My top 6 cities

My top 6 cities

City breaks are probably one of my favourite types of holidays. I have only come to love them over the past two years, so my list to visit is a lot bigger than the list i have visited! I love looking around places and seeing how things differ from here in England! I have included all the cities i have visited and listed them from 1-6, 6 being my favourite. 

I must admit, there hasn't been a city i have been to that i have been disappointed in! I love the idea of city life, i come from the countryside so i love having little visits to the cities! 

6. Edinburgh

As i have said previously, there isn't a city i dislike, in fact i love all of them! They are all so pretty and have there only story. I visited Edinburgh about 10 years ago and unfortunately i don't have any photographs of my time there, so this one was taken from google. The Edinburgh castle was beautiful and it carries so much history within its walls. I would love to go back one day, now that I'm older and properly soak in the atmosphere that lies within the city.

5. Dublin

I am not exaggerating when i say, this is probably the friendliest city (or even place!) i have ever been to! Everyone to so happy, welcoming and chatty! The place itself is also beautiful, everything is so full of colour, the architecture is amazing and it really has some of the prettiest and quirkiest sights to see. I would love to visit back in the summer because i can imagine there parks are beautiful!

4. London

I have visited this city countless amount of times and i will never get bored of its beauty. There is so much to do, see, so many pretty parts and villages that you will always find something to do. I especially love coming to London at Christmas, all the streets are lit up in pretty Christmas lights, theres so many festive events that it makes the time of the year seem even more magical.

3. Rome



I never realised ruins could look so beautiful. Rome is such a stunning place. The Colosseum is absolutely breath taking, along with the Trevi Fountain and the numerous other attractions. We went in June, the weather was HOT, but i believe the sunshine made the place look even more beautiful, the grass was so green and the flowers were so colourful. Rome is a lot of walking, so i would definitely recommend comfy shoes! If you are thinking of going i would definitely recommend Hotel Regno, you can find a hotel review here. It is right in the centre and close to everything.


2. Paris



Paris, one of the most romantic cities in the world. I would definitely agree with that statement. The city is beautiful. We went for a long weekend over the Christmas season, which made the place even more magical. Everything is really spread out and i would love to go back and explore more of the city!

1. New York City



If you haven't been to this place then you need to go. I would go back in a flash if i could afford it! I get a excited feeling in my tummy when i look back at the photographs. There is so much to do, so many incredible tourist attractions. There is so many people, but unlike other cities you don't feel the busyness of it, which is strange but if you've been you'll understand completely! Again, pack your comfy shoes because this is a place where you want to travel on foot, it is definitely the quickest way around, unless you jump on the subway!

Value Diary - Weight Watchers

Hello everyone,

I thought i would share with you all an app i have been loving recently. My best friend introduced me to it, and she has been using it for a while now, and to be honest, her incredible motivation and success from it made me want to use it even more! You can follow her amazing success here.

So you may be asking, what is it?! It is an app called Value Diary, it is based around Weight Watchers but it is completely free to download. When you first set it up you will key in your weight, height, gender etc, and it will calculate how many pro points you can use within that day. I am allowed to use 26 points a day. The perfect thing is, you can eat whatever you want as long as you stay within your pro points, although it does mean that a chocolate bar could take 10 pp away from you, leaving you with only 16 for the rest of the day.

Another important point is that all fruit and vegetables are free! So you can eat as much as you like of them and they wont be included into your points.

Here is what i typically eat in a day (my dinner changes everyday though):

Breakfast

• Rice Krispies with semi skimmed milk - 5pp

Total: 5pp

Snacks

• Apple: 0pp

Lunch

• Lettuce - 0pp
• Cherry tomatos - 0pp
• Cucumber - 0pp
• Grilled Chicken Strips - 1pp
• Grapes - 0pp
• Sunbites popcorn - 2pp

Total: 3pp

Dinner

• Butter chicken breast joint - 11pp
• Mash potato - 3pp
• Broccoli - 0pp
• Carrots - 0pp
• Sweetcorn - 0pp

Total: 14pp

Overall total: 22pp 

Whenever i don't make up my pp for the day i would have a bit more mash (or whatever i had for dinner on that day) to make up the extra points. 

You can also add exercise through the app, because i have a polar watch, i calculate my pp by 1pp every 80/100 calories i burn. 

I would really recommend the app if you are looking to lose weight. The best thing is, you have nothing to lose because it is completely free!

How to be happy..

Hello everyone!

I have yet again neglected my little blog, but i am determined to now keep it up as why would i want to neglect something i love doing?!

I thought i would write a little something about how to be happy. I find this is something people often struggle with for so many different reasons, they dislike there job, they are unhappy with where they are going in life, they want there life to be perfect in so many different ways. The unfortunate thing that i have come to learn is that your life will never be completely perfect. There will always be something you are slightly unhappy with, no one leaves a perfect life, no matter how it looks from the outside, everyone is struggling with a battle that no one knows about.

I have found the key to happiness is within yourself. Unless you love yourself and are happy being by yourself, enjoying your own company then complete happiness is hard to come by. Don't get me wrong, there are still lots of things i am unhappy with about myself, but as a whole, i have never been happier.

My life is at its highest point at the moment. There are still things i would love to change, i would love to find that job that i love and be the weight i would want to be at. But i am enjoying the journey which is taking me there. I don't think i would be where i am, found the person that i am in love with unless i found that love in myself first, found the things i wanted to change to make me a better person.

The true key is to love what you have in your life right now, not what someone else has.

A little bit of 'me' time

A little trip to the Spa!

I decided I needed a little bit of me time this week and booked myself into a Spa for a well needed massage. I think it is so important to have that time away from everything and to just solely think about you. I went to a spa at a nearby town called Henley-In-Arden, it is set on some beautiful grounds which makes your trip even more relaxing. Here are a few photographs I took whilst I was there..

After my massage I was given a glass of water and told to keep up my fluid intake for the rest of the day so that I can flush out all the toxins that have been released during the massage. 

What do you do when you want a little bit of 'me' time?

My little 'Pot of Dreams'

I have never been very good at saving money, especially when I already have a lot of money coming out. I don't have a fantastically paid job, I am pretty much on minimum wage, I have my car finance, phone bill, flat and food to pay for as well as general money to have a nice time on the weekends. I definitely know that I am not the only one in this position which is what lead me to write this blog post. My partner and myself are looking at buying a house within the next year, but we have been advised to save up a fair amount of money before this happens to pay for things like stamp duty, or to decorate. I have found a few ways that really help when saving a bit of money without feeling like I am leaving myself short.

I invested in a little piggy bank called a 'Pot of Dreams' where it states if you fill it up to the top with £2 coins then you'll have £1000! You also have to smash the piggy bank in order to get the money out - so no stealing from your own fund! I have however adapted the £2 scheme slightly in order to save more. I still put £2 coins in whenever I get them but I have also started to put notes in as well. I sometimes babysit so the money I get for that will often end up in there too.

I found that I don't generally realise that I am saving money because its only £2 here and there. But every little helps and every little adds up. I am also really excited when the time comes to smash it so I can see how much I have saved!

How do you handle change?

  

"Change is the essence of life. 

Be willing to surrender what you are for 

what you could become"

What does change mean to you? I for one, can honestly say, i do not deal with change well. Change sends alarm bells ringing in my head, makes my whole body freeze and i get a horrible sick feeling within my stomach. It takes a lot for me to learn to deal with change, i can deal with change within my environment, but when its personally happening to me, i kind of freak out. Is that even normal? Who knows.

So what inspired this blog post? Well, you might have already guessed, yes, change is definitely on its way. But why am i so scared of change? Change is supposed to be for the good, although everyone knows, it can also make you worse off. 

I have spent the last three years working so incredibly hard, dealing with abundance's of stress and lacking in a social life to complete my degree and to get myself in a decent job. Although, now this is no longer the thing thats keeping me motivated, excited and happy, its now the complete opposite. I am dreading the change of a new job. 

Ever since i started properly working on building my career i have started from the bottom and worked my way up. I started as a apprentice, so no one expected anything of me, if it did something wrong or i was unsure how to do something, no one looked at me as if i was stupid, because they knew i was only an apprentice. Although, no i will be leaving a job i know back to front as i have been doing it for 7 years and go into a job i know nothing about. 

That scares the shit out of me. 

You might be thinking "you've done three years at university on the job you want to go into, you must know something". Although that is kind of true, its kind of false too. My degree was an overview of the social sector, so it involved everything but nothing was specific. So i could apply for lots of different job roles and for my course to still be relevant, as i wasn't limited to just one job role. 

Although it may not seem it, i feel more positive about the situation than i did a few weeks ago. I have tried to turn this once positive change back round to become a positive change once again. 

Somethings that helped me put things into perspective and look and things more positively:

1. Talking. Talking about things with another person can change your outlook on something by the end of the conversation. Your mind has an amazing (but scary) way or making things out to be ten times worse than they actually are. Getting someone else's perspective can help with your own.
2. Remind yourself why you want this change, or why this change is happening. Changes only happen if you are willing to let them. 
3. Write all your thoughts and emotions down. It helps a lot, hence this blog post!

A surprise trip to Paris and Disneyland!

My ever so lovely boyfriend surprised me with a trip to Paris for my birthday over the festive season. However, due to the horrendous things that happened in Paris in November, he had to tell me where we was going so we could both make the decision if we still wanted to go or not. Although, thats the only thing i knew, throughout the holiday there was lots and lots of surprises, including Disneyland!! I am the biggest kid ever when it comes to Disney, so this made me so unbelievably happy!

Paris is such a amazing and beautiful city. It is somewhere i have always wanted to go and it has been on my top city to see for some time! There is something about city life that just fascinates me, i love them all, although, i would never want to live in one permanently i do love to visit them!

Here are some snaps from our trip..