For the easily distracted…

I think this is going to be my easiest post for #BEDM as I take a lot of photos on my walk to work…

Everyday I leave the house to go catch the bus – the first 10 minutes of my walk are pretty dull, and usually I’m rushing as I’ve only just left the house in enough time to make the bus.

But once I get off the bus, I have a lovely 10-15 minute walk (depending on traffic and how much time I have) through some fields, down into the valley and often I take a little bit longer than usual taking photos on the way. I meant to take some new photos for this post actually, but the weather hasn’t been great, so I never really felt like it, instead I’ll share some of my favourite from the last 4 years that I’ve been walking the same route.

I really enjoy my walk to work, it gives me 10 minutes to myself to slow down and enjoy my surroundings before the work day begins.

If you want to see more photos, you can see all my ‘walk to work‘ posts here. Oh also, I have a little Lomokino video from last winter as well.

Other than yoga, crochet, having a shower and snoozing (I love sleep) my ideal way to relax is to take photos on the beach… I love the beach, I talk about it a lot here but it really is my favourite place… the sand, the sea, the fresh air, I love everything about it. These photos are pretty old now, but I never got around to uploading them, so here are some pretty photos from one of the last times I was at the beach.

Location: Hemsby, Norfolk
Camera: Zenit B
Film: Lomo CN 400

This topic is a bit of a struggle for me at the moment, as honestly, so many people have said some amazing things to me in the last few weeks – but at the same time – they don’t all apply to me 100%. I’d even go as far as saying that even with all the life lessons I’ve learnt, I still haven’t had the right ones to get me through this past year – I’m constantly learning, and at the moment, that’s exciting and exhausting.

However, there is one life lesson that I do know I really need to focus on and give myself to, and that is patience.

Patience with myself, patience with progress, patience with people around me, patience with life, patience with painting my nails, patience with work, patience with waiting to go on holiday, patience with projects… patience with everything!

Things aren’t easy for anyone at the moment, but it will pass and if you work at it, life does improve but as they say ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day’ and neither is success, happiness, well being, a healthy lifestyle, green living, a perfect nail polish technique (I’m getting there) or relationships.

Also, I really need to be more patient with waiting for buses – that’s definitely going to be a life long lesson I think, haha.

p.s. The photo isn’t really relevant, but I like it.

Hands down my favourite place for a treat in terms of food at the moment is Betty’s (though it is closely followed by a local Mexican restaurant called Pinche Pinche in Chapel Allerton). I was actually quite surprised by how many photos I’d taken in Betty’s to be honest, so I was glad I had some to share.

I’ve been a bit rubbish at BEDM to be honest, I thought that it would help me get back in the swing of blogging – but one thing I do know about blogging (and anything creative I do) is that I shouldn’t really force it if I’m not really feeling it… its been nice to drop in and out of topics though and to read other peoples posts too – so I guess it isn’t all bad.

I’m not really sure what to write for this post – I recycle my rubbish, I use public transport, I don’t use aerosol deodorant, I try to buy things locally and to give things to charity when I don’t want them any more… I know that I could definitely be better with things – such as not running as much water or using more ecological products and one thing Thomas and I would like to do is try growing our own vegetables at some point.

I think green living is similar to other lifestyle choices – you have to be able to incorporate it into your life to the point of where you don’t even notice that you do it – its just what you do, like recycling, we just do it… its definitely something I need to keep working on though.

p.s. My friend Wendy has just started writing an amazing blog about sustainable living called Moral Fibres, it has definitely made me think about what I buy and how I can make more sensible choices, if its something you’re interested in definitely check it out.

{Visiting Paris and Krakow}

The tough part about writing this list is that there aren’t many places that I don’t want to go.  I haven’t really travelled that much, the lists of countries I’ve been too are mostly in Europe (France, Belgium, Poland) so its hard to really know where to start with a list of dreams because really I want to see and photograph it all. There are a few places that I would really love to visit though.

1. The Grand Canyon – Partly for the photos but mostly just to see it – can you imagine something so vast and beautiful? I can’t, not really, I want to go and soak it all in.

2. Cornwall/Devon/Dorset, England – It’s funny how one of the top places that I want to go is in the same country that I live in but I’ve actually never been to that part of England before – I’ve been around most other places in England and I’ve been to Scotland, Wales and Ireland but never to the South West of England – I’m hoping that when I finally learn to drive we’ll road trip it down there and explore for a while.

3. Tokyo, Japan – Mainly for the Studio Ghibli Museum, but Tokyo has been on my list for a while now.

4. Italy – anywhere in Italy to be honest, I couldn’t decide one place, I’d almost want to take a month off and go see everything (or at least as much as I could in that month) and mostly I want to go to eat the food, seriously, fresh gnocchi… I’m there.

5. Finland/Sweden/Norway – I’ve bunched these together because really, I just want to see the aurora – the northern lights.

6. Easter Island, South Pacific – With everything that’s been going on lately – part of me wants to get to as remote a place as I can. I’ve always been fascinated with this area of the world too and the statues look pretty amazing – Imagine the photos of those.

Ok, back to #BEDM…

My favourite social media site is easily Instagram. I love the interaction on there, I love looking at everyone’s photos, I love sharing snippets of my life and seeing snippets of others. I’ve recently been doing a 365 project on there which has been encouraging me to take photos even when I haven’t really fancied it and I think that act of looking out for ‘photo opportunities’ even if I haven’t had a camera with me has helped me to stay enthusiastic about photography on the whole. Though I am nearly a month behind on sharing the 365 photos here… oops. I’ll get around to it, I’m sure.

Here are some of my favourite instagram photos since I joined :)

You can follow me on Instagram here, I have a private account but I’m fairly easy going with accepting new friends on there.

I will add that I really love Twitter  and Society6 too – I didn’t expect Society6 to have such a social feel to it, but it definitely lives up to its name and Twitter is just perfect for everything – talking to friends, keeping up with the news, its awesome.
I do not like Facebook.

p.s. If anyone was wondering about the #BEDM topic yesterday – my first job was in the restaurant at Norwich Airport on Saturdays, it was pretty dull. I then worked in two of the local Tescos expresses in Norwich after that and through out Uni until I got my first ‘career’ job in London at an Interior Design company for a placement year… all very exciting stuff.