The days gone by| Instagram

 

Just a little update for you all. I have been quite busy recently, with work but also as my mother’s wedding is next weekend there has been a lot of preparation for that, so I actually feel like I don’t have a lot of free time; which is a lie, as I still get up to plenty. So I will run you through the above pictures, as I seem to be documenting my life through Instagram at the moment, but I suppose that’s an obsession all us bloggers have. As much as my family tire of me taking pictures of even the least significant parts of my day, they enjoy the finished product; the blog posts, so they can’t complain too much.

• Flowers For A Friend- My best friend is going through a messy divorce at the moment, but we celebrated her becoming a ‘Miss’ again the other day. It’s great for her to be back to the name that was of the girl that I befriended 20 years ago, the name of the independent, fun and flirty girl she used to, and will be again in time.
• Blogging Goodies- Monu contacted me a few weeks ago and offered me some goodies to try, I was completely over the moon with this opportunity, and am happily testing them at the moment, so a review will come in time.
• Glitter Galore- Being a desk working girl now, my obsession with nail art continues. This week was my first attempt at glitter dipper nails.
• Product Testing Central- This was me using the Soap and glory Detox mask for the first time, the review for which is below.
• Cake Pops- We have had a busy week in our house making 100 pop cakes. We are yet to ice and decorate them, but I can say that the inners are so yummy!
• Train Travels- I have been travelling around for the past few weeks, very often to Newcastle to see my boy, but other ‘exciting’ places including Carlisle and Lancaster, to visit friends and family.
• Newcastle City Games- I was lucky enough to be in Newcastle for the Great North Run weekend, which meant I got to watch the City Games on Quayside and saw legends like Mo Farrah and Greg Rutherford!
• The Great North Run- I spend an hour in the rain cheering on the 55,000 runners, in which were a few of my friends who all did fantastic! It has even inspired me, to perhaps enter next year… if I’m lucky enough to get a place.
• Pretty in Pink- Another Nail of the Day.
• Massive Milestone- I surpassed 400 followers on my blog this week! It really surprised me as I think I gained 15 followers in a day. But as always I want to thank you all; new and old for reading, commenting and sharing my blog. It is my passion and I enjoy it so much, but to know that others read and enjoy what I have to say makes it so much more fun.
• Fun with fruit- My boy gave me a choice of a sausage butty or a bowl of fruit for my breakfast last weekend, and low and behold I chose the fruit! I even shocked myself, I think my fitness kick is finally starting to change my attitude towards food, which is a great thing!
• Christmas comfies- Last night (and right now) I have been rocking my Christmas pyjama bottoms, because it is just so damn cold! What happened to out Indian summer!

What’s been going on in your life recently? Am I the only one rocking my Christmas Pyjamas far too early? Please say I’m not!

Fun in Finland

Well this post is a little bit late, seems I went on holiday a month ago, but I wanted to share my trip with you lovely ladies anyways.

As many of you know, I was lucky enough to travel Finland and Lapland at the beginning of June. Many ask why Finland? We decided to go to Finland as we have friends there who we studied with while we were in France, so it was an opportunity to meet up with them. I went with my two friends from university, and had a great time.

We managed to travel and discover 1158 miles of Finland in 10 days, so we definitely got around a lot! The country itself is beautiful and different to what I expected, as at the time I was unaware that 85% of the country is covered with forests, and there are 187,888 lakes in the country! I’m not going to bore you with every detail of my trip but will just share my highlights in order of their occurrence;

• Realising upon arrival that we didn’t know a single word of Finnish (we picked it up on the way).
• Paying 36 euros for a bottle of wine, and 8 euros for a cider… expensive!
• Going on a boat trip around the Islands of Helsinki and a bird pooing on my friend… cruel but funny.
• Eating street food from a market in Helsinki, and not getting food poisoning.
• Taking lots of pictures of the famous Cathedral in Turku, to then realise it was just a church.
• Eating the best burger of my life on one of the many boat bars in Turku.
• Having a bbq with a Finnish family and eating smores.
• Sharing my sleeper cabin on the night train with an old Finnish lady who kept shouting at me in Finnish.
• Staying in a log cabin with its own private sauna.
• Whitewater rafting in the Midnight Sun… unbelievably beautiful and fun!
• Trecking in the Lapland hills, unfortunately not seeing a reindeer.
• Meeting the real life Santa Claus at the Arctic Circle! (He even ho ho’d)
• Having to bribe the conductor on the night train back to Helsinki so he wouldn’t kick us off the train. Then getting off a stop too early!
• Seeing Sting perform at a festival in Helsinki.
• My boy send a bottle of champers to our hotel room to celebrate our trip.

So as you can see, I had a very busy 10 days, am crammed a lot in, but it was a once in a lifetime trip!

Where has been the most unusual and interesting country you have visited?