Au Pair life

Au Pair life is hard. 

The people at home think it's easy and you're seen as a babysitter, I honestly didn't think it would be so hard. The reality is that I have 2 kids around 45 hours a week (not including the time that they'll be with me when the parents are home). I spoke to the youngest of my host kids who's 4 and in part time school, I posed the question 'who do you spend the most time with in a whole week , mama , papa , Chloe or me?' There was no hesitation when he replied 'You'. An Au Pair is kind of like the third parent. It's hard being the person who instills good manners, rules, homework and life lessons whilst still trying to have fun with them. I've been hit and had my hair pulled out, cried with my kids and frankly got angry angry angry (STOP TALKING ABOUT POOP). Frankly 3 months in I've been questioning how great I am as an au pair...but today has finally made it all better. My host parents attended my little girls parents evening and came back to tell me one crazy thing ... that the little girl, Chloe actually talks about me at school and says how much she loves this au pair. Thank the lord, Mary and Joseph. 

Comments like this really makes being an au pair worth it and make me have more faith in myself.

Hula Hula 

xoxoxo 

30 before 30

It's all in the title I suppose, a' Bucketlist' before 30 I guess, although I couldn't put them in any particular order.

1. Get more tattoos 

2. Go to New York (DONE).. and spend a day in New York City library

3. Go to Coachella 

4. Sleep under the stars 

5. Gamble In Las Vegas 

6. Learn Yoga 

7. Go glamping 

8. Buy myself a mulberry bag

9.  Reach a goal weight 

10. Go on a ski trip (and don't break a leg)

11. Learn another language 

12. Get a dream job in psychology 

13. Go back to swimming

14. Ride a jet ski

15. Host Christmas one year

16. Spend a summer in Australia 

17. Do karaoke...sober 

18. Furnish a house how i truly want (aka urban outfitters hippy house)

19. Spend a year living with the girls (sorry Alec)

20. Run 10 miles a week 

21. Get a pet dog 

22. Rise before 6 every day 

23. Repay mother hen by helping with her mortgage 

24. Donate blood whenever you can 

25. Live a year on thrift shop clothes 

26. Shave my hair off for charity

27. Do a skydive 

28. Laugh every single day 

29. Learn to make the best parmo I possibly can (TEESSIDE)

30. Start documenting everything more! Pictures, diaries and blogs!

Hula Hula xoxox 

Slogan Tees

I'm not sure what it is ATM but I am feeling slogan tees. Summing up my mood and life perfectly, especially when i'm living for the weekends. Here are some of my favourites...

Zara

Zara

Etsy

Pull & Bear

Hula Hula xoxoxo 

Washington D.C

As part of my college course I went to Washington D.C over the weekend and had such a lovely time!  The drive was 5 hours (and when you look at it on the map the difference looks tiiiiiny) and when we got there the weather was beautiful, cold and crisp but with lots of sun. Washington is the capital of the U.S  with pretty much all government agendas and work here with lots of historical monuments, here are some photos, it felt like being in the movies! Also  a biggie that the Whitehouse is there (side note; Barack Obama follows me on twitter, claim to fame)

Me and my gal Megan at the Lincoln memorial 

Just outside the lincoln memorial and where the MLK speech was held.

Washington monument!

The whitehouse

Ohhhhh I also forgot 1 vital part of this trip- Washington D.C houses 3 of the 4 Nandos in the US, as a former proud Nandoca I had to get my chicken fix .... twice in 24 hours since I won't be getting it for the rest of the year!)

Hula Hula xoxox

American Halloween

Was so out of control... me & Julian ( one of my host kids) covered the garden in cobwebs we also had the Skeleton (featured in my fall post) and another ghoul. America is on a whole different level for halloween I'm talking halloween costume parades,  spider webs spanning the whole house with 3ft spiders perched on them, gardens transformed into graveyards and more pumpkins than you can shake a stick at. I spent the whole of Halloween with scary face paint on (in ten minutes to try and scare my host kids).. and people were actually really impressed at my scary attempt... Here are a few photos from the day.

Hula Hula xoxox

A day in the city..

Since my host mum has a train pass into the city,and I'm able to get there for free I'm ready to take full advantage of it. So after finally finishing my classes in Harlem I decided to explore this Sunday. We ended up doing street food in Bryant Park (the ice rinks are coming out), found a super tourist LOVE  sculpture, wandered round central park (the street talent is amazing). Then we got the subway down to the 9/11 memorial and freedom tower before wandering over the iconic Brooklyn bridge to see that beautiful skyline and have dinner at Grimaldis. Super touristy day, and I loved every second of it..

Hula Hula xox

Cliche American

I'm sat in a Starbucks with my beloved Mac Pro, sipping on a hot chocolate (its 8pm, no coffee for me) surrounded by others doing exactly the same thing,admittedly they seem to be doing college  work but does this mean I'm officially the stereotypical American dream? 
How hilarious, as well as this I'm wondering what they think of my style, they seem to dress pretty different here and for some reason whenever I meet new people they always tell me I give a hippy vibe (lord knows how) 
late(ish) night ramblings i suppose 
hula hula xox 

Long distance loving'....

How cheesy huh?
It always happens when you least expect it...I met a boy in June of this year, Alec, who I've known of through mutual friends and twitter (so weird). After a couple of month of intense dates and trips up to Newcastle to spend weekends together it was getting serious...then off i went for 3 weeks inter railing round Europe. Mid trip I found out I had gotten a job in America for a year. It's fair to say it shook shit up, technically we had been only seeing each other 2 months and we had to decide where we were going with this.... as you can probably guess we chose to make a go of it. We spent the most amazing 4 days in London as I was getting my visa (a bittersweet)and he was there to see me off at the airport and has been the most amazing support system I could ever imagine. It's fair to say that this month so far has been difficult and whenever I'm a little homesick I think 'why have I left this boy behind for a year, what have I done'. But in today's technology; Skype, Whatsapp and FaceTime it should be easy right? But there's still a balance to be had, to still enjoying my experiences over here and not being glued to my phone contacting him.  However he has already booked over to come spend the week in NYC with me in January, perks of having an (temporary) american girlfriend I'm sure.
It feels crazy that it's come to this and I never expected to be in this position when I applied for it.

Hula Hula xoxox

That Mulberry thang

Jeeeeeez have I fallen for Mulberry bags hard lately (I think it's been spurred on that they're cheaper here than at home) I've spent hours trawling their website looking at bags and purses and endlessly tried to explain to my other half that they are at INVESTMENT, and it's not like I'm choosing the most expensive bags. I'm a lady of classic black and these would be my dream picks;

(Realistically this is the beauty I'd pick, mostly because its the cheapest, poor girl problems)

And well there may as well be a matching purse in there too....

Hula Hula xoxo

Falling for fall..

Very inspired with my move to blog a lot more about experiences here, I've had to create a sticky note with around 12 blog post ideas (jeeeeez) 

But anyways it's Autumn or Fall as the Americans call it and oh my lord the difference between our seasons is incredible. Everyone at home seems to be posting about rain, scarves and hot chocolate. Where I am (around half an hour from NYC) the weather is beautiful, the trees are golden, theres wildlife everywhere and although it's a bit chilly on a morning, it's normally around 22 degrees by 11am! How crazy and beautiful is it!

As well as this as soon as October fell Halloween decorations have been popping up everywhere (they take this stuff seriously) I've seen huge spider webs spanning whole houses with 3ft spiders on them to pumpkins and hanging ghosts from trees and Halloween isn't even here yet! I still don't have a costume which is considered pretty serious at this point and I'm super jealous of the au pair who's decided to dress up as Mary Poppins. Any suggestions would be welcome!

My families front 'yard' so far, theres so much more to add.

Hula Hula xoxox

The Blogger returns...

Jeeeeeez I am so so bad at blogging so far, I noticed that my last post was about my grad ball and that seems soooooo long ago. I've graduated, travelled Europe and ... I've moved over to America for a year to be an au pair just outside NYC (I'm the luckiest girl in the world). I look after two children a girl aged 6 and a little boy who's 4, and it's a handful but I'm trying to embrace it! 

These are a few snaps from my initial move over here ..

Huuuuuge piece of Oreo cheesecake (my weakness)

Times Square

New York Skyline from the Staten island ferry

  

The Apple flagship store (feat people camping outside)

The top of the empire state building

NY Skyline from the Jersey Side (Hoboken)

Life doing the school run

Hula Hula xoxo

Gradballin'

So blogging has been put to the back of my agenda for the past few weeks and the inevitable uni deadlines have taken over my life.

But alas, it's all over now, and to celebrate we had a beautiful ball with lots of complimentary wine.

I wore a strapless red number from asos, which was helped massively by wonder bra ( I didn't realise until the pictures were tagged)

I also treat myself to a mac makeup session and ended up coming back with a lip liner, lipstick and a bronzer (a post to follow i'm sure)

Stupidly i barely got any photos of my beautiful makeup or my dress and instead revelled in all the post uni glory.

Best way to end the three years of uni with the best people.

Hula Hula xoxo 

Benefits with Benefit

So quite recently I had a run in with the Benefit brand over some rude customer service which I really wasn't happy with in Newcastle , a friend of mine also suffered the rude customer service and when they say us chatting on twitter they encouraged us to make a formal complaint ... a couple days later we got asked for our address and a week later I was lucky to receive a tester of the high beam highlighter as well as a beautiful neutral palette. I love the eyeshadow , the bases are cream and the shades provide a good range of colours (there's also a cute little book of how to guides with it). I'm not as keen on the high beam although I seem to be the only one , it tends to rub off my makeup!

Either way I'm extremely grateful for the gift as a sorry, thanks Benefit!

Hula Hula xox