Laura Maisey, Fully Qualified Piglet and Multi-Award Winner

Well, this is a good week. Passed my exams and been nominated for two awards. I’ll do the other one in a separate post. So for now, I would like to thank Wealthymatters for the nomination for the One Lovely Blog Award. This blog is a mixture of useful info and tips on creating wealth (always a useful thing when emerging from a period of self-imposed student-loan-related poverty!).

So the rules for this award are that I tell everyone 7 things about myself and nominate 15 other blogs for the award. So I’m going to have to think of 7 new things as I swear I’ve told the most interesting stuff already. Ok, here goes…

1. Sometimes I think I might like to spend my life becoming the new Alfred Wainwright, a famed English walker, who spent his time walking the Lake District and writing fantastic books about it, known as Wainwright’s Walks. In light of this possible life goal, I’m looking into walking the Pennines for my birthday next year. It takes about two weeks apparently. A friend did it and had a heart attack and had to be airlifted off to hospital. I don’t think the heart attack was related to the walk.

2. I once walked the Great Wall of China. It took about two weeks. It was exhausting. A lady in one village tried to sell me a Great Wall-themed t-shirt and when I said I had bought the exact same one at the previous village so didn’t need another, she said, in desperation, ‘But I have extra large!’

3. When I was travelling in Namibia with a friend and her family, we were staying in the middle of nowhere in a tented camp. As we walked in the pitch black from the dinner tent to our sleeping tent, we looked back up the path and shone the torch, and we had walked straight past a huge HUGE male lion with a massive mane. It had been lying down next to the path, clearly not hungry enough to have a go. If any of us had reached out an arm while walking past it, we would’ve touched it.

4. When I was younger, I named every single cuddly toy that I had, and I had a lot. When I was supposed to be going to sleep, I gave them all personalities and created a little life with them. My favourite doll, which I’d had since forever, was called Yvonne.

5. After I’ve been swimming, I eat far more than is really necessary, to get my energy back up. I’m probably burning enough to have two or three cereal bars. I tend to eat four or five, then a bit of everything else I find in the fridge. I know this is silly. And I know overall, the swimming can’t be having that much effect, due to my massively increased food intake, but I have decided to pretend that it’s not happening. If you would pretend too, then that would be great. Thanks.

6. I love a project. Love it! If someone says ‘I need to file all this stuff by tomorrow, I’ll never get it done’ I love it, I get straight in there. Or if we need to check the best before dates on everything in the shop, I’m on it, I’ve already started! Re-organising a drawer or re-arranging furniture, I love it. Let’s get the garden looking pretty, someone says. I’m your woman! I love it. I get excited thinking up projects for myself to work on.

7. I feel quite a bit of pressure to do something law-related now that I have my degree but in all honesty, I quite like what I’m doing now, even though it has nothing to do with law. People say, ‘O, so what will you do now?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, at the moment I am mostly baking and writing. Which I like. So I’ll do that.’ Lots of people with grown-up jobs don’t like them very much. Whereas I love my job, it’s great fun. I think I should count myself lucky in that and not be in a rush to go and do something grown-up, just for it’s own sake.

Ok, so now you all know me a bit better (I’m running out of cool facts to tell you all actually. Any more awards and I’ll be telling you things about myself that are of the ‘I had a cup of tea this morning’ variety), and it’s time to nominate 15 other blogs for the One Lovely Blog Award. This is fairly easy as they’re all pretty lovely, lovely enough for me to take the time out to read them every day. I’ll try not to repeat any I’ve done before.

1. Thought Catalog – This blog is just fantastic. There are no other words for it. It’s witty, painfully honest and always hilarious. 33 Things You Should Know Before Dating Me is my favourite of the recent posts, but the’yre all worth reading.

2. A Year Of Reading The World – This blog is great. 196 countries, and a year to read something from all of them. I was super excited the other day when I saw a book from Namibia on the list.

3. The Good Greatsby – I love love love this blog. Invite Me To Your Yachting Party and Thank You For Inviting Me To Your Party. I Apologize For My Behaviour At The Party are among the funniest things I have ever read.

4. Belle Grove Plantation – This blog feeds my history obsession. It follows the restoration of the plantation in Virginia, US, where James Madison was born. The little stories of discoveries on the land and tales of the families who lived there are absolutely fascinating. At some point, I’m definitely visiting, it looks amazing.

5. socomfortablynumb – This blog had me at “I’m not all that pretty. I dress wierd.”

6. CyclingEurope.org – This man cycled around Europe and wrote a book about it, which I’m in the middle of at the moment. It’s a great book, fantastically entertaining. Read it.

7. Bagni di Lucca and Beyond – Gorgeous gorgeous photos. I’ve never wanted to go to Italy more! In fact, I have booked myself a trip there soon and my sole holiday research has been this blog!

8. hairsprayandhemingway – I was initially attracted to this blog by the name. The blog is described as being about ‘literature, beauty and life.’ What’s not to love?

9. AsiaDreaming – This blog always has beautiful photos from exotic faraway lands, that make me want to drop everything and jump on a plane.

10. Blogging for a Good Book – It’s the Williamsburg Regional Library blog and every day I come and check out which book they have recommended. I’ve read a few that have been suggested and they were very good.

11. Tokyobling’s Blog – Again, amazing photos and a fascinating insight into another part of the world. The colours and liveliness in the photos are great.

12. Project 365 by Kenneth Todd – One photo a day for a year. Does what it says on the tin. There are some lovely lovely pictures on this blog, check them out if you’re into photography or if you just like looking at pretty things.

13. Fitness and Frozen Grapes – The great pictures of food are just one of the reasons I love reading this blog. No matter how active I am, I always feel lazy when I read this!

14. Lyrics and Chocolate – The most recent post, List of things that never change was great!

15. Steeshes – A Photo Collection of Mustaches – This blog is just great. There’s always a new picture of a moustache. I feel it is good for one to be up-to-date with the latest moustache fashions. That’s partly why I love this blog so much. Check it out. You’re bound to discover something amazing.

 

PS. As a London-dweller, I feel I should say something about the Olympics. So here it is = the Olympics are nice, aren’t they?

Cake talk

Today, I have a day off work, so my brain has gone into meltdown. I’m not very good with time off. So I make jobs for myself. I have made a cake this morning already. I have also done a bit of Land Law revision. It’s mortgages today. Not the most fascinating thing I can think of. With the brain in meltdown, I’m not very good at thinking what to blog about. So I’m just going to blog what’s on my mind.

The biggest thing is planning a wedding cake. Not for me, I might add! Someone else is getting married and I’m doing their cake. (Me? Getting married? What a hilarious thought!) I had trouble falling asleep last night because I was planning it in such detail. I love a foodie project. Yesterday I went into the cake supplies shop and was just out of control. It’s like someone had unleashed the mad woman that I usually keep under wraps and told her to get one of everything! It’s not like I went in with a plan in mind and got things which fitted with my plan. Instead I looked in great detail at absolutely everything in the shop and thought about how I could possibly use it, picked it up and kept moving. Occasionally I placed things back when I’d re-made the plan after looking at the next item but my arms were still pretty full by the time I got to the till (maybe an hour after entering the shop).

When I was falling asleep last night I was running through, over and over again what I was going to do, whether I should put this here or that there. What type of cake should I do for the cake bit? I also took the momentous step of finally purchasing a piping bag, which is a thing I’ve always felt like I should have but was quite intimidated by, like muslin cloth. I now have both. I think I should practise piping things first because I can just see a big disaster happening on the actual cake.

Now I don’t want to jinx things by talking about it too much and I hope Mr/Mrs Soon-To-Be-Married don’t stop by this blog before the big day but here’s the plan. Opinions please.

He owns a gallery and requested a cake in the shape of a picture frame. So I’m going to do a square/rectangle cake with gold frosting for the frame bit. Then inside the frame there’ll just be white frosting and I got two little silver letters for their names.

Oo! I’ve just thought! Gold framing and silver letters?! It’s not going to go together. Dammit. Should I go and get gold letters instead? Or will that be gold overload?

Anyway, two letters for names, whichever colour they end up being. Then I have edible red carnation petals that I thought I’d make a little flower out of for one corner and two small white icing hearts for the opposite corner. I’ve got two teeny tiny mini champagne flutes to put in the middle and thought I’d make some really small white chocolate truffles to either put on the board around the bottom of the cake or to put round the edge next to the flower, so it looks like part of the pattern on the frame.

It will probably change tomorrow, and the next day, so I’m going to start making little sketches or something so I remember each idea before I change it. Actually, here’s the one for what my current idea is… (Obviously my artistic skills are somewhat lacking and the proportions will no doubt end up completely different.Those little blobs in the two corners are the mini white chocolate truffles.)

Anyway, that’s the main thing on my mind this morning. Other thoughts are:

‘I’d better try and finish revising mortgages today as the exams are really close..’

….and ‘Omygoodness I ate a lot at the staff meal out last night, I should probably try to do a long walk or something to balance it out…’

…and ‘I want to make the truffles for the cake today.’

F is for…

FILING!

If any of you work in an office, you probably don’t like filing. Most people I know don’t like it. It’s tedious, takes forever and it’s so easy to get to the end and realise you’ve done something wrong and everything’s in the wrong place.

And that’s why I can’t explain the fact that I love filing. I love it. I love it when there is a pile of paperwork chaos and you come along and impose order on it, give everything a home, in a nice neat way. I once did some work with a project which had only just been set up. There was a small office space, some empty filing cabinets, a computer and the biggest disorganised mess I’ve ever seen in an office. Did I think ‘O no! What a nightmare!’ No! I rubbed my hands with glee and thought ‘I can’t WAIT to file all this stuff!’

I made dividers for in the filing cabinet. I looked through every individual piece of paper and worked out which category it belonged in. I bought marker pens and highlighters and gave each piece of paper a brief description so I wouldn’t have to read everything again to work out what it was about. I worked late. I came early. I found muscles I never had, lifting stacks of paperwork. I shunned company or food or even drinks. I HAD A PROJECT! AND I WANTED TO COMPLETE IT!

It probably took about three weeks of half days here and there as I had a full time job somewhere else. After everything had gone into a place in the physical filing cabinets, I then got started on the electronic filing. I think I might love electronic filing even more. I have a certain way that I name files, which I wrote up on an instruction sheet, should someone else dare to step inside MY office to use the computer and try to save something which didn’t have the proper name format. God forbid!

My memory is quite good when I’m in project mode because I’m really into what I’m doing. So even after there was order imposed and it looked like a normal office, with paperwork all in a proper place, I would get calls on my mobile, while I was at my other job, asking me where the piece of paper for the business bank account, with details of the loan agreement was. And I knew. I just knew. “Second drawer down in the large blue cabinet next to the computer. It’s near the middle, and the tab says Business Banking Natwest.” It was just there, in my memory.

Omygoodness, I think I need to file something! Writing this post has really excited me!