LIFE: Photo an Hour March 2016

If you didn't think the year was flying by already, well it's rolled around to another Photo an Hour Link up, to remind you just how quickly the months are passing us by. Sundays are typically our lazy days, we may pretend to be adults and get dressed, poke some DIY, do the weekly shop. This week we were enchanted by the blue skies and headed to the zoo for a wander and then flopped back on the sofa and went back to being lazy.

Sunday began with a late start to the day (10am) the usual coffee, cereals and catching up on a couple of pages of my new read - The Witches, which as you probably might have guessed is all about the Salem Witch Trails of 1692. Then I finally got around to opening up the Easter package from the homeland - some yummy looking Harry Hopalot chocolate figures from Thorntons.

I lost track of time when we were actually at the Detroit Zoo when it came to live updating, but hey I was having too much fun. With blue skies and warm temp, it was a perfect day to visit, loads of animals were up and playing around, especially fun to watch the young Chimpanzee's climbing and jumping off rocks and rolling down hills.

Fun for hobby time - cross stitching a Michael Powell design titled Garden Shed that will eventually end up upon a birthday card, and of course coloring in one of my favorite books - Unicorns Are Jerks. Because Unicorns fart in elevators, on purpose, if you didn't know.

5pm was time for tea! Some yummy homemade egg fried rice with lots of veg and crab. Then watching Windows decide it wanted to update. Had I know this earlier, this would probably have been achieved hours earlier. Yawn.

Then we ended the day, well more like 7pm (because my phone was dying) at failing to do our workout. Failing because we were still too knackered and achy from doing two cardio/core workouts on Saturday. We tried. That's the important thing right?!

So that was pretty much our Sunday. If you like random stuff like this, tag along on Instagram, where I try and post more of the same, random shit! 

How was your Sunday?

Rachael

LIFE: Orchards and Apple Picking

Growing up I climbed trees, a lot. It was part of the deal in autumn with old apple trees in the garden and summer was spent ducking from falling heavy apples while using the trees for shade. I was raised on apple pies and crumbles, our apple trees producing huge cooking apples that were stewed and stored away in the freezer to see us through the year. 

Along with the popularity of cider mills in the US, are orchards, but with the ease of just popping down to the store to grab a bag of them, I wasn't expecting there to be over an hour wait to grab a bag to go apple picking when we popped down to the orchard (the same trip we went raspberry picking). Each week different apple varieties are on offer - Golden Delicious, McIntosh, Cortland to Michigan Spy (a cooking apple) to Gala and for $17 we headed out with our 1/2 bushel bag - they suggest it's large enough for 40 apples (I think we topped that) like I child I was just as happy getting a tractor ride around the orchards and left the apple tree climbing to Joe, who like me as a child, appeared to be in his element. 

As I write this the delicious smell of caramelizing brown sugar dribbling over piles of Golden Delicious baking in a Dutch Apple Cake is drifting through the apartment. Just what I get baked and canned with 20 or so pounds of apples I'll let you know in a couple of weeks. 

LIFE: Raspberries and Cider Mills

Autumn's arrival on Sunday was met with a day at the somewhat local Erwins Orchard and Cider Mill in South Lyon - a place with fields of orchards and pick your own raspberries alongside their infamous apple cider and doughnuts.

Nothing beats the taste of hand picked sun warmed raspberries and it became a family tradition to fill up countless recycled margarine boxes, freezing them until there was a need for more home made jam, stewing them into a sauce with ice creams and the like. The PYO places in Yorkshire were quiet, small affairs, their popularity waning so I, wrongly in hindsight expected the same to be true here in Michigan. Oh how wrong was I! I should of known due to the popularity of how quickly canning and preserves books get re-homed that this wasn't going to be a quiet affair, instead there were queues for packing to the huge queue to even buy a bag for apple picking - but more on that another time.

Cider Mills here are far from only being about the cider, they are full of family entertainment and yummy, tempting foods. Here there were petting zoo's, 3D movies to kids rides, corn mazes and sunflower gardens - my favorite - but I loved the rows on rows of raspberries and sounds of bees humming around. While it's a little late in the season for the raps there was certainly enough to find and fill our punnets full, now the mission begins to work out just what to do with them all!

Have you been raspberry picking this year? Ever visited a cider mill? I'd love to hear about it!

DETROIT - Seasons Change

Walking along Detroit's Woodward Avenue yesterday after spending another Sunday at the DIA I noticed leaves were crunching under my feet and the orange and brown tint to the trees - autumn is slowly eating its way into summer days. It's still warm, very warm in south east Michigan, but mornings are colder, nights certainly are and it's these conditions with make the East and Mid West of the US infamous for it's fall show of tree colours. The bright blue warm August days just sets off a stunning backdrop for these shades.

As we were driving up we spied lines of freshers with their life packed into boxes as they hung outside their residence buildings at Wayne State University (which is in Midtown Detroit) - where have the years gone that eight years ago I was on the verge of breaking out from being a country girl, my life packed into suitcases as I started my adventure as a Fresher at Newcastle University?! If that wasn't enough as another season approaches it makes me remember just how quickly time seems to drift away. It only seems like a couple of months ago that I arrived in the US, in November it'll turn two years as my home.

DETROIT: The Sun's Still Shining

You might have heard that Detroit has chosen to file for bankruptcy - the largest US municipality in history to do so. Whatever your take on the reasons why (and there are many) to solutions (not so many of those) and what turning point the city will go down, the sun is still shining on the city. We popped down yesterday for my first trip to the DIA (who's collection is up in the air - more of that and trip there to come in following weeks) and I managed to snap some photos of Detroit, predominately Midtown along Woodward. No doubt the news reports you read or saw about the bankruptcy were accompanied by ruin porn photographs, burnt our, chopped up, falling down building - but those images have no place on my blog, I'm not one to prompt that image of the city.

So here's some alternate images, Detroit is still alive, it's still open, it's still sunny.

LIFE: Blossom and BBQ's

Michigan springs are pretty much the temperature of English summers, but after the cold winter I forgot just how warm it gets here. The bright sun and the warmth really sets off the blossoms which cover street upon street around these parts which is welcome after how bare the trees were just a couple of weeks ago. So yesterday with another day with temperatures in the mid 80's, we packed up our BBQ and took off to one of the state recreation parks not too far away and ate hot dogs with a lake view.

Perfect Sunday indeed.

METRO DETROIT; An April Sunday at the Zoo

We've been on a mission of the past three weeks to head back to the Detroit Zoo - but one thing or another - being ill and the weather stopped us from ever getting there until last Sunday when we made our trip there our "date" of the week. It's been over a year since our last visit, which is pretty bad considering it's like a couple of miles from where we live, so this time we brought zoo membership for the next year - yey for being able to visit lots! Detroit is a great sized zoo and while it's not on the scale of say London or Edinburgh, there's a good assortment of animals you don't feel like you have to rush around to see everything, nor do your feet start to ache mid way around.

A couple of the animals were still off exhibit due to the colder then normal spring like temperatures but the majority were out and about - the Rhino's were certainly making the most of the warmer spring day with their playful headbutting while the lions and tigers were just doing what your typical feline friend will be doing - sleeping. The grounds were filled with daffodils and blue bells yet the trees are still bare of their leaves, they've opened a new walk way over ponds and the otters are getting a new home built. But like last time, the polar bears were hiding.

Hope you have a great weekend everyone, hopefully we get out as the spring sunny days seen to have returned in time, plus there looks to be some great estate sales in our neck of the woods tomorrow, so looking forward to being able to grab some vintage treasures!

MICHIGAN: A Sunday at Indian Springs

I've finally got around to taking photographs with my bridge camera again, I'd somewhat abandoned it because it eats up way too many batteries so all my blog photographs lately have been taken on my guys camera. But with new lithium batteries in hand a a trip to a metropark I thought I'd return to my camera for a change. 

If you do go to any park in Michigan you'll see so much wildlife, but I'd never seen to many different species until we visited the Indian Springs Metropark on Sunday to take advantage of the sunshine. Not only were there butterflies but I spied wild turkeys, fishes, chipmunks to crazy looking beetles plus countless signs for rattlesnakes - but I'm glad we never saw them. We took a stroll on one of the nature walks and came across rusting farm machinery randomly placed along the walk, perhaps as art pieces or as a reminder of the former agricultural history of the area. Either way all the old parts were great to photograph. Inside the Nature Center they have an under water tunnel taking you under a lake to see all the fish swimming around - it was pretty cool looking out in the murky depths to try and catch a glimpse of the odd fish floating by. I even overheard one little boy saying how it was "like the zoo" with the girl, possibly his older sister arguing it was "even better". 

A weekend in February

Seeing I haven't been posting on the weekend and spending time with my boy, I thought i'd start doing weekend summary like so many people do. So our weekend was all about;

♥ Making these utterly delicious chewy chocolate chip cookies which I nearly ate all by myself. Ooops!
♥ Joe getting mail from the UK Social Workers Council regarding their changes to overseas applicants. Previously he couldn't get registered but now he would be approved only a little over a year too late. The future country for settling in is back up for grabs.

♥ Getting a gorgeous bath bar present in the mail from Em 

♥ Going for 9PM cookie dough milkshakes at the drive thru, dressed in pjs whilst snowing. It being so cold that it took several attempts to be able to get the drivers window down to order.
♥  Loving the crunching snow from walking on fresh, thick snow.
♥ Introducing Ed to Smokey, Ed hissing a little and then spending the rest of the meeting under the sofa. Little steps. Smokey on the other hand is a huge bundle of love.
♥ Buying Ed a Kong toy which you fill with treats or biscuits which they paw it in certain directions to get the food out. It's highly entertaining to watch.
♥ Spending Sunday sewing some of my sampler I'm making to celebrate our wedding, all designed by myself. Sometimes harder then it looks.
♥ Being spoilt using Lush massage bars to help with the itch and my skin after it's rash.
♥ Buying nail varnishes on clearance because it would be a crime to leave the OPI and Relvon varnishes there right?!

♥ Constantly poking HelloCotton for new blogs to read - that website is so good and so addictive!

What were the hits from your weekend?

Our version of Superbowl Sunday

Last year I remember staying up late trying to catch as much as I could of the Superbowl. The reason being the Steelers were playing. If you get involved with a family from Pittsburgh, you get involved with the Steelers, plus with living in Metropolitan Detroit, you follow the Lions too. Seeing neither had reached the Superbowl this year, interested was limited. In turn we washed the car, went to an all you can eat Chinese Buffet and got my first ever fortune cookie[!] and poked more pet stores for cats to re-home.

Since way before I moved and even got the go ahead to move, we wanted to re-home another cat. Partly to give Ed some company but additionally to give another cat a chance of a happy life, and whilst I'm not working yet I can keep an eye on them till they get use to one another. Most of the pet stores have three to six cats at any time waiting to be adopted. We saw this kitty [the one pictured] on Friday night, but he's actually one that we'd seen advertised on the re-homing website for months. That became another of the reasons why we've applied to adopt this cat, because he's been wanting a home for a long time. Apparently however adopting a cat isn't as simple as it use to be, you have to give vet and personal references and be up for having a house check. Fingers crossed though, we really want to give this kitty a home and if we're lucky I'll tell you more about him!

If anyone has any tips on introducing cats to each other that would be a great help, Ed's a little timid around new people and things so we need to make the adjustment for her as calm as possible.

P.S. There's also a little poll on the left sidebar regarding what you'd like to perhaps see more of on this blog!

LIFE: Trans Siberian Orchestra

I thought I would try and sandwich in one of my slightly normal Sunday photograph posts between the wedding and the huge wave of Chicago Honeymoon posts that I'll start posting next. After having five amazing nights in Chicago it was back to reality in Detroit yet we've still managed to pack in some fun before the boy heads back to work tomorrow. Yesterday we went to see one of the boy's favourite musical acts - the Trans Siberian Orchestra. I will admit to knowing only a couple of their pieces but the whole act was mind blowing with huge pyrotechnics, strobe lighting, moving stages and a lot of head banging. The rest of the weekend has been spent constructing our goodies from Ikea [yes even America as Ikea]. We spent some of our wedding money getting our flat more homely - we brought a new TV stand come storage piece, a huge new bookcase and three chairs to go with our new kitchen/dining table [saved from our friends basement]. I have a love for putting together Ikea goodies anyway, but its rather fun doing it together. I guess it would be wrong not to mention Christmas seeing it's practically here - we booked our trip down to Pittsburgh to see some of Joe's family which is somewhat daunting for me seeing i've only met his Gran so far. This week I still have to finish off my Christmas shopping, wrap all of the husbands pressies and probably finish off the Ikea jigsaw of goodies!

You know your in America when ...

You see the yellow school buses everywhere - even on non school days ...

You hunt out the "English" section of the international food aisle ...

... your lucky you can't see the prices of some of these - whoever knew you'd want to pay nearly £4 for one tiny box of Jaffa cakes?! That's alongside some of the items they claim to be "English" like most of the section of the left of the image, I've never heard of most of that stuff. Also please excuse lame blurry phone picture.

You see flags - from tiny ones to HUGE ones everywhere, from homes to car garages to drive ins, [why do we never have this sense of nationalism in the UK apart from the occasional sporting occasion?!] ...

It becomes just as easy to dine out then it does to eat in - and sometimes even cheaper ...

And one of the best parts -  sticking your Christmas tree up before December and get away with it, the fact that we put ours up on Thanks Giving felt somewhat rebellious to my English background - was a good thrill and looking around at all the homes around us - we are far from the first.

Let's not forget the debate over English verses American baked beans ... that set off a debate on my facebook - but the American version comes with bacon - and that has to be better right?

While i'm at it - you know you have an amazing amazing boy when he brings you home three bracelets he made at work for you.

Anyways i'm not really looking forward to the next couple of weeks - I probably should because we're getting married in a week and a half, but I still don't have a dress, or shoes, Joe doesn't have a suit and we don't have rings or guests confirmed. I'm having to meet some of Joe's work colleagues and I HATE meeting new people and to top it off he has his stag/bachelor do at the end of the week and I'm dreading it. Its not that I don't trust him - it's the people he's doing it with - i don't know them so it's hard to trust them. I wish we were just eloping and then running off to Chicago.

Food Sunday

One of the more obvious differences between the UK and the US is food. Potions are generally bigger [to the point where they are too big to finish], yet food is often cheaper here, some of it can be hit and miss but its generally eat-able. I did my first batch of home baking with cookies - recipes in the states are measured out by cup size, it seems a little less exact but the cookies came out fine so it can't be that odd. The Astoria Pastry shop in the next city is where we shared the huge strawberry shortcake  - which was delicious - the store was crammed full of freshly made pastries, cakes and treats of which we took away something for afters, of which I tried my first American cupcake [last image]. The icing was utterly yummy and overall they make a good rival for their British counterparts, again they tower them in size. One food item I still haven't had the guts to try is canned cheese; you don't even need to keep it in your fridge. The fact that they need to state that it's "real" cheese on the labelling is somewhat disturbing. I think cheese is one of the things i'm missing food wise, proper cheese that's not sliced or out of a plastic wrapper. Cheese out of a tin to a girl that loves her cheese sarnies doesn't fit well.

Suitcase Sunday

One of the hardest things to juggle with moving is packing. It can become a challenge and i've sat countless times on my bed looking at my stuff wondering where to start in deciding what moves with me. I've managed to parcel a lot over already - Joe has to open them up and remind me what i've actually sent however. 

A popular question is about baggage and weight allowance. People assume with a visa you get a bigger weight allowance - if only! You book your ticket like every other passenger, no one knows your on a visa until you declare yourself. So like everyone else my weight allowance is 23kg - realistically I kept thinking that was loads, I mean i'm only packing a few cosmetic bits, some converse, couple of books and clothes. Yeah right, I've packed and repacked my suitcase three times in order to get more in and be more organised with the assistance of the bathroom scales, but i'm also working with how much I can physically lug around on public transport to and around Heathrow. 

But what do you pack? Michigan gets a bit cold so woolies are a must, I've thrown out socks to try and get other things in, my childhood teddy is packed, as to is Joe's [pictured] the remainder of my compact collection and some nail varnishes. You have to pack your visa paperwork into your hand luggage but whoever invented the size of the packet really didn't take into consideration the average backpack size [its huge]. I've managed to get my Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers book, The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck and my Road Trip USA book into my backpack along with my notebook, I've been eyeing up the 1Q84 book which looks an interesting read and I'll top myself up with some magazines before hand.

Yet I'm a person with the attention span of a goldfish so nearly a nine hour flight is somewhat daunting for my head sanity, so I'm asking;  

What tips do you have for self entertainment on flights or general flying tips?

LIFE: Tears and Pogs

This weekend has been fairly pants to say the slightest as anyone that follows me on Twitter might have gathered through my random ahhh moments. Work was rubbish all week and it took me to Wednesday to realise that not one of them had asked either how my birthday had been or even what my boy had got me. Charming. The week dragged so bad and to top it all last night I spent most of it crying because I realised I didn't have an "affidavit of support" for my visa application - the world literally went from under me. That is the instance of not being able to understand the [rubbish] information your provided with upon the embassy website. The affidavit is basically a statement from your visa sponsor, in my case Joe that he can fiancally support me until I work, so 24 pages printed out later of tax returns and pay slips we're somewhere closer. Well I say that even though I messed up another element of my interview - one letter said the k-1 visa is paid for prior to the interview, second letter directs you to a PDF declaring you pay on the day, brilliant I thought - i'll just pay on the day. Well no actually you can only pay before, looks like i'll be late to work because I have to pay up tomorrow morning and get an email payment confirmation. I think any luck regarding this visa is actually running out, i'm not confident anymore, i'm so unbelievably stressed and upset about this whole lark. No one can ever tell me immigration is easy, ever.

I slightly stuck my head in the sand, well into a bowl and did some baking this morning, i've been baking a lot more lately and I think i'm improving! Today I baked my first two recipes from the Mary Berry cook book I received for my birthday - making some St Clementine muffins and some vanilla cupcakes, both taste utterly yum! The rest of the day was spent rather much gutting my bedroom for which three huge black bin liners went into the bin find of the day being some of the old pogs I use to play with at school when I was about nine or ten then followed off with a bath - which felt rather posh having one in the middle of the afternoon. It felt good in an odd way getting rid of a load of junk, yet I still think i've tempted fate too much, i'm not sure how I break it to Joe if I fail to get my visa.

Yesterday, when things were still more rosy looking I brought myself a brand new camera. I've been thinking about getting a brand new one to improve on the former 6MP camera that normally is the instrument behind my blog photographs. I ended up buying a Fuji S3300 bridge camera [basically a camera that looks like a DSLR but without the change of lens], I wanted a DSLR but i'm a very lucky girl and i'm being treated to one for a birthday present from the boy, plus we needed a more "everyday" camera that wouldn't take up space needing a load of lenses, I sometimes don't fancy being in the middle of downtime Detroit or going around everyday with a hugely expensive camera. So far so good though, i'm trying to get my head around all the fancy features and trying to opt for the more manual options the first of which is the dying flower head photographed above.

Does anyone else remember playing with pogs? Got any exciting plans for the week ahead?

October Calls

So that is September down and now we roll into a rather hot October. October is going to be the make or break month regarding my visa, i'm very very excited yet nervy at the same time. In ten days I have my visa interview which will be the conclusion of nine months of the visa adventure, i'm actually having to swot up on my relationship, learn all those facts about the family of your OH and knowing point down to where he works, lives, where he was born. Its odd having to dissect your relationship into such detail. I even handed in my notice last week even though that's a massive thing to do in the tempting fate lines. I just couldn't face having my interview and having to work the four weeks notice on top of that. They seem to be messing me over on holiday pay and days i'm owned and making me change all my days off to help other people and la la la. I really can't wait to leave. I'd rant about the company but I won't go along those lines.

But being a planner and organiser, I had all my days off sorted into gutting my room but everything has been thrown into the air and I have this huge panic about running out of time to properly sort through my things. Today I managed to [re]find three lush bath bombs and one lush soap, they look like they might have been there a few years [the date on one labels is 2009 I will admit] but I'm sure it'll be fine - I'm rather looking forward to having three baths to use them up!

When I wasn't sorting [or eating those yummy cupcakes from the boy] today was spent having a BBQ - who'd have thought that would be possible in the UK in October and I've had my head in Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge - about the history and life of the man behind that London shop - it's very interesting! Now it's time to work out who won the MUA giveaway - exciting stuff!

Have you ever re-found anything exciting? What you all looking forward to this October?

The Crows Are Coming For Us

It was my weekend off, finally after two very long weeks at work especially with the bitchy hicup mid week but we're over that for now at least. I love weekends off, or just having two consecutive days off together, which is often rare makes the thought of having months off after I move, very, very appealing. Yesterday I spent baking - attempted some marbled chocolate cupcakes and some cappuccino squares with a white chocolate topping. Both turned out a lot better then I expected, i'm slowly getting into the baking lark, especially with watching the Great British Bake Off [anyone else totally addicted to this BBC show?!], although i'm a very messy baker in comparison.

With all the photography magazines I end up buying lately I started a scrapbook of inspiring images that catch my eye or techniques or equipment to keep up with. Just cutting and gluing takes me back to my childhood and kept me entertained for much of Saturday afternoon, i'm still unsure what extent of photographic talent i have but photography definitely is becoming one of my favourite pastimes. And Sunday wouldn't be a Sunday without some flower photos and I was lucky enough again to catch some shots of the bees, one of the reasons why I want to upgrade camera wise is to home in on macro shots such as this. 

We have the strange hope of me moving the first week in November, that means I probably should really sorting things out and handing in my notice at work. It's starting to feel very very real lately, just knowing there's that one [expensive] step left. But that's this weeks task - to book trains tickets and hotels for my interview and sort out when i'm leaving my job. Maybe it's too presumptuous to leave my job before getting my visa, I hope it's not tempting fate too much. Either way it's my last week of being 24, 25 is starting to sound very grown up.

Don't forget to enter my MUA Heaven and Earth giveaway - you have until midnight [UK time] on Saturday 1st of October to be in for a chance of winning! [just enter on the linked post]

Another unsuspecting Sunday afternoon

I was starting to think because the days are drawing closer, the colours of the flowers are changing and plants start dying off there wouldn't be too much to keep photographing. I guess my luck was in today. We have a mass of tiny [well in comparison to their proper counterparts] sunflowers - all grown from all the fallen sunflower seeds under the bird feeder. There was about twenty or so of the stalks growing at one point, but there's only two flowering. I love the loud in your face rowdiness and colour sunflowers have.Yet the photographs of the bee where just pure, pure luck. 

Most of today was spent listen to random music, starting some sewing - [it's been so long] and watching all the rain showers that the afternoon brought in, so I hope you've all had better weather then it's been here in East Yorkshire. As for the week ahead it's the same old same old. looking forward to doing some baking at the weekend and possibly might have to start looking into the whereabouts of this visa interview letter seeing after four weeks we're had no word. Whoever claimed immigration was easy?!

LIFE: Come Together

This weekend has been half spent between baking and reading countless photography magazines. You could say I was becoming a little bit of a geek - especially about the latter element I just mentioned. I'm trying to get my head around the geeky camera terms, working out which camera to invest in and reading up about the Lomo cameras which i'm really tempted by too. I found the photographed charm necklace in Primark when I was down in London for my medical and just fell for it - for £1.50 it was a dead winner and sums me up perfectly. 

The parents found a cheap cupcakes and muffin recipe book in Asda yesterday so I was making use of it, making some moist walnut [with lots of lemons] cupcakes and some orange cupcakes. Both are totally untried too - how they've managed going a day without being eaten I don't know! I blame myself for eating my way through strawberry tarts.

But another full weekend off means back to work tomorrow. I'm not really loving work at the moment, one women wants more hours at work so can't wait for me to leave and the rest, well I feel like i've totally done something wrong in my visa because of not hearing anything back yet [that is a rant in itself] and all they hear and see is newspaper headlines claiming immigration is easy. They don't fill me with positive vibes at all. Plus having an American boy I have a slight attachment to America these days - it is going to be my new home country after all. This set off a debate at work steaming from a chat about 9/11 - and the narrow minded convostation from some quarters at about muslims and how mosques shouldn't be built in the UK especially in York. I actually had to walk out the room because I would have blown at the girl who came out with this statement.  Don't get me wrong, I totally believe you should have freedom of speech but not arrogant and ignorant statements. I know you shouldn't really talk about reglion in the work place but I couldn't just stand there and not say anything. I'm all for being an open, expecting, democratic and tolerant society. I'm not very good at dealing with such narrow mindness.

Here's to be better week, and just maybe getting my interview date or we may have to move the date of our wedding back. Boo hiss.

Cherry Red

Sundays often turn slightly into my version of pampering and beauty days. First they often become home hair dying days. I think the John Fredia Deep Cherry Red might just well be the third colour of hair dye this year alone. I get jumpy and bored with the same colour. I thought it would be more redder then it's turned out - in fact its gone rather dark but heys too experimenting. I often get stuck  between trying to be more vintage and being more rocky in style - i'm currently refinding my love for the darker side of music so i'm following that flow at the moment it seems. I've spent the morning listening to Evanescence for some odd reason. Those were the days!

My nails have got to the point were i'm constantly having to repaint them because of their pure natural state. They are too stained and chipped not to be painted sadly. They've gone into an orange pinky colour - i'm sure that's not right. I managed to bag some Model Own's varnishes in London - for some reason i can't find them in York [only the Pro range - unless i'm totally blind]. They were on three for two in Oxford St Boots so I managed to bag Feeling Blue, Lilac Dreams and Grey Day [pictured] i've been going between the three colours for the past couple of weeks and i'm totally in love. They apply brilliantly, are really colourful with two coats and stand up to the hell I put them through at work. I want my visa interview just to go and grab some more!

Speaking of visa's nothings really occurring at the moment. Stuck in silly paperwork silence. It's three weeks on Tuesday that I sent off my forms and i'm still waiting for a flipping interview date. I should of expected this but it's just frustrating. Nothing can be booked or planned till we have an idea when I might possibly, could just, maybe be moving. 

Plus today is mine and the boy's second anniversary, I don't think we could have ever imagined our relationship would have ever turned out as strong; as successfully or as strong as it has. He's totally changed my world, how I see myself, how I see life. I love him so incredibly much. Gushy I know!