A month in photos - March 2015

Hey all... here's a quick introduction to my new "blog adventure" every month (well hopefully) I'm going to upload a month in photos. This will range from selfies to things I've bought. I hope you all enjoy.

March was the first month in a long time where I actually decided to try out another beauty box. It's fair to say I love the "love me beauty" box due to the fact that you get the chance to pick out the products you want from the ones available, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the nail varnishes were full size, basically paying the box off and then some with one product.

          

Selfies are always a clear instalment on everyone's Instagram.

          

As you can see being at work makes me go crazy with excitement.

          

          

I can however take some good selfies.

          

Ah when irrelevant people try to reinstate themselves back in your life, I think the person related to this post got the point though.

On this day I finally saw how much weight I had actually lost! ( I have promised to post more regarding my weight lost so do stay tuned in you're interested) I do have a long way to go yet but it's so nice to finally be able to see the results.

        

The joy you feel when a pizza place actually draws what you ask them too on the box 

       

       

I also found the spotify page for a person I used to watch on YouTube. I may have fallen in love again 

      

Drinks and batman drawings in Waterstones

     

     

Although I do feel like whoever drew this awesome piece of work could of spent a bit more time on the actual logo ^_^

I ventured to my mothers house and decided to snoop around for photo albums and i was in luck! I found them! Do you all remember how awesome birthdays and Christmases were back then.

Please tell me you all remember how excited you were when you received the ps1 

     

I also got "my hair did"! I decided that my usual platinum blonde hair was getting a bit too much to handle and was slightly washing me out, so i decided to go for something a little more manageable or "grown up" as my mother puts it.

    

   

It was a little darker than i had originally wanted to go, thankfully with washes and stuff thats changed and the blonde is still there.

Found all my lush bath stuff too! 

  

I ventured to a salon and got some hair extensions installed here's a before and after.

         

As you can see it has a lot more blonde in now. The extensions were installed by the lovely Lisa who owns "Sephora hair extensions" in Middlesbrough - i absolutely would recommend her to everyone.

A few days later a pub lunch venture with my boyfriend turned into something more with a few friends  

                           

This is my very very good friend Lynne. Let me tell you the story behind this photo, We were talking about how its very easy to compliment people with blue/green eyes "your eyes are like pools of clear water" and what not. But we couldn't think of ones for brown eyes, so i came up with "your eyes remind me of the poo emoji" then we took to snapchat to create that.

                                               

saw this beautiful thing in the town centre and just couldn't walk past without taking a photo.

My mother and I decided the best bet for dinner on this night was a good old english fish and chip shop, they had this drawn on one of their walls!

              

Picked this little gem up in a charity shop, I think its a candle holder.

              

You know when you call up the tax office and they have you on hold for over an hour? Yeah that happened, good news though they owe me pennys.

                                         

This song is AMAZING!!

                                            

                     

I shall finish this post of with a good old selfie - let me know what you think about these "month in photos" post.

Slimming World?

In this post I'm going to be explaining the reasons behind why I'm a slimming world member, why I gained weight and what not.



So ( ahh I cannot believe I'm doing this/ deep breath)
The Natalie I remember from four or  so years ago was a healthy weight (obsessed with losing more like almost every girl my age). She was enrolled on a musical theatre/acting course at college meaning she was getting daily exercise - from dancing to physical theatre. She worked weekends and wasn't old enough to drink, nor was she interested in drinking before she was legal.


The Natalie after those years, well thats a different story, she can legally drink and she enjoys it.
Now I'm not saying drink makes you gain loads of weight nor am I saying it's the only reason I gained weight - because, well it's not. However let me give you my weekly nights out for my university years.

Wednesday - bad med  rock club (we liked to call it bad mednesday oh how I miss this night bring it back please)

Thursday - overdrive

Friday - sumo

Saturday - AVM or empire

Yeah I drunk a lot and that's not including the pub visits after a hellish day of rehearsals at university (myself and my friend didn't even need to use words we just looked at each other, nodded and headed to our fav pub)

The drink was also accompanied by pub lunches, meals out and takeaways. That with no longer doing all that much exercise lead to a massive weight gain.

Flash forward to second year of university I had somehow managed to get to 13stone and a friend and I decided to join slimming world, we'd go to the gym and everything was going so well till I gained one week and couldn't handle the disappointment, so I gave up.

After which I tried every stupid little fad diet going from little drops on to liquid to miracle pills, yeah I know what youre thinking - WHHHHHY THEY ARE SO BAD.

Since then I have finished university, studied teaching, gained a new relationship with someone who may or may not of been my best friend before hand (escaped the friend zone you'll have to ask him how he did that).

I was visiting my mother in September and she just looked at me, you know that funny little dissaproving face that mothers do but try to hide? I asked her "what?" And she said "what happened to you, you used to be so obssessed with how you looked and what size you where and what people thought of you"
(Now don't think bad of her I'm one of those people that needs people to be blunt and honest with me
I respect people like that)


However my reply was "well if they are my true friends they wouldn't care about how I looked or what size I was, when I lose weight or if I chose to lose weight  it will be for me and nobody else"
 (never change yourself for anyone, if they want you to change they're not worth your time)

Upon reflection of this argument / conversation, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought
"Oh god Natalie"

In September I joined slimming world, my mother joined too for moral support.

Now I know slimming world can be considered a fad diet too and I have heard horror stories about people getting really sick on it which is why I'm not following it completely, but the support and guidance you receive there is second to none. Everyone is so helpful and welcoming, they also have private groups on Facebook so if you need help during the week you can get some, it's a great community. It's also amazing to have something to work toward each week, as each week you go in there and get weighed, so you try your best to make good food choices so you can see those pounds roll off.

As well as slimming world I try to go to the gym 2/3 times a week.

Slimming world has taught me so much from picking the right food to drinking more water (my skin loves them for that) it's also given me the motivation I needed to actually try and shift the pounds.

Now I'm currently not comfortable with supplying you all with my starting weight just yet, but I have lost one and a half stone since September - which is amazing.

If you'd like me to continue doing updates on my weight loss journey do let me know.