New Years Resolutions 2015

Personal - Appearance

1. Lose a bit more weight, minimum 1 stone by moving more and eating better.
2. Get my right ear re-pierced.
3. Get my septum pierced.
4. Get both ears pierced again.
5. Start stretching bottom holes once healed.
6. Put dreadlocks in my hair once long enough - may be extended until 2016.
7. Refine my style.
8. Find a new purple hair dye - my current one isn't purple enough. Feel free to suggest, permanent colours only - less upkeep.

Personal - Other

1. Get my provisional license.
2. Learn to drive.
3. Decide a career.
4. Train for career if necessary.
5. Get a better job.
6. Help mum find a new job.
7. Write (finish!) a novel.
8. Go on a date.

Material

1. Buy new phones for mum and I.
2. Buy an external hard drive.
3. Buy a new desktop PC.
4. Buy an iPod Classic - used since they are now out of production (I hate years of bad finances).
5. Buy a Kindle.
6. Buy a laptop.
7. Upgrade the car.

Goals

1. Read at least 100 books.
2. Watch at least 100 films.
3. Finish the Gossip Girl series.
4. Read A Song of Ice and Fire.
5. Read Under the Dome.
6. Discover at least 2 new shows.
7. Discover at least 3 new bands/singers.
8. Improve my equine anatomy.
9. Improve my humans.
10. Draw a self-portrait.

Update April 2015:

A few things have been crossed off which I'm quite pleased about since we're only a few months into the year.

Update November 2015:
I've managed to cross some more things off but as we are now approaching Christmas I probably won't be able to cross off any others. The frustrating one is the weight loss one. I did manage to lose a bit but I've put it back on plus a little bit I think. *Sigh*

Non-Tag Tag

Saw this Liebster tag thing on Just me, Leah's blog and decided to do it :D

Here are the rules.

1. Mention who nominated you for the award.
2. Each person nominated must list 11 different things about themselves.
3. Answer 11 questions that the previous tagger has left you.
4. Create your own 11 questions.
5. Tag up to 11 people

11 things about me:

1. I love books and am constantly filling up bookcases (volunteering in a charity shop really doesn't help). 
2. I collect notebooks. I have piles of them everywhere. I buy them to write my stories in but then there's odd ones that I think they're too nice to ruin if a story goes wrong. 
3. My longest lived dream is to be a published author. I am constantly thinking up stories and starting them. I have several that I think could be viable for publishing and one trilogy that when it's written should do well, I've just got to write it first -_- 
4. I also hate my feet. I'm a size 9 UK which means I can never get nice shoes to fit. My feet are also quite flat which in combination with feet that turn out (I was told by a doctor when I was young that inline skates would be a bad idea, I don't know if the joint is weaker or something) makes a lot of shoes very uncomfortable. 
5. When I was in school my hair used to be just above my bum then I cut it to shoulder length and it's gone shorter ever since including a funky asymmetrical cut and a grade 3 or 4 shave. I'm now growing it out for dreadlocks. 
6. I also collect ornaments. Unicorns, pegasi, horses, wolves, dragons, faeries and owls. I will eventually do a post about my room which will showcase them. 
7. I have a serious phobia about bees and wasps to the point that I will jump in the road to get away from them. 
8. My dream is to move to a house in the Welsh countryside with huge rooms and about 10 acres of land so I can keep horses. I also wouldn't mind learning Welsh. 
9. Horses are my favourite animal and I have always wanted to learn how to ride but when I was young we didn't have the money and as I got older I put too much weight on. 
10. I love snakes and really want a pet corn snake. 
11. I am a non-displaying Goth at heart, I love black, bats and spooky things. 

Leah's questions:

1. Who would you say has been the single biggest influence on your life? My mum definitely. She's always been there and she loves me for who I am :) 
2. If you're attached, where did you meet your partner? I LOVE hearing how couples found each other! If you're single, tell me what you look for in a partner or who your celebrity crush is. Sadly single but I look for a girl who is fun, quirky, trustworthy and who has similar interests to me. I love curvy girls :D My celebrity crush is Kirsten Vangsness aka Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds :)
3. What song do you play to get you in the party mood before a night out? I don't go out but when it comes to dancing Moves Like Jagger by Maroon 5 is always good :) 
4. If you could go back to any period in history, which would it be? The 80's had the best music and fashion so probably then. 
5. What was your favourite subject in school, and why? Art and English because they were the things I was best at. I also quite liked GCSE History as I had a really good teacher and I was good at it (it's always easy to like stuff you're good at XD). 
6. What do you spend the most of your money on? (excluding rent, food and travel.) What money? We do Avon regularly and I'm usually buying nail varnish from that. I also get a lot of books and some clothes from the PDSA charity shop I volunteer at. 
7. What are your favourite 3 possessions? My computer, my book collection and my iPod. 
8. If you had to live in another country, which one would it be? Within the United Kingdom then Wales but otherwise either Canada or Australia. 
9. What makes you happy? Reading and music. 
10. What was your best holiday/vacation ever? I've only ever been on holiday once and that was to Weymouth for a week with my best friend/ex-girlfriend and her grandparents. I really enjoyed it, it was September but the weather was great. 
11. What would you like your legacy to be? How would you like people to remember you? I suppose if I'm remembered at all would be fantastic. But I'd love to be a published author and have people remember me for that.

My questions:

1. What is your favourite band?
2. If you could go on holiday anywhere where would it be?
3. Which blogger inspires you most?
4. What is your favourite book?
5. What is your biggest fear?
6. What would be the one thing you would save in a fire?
7. Skirt or trousers?
8. What is your favourite TV show?
9. What is your favourite feature on the opposite and same sex?
10. What is your favourite film?
11. What would you buy if money was no object?

Feel free to fill this out if you haven't done it but otherwise I shall tag Sian of Sort Life Out; Buy Milk one of my favourite bloggers :)

Life

Unsurprisingly things haven't changed. I'm still unemployed. So is mum. I had an interview at Sports Direct which I didn't get and way back at the end of April I had an interview at Greggs which I'm gonna assume I didn't get as they haven't bothered telling me. I did ring them once and they said there had been a delay up at head office and I'd hear in a few days. We are now several weeks later so I might ring them again this week and have a bit of a rant about their shitty treatment of the whole thing. Especially as it says on their recruitment website (which they call Greggs Family hmph) that they will get in touch within 7 days and if there's a delay we will let you know. There hasn't been any change on my account section of their website either. It's very frustrating.

Other than that I've applied at Co-op but they haven't been in touch yet and mum and I had a dual interview for a cleaning company and it went well and the guy - Phil - said he was gonna ring the following Tuesday (presumably with formalities and some jobs for us to do as a tester) which he never did so mum rang him last week and apparently he was on holiday so she's gonna ring again this week. I hope something does go alright there as it seems like nice enjoyable work. Flexible hours, pay from something like £7.40 an hour which is pretty good considering minimum wage is £6.31.

To think something like that we never would have been able to apply for previously as these kinds of jobs usually require a car which before May we didn't have. We got a mini-loan from Provident (not a payday loan. It's payable over a year although you do end up paying back double pretty much on the 36% interest or whatever it is) and managed to find a nice little Citroen Saxo for £320. It needed Tax but MOT is until February. Meet Ruby:

Also our flaky friend Hattie sneezing. She took us to see the car and then her dad drove it home for us as it was all the way over in Keynsham (and we're in Portishead) and mum hadn't driven for 11 years or so. We had a car when I was 11 in the first year of secondary school and I'm now 22 almost 23.

This is mum sitting in Ruby :D She's a cheery soul hey? Always smiling. Well not so much these days with the whole job situation and the job centre ragging on at her all the time. They'd led her to believe this 2 day course thing a few weeks back was optional yet today they were going on at her because she couldn't go (couldn't afford to plus she had a meeting in Weston on one of the days and we were meant to go to the dentist the other day had it not been cancelled same day). Annoying.

Here's a recent picture of me - not as cheery as mum XD. Sat in Ruby while waiting for mum at the job centre. One of those rare sunny days we had before the rain set in again -_- my hair is growing nicely since shaving it in February. I did plan on keeping my natural colour but I caved fairly quickly. The idea is for it to get to shoulder length-ish maybe cut a blunt bob type style so it's all one length as it's kind of here there and everywhere at the moment... Grow it some more and once it's long enough - maybe somewhere past my shoulders - and then rope mum into helping me dreadlock it. Somewhere in between I'm going to bleach it and try and get it proper purple. Possibly with temporary dye (Special Effects, Directions or Manic Panic) but most likely with a shop bought dye. I usually use Schwarzkopf Live Color XXL in Mystic Violet http://www.amazon.co.uk/Schwarzkopf-Live-Color-Mystic-Violet/dp/B001RYUE5O/ref=pd_sim_sbs_beauty_15 but I'd like to try L'Oreal Paris Feria in Violet Vendetta http://www.amazon.co.uk/LOreal-Paris-Feria-Violet-Vendetta/dp/B009WNYL8I/ref=sr_1_1?s=beauty&ie=UTF8&qid=1371491848&sr=1-1&keywords=feria+violet+vendetta all I know is that I want it to be as long-lasting and low maintenance as possible. Oddly despite purple being a less natural colour it lasts way longer than red (which is what I used to dye my hair). No matter as purple is my soul colour hair-wise.

Anyway this has gotten a bit rambling so I'm going to finish up now. I'm going to try and be more active here, maybe post some outfits occasionally. Shock horror! My fat body on show to the world!

Stef Out xx

Identity...

People have been talking a lot lately on various blogs about identity and it's made me wonder what is mine? Appearance-wise anyway. I already know my sexuality (homoromantic demisexual - feel free to ask more about this or visit this site: http://www.asexuality.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page which has a wealth of information on everything in the asexual spectrum), I know I like an odd mix of music: rock, goth, metal, cheesy pop, 80s, sometimes stuff that doesn't fit into any category e.g. Brian Froud's album of Faerie music. I also know I like darker colours and imagery. Colours: black, purple, blue, red, deep green, teal. The only light colours I like are light blue, lilac and turquoise. Pink attracts me sometimes but it needs to be bright and in your face.

Imagery: graveyards, skulls, bats, rats, horror movies, flowers, rainbows, love, peace, supernatural themes - vampires, werewolves, monsters, zombies, ghosts. I like a lot of stuff that could be attributed to Goth, but also a lot of stuff that could be attributed to Hippie/Bohemian.

My Style by somersetraven featuring stripe socks

I decided to do a quick Polyvore to show what I mean. OK there is a lot of Goth imagery I like but there are also things in there which are more Hippie/Bohemian. And of course rainbows because they're pretty and also Pride FTW! XD As it stands currently my style is well... Not a lot. Fat stuff. I am a UK size 26/28 which means I'm limited in what I can buy that fits my style. Moonmaiden.co.uk do custom sizing but I'm unemployed and can't justify paying £50 for a skirt. So that means I'm limited to what I can find in the charity shop where I volunteer. I still try and stick to darker colours and suchlike but none of is obviously Goth or Hippie-ish.

However in 2013 I am hoping to start losing weight (seriously anyway, I've lost a bit lately. About a stone, it was a stone and a half but I've put the half back on through Winter gorging. Oops. Once I lose weight I will find it easier to find cheap clothes in my size and that match my desired image. The biggest change eventually will be my hair.

This is the most recent picture of me. Taken for Spirit Day this year in honour of those who have committed suicide due to homophobic bullying (oddly one of the few things I wasn't bullied about, my weight was my main target, I came out as Bi when I was 16 but it was never an issue and I later realised that actually I'm Gay so...). My hair is actually a little bit shorter at the moment as I had it cut for Christmas. My plan for 2013 is first of all to get a job, second to lose weight, third to get my tattoo covered (I like it but it was really badly done). My idea for my hair is to cut it short again once or twice. Then if I have a job by then shave it in the summer for my birthday and then start growing it out with the aim of in 2014 (when it's long enough) getting it dreadlocked. It's something I've wanted for years but seeing Amy of Bohemian Bloomers take the plunge has really made me resolve to actually do it but I do need to work myself up to it.

Anyway I think I've said all I want to for today and this post is getting pretty long so I'll see you in another few months or whatever XD.

*Stef Out*