Rachel's Next Adventure

Ok, i'm going to start from the very beginning of the day. A bank holiday off work is rare for me so I wanted to make the most of it. My fiancé and I headed into town in the morning, I was looking to pick up a few things for our holiday but I couldn't find anything. I need to print a copy of my check list before I go shopping next time. We got some food before heading back to the house to wait for Jess. After Jess arrived we headed straight out, and after missing a Metro by seconds we decided just to walk from Seaburn to the Stadium of Light. It took a while but we still arrived there by around 2:30, there wasn't much of a queue by then to be honest, and once we got into the Stadium at 4pm, we were only around 6 rows from the front, and in an ideal location stage position wise. On the walk there we saw a couple of these lost cat posters, but we're not sure if they're actually serious or not, but its a nice drawing of a cat either way. Here...

Two 'Sunday' posts in a row! I've basically been at work the entire month so haven't had any time to do anything else that I could write about! So here was my day: I got up at 6am and got ready to start work, I was going in for an early 8am start! The shift went really quickly as it was crazy, so much running! I finished work at 4:30 and went over to my fiancé's house with my Mam, we put up some of our new furniture (maybe i'll put up a post for that later). And ok, so by 'we' I actually mean, I wandered into the kitchen while my fiancé and Mam put the furniture together, I went in there to find food, and in the end broke the garage door. Its fixed now, but theres definitely something wrong when I can push a door to put the second lock in and it just pushes 3 inches too far and jams :') I dropped my Mam back off at home and then my fiancé and I headed to the beach. We got something to eat and then wandered into the arcade for a little wh...

On Sunday evening (last Sunday, the 17th of May) I met my fiancé and gave him his new Apple watch when I finished work and we walked down to the beach to get some food. You can read more about the Apple Watch here - my fiancé wrote a review of the watch after having it for a few days. He's really enjoying having it, and its even urged him to do more exercise, he even went for a run yesterday! The watch tracks your movements and will let you know how much exercise you've done. We walked through the cemetery, as we do every Spring, to admire the blossoms, I spent a while taking photos of the trees and the flowers, while my fiancé made himself familiar with all the settings and apps on his Apple Watch. I really liked the above photograph, it wasn't set up, I just noticed the flower laying there when I was taking some photographs of the fallen petals. I think the depth of field has worked well with this photograph. After taking a few photographs of th...

Last week the Apple watch I preordered finally arrived! As it was a birthday present for my fiancé I'll let him write the review: "I have only had an Apple Watch for three and a half days and I can see it becoming an important part of people's lives, from little things like reminding you to stand up (and take a break from working) every hour to things like keeping you updated with messages, emails and any activity on your phone. At first I was a bit sceptical about its usefulness: "why have an Apple Watch when you can just use your phone?" But after a few days I find myself turning to my phone less, my watch is a convenient filter to let me quickly judge how important a notification is at a glance. Things like message dictation are great features too for quick replies but I wouldn't use them for longer messages unless you're sending a voice snippet so that the other person can hear what you're trying to say. Let's get on...

So far, May has been a very busy month, today is only my fourth day off this month. I've been at work pretty much every day so I haven't had time to do anything, and my life is just so boring all of a sudden! I'm off work next Monday and Tuesday though, i'm seeing the Foo Fighters on Monday with my fiancé and my friend Jess, and then on Tuesday i'm going to spend some time with my fiancé - we're not sure what we're doing yet but so far it could be going to Newcastle, The Metrocentre, the cinema to see Avengers again, or bowling! or even the beach or a park if we finally have some nice weather. I've spent any spare time i've had doing more planning for our trip to Japan - only 75 days to go! And it turns out if we get the rail pass we might risk not being able to get the trains we want because its peak season, so we need to look into that a bit more, you can't prebook train tickets online either so its basically either...

On May 1st Intu began a month long event full of competitions and fun. The Intu Metrocentre's first competition was a 'retweet this' competition to win a £10 gift voucher, and, guess what? I WON! Its not really that often that I win things (ok, i'm lying, i've been pretty lucky my entire life - from huge Jelly Belly gift boxes via the Chipper Club to GÜ pud vouchers via a 'spin the wheel' competition with Geography class Cadbury creme eggs in between! and of course not forgetting the Tassimo machine I won!) so I was pretty excited after checking Twitter on my break (busy and tiring / stressful day) to find i'd won!  As I was working until the 9th of May and the office is closed on weekends, they agreed to post out my prize to me. It arrived on Friday 8th - just in time for my Saturday off which we intended to spend at the Metrocentre stocking up on holiday essentials. But in the end we didn't manage to get to the Metrocentre ...

I had last Saturday off work (I know, its so rare! I really wish I wasn't contracted to the entire weekend). On Friday night (which is technically when I started my weekend day off) my fiancé surprised me with this lovely little Tsum Tsum! Its the Mech Baymax Tsum Tsum, and it had been out of stock on the website when I ordered the others, so he ordered one off eBay for me. :) Our original plans had been to visit Sunderland City Centre before dropping off our shopping and then heading to Newcastle and the Metrocentre, but we found that there was maintenance work being carried out on the Metros so there wasn't one running to Newcastle, and the trains to the Metrocentre from Sunderland only run once an hour, so we decided just to stay in Sunderland for the day. We bought a new new suitcase, its the next size down to the one we bought a couple of weeks ago, so it fits inside the new one and we'll use it to bring back souvenirs from Japan, because I can gua...

I had been waiting for the release of the Big Hero 6 Tsum Tsum collection for over a month, and on the morning of May 5th I jumped out of bed (late, because I forgot about the release for half an hour!) and got straight online to the Disney Store website. Sadly, I found that every time I tried to check out, the Mech Baymax Tsum Tsum would be removed from my basket! And it wasn't long before he was officially marked as sold out. My fiancé did find him on eBay though - official! - after someone had gone into their local store that morning and bought two of each and stuck them online! So in the end, Mech Baymax cost just over 3x what he should have. But I have him now and thats all that matters! I ordered the rest of the set there and then, and around an hour later a couple of other characters were also marked as being sold out, with the Little Mermaid set settling out in under half an hour, its safe to see Tsum Tsums are getting pretty popular (or understocked) here ...

I don't really have an interesting post today. I've not had a day off work since April and today i'm working my 9th shift in a row! I've been given tomorrow (Saturday!) off though, so i'm so excited to have a day off on the weekend, and i'll be sure to write a post about what I get up to in a few days! Its only 87 days until I go to Japan now, so i'm going to be really busy planning and booking more things! I'll be sure to write about it on here. I've not had time to plan anything this week, but I did dream about Okunoshima/Rabbit Island last night! I've recently started a new project - well, two - its the One Second Every Day video project, I have one for me (its pretty boring! Mainly since I started it on my last day off and i've been at work since!) and one for my cat (I'm loving this one and I can't wait to share it). I wasn't too keen on buying an app when I could just edit the clips on iMovie...

Last Sunday I had a long shift at work, I started earlier than usual, so I could get away an hour earlier. I'm still feeling the affects of no sleep now! It's been a long week. Anyway, when I finished work I rushed straight home to get changed before heading out to the beach with my fiancé. Although it was hot everywhere in the city, it wasn't at the beach! It was cold and misty! We got some food and then headed into the arcade - Seldons Leisure World - we'd only planned on spending a short amount of time there due to our spending bans (update coming soon!) but ended up spending a couple of hours there >.< I can't actually remember what happened to our tickets, I don't remember cashing them in or putting them in my bag!. Anyway, we did end up wasting a little bit of money in the grabber machines but just look at these two! Plankton is so happy because he's kidnapped Gary. He's going to trade hi...

A few days ago I downloaded a new game that i've heard a bit about recently - but it was pretty 'difficult' to download. The game is called Neko Atsum e, or  -ねこあつめ- in Japanese. You can't search for it in the iPhone app store unless you can type it in in Japanese, so the easiest way to get it is to access the iTunes store online (I found it by Googling Neko Atsume, but heres the direct link to the iTunes Store. ) Once you download it from the iTunes store you'll be able to find it under 'purchased' in the app store on your iPhone. The App is entirely in Japanese, but don't worry - if you don't know any Japanese this app is very easy to follow, there are also English tutorial/guides online. In short this is how you play the game: Buy food and toys. Place food and toys in your garden. Wait for cats.  (Revisit the app every 5min or so) Watch your cats play. Take a photo of them for your cat file/album. Repeat....

When I was in Florida back in September I picked up two Hipster Mickey art prints, I absolutely loved them and was so happy they made it home in one piece (I think we actually shipped these home wrapped in paper padding, bubble wrap and carrier bags!). My room was just starting to be decorated when I got back from Florida, and with Christmas on the way it never quite got finished. Not long after Christmas I decided I needed a third print to go with them, there wasn't one I loved as much as the other two on the website though except the Trader Sam's print but they didn't do it in the same size so I got the Mint Julep print instead, I ended up having to pretty much pay the full cost again in tax and charges when it arrived! I've spent the last couple of months looking at replacing the mounts as they're all different, but in the end i've just left the original ones in. I then ordered three frames online, finding a frame the right size was really difficul...