McFly, MSN, and Myspace

I saw recently on Sarah-Elizabeth's blog, The Spanish Bluebell, that she did this little remembering post with a random coin she pulled out her wallet. Pretty much the gist is you pull it out at random and reminisce about things you did in that year. Problem was I pulled out a couple of coins first that were 1990 and 1991 so yeah I wasn't born but next was 2008, coincidently the same as Sarah-Elizabeth! So what was happening in 2008? 

Well I turned 14 and was in year 9 for a start, oh year 9 that was truly an awful year for me... that and year 10. Unfortunately my school was a year 7-13 school so everyone was already in friend groups and it wasn't like everyone was in a new school together. I'd only been in New Zealand for just over 3 months of 2007 so 2008 was my first proper year in NZ and my first proper go at school with electives and everything. I was currently ahead of most of my year as the UK is quite far ahead in teaching so I was in all of the top classes and knew everything my beginner French teacher was teaching the class. 

I met the only two people I really speak to properly now from high school in this year. Conveniently the girl I sat next to in Maths was the daughter of my mums work colleagues so we ended up getting to be pretty good friends. The other we didn't really get to know each other until the following year but we met and knew each other so that counts right? I spent most of my time with my best friend at the time who had around 8 dogs at that current moment in time I think, I could never keep up, but that amazed me. I also got my first pair of rats this year, Milo and Slinky, they were my buddies and detested by many but they were the cutest things. 

I didn't join Facebook until 2009 so it was all Myspace and a bit of Bebo for me in 2008 oh how those were the days. Gosh I think I was still on MSN back then, there was only so many ways you could keep in contact with friends on the other side of the world. I mean I had to have someone to talk to about McFly and other British bands seen as no one in NZ knew who they were! I'm pretty sure I was still snooping around things like Runescape and Neopets as well when my friends weren't looking and was my Gaia Online phase in 2008 I cant remember.

I think that's about it, or about as much as I can remember and am willing to share. Pretty much I was a bit lame haha hopefully I've improved since then, at least I can kinda apply make-up now and don't think bright red jeans are the key to fashion... If you have a go at this let me know! 

A Year Of Firsts

I came across this idea on a few blogs I've been reading recently and I thought it was a great idea, last year I achieved quite a few things for the first thing so I thought I would make a list of a few things I wanted to do this year!

Attend a blogging event

For the last few weeks I've been involved in the NZ Bloggers chats and the NZ Brunch Club Facebook page. Being able to chat to loads of bloggers from my country has allowed me to start advertising my blog more and reading lots of other blogs. The brunch club holds an event once a month and I was too scared to attend the February event but hopefully this year I will get over my fear of new people and join one of these events!

Do a zoo encounter

I want to go into the meerkat enclosure at my local zoo so much! I'm hoping for tickets for my birthday so fingers crossed. 

Learn how to use my camera properly 

I constantly tell myself to do this but there's just so much involved that I just put it on hold. I know how to basically use the manual setting but I want to be able to take much better quality photos and learn how to use camera raw. 

Leave more time for art

Over the summer I thought it would get so much time for practicing and improving my 'arty' skills but as it turned out I practiced my 'watching a series a day' skills instead. With uni starting in two weeks I want to hopefully have some time throughout the year to do non uni design and art that I enjoy. Maybe design my own font or design some prints to sell. 

Turn 21

Simple enough, it'll happen I just have to do it in the right way! 

Gain 100 Bloglovin followers

Since joining the blogging groups and chats this has been improving so hello you new followers it's nice to have you around! I'm  not in this for the followers but everyone secretly wants as many as possible and if I can manage 100 by the end of the year that'll be amazing! 

Get an A+ overall grade 

I've gotten quite a few great grades but I have yet to achieve an A+ in an overall grade. An overall grade being an average grade of the paper I've gotten into the habit of getting a really good grade in one assessment and an average one in the other leaving me with a above average overall grade. I just wanna get higher than my highest overall grade of A - its a competitive part of me.

Cook more 

Brad and I have a unsaid deal where I do most of the cleaning and washing in the house and he does most of the cooking with me being sous chef however I'd like to take some of the days off of him.

Get happier with my blog

I've been running Sofilly x since April 2013 however I've not really been happy with it really until now. I've been on and off blogging through the course and lately I've gotten the consistency going enough to be happy posting my links to Twitter hopefully by the end of the year I'll be happy posting my links to everywhere and anyone.

Save some money

Due to some unforseen problems last year I had to use a lot of my savings on extra rent and bills etc so I'd love to save some of that back up again. 

Spend it on the good things

I also want to spend some of that saved cash on myself and others and splurge a bit. Not exessively but chocolate, a night out, a nice present or two wont harm anyone. 

I totally recommend sitting down and thinking about this for yourselves, they're almost like mini new year resolutions or goals. 

Recently...

I've been a bit busy recently and after scheduling some posts while I've been away with no internet I'm back with more inspiration! So to catch you up here's some of my recent goings on. I've spent some quality time with the family before moving back to Wellington as I'm not sure when I'll be next home so we took the campervan out to Whakatane for a weekend and then travelled down to Wellington to drop off my stuff and join Brad's family camping. It was the first proper time our families spent quality time together and I'm glad to say it went off very smoothly, helped along by alcohol of course! They all went home and Brad and I stayed longer to spend some time together after almost a month apart; throwing rocks at the beach is what all the cool couples are doing right?! Once returning to the land of internet and phone signal we actually managed to find a kitten! Our own little tiny kitten barely months old and free I might add, more on him in a later post though he needs to be properly introduced. Hope things are going well for you guys in the recent weeks. 

I'm as kool as a kangaroo

I held a koala!!! And stroked a kangaroo!! And it was amazing and I got to cross things off my bucket list!! Woop woop! While we were in Australia we couldn't not go see the native animals could we? Although the zoo was a few cities over we actually were staying near Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary which held all the animals we were interested in anyway. Due to construction in some areas of the park it was actually much cheaper to go visit so we took this as a sign that we should definitely visit, especially as the construction didn't actually put any of the animals off limits. We saw loads of native animals like dingos, wallabies and crocodiles, unfortunately the wombats were in hiding to the dismay of the women in the family. They actually had an albino dingo at the sanctuary who causes so much mischief he had to be separated from his family in another enclosure! (although that meant there wasn't much chance of photos of him) 

Did you know there was such thing as a tree kangaroo? I'm not sure if they're related but him and his proper kangaroo buddy are pretty similar looking if you think about it. The kangaroos were in a large enclosure that humans were able to go into and feed them. However they were all pretty chilled and too relaxed to go eating the little pellets. I fell in love with a little baby joey chilling with his mum in the shade of a tree, the amount of photos I took of him it was hard to choose one to include in here. There was also a very young joey who was chilling in his mums pouch and she was constantly flicking her feet at him to stop him wriggling! Now all I have to do is pet a meerkat and my animal goals are complete! 

That yearly 365 paged book.

So hello 2015; come in, make yourself at home, have a cuppa! A new year has begun and hopefully a new section of life. It's not really hard to see that 2014 hasn't been the best year for me at all but there were a few things that made it worthwhile. Bradley and I celebrated 1 year together just 5 days ago and without him 2014 would probably not have been manageable so woo thank you amazing best friend and boyfriend. I also went on an amazing holiday to Australia that I've just returned from that was probably one of the best holidays I've ever had (more posts on this later with photos woo)! But all in all I'm glad this year is over. With it being new year and all I decided to make some resolutions, however I have just the one this year: 

This can't really be hard so I'm really doubtful that I'll break it but that's not the point. I didn't want to make a list of things like I normally do and then break them before January has finished. I wanted to make one open resolution that means if I want to do yoga for a week and then give up I can, or if I want to do the thing where I say yes more sometimes I can, or say I want to give up sugar for a fortnight I can. There's no restrictions or set deadlines as any of these three things will add to a better year than 2014. So to be cliche - today is the start of a 365 paged book, try and make the story worthwhile. Happy New Year! 

Artist Attraction #2 | Lizzie Mackay

Another artist discovered on Pintrest: Lizzie Mackay... aren't her illustrations beautiful! There's just something about any nicely drawn animals that just make me want to look at every single other piece the artist has produced and these are no different. I had to google her and spend a good hour or so looking through all her pieces on her website here, I really recommend a look as I'll definitely be using some of her work as inspiration for my own x

Bye Bye Baby.. was that too cheesy?

It's been three weeks since my little baby passed away and even though I've moved back to uni now and wouldn't be with her anyway I still really miss her. We're still not sure on the cause of her death, whether it was her cancer finally kicking in or just old age. She was over the average age for rats so I'm assuming it was that. She had a great life though even after one round of cancer, an operation and another round of cancer she was fighting fit throughout it all. I'm really amazed she managed to live over 6 months longer than her sister as normally rats don't live very well on their own and I just couldn't get another ratty friend for her.