Catch Up - 12 Things Happening In My Life

I haven't been very active on here for a while! My last post was in January, so quite a few things have been happening. Here they are condensed down to a little list of 12...

1: My Birthday
February 12th was my birthday, I had a really lovely day with my other half, best friend & her partner. We call ourselves the fantastic four... It was a really relaxed day with food, films and friends. I made viennese whirls for the first time, and they were delicious!

2: Anniversary
Also on February 12th. To be honest I can't remember what we did, but it probably involved going out somewhere, food, and spending time together

3: Valentines
We don't tend to make a big deal of Valentines Day, as it follows both our anniversary and my birthday. But we always give each other a small gift and a card.

4: AAT
My level 2 accounting course has finished, I got 96% overall. Very proud of myself for this, and hoping to achieve similar results in level 3 - which started in September.

5: Vegetarian
For Lent, Andrew and I challenged ourselves to be vegetarian. It was a really easy transition, and when Easter came we decided to stay vegetarian. I don't miss eating meat at all, and I'm being much more creative with my cooking.  

6: Redundant
At the end of February I was made redundant. It was a really stressful time, and there was a lot of uncertainty around what I would do next. I worked for an additional week to tie up my work and hand it over to colleagues, while applying to all the jobs. Thankfully, I had loads of responses and a whirlwind couple of weeks full of meetings with recruiters and interviews. In the end I received 5 job offers within accounts.

7: New Job
My new role - Management Accounts Assistant. It is exactly what I was looking for, and I'm using skills learnt in my AAT course. There's a lot to learn and I have been enjoying the challenge. It's a big company, which has taken a little adjusting to on my part, but I have plenty of opportunities to learn from the management accounts team and ask a ton of questions. Plus, it's a pay rise AND a study package is included...basically the company will fund my accounting qualifications, wooo!

8: Dawn Breakers
Dawn Breakers is a 6-week exercise course, 6 am, 45 minutes, every weekday. It is intense, hard, and great all at once. I enjoyed doing this course and even signed up for another one, however I've didn't go to the classes that time around as I was way too exhausted! (See point 11 for why...)

9: Slimming World
I'm still going to Slimming World. I haven't quit yet even though I have been close to doing so. I'm finding it really difficult to stay on plan, and subsequently am not losing much weight. I want to do better.

10: Roller Derby
Also known as, the best thing ever. Roller Derby is a sport played on roller-skates. It's akin to rugby on roller-skates, minus the ball. I joined my local team in April, and have been learning a multitude of skating skills. Derby is really hard on my lower back, so I can't do as much as I would like to. I have to keep stopping to stretch out and ease the excruciating pain. The more weight I lose and the more skating i do the easier it will get, so there's another reason to get back on plan with SW.

11: Second Job
I had a second job. After leaving my full-time day job, I would go and clean offices for 2.5 hours every weekday evening. It's exhausting, but the extra money from doing this went towards saving to eventually buy a house. Maybe we'll be able to buy in the next 5 years...Ideally in the next two, but I'm not convinced it will happen that soon.

12: EGX
EGX is a gaming convention, I've been to it before, but not for the past couple of years. This year, I went up to Birmingham in September to go to it and try out new games with a group of friends. It was a fun weekend!

NaNo Fail...

So early into NaNoWriMo, I was struggling to find time to write. It got harder and harder, and everything else needed to come first. So, I decided not to beat myself up about it, and not finish this year. There's always next year, or the year after...when I have a little more free time. Sooo 5895 was what I hit on my word count this year. Maybe I'll get there next year, maybe not. I'm okay with that. 

NaNo update

It's day 11 of NaNoWriMo. I am so behind, I've written just over 5000 words and I should be heading to 25,000! It is extremely difficult to find the time to write. I think I overestimated the amount of free time I would have to do this. I've also been slow, I didn't plan anything so I'm writing as I come up with the plot. It's slowing me down as I think about what happens next. At this point in time, I don't think I'll hit the target by the end of the month. I'm feeling disappointed and a little unmotivated, but I'm going to try and keep writing, and see how far I get.   

WHAT A WEEK.

I have not had the best couple of weeks...things have been a little insane.

2 weekends ago, the bicycle I've been using to get to work was stolen. Someone got through my bike lock with bolt cutters, and cycled off into the sunrise. Luckily I hadn't spent loads of money on the bike, but it's still incredibly annoying and inconvenient!!

The week following I was obsessively searching for a new bike on gumtree, without having any luck.

At the end of the week, I was driving back to Kent. Andrew and I had been singing along to Let It Go from Frozen, laughing at ourselves once The song was over when we came to a stop in traffic, and 2 seconds later were hit from behind. the following week was an amalgamation of calls to and from insurance, organising repairs and pickups, hire cars, and all the rest. On Friday, we heard from the repairs company letting us know that our car is a write off. Our reliable Hogan is no more, after only a year - and there's nothing we could have done about it.

Now we're in a position where we need to find a new, reliable, economical car ASAP before we have to give our hire car back...on top of this, I need a bike to get into work with.

So. Freaking. Busy. 

Life Updates

Hi!

It's been a while. No fault but my own on that one - soz.

I feel like a lot has happened in the past couple of months...here's a rundown of what I've been up to:

• I moved out of the house Andrew and I were sharing together.
• I moved halfway across the country into a flat (with Andrew).
• The move was not very well planned out, and took a lot of time over several weekends to get everything moved across.
• I successfully hired, drove, and crashed a transit van.
• Lots of reading - so many reviews to write up and post!
• Work got very busy very quickly - peak trading season is upon us.
• I joined a gym
• Found and joined a new Slimming World group
• Went to Ireland
• Made several Ikea trips to kit out our flat
• My car failed her MOT and is for sale...Click here if you'd like to adopt a wonderful little runner... 

  

  I love my little Tallulah! Sad to let her go.

• Found & bought a new car
• Named new car. 'Hogan' in case you were wondering.
• Had a spa day
• had a couple of haircuts - discovered a hairdresser who is really enthusiastic about cutting curly hair, epic win for me!
• Did, and am still doing, a hell of a lotta unpacking

Thought I might have a small pitiful list but actually it turned out to be quite long! Go me. Busy bee.

You can expect some more regular posts from me now that I've settled into our flat, there's not too much more unpacking to do! Let me know if you want me to elaborate on anything above, happy to throw in a random life post!

Anywho...I promised to get a box unpacked tonight...SEEYA.

Update...

It has been a busy few weeks. I feel like since we moved, I haven't really had the chance to stop and chill out. Not that I have found the time now, I was feeling guilty for neglecting my blog again so I'm cramming in some time to post. Since my last post, I had a birthday, anniversary, Valentine's day, saw a musical, travelled home a couple of times and had A's mum, aunt and uncle over for a week while they cleared out the house.

My birthday and anniversary are on the same day, shortly followed by valentines day. (Lucky me, I get spoiled!) I didn't do very much for my birthday until the weekends following, but I got some lovely gifts and cards on the day, as well as cake!

Andrews mum, aunt and uncle came down on my birthday, and we suddenly had a very full house. While they were there clearing out the house, we tried to keep out of their way.

The weekend following my birthday (while A's family were still at the house), we met my bff and her partner halfway between where we live, and where they live and went for lunch. This turned into going back to theirs and staying the night, which was fun. On the Sunday we went for a long walk with her greyhounds, had lunch, then Andrew and I said our goodbyes and headed to the cinema. 1 film later it was time to drive the 2 hours home.

I had my first work bookclub on Tuesday evening, which if the empty bottles of wine have any say was a successful evening. Yay me - it was kind of my idea so I was pleased it went well!

Andrews family stayed until Wednesday. While it was nice to have them over, it was also nice to have some time to ourselves again.

Friday I was at a German beer evening with work, many a stein was drunk (I had 2, so actually not that many).

The weekend came around, and we were busy saturday morning with the charity that had come to pick up a load of stuff. Saturday evening we went to see Wicked - and had use of the VIP lounge. Thank you Andrew! The show was amazing. Despite knowing the big thing that happens before the interval, it still gave me goosebumps!

Sunday we went on a long walk through awful mud - I slipped over in it - then visited Andrews family before having dinner and watching a film with mine. Back late again on Sunday evening.

That has been my life - around working - up until now! Hope you have had a good couple of weeks...I plan to be posting more regularly so I should be popping up again this week!

Happy Tuesday...

23 Things About Moving Out

Andrew and I moved out on the 31st January, it's been 10 days and things are going well. Sooo with me being me, I made a list of things I've learnt so far about about moving out...

Also, I may be jumping on the blog list bandwagon a little bit. Oops.

Here we go...

1. Moving out is exciting.
2. You realise how much stuff you actually own.
3. Packing is hard work.
4. It makes you think about all the clothes you never wear.
5. You start to think about how you're going to survive after moving away from where you have lived all your life. 
6. Seriously. So. Much. Stuff.
7. Where do boxes even come from? And why are they so expensive??
8. Moving in is messy.
9. It takes forever to unpack.
10. It's awesome to finally move out with your long term partner
11. Living with one other person, who works odd shifts means you are in the house all alone sometimes...which isn't always that fun.
12. Housework is harder than it looks
13. It takes a long time to heat up a house
14. ALL the stuff.
15. Unpacking takes forever. I haven't even moved all of my stuff here yet and I have still been unable to unpack a small portion of my things.
16. Moving out is expensive.
17. There are always a million things to do around the house, and millions of lists to go with them
18. Living with people at uni is not like living with your boyfriend full time.
19. It's really nice to come home to your boyfriend and spend some time hanging out.
20. Finding homes for all your things is both laborious and a little bit fun.
21. Moving a sofa through a small door, and around into another small door is quite difficult.
22. Compromise. Get used to doing it fast.
23. Running a household is a very 'adult' thing, but when it comes down to it, you still feel like a kid playing house from time to time.

Voila, a list for you to feast your eyes upon! 

Life in Reveiw - 2014 6 month life update

Well...I kind of missed the previous 6 months of this year in reviews, but such is life. I'll do a round up from January aaaall the way until now! Aren't you lucky.

I totally dropped the ball on this blog, I have about 4 drafts which sit unfinished and I haven't posted in forever!! I'm sorry world, I don't mean to be such a disappointment.

Well, life updates are in order I suppose.

Career: Still working at Bluw as a Sales Administrator, work is quite stressful at the moment with a huge system switchover and transferring everything. The days feel long, and the commute feels longer-while making my budget fall short. However, the people are good, I get time to read on the train, and being employed is always a bonus so...

Driving: Haven't passed my driving test yet. I did a test in June, but failed on 1 major and 4 minors. Which as you can probably imagine was very annoying at the time...Have re-booked and I'm hoping to bring better news in the next update. 

Blogging: Well as you know I've been really crap with this blog, however over on my health blog haha health, what is that? I've been pretty consistent in posting at least once a week. yaaay. My plan is to be more active on this blog by setting a day where I have. To Post. Not because this blog is a burden, but because I want to, despite my laziness! I also want to update the name of this blog, as I really don't feel that the blog name is relevant anymore, because I haven't been blogging about my wasted clothing! Any suggestions are welcome...I will be brainstorming the brain out of this!

Relationships: Mr Gandyman and I are really good, as always *wink*. Family are all good, and friends also. Though I do not like my bestie being so far away...but hey ho - I'll be seeing miss RoanRider and her handsome MrMan soooon!

Health & Fitness:  I regularly update my BekBek blog on this front, but as it's quite a large part of my life and one of my new years resolutions I figured it was worth a mention! I am not on track to loose 2 stone by July as I set out to in January, however I believe I can reach this by the end of this year (I hope). I recently ran a Race For Life 5k, and am coming up to doing a Pretty Muddy - which I am both terrified and excited for.

Sister Update: I asked Sisterbell to write a guest post on here, but she didn't want to (I think she was too shy...Read: Lazy). As we speak she is putting a mini Christmas tree up my sleeve. She has finished her exams, and is rehearsing for her school summer play - Beauty and the Beast. This evening she has also spent a large amount of time raiding my wardrobe for a dress to wear. She is much smaller than me, so my old dresses are like a second hand shop to her, and to be honest, someone may as well wear them.

Books: I've been reading quite a lot on the commute to work, and recently finished the Divergent Trilogy - which I really enjoyed. Though I was hoping for a different ending...I may post some reviews up here, I hope I will, but who knows in this wacky life what I will actually have time to do!

Life in general: Is good. I feel a little like I'm plodding along waiting for something to happen though...I'm not sure if that's because I'm feeling lethargic, or if I'm dissatisfied with something. Probably my job, or it could be monetary based, but who knows.

Coming Up: Things I'm looking forward to in the remainder of this year. 

• Passing my driving test
• Pretty Muddy
• Eurogamer
• Hovercraft Driving this month!!
• Christmas I know it's early...but who cares!
• Blogging regularly
• Finally losing some weight - it will happen this year. I can feel it.