York & Bournemouth photo diary | mini trips

2019, photography, travel

Hello!

Since passing our driving tests my boyfriend and I have been everywhere – we drove down to Basingstoke, via Reading, in and our of our local city and in the last week we’ve done well over 500 miles to York and Bournemouth to see family friends and my sister.

I love talking about travel on my blog and I love talking about the process of travelling and documenting my adventures to new places, but York and Bournemouth are places I’ve been before and they weren’t really sightseeing trips. So instead, with the magic of Huji, I’ve taken loads of pictures that I thought I’d share.

So my godmother’s kids wanted me to watch their swimming lesson so can I just acknowledge how difficult it is to do a photo diary AND not get any children in swimming costumes in? Very challenging, but I actually quite like this photo in the end!

Trying to be artsy while the boyfriend makes sure I don’t walk into anyone…

And from York, to Bournemouth!

Harry Ramsden’s for dinner!

my silly boy!

the BEST arcade in Bournemouth

my favourite dominos is the veggie one, if you’re offering

this place had the potential to be really cool, but the service was above and beyond crap tbh!

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I’m a WALKING stereotype

And after this walk on the pier, we drove to my sister’s new house to go have pancakes and drove home!

My blog has always been about authenticity for me and a lot of these photos aren’t groundbreaking, but they’re personal memories and that’s what I love them for – most of our lives are mundane, so why isn’t that worth documenting too?

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx

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October photo diary

2018, lifestyle, photography

Hello!

I mean, we all know I’m a big fan of capturing memories, documenting things and taking photos, so is this post a surprise to anyone? Probably not!

I’ve always liked having printed photos – I’ve just finished an album of some of my uni photos and I’ve got a couple of other photo albums and scrapbooks on the go. I’ve recently started making the most of getting 50 free 6×4 from Snapfish each month and I love choosing which ones I want to print to capture my month.

So I thought I’d do a more digital scrapbook, photo album thing and make a little snapshot of my month so far! Not sure if this is something I’ll do regularly, because I’m really enjoying making physical photo albums and I don’t think a blog post of 50 photos to summarise my month will have the same long term impact (nor do I think anyone is really that interested) but for the moment, I’m sticking with it and this last week has been pretty manic so it’s a good time to share!

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I actually really love Sainsburys TU clothing, but I can’t justifying buying any part of this outfit at the moment (though after payday is a different matter entirely)

the first crunchy leaves feet picture of the year!

I wasn’t joking when I said I got loads of photos printed – there’s 140+ in this batch

Sainsburys released these collectable Lego cards for children. My 22 year old boyfriend is obsessed and very disappointed that it’s now ended and he didn’t complete his collection!

Oops it fell into my basket? (I really like the sunlight in this photo)

and here, three thousand years late, the girl discovers Huji – the photo app that says you’re living in 1998

when the boy takes outfit photos and then asks you to take a photo of him

I love cooking so much – this is the stuffing mixture I make usually for putting inside roasted peppers, but recently we’ve been putting them in wraps and making enchiladas with them and it’s been a big success (would anyone care about a blog post recipe?)

a photo of my granddad 1954 (left) – he just looks like such a ladies man and this is why I love printed photos!

my boy and I on our way to London!

Nick was our housemate for two years and one of our best mates at uni for all three years, this was the first time we’d seen him since graduation in July – three months!

Huji returns 4 The Circle Final – hosts Alice Levine and Maya Jama on the right and all the contestants are on the sofa on the left but it’s not very clear in this photo

We got moved to the other side of the studio and for a while we had a much better view (until some rude boys pushed in front of us) but I love this photo of all the finalists!

the view from our hotel was actually really cute

Really felt my make-up – I often avoid looking at myself at any opportunity but I didn’t hate myself on this day lol

underground signs aesthetically make me happy

the Natural History Museum is actually stunning

my tol boy with real tol boiz

I’m now obsessed with Dinosaurs and skeletons are proper cool

I thought this photo was proper artsy when I took it but it was mostly so I could read about the dinosaurs

trying to be creative but I wasn’t quite tall enough for this cool granite stone wheel thing to be a cool background and the lighting was rubbish but STILL

Huji photos and lens flares? CUTE

weekly card game night with le fam (minus my sister, who’s at uni)

RIGHT let’s talk about this – we’re quite competitive so we’re keeping track of overarching scores and somehow I’m OVER SIX HUNDRED POINTS BEHIND? Raging m8

even more Autumn-y leafy feet photos

the amazing cupcakes I made for my sister’s birthday (I wrote an insta post all about them which you can see here!)

family squeeze themselves into a car for a long ass drive to Bournemouth

Le Birthday Girl!

my sister in her funky new coat / the outfit she would wear if she was the Doctor

family birthday dinner at TGI Fridays

the birthday hat

I FINALLY GOT THE BIRTHDAY GIRL TO WEAR THE BIRTHDAY HAT!

nobody gets left behind… (he did though, reluctantly)

the drive home was SO PRETTY and all the trees were full of Autumnal colours but I couldn’t properly pick it up on camera

and my phone is mostly full of very exciting screenshots like these! Where are my Arrowverse fans at?

‘I can’t share a post with 50 photos in, that’s too many!’ she thought, then not being able to cut her photos from 17 days to less than 30.

Ah well, who doesn’t love a long post every now and then! It’s a bit like scrolling through Instagram but it’s just me, bit vain. Maybe I take too many selfies, maybe that’s not the worst thing in the world, but I’m getting better and taking family photos and documenting the everyday and I’m really happy with my mentality towards preserving memories – I’m going to have rooms full of photo albums and scrapbooks at this rate!

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

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A Date Day in Bournemouth

2016, travel

Hello!

Having moved to Southampton, I’ve got to explore a whole new area of the country 170 miles away from home. Bournemouth is somewhere my cousins moved to when I was younger, somewhere I went on a family holiday to once and somewhere that’s just a short train journey away from home now.

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Talking to people around Southampton and at uni, a lot of people are very fond of Bournemouth and rightfully so – it’s a beautiful South-Coastal city, somewhat overshadowed by the fame of Brighton’s seaside tourist attraction.

My boyfriend took me on a date day there back in late April and I’ve been back since to visit my sister when she was there over the summer, but I love the city and I really want to go back there soon.

From the train station, it’s a really short walk to the beach and it’s really pretty – so picturesque and the pier is so much fun. This area of Bournemouth is really popular in peak season, but we went on a weekend before school was out for the summer so it wasn’t too busy (we might try a week day next time just so it’s nice and quiet!).

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My favourite parts of Bournemouth were the things we did on our date day and it started with a walk on the beach, we then found a little arcade and decided we were going to find a good one. We had a look at a bunch of arcades, we got chips for lunch and then we went up to the Odeon team to buy tickets to a movie we went to see later that day.

Side note: the screen we were in at the Bournemouth Odeon when we saw Jungle Book was beautiful, essentially it was a converted theatre and it’s absolutely stunning.

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But before the film we went into this amazing arcade literally right next door called Fanzone – it’s not a dingy arcade full of gamblers it’s just a friendly, fun arcade with games like Plants vs Zombies, MarioKart and Temple Run as well as all the traditional penny pushers and games like that. Winning tickets is somewhat addictive, one day I’ll get the 6000 tickets I need for the giant teddy.

We then went to the cinema and saw the beautiful theatre and watched Jungle Book, which was amazing and I wrote a blog post about it at the time if you’re interested in my thoughts! You can read it here if you’re interested.

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The perfect way to end this date day was by heading back to the beach and having Harry Ramsden’s fish and chips with our feet in the sand! I love the beach and the sea and chip shop chips are my favourite things in the world. Next time we go, I think we might try sitting in the restaurant because sit down restaurant experiences are my favourite, I love eating out.

If I could afford it I’d do restaurant reviews but I’m a student so I can’t afford to eat out at all, if there are any Southampton restaurants reading, I’d love to do a review…

Thank you for reading!

Sophie xx

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