Life update and new hair plans!

This week has been much quieter for me than previous weeks. To be honest with you I think that the next few months will be quieter as I am really budgeting again and saving money as my holiday to Singapore is fast approaching. Too quickly if you ask me. The idea of my trip to Destination Star Trek, my credit card I need to pay off, Christmas and then the added pressure of paying for our flights and saving spending money is a little over whelming at the moment. I think I will have to postpone some of this till 2017 but after paying off all my debt last year I find it exceptionally scary that I could easily fall back into that hole!

Hopefully as my brain is wired much better and much more sensibly with money now I hope that I will prevent this from happening. This is a nice flow into my next update topic of my hair. Last March I had to stop bleaching it ( I used to do it at home so it didn’t cost much). I wrote about it briefly here, but to sum up I had finally got to the point where I had almost white hair, hair I had dreamed about having for years. There was a big price to pay for this though and back before the Christmas of 2014 I started to notice breakage. Very quickly in the space of 6 months my hair was so damaged random chunks were snapping and breaking. Parts of my hair were so dry and brittle they were uncontrollable and to be honest I was fed up of dying it every 3-4weeks.

So I went more natural and toned it down. I have ended up with highlighted hair now which I do think looks quite nice. However the more of my natural colour that comes through, the more I actually think, ‘hey that doesn’t look too bad’. It has been on my mind for a while now the idea od going natural. There are too key negatives to having highlights. 1 is having to give up almost a whole Saturday to get my hair done every three months is kind of annoying and 2 it also it leaves a huge dent in my purse. It is pretty much £100 a go with a trim and highlights and to be honest with you it is money I don’t want to spend and time I don’t want to use.

So I thought what the heck, let’s do it. Let’s let my hair grow and the highlights hopefully should grow out naturally and eventually I should be left with a full head of natural healthy hair that needs no maintaining other than haircuts. I like that ombre effect where it fades from dark to blonde and I think it would be a nice slow process of getting used to having darker hair too as I would imagine it will be a few years until most of it is gone.

Images found on pintrest - NOT MY OWN!

I may need to have some more highlights or low lights to blend it in depending on how it grows out but we shall see. So I am excited to be saving money and my time. I have to say I have been dying my hair since I was about 14 and I just don’t want to do it anymore. It is a really refreshing thought to think I do not need to fit having my hair done around what activities I am doing.

I think one of the reasons I was so set on blonde hair as I was so unhappy with what I wore when I was bigger due to lack of confidence. But now I can express myself through my style and I don’t feel the need to have bright glowing hair. All I want now is super long shiny healthy hair and I have to say brown hair is really growing on when I see girls with long glossy hair.

The only idea I have of what my natural colour will be!

Fingers crossed I don’t freak out in 3 months’ time and have the highlights put back in. However at least this was it won’t be hard to put it back to blonde unlike the time I dyed it all read haha!

I think I will document it on here and see how fast it grows too (the hairdresser cut it far too short last time and this makes me very sad) Anyhow that’s my plan and I am REALLY excited to see what my natural colour is and to watch it grow out.

May POP! in a box!

I feel like summer has already arrived it has been so warm and sunny and we are only in May, I REALLY hope this continues. In the mean time though it is POP! in a box time

You can view my previous POP! in a box surprises here

And don't forget if you want to get this fun surprise every month then you can save 20% by clicking here!

I have now ventured into the vlogging world and you can see the unboxing video below, if not continue past for my photos and review.

I very excitedly opened May's POP! in a Box and I got.....

My first Doctor Who POP Funko hurrah! And what better way to start of my collection than with a Dalek. I know they are the enemy but I have a secret soft spot for them so I was so happy when I opened the box to find this little chap inside.

The box was pristine and undamaged and the POP himself was well painted and really solid too. I expected him to be much more hollow feeling but was really happy to find a very well made and painted POP inside. 

He is really cute and I find him even more adorable than I usually find Daleks.... haha I guess that isn't quite right considering we are meant to be afraid of them!

I can't wait to buy some more Doctor Who ones now, what a great excuse! 

Heat wave weekend.

If you live in the UK then you will be fully aware of how insane the weather was last weekend. If you don't then please understand that we had a mini heat wave, when it had been snowing on and off less than a week ago, for it to be HOT hot 25+ degrees that is how crazy the weather was. Plus here in the UK weather like this is so rare that we all celebrate hard!

I was really pleased because of 2 reasons.

1. I had planned on going to Cow Pie again 
2. I was on a downer from the previous weekend festivities being well and truly over and I needed a pick me up. 

I put all 20 year something year olds to shame with my wild crazy self and spent my Friday evening cleaning the flat. I also took a nap. Haha I am so old! But it meant that I could just enjoy my weekend as a friend popped round Saturday morning. 

With the weather being so nice, Matt and I took advantage and tried mini golf again, you can see my previous adventure here. That was really enjoyable and I won hurrah, then afterwards we headed to creams and had a dessert. It was a very pleasant date night.

It was quite a spontaneous evening, but very enjoyable and it was just nice to spend some time in the sunshine with Matt. 

So Sunday rolled round and I was very excited. My sister and I went to the Cow Pie show last year, which you can read about here. And we decided to go again this year because we have so much fun last year and with the weather being so ridiculously beautiful we had to go!

Please enjoy a rather image heavy post below!

I loved the army vehicles 

All the baby animals were soooo cute

We took a ride on a horse and cart

Had to get an Ice Cream couldn't say no!

I was explaining to this guy that the cross bow was my choice of weapon in a zombie apocalypse

Rather melted slush puppy

I loved all the dogs there and I wanted to take them all home!

I also made a badger friend

We ended up getting these quite late again as my sister wanted her roast dinner first and then took ages to get ready *shakes fist* but we still got over two hours there and got to do all the things we wanted. We have decided next year to go in the morning weather permitting! 

We had a ride on a horse and cart, ate ice creams, shot a cross bow and watched vikings fighting. The weather was so beautiful I didn't want the day to end. There were so many dogs everywhere that I wanted to steal and it take home. I was rather snap happy  and took a lot of photos (over 100 oops!) it was hard not to be when the weather was that glorious! 

So my weekend was fab again which was good as it took my mind of the weekend in Nottingham I was missing, but has left me feeling a bit down now this weekend too is over! 

I can't win it seems. I really want to try and get to some more shows like this and make the most of the summer weather (lets all hope and pray that it stays this way)

I hope you enjoyed the weekend if you too had this BEAUTIFUL weather! 

Fun in Nottingham

Back near the beginning of the year Laura and I arranged for myself and Matt to go up to Nottingham again and spend a weekend with her and Sammi. Originally we were looking at August but I saw that EM Con was on at the end of April over the May bank holiday, so we decided to take advantage of that. 

We booked Friday off so we could head up nice and early and get an extra day together. That didn't quite go to plan. 

We did get up nice and early and had a Toby Carvy buffet breakfast and was ready almost bang on 11am like I had planned. What I didn't think about was that everyone would be using the M1 and M25 to travel on the bank holiday. What should of been just under a 3 hour drive turned into 5 hours. FIVE whole hours, it was rather long and frustrating. We did make it though and got to spend the afternoon with Laura and Sammi and all evening. 

We ordered pizza and Laura unwrapped her birthday gifts and we spent the evening catching up. Matt and I needed to be at the arena fairly early on Saturday so we went to bed earlyish ready for the weekend ahead!

Saturday was awesome and you can read about that here!

Then Sunday we had a lay in did a bit of shopping around Nottingham and as always when we are in Nottingham we headed over to Annie's Burger Shack! I had the Delta burger which I believe I have had before. It was pretty spicy but delicious.

Matt and I at Annie's

We then headed home and spent the evening eating desserts, chatting and drinking wine which was really lovely. 

Sammi hasn't been that well so we headed over for another breakfast buffet on Monday and she went home while myself, Laura and Matt went to have a look around Wollaton Hall and Park. Unfortunately the weather was pretty naff, it was bitterly cold and threatening to rain. We did however have a look around the house and the park and snapped a few photos! (warning heavy image post below!)

We only stayed a while because of the weather, which is so annoying as we are having a beautiful heat wave at the moment, less than a week after we went! BOO! I really enjoyed looking around and the place was really beautiful! I really want to go back there when the weather is nicer!

Then we popped to Derby to do a bit more shopping as there wasn't much to do with the weather which started to tip in down with rain moments after we left the hall. After the shopping we headed back to Laura's spent a while chatting and then early evening we headed home.

I really didn't want to leave, I have NO IDEA where the weekend went but I had an absolutely fabulous time. Whenever we spend time with Laura and Sammi, I  remember how much I miss her and I wish we lived closer. What I wouldn't give to just call her and say 'HEY LOR I'M COMING OVER WITH A BOTTLE OF WINE AND A MOVIE SEE YOU IN 5!' 

But alas she lives over 100 miles away so I will just have to treasure the moments I get to spend with her and Sammi.

My bank holiday weekend was great though and I can't wait for the next one (lets hope for some sunshine!)

Em Con!

So this was my first ever convention outside of London/The South (we attended Brighton last year), but is defiantly the first ever convention where I have traveled a fair distance to get to. I was talking with my best friend about coming up and seeing her, and I looked up conventions and saw that Em Con was on just after her birthday and had a great line up of guests including a group photoshoot with some Stargate Atlantis cast members. I was sold so made arrangements and booked tickets and as it fell over a bank holiday weekend it meant we got to spend 3/4 days with Laura and Sammi rather than the usually 2ish...

So Saturday rolled around and we got up early to try and get to the arena for between 9:30 and 10am. A you may well know with LFCC you are best to get there at least 1-2 hours before the doors open to get a good spot in the queue. However it really wasn't necessary this time and I am actually glad we ended up being a bit late as even the 10 minutes just standing outside was freezing. Sammi and Laura very kindly dropped us off, they had some things to do that day and didn't fancy the convention. So Matt and I headed inside.

It was quite an odd set up, because it was an arena there were stalls around the outside walk ways which you had to pass to get into the main arena area. Once down there we started to do some shopping and look around the stalls.

They had a few really cool exhibits too including the Tardis, Iron Man costumes and a StarBug Prop. What I really liked about all of these and a lot of the the convention in general is it was all based on charity donations.

I then decided to buy a photoshoot ticket with Walter Koenig as well. As I am meeting as many of the Star Trek crew as I can in October, I thought it would be good to meet Walter on the day and have less to do at DST! I checked the schedule and we had the Q&A talk with the Stargate crew at 1pm, Walter Photo at 3pm and Stargate group photo at 3:45pm. So we headed across the road to get a some lunch. 

When we returned we queued up for the talk and around 1pm we were lead upstairs to a little conference room full of chairs. The guys came out and it was one of my favourite talks to date. It was really intimate and the actors were lovely and down to earth. They told some fab stories of what happened on set and I really enjoyed it. 

At the end Paul auctioned off some scripts from Stargate for charity and he also had 'A Dog's Breakfast' one too. I am a huge fan of that film and had a chat a few years ago with David Hewlett about it so I decided to bid on it. I stopped around £35 but Matt kept going for me and won it. I was so excited and all the money goes to charity too so I was happy to pay for it!

It also meant that I could get it signed for free by the Stargate cast so I was really excited about that too! I went to Paul's table first and he also as a thank you signed a promo print from the film for me too which filled me with joy. I later got Alexis to sign it and picked up a copy of his new graphic novel which he also signed and then David signed it later on in the day too. It is something I will treasure forever!

I had my photo shoot with Walter Koenig and he was lovely! He asked me how I was and shook my hand as I left. Not long after that I also had my group photoshoot with the Stargate cast and that was great. David introduced everyone and Paul said we had already meet which was nice he remembered me.

I had to collect my photos a little later on as they don't print out straight away like the LFCC (it is like back in the day when I first started going!) but I was SUPER happy with the photos! 

Of course I also managed to pick up some Pop funkos too and a lovely Walking Dead inspired necklace from an awesome stall where you custom make your own fandom jewelry. We also added another art book from Matt Dixon to our collection because his work is just stunning. 

I have ventured in to the world of YouTube with my first haul video if you would like to see a close up of the bits that I picked up over the weekend!

Overall I had a fantastic day. The atmosphere is much quieter and more peaceful than the London ones. I wish I had attended the Sunday too so I could of gone to the other talks as they were so intimate and enjoyable. I would highly recommend Em Con especially if you want a more low key quieter day than the manic (fun) mess that the London ones tend to be!

I can't wait for the rest of the 2016 conventions we have planned!

Macklemore Live O2

I recently have become a big fan of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. I have enjoyed their songs since Thrift Shop but only recently listened to their albums properly! With the announcement of their new album at the beginning of the year I looked up to see if they were doing any live shows and hurrah they were! I was really happy to see some tickets were still available so I got Matt and I some.

I took a half day and thanks to the train strike (bloody inconvenient!) I drove up there. We had seated tickets which was nice as I didn’t feel rushed or feel like a needed to queue to get near the front. We had a lovely dinner and headed inside with enough time to catch the support acts. I really enjoyed the first person called XP and the second support wasn’t quite my cup of tea but still very talented!

Outfit of the night - Sugarhill boutique dress and new grey brogues 

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis then came on stage about 9pm and were amazing from start to finish! They played all their big hits and lots of songs from the new album. A couple of songs in Macklemore got everyone who was in the seated area to stand up, which I was pleased about as it meant I could have a good dance. He really is an outstanding showman and what I really really liked was how humble he is. He genuinely seems so grateful to his fans and he seemed almost overwhelmed to be playing to 10,000 people in London!

Warning onto the rest of the post which is picture heavy!

The show was fantastic, the atmosphere was great and I did as much dancing as I could without risk of falling down the seats in front! It was over so quickly but I enjoyed every minute of it!

He really is a very talented artist and the show went flawlessly The pace of the night didn't stop or slow down at all. He also sported some pretty interesting outfits throughout the night!

They ended on Downtown which was awesome (unfortunately my camera died at that point so no photos) as the crowd went crazy and streamers were released into the air.

I was gutted it was over as it went far too quickly and it was totally worth being exhausted at work the next day. I will definitely go and see them live again when they tour next and I might even try and get standing next time so I can dance my little heart out!