101 things in 10001 days

So instead of New Years Resolutions this year I'm planning on starting the Day Zero Project.
I tried this a few years back, when I was still using myspace, but most of my goals were to big and unachievable, so this time I've been a little more realistic.
I'll be starting on January 1st, which means I'll finish on September 28th 2014.

1. Start eating around 50% raw foods.
2. Make my first sale of the year.
3. Have a wardrobe that is 75% handmade and/or vintage.
4. Take Kev to dinner.
5. Help towards affording a better house or us to live in.
6. Keep blogging
7. Cook more
8. Thank my Gods for everything I have
9. Visit a country I haven’t been to yet
10. Email myself on the first day an email I’ll get on the last day.
11. Get another tattoo
12.  Leave an inspirational note inside a book for someone to find
13. Tie a note to a balloon and let it go
14. Send a secret to PostSecret
15. Find a personally inspirational quote and work it into a piece of art or home decor
16.  Write a song
17.  Send a message in a bottle
18. Host a dinner party
19. learn another craft
20.  ride a horse
21. Get the autograph of one person I admire 
22. Order room service
23. Add to the wall of graffiti in the only toilet cubicle with a lock in THAT PLACE
24.  Shop in Japan
25. Get gel nails
26. Attend and photograph a fashion show
27. Make a list of 25 things I like about myself
28. Attend a wine tasting
29. Donate money to charity
30. Have a pen pall
31. Have a vintage cocktail party
32. Write a personal mission statement
33. Send a postcard via postcrossing.com
34. Take part in http://operationbeautiful.com/
35. fulfil my dream of having my own textile design business
36. Start lino printing again
37. Go to a German Club
38. Make my own corset
39. Knit a pair of socks
40. Go shopping in London
41. Attend a Murder Mystery
42. Go strawberry picking in the summer
43. Meet somebody from Tumblr
44. Go to the ballet
45. Go to the Opera
46. Drink a Guinness in Ireland
47. Build a gingerbread house
48. Get my picture taken with Santa
49. Create a family tree
50. Wear a bikini on the beach
51. Get professionally measured for a bra
52. Have my hands hennaed
53. Sew a quilt
54. make a batch of pickles
55. get a group of people together to create butterflies for the Butterfly Project http://www.hmh.org/ed_butterfly1.shtml
56. treat a friend, who is having a really rotten day to lunch and a pedi
57. Get my fortune told
58. Write a letter to someone who has inspired me
59. Have a conversation with a complete stranger
60. learn basic German so I don’t have as many *lost lamb face*  moments at Mera Luna
61. Write my name in the sand
62. Make bread (regular bread) from scratch
63. Buy myself something sexy
64. Send 20 Loli valentines
65. Go outside and watch the clouds.
66. Write a song.
67. Buy a camcorder.
68. Write an e-mail to my favorite author
69. Make candles
70. learn more vintage hairstyles and be good at them
71. Have my aura photographed
72. Host an 'adult toy' party
73. Make French macaroons
74. Go sailing
75. go to an auction
76. dry my own flowers
77. make wheat bread from scratch
78. Go to a sporting event
79. Try a new beer
80. Be an extra in a movie or TV show
81. Have waist length hair
82. find something marvelous at a thrift store
83. learn to pole dance
84. Bake my own crisps
85. Fill a giant photo frame with pictures
86. Figure out how to show love properly
87. Get one of those "old fashioned" photos taken
88. attend the edinburgh festival fringe
89. Have my make-up done at a make-up counter.
90. Get the autograph of one person I admire
91. Make a photo book for someone
92. apply for a reality show
93. Cut the people out of my life I don't want or need but haven't had the guts to so far
94. Write a children's book
95. Walk Hadrian's Wall
96. Write a list of songs that I want to be played at my funeral
97. Make some faery wings
98. Make shopping bags
99. Make Calzone from scratch
100. create a little mini documentary
101. get my nose peirced

Family :)

Not really doing a lot today, just sitting around with Kev and Stirfry watching Sky Sports news and eating Christmas sweeties.

My Mam uploaded this photo of my Grandma and me earlier and I thought I'd share :)

It's beginning to look a lot like fish men!

Christmas presents :)

This year my gifts  have been:

(top picture)

Two bars of dark chocolate

Part of my Elephant adoption renewal pack

Vivienne Westwood Let It Rock Perfume

(all from my parents)

True Blood (from my Kevin :) )

Marmite gift set (OMGLOOKATTHATTEAPOT!)

Dr Who Legos (mine is a set with a Stone Angel, my mam got Kev a set with Amy and Rory in it)

Saw puppet stash box (now full of little bits of jewellery :D )

More choccys and the new River Cottage veggie cookbook (NOM NOM NOM)

More elephant things and VW Campervan egg cups :)

So what did everybody else in the blogosphere get?

Stadium of Light Legends Tour

Yesterday was a lot of fun :)

I wrapped up warm to go meet my mam and grandma and head off to Sunderland to do the Legends Tour of The Stadium Of Light (amusing story, it's a stereotype that guys love football and women find it boring right? Pretty much all of the men in our family hate football, us wimminz? We love the beautiful game :) )

So the Legends Tour was a tour of our home ground with team hero Jimmy Montgomery ( Goal Keeper in the 1973 FA cup final squad, pictured above).

The tour took us right the way around the stadium, including areas not usually open to the public such as the home dressing room above.

The ever so slightly claustrophobic away team changing room.

The tunnel the teams come out through at the start of the match (we even did this with Dance of the Nights playing...No idea what the song after it was though, BACK IN MY DAY THEY USED TO PLAY DOTN INTO REPUBLICA'S READY TO GO!)

The press areas...LOOKATMEWORLDFAMOUSBLOGGERINTHEPRESSAREA! ;)

We couldn't actually get onto the pitch itself, however we could stand right next to it :)

"I never knew football fans could be so vocal and fanatical until I came to the North East" - Kevin Phillips.

Mam and Grandma in the press room :)

One of the executive bar areas.

Mam and her hero, Nial Quinn.

Bob Stokoe's hat and coat :)

***

If I don't get a chance to get online tomorrow, Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night! :)

Holiday wrapping is done!

My posts might be a little sporadic during the jolly season, just a heads up :)

New Goals!

So I completed two of my work goals last week (first sale and more money than Job Seekers) so now I am replacing my two completed goals with two more goals :) )

1. Make two sales in one day.

2. Make enough money to go out for a nice Lebanese meal (and Shisha maybe?) with Kev :)

Interesting things I have seen this week Picspam!

Heart shaped, conjoined carrots :)

Carol singing robot...

These door handles are 70s-a-licious!

What the heck is a Vergatable?

I'm fairly sure they meant "Denton"

Proof

Gingerbread House!

That big ol' building behind those cars is the converted asylum here the sailor who adopted a penguin lives :)

In which I prove I am in fact a Corporate Goth!

Yesterday I signed up a Sailor who lives in part of a converted Victorian Asylum (when he's not at sea) to adopt some Penguins :)

He was a lovely guy, let me sit down and gave me a glass of water while I filled in the form and told me some things about the building.

It's a lovely building, I took a photo of the outside that I might upload in a giant picspam of odd things I've seen over this week post at the weekend (or maybe tonight if I'm not to tired when I get in).

I hit my first target!

Yesterday I made my first sale! Woohoo! I had a lady who walks dogs for a living (she had a house full of them and they were so fun, there was an Alsation, Akita, Chihuahua and a Westie), adopt a Penguin for her little girl.

And you know the weird thing, it's great that obviously I get my bit of money for that, but I feel really happy about them adopting a Penguin more because I know that the charity will be making at least six times what I was paid and they can really help out those Penguins with that and I feel happy that the little girl gets to say at school that she has a Penguin and I know she's going to learn a lot from the letters and updates they'll get.

I know it sounds kind of corny, but getting paid feels like a secondary thing to me, I really didn't think it would , but it does and that feel awesome to me...I guess I am a nice person after all :)

My Goals

So I decided to write down some goals to keep me motivated when I'm working, obviously eventually I want enough to be able to set up Arachnee Threads, but I think that's a fair way off, so for now I have seven slightly more realistic goals:

1. Make my first sale.

2. Earn more money in a week than I would if I was on Jobseeker's Allowance (roughly three sales).

3. Earn enough to buy a decent pair of boots (I don't have any boots at the moment, this is ok for now but will be a bit of a nightmare when it starts to snow).

4. Earn enough to give back to charity myself. (While I know that doing what I do helps charities out, I feel that I'd like to be able to contribute myself)

5. Earn enough to not have to make excuses around people's birthdays.

6. Pay back my half of the Mera Luna Hotel money.

7. Buy a pair of Vivienne Westwood shoes.

First Day

Well I survived my first day of my new job, I just have to make it through the next six days (I have a six day trial to make sure I'm both right right for the job, and that I think that it's something I want to do).
Hopefully things will go swimmingly because it seems like a really fun and interesting job :)

In other news, Limecrime are having a SPONTANEOUS sale, so if you have a friend or family member who likes interesting make-up that you haven't bought a gift for yet then click the link below:

What I've been up to lately

Well as you know I was ill for three weeks with what I initially thought was a mild cold, then flu before finally it morphed into the worst throat infection I've had in a good number of years, so I've pretty much spent the last three weeks indoors except to venture out to see the Dr.

Before that though there were a couple of gigs I didn't manage to get to tell you about due to being sort of incapacitated by germs.

The first was Uberbyte supported by Kommand and Kontrol and Alter Red.

I'd never seen Kommand and Kontrol before, and I really enjoyed them, they're quite heavy on the electronic drums and if like me you like that kind of thing you'll probably enjoy Kommand and Kontrol.

Alter Red ran into some traffic problems on their way to the venue and suffered for it in my opinion, I have seen them once before though and really enjoyed them that time.

I've seen Uberbyte many, many times now, but this is only the second time I have seen them at the top of a bill (the first was in Leeds a couple of years back, which was also the first time I saw Mandr01d!), they played a fantastic set.

A few days later was Aesthetic Perfection with support from Paresis and Thir13en.

Aesthetic Perfection's set list

By this point my "cold" had started to kick in, which led to various fun moments when I was hopped up to the eyeballs on painkillers and cold remedies and then doing pre-gig work like trying to find somewhere that sold fluorescent lightbulbs and electric fans and ended up sort of tripping a bit (honestly the epic journey to find a fan was probably the most fun I've had doing pre-gig "runner" work...THE CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ON THE WAY BACK WERE SO PRETTY!).

Ahem, yes...
So Thir13en were slightly more metaley than I was expecting, but pretty enjoyable, kind of like early Nine Inch Nails, in sound.

Paresis almost stole the show! Again I was a little hopped up on painkillers at this point so I can't really remember how I'd describe his music, I just remember it was really good, which obviously means I'll have to hear it again so I can judge accordingly :)

I have seen Aesthetic Perfection once before, when they supported Combichrist in Sunderland back in 2009, back then it was just Daniel Graves and a session keyboard player (who I think may have been called Gabe), they were pretty good back then, even managing to recover quite well from a broken keyboard cable that stopped the music for a few minutes with Daniel doing a dance.

This time the line up consisted of Daniel on vocals, Elliot on keys and Tim on drums.
I like what live drums brought to the performance, I love drums, they're my favourite instrument (and not just because they're the only instrument I can actually play), but so often band that don't start out with live drums will add a live drummer and they'll bring pretty much nothing to the sound, but this year I've now seen two bands successfully add live drums to their sound and it be made of win (the other being Angelspit).
They played a set mostly made up of tracks from the new album, which is great imo.

Businessy type updates

So having put together a business plan and worked out the costings for things it turns out the start up costs for Arachnee Threads are going to be pretty huge, this is admit-idly slightly off-putting as it means I can't get full funding for it and currently I don't have anything saved up as uni pretty much wiped out all of my savings.

However this is what I WANT to do, I studied for a role in the Textile Industry and so I'm not about to give up without a fight.

So I needed to get a decent job, I say needed in past tense because I decided getting full time work was a priority around a fortnight ago, and given that people have pitched tents in Newcastle centre because there are apparently no jobs I hadn't held much hope for finding one so quickly.

HOWEVER I applied for a marketing job, and after the first interview on Wednesday I was invited back for a second interview/training afternoon yesterday and afterwards was given the job!

So it'll be hard work and pretty long hours BUT I'll be able to save some money together to get started with Arachnee Threads, it'll just take me a little longer than originally anticipated to get started.

Day 3: Your hair in a Pony Tail

Day 2: Your hair waved

I was still kind of ill when I took this, feeling a lot better today though :)

Undersea magic :)

I'm feeling a little better today, I'm still not 100% though so bare with me.

I finally got around to editing together the video I took at the Sea Life Centre back at the end of October, so I hope you enjoy it :)