Friday Five

Here's a little round up of what I've been loving this week :) The picture is sunset in my boyfriend's village - not bad! 

1. Jess's post on why 16 & 17 year olds should vote is really powerful and she offers up some good debates! It's a bit different from your average #ootd blog post- well worth a read! 

2. Kirsty's post on moving out of her flat - I've read Kirsty's blog for a long time now and I love her writing style, definitely check out her blog if you haven't already.

3. I've just started my new job which I'm really excited about - it's not exactly a graduate job but it's in retail which is a sector I've wanted to work in for a few years now so I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes :)

4. Tomorrow I'm off to Manchester to see my friend Ruth, there'll be lots of catching up and shopping to do aaaand we're off to Chester Zoo on Monday - I can't wait! 

5. On Tuesday I walked nearly 5 miles - I wanted to see if I'll be capable of completing Cardiff Half Marathon in a couple of weeks. I entered months ago but didn't really train properly even though I was running regularly in July. I worked in a pub for 2 weeks in August which made me too busy and tired to train and it aggravated an old knee injury so I'm just seeing how my body copes with exercise. The 5 miles I walked was mainly along the beach which was quite hard going on uneven sand but I wasn't in too much pain, so it's an achievement!

What have you been up to?

How NOT to have a clear out - ebay fail!

source via pinterest

What with all the beautiful A/W clothes in the shops I decided to have a clear out so I could fit in some new clothes (and scrape a few pennies together on eBay to afford them). This was a brilliant plan. In theory.

I sorted all my the clothes in my drawers into keep, get rid of, and not sure piles. I put all the stuff in the keep piles back away and sorted the not sure pile into keep and get rid of. Now, the get rid of pile... this was my downfall.

I selected a few nice pieces, took some photos and put them on eBay. I set the auction to end a week from that day.

In the next few days, I gathered together my get rid of stuff and took it to the local charity shop. When I got home I got a notifcation on the eBay app to say someone had bid on one of my items  - a pair of pink jeans. My heart sunk - you can guess what happened!

I checked my room anyway and of course  the pink jeans were nowhere to be seen - they'd been taken to the charity shop!

Although they only had a 99p bid on them, it was still really complicated to try and end the auction as it was less than 12 hours til it ended. I went to the charity shop ready to buy them back but unfortunately they'd already been snapped up. Panic!

Then genius struck - I asked my mum to bid on them for me! I was all for her going on ebay just before the auction ended, but then my boyfriend's dad suggested she put a really high max bid so no-one would bid higher, because who's going to pay £30 for some old jeans? This thankfully worked, and I managed to set the payment options to cash on collection, and the postage to collect in person, so no money was actually exchanged.

I didn't have to send an awkward message to some poor unsuspecting bidder, the charity shop made some money, and I only lose out by having to pay seller fees to eBay, which is only a few pence.

Moral of the story - sort your get rid of pile carefully - remember what you've put on eBay!

A Spiky Selection

So Mark and I have a rather large - and growing - collection of cacti (or cactuseses, whichever). It started with a trip to Ikea a few years ago because we wanted to brighten up our flat, and then there was a trip to a local garden centre a bit later... then a special trip to Wilkos just for a cactus (its an hour away) and finally the latest additions were adopting the babies of my friend's rather large cactus. Unfortunately the orginal prickled member of our collection died. Yes, it is possile to kill a cactus. I think we watered it too much - but we have learned from our mistakes and now we have a thriving little brood.

Now, at the moment they are all in the rather boring little brown pots that they came in. I attempted to make a new pot at pottery for them but it was far too shallow - it was more of a dish really. I'm in the process of making a replacement, but this is them in their temporary accomodation.

 Yes I know the one on the top right is a succulent, not a cactus. As you can see some of them are getting a little a lot too big for their tiny pots, so the sooner I can get their new pot finished the better - hopefully it will turn out well!

I like cactuseses (its more fun too say than cacti) because they look really interesting and they're so easy to care for (if you ignore the fact we killed one). I'm really excited to put them into their new home!

Book Review - Amy & Roger's Epic Detour - Morgan Matson

source

I found this book after reading something somewhere along the lines of "If you liked Paper Towns by John Green you might also like..." so I downloaded it onto my kindle after reading the blurb and reviews. It tells the story of Amy and Roger (funnily enough)  who need to get Amy's mother's car from Los Angeles to Connecticut (the width of the USA, I had to look at a map). The two start the book as pretty much strangers, but as you can tell by the cover, they end up together. Although this turn of events is glaringly obvious the whole way through the book, its still a good read, and its not the main focus of the story.

I know its a cliche but the characters embark on a personal journey as well as a literal one - Amy more so than Roger, which makes sense as it is told from her point of view. From quite close to the beginning I guessed the general gist of the big secret that Amy is holding back, as clues are given, but it doesn't come as a surprise when she finally reveals it to Roger later in the story.

A touch I liked is that for each chapter there is a playlist for that section of their trip - I only knew a couple of bands but I'd like to investigate the rest! Its a shame I read it on my kindle rather than as a physical book because its a lot harder to go back and find the pages with the playlists on. A quick search on spotify has found some kind soul has compiled the playlist! Brilliant.

This is my first book review since I was in primary school so I'm not really sure if I've covered all the bases - I hope that the general impression I give is favourable because I really enjoyed it. If anything it makes me want to explore America a bit! I'm very intrigued about Frozen Custard for starters....

MGs Cafe, Aberystwyth

Yesterday my family was going to our nearest big (ahem) town, Aberystwyth, so I thought I'd tag along and meet up with my friend from school, Naomi. I can't remember the last time we saw eachother, which is frankly unacceptable! We decided to avoid Costa and give a local independant cafe a go, and we chose MGs.

I'd never been there before, and I was very impressed! The interior was just lovely. There was a huge open skylight in the ceiling and lots of plants, and a wall of mirrors!

 

This rather sweet minature tea set was on the display next to our table and on the shelf underneath was a selection of books on the local area to browse.

The menu. Obviously there was an English version aswell. The top section is breakfasts, served til 4pm! Our kind of place. The second section is light bights. There are other sections for bigger meals, and obviously drinks and desserts, and there was a specials board. We were too full for any of the cakes on offer but they all looked scrummy. Everything was reasonably priced - I'm going to have to go again to try the other options!

 The food. I ordered this amazing bacon and egg bagel. They also offered a salmon and cream cheese filling. Naomi had really thick bacon and egg pancakes.

It was so good to finally see Naomi again, and this was a great place for a catch up!