Reunited and reliving those precious memories of university

After a long six months, the House of Boobs girls (as we were nicknamed at University of Hertfordshire) were finally reunited for a weekend of catching up, drinking champagne and cocktails, eating copious amounts of chips and dip, and most of all, making enough memories to tide us over until the next meet-up.

After living together and spending nearly all of our time together over the three years of university – supporting each other through the course stresses and deadlines, cheering each other up over boy trouble, staying up into the wee hours with drunken tears, celebrating each other’s achievements and having each others’ backs on every night out. We’ve been through a hell of a lot together over the years and we’ve all come out of it stronger than ever. Boys truly have come and gone in that time, as have jobs and other friends – but the one thing that has stayed constant is that we are all – without fail – always there for each other no matter what.

After arriving in a village near Chelmsford, Essex, at one of my former housemate’s house, we unpacked the mountains of stuff we had brought along, tucked into a delicious dinner and had a quick catch up before heading upstairs to get ready. We all glammed up in our high heels and fabulous outfits – my top is from Missguided and skirt from Ark – and after a couple of glasses of wine and making sure we had all remembered our ID’s, we clambered into the cars and headed out to Leigh-On-Sea.

Our destination was a bar called Bellinis, which was quite small but served great cocktails! To be honest, we could have been anywhere and I wouldn’t have noticed what was going on around us – we were all having so much fun dancing like loons, drinking Jam Doughnut shots and laughing, a lot! It was amazing to be surrounded by the girls again, because they are all the type of women who I wish existed everywhere – none of them will ever put you down or say a bad word about you if they have your back. It was so nice to be surrounded by such supportive friends who were nothing but happy to hear everyone’s news and celebrate everything going on in their lives. It is rare to find a group of girls who honestly act this way, who don’t put each other down, and I am proud to have friends like these.

I have such fabulous friends. Nearly all of them are in very happy, loving relationships with great guys (not something that they could boast in university!) and the ones who are not are confident and happy in going solo. Some are nearly finished battling through their PGCEs and are now teaching classes of little ones, while another is working in Asos marketing department, another travels to Germany and America regularly for work. Another is heading off travelling around South-East Asia and Australia at the end of the year and another is working as a para-legal and loving it. I am proud of everything they have achieved and have yet to.

Am really looking forward to the next meet-up and hopefully we won’t have long to wait. The main DJ from our old student union is holding a huge reunion party so hopefully we will all make it along to that.

Communicating with the big, wide world

I’m thrilled to announce that within just a few weeks of blogging on WordPress, I already have 40 followers and have had countless visitors to my site and likes on my posts. It’s really encouraging to see that my writing and opinions are being heard and appreciated by so many people from all over the world. And I really love that WordPress offers the stats pages to show you exactly where your readers are accessing your blog from, I appear to have a lot of UK and US readers, but have even had some from Bangladesh checking out my pieces.

This morning I also reached my 5,000th Tweet which went out to nearly 400 followers on my Twitter account who are spread across the country and the globe. It is great to know my opinions and comments are going out to people in my industry and to friends at the same time, and that I can instantly share my work with the world.

On my original blog, which I now use more are a photo-diary and a log of my work at the paper, I am sharing my writing with around 300 followers on Tumblr. Although Tumblr is good for the immediate sharing of pictures and thoughts, I find that WordPress offers more of a considered approach to blogging when one puts rather more time and effort into constructing a post and decorating it for readers.

Adding my Instagram to the mix, I am sharing my regular uploads with nearly 160 followers, documenting my movements whether journalism, music or blogging-related. I also find Instagram a perfect way to edit my photos and share them on my blogs. Finally, on Facebook I have 941 friends who get all my updates relating to blogging, writing for the newspaper, editing for This Festival Feeling and living life. This is a fantastic amount of people that I am reaching on a daily basis and who are accessing my posts and work. I considered making a page for myself as a writer, but didn’t want to limit my posts to people who have liked my page because I know how easy it is to lose followers that way. Plus it makes it more personal to be a ‘friend’.

Overall, I am reaching more than 1,800 people daily through my blogs, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts – when writing for The Lynn News and This Festival Feeling, and displaying on the websites, I am reaching thousands more.

This is an amazing feeling and it astonishes me to have collated these figures and get a real picture of how many people I am in touch with. You should try it, technology really has brought the world closer together! Click on the links to follow each of my accounts and get a slightly different picture from each!

Memories of Boomtown Fair 2013

While having a bit of a wardrobe clear out on Sunday morning, I came across a backpack we used to carry stuff round the festival at Boomtown Fair, in Winchester, back in August. Inside the backpack was still a few bits and pieces, including the card of a photographer who snapped myself and Mark while dancing in the Lion’s Den stage over the weekend. The photograph was snapped by a photographer who was working for Wuwo Magazine and brings back a lot of memories on what was a particularly fun day! On this day, I was wearing a Topshop dress and glasses.

Everyone’s a winner baby!

After a lifetime of entering competitions, paying the Lottery and trying my luck at quizzes – I finally won something! I entered an online competition organised by the owners of a Cambridge-based vintage seller, called Rehab Vintage, through their Facebook page.
Never even considering for a second that I might win, I answered the question and forgot about it, until a status popped into my news feed saying that I had indeed won!

I had my choice of a selection of winter warmer vintage cardigans and jumpers with a range of designs available. So many of them were fabulous patterns and styles, but I chose this cardigan and it arrived last week. It’s absolutely lovely and snug as anything, managed to wear it on Saturday, but it was too warm on Sunday.

Getting a bit over-eager for that wintery chill now so I can really get some wear out of it. Will definitely be planning on checking out the rest of their clothes on their Asos Marketplace page.

Challenging myself to workout harder with a treat of new gym clothes – with your help!

Can anyone suggest where I should head to buy some fabulous, but reasonably priced, workout clothes? I’ve been wearing the same ones for years and think it’s about time to treat myself to some new ones as an early Christmas present considering how much time I spend there. Am hoping that the clothes will help inspire me to be more adventurous with my workouts and they will also be helpful for when I start these new bootcamp and yoga classes with my friends. If anyone has any suggestions, I would be really grateful! Love the stuff on Sweaty Betty, but much too expensive now that my sister isn’t working there and can’t get me discount now! Hope you can help me, fellow bloggers!