Recently...

...I've been wrestling with my laptop. Still. I'm now on the main computer, wrestling with the world's worst keyboard. I've had so many things to write about this week and nowhere to write them - I even picked my diary up again on Thursday. Yes, really.


Here's what I've been up to...

It was Aiden's 18th last night. I spent most of my time there sitting with Sophie (pictured) and laughing at the ridiculousness of the woopee cushion costume to our left. I also got to see Poppy again, which was awesome. I saw other people too, but they're not really worth mentioning. Ahem...


I was 'Spanish' and Sophie was 'French' (it was fancy dress) - my costume was ridiculously last minute, so I didn't really look Spanish at all. I also loaned Sophie the beret ;)


However, the main event of yesterday was not Aiden's party, being paid £100 by college for writing a letter for the prospectus OR having an awesome impromptu choir rehearsal.


No, the main event of yesterday was me passing my driving test :D First time trying, only 5 minors. Woo! :) And, dare I say, it was kind of easy. Waiting a year definitely paid off for me.


This week was odd. Tuesday was spent having coffee and a gossip with Jess while tidying the Amnesty office. There were other events, but that's pretty much all I remember of it. Every single time we talk, we always get into discussing how it's odd that we've become so close after Poland. We went to experience (as best as we could...) one of the most horrific things to have ever occurred, yet from it, a wonderful friendship has emerged. I love all of my friends, but I could never thank Jess enough for how much she's been there for me in the past few weeks. Jess, if you've come over here to read from Tumblr, thank you.


I'm pretty much just counting down to half term now. I'm going away to Edinburgh for the first three days of it (I think) - I'm desperate to get away from normality at the moment so it should be good. Except, of course, we're staying in a Holiday Inn hotel, and the last time I stayed in one of those the hotel made me quite ill. Oh...


I have a few post ideas - so may actually handwrite them then type them up when I can steal this ancient computer.


Besos ♥
Rachel

Party day :)

I really don't have time to blog tonight, but I fear that if I don't, it'll be next Sunday before I find the time. Last night was my 18th party and it was such a good night. Well, excluding the fact that one of my 'friends' tried to abduct another of my friends...and the fact that it all ended with the fire alarm randomly starting up and refusing to go off. Other than that? All good :)

There are so many random, little things that stood out for me - Poppy's 'purple shoes' drawing; Jess' ridiculously wonderful gift box (seriously, talk about being good at buying presents for people) and the sweet message she wrote for me; Amy and George's protectiveness when two randomers showed up; Amy's reaction to the 'friend' and his...antics...; Danny, Eliza and Amy's song dedications (couldn't have been more random); and many more things. Jade definitely won the award for the most energetic dancing, followed closely by my auntie - they even danced together at one point, and Jess turned to me and went ''who are we dancing with?"

Some pictures...

Stolen from Jess. L to R - Keyana, Poppy, Natalie, Katie, Sarah, Eliza, me, Rachel, Amy, Jess, Jade, Sophie, Joe

Stolen from Jess (and not as posed as it looks). L to R - Rachel, me, Jade, Sophie

Cake + balloons

The relatives rather enjoying themselves

The cake

The only decent picture of Rachel, myself, and Fern. Luckily, quite a nice one too.

Myself and Jess

And now I really must return to my world of Psychology revision, surprise Spanish research and feeling rubbish because it's over. Ha. 

Thank you to everybody (almost everybody...) who came. You really have no idea quite how much it meant to have my best friends and family all in one room. All of the stress over planning, prising people away from people they shouldn't have been touching and near fire was absolutely worth it to see everybody smiling and just enjoying themselves - so thank you, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did ♥

Besos ♥ 
Rachel

Late night musings

As I begin typing, it is 00:16am, Saturday 10th September (mainly referred to as 'Party Day' in my household). In approximately 13 hours, I'm going to pick Rachel up from the train station. In fact, if her train isn't late, in 13 hours I will be with her. I don't even know where the train's coming from, I think she has to change at Sheffield possibly? It's Melton, Leicester, Derby, and after that I don't know. Anyway, as I just told Facebook (mainly because she will probably read it), I'm ridiculously excited to see her again. I'm also ridiculously nervous, because it has been four years. But still... :D

My half cousin also posted on Facebook ''bring on tomorrow night'' before midnight, and it made me smile to know that she's looking forward to it. Another relative has even booked Sunday off work because, in my grandma's words, he wants to enjoy it. Haha. 

I get to see some of the Doncaster relatives tomorrow, and I'm ridiculously excited about that too. Fern has already told me that she wants to meet my great auntie Helen because I described her, quite simply, as one of those people that is just truly lovely. And she is.

Family is such an odd thing. In the past month or so, I've really found myself appreciating the family I still have - most probably because of things that have happened recently, but also because there some people who I feel honoured to know. I really want them all to enjoy themselves this evening, because it means something to see them happy. 

Today was, by college standards, rather average. I had a free period first and used it to, shock horror (given my lack of time), continue re-reading Eleven. I was telling somebody yesterday that I ''never have time to read :('' and realised that there was no reason why I couldn't in my free...so I did. I also read during my free after lunch, although it was frequently interrupted by Sarah yelling ''NOOOOO, BIG ONION!" at the Shrek game on my iPod. All was forgiven when she 'spilled' the gossip she had ;)

Still no further in dealing with the budget issue of yesterday. Have refused to go back and try speaking to the same woman because I'm not in the mood to just be shouted at again. Moving on...

I had so many things that I wanted to write about today - the walk home from the bus stop was spent planning my next post, and then I couldn't breathe properly (that was fun...) and ended up driving to pick my mum up, so I completely forgot it all. But, I'm sure I'll have plenty to talk about over the weekend ;) :)


PS: Am still reminding myself to be positive and still succeeding. Didn't even get annoyed at the girl in my English class saying she ''wanted to commit suicide'' because the teacher told her to stop talking when he was. People like that do wind me up, though. 

Besos ♥ 
Rachel

Summer Favourites

So, I've been a bit of a naughty blogger this summer and seriously lacked in enthusiasm to post anything on here. I've gone from 27 posts in July to 8 (9 if we include this one) in August. I can hear the internet yelling ''shame on you!"... Anyway, I'm back to college on Monday and summer will, in my head, officially be over. Booo :( I thought I'd compile a 'summer favourites' post to give you a glimpse of why I've not been posting :)

Television If I told you that my entire summer has been spent watching Not Going Out repeats, I wouldn't really be lying. Equally, I wouldn't be lying if I substituted Not Going Out for Pushing Daisies. I pretty much never watch TV during ''the academic year'' so summer has very much been spent lazing around and watching TV. When we were in France, my brother and I spent every single evening watching the DVDs in the picture :)

Personalising Somewhere, once, I saw that someone had created a 'washing line' of cards, photos etc, and hung it in what I think was their kitchen. I'm not even sure why, but I decided I wanted to do the same in my bedroom. From left to right: The CHS World Challenge Team 2010; Fern and I at prom; Croatian countryside; Rachel 1 and Rachel 2 at Magna (v. old); My handprint; Sarah, Beth M, Fern and I on prom night; two thank you cards from extended family; a Valentines card from Talor (my Psychology friend). The pegs are a mix of craft pegs and pegs I bought in Poland ''because they looked pretty'' :)

Jewellery I've been incredibly good about buying jewellery this year and barely bought anything, with the exceptions of the three (technically four...) rings pictured and a bracelet in Poland that matched Jade's. The first three rings you can see are all from Bijou Brigitte, which is a German brand that has recently opened a store in Wakefield, and the fourth is from Asda. The necklaces pictured were all made by me, and if you scroll back a bit you'll find tutorials and other posts about making jewellery yourself.

Nails The only thing I can justify wasting money on is nail polish, and that's because I know I'll use it. From left to right: Beauty UK Frozen Kingdom; Boots 17 Chaperone; Boots 17 Baked Cherry; Accessorize Khaki Folly; Models Own Utopia; George at Asda Deceit; George at Asda Indigo Dazzle; George at Asda Troll; George at Asda Starry Eyed. The George range has absolutely been my favourite - only £1.75 and the polishes seem to last for quite a long time considering how cheap they are. The bottles are a little small but for the price it's reasonable. My most recent purchase was the Beauty UK Frozen Kingdom one, which I LOVE, and despite the name, it really isn't wintery.


Being a Geek The two notebooks pictured were customised to say 'Notebook' and 'Thoughts' in lots of different languages. Geeky? Yes. My drawer isn't usually that messy, by the way. I've also been teaching myself Swedish, hence the whiteboard...which actually is completely out of date now as that was the first lesson I gave myself and I know everything on there now. A post on that will be coming soon, language geeks :-)

Beauty While I can justify spending money on nail polish, I really can't when it comes to make up. I don't know why, I just can't. This summer I've mainly been wearing the lighter shades of the eyeshadow, the Rimmel Flash Eyeliner or the brown eyeliner, and a lipstick that's not actually pictured (yay for good photography). The lipstick pictured is actually a replacement for one that I bought twice, which broke both times I purchased one. The one pictured, Beauty UK's In the Buff, replaced Collection 2000's Crystal Gloss Coral Crystal - the colour is fairly different, but it's does its job and, most importantly, doesn't literally fall apart when being used. 

Hola Magazine This really shouldn't count as a 'summer' favourite, as I only purchased it recently. However, I have discovered that WH Smiths sells copies of Hola magazine in some of its branches. So far, I've spotted it in Barnsley (random, I know) and York. Obviously, I've purchased both times :) This one I bought in York and I was pretty impressed with myself for actually knowing of one of the celebrities it did an article on (Paulina Rubio). Stress free Spanish revision is the best ;) I've had the other issue I purchased for well over a year, so it was nice to find something up to date, haha.


Party Planning Finally, the big one - party planning. My 18th birthday is on the 18th of September, and I'm having a party on the 10th to celebrate :) There are no prizes for guessing why the picture is related, but I'll be impressed if you can guess why (Fern, you know why, so you can't take part :P). My mum is a bit of a nightmare when planning something - I keep mentally comparing her to the nightmare mother of the bride situation you always see in films, haha. I'm VERY excited for my friend Rachel (yes, same name) to come up from Melton Mowbray on the train as we haven't seen each other in about 4 years. I'm also excited to see some of the extended family again because it's been a while. I'm also hoping that after a long first week back at college it'll be something nice to look forward to :)

So that's been my summer. I'm back to college on Monday (nooooooo) and dreading it. That place is seriously depressing. I'm also going to look into the ridiculous spacing problem going on with Blogger at the moment, because I know the paragraphs are all messed up and it's been winding me up for ages.

Besos ♥ 
Rachel