Last week in pictures...

Or, the times I remembered to bring/use my camera.

1

1. This was taken on Monday morning. The light that was coming through my room looked peculiar in a beautiful way, and I loved the effect it was having on my (thin shitty) curtains, so I decided to snap a shot.

2. Just the clothes I wore to bed that night, but taken from my windowsill r.e. the aforementioned lighting that I spoke of.

3. Lasagne the stray cat has now been officially BANNED from our house after he MAIMED MY FACE on the Tuesday night. I was picking him up to let him out of my door, which is normally something he is fine with to the point where he mostly purrs, but on this night he decided to stick his claws right into my lower eyelid, quite literally 1cm or so away from my eyeball. If he'd got the tiniest bit higher I would have been blinded so I'm grateful! It's left a tiny mark but I'm still pretty pissed off about it. If it was on my arms or my chest for example I wouldn't care because you can cover those areas up, but your face - that's something people have to see everyday! Not cool man.

4, 5, 6. Last Tuesday as we all know was Shrove Tuesday e.g. Pancake Day! I hope you all had fun eating lots of pancakes! What toppings are your favourite? My housemate Matt made myself and him a stack of them with bacon and lots of maple syrup, and my goodness they were so good! I wanted chocolate spread on my next round by then remembered we only had nutella, which also belonged to my other housemate who was back home in London. Fate is keeping me and chocolate apart!

7. This is a polaroid picture of Matt and myself taken at the Vice Issue Launch Party at Brighton's Green Door Store on Friday night by my coursemate/future housemate Lulu. I love it!

How have you all been? This week spells madness and mayhem for me - I'm heading to my first houseviewing in an hour! I know I can't afford the deposit but it's something to start us off with at least and I'm going to see if I can negotiate the cost of the deposit and such. It'll be nice to meet Matt's friends/my future housemate's Matt and Ellie too. After that I'm going food shopping then will desperately be cranking out my presentation - which is only about 10% done, due Wednesday and my lecturer isn't replying to my e-mails about the content of it! Shit shit shit.
On Tuesday I am gracing London for the day with a University organised trip to Shoreditch, which I'm very excited for. It'll be nice to get out of Brighton for the day and I'm with one of my close coursemate's Rhys, who, through him being constantly stoned, makes everything funny. We have open return tickets to the capital so I'm excited to see what the day will hold for me. Wednesday is Uni all day, and we have another houseviewing on Thursday (the other two got cancelled!), working Friday and Saturday but I am also heading to Jack Beats Saturday night with Matt and some of his friends from home, so that should be good. As I have (attempted to) shown with this post, I'll try and illustrate as much of my week as I can via the medium of photography!

Right now I must finish getting ready and have a quick snack before heading to the viewing. What do you have planned for the final week of February?

P.S. If you haven't already heard of him, check out 'Baths'. I've been listening to his music for months but only very recently have I gotten back into it and I've had the 'Cerulean' album on repeat for a day solid now. Check this out below whilst you enjoy your Monday afternoon, you won't regret it!

Electricity

Check out this video that came to my attention the other day. It was actually made by a friend of a friend in Sweden, and looking at the snowy cityscape, the tunnelbana and the beautiful aura that Stockholm has, makes me miss Stockholm and Sweden even more than I currently do, but I'm excited to go back in August.

I was hoping to display the video on this post but Blogger is stupid and won't let me paste the Embed code from Vimeo, so here is the link. Hope you enjoy!:

http://vimeo.com/36918614

Grid Lens

One thing that has really been inspiring my photography, and making my creativity easier and more open, is the iPhone app Grid Lens. I downloaded it from iTunes via their 'app of the week' recommendation for something stupid like 69p, and it's the best 69p I've ever spent! I love the vintage effect of the photos and how you can apply subtle changes to them that, in my opinion, don't make them overly pretentious. I've been having lots of fun with it recently and will continue experimenting with it. Here are the fruits of my labour thus far:

If you fancy a go yourself, search the App Store for 'Grid Lens', I promise you won't be disappointed!

P.S. Are you excited for Pancake Day today? When I drag my arse out of bed I'm having a Canadian breakfast with Matt, then heading over to my coursemate Nicki's house with about 15 other people for a curry, more pancakes and alcohol - good times! Take it easy everyone!

P.S.

In relation to my last post, it would be unfair to mention the blogs and websites I found through oh comely without linking you all to their work. After all, sharing is caring right?

http://stefannysite.blogspot.com/

http://danilurie.tumblr.com/

http://cargocollective.com/lucydoolan

http://howtobeadomesticdisgrace.blogspot.com/

http://beccastadtlander.blogspot.com/

http://kiley-victoria.blogspot.com/

http://www.twelvejuly.com/

http://huiuh.com/

http://www.davidswailes.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/eyelashkisses

Finally...

It's a double whammy post from me today! Aren't you all excited?!* I woke up this morning to a voicemail from my manager telling me that I'm not actually needed in to work overtime today as they found somebody else, so I have the day off to do whatever I want. This, in my opinion, apart from being in love, travelling and eating good food, is one of the best feelings in the world. I love waking up in the morning without an alarm, knowing I have the whole day to myself to do what I want, when I want and how I want to do it.
I won't lie, most of the time this does involve copious amounts of time on Facebook, Tumblr and my Xbox, or spent smoking far too many cigarettes with my housemate Matt. But occasionally, just occasionally, I do something creative with my spare time. I've always been a creative soul, drawing and writing things since I was old enough to do so and draining my pocket money (and that of my mum's) on disposable cameras. But ironically, I feel my creativity has dwindled since I've started my second year of University. I'm constantly surrounded by creative, arty people on my campus and I'm learning about all these fascinating subjects on my course - but I feel that spark in me is dying, and it's something I'm desperate to re-ignite. Curious as to when the next issue might be out, I was looking on oh comely's website, one of my favourite magazines, for the release date of its next issue, and got sidetracked looking at the blogs and websites of its editorial staff and contributors. I saw some incredibly beautiful, witty, original and inspiring pieces of writing, photography and illustrations which have inspired me to think up a couple of projects of my own. How I will have time for these inbetween Uni work, trading my time for money at Topshop, keeping my social life happy and my belly well fed is a mystery - but when there's a will there's a way! Right? Or something like that.

Now I'm going to call my manager back to arrange some overtime (just watch as I get roped into doing shifts I can't/don't want to do. The word 'no' escapes from my vocabulary sometimes.) make breakfast/lunch and start my Uni presentation on The Beat Generation. Hope you all enjoy yourselves!

*You're probably not

The 5.15am to Stockholm

the snow fell lightly as we hugged for what i knew would be the last time - under the great oak tree where we first met. it was acutely quiet, and our hushed, rushed voices seem to echo in unison with those of the Angels around us as finely powdered snow parachuted onto my lips.
you kissed me lightly, your warm familiarity melting the flakes from my trembling mouth. the last memory of your kaleidoscope eyes was a music box of red hot flashbacks - roadtrips, sun-kissed adventures and afternoons getting high with our friends in your back garden. of sights and sounds, laughter and frowns, this was the bridge that led us to you leaving me.
“but i don’t want to fall asleep with a broken heart…” i said with heavy breath. you pulled me close to your athletic frame, your hands on the small of my back and roaming through my hair. it was there, right there, a few hours before you had to board that plane, that i fell both in and out of love with you again. 

Today, inspired by the mention of it by my housemate Rich, I decided to take a walk up through the forest near my house and up onto the sloping hills. It was beautiful! Such a nice wintry afternoon, lots of people out dogwalking etc. I took my SLR with me (as promised) and snapped some photos as I strolled through the forest and then eventually up onto the Hollingbury hills. Here is the best of the bunch:

Tomorrow I have work in the afternoon, and Tuesday will be dedicated to Uni work and EATING PANCAKES! Too good. Wednesday is Uni all day, Thursday is more Uni work, Friday is PAYDAY (at last!) and working again, and the same story with Saturday - it'll all pay off eventually. Hope you all had a lovely weekend whatever you got up to!

Terrible, terrible and terrible...

...is what I've been with updating. It's not so much the fact that I can't be bothered, it's more that I wanted to give this blog a more of a "professional" feel over my tumblr, and post about fashion and photography and creative/fun things I've been doing, but in all honesty none of that has been happening. All I'm doing at the moment is going to uni, going to work and swanning around the house in my trackies playing Soul Calibur V - hardly leaves a lot to be desired! A distinct lack of money means I can't afford to buy any new clothes or purchase new music or even have a social life, and apart from the occasional piece of poetry my creativity is going down the pan too. What's going on??
Next week however should be the break on the horizon. I have a fun little "date"/evening out with the delectable Gee, one of my favourite people who I work with, and I'm booking tickets to see Jack Beats with my housemate Matt. I was speaking to my housemate Hannah last night and we both agreed we all spend too much time at home and it's nice to get out of the house now and again to avoid staring at the same four walls all the time. So I think we all decided to head out once or twice a week, not necessarily to get drunk but even if it's just for a meal or to the cinema, it makes a difference.
I've really been missing home for the past two weeks or so. I don't know if I'd go as far as to say I'm homesick, but I miss my mum and just familiar sights and sounds I suppose. When you're spending a lot of time on your own with just your mind, it begins to wander. A lot. Hopefully having money next week and plans to think about will change my current mindset.

My most (and probably only) exciting piece of news however, is that I'm travelling around Continental Europe in the Summer! I'm ridiculously excited, and this gives me a massive goal to save towards. I'll be going from England to France, then from France into Switzerland where I'm meeting my good friend Deb (who will be doing the rest of the trip with me) and we will leave Switzerland for Austria, then the Czech Republic (Prague baby!) then into Poland, then Germany then into Holland. Then we're taking the night train from Holland to Denmark, then taking the coach across the huge (and still relatively new) suspension bridge that connects Denmark to Sweden, then we're snaking our way up through Sweden until we get to Stockholm, where after a few days there our journey ends. It sounds like a long time but we're only going for three weeks to a month maximum. We'll be doing most of our travelling by train and with Interrail it's actually fairly cheap, and staying in cheap hotels where the cost of the room is split between me and Deb. I think if I start saving just after I come back to Uni from my Easter break, this is a goal that will definitely be feasible!

Right I must dash as I have work at 3pm and at 1.37pm, I'm still sat in my underwear! I promise I'll try and keep this blog afloat more, and start taking my camera with me more when I head out. Enjoy your weekend everyone!

Bridges Over Water

and she leant in and whispered with a voice most sincere:

“keep hope close to your chest, for it may not be there at the end of your journey”

she was what feathered wings and my poorly painted heartstrings couldn’t keep away, the final stretch of sunset’s horizon on a long day.