving on to my friend’s previous relationships, and how I had correctly predicted how each of them would turn out. I also noted that most of his girlfriends had always been jealous of my friendship with their boyfriend. I don’t know if this makes me a weird ‘girl’, but I honestly for the life of me, cannot understand other female’s logic when it comes to matters like this. I am not the jealous type, and any boyfriend I have been with, have always had female friends who I have never had any kind of worry about, or any kind of jealously; I am only jealous when I know for a fact that there is something to be worried about- e.g. they actually try it on with my boyfriend. Until I am given a reason to be jealous, I refuse to be that girl. Other females tend to be different from me in this way; they seem to see ANY other female in their partner’s life as a threat, unless they are family. This isn’t something I’m saying applies to ALL females, don’t get me wrong, but certainly in the cases of each of my friend’s exes and other females I have observed, this seems to be the case.
As I was relaying this to Dom, our friendly stranger leant over once more to offer his insight.
He started talking about how we, as humans, have evolved to think this way- we feel jealously because, in our evolutionary history, we want to protect our ‘mates’ as they are what will produce us offspring. Though we have evolved out of that primitive way of looking at things, our instincts still tell us to feel jealous of anyone we could view as a threat to the survival of our relationships, and therefore our chance for offspring.

This is all stuff I knew already, but I was fascinated by this man who so quietly sat in Starbucks, and so easily engaged two people he had never met before in conversation. I’m quite a shy person when I first meet someone, and I’m not at all the sort to talk to or start a conversation with strangers. This guy was ballsy and interesting and intelligent. He didn’t attempt to hide the fact that he was listening to our discussion, and was even confident enough to offer his own opinion to what we were talking about.

When he left, he put on his coat and a hat. He walked past us and tipped his hat to us, and went on his way. He left behind on the table, a yellow cardboard origami unicorn of his own creation.

I picked up the unicorn and took it home with me, to remind me that out there in the world, there still are people who are friendly, and wise. And sometimes, they’re just the guy sitting next to you, alone in Starbucks.

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The Easter Weekend Down South

On Thursday I got the train back to Oxford from Manchester at half twelve in the afternoon. Since then, I’ve had a BUSY time, considering it’s only been a day and a half.

Once I reached Oxford, narrowly escaping death at the hands of my clearly psychopathic, very talkative but not legible seat-mate on the train, I was met by my friend Lucy. We went back to her house briefly to select some films for our night in with chocolate, and headed to a pub for some drinks. 
Then to my best friend Tav’s house for the three of us to have a meal. Tired from my journey and early morning / late night, I wanted to go home and relax. They had other ideas. A club in Oxford was doing an  Easter free entry night, and they decided we had to go along. After much persuading I agreed, and we headed to another pub for a drink with my parents, before back to my house, then back to Lucy’s to get ready for our night out.
In all honesty, I’m glad I went now. The club was kind of quiet, but it was a good night; I got to see my friend Grant who I’d not seen for ages, and also my friend Kat, which was good. Plus I got a new dress out of it, as Lucy didn’t want it any more. (:

Today, my sister, her boyfriend and his son came over for a family Easter meal. Tav stayed too as she was over the night before. We had an Easter Egg Hunt, which is always violent when myself and my sister Gwen are involved as we are both very competitive, and made worse by adding her boyfriend Mark, Tav and Mark’s son Shamen into the mix. Tav ended up slamming a door on me as we rushed to find the next clue, and shoved me to the floor when I found it before her. I love my best friend. 😛
Tav and I also found time to squeeze in a photo shoot for Uni before she left.
The rest of my evening has been spent cuddling my cat, eating M+M’s and being on Skype to Dom. 

Still got a lot to fit in before I go back to Manchester on Tuesday, and I’m already knackered! Still, it’s been fun so far. Happy Easter everyone!

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My Life in Letters: C. & Spring has Sprung!

Well, this weekend was pretty awesome. Finally, there’s been amazing weather! Really sunny and warm, but with a cool breeze- bliss!
Steph, Dom and I spent the Friday exploring. We can see hills in the distance from our flat, and we were determined to walk to them. So we set off in the general direction of the hills, and after an hour or so of walking through the really, really rough areas of Bolton, we found a Manor House, and a forest with a river and little streams and walking path and all sorts! We were so excited to see something that wasn’t concrete that we spent all day there, walking a total of about 9 miles.

 

On Saturday we continued our adventures and went into Manchester, where we went to the Museum. We went to see the dinosaurs, but mainly found ourselves confronted by a load of stuffed birds and big cats. Which made us all sad. But it was a really good day nonetheless.

Anyway, onto the Letter of the day, and I’ll keep it brief as this is already pretty long.

The obvious one for ‘C’ to define something important in my life? Besides a wide range of people who I love with a name beginning with it: Charlie, Caz, Clara, Chris, Christopher, Craig… the word for me today is “Camera.”
It’s part of my Username, I know, but that’s not the reason. If you’ve read my previous entries you will know I am studying Photography at University. But that’s not the only reason why I chose Camera for my word to define myself. I first developed an interest in Photographs and consequently Cameras when I was about 11. We moved to Yorkshire, Hebden Bridge, and when I first walked to the top of the valley with my sister and my dog, I was filled with an overwhelming desire to have a camera with me to take a photo of the view. I went into town and bought a load of disposable cameras with my saved up money from my cleaning job, and went back up to take photos of the town from above. Technically speaking, that means my first camera was a disposable one. After that, my father noticed my interest, and as we’d never bonded, and he did photography himself at University, he bought me my first real camera- a Nikon SLR film camera. I still use it to this day, 9 years on. It also came with my favourite of my lenses.

So, that’s what the word “Camera” means to me. (:

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