25 Facts about Me

 How well do you think you know me? Because in today's post I'm going to be telling you 25 facts about me! 

Enjoy! 

 1. When I was little I sucked my second finger rather than my thumb

2. My birthday is on the 17th of January

3. I was born under the sign of Capricorn

4. My Chinese animal is the Tiger, (I was almost the rabbit)

5. When I was younger I was crazy about “Thomas the tank engine” and toy trains in general  

6. When I was a little kid I did lot's of stupid things, one of them being trying to walk on lily pads

7. I have three sisters

8. I stopped attending school at the age of eight and am now home schooled  

9. I have been to New Zealand three times

10. If I'm in a room with lot's of interesting people, and there's a dog too, the dog will always take my attention away from everything else

11. My second favourite animals are goats, and my first favourites are dogs

12. I am very indecisive 

13. I am definitely an introvert, as I'm very shy with people outside my family

14. I don't actually have a favourite colour any more, as I love loads of colours, so I just say blue when people ask me

15. My favourite name of all the months in the year is September

16. I am mad about cheese and chocolate

17. I dream of being a writer and an actress one day

18. Though I love writing, I have (so far) only finished one novel

19. I am crazy about space, and would love to go sight seeing in the Universe, (though I wouldn't want to stay away from Earth permanently)

20. My dream holiday would be... a tour of the Universe!

21. I hate aubergine and nothing will ever change that.

22. My favourite celebration is... Christmas!

23. I have a wall in my room that I'm trying to completely cover with postcards, (bear in mind, it's quite a small wall)

24. I have owned three other blogs before this one

25. I'm afraid of wasps

 I hope you've learnt at least one new thing about me from reading this post... if you have, be sure to let me know in the comments!

New Puppy

I'm sorry this post is a bit late, as I was meant to post it last Sunday! But it's here now, so I hope you enjoy it!

Last Saturday, something very exciting happened... we got a puppy!!! I have wanted a dog for years, and we had never got one, so I was obviously over the moon!

The puppy we got is a girl border terrier, and we called her Maudie. You can see a photo of her and her siblings on the left, and on the right a picture of her Dad and Mum.

Last Saturday she arrived at our house. She was really nervous for the first few hours. She found the hall mirror very scary and spent most of her time in her basket. In the end though she decided to come out and play.

Sometimes she's really energetic, and other times she gets very tired. She also loves to lie on people's laps.

Maudie has got over excited occasionally and bitten us, so we're trying to train her out of it, (which isn't easy). Over than that though, I'm really enjoying looking after Maudie!   

What am I reading at the moment?

Today's post is going to be quite a quick one. As you can probably tell form the title, I'm going to tell you about what I'm reading at the moment, which is "To kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee.

I'm really interested in English, and as I don't go to school I've never properly had the chance to do an English lesson. So, my Mum bought a copy of "To kill a Mockingbird" for me to read, and a study book on it to use after I'd finished the novel. So far I'm really enjoying it, and am almost halfway through.

If you don't know what it's about, it's a story, told by tomboyish Scout Finch, about the prejudice against black people in 1930s America. Her father, Atticus, is a lawyer, and is defending a black man charged with rape. Even though the book is a about a very serious subject, it is still really funny and entertaining. When I'm finished reading it, I might do a proper review of it, so stay tuned for that.

If you want to find out more about the book, here's the link to it on Amazon, where you can look at the first pages and read reviews on it.

Room Makeover

Recently, I was feeling annoyed with how untidy and badly organised my bedroom was. So, I decided to do something about it and had a room makeover! I apologize for the lack of "before" photos. I would have taken some, but I didn't know I was going to do a blog post about it at the time.

I really wanted a better dressing table area, as previously I'd just been using my desk, which is also where my computer is, so there wasn't much room. I decided to use the top of my bedside table/bookshelf. There had been a lot of junk and other things there, so I had to find a place for it all, but after that I had pelnty of space. This is how it looks now.

I decorated a jar to put makeup in, which you can see above. I also used an old body shop basket that my Mum gave me to store stuff in. I put my nail vanishes on display as well, as they had previously been in a tin.

The rest of my bookshelf didn't change much, but the top shelf did. I put my jewellery box on it and other stuff, like my tin of hairpins, my doughnuts, ect.

My desk had been a state, so I tided that up as well.

I decorated another jar, this time for pencils. I used a ribbon and glued it round the rim. 

I also cleared a lot of stuff up which was just lying on the floor, but I won't show you that, as I didn't take any "before" pictures for you to compare it with.

There's a lot more stuff I want to get done before I will say my room is fully complete. I still would like to get the walls repainted, take down old pictures and put new ones up, but I've done quite a lot already. I enjoy being in my room a lot more than I used to, and it feels less claustrophobic.

I hope you enjoyed reading this post, and that if you have a messy room, maybe it inspired you to to have a day cleaning out and reorganising. It takes a while, but it really is worth it!    

Memory Boxes

I thought it would be interesting to do a post about my memory boxes this week, and show you some of the things I keep in them. I have two boxes which you can see above; the one on the left isn't a very interesting box, just an old shoe box. In it I keep paper memories. By that I mean letters, postcards, leaflets and so on. The box on the right looks more like a treasure box, and in it I keep object memories.  

First I'll show you the object memories box.

This is a little toy that my school buddy Ellen bought for me at a jumble sale. When you open the roof of the house, Daisy Duck jumps up!

This next memory was given to me around the same time. I was leaving for another school, and a girl called Millie gave me this little dog keyring as a goodbye present. I had it clipped to my bag at my next school for a very long time.

This one is probably one of the most interesting things in my memory box, as it is a piece of dried lava! I found it the first time we went to New Zealand whilst visiting a beach. At first I thought it was just a strange rock, but then my Mum told me that it was a piece of lava that had probably come form a old volcano which was nearby. I (being a young and stupid), decided to brighten it up a bit by drawing on coloured stripes with felt tips. In this photo you can see the side that I didn't colour in, and fortunately the colour that is still there is wearing off now.  

This is a slightly more recent object in my memory box. It's a Clarice Bean watch that I was given after I sent a letter to Lauren Child! (Lauren Child is the author of the book "Clarice Bean", and also many other books, including "Charlie and Lola")

Moving onto my "Paper Memories Box", I have some leaflets from places I've been, and here's a picture of some of them. From left to right they are from; "The Bronte Museum", "The Anne Frank House" and "Edinburgh Zoo"

This is a photo my Mum gave me recently, of me visiting Ruth's Nursery when I was little. My Mum said that one of the teachers let me dress up in a brides costume, which I imagine I must of loved!

These little pictures where given to me by a girl called Peta when I was younger.

The last thing I'm going to show you is this letter I got from Jk Rowling! I had sent her a letter, saying that I really enjoyed her books, and she replied, though not personally, as she has too much fan mail to do that. I was also sent a sheet answering some of her most commonly asked questions.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my memory boxes! If you did, it would be great if you could leave me a comment, as I'd love to read them!     

My Holiday, Part Three: The Lake District

This is the last part of of my holiday posts, and this time, it's all about our time in the the Lake District! Originally we were going to go to London, but due to the heatwave, it was going to be way to hot there, so instead we went to the Lake District.

The first thing we did there was go on a boat ride on one of the Lakes.

 

 Before we boarded the boat, we went to the café near by to get something to eat. I know this wasn't really that important, but I just had to show you this photo of the cake I got ... it looks so delicious!

The boat ride was nice. There were lots of good views and the inside of the boat was very grand, (sorry I don't have any pictures of it).

The next place we went to, and my personal favourite, was Beatrix Potter's house. You could look around all the rooms of her house, which where really nicely set out so that it looked as if she still lived there. You could also easily recognise rooms from the illustrations in her books. I would have loved to have taken pictures inside the house, but it wasn't allowed. I did take some pictures of the garden though, which you can see above. 

We also visited John Ruskin’s house and gardens. The garden had some really lovely flowers! You can see some photos from our visit below.

After that we drove home and it was the end of the holiday. 

I hope you enjoyed these posts! Here are links to the last two parts, Part One and Part Two.

See you soon!  

My Holiday, Part Two: Bristol

Hello, and welcome to the next post about our holiday! After staying in Wales, we went on to Bristol for two days, visiting our cousins who live there.

 

 In their garden they had a pond, and it was just full of tiny little baby toads, (we originally thought they where frogs), and we ended up playing a game called "True Frogs" with them. The idea of the game was that in the pond there was one toad who was destined to be your toad. You had to try and find your true frog by putting them onto leaf gondolas. If they jumped off and swam away it meant they weren’t your true frog. If they stayed on the gondola though, you had found your frog! You also had to give each toad you tried a name.

I, (after much trying) found a toad who seemed like my true frog. She was called Miranda, and you can see two pictures of her above. At first she had a sister too, but she sadly moved on. Miranda stayed on her gondola for a very long time, but, in the end, I lost her. I was letting her sit on my hand, not long after these photos where taken, when she suddenly fell off into the pond and I never found her again.

They also have a dog called Goldie, who was really nice and friendly. She did manage to get up to a bit of mischief though, taking Else's cuddly toy and running off with it, making a dent in my phone whilst trying to get the phone sock off... but it was fine in the end. She didn't rip the toy to pieces, and the dent didn't damage the phone, it's now just a little souvenir of Goldie.
We had a great time there, and on the last day we even had lots of races on the lawn, running, piggy back, ect.
Look out for the next, and last, post on our holiday, which will be coming soon! And click here for a link to the last post, all about our time in Wales. Thanks for reading! 

My Holiday, Part One: Wales

As you know from my last post, I have been on holiday! We went to three places: Wales, Bristol and the Lake District. I will write three posts about the holiday, and this part is all about Wales!

We stayed at a campsite called Fresh Water East, which is very close by to a beach with the same name. Whilst there we went swimming in the sea a lot. Another highlight was that we went to Folly Farm.

Folly Farm is a Welsh theme park, which my family have now visited four times, (my poor parents). My two favorite bits where the Funfair and the Jolly Barn. The Funfair had lots of vintage rides, like a carousel and dodgems.

The Jolly Barn was full of farm animals, and my favorites where definitely the goats... they where just so friendly!

Unfortunately, our whole holiday was during the British heatwave, and sometimes it was pretty unbearable. But in Wales we could always go for a swim to cool down, so that was lucky. Above is a picture of us at Fresh Water East after having a swim.

I hope you enjoyed this post, and soon I will post part two, about our time in Bristol!