Featuring today on Primp and Preen

The gorgeous Roslyn over at Primp and Preen is kindly featuring me over on her blog as part of her Introducing… series of new bloggers.

Mainly blogging about make up, beauty products and fashion she also treats her readers to the occassional generous helpings of yum! Thanks to her I discovered the joy that is Lee Stafford’s hair growth treatment.

Check out her fantastic, open and honest reviews on the Remington Pearl Wand and Montagne Jeunesse lipbalms. As well as lovely ideas for mother’s day and this fab post on rainbow effect nail art!

If you’ve popped over from Roslyn’s blog a huge hello and welcome to you! I’ve signed up for Blog Every Day (in) April {BEDA}and have been thinking up a mixture of ideas for it so hopefully there will be enough to keep you all reading.  I love knowing who’s reading over here in my little corner of the Interwebs so leave me a comment and say hi! Don’t forget to link to your blog so I can add you all to my Google Reader, I’m becoming a bit of a blog addict!

#85. Get a pen pal

You may have seen my recent post on the handwriting challenge that I found out about through the lovely Laura of A Daisy Chain Dream. You can check out her handwriting post here in which she made the mistake of hinting that she would like a couple (more!) penpals with whom to swap letters with. There were a load of comments left from people wanting to break out their correspondance boxes and swap stories with her and I was chuffed to bits when she contacted me on Twitter for my address!

Just a few days later this lovely beauty arrived in the post (along with my new Big Bang Theory t-shirt – can you say EPIC post day ) and I finally got around to posting my reply today. I wrote it at the weekend I just completely forgot to post it – bad girl that I am! But I am totally and completely psyched about having a penpal again, I think I was 11 the last time I received letters frequently. It also gives me an excuse to break out my craft cupboard and make a few blank cards so I’m always ready to send a response!

#80. Give something away on Freecycle

After no-one who reads this wanted any of my crap I decided that I might as well try sticking it on Freecycle before donating/binning it. I was disappointed to get NO response whatsoever until I finally checked my Junk folder a week later (oops) and realised that someone, somewhere in this city did actually want to free me of some this junk! Hooray!

He was specifically after the cross stitch and embroidery books as well as the GCSE CD-Roms which I enthusiastically looked out the night before he was due to pop round and was so excited when he popped into collect them. It’s nice knowing that they’ve gone somewhere that they are wanted instead of the bin and also puts the number of items I have gotten rid of up to 99 (remember this does not include items given to charity) so just two more items to pop this cherry!

#Operation Penny – Week Twelve

I’ve been mega ill this week so tracking, eating and exercise have all gone out of the window for a few days and I still haven’t found the watch for my heart rate monitor so my #FitPledge is null and void

I’m back to weighing on the Wii as the battery has died on my electronic scales and while it was nice to see the Wii graph go down I was disappointed to be back up to 135lbs since last weeks weigh-in. I also spent some of last week sorting through some old photos and the few that I found of myself were less than flattering. I wanted to see how noticable my changes were so I decided to pop on the same outfit I had in one of them, snap a piccie and compare. Excuse the ridiculously red nose from the sniffles!

Left: 11-Sept-2010 Right: 26-Mar-2011

Because of the style of dress it’s hard to see any differences but I definately notice that it’s not so tight around the hips or thighs and oh my God I have a waist lol. I think pictures are definately the way forward when it comes to measuring progress. Although it has made me hate my hair it looks a horrible straw colour rather than the golden blonde colour it should – not sure if this is a flash issue or if my hair actually is just that rubbish!

#FitPledge for this week is simple:

Water. Drink water. Lots of it!

I’ve got really complacent about this and need to make a conscious effort to get back on track. My skin is really suffering at the moment (being ill hasn’t helped) so I need to get back on it. In more exciting news the new Pure Gym has finally opened in Aberdeen and I’m hoping to get along to give it a whirl at some point this week. I have also finally signed myself up for the Aberdeen Race for Life 5k event on the 3rd July this year which means I have 14 weeks to learn to run!!!

Good things of 2011 – Part 12

1. Making millionaire’s shortbread for the first time. Nom!

2. Hanging my lovely new piece of artwork with pride. It’s now the first thing I see every morning

3. Having a Castle marathon on my days off (if you have not seen this show yet what are you waiting for? It is my favourite show ever at the moment!)

4. Seeing Matt Willis in Footloose on Friday evening

5. Completing the last of my 10 bootcamp sessions despite being under the weather!

#93. Get a bike

It’s been a busy few weeks with my list for some reason (not that I’m complaining one little bit – I <3 seeing things getting crossed off) and thanks to the power of Twitter I now have another to add to the pile of successes! A bunch of my followers seem to be cyclist commuters and are always making me feel guilty/jealous of their morning accomplishments. One morning after reading some such smug tweets (only joking they’re not smug about it at all {well maybe a little }) I noticed that my current bus pass runs out on the 11th June so I decided that this would be my target date for being a regular cycling commuter. This gave me plenty of time to save for a bike and buy all the bits and pieces that go with it as well as get settled in my new place.

I then got a tweet from the very generous @Todd_Philips (go follow him, he’s awesome!) offering to hook me up with one for my favourite price of… FREE! So this weekend after (mostly) having recovered from the plague I popped over to check it out and now have a bicycle to call my very own that has even been oiled, adjusted to the right height and had the tyres pumped up for me. Love having such awesome people in my life

Of course I STILL have a to buy list as long as my arm: lights, lock, helmet, reflective clothing, etc. etc but the main expense has been spared and means I can start to get some practice in before making it part of my day to day adventures – cannot wait!

Second change to The List

I’m having to make another change to the list… boo! But this time it’s not my fault! I’ve been trying to figure out which goals I’m going to spend the Summer working on and have just discovered that the open top tour bus is no longer operating in Aberdeen so #98. Take the open top tour bus around Aberdeen now off the list!

I’m kind of cheating in that I’ve already been working towards this goal but didn’t start until after my 101 thing start date so I don’t care and think it is an ace goal!

#98. Watch every episode of Charmed, Buffy and Angel

I’ve been getting series DVDs from LoveFilm rather than movies as it is so much easier to find the time to watch a 45 minute episode rather than a 2 hour movie and these three shows I’ve seen bits of but never with regularity or in order and they’ve sent me Charmed to start off with. I’ve just finished season 3 episode 8 “Sleuthing with the Enemy” so only another 5 and a half seasons to go!

Handwriting Challenge!

This challenge was brought to my attention by A Daisy Chain Dream and like so many others I am truly curious about other peoples handwriting that I thought I’d give it a go myself and tag a few other bloggers who might also like to take part.

First off, the rules are:

1. name and blog name
2. url
3. write ‘a quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’
4. favourite quote
5. favourite song
6. favourite band(s), artist(s)
7. anything else you wish to say…

So now that you’ve all seen my writing I’d like to tag the following people as well:

• Holly at Shopaholly
• Roz at Primp and Preen
• Amy at thentherewere
• Sarah at Sarah’s Scribbles
• LC at Blonde on a Budget
• Caroline at What’s Happening at My House

Of course if any of the rest of you want to do this as well please do and leave me a comment to let me know so that I can go and take a nosy at your handwriting!

First ever mortgage

Since my dream of owning my very own property is very much underway I thought I’d do a wee blog to let you all know about the mortgage deal that I managed to get. As I was a first time buyer I went through an independant mortgage adviser to help things go as smoothly as possible. I didn’t have to pay them a penny but I know that they will get a commission of sorts from my mortgage provider.

In the end I’ve went for a 3 year fixed deal at 4.29% with Santander over 15 years. Yes, thanks to my lovely Daddy loaning me £25k I’m starting out with (what I consider to be) a teeny, tiny mortgage term! Theres a £750 fee attached to this product but this can be paid off in full within 14 days. I can also make overpayments up to 10% of the outstanding  balance in any one year which will help settle the balance even faster. Oh and get this… I get £250 cashback which will help me towards buying my new TV! Woot!

As D-Day gets closer I am getting more and more excited. I’m finding it very frustrating that it’s currently sitting empty at the moment when I could be getting it decorated but I guess I just have to be patient! I cannot wait (and this will sound ridiculous to most people who have bills to pay) to start shopping around and comparing prices for gas, electric, insurance etc and find the best deals possible for me! Speaking of which, does anyone know how to work out the cheapest deal for you when you have no idea about the average consumption whenit comes to electicity and gas?

Anyway, as someone who loves a challenge I’m setting my biggest target ever and plan to have this mortgage (and my loan from Dad) cleared within 10 years time! Thats right I plan on being mortgage free before I hit 35! Eeks

#68. Find a personally inspirational quote and work it into a piece of art or home décor

This is the quote I eventually settled on for my wall. I knew as soon as I read it that it was the one and couldn’t wait to get started. I had already purchased a blank canvas a while ago so all I need to decide was what to do. I wanted to keep it simple but also wanted to make it colourful and fun. I settled on fuchsia pink poster paint!

I used the same technique as per my last post, starting off by looking at fonts in Microsoft Word to see what sort of style I wanted then I sketching it out onto the canvas using pencil to guide me before painting. I’m not sure if this was the best idea or not as it smudged really easily and you can still see some of the lines despite two coats but I don’t really know any other way I could have got around this.

Once I was done I felt that it was missing something so in the end I added a few silver flatback gems to the outline of the heart to give it a bit of bling. I can’t wait to get it hung on the wall opposite my bed so that I can see it every morning when I wake up!