House Hunting

It's now come to that time in my life where I've had to start (and indeed conclude) a hunt for my first privately-rented property (how scary!) So, this led to me pondering the housing market and, well, just everything really.

For anyone who's interested, I am sharing as part of a group of five girls who will all be living in a two-storey house in Beeston; near the university. The property has five bedrooms, three bathroom-esque rooms (only one actually has a bath in it, the others have showers), one lounge, one dining room, one kitchen, a scrubby garden with a "bald patch" (Helen) and a "Bedroom", in which the bedroom furniture doesn't even fit. Needless to say, this will be used as an occasional overnight room for people staying (willingly or because they're unable to use their own legs...) over and (probably) a storage room.

Basically, this whole process has made me feel very grown up; primarily because I have been doing most of the dealings with the estate agents (as the one who was willing to make the phone calls on Monday) and this gives me a terrifying level of responsibility, but also because I now realise that next year I will be responsible for myself; all the payments of bills and rent will be down to me (probably not financially, but I will be in charge of organising it) and if I mess up, it will be my own fault, with no way to blame anyone else.

That's scary.

In addition, I have decided I would be a terrible estate agent. I would feel incredibly guilty for the amount of... not quite lying, but... 'smoothing over' I would need to do to sell certain properties. Did you know there's no patron saint of estate agents*? Somehow it doesn't really surprise me. (At a stretch you could say it was St Lucy, patron saint of salespeople, but I'm not sure that's the entire of the estate agent's job.)

To be honest, my main concern for next year is getting on with my housemates, who are all lovely girls. This may seem a silly thing to say, if they're all lovely girls, why would that be a concern?
Basically, because they're so lovely I'm worried that I will be the one who will annoy everyone to the point where we have an argument and they are no longer friends with me. Apparently there's meant to be someone like that in every house. I really hope we're the exception...

If it doesn't work out, I could always live in a yurt.

Emmatt update: I realised I didn't do one of these last time, so in case anyone's interested, I thought I'd let you know. Matt and I sent a lot of time together over the Christmas holidays, even though we both had a lot to do. We're both very happy that we've now (more or less) reached five months together and are making plans to see each other in a few weeks, just after my Birthday. I also hope during this time to introduce him to some of my other friends (the girls I'm living with, plus other people in my course), although he doesn't know this yet. Sorry Matt.

*P.S. Father mine, the patron saint of Bankers is St Matthew

Ding Dong Merrily On A Budget

I know, I know, I haven't updated this blog for over two months now and I'm very, very sorry. Therefore, like a parent who has missed their child's school play, I am now going to ravish you with extra attention and new and more interesting posts to make up for it. Hopefully. I have actually been hoping to write this particular post for about six or seven weeks now, so it is a bit late (and out of season), but I hope you'll excuse that. Anyway, on with the show!

As you can see, today's post is called "Ding dong merrily on a budget" and, basically, the idea behind this has sprung from my desperate need, as a student, to decorate my room for Christmas on an incredibly minimal amount of money. I set this limit for myself at no more than £10 and managed to come in below this amount anyway. So, my first shopping trip took me to (where else?) Tesco; where I spent approximately a fiver(?) on decorations, consisting of:

• Tinsel, 2 (two) - gold, total of 4m
• Stocking, 1 (one) - red and white felt
• Battery powered Christmas lights, 1 (one) string - star-shaped, purple and pink alternating

I was quite happy with the way my looked at this point; I may even have a photo...

Somewhere.

For now, allow me to continue.

This was in the last week or so of November (I thought it best to get in early, although I am usually against this, as I was leaving Uni on 13th December, so wanted the full Christmas season), however, by the beginning of December my friends and I had decided that we wanted to have a Christmas party and, seeing as how my room was the tidiest/I'd done the least hosting all term/I was most open to decoration, my room became the designated party room. This, of course, required more decorations to be purchased. 

With now only £5 left in the budget and most of a room to make festive, we thought we'd have our work cut out (does anyone else think I'm beginning to sound like one of those stupid house makeover programmes?) Anyway, we decided to start thinking outside the box; the regular person, socially acceptable box...

So we spent about £3.50 on wrapping paper and we (Declan and Elena) wrapped the walls of my room.

Yes. That happened. 

See photo if you don't believe me.

Please ignore these people. They're just actors posing as my friends.

So, my plan with this post was to encourage people to get involved in the "Ding dong..." idea wot I came up wiv, but obviously it's a bit late for that. So, please consider it for next (this) year (especially those of you on tight budgets) as a cool Christmassy thing to do.

Hopefully I'll have another post soon. Much love xx

(P.S. Tom, I haven't forgotten about your letter. I have it and am in the process of writing back, but I haven't yet had the chance to send it - sorry!!!)