Puggy Pumpkin

Been working all day apart from a pumpkin carving break; can you tell what it is??

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEE

Today has been my birthday! I have done far too little work and way too much play, but right now I don't even care. I have had a wonderful day with some wonderful people :) I took this this morning, look how happy I looked! Now, I'm looking a lot less spritely, having had an exhausting day... still just as happy though :D

ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE

Over the weekend, the university held a 'zombie apocalypse' event... I didn't go but this morning as I was wandering over to uni this is what I was faced with, I found it quite amusing :) 

Rescued birdie!

This morning I looked out of my window to see one of the hundreds of local cats terrorising a bird, in the end my banging on the window and yelling wasn't enough to scare the cat off, so my housemate ran outside and rescued the poor thing. Obviously it was in shock and its heart rate was about 100mph.. After having him in the house for a while, my housemate took birdie outside to see if he would fly off, but he didn't! And guess what?! The local branch of the RSPCA is closed on Mondays. So we tried the RSBP, but they just directed us back to the RSPCA! Grrrr... So until torrow, we have an addition to the household! 

Soup!

Another day of not much today! Although, I've discovered an app to turn my friends and me into cartoons, which has occupied an alarmingly large amount of my day... This photo is just of my lunch yesterday when I was in town. I went into Marks and Sparks as I fancied a nice sit down sandwich. As it happened I went for the soup option and felt really quite silly sitting there with my kiddies juice carton whilst I waited for my soup to arrive! A thoroughly un-interesting photo, so my deepest apologies! 

Lazy Day

Today, I've not done much. Just pootled into town for a bit, came home and did some work then spent the evening sitting in front of my laptop messing about. Whilst I was in town, I decided to just sit somewhere quietly with a coffee and watch the world go by, and I am SO glad that I did! This is the view I had;

Spidey

Today I've had the pleasure of seeing about 5 hand-sized spiders. I'm not terrified of them like so many people seem to be, but neither do I love them or particularly want them in my close proximity. Since being at uni I have come to the conclusion that spiders are another thing to add to the list of beasties that a Hull seems to have a problem with. The other things on my list are cats (I absolutely love cats but they do seem to be everywhere) and slugs! Here's a Hull spider to freak you all out.

Bat-toes

After having spent 7 hours in the library today, I CANNOT wait for reading week.. Just a week of no lectures where I can work at my own pace! I'm also going to get pretty nails, because I'm going home for reading week and I have the BEST nail lady there! Here are a few previous ventures :) 

Aurelia :)

Another manic day in the world of Alex but something wonderful happened; I met my Goddaughter! She is simply the best thing ever, and only a week old! I also dug out this old dragon :) 

Lamby lamb lamb

Today has beet utterly miserable (weather wise) and relatively uneventful. I plodded off to uni at 8:30 this morning but after the first hour decided I should really be in bed so back home I went where I caught up on some much needed sleep from the last few days before reading pre-Raphaelite books for about 4 hours. I'm feeling pretty damned knowledgeable right now! I don't have a relavent photo from today but here's a lamb I found about a year and a half ago in Godstone! 

Biscuit Men

I've just got an urge to make some biscuit men... Not because I want biscuits, but because I want to decorate them! Here's some I made last year before I put their smiles on! In other news, I managed to co-ordinate a photography exhibition launch pretty successfully today. I had great help from my team and I was working with some wonderfully enthusiastic photographers... All in all I am really quite proud of myself! Now just to count up the charity buckets and see how much we raised!

Wombat Friday (on Sunday)

A few days late, but I haven't got anything from today so I thought I would share Friday's wombat Friday with you! This is Rossetti's Annunciation :) 

Mohammed

I hardly ever mention or put photos on here of people other than myself, but I thought I'd make an exception. This is one of my dearest friends, Mohammed who I went to see in Manchester earlier this week for the first time in years. I took my camera along and got this! When I was doing A level photography, he was my best model for far, it was like he was made for the camera!

Printer rant! (and Welsh cats)

Generally speaking, today has been a good day! I've sorted out all the issues that were previously causing me stress.. apart from just the ONE thing. Over the summer, the university decided to change what was already a perfectly functional printing system. Obviously it's now gone horribly wrong now and everyone wants the old system back. Last year, you pressed print and your work would be printed out at the nearest printer. Fine. NOW, you press print and nothing happens. But it's ok because you can then go and get your work from any printer on campus by scanning your student card on the top of the printer and then selecting the documents you want printing from your print list which will appear on the touchscreen display. Great. So I set 3 documents to print and then went off to the nearest printer. When I got there, it was apparently jammed and I needed to remove some paper from the printer tray, which would have been fine, if the department hadn't PADLOCKED the paper trays shut!!!! Presumably this is an attempt to stop students from stealing paper but I was still hugely unimpressed. Anyway, turns out the next nearest printer was on the other side of campus in the library (really handy) so off I went. When I got to the library, there was a massive queue for the printers and when I finally got to the front, everything had disappeared from my print list despite me never printing anything!! To cut a long story short, I got very angry but eventually managed to print something and persuaded the poor library staff to re-credit my account with £1 for the documents that I'd been charged for but hadn't printed. I think it might be time to invest in my own printer. 

I've just been rummaging through old photos and I came across these. When my boyfriend and I went on holiday to Wales a few years ago, we had just discovered this amazing new app which meant we could superimpose a variety of different cats into our photos, so most of our holiday snaps came out like this. 

Paddington

Today has been the most stressful of all stressful days (and to make matters 100x worse, there's no chocolate in the house). Despite the stress of today, I have 2 pieces of good news. 1) My bear put on his new Paddington coat and hat today and is looking VERY dapper. 2) I HAVE A GODDAUGHTER! She's a week late, but better late than never! Welcome to the world little one :)

Speedy Selfies

Today has been absolutely manic and I am now shattered. I went over to Manchester to see a very good friend who's been out of the country for a good three years, so it was fabulous to catch up! Whilst I was in Manchester, I went to the gallery as it's where a whole load of Pre-Raphaelite paintings are.. The only issue was that I had to be in and out in all of 15 mins so as not to keep said friend waiting at the restaraunt for lunch for me! Ten of these minutes were spent in the gift shop speedily flicking through books that would be potentially useful to my course, and the other 5 minutes I spent running around the gallery like a headless chicken trying to get as many shameless selfies as humanly possible (collecting lots of suspicious looks in the process). These two are Holman Hunt's 'Hireling Shepard' and Rossetti's 'Bower Meadow'. 

Last of Hull Fair!

This is the last image I'm going to put up from Hull fair (unless I go back of course!). Not a great image but it sums up the fair pretty well! 

Teacakes and Toffeeapples!

As I've mentioned, I was at Hull fair a few days back and I think it's worth talking briefly about the food there. The first time I set foot on the site of the fair I was absolutely gobsmacked; the first thing you come to is what's effectively a street of food stalls. It's not just your average burger vans, oh no! There are noodles, chocolate fountains, carverys, cupcakes, snow cones, fish and chips, and pomegranates, pomegranates EVERYWHERE! Basically everything you can possibly think of, you can probably find somewhere in Hull fair. The pomegranate thing was new to me. Maybe I've just been deprived of quality fairs in the past, but I never knew these delicious pink fruits had such a massive affiliation with fairgrounds! I love them, so I spent a good half an hour hunting for the best pomegranate deals; in the end I found a stall selling 3 for £1. Perfect. 

Hull Fair!

Here's photo number one from Hull fair. This is probably my overall favourite from the entire night It's another one of those ones that apparently looks like a 3 year old took it but I don't care! 

Cameras!

Ive just found this from the cakepop making extraveganza of the other week and thought I would share it :) I've been to Hull Fair today and there will be photos tomorrow!

Wombat Friday

I spoke briefly about this yesterday. But here's my photographic evidence from today's wombat Friday!

Thorin and the Pre-Raphaelites

Well, today I've worked my way through this mountain of books and Thorin has watched over me all the while. In the art world, every Friday is 'Wombat Friday', which basically means that you look over Pre-Raphaelite art whilst eating cake and being accompanied by a wombat. I was thinking of starting up 'Thorin Thursdays'. I haven't got the details worked out yet but I think it should involve chocolate! 

Smelly Pumkins.

This photo sums up my week really. Lots of reading for my course, bunches and bunches of flowers filling my room, and lots of baths with nice smelly things. This little cutie is from Lush, just for autumn! He's a bubble bar but I haven't been able to bring myself to mash him up and put him in my bath yet. He looks nice on my bookshelf and is making my room smell wonderful! 

Something That Really Gets My Goat

Prejudice. I am absolutely sick and tired of people having something against me for NO GOOD REASON! In all honesty, things are generally a lot better now in this country than they were a few years ago, but sometimes I still think it takes the biscuit. I've had people cross the road to get away from me before. WHY?! Do I really look like I'm going to mug you?! Just because I look like this (see picture), I am clearly to be avoided. 'Oooooh pink hair, how unconventional, she must be a crazy axe-murderer'. There are people who honestly think that just because I have wonderfully snazzy hair, there is something wrong and I should be kept away from. Things like bright hair and big tattoos are becoming a much more common thing, so people are generally speaking becoming more accustomed to it, but there will always be those people out there who will think that I'm not just a normal person. Rant over. 

Books books books!

As soon as you walk into my room, you can tell I like my books. They're everywhere; on every available surface, in draws, under my pillow and filling my shelves. I thought I'd just post this up here today as this is the pride of my bookshelf, guess what the category is!

Hull is Pretty, Unlike its Reputation..

When I first moved to Hull, I had some pretty worrying comments from friends and family. By the time I got here, I was expecting to be stabbed and mugged within the first 5 minutes and to be living in a hovel. Surprisingly enough, none of that happened and 3 years down the line I am STILL struggling to see why Hull has this terrible reputation! The University and surrounding areas are the same as any other university city, and to be perfectly honest, the town center is a LOT nicer than quite a few places I've been to. The architecture is fantastic, the city in general is exploding with culture, there's a whole shed of things to do out and about and the locals are wonderfully friendly, not to mention everything up here is gloriously cheap. So why the reputation?! I have no idea! I took this today as I was walking through town and I'm sorry, but this is NOT a photo of a s**thole. 

Happiness is...

Walking past a florist on a rainy day to find a big bunch of lillies for £1. 

Dragons, mark 2

The other day I put up a post about my dragon drawings... Since then I decided to colour the latest one in! I was actually really sceptical that it was going to look any good as I have no idea what the heck I'm doing when it comes to adding colour. After some faffing about with some watercolour pencils this is the result which I'm rather pleased with! Just a quick hot chocolate update, today's got so out of hand that it involved glitter spray.

Through the Streets of Paris

Today, I've had Paris on the brain. I've been offered a great opportunity to go with the university but unfortunately due to a number of reasons, the trip really isn't for me. :( It got me thinking though, about past trips and experiences from the city. It's one of my favourite places in the world and I love everything about it and I have some wonderful memories there. I've just been digging through photos I took around the city from the last 5 years and there are really quite a lot of them! I seem to have thousands from one particular trip when I was 17 (unfortunately most of them are of friends pulling silly faces standing next to famous paintings). It was supposedly a photography, fine art and French trip, although I distinctly remember sneaking off down Parisian back allies to drink beer and smoke manky French cigarettes. Since then, I've been back with a group of 6 of my nearest and dearest friends and we were staying in some kind of second rate red light district which was pretty interesting in itself. Our apartment was just minutes from the Pompidou center and a little further from Notre Dame; perfect location. One of my fondest memories is of me and the 6 boys sitting on the grass under the Eiffel Tower at night, just chilling. Perfection. Here's a little selection of my Paris photos from over the years;

241

Well, here's the second post of the day due to aforementioned issues. I have had a Godawful day. To start things off, I woke up an hour earlier than I wanted to feeling really quite rough. I have absolutely no idea why.. it's not food poisoning or a bug or a cold from what I can tell... it was like that feeling you get after too much tequila, only I wasn't drunk and hadn't actually had any tequila. This has been coming and going ALL day, which as I'm sure you can imagine, was bloody marvellous. Anyway, I got into uni and delivered my many cakes (in pizza boxes) to the photography stand and helped set up. I would absolutely loved to have stayed and helped 'team photography' recruit new members but I had some wonderfully dull induction lectures to attend, which overran. When it came to lunch time, the bar had a half an hour wait on food orders which is just great when you only have 35 minutes before you have to be at your next set of inductions. I managed to get a sandwich elsewhere after standing in a queue for a good 15 minutes, which was at least some kind of an achievement today. To top it all off, I received a message from a very large scale utility company (naming no names) telling me I owe them a substantial amount of money. Living in 'all-inclusive bills' accommodation, I wasn't best pleased when after a long and stressful phone call with the aforementioned company,it transpires I really DO have to give them lots of money, which being a student really isn't ideal (not that it's idea for anyone of course). Hopefully things can only go up from here!! On the plus side, I had a lovely meal with the photo soc people and was told that my cakes went down fantastically! Things can only go up from here!!! (This is my face right now.)

Technical Issues...

I wrote my post as usual yesterday, but for some stupid reason it didn't go through when I told it to... so here it is now! (I'm not counting this as breaking the challenge as I wrote this on the right day, it just didn't go through!)


So today has been filled with YET MORE CAKE. Well, it's the same cake really, but I've had to add all the finishing touches. I woke up super early (for me) just so I could go and buy some cellophane to wrap my cakes in.... this in itself was a total faff as it turns out busses don't run down the road I wanted to go to! After I'd messed around with taxis and overly large baking sections in shops I finally got home and decided that actually, instead of wrapping each cake individually with the 7 rolls of cellophane I'd just bought, life would be much easier to just put them all in pizza boxes. So that's exactly what I did (after wiping them out and redecorating of course!). If anyone ever desperately needs any cellophane, you know where to send them.