A New Venture…

Sorry I’ve been away so long.

This is just a short note to refer you to my new blog, which will explain my absence.

The Speed Bump

Enjoy 🙂

Welcome To 2013!

So, welcome to 2013, and what will be my second year of blogging. Yes, I started this blog twelve months ago and didn’t really think it would get anywhere – like all my blogs, I figured I’d crash and burn by the middle of February. But here I am a year later with a blog that seems to still be going strong. Of course, most of my views aren’t actually people who read what I say – the majority of my referrals are people looking for “inspirational pictures”, so they stumble across my inspirational posts, presumably steal a few pictures and leave, never to be seen again.

Of course, there are some people I know of who do read my blog, and if you’re one of them, thank you and please stick around! I’m actually going to try and make this into more of an all-rounder blog so as well as writing and moaning about stuff, I’ll be exercizing my right as someone’s fiance to have bits about wedding planning in here, and I’ll also try and do a lot more about being a student – tips and tricks, a little student survival guide. I also want to review a lot more things; got some exciting stuff coming up over the next few months so that section of the blog should get a little busier.

For now, however, I shall leave you all to see in the year however you see fit and I hope that in 2013, you achieve everything you are hoping to achieve and that 2013 is successful, peaceful and happy.

Peace out,

Maddy x

Inspirational Post time!

It’s been a while since I did one of these but they seem to be popular (every day people get to my blog by searching for “inspirational pictures”, so I’m not going to complain if it increases site traffic!), plus I enjoy finding them. The theme for this one is working hard, inspired by the fact that I’m at uni and need to work hard (despite what people might say about students!).

My room!

I keep referring to university as “home” which is, as you can probably imagine, quite painful for the people back home – that is, my old home, my house, the one where I lived for all those years – to hear. I mean, I’ve only been living here for two weeks, and I’m already calling it “home”? What’s the deal with that?

The thing is, it’s quite easy to get into a routine quickly. I guess for my family and Daf, they’re still in the same place, doing the same things – but I’m not there, and it might be quite glaringly obvious that someonne’s missing. For me, though, I’ve been so busy that my head is full of so much stuff – forms to fill in, things to remember, items to take to lectures with me, new timetables and so much new information, as well as all the new names you have to learn. To me, my room probably does feel like home because it’s where I sleep, it’s where I’m not faced with information overload, and because it’s the closest thing I have here to my bedroom at home.

On a lighter note, I’ve got some pictures of my uni bedroom (these were taken last week so things are a tiny bit different now; I now have a Wrexham FC scarf up – got to support the home team! – and I have my Welsh flag duvet on my bed instead of the blue check, but aside from that, it’s mostly the same (and still as tidy, thanks to the best fiance a girl could have!). So, please enjoy – and, if you want, take inspiration from – my uni bedroom 🙂

I have a few more pictures, but those should give you a basic idea of how I’ve decorated it. I’m quite pleased with how it looks – I wish I was better at keeping things tidy, but it’s not a complete pigsty (any more!). Now the aim is to try and get into the habit of tidying up after myself all the time. It won’t be easy, but if I want my room to look nice, it’s what I have to do!

I’ll post a few more posts over the next few weeks about living independently for the first time – especially for students who are, like me, 18 and living away from home for the first time. Things like cooking – I’m learning! – shopping for yourself  – still working on getting that one right! – and generally beating homesickness – not sure I’ll ever master this one myself!

Moomintroll’s Book Of Thoughts

I intended to post this sooner but I’ve been neglectful of my blog, and I do apologize.

Look what my other (better) half got me for my birthday –

 

It’s “Moomintroll’s Book Of Thoughts”, and it’s lovely! It reads like a Moomin version of “Chicken Soup For The Soul” (another favourite of mine), and I thought I’d share some of the nicest quotes with you all 🙂

“By the end of the hairs on my long, long tail!”

It’s just a great thing to say in general. I think I should start using that as my exclamation of surprise in the future, rather than “oh my god” or the recent one, “jeez”.

“Moomintroll wrinkled his snout, but said nothing”

I like this one because it’s something I do a lot – I wrinkle my nose up when I’m laughing, and often I can’t control it and my nose wrinkles up anyway. I think I’m more like the namesake of my nickname than I realized!

“I’d raise my eyes towards the clear blue sky that musn’t perish, that keeper of the burning amber sun that I do cherish”.

I think that’s just lovely 🙂

“You bob along like a cork in the rainbow-coloured mist of the water, but the heavy surges keep pushing you back towards the shore. You end up being thrown back to the sandy beach, laughing and taken aback by it all”

I love the imagery and the simplicity of the statements… Tove Jansson writes what would normally be the most simple of statements, and yet he has a way of writing them that makes them beautiful.

“How wonderful to be a Moomin”.

How wonderful indeed 🙂

“He thought about the sea, the rain, the wind, the sunshine, the grass and the moss… and how it would be impossible to live without them”.

Again, such a simple statement, but it highlights the beauty of nature and just how much we take it for granted.

“Mamma, wake up”, Moomintroll cried. “Something altogether dreadful is happening. They call it Christmas”.

Just a random one that I like, it’s funny.

“We have to bring provisions along,” said Moomintroll.

This quote is quite nice in itself, but probably nothing special. It is nothing without the picture that goes with it –

“What an exciting life we live,” thought Moomintroll. “Everything could be turned upside down in a moment – for no reason whatsoever”.

“Isn’t it strange,” said Moomintroll, “that we who are going directly towards the most dangerous place are less frightened than those who are leaving it?”

“There’s no need to pretend that you are radiantly beautiful, because you are”.

“Then he held the lamp up high over the Snork Maiden and gazed at her thoughtfully. Her fringe gleamed in the lamplight; he saw that she was unbearably sweet”.

“Perhaps the happiest one of all was Moomintroll, who walked home with his mother through the garden, just as the moon was fading into dawn. The trees were swaying slowly in the morning breeze rising up from the sea”.

 

We apologize for the interrupted transmission…

For a weekend that hasn’t actually been that busy, I somehow haven’t found time to blog regularly (or at all). I’m really enjoying watching the Olympics, especially seeing as I recognize the places where it’s being held (I love the idea of beach volleyball in Horseguards’ Parade) and there’s a certain sense of patrotism associated with it being on home turf. And how about the opening ceremony, eh? There’s been the old naysayers, “Beijing was a million times better”, but I honestly thought that Beijing was… alright. It didn’t blow me away, didn’t appeal to me, didn’t really show me anything much. I’d rather be associated with the Queen, James Bond, the NHS, Mr Bean, children’s literature and the creator of the internet than getting a 7 year old to sing but telling her another girl was going to take the credit and appear, because the actual singer wasn’t “pretty enough”.

I loved the tribute to the NHS; I thought it was beautifully done, and the lights on the beds were so skillful. How about those puppets too? The giant Voldemort rising into the sky, the beds flying up – everyone was amazing! I loved the way they lit the Olympic torch too; I thought that was brilliant and really captured the motto of these games – inspiring a generation. They’re the next generation of Olympians we’ll be seeing in 4/8 years time, and to have them featured was brilliant. Danny Boyle really showed his genius with that opening ceremony. I loved the children from the four nations singing national songs (although I’d have liked Cwm Rhondda to be in Welsh 😉 ) and the Industrial Revolution section, with those drums and that music, was phenomenal, and Pandemonium was certainly an apt name to it. Every bit of it – including the memorial to the war dead, the moment of silence with the poppies – was well done. I didn’t really understand the significance of the interpretive dance as a memorial of the 7/7 bombings; I think they could have done something a bit better there, but I’m glad they included a tribute to it, because it has been an important part of the journey since we won the right to host the Olympics seven years ago – the day after we had such jubilation, there was sudden shock and sadness, and it was right to commemorate that.

In other, non-Olympic related news, I can jog! Not incredibly far, but it’s a start. You can sponsor me at http://www.justgiving.com/madison-matthews , please do if you can because it’s such an important cause! Training’s going well, I need to start getting some songs on my mp3 player to motivate me but I have a brilliant training partner in my other (better) half, who is also doing the half marathon (www.justgiving.com/dafydd-williams09) and he’s keeping me going, as is a steady supply of Mini Milk ice creams!

Rehearsals for the musical start a week tomorrow and I’m pretty excited for that, could do with making a start on learning my lines though. Three weeks of rehearsals sounds like a long time but it flies by, especially when you have music and dance rehearsals too, and you’re trying to put it all together! Still, it takes my mind of results day, which is less than three weeks away now!

On that note I shall leave you, with a vow to blog more frequently and my thanks for continuing to read and follow this blog, even though my sporadic updates may be a bit annoying! Your continued readership is much appreciated.

Inspirational post #4 – Happiness

 

 

Aaaand hello writer’s block.

I had my first exam today! Drama, the re-sit of the paper I did in January and I’m so pleased with the questions, they were so much better than last time and exactly what I’d hoped for. I’m not entirely sure how I did – I messed up timing with painkillers and ended up doing the last half an hour or so with a few concentration lapses because I was in pain, and time constraints are evil on that exam because there’s so much to do, but I’m hoping it’ll be enough to get me maybe a B, which is great because it brings me closer to getting into university. My hand is killing me from all the writing I’ve done, but I’ve got eighteen days to recover before my next exam (Psychology, which is also a mass of writing to do but I’m feeling prepared for that one), and then two days until Epic Exam #3, English. Then I’m done with exams and college!

The words were really flowing yesterday – I was finding it really easy to write, I knew where the story I’m writing was going and everything and yet today, when I tried, it just didn’t work – the characters are completely different to how they were yesterday for some reason, I just can’t write them in the same way. I guess maybe the sheer amount of writing I’ve done today has taken it out of me and I need to give it a break. I’m still hoping to post them up here soon so that rather than me just blabbering on about my writing like I have done for the past few months, I’m actually going to post some writing up, which is what this blog was originally intended for. When I’m better, I am going to work on sorting out videos of me singing to come up on here too, I promise 🙂 Things got a little sidetracked by my misbehaving kidneys, and they’re still refusing to toe the line but we’ll get there eventually.

So, I think it’s best to leave the writing for tonight and maybe tomorrow – or maybe to just have a whole weekend away from writing and needing to think too much, and just doing things I enjoy. Face painting this weekend, pwning some n00bz on Black Ops tomorrow and then a week off to recharge my batteries and do some more revision to make sure I’m as ready as possible for the exams. It’s kind of hit me today just how important these exams are, and I’m not going to take them lightly.

Oh, and for those of you awaiting a new “inspirational pictures” post (yeah, I see you all, getting to my blog by searching google for numerous variants on the phrase “inspirational pictures”, and I’m sorry I’ve not posted any more recently but I haven’t been feeling inspirational!), it will be along soon. Not sure when, but soon.

And now, in conclusion, the mushy section of this blog post. I’ve been with my boyfriend for seventeen months yesterday (the 31st) and he’s made me so happy in those seventeen months, I don’t know what I’d do without him, so if he reads this (and I hope he reads this, because I read his blog 😉 ) I love you and thank you for everything you do for me and, to quote the vernacular, this one’s for you 😉

Inspirational Pictures #3: A De-Motivational Special!

Well, today’s “Inspirational Pictures” might not be inspirational ones, but ones which may make you smile and laugh. If you spend a lot of time on the internet (essentially, if you’re a geek like me and proud!), you’ll probably have stumbled across these at one point. You’ve probably seen the motivational posters – a picture of a landscape, or entwined hands with a heartwarming caption to ensure you that no matter how bad things get, one day, you too might hold hands with someone, or fall off a mountain through the clouds to the beautiful floor below, or whatever it is those pictures are trying to encourage.

Demotivational posters do quite the opposite. They use the same format, but the captions… well, I wouldn’t exactly call them motivational. And as for the pictures… they might not warm your heart. It’s hard to explain, but if you’re a newcomer to the world of demotivational, you’ll understand once you’ve seen these choice examples, my personal favourites.

Enjoy!

Inspirational Post #2

Today’s “Inspirational Post” has a distinct Disney flavour to it! Enjoy…

  

And finally this one, which has cheered me up whenever I felt down, and may have been included in the first “Inspirational Post” but who cares – it’s amazing and TRUE!

Oh, and if you have Tumblr, follow disneyandquotes.tumblr.com . That’s where most of these pictures have come from, and it is probably the sweetest and most inspiring Tumblr I’ve found. There’s something about Disney that is just so wonderful and inspirational, and that Tumblr captures the essence of that perfectly.