The Accidental Date and the 11 Month Apology

I have one incident in my dating life which I am not proud of. I think enough time has passed that I have made peace with it and now I’m ready to share, the story of “The Accidental Date and the 11 Month Apology.”

In March 2014 ish I started talking to Pete on OKCupid. 

This could be what Pete looks like in a few years

Very quickly the conversation was easy, flowing and we were getting on well. As usual with people you talk to online, it took us a little while to agree to meet up. Well you don’t want to rush into it and get murdered!! I was totally up for meeting, but Pete was a little hesitant. At this time I had also been going on a few dates with a bartender called Frank. Frank had charmed me by saying he'd noticed me previously in the bar and thought I was funny, that was all it took for me to say yes to a couple of dull dates! The fact I never noticed the man giving me booze should have set the alarm bells ringing!

Farewell makeup and sparkling studs

I mentioned previously that I left my old job a little while ago, and because I had been working with some lovely people they gave me some gifts when I left. 

They clearly knew me very well as they presented me with some sparkly earrings and make-up from MAC (including some great false lashes!!). Vampy nail varnish, glittery eye shadow and big hooker lashes make for a great look, all topped of with a little sparkle in my ear.

How much do we love my ex-co-workers?

The fine art of Friends With Benefits

I have recently been spending time with a blast from the past. Matt, who the keen eyed of you will remember I met at the start of the year (first impression, Daisy's thoughts, post date, update, drunken text), occasionally sent me messages that we should "hang out". I'm not the kind of girl who actually thought that this meant he wanted to hang out!

Recently with work easing a bit and a couple of not so great dates under my belt (updates to follow), I thought it might be fun. It has been fun. With Matt's interests revolving mostly around cycling, climbing and bike engineering and mine being as far removed from that as possible (TV, eating, painting my nails...), then I didn't see any issue with some fun without stings or emotions.

The problem that I am finding is that the more we talk and spend time together, the more I enjoy being around him. We have far more in common than I thought and, heaven help me, we are now starting to share personal details about our lives with each other. This is not helping me stay detached from the situation and with that in mind I have been devising a set of rules for myself to keep things purely in the "friends with benefits" camp.

1. Don't fall in love.
2. Never stay the night
3. Keep conversation light
4. Don't meet the friends
5. Don't go out in public together
6. Never discuss deep personal secrets
7. Don't cook for each other
8. No spooning

We have currently broken rules 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8.

DAMN IT!!

Starting Over: My New Job

Change is hard, even if it's by choice and something you have been considering and then preparing for months in advance.

I don't like change much. I don't hate it but I can find it difficult to adapt to big changes. The biggest change I have faced in a long time is changing my job. I am the kind of person who up until recently just fell into jobs. I trained as a teacher and eight years ago during the summer holidays I decided to take a temp job, I never left that temp job until recently. 

I had been feeling like I needed a bit of a change of pace. I was unhappy and needed to make a big life change so I started applying for new jobs. After some tough interviews, the first ones I'd had to do in about 10 years, I was offered a new job. 

I have now been in my new job for about 3 months, since I last posted on here! It has been a difficult transition for me. I knew a few people going in as I work in a niche industry, however it was like starting from scratch again. I had forgotten how long it takes to build friendships with colleagues and how exhausting learning new ways can be. 

Finally, I am beginning to feel like myself again. I had a few bumps along the road where I was not sure if I would make it. The support of my close friends and family helped and I know that soon I'll be soaring once again.

In preparation for feeling like the happy-go-lucky version of myself from yesteryear, I will be dating again and sharing the stories as well as my general love for sparkles and pretty things. 

I'm back!!

Reading Reality

When 2 of your favourite things come together you have to jump on it right? Suddenly I realized that I could combine my love of books and my love of reality TV by reading books written by reality TV personalities. I know... I probably should have worked this out earlier, but this realisation made me really excited.

Onto Amazon I jumped and I bought a selection of books (second hand where possible) and patiently waited their delivery. They have finally all arrived and I am very excited to get stuck in, starting with Most Talkative by Andy Cohen. The rest of the titles I have in my pile are -

Most Talkative - Andy Cohen 

I Didn't Come Here to Make Friends. Confessions of a Reality Show Villain - Courtney Robertson 

Drinking and Tweeting - Brandi Glanville

Spelling it Like it is - Tori Spelling 

Let Me Tell You Something - Caroline Manzo 

The Andy Cohen Diaries: A Deep Look at a Shallow Year - Andy Cohen

The loveliest pile

I can't wait to share my thoughts on them all.

Power Ranking: Podcasts

I like to number things in my head. It is a weird thing to do, but it makes me happy. The rankings are variable and as soon as something new comes into play I start again. For example I will have my top 5 TV shows, but as soon as there is a new show I take a liking to I will re-evaluate. I was listening to a podcast recently where Juliet Litman was mildy mocked for power ranking everything in her life! I felt happy that I was not the only one and established that this should be something I share.

Today I want to share my current top 3 podcasts!

1. Happier with Gretchen Rubin
Firstly I love Gretchen Rubin's voice, I find it very soothing. For a podcast giving life tips on how to be happier this is a must. Secondly I find a lot of her advice actually doable and easy. Little tips like giving people a warm greeting first thing in the morning and setting an alarm to tell you when to go to bed. All of these tips are great and I like her easy conversational nature she has with her arty and creative sister (who I relate to the most).
Click on the link above for ways to download

2. The Right Reasons
I love reality TV and listening to others talk about reality TV is a must for me. Here Juliet Litman and David Jacoby talk about the Reality TV they have watched for the week. I will admit that I have started watching some shows just so that I can enjoy the conversation even more as I know what they are talking about. Since I find this a guilty pleasure listen I can't put it at number 1, but this is a podcast I like to save for myself to savour on the weekends.

3. How Did This Get Made?
Since I listen to most of my podcasts walking home from work, I like to keep them light. I find that after a tricky day at work, listening to 3 comedians I like pick apart "bad films" asking themselves "How did this get made?". I have probably been seen laughing to myself with my headphones on walking down the busy road to my house. The harder I try not to laugh the worse it becomes. Anyone who likes dry observational humour or likes either; Paul Scheer, Jason Mantzoukas or June Diane Raphael should give this a listen.

I'm off to make myself a power ranking of things to power rank, and work out a picture to accompany power rankings... I'm excited!!

Current Obsession... Vintage Hair

I aspire to hair like this...

Have you ever been drawn to an era without really knowing why? You find yourself wondering what it would be like to live then and how you would fit in. For me it’s the 1940’s. I’m not sure why I like the 40’s so much. For me I grew up loving classic films with His Girl Friday and Rebecca being my favourites, or any Hitchcock really (the earlier ones are great!) and I think in a strange way I could relate to the characters and wanted to

Update 5

Oh my, what an update to have. I have a 2^nd date, a drunken texter and a flake to update you on!

First off, yay for my guest blog post on Mairi’s blog!! I’m excited to be included. Enough chitter chatter though, on to the men!

Paramedic Rick: Still nothing from him, Ben wonders

The Dye Job Part 2

After being disappointed by the colour from my last home dye job (which was still too dark for my liking) I decided to try again. This time I took my friend on a hair dye shopping expedition. She seemed really keen and excited for me... that is until I picked up a box of bleach proclaiming that "this will do the trick". I'm not sure how she thought I was going to lighten my hair without using bleach.

Bleach and more copper

New Handbag

Who doesn't get a thrill at buying a new handbag? I loved my old River Island handbag, one of the poppers on it broke over a year ago and I have continued using it up until now as I loved it so much. It was a pale brown satchel and it held everything I needed and always had exactly what I wanted right there at my hip. Farewell old friend I'll miss you and never forget you...

Goodbye you old bag

Enter, brand new orange bag. I was having a browse through River Island a few weeks ago and when I saw this bag I thought 'ew, orange bag',

Pretty Lovelies: Homemade Scrub

We have an annual Christmas Ham dinner at one of my pretty friends houses, we call it Hamfest! She always makes such an effort every year and this year was no different. In every place setting this year she had a homemade body scrub for each of us.

She put them into individual glass jars with tags telling us what the ingredients are. She had made us a scrub of lemon, cocoa oil, lavender and coconut oil. I'm going to admit that I'm not the biggest fan of lavender, however the combination of all the scents together were fantastic. I used this for the first time recently and it left my skin feeling super soft and smelling delicious. I would recommend this combination and if we are nice to Sam maybe she will share how she made it. I have to try not to run out before that happens. 

Yummy Scrub

Yummy juice

Personally I think that finding something new in the supermarket is so exciting. It makes me happy and I like testing out the product. In my trip to ASDA today I found that in their fruit juice isle there was a new range of fruit and vegetable juices.

Fruit and Veggie Juice

I could easily have picked any of them as they all sounded delicious. I decided to try the Apple, pumpkin, grape and peach as it was calling out to me! It stated that the apple and the grape juice were both not from concentrate and the pumpkin and peach were purees. 

A little evening drink

The Verdict: it tasted a little bit like baby food for my liking. It is what I remember my younger brother's jars of baby fruit puree tasting like. I was 10 when he was a baby and I liked munching on his food back then, but now this is not something I am rushing to gulp down. Maybe the others will taste less sweet.

Being Stood Up

My dating stories and tales are a couple months old now as I had passed them around my office before deciding to put them into a blog for all to laugh at. One of my wonderful and talented colleagues has her own blog over at aguide2.me. She approached me about writing a guest post for her. I really wanted to, but felt I had nothing very self contained to write about... until I was stood up.

The original post can be found here. For those not wanting to click, here is my post in all it's glory with the guys name changed so that it follows on from the last update...

Dresser Overhall

I have a horrible habit of dumping stuff. I will empty out my handbags or pockets on to a surface and then it ends up taking me ages to then get round to tidying the mess up. The worst place for me to dump stuff on is my dressing table. It already has a few things sitting on it and the drawers are full of products so it takes very little time for it to go from being tidy to overflowing with 'stuff' again.

This is the horror show it was recently...

Dumping ground for all of my rubbish

After giving the mirrors a good clean, putting away most of my makeup and getting rid of general junk, it looks so much better. The only thing I want to try and keep out are things I use most regularly. It is going to be difficult for me to remember to put things away once I have used them, but if I can do this my dressing table will look so much better. 

And after, dust and clutter free

I have a long glass vase filled with coffee beans which I keep my brushes in, a pot for pencils and a pot for mascara. I managed to find a mirror tray to keep my powders on and handy for use. Most of my products (shadows, pallets, lipsticks, samples, creams...) are all kept in the drawers, and these are relatively tidy. Go me!

Finally I also moved the picture I have of Audrey Hepburn from behind the dresser, for the last few years this has been blocked by the mirror and I never got around to moving it (bad me!!). Now it is about half a meter to the left and looking much better.

I think the next step is to go through my products and get rid of the old and broken products!

The Dye Job Part 1

I put some time aside recently so that I could use my lovely boxes of Mango Intensive Copper hair dye from Superdrug. I had really high hopes for this based on the colour swatches on the back of the box. I was promised that even though my hair was on the darker side I would be left with a bright copper. 

The starting colour

My First Sassy Smoothie

Oh I was itching to use my spirulina. I posted not too long go that I had bought a packet of spirulina and some ground flaxseed and I was excited to get blending. After looking for some inspiration online (I'm looking at you google and pintrest!) I found a video of a green smoothie which looked amazingly tasty.

The ingredients were all ones I knew were available in the supermarket if I didn't already have them. Blueberries, banana, spiniach, kale, flaxseed, spirulina, chia seeds and water. She lso added in some dates for sweetness. The video is below of you want to check it out.

Pretty Lovelies: Hair Dye

I have had a bad day at work. Actually I have had a few bad weeks at work recently. I am changing jobs and working my notice period. This involves every problem in the department being placed on my desk for me to solve. Stress and misery like this generally leads to me feeling restless and then this leads to me wanting to make a change.

At the moment this has resulted in the purchase of 2 boxes of copper hair dye (I got 2 as they were on offer). I used to have my hair copper and loved it. I'm not sure how to describe the current colour of my hair, as it goes through a lot of changes, but it is probably a dark reddish brown.

Once I have coloured my hair I will post some before and after pictures. Copper here I come...

Mango Copper Burst Superdrug Hair Dye

Update 4

How things have changed, I have gone from such a long list of men that Daisy had to tabulate them, to basically 2 guys. I think the key to dating these people is to meet them and see who I meet that I want to jump over the table and mount! I have not had that yet, but is that because I have generally become a lot more laid back or that I don’t really care as much?

At one point recently I had considered Speed Dating, and I was so blaze about it. However the times didn’t fit with my plans so I’ll go to the next one, totally no big deal. Meeting people and making awkward first date conversation is no different to making conversation with a client. You smile and try and draw on the little information you know about them so far so as to fill enough time that it becomes easy!

Tea for Nepal

The other week I received a lovely email from a friend asking me if I wanted to come along and support an Afternoon Tea event to raise funds for Nepal in conjunction with Unicef. How nice of her was that!!

It was a great event! the tickets were £20 and then there were cocktails, food, a raffle and a silent auction. The afternoon was held in the Dovecot studios. I had never been in the Dovecot before, it is a tapestry studio space and gallery. Previously the space had been an old Victorian swimming pool with a viewing level. The event was held on this level and it was a lovely bright day.

Items to feel good about

I found myself walking past a big health store the other day. It was payday and I was feeling like a little browse so I popped in. I like the idea of being good to my body and feeding it only good clean foods (although in practice that rarely happens). Browsing in the "Superfood" isle I came across some packets of spirulina. I don't know much about it, other than it is supposed to be good for you and people put it in smoothies. I purchased a pack to see what difference it makes for me and because it was in a multibuy offer I also picked up some ground flaxseed and goji berries to add into the smoothies also.

I have started pinning some green juice recipes to a pintrest board and I will try one very soon. Any recommendations are welcome.

Spirulina and flaxseed... yummy?

The Bachelorette ep 1 and 2 thoughts

What can I say? I am a big fan of the Bachelor (and most US reality TV for that matter) and after the last season, hearing that Kaitlyn and Britt would both be contending to be the Bachelorette, ensured that I would be tuning in to see how it all turns out.

Update 3

     

It has been a while since we were here, talking about my love life.

I think something clicked in me recently. I went through the holidays with this feeling of needing to find a replacement for the ex and that getting back on the horse is what you had to do once you break up with someone to prove that you had moved on. I don’t have this feeling anymore. In the last few weeks I suddenly feel chilled out about the whole thing and very ‘what will be, will be’ about the whole dating process. With this in mind I have cut all dead weight out of the below and I now have 2 potentials, so let us update –

Update 2

     

Since my ever evolving and organic work-in-progress love life changes on a daily basis this is an update keep you up to speed. Here is where I stand with all the men (and there are a few new players)!

The dreaded gym

It has probably been almost exactly a year since I was last in the gym. On that day a year ago I have vivid memories of standing on an elliptical machine having a full blown panic attack or meltdown. I went home to try and sort out my head and I have been finding excuses to not go back ever since. Some of these excuses are as follows –

I’m too tired

I have no time

I feel like I am getting sick

Trying to juggle rehearsals and exercise is not a good idea

I should be spending this time with my boyfriend 

I’ve not shaved my legs (?) 

I’m too hungry

I’m already on the sofa

I should diet first and then work on my fitness

It’s too far away

From a Friend

After sending on the lineup of the guys currently chatting to me to a couple of people at work, one of my colleagues Daisy sent me back the following message and spreadsheet of her thoughts (because this is the kind of people we are!!

Daisy: 

The Lineup

I have jumped back into dating since my break up and I am talking to as many people as possible to try and find some I'd like to go out with. So here is a lowdown on everyone with some pictures.

Tonight I am going out with Matt! Matt is 30 and works for a bicycle shop as a mechanic. He grew up in the US and Guernsey and seems really nice and friendly with a cute baby face. 

Notes on this blog

Herein you will find tales of my dating life, my journey to get fit and general thoughts on my true love... US reality TV.

In the dating warnings tales, all names will be changed unless I am given permission to use their real name (likely!!). I will also be hunting out some pictures of celebrity likenesses to bring the stories to life. Well I can't be posting their real pictures now can I?

For all you curious types, this is me:

xx