I love.....my bucket list!

“Every man dies – Not every man really lives.” ~ William Ross

 It’s true though. Some people just live their lives, never actually achieving anything. It makes you wonder what the point of them being here is really. When my Mama passed away in April, she was only 49. She probably never got to do half the things she wanted to do, and it made me realise that life is far too short to sit around hoping good things will happen to you. My Mum has become my motivation for everything I do. If I think I can’t do something, I just think of her and it spurs me on. I think of what she will miss out on now, and it makes me want to fulfil all of my ambitions because you really never know when your last day will be.
I could live till I’m 100, but I could get hit by a bus tomorrow, so from now on I must live every day like it’s my last! No more moaning. Little Miss Proactive has been born!
So before I kick the proverbial bucket, here is a list of things that I simply must do/see/achieve!

1. See a tornado in real life (Twister is the best film ever made HA!)
2. Watch a rocket take off (I am so depressed that stupid old NASA have stopped the shuttle launches though!)
3. Drive across America in some kind of convertible Thelma and Louise type car.
4. Ski down a black run without falling/breaking my legs/dying
5. Do the 3 peaks challenge
6. Swim with dolphins (So standard but it would be pretty amaze)
7. Run a 10k race (I am far too lazy for this but have signed up for the Bayer 10k in May. Oh dear)
8. Further my education by getting an MA or Charters
9. Have at least 3 children
10. Get married to the love of my life (Yet to find such a man, applications currently being accepted.)
11. See the statue of Christ on that big hill in Brazil
12. Go to the Colossuem in Rome
13. Go to Glastonbury Festival
14. Roll down a really big hill
15. Raise a lot of money for charity 130k bike ride with my darlings Lau, Ro and Tommo.. raised £2,200 for Cancer Research woop
16. Get to my ideal weight (Not telling you what that is, cheers thanks.)
17. Work a season abroad, either ski or summer
18. Do a bungee jump
19. Volunteer at a cancer hospice
20. Learn to scuba dive (even though I’m scared of deep water, rocks, fish and shipwrecks eek!)
21. See the Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights)
22. Get better at playing the piano (chopsticks no longer cuts it)
23. Learn to fly a plane (I want to be a pilot so I can fly myself on holiday and not be scared)
24. Drive around the Monaco F1 circuit Did this a few years ago, just call me Jensen.
25. Own my own cupcake shop
26. Go travelling across the world at least once.
27. Learn to speak a language fluently (I’m thinking Spanish is easy, that’s what the thick kids did at school)
28. Learn to surf in Hawaii
29. Go to Scotland (literally cannot believe I have never been!)
30. Go and see Mount Rushmore
31. Knit a scarf
32. Go wine tasting in France (YUM!)
33. Volunteer somewhere like a Russian orphanage
34. Design and build my own house in the countryside (Maybe I can be on Grand Designs ha, I do love a bit of Kevin McCloud)
35. Use my journalistic skills and get an article published in a national newspaper
36. Randomly rock up to Heathrow, buy a ticket on the next plane out of there and see where I end up (hopefully not Iraq or something OH MY!)
37. Have a ride in a fighter jet and do barrel rolls and flips, think Top Gun.
38. Live in a foreign country for at least 3 months
39. Sail a yacht Did this one a few years ago when we sailed from Plymouth to Falmouth
40. Set foot in all 7 continents (Uhhhh 1 might be difficult. How do you get to Antarctica anyway?!)
41. Visit the Taj Mahal
42. Write a cookery book (I want to be the next Nigella)
43. Go to Lapland at Christmas to visit Santa
44. Go to Time Square in New York for New Years Eve
45. Speak in a foreign accent for the entire day Me and my sister enjoy to speak Irish/Australian frequently…. HA
46. Organise a massive charity event where everyone has a lovely time and we raise lots of money :)
47. Get another tattoo (one relating to my Mama)
48. Go to a spa for the whole weekend to be pampered and drink champagne
49. Make a time capsule and bury it somewhere cool for people to dig up in 100 years
50. Do a sponsored silence (I like to talk A LOT so this would be an immense challenge!)
51. Go and watch Wimbledon (centre court)
52. Visit every country in Europe (This will be a fun one! I have done 10/50 I think. Not a great start..)
53. Enter a craft or baking competition at a country fair
54. Visit Ramsay Street
55. Take a cruise around the Caribbean (a cool one, not one with 1000 elderly people on a SAGA holiday)
56. Be able to do the splits
57. Start taking more of an interest in photography to carry on my Mum’s hobby (she was really good at taking artistic pictures of things like flowers and the sea!)
58. Become a newsreader (I’m soo the next Fiona Bruce)
59. Do a week-long bootcamp
60. Swim in the Dead Sea
61. Ride a horse along a beach
62. Visit St Maartens in the Caribbean and go to the beach where the planes fly about 2 metres above your head!
63. Ride all the rollercoasters in the USA (SURELY impossible!!)
64. Snuggle in bed all weekend and only get out to wee HAHAH A

OK. Looks like I have a lot to do. Best be getting on with it!! I'm sure I will add more as and when I think of them too...!

I know some of the things seem totally stupid or unachievable but if you can’t dream and push yourself then what is the point of living?

Do you have a bucket list? Or do you have any ideas of things I may like to add to mine? Let me know :)

Love
Lauren x

I love a blog vacation

OH dear oh dear.

Turns out that my promise to keep this blog up to date and post at least once a week was a pure lie… I for one am shocked and appalled at my lack of effort.

Anyway, I am back now, but it really is anyone’s guess as to how long I will stick around (next post, December 2014?? Who could say!!)

So what has been going on since my last (boring) communication with the world?!!

Here are my updates in a nutshell:

• Got made permanent at work
• Moved into my very own flat with the delightful Deonne :)
• Lost another stone
• Started going running (enjoyable)
• Booked a holiday to Turkey with the girls (Woop so excited!)
• Started baking lots of cupcakes and have now been dubbed the cupcake queen. Thinking of taking orders :)
• Oh, I made my blog public again…I think? Not that it matters, no one will ever read it!!

So a fair bit has happened and I must say I am fairly content with life at the moment. As soon as Bradley Cooper becomes my boyfriend (sure to happen very soon, right??), things will be fabulous.

Anyway, I am boring myself right now so its over and out from me. Hopefully my next post will have some kind of delicious topic (don’t hold your breath though!)

Love Lauren x

I love pink

Well my dear blog readers (aka no one as my blog is private, duh), you know I adore a bit of baking, especially when it’s for a fantastic cause, so last Thursday night saw me whipping up a storm in the kitchen once again, this time in aid of Breast Cancer Care.

Friday 28th October was national Wear it Pink day, where people, businesses, shops, groups etc were encouraged to wear something pink to work, and donate £2 for the privilege. Of course, me being quite the pink lover (the colour of this page says it all really!), I jumped at the chance embrace the theme (think pink top, pink bracelet, pink nails, pink lipstick…you get the gist.), but I thought why stop at clothing, why not make some cakes and sell them at the office to my sweet-toothed, cupcake loving colleagues in order to raise even more money?!

So I set about making cupcakes, a victoria sponge and some chewy white chocolate cookies, but these were no ordinary cakes. No no my friend, it is fair to say that I cracked out the red food colouring, meaning my creations were not only delicious and beautiful, they were pink to match the day’s theme!

Here is a snap of my beautiful pink cupcakes!


Cool huh? They went down an absolute storm, and by the end of the say I had sold all 30 cupcakes, 1 massive victoria sponge (sliced up in to about 14 bits I think) and 15 huge cookies!

The total we raised on the day was £141.09, and I think about £40 of this was from cakes alone so I was so pleased with that :)

I love raising money for charity, but when you can raise money but doing something you really love, that’s even more rewarding. Everyone said to me that my cakes were delicious, and some even said that I have missed my vocation in life and should open my own bakery haha! I would go that far, but I will be sure to keep on baking, and if they are lucky, I may even bake some more cakes to bring in for my colleagues next Friday!

Love Lauren x

I love flying....

Ok, well the title of this is clearly a lie! But whilst I dread the mere thought of cruising through the air at 600 miles an hour, 34,000 feet about the earth which is just clearly NOT natural, it doesn’t mean I don’t go on lots of flights to enjoy a holiday or two at some stunning far flung destination.

Apart from the sheer terror of take-off, the trauma of turbulence and the distress before landing, the thing I hate the most about flying is the pure discomfort. Being stuck not only in the worlds most cramped seat, for 10 hours is one thing, but having to sit upright and try to sleep really does not make for a pleasant experience. Now sadly, I am not one of these fortunate folk who can afford the extortionate amounts it costs to fly in business class, so we mere mortals have to be inventive when it comes to providing ourselves with in-flight comfort (you don’t get free pillows and blankets these days people).

My sister flew to Las Vegas on Monday (lucky mare), and before she went she was talking about wanting a neck pillow for the flight. I thought this was a genius idea so we decided that I should use my sewing expertise (ahem) to make her one. If you want to know how to fashion your own in flight neck pillow out of some fabric and the inside of a cushion, keep reading.

So to make this delightful pillow, you will need:
· Any cotton fabric of your choice
· Stuffing from the inside of an old cushion
· Thread to match
· A sewing machine (although it could be stitched by hand if you don’t have one)
· Scissors
· Pins
· A needle
· A pen

Oooh take a look at my old school sewing machine. Cool huh. I may as well be living in the 50’s. This beauty can only do a running stitch. No zig zagging for me! But it serves its purpose I suppose!

Ok so firstly you will need to pick your fabric. Rowanne chose a charming mint green material with small flowers in pinks, purples etc. Fold the fabric in half so the nice sides are facing inwards (rough edge on the outside) and lay flat on the table. Use a pen to lightly sketch the shape of your pillow; think a thick boomerang!

Once you have drawn your shape, cut it out. Once you have done this, you will have 2 shapes that look like this (you have 2 because you folded the material in half, remember?)

So now you need to line these shapes up, with the good sides facing each other. Use your pins to pin them together so when you are sewing, nothing moves out of place. Take this pinned piece and use your sewing machine (or hand sew using a running stitch) and sew about 1 centimetre from the edge nearly all the way around, leaving a gap big enough to get your hand through when you are stuffing! Turn the shape inside out so that the good side is now on the outside and you should have something like this!
Unsure why this is sideways, but you get the gist, right?

All you need to do now, is stuff the pillow with your chosen wadding and then stitch up the gap by hand. This can be a little tricky as you must turn the open edges inwards and do a looping type stitch to make sure the pillow is sealed with no rough edges (Blimey, that’s so unclear…I’m presuming no one will have a clue what I mean haha!)

And voila!! You should have something that looks a bit like this! (Yes, I know one side is chubbier that the other. I don’t care. It looks stunning)

Hope Rowanne had a nice sleep on the flight. Considering I also made her a matching eye mask, she should have slept like a baby!

Love,
Lauren
xx

I love DIY

Bonjourno!

As you may have noticed, my blog is an utterly random array of things I love (well, and hate, but I don’t think a blog called ‘Lauren Hates’ would be a terribly appealing read!)

So today I just wanted to do a little post about my interior designing skills! As you know, I love anything shabby chic, vintage or Cath Kidson esq, but I really do not appreciate the insane price tags that come with purchasing these delicious items, so I have taken to creating my own in order to create the style I desire but actually have enough money to survive (aka go down the pub).

I have spoken about my love for sewing, but sadly there are some things that you just can’t sew, so (aaagggh too many so’s!!!) how else can I go about turning my home in to a cute little vintage dream? Well, being an expert in all things shabby, I know that if its cute, white, and rough around the edges (that sounds like a man I would like to meet!) then it’s in, so how do you go about creating the perfect piece?

My sister had a really ornate but black mirror, but as black is not in keeping with the country cottage vibe, I decided that I would paint it for her and see if we could ‘shab’ it up a bit.

Literally, all I did was masking tape up around the mirror, get some white emulsion and after 2 coats of paint (and a fair bit of mess later), the only thing left to do was to sandpaper and rough up any bits that protrude or stuck out to make it look like old wear and tear…and here is the end result!
Cute eh! With my quick dry emulsion, I would say it only took a few hours! You could do it so anything, mirrors, photo frames, shelves, furniture, the world is your oyster. So if you see something that you think is cute but doesn’t quite have the vintage factor, just do it yourself!

Top tip: Keep an eye out at boot sales. Items are dead cheap but you could make them look uber expensive :)

Also, here is an updated pic of my room, hope you like!
I am getting a pine bed frame on Wednesday, which I will be sanding down and painting white, so hopefully that will look awesome!!

Until next time….

Love
Lauren x

I love an overreaction

Having read on Twitter about the earthquake on America’s East Coast that happened the other day, I was expecting to see pictures of devastation to rival that of the earthquake in Christchurch or the Tsunami in Japan, but what greeted me was, to be honest, nothing short of a disappointment. Now, I hate major disasters as much as the next person, but if you are going to cause such a drama and splash a story all across the internet and TV, at least give me something to look at. Here are some of the images of the ‘damage’ that the 5.8 Virginia earthquake caused:

Wow, a few bricks on the floor and a broken jar of Dolmio? I for one am surprised that nobody was killed (please note my overly sarcastic tone). I would say, this earthquake has had nearly as much publicity and air time as the New Zealand quake, but literally pales in comparison! Here are some photos of devastation caused in Christchurch, where 181 people were killed.

How many people were killed on Tuesday in America? That’s right, a big fat zero, so why such a fuss? At least some of the less dramatic Americans saw with the reaction what I see, and decided to poke fun at it too! Here is my favourite viral pic:


Even people on Twitter have started to poke fun at the clear overreaction …..My two favourites are:

@geek3point0: President Obama has just confirmed that the DC earthquake occurred on a rare and obscure fault-line, apparently known as 'Bush's Fault'.

@Supajoe: This east coast earthquake is obviously divine retribution for Jersey Shore

Hahaha. Yep. Jersey Shore is terrible. Take that as payback MTV.


But seriously, maybe America needs to stop this melodramatic behavior, after 9/11, you would think they would actually be able to distinguish between the serious, and the downright stupid!
Anyway, rant over for the day! Bank holiday weekend, bring it on woop!

Love,
Lauren

I love the internet

Even though I know how big the internet is, I am often still amazed by its power.

Take the recent riots for example. It seems that some of these thugs did try to organise the chaos via the internet, and clearly, it worked. The message spread fast and hundreds of would-be rioters gathered in force to do battle with police. But that was not the extraordinary thing. What amazed me was that via twitter, hundreds, maybe even thousands of people opposed to the mindless violence spread the word and got together to help with a mass clean-up of the devastated areas of London.

Even blogs, which do not have such a wide readership as Twitter and Facebook have been proven to muster support and get something done about a situation.

I was having my daily (uhhh more like hourly!!) catch up on Mail Online earlier, and came across a story in which mother of 2, Nancy Atkinson-Turner used her blog to foster public opinion and force a retail giant to bow to pressure and finally apologise to her for accusing her of shoplifting. Having been falsely accused to pinching shampoo from her local Tesco Extra, all Nancy wanted was an apology from the store manager. But when weeks passed and she had heard nothing, she took to her blog to have a bit of a rant about the way in which she had been treated. She thought perhaps her friends might read it, and pass it on to a few others, but she was not prepared to find that just a 24 hours after writing the post, she had accumulated over 60,000 hits and hundreds of supportive comments. The next day, Tesco called her up and told her an apology letter and a voucher to compensate her was on its way. It seems blatantly obvious that Tesco only apologised to Nancy because their misdemeanour was being circulated to a wider audience and they didn’t want to look bad. Blog pressure. I like it!

This got me thinking about marketing. It just proves what a useful tool social media has become, not only for the masses to spread awareness and organise mass opinion in to mass action, but for businesses too. Promoting a service or an event has become so much easier with the use of online marketing. One click of a button and your message is out there, for hundreds, thousands, maybe even millions of people to see, so why not use it to your advantage to promote yourself? Nancy showed that even something as simple as a blog can be turned in to a platform to get your point across and gather support, so I think businesses, especially smaller ones would be foolish not to use social media to their advantage!

Everyone should have a blog. Even if no one reads is (like mine ), it is still somewhere to voice your thoughts and opinions, and if you can’t be bothered to write long posts like me (by now you will have figured I like to ramble on a bit!!) then why not try Twitter for a micro blogging experience. It is clear that achieve a lot with the pesky 140 character limit! you can tweet me @LaurenPrater

Love
Lauren x