New year, still busy

So... I was supposed to come back from my holidays, super relaxed and ready to blog hardcore. Instead I decided to do a shoot for my next campaign and so I've spent the last week doing storyboards, budgets, having meetings with set designers, hiring camera and lighting crew etc. which is hard work but super exciting.

I remember being at uni, doing shoot after shoot and thinking "this is fun but I wonder what I'll be doing when I grow up". Well this is real life and I'm getting paid to do fun and awesome things. I don't really believe in resolutions but I've decided to push myself out of my comfort zone and just go for it, even if it's crazy and scary. So having pitched a big shoot on the first day back after Christmas I think I'm doing okay, actually.

I have also decided to get a tattoo of a super 8 camera on my right wrist to satisfy my tat cravings until the big Russian doll project kicks off sometime in the autumn, hopefully.

All these thoughts and plans are making me feel very happy and excited about the future. In fact, the January blues have yet to make an appearance.

And if they do, I'll just dance like a lunatic to this song:



Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

7 followers

Considering how sporadically I update, I am really happy to have 7 followers. I follow all of your blogs with great interest and will definitely be updating a lot more after the Christmas rush.

I have been having a crazy time at work lately, getting home at 11 every night this week. I am tired but happy and will definitely have lots of fun updates ready for you soon. At the moment I have to devote all of my creative juices to my work (which is actually a privilege, not many people have a job they truly love, where they can be creative all day long and get paid decently for it).

You guys make me want to make a real effort. Hopefully getting that Canon after Christmas will mean nicer photos too, which I know will make me want to post more frequently.

So, thank you. All 7 of you! I look forward to getting to know you all better.

x

I love you like a fat kid loves cake

I do apologise for the lack of updates in the last week but I have been incredibly busy with work deadlines and being ill. Not a fun combination, I tell you!

Anyway, this post is basically just an excuse to post photographic evidence of the culinary delights I've somehow managed to squeeze in.

Last Sunday I had my friend Pia over for an afternoon in the name of craftiness and æbleskiver, which is a very Danish Christmas tradition. I know I said I wasn't going to give in yet but y'know, it's just cake and they were DAMN tasty if I do say so myself! And Pia certainly seems to think so...

Then yesterday we had some of Daniel's family over for lunch. Daniel made a delicious pasta dish with aubergine and tomato and I got up early and made ciabatta bread (no pics, sorry!) and a chocolate and raspberry cake. It's one of those cakes with no flour in it, just ground almonds and walnuts, mmm! I customised it by adding fresh raspberries before popping it in the oven and it turned out really well.

I am pretty confident in a kitchen but sometimes when I have a lot going on at work or in my life in general I am more likely to fuck up a recipe (which is one of the worst things I know) so I'm always pleased when something turns out particularly well. Unfortunately I completely forgot to take a picture of the cake while it was still whole and the picture of my slice below doesn't really do the cake justice, but here goes...

  

And finally today I made an awesome soup with chicken, noodles, spring onions and fresh herbs and it was delicious!

 

And the best thing is that I am still losing weight. That's the beauty of stress!

The hardest of hearts

I absolutely love Christmas. Completely and unconditionally. Every year I find myself getting extremely excited about big coats, long scarves & mittens, ice skates, Starbucks' red cups, pretty gift wrap, Phil Spector's Christmas hits, mulled wine and lame TV Christmas movies. This in itself isn't the problem. The problem is that I start getting excited about all of this around mid-October. And every year I find that around mid-December, the novelty has worn off and Christmas becomes this big, stressful anticlimax.

This year I am really trying not to give in to my cravings. It's pretty hard to avoid the whole hoo-ha when living in central London, as Oxford Street has been blinged up with tacky lights for several weeks now. And at work, Christmas has been on my daily agenda for ages.

I do love you Christmas, I really do, but I just can't bear to spoil it for myself this year. So I won't allow myself to give in to the cheer until 1st December, where I'll be decorating my Christmas tree with these, amongst others:

Yeah, I couldn't help myself.

Since last update...

I am not super happy with Blogspot and have started the process of creating a new blog. Unfortunately I am a bit of a perfectionist and so, it's taking a while. I find myself taking photos for my blog, then putting off updating it because I want to save the pictures for the new, pretty blog. Alas, I shall try and update this thing on a regular basis until the new super-blog is ready for the grand unveiling.

So, since my last update I have added another year to my age, I have started my new job, it has become autumn, I have discovered the joys of diet Cherry Coke and I have lost a few pounds. All in all, not too shabby.

More recently (as in this weekend) I have had a bit of a Halloween obsession going on and have spent most of my time watching old favourites on dvd. Since Friday, I have watched The Ninth Gate, Hocus Pocus, Carrie and The Nightmare Before Christmas. We are having a Halloween party in a few weeks' time so I am looking for inspiration for an awesome costume.

I also found time to do a bunch of things I have been too lazy to do. I went to Camden to pick up an old vintage bag of mine that had been fixed by a man selling homemade leather bags at the market. I had been putting that off for ages, but it's nice to have it back. Then I walked into town and had a stroll around in the sunshine. Went to Soho Square and had some sushi, then finally went into Frith Street Tattoo to put my name on Valerie Vargas' waiting list so I can get my Russian doll tattoo done. Her waiting list is about a year (which I was expecting), and while it may seem like a long time, I love her work and I would rather wait a while to get the tattoo of my dreams than find another artist and get a less good tattoo out of it. It will stay on my body forever, after all! My other tattoos are much smaller and without colour and while I did think about all of them for quite some time before getting them done, this is a much bigger decision. It will be on my left forearm and therefore far more visible than my others ones, so I want to get it right.

I will finish this very long entry with a few photos taken since my last update.

I made a bunch of cupcakes for a charity cake sale at work

Pretty butterfly at my parents' summer house

Kitties being cute

London is pretty in autumn

I can't believe I live a 5 minute walk away from this

Just doing this post has confirmed how much I dislike Blogspot, what's with the retarded double spacing between paragraphs? Better get my skates on and finish my awesome new blog, huh?