Monthly Musings: November

And another month bites the dust.

Does anyone else feel like November was a bit of a 'meh' month? For one I can't remember the last time I saw so much as a streak of blue in the sky. Here in South Wales it has rained pretty much constantly since 4th November with brief intervals of gale force winds. I kid you not, I attempted to carry a large cardboard box from my storage lock-up to my car earlier today and I genuinely thought I was about to be swept off my feet like some kind of bedraggled, frizzy-haired Mary Poppins.

Here's me, hiding from the rain and praying for coffee

Maybe it was the murky weather or maybe it was the dull interlude between Halloween and Christmas, but my November was a bit grey all round. In fact, what even happened this month? Surely I must have been present for at least part of it!

Obsession of the month...

It's been a good while since I've had the time to sit down and binge-watch a TV show like I did back in my carefree uni days. But one day last month I was ill and suddenly found myself with an entire day to fill with nothing but lounging on the sofa under a duvet and catching up on my series links. It was glorious! You know, apart from the illness and whatnot.

Anyway, I finally got around to watching a show on Sky 1 called You, Me and the Apocalypse, which I quickly became totally obsessed with. 

It's about the oncoming end of the world (as you would imagine) and it follows various different characters from all over the place as they live out their final days. It's hilarious! The plot is totally off the wall and bizarre, but I am so hooked! There's just no way to guess what's going to happen next!

Now I just need to come down with the flu or something so I'll actually have the time to finish watching it... 

Accomplishment of the month...

I successfully applied winged eyeliner. Women everywhere will appreciate how huge this accomplishment is. 

Thing I am most ashamed of this month...

The shambles that was my Christmas shopping weekend. Don't get me wrong, it was a fabulous weekend. Roman Baths were visited, prosecco was guzzled, Big Rich Texas was binge-watched in the hotel room. But as far as actually making headway with my Christmas shopping goes...yeah, it was a total fail. I didn't buy a single gift. Unless you count gifts for myself...

Book of the month...

Do we really need to talk about it? Yes, I'm still reading *Middlemarch and yes I will still be reading it in 47 year's time.

Youtuber of the month...

Sarah Rae Vargas

This lady certainly does not need any additional promotion from little old me since she already has nearly 500,000 subscribers. And for good reason!

I've been subscribed to Sarah's channel for a while now and her videos are so different from anything else I've seen on Youtube. Her down to earth, no nonsense honesty is a breath of fresh air (and definitely leaning towards the risqué). She makes videos about body confidence, dealing with haters and sex alongside your standard hauls and outfit of the day videos. 

She also strikes me as the type of person who'd be great to go do tequila shots with.

Things ticked off the 2015 List...

Success! I actually accomplished something on the list this month!

26. Listen to classical music (in the vague hope that it will make me more cultured and stop my brain cells from fizzling out at such a high rate)

I had Radio 3 on in my car for an entire 4 days, which is a practically an eternity when you consider that I spend 4-6 hours of my work day driving. Listening to classical music definitely made me feel very cultured, but by day 5 I simply had to switch back to my beloved Radio 1. All the violins were starting to make me weirdly anxious. 

Next month I will aim to...

Soak up as much of the Christmas spirit as humanly possible...hopefully without inadvertently gaining 20lbs. Because, you know, Christmas chocolates...

Pssst! You can check out my favourite products of the month here:

(Affiliate links marked with *)

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Monthly Musings: September!

Do you ever have one of those months that just feels like a brick in the face? That was how September was for me. Don't get me wrong, it was a great month. My birthday is in September and I got a new job, I finally managed to catch up on Game of Thrones (although I have no idea what I'm meant to do with my life until the next season comes out!) and the weather was uncharacteristically pleasant.   

But boy was it intense! One minute it was the first week of the month and I was happily knocking back Jack Daniels and blowing out birthday candles and now all of a sudden it's October and I've somehow become a sleep-deprived business woman who can barely account for the last three weeks of her life. 

But, whether I can make sense of it or not, September is over and it's time for some monthly musings!

Obsession of the month...

This month I have been obsessively listening to Charlie Puth and Meghan Trainor's new song, 'Marvin Gaye'. On repeat. Sometimes for hours on end. Of the 73 million views the video has had on Youtube, 10,000 or so of them are probably mine. Yes I'm aware that I could just download the song on Itunes, but that would be far too logical. That's simply not how I roll.

Accomplishment of the month...

This month my greatest accomplishment was getting myself a fancy new grown up job, which involves wearing blouses, pretending I know how to use an Ipad, and occasionally popping into London and getting utterly lost on the Tube. I never thought I'd end up in the corporate world (being more into rainbows and smiles than pie charts and firm handshakes) but I guess that's the beauty of my bizarre little life. There is absolutely no knowing where I'll end up next.

Thing I am most ashamed of this month...

As part of my fancy new job I got a fancy new company car. The low point of the month was definitely getting stuck outside Dominos Pizza for 15 minutes because I couldn't work out how to put the car into reverse. #epicfail

Book of the month...

The book I've been slowly but surely working my way through this month (and will no doubt be working my way through for a good few months to come) is Middlemarch by George Eliot. Now don't get me wrong, I love Victorian novels. I don't mind getting entangled in the enormous descriptive passages or trying to keep tabs on the seemingly never-ending cast of characters (yes, Dickens, that one was aimed at you). But so far Middelmarch hasn't really grabbed my attention and the next 636 are looking pretty daunting right now. Wish me luck.

Youtuber of the month...

I've been subscribed to Stepanka for a long time now, but for the last few weeks I've been binge-watching her videos like some kind of weird stalker. Maybe I find comfort in knowing there's someone out there who seems to end up in as many random and bizarre circumstances as I do. But if you enjoy my weird and wonderful annecdotes then you'll probably love her channel.

Things ticked off The 2015 List...

An accurate depiction of how I currently look/feel

This month I continued the theme of accomplishing absolutely nothing on The 2015 List. I'm nothing if not consistent after all.

Next month I will aim to...

Fit in some time to sleep! This month has been so hectic that the bags under my eyes have become a permanent feature, so deeply engrained that there's not enough concealer in the world to help me. Trust me, I've already gone through a whole bottle!

Monthly Musings: Apirl

Do you ever feel like life is train, hurtling forward at a speed so obscenely fast that sometimes you feel like shouting, "Hey, can't we just pull over for a minute so I can pee?" 

Somehow April has come and gone before I even got out of the habit of writing March on all my paperwork. But, regardless of whether I'm prepared for the onset of May or not, here it comes. And, with the end of the month come my Monthly Musings. 

 Obsession of the month...

I know I am extremely late to the party on this one, but this month I started watching Game of Thrones. Why did this take so long?! Why did no one force me to sit down and watch this years ago? I mean, yes, my ex-boyfriend did try, and my housemates, and then my friends...and my brother. And I suppose it's true that my father has been demanding I watch it for at least the last 8 months, but, really, I feel like more could have been done. 

I am now trying to make up for lost time by binge-watching it every evening and have started silently cursing every episode of Coronation Street, Eastenders and various other soap opera-type rubbish that my mother insists on watching. Woman, you are eating into my Game of Thrones time and some of us are desperate to know what's going to happen to John Snow!  

Accomplishment of the month...

This month I got a job as a summer camp counsellor...in Maine! In just 7 short weeks I jet off to spend a summer toasting smores on a camp-fire, trying to come to terms with the fact that the letter 'u' will all but cease to exist, and slowly edging my way ever closer to the Jack Daniels distillery. This is the stuff that dreams are made of!

What's more, I've already Googled the bear population in the town I'll be based in and it seems very unlikely that I will be mauled to death (although back in 2012 a bear did attempt to steal a couple's hamburgers) so that's one less thing to worry about.

The moose population, however, is an entirely different matter...

Low point of the month...

Without a doubt the low point of my month was turning on Netflix and discovering that Greek had been removed. Why would Mr. Netflix do such a thing?! I had intentionally imposed a Greek ration to stop myself from burning through the entire series too quickly (à la Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Desperate Housewives, and, of course, Toddlers and Tiaras) and suddenly, not even midway through the series, it has been cruelly snatched away from me! Is it too much to want to know if Cappie and Casey will ever get back together or whether anyone will finally push Rebecca Logan off a high cliff?!

Book of the month...

Memoirs of a Geisha. I thoroughly enjoyed this book (which was a relief after trawling through last month's book)! It's beautifully written without being too dense or heavy-going, the plot is intriguing and unlike anything I've read before, and yes, it did make me cry! If you're on the lookout for your next read then I would definitely recommend this one! 

Youtuber of the month...

BuzzFeedYellow

I love ridiculous Buzzfeed articles so when I realised there were ridiculous Buzfeed videos...naturally I was all over that! From 'If Disney Princesses Texted their Princes' to 'If Girlfriends were Honest when Arguing', they have a video for pretty much every mood and I find them all hilarious. 

Things ticked off The 2015 List...

Another epic fail with regards to the 2015 List. There's no real excuse seeing as so many of the things on there can be done from the comfort of my own home with little to no effort (it's not as if watching When Harry Met Sally is going to be particularly taxing). But, once again, I've done absolutely nothing on the list. I'm a failure. I accept it. Let's move on.

Next month I will aim to...

Aside from finalising my travel plans, coming up with a three week arts and crafts itinerary for camp, and finding myself a suitcase big enough for all my junk, by the end of May I aim to have 500 subscribers on my Youtube channel. My original aim for the entire year was to reach 100 so I've already smashed that target. But 500? Are there really 500 people out there willing to listen to my rambling? 

We'll see I guess!

Monthly Musings: March!

Obsession of the month...

My obsession this month was a new TV programme on Netflix called Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. It has all the components of what I would consider to be the perfect TV show. The humour is bizarre, random and totally genius, the theme tune is catchy, and you never know when one of the characters is going to randomly burst into song. It's fabulous on so many levels!

Unfortunately, I made that fatal Netflix error of watching the entire season over the course of two short days and now I'm stuck twiddling my thumbs until they upload the next one.

Accomplishment of the month...

This month my Youtube channel hit 100 subscribers! I'd call that a pretty awesome accomplishment. It's so exciting and I'm so grateful/amazed that people like my videos so much. And I've been getting so many lovely comments and messages from my subscribers too! 

If you are a subscriber then thank you! I really, really, really appreciate your support. And if you're not, what are you waiting for? Go subscribe and experience my rants and ramblings in an entirely new medium! (Plus there's a super awesome giveaway going on right now too!)

High point of the month...

I'm not even ashamed to say that one of the most memorable occurrences of the month was coming across a Milkybar Milk and Cookies chocolate bar. Just when I thought there wasn't anything more delicious in the world than Milkybar chocolate, they go and put little chunks of cookie in there! It was just...everything! 

Low point of the month...

Not being able to find said Milkybar Milk and Cookies chocolate bars anywhere since. I mean, in what kind of cruel world would I find something so perfect, just to have it snatched away from me? 

Book of the month...

I've spent the entire month trawling through Stephen King's 'The Stand' and I still have another 150 pages or so to go. Unless something truly monumental happens right at the end, I can't see it working its way into my top 10. Or top 20. It's a really great story, but it seems ridiculous that a plot that takes place over the course of a single summer needs to be over 1000 pages long. I mean, come on! Margaret Mitchell squeezed 16 years worth of plot into a novel shorter than this one!

Youtuber of the month...

Popgnome

This month I've been binge-watching videos by Kourtney and Jessica, AKA Popgnome. Their channel is a mixed bag with videos about everything from lipstick to DIY, food to dogs. You know I like my Youtbers down-to-Earth, fun, and interesting to watch and these girls tick all the boxes! 

Things ticked off The 2015 List...

I managed to tick just one more thing off the list this month (it's going painfully slowly).
32. Visit somewhere new
This month I took a trip to the Forest of Dean with my friend Beth, her boyfriend, and a whole lot of his friends. Yes, I know I'm a party-crasher, but who can blame me? After all, a weekend away is a weekend away!
We stayed in little cabins surrounded by trees and mud and (so I'm told) all kind of animals. Personally it's the closest to camping I ever want to get. And imagine my surprise when I realised that the Forest of Dean is actually nowhere near the Lake District!
Actually I'm beginning to wonder whether it's too late to add "brush up on basic Geography" to The 2015 List.

Next month I will aim to...

Make some headway with The 2015 List. I'm three months into the year and I've only managed to tick off a measly two accomplishments. Maybe I won't aim for number 6 (climb Snowdon), but there are plenty of random things on there that would actually require very little planning (or effort).