Happy Halloween Week! This blog post is going to be another one where I just type all of my thoughts out on to (virtual) paper. I've written a few of these this year and I don't know if they're annoying to read since they sort of jump around instead of being focussed on one topic but sometimes I just don't have enough to say about one thing to dedicate an entire post to it. Watch this space next week though as I am getting tattoo number 5 this weekend, which is very cool as I got my first ever tattoo on October 28th last year and I'm already on number 5 a year later. I love that for me. As usual, there will be a dedicated post to that.
So here is an Autumn edition of '5 things I've learnt lately', as the last one was posted over the Summer.
1. Tiny basement flats are incredibly hard to decorate, but it can be done.
I mentioned this in a post shortly after Stephen and I got married, but we’ve now lived in our tiny basement flat for over 2 years, when we really only intended to be here for a year, and it now looks like we’ll be here for another year or two due to recovering financially after planning two weddings. So, back in June, we decided to actually throw away all of our packing boxes and start making our temporary home feel more like it’s our own, within reason of course, as we are renting.
Recently, we made our kitchen table more of a kitchen table and less of a ‘throw things here that don’t have homes anywhere else’ area, and the same went for the space of floor underneath our kitchen island. We honestly must’ve walked around with measurements of that floor space on the Notes app on our phones for almost six months before we finally found this cute little coffee table from The Range which fits in the space and looks beautiful. We’re absolutely in love with it, and it’s insane how such a simple change can really make a room look so much better. The ‘Boo’ neon light featured in the photo is from the Sainsbury’s Halloween range last year or the year before, and the rose gold glittery placemats and coasters are also from The Range. I’ve also ordered an adorable Ginger Ray garland for hanging across this table and it’ll help it to look more festive.
2. Fudge is a really unexpected cupcake topper idea that works
Stephen’s office recently had their #WearItPink Breast Cancer Awareness/Fundraising Day, and so staff were asked to bring in baked goods to sell to raise money. I spent some time the night before baking two different sets of cupcakes, 12 vanilla with Cornish fudge cubes as the cupcake toppers, and 6 red velvet cupcakes. Mine were the only homemade bakes in the whole office and I’m so proud of that! My choice of fudge cupcake topper felt unique and a bit odd to me while I was buying them and choosing to go for it because I’d never seen it done before but it’s definitely what helped them to sell as quickly as they did, according to Stephen’s colleagues so I’m super excited about unexpected cupcake toppers now, and will continue to look for ways to come away from sprinkles and go for something different.
3. Nobody knows the size on your clothing label except you
TW: Eating disorders.
I’ve recently come to the discovery that literally nobody knows or cares about what size clothing you wear. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve recently gone up a clothing size or two, but honestly unless I tell you what it is, nobody knows, and it honestly doesn’t even matter. All that matters is that you wear cute clothes that you feel good in and that make you feel happy. It isn’t anyone else’s business unless they’re asking for your size because they want to buy you clothes, in which case they already love you and will not judge whatever the answer is. There is enough in this world which is triggering for someone who has recovered from disordered eating, and I refuse to let the clothes hanging in my own wardrobe be a trigger for me. Fashion is something which I absolutely love and enjoy, so I’m no longer keeping anything which ‘just about fits’, is too tight or I ‘have one or two more wears in’. No. I cannot tell you the relief I felt when I went from squeezing into my jeans and jumping around to make them fit every day to just throwing them all out and starting again with new pairs which go on easily. It sounds crazy that I ever did that in the first place but maybe that’s you too, and I’m here to tell you to get rid of them, and size up. It doesn’t matter. (Ignore the vaccine plaster on my arm in these photos, I just LOVE this outfit and I wore it on vaccine day last week)
4. People who say ‘getting married won’t change anything if you’re already living together’ are lying
This isn’t something that was ever said directly to me, but it is an idea that I have seen spread around quite a lot. I truly respect couples who don’t want to live together before they get engaged/married if that’s what they want to do, and I do know that it was a bit of a shock to my own family when I wanted to move out as an unengaged woman, but to me personally, I don’t think I could marry someone if I didn’t live with them first – that’s how you really get to know someone, in my opinion! We’d lived together for a year when we got engaged, (and what a year that was honestly – probably the most challenging of our entire relationship and it brought us a lot closer because it had to), and were approaching our three years of living together by the time that we were married. Anyway, we’ve been married for almost six months now and honestly, it has felt different to when we weren’t married. There’s a level of security to our relationship now which is really lovely, and I don’t have logical explanation for this next one, but we keep forgetting when our actual scheduled fortnightly date nights are, (we’ve done this since 2019 and you can read more about it in this post), because every night feels like a date night, except for the ones where Stephen is on a night shift obviously. I don’t have a logical explanation for that one because we haven’t done anything differently, we just feel closer and happier than ever before which is as incredible as it sounds. To say that nothing will change after your wedding if you already live together is totally a myth.
5. People are ultimately good
I've discovered that we could all choose to focus our energy on the bad things that happen to us, or we could choose not to. There are so many kind people in this world, and I would like to think I’m one of them, so some nice interactions I’m choosing to focus on instead include: the nurse who administered my 2nd Pfizer vaccine last week who said she ‘couldn’t even tell you were nervous until you told me’. I felt like I was having a literal freak out under my face mask because I’m so terrified of needles, and maybe she was fibbing, but It made me feel so much better knowing that she thought I was absolutely fine and that I handled it like a pro. It meant a lot. Another kind interaction was the teller at the post office who helped me, even though it was 10 minutes before closing, (because I ran there after an incredibly busy day at work), and she was very kind to me when I didn’t understand how to pay the DVLA my licence renewal fee because it says not to enclose cash and that they don’t accept cheques, so how do you pay anything to them – turns out there’s something called a postal order which is very easy to get. She definitely could’ve rushed me, but she explained and listened to me and was just genuinely lovely. Another one is one of my closest friends telling me that she will ‘always want to know how you’re feeling. Tell me everything, always’ after I told her that I still feel like a burden whenever I talk about how I feel since someone brutally ended our friendship last year over nothing except that they had suddenly decided they didn’t want to be there for me anymore. If I've learnt anything from that experience, it's this. Run away from people who make you feel like you’re a burden. Finally, my husband stocked up our little fridge freezer with a variety of oven meals for me to eat because he had to work while my arm was recovering from my vaccine, and he didn’t know if I’d be in too much pain to cook, (which I wasn’t, yay! if you’re someone waiting for their 2nd Pfizer vaccine, I was worried too because I heard the rumours that the pain is worse but I was fine! I could even sleep on my left arm this time whereas I was bawling at 4am just because I accidentally brushed my arm with my pillow the first time because it hurt so much), and then he was absolutely distraught when he realised they all had onions and garlic in them and I’m currently not eating those due to my parosmia. It was the sweetest thing when he realised that my arm didn’t hurt anywhere near as much this time and that I’d be okay by myself while he was at work. I am very lucky to have the chosen family that I do, who remind me every day that I am healing and learning that not everyone will leave or hurt me, and that people are ultimately good.
I will leave you with that one this week.
xo
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