Photos: The calm evening sea

I want to start a blog series based on photographs that I take. I love photography even though I'm though I'm only a beginner. Images can just say so much more than words sometimes.

These are just a few photos I took on a beautiful calm evening recently. I just love the way the gold light hit the water. 

I want to do posts like this more often!

Étáin

xxx

OOTD - "It's Time"

 An outfit of the day for you peeps! It's a strange mix between grunge and prep which seems to be pretty day-to-day for me. I have no idea what my style would actually be if I were to put it into words because it is constantly changing.

Also beware for a bit of blabbering in this post.

I've had a lot of thinking time recently and I've been feeling really down and frustrated with myself. I am determine to try and be better and do the best I can with things. For me best cure for sadness is music. "It's Time" by Imagine Dragons is one of my favourite feel-good songs.

Events of the last few days have really made me want to be more confident. Being shy really holds my back and it's one thing I hate about myself. I wish I was able to just put myself out there without worrying about what people will think of me. Being shy is like a fear of failure, a fear of saying the wrong thing and messing up. It's incredibly frustrating because most of the time my mind is buzzing with things I want to say but can't. It's like someone zipped my lips together and then anything I do say is all crooked and wrong. I often rehearse what I want to say but then end up saying something  that doesn't even make sense. It even comes out in things I am writing making me absolutely shoddy at English.

 Spring is coming!

Back to the outfit! The jeans are from Only and were a fabulous bargain at only €10 in the sale! I've been dying for a black acid wash pair of jeans like these for ages and these are perfect!  I never normally wear jeans because they tend to be really uncomfortable but these are so nice.

I went all out with the accessories in this outfit. Most of the bands were either free at events or gifts so I'm not sure where they are from. As for the rings, the blue one was from a vintage market in London and the others are Penneys and H&M.

The cardigan and shirt are both from Penneys/Primark.

The shoes are my trusty New Look boots which I wear all the time.  The necklace was a gift from my friend Sorcha.

Shoes - New Look

Jeans -  Only

Cardigan - Penneys/Primark

Shirt - Penneys/Primark

Rings - H&M and Penneys

Earrings - Penneys/Primark. 

 One more thing, I did a 2015 bucket list a few weeks ago and recently I found one I made last year. I was actually really happy that I completed everything on it even though most of the things were Harry Potter and Sherlock related:

My dogs are such photo-bombers!

    1. Visit 221b Baker Street  - I did this in November. I love being able to say that I was there even though it wasn't actually that amazing.

 

      2. Visit the Harry Potter Studios - I did this back in August. Best. Day. Ever! Definitely worth the visit for any Potterheads out there! I did a blog post about it here.

       

    3.  Go to Summer In the City -This was such an incredible experience! I am going again this year and can't wait! I also did a post about this.

     4.  Go to Platform 9 and 3/4 in Kings Cross station - I saw it... and the  queue behind it and decided not to go up to the half-a-trolly-glued-to-a-wall-with-a-guy-giving-out-scarves-for-a-photo. It was pretty rubbish, I mean it wasn't even between platform 9 and 10!

    5. Visit more places - I went to England in February to visit family, I went to Spain in June to visit my adorable friend Sofia, England again in August and again in November for my London trip. I can't wait to see more of the world this year.

 I saw this adorable little bird while taking these pictures, he didn't even seem to mind having his photo taken either.

I chatted a lot in this post, sorry. It kind of turned into an update post. Thanks for reading! I hope you liked the outfit!

Étáin

xxx

P.S what are your favourite feel-good uplifting songs?

London #1: Sightseeing, Art Gallery and The Lion King

Last weekend I went on a little trip away to London to visit my brother who's at Uni there and do fun tourist things. I know to a lot of people, London and cities in general are very boring as they live in them but when your closest neighbour is a cow (a literal cow, not a person) and you are five miles away from the nearest shop, cities are very exciting! As I want to live in London one day, it's great getting to know the place a little so not to get lost in the vast urban jungle the next time I go back there.

I was doing my usual "I'm gonna take pictures of everything I see!" so took a LOT of photos! My next few posts are going to be in a series of photo-diary style.

On the first day we just did general sightseeing around central London and went to a show in the west in the evening. Although I have been to London a few times before, it was fun seeing all the sights again such as Westminster Abbey, the London eye, Southbank etc.

There were loads of bonfire night fireworks still going on on the Friday on the plane over, it was brilliant seeing fireworks from the sky!

In the morning we arrived into Blackfriars from where we were staying (with friends out in St. Albans) and headed along Southbank. It's a really nice part of the city centre and I would definitely recommend going down there if you are visiting it.

I didn't take many pictures of my outfit. The top I wore is my fantastic Hogwarts t-shirt from New Look. The cardigan and skirt are both Primark/Penneys and the necklace is River Island.

London is full of amazing graffiti, something you don't really come across much in the country

The one thing about London is that no matter where you go, you are always surrounded by hundreds of people, not just in the city centre either. Everywhere you go, it's just a busy bustle of individual people maneuvering their way from A to B. It's actually really interesting to watch and be part of. I love this kind of environment, it's all so different to the countryside and little villages where everyone knows the business of everyone they walk past.

The iconic red telephone box.

Pigeon photo-bombing what could have been a lovely picture of London architecture.

 I saw another pigeon in a wall covered in ivy and had to take a photo of it.

We headed up along Whitehall street after seeing parliament, going up towards Buckingham Palace, which I've seen before so we didn't actually go down to it. We then went up to Trafalgar square. 

Trafalgar Square!

My Shoes are from New Look and my bag is Bershka.

These people actually creep me out!

We then went into the National Gallery. I got to see a lot of paintings of artist's on my art history course which is great for my leaving cert!

We headed up to Oxford street, which was lit up for Christmas! This was strictly a no-shopping trip so no nipping in to the amazing shops (saying that I did manage to pick up enough stuff for a haul post on the other days oops)

The Kings Cross/St. Pancras (not PancrEas as my mum though is was) building is so pretty!

Of course the inner fan girl(actually it's not like I try and hide it) emerged the moment I got to Kings Cross station and I rushed to platform 9 and 3/4. Unfortunately it is nothing special and I didn't fancy queuing for an hour to put on a scarf and take a picture next to a wall that isn't even between platform 9 and 10.

Pretty fountains outside the University.

We then headed for food and hot chocolate in a really nice restaurant called The Caravan next to one the University of Arts buildings. I had a look around the building and now I really want to go to Uni here.

This was a very nice hot chocolate

 

The last thing we did on the Saturday was head to The Lyceum Theatre for the stage production of The Lion King. It was incredible! The costumes, the set, the acting...everything was amazing! I would 100% recommend this to anyone thinking of seeing a show in the west end.

You can cram so much into a short amount of time. It's very tiring and we did a lot of walking but public transport is also brilliant if you get tired! I just love seeing new places (and visiting old ones) and I really enjoy the thrill of travelling even if it's just hopping on and off a tube so want to do more travel posts. I will post day two in the next few days. Thanks for reading!

Étáin

xxx