16 things you know if you rent your home.

This evening Collette and I were discussing our separate rental properties and the landlord convention that they must have every year to keep up their huge cliches when I decided to start writing this post. I haven't had #inspiration to write a post so quickly in a while so I'm a bit excited about this. (I know, bit geeky).
I've rented a few places over the last couple of years and have definitely noticed some similarities. Here we go!

1. For some reason all of the walls will definitely be magnolia.

2. If you're lucky there might even be some kind of odd textured wallpaper that has had magnolia painted over the top of it.

3. You probably wouldn't actually dare paint over any part of it no matter how bland it may be because that deposit is a lot of money to not get back just for a slightly more aesthetically pleasing wall.

4. You've probably had a bit of a tiff with a landlord/ letting agency about not getting part of your deposit back. It is soul destroying when you've been a decent tenant and spent a whole day deep cleaning before you move out. So fuck you and your cleaner who charges £50 to get some limescale off a shower screen Janice. (Any resemblance to persons living or dead is merely coincidental.)

5. The carpets are usually some kind of shit brown/taupe/tan colour.

6. If they're not and you have cream carpets you spend all of your time on edge about spills.

7. At some point you will have looked at a house for sale on your street and worked out how much less per month you'd be paying for a mortgage. If only the rental market were less extortionate and you could save for a deposit. #millenialproblems

8. Your landlord probably has a 'handyman' that they use instead of getting actual work people in. It's probably their dad.

9. If your landlord is local, you may have lived with a problem for a while instead of having the stress of them coming to inspect it themselves and seeing how you live in their house.

10. You will never want to do anything major to the house to make it feel like your own. Usually because you're not allowed but also no matter how long you may be thinking of staying somewhere it always feels a bit temporary.

11. Every so often you get itchy feet and spend every spare minute on Zoopla or Right Move lusting after other places to rent near you. (Look this one has exposed brick, think of the Instagrams!)

12. You will look on in awe at people 5+ (I'm 24) years younger than you buying their own houses and wondering if they sold their soul to do so.

13. There will always be someone who looks down on you for renting "it's dead money!". Fuck off, mate.

14. If you decide to get married or have a child before buying a house you will probably find yourself justifying it to everyone and yourself, constantly.

15. Sometimes when you're pretending you don't actually want to own your own house you can bring out the old "You know mortgage basically translates as death contract, right? I just don't want to be tied down!"

16. No (or hardly any) rental places in the UK allow pets and it's basically the most upsetting thing in my life at any given time.

Hope you liked my little listicle (isn't that what the cool cats over at Buzzfeed call them?) good bye for now from me and my patterned magnolia walls and shit brown carpet in my little rented terraced house that I love. 

 

How I did my make up in school.

Recently these videos of how people did their make up in school have been my absolute favourite to watch, probably because of the fact that no matter where you are now it's a reminder that we all started somewhere. I wish I was exaggerating with my make up looks but I'm honestly not. I even sent these to my Mum for her to look at and check. 

Age 12-13

This was the phase I had when I was desperately trying to fit in, if you didn't wear make up who even were you?? My Mum had banned me from wearing make up to school because in our school you weren't meant to wear it until Upper (year 10) I think! But I would sneak bronzer, eye shadow and eyeliner onto the bus with me, sometimes mascara if I was feeling brave. (It was harder to take off at the end of the day).
I wish I could remember the brand of (always baby pink) eye shadow that I used but I can't, it has been banned from my memory forever. This one is a maybelline colour tattoo that I actually love when I use it well. The bronzer I used to use was free on a magazine, and that was where I learned by bronzer SKILLZ (only put it where you naturally get tanned i.e. your nose, cheeks and forehead according to me)! Concealed lips, black eyeliner ONLY on the lower waterline you would so not put it on the top and a bit of mascara if I was brave.
My hair would be so slicked back with 2 little tendrils coming down, sometimes these would be gelled. All of this make up would then be removed with soap and water in the school toilet before I caught the bus home. Lovely. I don't have any pictures of me with my make up like this which I'm actually a little gutted about! I must have known even then that it would haunt me in the future.

Aged 14-15.

Myspace throwback anyone?! (Rawr means I love you in dinosaur). I think this happened to me when I discovered Greenday, took a trip to blue banana and just wanted to be myspace famous. My side parting couldn't be too deep and there could never be enough eyeliner. No joke, once I broke my black eyeliner and I asked Mum if I could have a day off sick because I couldn't handle it if the boy I fancied (who wore the skinniest black jeans and had the biggest black hair of course) saw me without it.
This was the time of band tees, black drainpipes and Vans. I even convinced my Nanna to buy me plain black Vans for school and they were LITERALLY PLIMSOLES. I'm so sorry Nanna. The brands of make up at this time however didn't matter it just needed to be the blackest it could be. I think bourjois did a mascara that was called blackest black so of course I used that but any black eye pencil was good. I didn't wear foundation day to day but when I did it was just the palest one I could find, gone were the bronzer days!
I do have some photos from this era:

I'm sure I was mortified by the gaps in my fringe at the time. 

The top picture isn't a good example of the eyeliner but it is peak fringe. My mum must have convinced me that masses of black eyeliner wasn't a good idea when we were at an outdoor gig in the heat. That was when we went to see Red Hot Chili Peppers, amazing. Or it could have been the start of the 'phase'. I'll have to confirm that one with mi madre.
The bottom one I remember being so mad at my mum for putting it up in our house because I was wearing a football shirt which so wasn't my vibe. It was at a family barbecue and we'd have a water fight I think which only added to my eyeliner goals.

I don't really remember the point where I stopped feeling like I had to put myself in a box but I know it happened while I was at school. Eventually I stopped wearing things to match some kind of image I was trying to build and stopped not wearing things for the same reason. I unapologetically listened to Greenday and Britney Spears. It's a way of being that has actually followed me well into adulthood in that I'll wear things if I like them, not just because they're trendy or someone else has one. I think it's a good way to be.

Life Lately, in verbs.

The wonderful Rosie over at Cider With Rosie  (one of my all time favourites) does these posts called 'Life lately, in verbs' and I love them, I contacted Rosie a while ago to see if she minded me doing one of my own, she very kindly said she didn't.
In times when it feels like time won't slow down and I don't quite know how to document everything I feel like this is a way for me to step back and look at the big picture, whilst singling out the little things.

Listening to: Vinyl! I am now the ultimate hipster, my lovely fiancé Sam bought me a record player and my first vinyl this week and I LOVE it! I've wanted one for ages and always thought of reasons not to get it but vinyl shopping is my new favourite activity, we even have an independent vinyl shop in Carlisle!

Recovering: From wisdom teeth removal. I went in on Wednesday morning to have my top 2 wisdom teeth removed under sedation. In April my dentist tried for AN HOUR to remove them before giving up and referring on to the hospital. I thought the sedation hadn't worked because I could remember the whole procedure but in reality I thought I was in there 5 minutes and it was actually 30, so maybe it worked better than I thought.

Watching: Brooklyn 99. I love this show, we've now watched series 1 twice and I still laugh out loud a few times every episode. Would highly recommend (series 1 and 2 are on Netflix).

Eating: The new Italian range at Dominos! I tweeted about my fancy AF Domino's the other day and people were not as impressed as I was. My pizza came with a little pot of fresh rocket, goats cheese and a mini bottle of chill oil to drizzle! Swanky.

Buying: Plants on plants on plants. This week of leave that Sam and I had (despite the wisdom teeth bump in the middle) has been used to really get our little house how we want it. We bought and built furniture, we took a trip to Homebase and spent approx a squillion pounds (£50) on plants for every room in the house (2 for the bathroom that lucky devil). It's been hard to make this place truly our own because it was part furnished when we moved in and there's always that temporary feeling of a rental place but we love it here and a year down the line we figured we should really make it right.

Drinking: Green smoothies. Sorry to keep harping on about these bloody teeth but I really thought their removal and recovery was going to hinder my eating abilities more, so I panic bought green smoothie ingredients. My fave little combo has been :
a handful of strawberries,
a handful of frozen mango
as much spinach as will fit in the blender
coconut water (about 250ml)
a tsp of organic honey
It's probably the wrong time of year to begin enjoying green smoothies for breakfast again and I'll soon transition back onto porridge but for now myself and my tender mouth are enjoying the refreshment and nourishing factor of the old smoothie.

Feeling: Ridiculously excited about the wedding. I know, I've just been moaning all over twitter and here about wedding planning for the last however many weeks, let me live. We went with family and friends in tow (anything can be an excuse for a meet up when you live 200 miles apart) to our future wedding venue for a wedding fayre! It made me SO happy to see it all done up for a wedding since we'd only been there to eat and meet the wedding co-ordinator before. It also made me well up a little (on the inside) to see a few of our family members and friends get along so well and get so excited on our behalf. We're a lucky pair.

Reading: As much as I can! I had a realisation that I hadn't read a book for 2 whole months and I was so upset with myself. I always prided (??) myself on being a big reader, no matter what, I had a book on the go and I had let myself get so 'busy' that I didn't leave time to read. I've remedied that by reading 2 books in the last week. One was a complete trashy (no hate) chic-lit novel about weddings (set in the lead up to the royal wedding in 2011) that I LOVED. I eat that shit up honestly, give me a book about a strong female lead in a 'stereotypically female' conundrum with some drama in there and I'll devour it. No shame.

That's all I have for now, I'm back at work Monday after a very strange week off and I'm kind if looking forward to some normality again! Thanks for reading :)