3 is the magic number.

WHAT A WEEK!

Once again, I have discovered the power of the magic number 3: starting my new job, buying a new car, and finally signing the dotted line on a house share, all within the space of 7 days.

I think I should probably start at the very beginning, as its a very good place to start.

So on Monday, with the remains of a 2 day hangover following my Icelolly leaving party and a tummy full of butterflies, I started my new job as a project coordinator and digital marketing guru (quite a step up from intern/tea bitch).

Real jobs require real work clothes, so dressed to impress I tootled through Leeds on my brand new oh-so-high heels and arrived at my new office 20 minutes later with jelly legs like I'd run a marathon, and 4 rather painful blisters. Luckily, there is quite a lot of sitting down involved in my new role. Thank god.

Naturally, being the new girl, I get the impression that my new workmates are rather wary of me. I guess they'll get used to me eventually and the ice will break in its own sweet time, but hell it's made me miss my Icelolly family so much!

The job itself though is absolutely incredible. I've realised that I know a damn sight more about digital marketing than I ever realised, and I've already got my own little projects on the go to channel my ideas into. I even hosted my first meeting... Who would've thought it eh.

On top of my new working schedule, Kate and I had arranged a few more house viewings in the evenings and made a pact that no matter how difficult, we would have made a decision about a place by the end of the week.

Which thankfully turned out to be quite easy to do.

We looked at 3 more houses around the Headingley area, one of which definitely piqued our interest, however, for some bizarre reason, both of us kept comparing it back to ugly house.

Incredibly, our demands to redecorate ugly house before we even paid our deposits were met with enthusiasm from the landlord who has even offered to supply the dust sheets. What a gent. So the decision became a no brainer.

All I can say is there must be some pretty strong forces at work in that house, because we've now picked our bedrooms, bought some paint, and the moving date is set for 2 weeks time!

Oh. My. Days!

This of course means that my little nest had to go back on the market...

Someone is coming to view it tomorrow, so I've just had a crazy little cleaning spree to make it look it's shiny best! I will be sad to leave it, my first little home, but onwards and upwards!

Lastly, I come to my new wheels.

BOOM!

It's so beautiful, I would happily drive it to the moon and back. We won't be united full time until I move into ugly house, so at the moment, it's going to live with my parents and I'm going to have to make do with a long distance relationship.

*sighs*

I really don't do things by halves do I?

L x

The good, the bad and the ugly.

After Tuesdays out and out disastrous house viewing, my enthusiasm for real estate has somewhat waned.

Obviously, we still have to find a house, but the excitement has totally been taken out of looking.

Every advert I look at now just seems too good to be true, so I'm finding myself set up to be disappointed before I even go to the appointments.

That is, that's how I did feel, until Thursday evening...

The Good.

Can anyone remember the TV show Cribs? When a camera crew from MTV would go and snoop about in celebrities super beautiful houses?

That is totally how me and Kate felt at this incredible house in Horsforth.

We had expected this one to be 1000x better than the first one anyway just because of the area, but JEEEEEEEESUSSSSS!!!

It was palatial! An 8 bedroom mansion with a swimming pool for a bath tub, a field for a garden and a kitchen you could have played football in.

It was the kind of house that everyone dreams about living in one day.

So it breaks my heart to say... We decided not to go for it.

There were reasons for our decision of course, but out of respect, I won't put them to print.

The Bad.

Today, we went to look at 2 more contenders in Headingley. Straight away I had a good feeling about the area.

Residential, homely... Something just clicked.

I wish I could say the same about this house that we saw.

It was so tiny! Lovely decor and very modern, but so small, it makes my little nest look grandiose.

The letting agent informed us there had been a pretty devastating flood there a few months before so to ignore the foisty smell, but with or without this little nugget of information, we wouldn't have considered living there anyway.

The Ugly.

This is where things get interesting ladies and gentlemen.

The final house I'm going to describe to you is beyond doubt one of the worst decorated properties I've ever seen.

1970s flamboyant pattern carpets, dark wood mismatched furniture, bright lurid orange and green painted walls...

But for some insane reason, both me and Kate have fallen in love with it.

It was like going into a cat and dog shelter and instead of picking the pretty, prancey little poodle puppy, cooing over the scraggy little mongrel that had been left in the rain for too long.

It's a bit of a fixer upper, I'll admit, but it has a brand new kitchen and 2 new bathrooms, plus 6 bedrooms which are all HUGE if completely hideous.

Plus as a bonus, we met one of our potential housemates, and got on like a house on fire (pardon the pun).

It's the first property we've looked at that we could actually picture ourselves living in. 

So... *drumroll please* We've entered into negotiations with the letting agency!

WOOOHOOOOO!!!

I'm trying to strike a deal about the decor so we can be let loose with some paint brushes in our own bedrooms, but all being well, we finally have a house we can call a home.

L x

The House Share.

So on bonfire night, after a bottle of wine (always the best time to make decisions) my dear friend and colleague Kate made me a proposition...

(No, not that kind of proposition!)

She asked if I wanted to be her roomie if we could find a house share.

As much as I've grown to love my little city nest, the lack of essentials like a washing machine and an oven have finally become too much, and I really need to find somewhere I can make a home.

So, for the last few weeks, we have been trawling spare room sites looking for places to live.

We really thought we had hit lucky with a 5 bedroom share in Burley. It had everything we were looking for, plus the price was good...

But something which seems to be too good to be true, usually is.

If I was Carrie Bradshaw and Leeds was Manhattan, this place was the Bronx.

The first big cross in the box was the pile of litter just casually sitting in the street across the road from the house.

Who the hell are the neighbours?!

Cross two was the front door. Now me and Kate are by no means roided up gym bunnies, and we could have put our knuckles through the front door just by knocking on it.

It didn't instil much confidence about security!

By the time the landlord arrived to show us around, I had already planned a fairly strategic break in and my concerns were pretty high.

Then we got inside...

Putting it politely, whoever took the photos of the place for the website must be an absolute wizard with a camera.

The advert never said that exposed wiring, peeling paintwork and damp were the existing housemates.

I think the landlord sensed our disappointed and we were outta there pretty sharpish, not before I had time to fall down the stairs though.

Bloody shoes.

Mortified but laughing, I headed back to Burley station to catch the train back to the city centre, when I was stopped by a ticket inspector: "have you got a ticket?"

"Yeah, sure", I replied, reaching for my purse.

"This is an off-peak ticket, you'll need to pay 5p extra for another one".

I genuinely thought he was kidding.

He wasn't.

So 5p lighter and with a twisted ankle I waited on the platform for a good 20 minutes, to find that the train was delayed.

Needless to say, I'm not feeling much love for Burley right now!

And so we find ourselves back to the proverbial drawing board. Luckily, the experience has only given me faith that we can't genuinely find anywhere worse to live.

Every cloud eh!

L x

Suits.

We say to girls,

"You can have ambition

But not too much

You should aim to be successful

But not too successful..." 

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

Before I begin, I just want to say, I am by no means the girliest girl on the planet.

Yes, I like sparkly things and high heeled shoes, and the mere thought of doing football in PE at school was enough to send me into a state of absolute panic, but I am nobody's barbie doll.

Yet despite this, my inner girly side was set a challenge today, a challenge which was presented due to my looming new job start date...

I needed to buy a suit.

Nothing flash, just a jacket and trouser combo that can be worn day to day, but also for meetings and whatnot with businessy-type posh people.

I must have read a zillion articles about "power dressing" in magazines long before I ever had any real need to pay attention... So I didn't really know where to start!

Suits always remind me of times when my Dad would go away on business when I was a kid. He'd disappear for a few days in his pinstriped suit, with his briefcase and laptop and all the kids in my street thought he was a spy.

Maybe he was... 

All I ever cared about was whether he'd bring me back some sweets.

So the Mother and I set off to the shops to buy MY first suit.

Something I never thought I would do.

"I don't want to look like a man" was my only specification.

But as it turns out, there is actually quite a nice selection of women's business wear on the high street!

My only real issue turned out to be sizing.

I'm the first to admit, I'm not in great shape at the moment. I'm definitely on the wrong side of curvaceous-bordering-squishy, but jeeeeeeeesus!

How is it possible to be 3 different dress sizes in 1 shop?!

My poor Mother got the full force of my pouty tantrum when the third pair of trousers didn't fit.

Bless her, she tried her best to make me feel less like a walrus in a catsuit...

"It's just the shaping", "the sizes are always tiny here", "maybe it's just the material"... 

But I was a woman possessed!

We ended up leaving Outfit empty handed, and instead spent an obscene amount of money in Next, where clothes actually fit properly.

What are parents for eh?!

So I'm now suited ready for my new job starting on the 24th, I just need to find the shoes to match.

Let's hope all the aggro turns out to be worth it!

L x

Leodiensian.

It seems that 3 really is the magic number.

When I first made the move to Leeds back in April, I left home for the first time, changed cities, and started a new job all on the same day.

This week, I have accepted a new job, ended a relationship and handed in my tenancy notice with my landlord...

WTF IS WRONG WITH ME?!

Yes I must be mad! But onwards and upwards so they say!

Although I am yet to sign on the dotted line, I have accepted a job offer from a ridiculously prosperous Leeds based company who specialise in hosting networking events for local businesses.

It's a fantastic opportunity for me which I just couldn't afford to turn down. Of course, this means I'm leaving my fantastic icelolly family behind...

They know I'm devastated, but hopefully we can all keep in touch, they've been my whole Leeds world this year!

The parents have mixed feelings about my decision not to come home, but I know they're 110% behind me no matter what and just want me to be happy, which I really think I'm starting to be!

I've had a fab weekend in Leeds, a messy night out on Friday, followed by a severe hangover and a bonfire party on Saturday, and then a trip to the Royal Armouries (a Leeds institution so I'm told!) followed by more alcohol consumption today.

I think it's fair to say I'm on my way to becoming a real leodiensian or "loiner".

I doubt I will ever lose my stupid Cheryl Cole-esque accent but I'm willing to call this place home for now.

For the first time in a while, I'm excited about things to come.

L x

Distance.

Love is a bitch.

Relationships are not easy.

They require many things; investment in time, trust, and emotion being the 3 biggest things in my opinion.

This blog is supposed to be a record of the big things which happen/have happened to me during my time in Leeds.

So however childish it may seem, and no matter how hard it is to write, it's only right that I should post an update to tell whoever even reads this that my relationship with my boyfriend has come to an end.

Long distances can drive a wedge between people, whether they be your lover or your best friend or even a family member.

Without some serious dedication, this wedge can become a serious problem and eventually drive people apart.

In my current situation, relationships with all of my nearest and dearest have become strained in one way or another, and I just haven't been able to invest enough of myself into saving some of them.

So here I am.

Really alone for the first time since I moved out.

This is going to take some getting used to.

L x