Sunday 19 October 2014

Photos from the weekend

Weekend news

Feeling lucky :)
Family time this weekend was very special. Through this post you will find many useful links to help share the joy. 

Unusually,  I had a Saturday off from working. We decided to enjoy a wonderful Premier inn breakfast (children under 16 go free for every paying adult) then headed off early to Chessington World of adventures.  We love it there!!!


A quiet day there, maybe folks were waiting for the Halloween fun to start. That's always worth a look.  Gardens decorated in hundreds of pumpkins, the friendly variety of witch to greet you at the door (and pose for green-faced photos) and dry-ice galore. 
Yet this weekend was a ride filled time. With quieter queues, my daughter braved the Dragons Fury ride for the first time. Such a cool character. She loved it! 


Of course on days when Chessington is busy, there are animals galore just waiting for you to see them. Penguins stretching for little fish dinners, you'll always learn a bit of history and Biogeography too!
So it really doesn't matter if you hate standing in a Queue, there is always plenty to see.


Now, here's a great tip for you; if you or anyone in the family has a student discount card (NUS Extra) you can buy a yearly Merlin pass ticket and save 25%.  This is a huge saving and one I used when getting our family tickets.  Now, there is another way of course and that is to use your Tesco Clubcard vouchers.  When we got ours, we used £50 of vouchers in exchange for one yearly Merlin Pass ticket. 
This doesn't exempt you from parking payments though which is a bit of a cross to bear for many thrill seekers but you can upgrade your ticket to pay for parking charges.



Thorpe Park is another park you can enjoy with the Merlin pass in your pocket.  Although we avoided this.  Reason being, it's full of Zombies chasing you and such like.  Goto Youtube and search Thorpe Park fright nights.  You will see what I mean.  Much too scary for my liking.  I've a crazy imagination and these images will stay with me forever.



So, after enjoying our day out,  I decided that the next day should be quieter.  Off to Argos to get a nice new trampoline for the children (and adults) to keep fit on! As you will see from the photo, Harley dog really wanted to get in on the action!


What did you do this weekend?  Hope you had a good one.

Much love

Louise xoxo

If you missed my last weekend blog, you can see it here. 

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Tuesday 14 October 2014

Blogging-what should you write?

So what should you write in a blog?

For me, my favourite thing is sharing photos and thoughts. Random thoughts. This is because this is what I love to read in other blogs. 

Sometimes, I find I mentally write, wherever I am! Maybe at the gym, right now, on a train. A man sitting next to me clearly coming over into my space. His perfectly blue pinstripe suit, the type of newspaper and fact that his age is talking to me, suggests a gentleman in a high power position. Does this give him the right to squash me against the window? No. Doubtless, he's a bully at work. I might just have to open and eat my cheese and onion crisps ;)

Now I feel a blog should be whatever fires your spirit up. Me, it's writing and sharing photos. You guys seem to love my law of attraction stuff. 
Google analytics tells me that most of my audience are fellas (hi guys) which surprised me a little. I love to know what you like to see. 

I've other blogs too where I share different subjects of mine. 
I've a nutrition blog, a photography blog and some other professional stuff (coaching) yet I'm tempted to share the nutrition on here and the photography. 

I'd love your comments on what you like to see. Email me. 

So for you, if you are a blogger what inspires you? If you would like to start a blog-go for it!
If you are shy you don't need to add your name. Anonomous is fine! Will just take longer to build your audience without sharing to social media. Then, blogs like mine also offer very low cost ($5 per month) adverts on the blog. So you can gain momentum quickly. 

Meanwhile, I'll share a random photo for you and wish you a wonderful day. 



Much love

Louise xoxo
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Monday 13 October 2014

Dem bones dem bones



Nutrition. 
You think of food. 
Right?

Phew....this body which houses us sure is pretty amazing. 
Not only is it just simply amazing, we can recreate a whole new skeleton every 10 years. Did you know that?

I just learned this! I'm amazed every day at what our amazing bodies can do. There's still lots to learn too!

So while I struggle to find the time to straighten my hair today (due to rain too!) and I pull up a curly ponytail, I must, must, must find time to treat my body right with adequate nutrition to effectively allow it to perform miracles!

You'll be totally blown away to know how much better you feel when you start eating correctly. To find out why is just the cherry on top!

Watch this space to find out more as my journey progresses. 


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Friday 10 October 2014

What I did this weekend

Weekend blog

So this past week has been crazy busy with lots of life changes happening.  I was becoming increasingly aware that I needed To catch up on lots of work while sitting at my desk.



Saturday afternoon had been so quiet in my household which was very unusual.  To continue this trend through into Sunday didn't seem right somehow.  The late autumn sunshine was peeping through changing leaves and I had a burning desire to get out into the countryside with my faithful shuhtzu Harley dog.

Thankfully, my children were happy to join me too as we took off into the countryside.  We live in a beautiful part of Kent which looks particulatly lovely at this time of year.  Once the leaves begin to change colour even more, I have no doubt I will be out taking photos of them.

Meanwhile, here are a few I took last Sunday.  Hope you enjoy them.

Feel free to let me know what you have been up to.  





Then Monday morning showed me this beautiful sunrise


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Tuesday 7 October 2014

First week at university-how was it?

Was the first week at university how I imagined?  To be honest, yes. Although I've a few surprises which I will share with you here as words of wisdom. 

Are you at uni? Are you a fresher?  
How has your experience been so far?  
I would love to hear from you. 


I'm so pleased to say I've met some really amazing people and the tutors/lecturers are amazing!
Wow do these guys know their stuff. 
There's not one of them who would allow bad school boy behaviour and woe betide anyone who tempts to challenge that!

Feeling as though I'm a fairly confident person (people often tell me) I have had to find some inner strength this past week and it's certainly not for the faint hearted. 

Challenges?  

Yes there have been many. From finding a long queue out of the door to try and purchase a train ticket and then actually catch the train on time right through to realising I don't have enough bottles of water with me! 
I'm not sure yet if it's the 260 bodies in a lecture theatre or the air con but something is making me very thirsty. 

The difference between a lecture and a tutorial:
I think I'm right in saying that during a lecture, you generally sit tight and listen.  For, like, a couple of hours. 
After that, we seem to go off into smaller groups of about 20 and have a tutorial session.  This is where we go over the lecture and write up a summary. 
I'm still to get 100% clear on what is a summary..... Yet right now it's points to remember (not with examples, just reminders) and condensed down onto 2xA4 sheets. 

Side note: as I sit writing on the train, I notice so many ladies doing their make up! So many people with the new iphone6 and someone smelling gorgeous - I wonder what that perfume is?

Back to the uni stuff!  The subjects covered have been HARD.  I'm finding I really need to focus. There are some subjects I've not covered at all before. I would suggest you get a good night sleep beforehand (even the most brilliant people have been seen napping) and try hard to listen as opposed to taking too many notes.  

My uni has all of the slides online for every lecture. Plus practise quizzes and other stuff to help you and give you a chance to get up to speed. During lectures I have been writing down odd little notes or questions that I need to go and get answers to.  For example, in biochemistry we were talking about "ground state" of items found on the periodic table. I'm not sure what that is, yet I'm pretty sure many others know what this is so I'll use google :)

After a lecture, I've been leaving slightly baffled. I guess it would have been helpful to know that you aren't always going to "get it" at every lecture on the first attempt. Yet after going away and re-studying everything and looking things up independently, it will come. 

Great tip:  we were told of "the Khan academy". This is an excellent learning tool for you which is online based. Check it out. 

The shock factor came when we were informed on my course that we have to pass this first year at distinction level, without this, we cannot progress to the second year. It has put lots of my fellow students off. They are now deciding to transfer to another course for the second year.  I slept on it, questioning my ability. Yet I would never know unless I tried. So I'm going to give it everything I've got and work hard enough to know I've done my best. 

All the while still nurturing my blog, YouTube, clients and family. 

I can do it. It's just using lots of focus (which I love) and super powers of organisation- such as putting out the rubbish a little early......

Much love

Louise xoxo

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