Moving Out - The Prep

A few weeks ago me and my best friend made the decision that we were moving in together(and you can read the post out about that decision here) and now the week has finally come where we actually make the big move. She has moved away from home before as she went to uni but this will be the first time I have lived anywhere else other than home so yeah you could say I have no idea what I am doing! So if this is your first time moving out then read on and hopefully I can help (and if this isn't then please continue to read on for my naivety)

Packing

It's amazing how much stuff I have! I only have one smallish room at home but seem to have enough clothes to start my own clothes store and enough books to start a library (although these would tend towards the chunkier lady and crime books and I am not willing to part with any of them so a pretty awful shop if I am honest) I am pretty lucky that I am moving from my parents so don't have to be out by a set date but I do have to empty all my furniture so that it can be moved as moving a solid wood wardrobe full of clothes & books would require the services of the Hulk. 
I decided to get all my packing requirements from Big Yellow Self Storage. They had packs of boxes put together with bubble wrap and tape which gave you a discount if you were going to buy them separately and I thought was reasonable value (although this is the first time I have ever brought a box so I'm probably not the best judge!) I have wrapped everything in bubble wrap that I even think might break and I'm pretty convinced I will break something because I'm a klutz!
I think the main idea behind good packing is to pack your rooms in separate boxes but as my friend won't let me help her pack her shopping because I just throw everything in, I have followed this idea loosely. As the house I am moving into is quite little I don't think it is going to matter that much but will let you know when I try to unpack

Grown Up Stuff

This includes to me stuff that I don't normally think about - bills, budgeting, insurance, tv licenses and probably a million other things I haven't even thought of yet. Council tax, water meters and stairs are all a foreign feature to me. The only thing I have managed to sort so far is the contents insurance which is all set up relatively pain free so fingers crossed for everything else being as simple.

The Essentials

I've been slowly building up my bottom drawer for a year or so now and I thought I had accumulated a reasonable amount of items but until you actually write down what you need you don't realise how much stuff you actually need in a house ... and how much it costs!! However there are essentials and then there are ESSENTIALS!! Potentially the Laura Ashley cushion I brought yesterday on my essentials shopping trip may not be considered an essential by some but it was blue and pretty and 30% off so pretty essential to me! Buying of toilet cleaner, dish cloths and peelers wasn't as fun as cushion shopping but still essential. As my dad is helping me move the main essential is tea making facilities as I will be left by myself if I don't provide this. It's a good idea to make sure stuff you will need access to is actually accessible to you and not packed at the bottom of a box that you really cannot be bothered to unpack. Also REMEMBER TOILET ROLL!


Panic Stations

Yes I am panicking a little bit but that's ok. Panic means you care but if you are panicking too much then just step back. My panic happened about twenty minutes ago when I had filled two suitcases with clothes and still have a nearly full wardrobe to pack away. Instead of having a meltdown I stopped took a breath logged onto my blog and put it all into some perspective. To start with I think I majorly underestimated the amount of time it would take mainly due to the fact I have majorly underestimated the amount of stuff I own so it's a good idea to give yourself more time than you thought you would need.

In 24 hours time I will have started the big time so wish me luck and any last minute tips are gratefully received!! 

Read This

If you read anything today let it be this. I struggle sometimes and feel like my world is falling in around me and then you read purely tragic stories like this and you realise that yeah it's actually all ok for me, there are people out there who have it much worse than me. And I know that just because people have it worse than you that doesn't mean that you can't struggle, it just puts it into perspective a little.

And yeah it will probably make you cry as it did me but sometimes tears are good.

So all my thoughts with Nora and her family

Reasons I Love Winter

Yesterday's post was all about my negativity towards winter but hopefully you will find some more positivity in today's post!!

- Sitting in bed in my duvet wearing my Christmas jumper and watching family movies like Harry Potter and eating chocolate just make the trauma of Christmas shopping this morning all seem so far away. Things like this are only acceptable (or even comfortable in Winter)

- The weathermen seem adamant that we will get snow this year and I hope they are right (as long as I don't have to drive anywhere). Snowmen and snow angels all sound like a fantastic idea and the warming hot chocolate that follows is always appreciated. 

- CHRISTMAS!!! I love Christmas. Secret Santa, Christmas trees, presents, fairy lights and Christmas dinner just all sound positively perfect.

- Winter fashion is honestly the best. As what I would call a woman on the chunkier side of slim summer can literally be torture. I have enough insulating fat to keep me warm and it's apparently socially unacceptable for a fat woman to wear a skirt or dress without tights! In the winter I can wear leggings and jumpers to my hearts content and boots ... I love boots!! Christmas jumpers and sequins also become acceptable and what could be better about that??

- Stews, mash, apple crumble are all only acceptable to eat in the winter, summer food is all about the salad and yeah who wants a salad?!? 

- Going to bed at 9pm is acceptable as it's dark outside and sometimes I just need to hibernate. I wish I was a bear (and if I was a bear I wouldn't have to shave my legs - which is also possible when tights, leggings & trousers are the order of the day)

Reasons I Hate Winter

- Go to work - it's dark, get home from work - it's dark. Where the hell has all my daylight gone? I live in Suffolk not the Arctic Circle but yesterday it didn't even get light, just the day got slowly more grey. It's depressing.

- I hate being cold and I hate being warm due to artificial heat from radiators and heaters. It makes me feel sick and sleepy.

- I wish I had a wardrobe full of sophisticated winter clothes but all I really have are comfy leggings and jumpers that are even close to being suitable to wear when it's nearly freezing outside. However I'm not sure this is particularly suitable for everyday office attire (not that this stops me!). Also jumpers do nothing to make me look slim, jumpers are all about bulk which is not really my friend

- Winter makes me need carbs, like an actual addiction, which does not help with the aforementioned bulk. Also Costa has the Black Forest hot chocolate which is actually amazing and has about a million calories per sip.

- As soon as the ice warning comes up in my car, I panic. I have crashed two cars in the same spot when it's been icy and it's not something I wish to repeat. Luckily the "crashes" have been pretty minor but finding yourself on the opposite side of the road facing the wrong way in a hedge will never be my idea of fun. (Although my car no longer says "warning ice" it says it in Portuguese next to the time that is 3 hours and 3 years in the future!)

- Time seems to literally speed up in December. It seems like minutes ago that November started and now we are twenty days away from Christmas and I don't even remember it happening. Also December is a super expensive month (especially this year with the deposits and everything!)

- I hate crowds, they make me tense and shopping in December is just torture for me. So I am not entirely looking forward to shopping tomorrow, but I need boxes to pack my stuff so I must face the city!

There are many reasons to love Winter too. One of them is blogging in bed with a bar of Galaxy Caramel and the cat curled up next to me.

Homemade Advent Calander

I know I'm too late this year for you to make your own Advent calender but I couldn't write about it until I had unveiled it to my sister and I obviously still can't go too much into what is inside it as I don't want to spoil the surprise but this year me and my sister decided to make each other Advent calenders.

There are lots of different ways that you can display the gifts you get but this is the way I decided to display mine.

To make you will need:
24 small gifts - we agreed to try & keep relatively cheap so it's a mixture of childish cheap fun stuff and slightly more expensive little gifts
Coloured string
Ribbon
Brown Paper
Luggage Tags - got mine from W H Smith 
Gold push pins (found in the random stuff drawer in our kitchen)
Black Biro (I attempted different more expensive pens but these didn't work with the coating on the tags or dried out extremely quickly - biro is your cheapest most reliable friend)
Large corkboard (I recently got mine from Amazon for under £10 and will put it back to it's original use once we have finished)

I decided to wrap some presents and keep some presents visible. This was mainly due to the fact that some of the presents would be insanely difficult to wrap and also I like the look of some of the presents being on show especially the pretty bird. I decided to keep a common theme of the snowflakes on all the presents and the tags and a mixture of using the written number and the numerical form to look a bit more interesting too.

I honestly had no idea how difficult buying 24 little gifts would be. When we first decided on the idea it seemed like the simplest thing ever but things are so expensive that it was hard to get decent gifts that didn't cost the earth. Also as a relatively uncrafty person the writing of the tags literally took me a millennium but I am happy with them (these are attempt number two though!!)

What do you think about my advent calender idea? Have you ever made one?

What I'm Going to Miss About Home

I move out in less than two weeks and I'm excited and nervous and this all still seems rather surreal. Since the decision was made moving out date has come round incredibly fast and I still don't feel even close to being prepared or having the stuff sorted that I need! So instead of packing or sorting contents insurance I have decided to write a post about what I'm going to miss about home.

- That clean washing sometimes just wonderfully turns up in my room all folded & neat (unfortunately it never puts itself away in my wardrobe so there it stays for quite a while!!)

- Being woken up with meows & a cold nose in the morning (the new house doesn't have a garden & Felix will never be an inside cat). Also not being able to move my legs during the night so not to disturb him and not being able to walk anywhere without getting tripped up.

- Seeing my siblings nearly every day, hearing about their day, being there on the morning of their birthdays, the little things. 

- Eating said siblings left over pizza because you know that food that is leftover has no calories and obviously that is how I keep my svelte figure

- Having my Dad here to fix things, know how to sort things & just watching him sleeping on the sofa with his favourite dog. Also I would miss things like this artistic piece. It's a contender for next year's Turner Prize.

- Mumma Hen cooking dinner - it's pretty good when you can't be arsed to even think of what to eat let along cook it after working for 11 hours. Also when the food tastes crap the only person I will have to blame is myself

- That when my siblings get brought chocolate then so do I. I have a perfectly good Twirl in my bag, my Mum brought me a Flake and my sister got me some bloody fantastic cocoa fudge from Hotel Chocolat

I wish this was all I am going to miss but you have to grow up sometime and now is my time. What did you miss most when you moved out from home?

Moving Out - The Decision

So I finally made the big decision and with my best friend we have decided to move out and rent a little place of our own. You have no idea how hard it is to find rental properties until you start looking for them. I mean maybe you would have more luck if you were looking in the big towns & cities but when it's deep dark Suffolk affordable rental properties are very few and far between. 

Every place we looked at online was either extortionately expensive or looked like it had last been redecorated about 40 years ago and since then had had a dirty sweaty man rolling about the place who hadn't heard of deodorant or a vacuum cleaner or unfortunately both. Also more money out here just means more bedrooms or more acres not anything more modern, cleaner, sturdy kitchen cabinets or a white bathroom suite!

I'm also blaming Pinterest because this board has given me a totally unrealistic expectation of what my house should look like!

 My perfect house seems to be white with lots of natural light, wood and antique tiles and a kitchen that's the size of a small town. And while I am not completely willing to give up on the dream of a Pinterest worthy house I have to admit that it's probably not going to happen in my first place unless I win the lottery (which I don't even enter!)

We both spent a lot of time on Rightmove & Zoopla. I have no idea how people found houses before the internet but if I had had to sit in an estate agents and view all the pictures of the places I have viewed from the comfort of my bed I think I would have gone on a crazy rampage! 

I think a lot of finding the perfect place is a mixture of luck & compromise. It's seeing the right pictures at the right time. Good properties go so quick around here and properties that look like my Pinterest board are actually non existent. To be honest looking felt a little like a game, it felt unreal but we have found a place and are looking at putting the deposit down.

So yeah I am scared, I'm nervous and I'm really excited but the decision has been made - I'm moving out!!