garden

Hello!

It’s been almost a month since we moved into our new (rental) house and I’m just about happy that we’ve unpacked basically everything – there’s a few bits of furniture we want to upgrade in the long term but we intend to be here for a long time so we’re not rushing.

There are so many aspects of this house I love – corners that were selling points, ways I’ve decorated that I’m really pleased with and satisfying storage solutions making the most of the space we have, so I thought I’d take some pictures and share them here as a nice capsule memory of when we moved into this house.

My office

The entire point of getting a three bed house for us was so that I could use one of the spare rooms as an office – for the first three months of my job, I often attended video meetings with my fiancé playing video games in the background because I had to set up my work desk in the living room because there was nowhere else to go but now he’s not even on the same floor as me!

My office is in the littlest third bedroom and it’s not a lot of space but I’m really pleased with how much I’ve managed to squeeze in without it feeling too cramped. It always takes living in a space to really figure out what works best and I’m still figuring a few things out, but I’m so excited for when I don’t have to work from home anymore and this can be my craft room.

The library

Technically bedroom 2; the spare bedroom; our uni friend Nick has been referring to it as ‘his bedroom’ since we told him where we were moving, but I call it The Library. This is where all my books are currently living – the plan for this room is to get an IKEA Hemnes Day Bed so it can also be a bedroom when needed, but predominantly it’s going to be my reading nook and line the walls with as many bookcases as humanly possible (thank you mum and dad for donating the furniture).

It’s very much a work in progress at the moment – books are all still in boxes and shelves are empty, but I think I’ll do a whole post about it when this room is finished – I want to make it really cosy in here – some fairy lights, my Harry Potter themed prints, as many story themed things as possible, all the cushions for the day bed, I’m so excited to develop this room.

Kitchen window

This might sound a little ridiculous, but our old house was closed in on three sides – we only had two windows in the entire house; one in the living room and one in the bedroom. Our kitchen was tucked away at the back of the house and there was no windows at all…

Our new kitchen has TWO windows!

I love this deep window and I’m so excited to dress this window sill with as many plants and greenery as my fiancé will allow me to buy!

The garden

please ignore my pots of dead daffodils…

WE HAVE A GARDEN!! I never thought I’d like astroturf, but it’s surprisingly soft and doesn’t need any maintenance which suits me just fine! The garden is 100% a work in progress – I’ve started my gardening for the summer, but I want to get a garden shelf to do my potting at and we’re looking at getting some garden chairs and a lounger because I want to have a summer reading spot (I meant it when I said I was planning a reading nook for every room!).

We’ve even got outside plugs so I’ve got hopes for a garden of fairy lights in the summer and icicles on the front of the house for Christmas (I’m not sure how enthusiastic my fiancé will be…). Hopefully the pandemic will allow us to have a bit more of a relaxed summer because we’re planning a house warming BBQ in July and it would be nice to have actual people there.

Oh summer, how it feels a million miles away in both weather and human company.

The extension

Now, let me tell you the extension is the biggest reason we wanted this house – the living room is great, decent size, I like the way we’ve laid it out but having the extension on it completely opens up the room – the extra floor space, the sky lights (which sound simply magical when it rains) and the tri-fold doors. The light in this East facing room in the morning is just glorious.

Right now, we have a sofa bed under my photo wall (which survived the move from the old house!) but the long term plan is to replace this with a couple of arm chairs so I can… (guess what)… have another reading nook! I guess I’ve got all four seasons covered – Spring/Autumn in the extension, maybe with the back doors open if it’s warm enough, Summer on the deck and Winter in the library!

With it’s under floor heating (that we still can’t figure out), the natural light from all the windows and my sentimental af photo wall, it’s no wonder this is my favourite part of the house and I can’t wait to experience it in every season.

There’s still a fair bit of work to be done till it really feels like home, but the more we explore the area and start putting our own touches on the place the more I feel like this is where we’re going to settle.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

Hello,

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a really long time – ever since my last outfit post I knew this is something I wanted to continue and then I picked up this gorgeous yellow, floral playsuit from Primark and I knew I wanted to do an outfit post in it, talking about the size I had to buy it in.

It’s a size 20 – I’ve been putting on weight like a small freight train this year and it’s something I’ve been struggling to cope with. It’s not the first time I’ve bought something in that size – I’m a lover of baggy, over sized clothes anyway – but it’s the first time I’ve felt I’ve really needed that size. And I won’t lie, it hurt.

My weight has always been a sensitive spot for me – as I spoke about in the self confidence post – I can’t remember a time of my life where I didn’t feel like I wanted to be smaller. All through school I was always too tall and I felt like every part of me wobbled. Everyone I seemed to know was someone who was stick thin without trying and could eat whatever they wanted without ever putting on a pound, especially since I spent my whole life dancing I’d get home from school, go to dance and all of my dance friends were the same. They’d prance around like dainty ballerina’s and I was the comic relief elephant in a tutu, or at least that’s how it felt.

Having tried to document healthy eating and fitness routines and whatnot on my blog before, I feel like the phrase ‘the heaviest I’ve ever been’ has been cycled around quite a lot, but it’s also a sign of the massive amount of weight I put on this year.

I started a new Instagram to try and document healthier eating and at the beginning, it worked – I put up videos of the ab challenge I was doing (and gave up on), I was making a conscious effort to eat a lot better and I had time for it all. Now I don’t – I wrote about it all on Instagram last night so I won’t repeat myself here.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYKxUQDghaP/?taken-by=ahealthiersophie

I have no problem with buying big clothes – I tend to buy the biggest size I can for comfort anyway and I once bought a 6XL t-shirt just to see how big it would be, but even in my baggy clothes I don’t feel happy. Sitting at my desk right this second I can feel the weight of my stomach and my thighs in my chair and I don’t feel healthy, it genuinely makes me want to cry.

I wanted the conclusion of this blog post to be ‘but look at this photos! I’m happy look at me’ but I have to be honest – I hate all of these photos. Picking out the best ones was so hard because I don’t like any of them, I can pick out flaws in all of them and I really hate them.

The real game changer for me was that when I was chubby in school, I knew how to work angles in photos to be the most flattering they could be and now, I can’t feign skinny from any angle – my tummy shows in every photo and I just hate it.

I feel like I’m fighting against an invisible wall – I can see myself in the distance looking healthier, I know what I have to do to get there but there’s something holding me back. Whether it’s lack of motivation, lack of will power to resist unhealthy food or people putting me down and not supporting the changes I want to make, I sit at my desk feeling like I can’t do it and drowning my sorrows in food.

Slimming World has been brought to my attention recently – I’ve spoken to a few people who’ve done it and I’ve had a few people reach out to me and say that it works in ways they never thought it would but I just don’t know if I’m strong enough to stand up in front of a bunch of strangers and have someone read out my weight. I can’t do it. I just don’t think I can.

Hopefully if I do another outfit post it will be in a happier tone from someone who’s lost weight, but for now I just don’t know. I’m going to work at Reading festival today where I will have no control over what I’m eating, but when I’m back I’m going to try again because that’s all I can do – keep trying.

Thank you for reading,

Sophie xx

I don’t like it but this one does make me laugh, it’s so 2005

sophie counts clouds

reading in every room – my favourite parts of my new house

becoming plus sized | outfit