January Roundup – How Month One of 2019 Has Been

Any regular readers to my blog may have wondered where my five things posts have disappeared to over the past few weeks. For almost 3 years I posted five things every single week (Sunday/ Monday) talking about what I’d done in the week behind and although I loved these posts I wanted a fresh start in 2019 and felt they were getting a little stale.

For this reason, I’ve decided to do monthly round-up posts talking about some of the places I’ve been, items I’ve bought, great and not so great things to happen in one place. It’s a nice way to reflect back on the month and it means I can just put in the totally awesome stuff as opposed to feeling like I need to fill at least five things every single week.

The places I’ve been in January

• On Sunday 6th January me and Luke headed into London where we went to the Avengers S.T.A.T.I.O.N located in the Excel centre, and afterwards, we headed to Covent Garden so I could tick Grind off my foodie bucket list.
• On Friday 11th January I went out for dinner with my best friend to celebrate my birthday and we had an amazing Lebanese meal which is my absolute favourite cuisine.
• On Saturday 12th January Luke took me for a day out in London for my birthday which included indoor mini golf, gin, a video games exhibition and food. I wrote a post about my London day out here.
• Following on from my London day out on Sunday 13th January I saw my family for my birthday which was really nice.
• On my actual birthday on Monday 14th January I had the day off so I had lunch with my parents, chilled out and then Luke took me for an amazing steak meal in the evening.
• We headed to the new revamped Walkabout in Watford on Friday 18th for drinks and a yummy burger. You can read more about our visit here.
• On Saturday 19th I did another new escape room from the team at Aim Escape and it was the best escape room I’ve done so far, very well thought out and the puzzles and tasks were all logical but required a lot of thinking. I wrote about our experience here.
• On Thursday 24th me, Luke and our friend headed to the VIP opening of the Hollywood Bowl in the Intu Watford which was so much fun and it looks amazing.
• On the morning of Saturday 26th, me and Luke headed to Paradise Wildlife Park which was just a short drive away from us in Herts. I love zoo’s and animal parks and as it was so quiet we managed to see a lot of the animals pretty close up.
• On Sunday 27th January I went to see Cirque De Soliel at the Royal Albert Hall and it was absolutely amazing to see live, definitely, a bucket list thing ticked off my list.
• To end the month me and Luke headed to see one of our favourite bands (Vukovi) on Tuesday 29th. We managed to grab a burger dinner before the show and it was so good.

The great things from January

• I got to bid farewell to one of my friends as she heads to Vietnam to teach English, she’s initially gone for 5 months and although I’ll miss her I’m also so excited for her.
• Over the month we’ve done a lot of de-cluttering in the flat, throwing some stuff away, reorganising spaces we currently have and putting some stuff aside to sell.
• On Thursday 10th me and my mum made our long-awaited return to aqua aerobics and it was such a good class. Sadly I was ill the week after so did end up missing a week (or two) before getting back into the routine.
• We chose where we’re going to hire a storage unit after going to view one and speak to the team there, I’m just waiting for some more information on a date.
• Me and Luke have seen a few movies with our Cineworld pass this month including Bumblebee and Glass, I’ll definitely be pushing and trying to see even more in February.

The not so great things that happened in January

• Bring Me The Horizon announced a tiny Brit Awards charity show and the site totally crashed on the day and I couldn’t get tickets which I am so gutted about as they are my favourite band. I’m still holding out hope I’ll find some somewhere but until then I’ll just sulk.
• On 15th January a close friend of mine passed away and although she had been very ill it still came as a shock.
• It’s been a pretty slow month for freelance work and collaborations which is a shame as I’d hoped to start the year well. I’m hoping this changes as we go forward but I need to push myself to reach out to more brands.
• I sent out my first batch of pitch ideas to magazines and I didn’t hear back from any of them which is such a shame. I’m not going to give up though, this is just a bump in the initial road.
• I’ve definitely not been on it with my weight loss journey and haven’t seen any losses at Slimming World this month, but with our holiday being 6 weeks away I need to really push just a bit before then. Although thankfully I lost 2 pounds right at the end of the month which is the push I need.

The things I’ve bought in January

• It’s Luke’s 30th in March so I’ve started buying some things and experiences for his birthday which for obvious reasons I won’t share on here until after the day – you never know if he could be snooping – but I’m happy to be a bit prepared ahead of the game.
• I treated myself to a brand new Pipdig layout for my blog on my birthday and I spent some time changing the spec to have it look the way I want it to. Overall I am pretty happy with the results but I do want to play around with it a bit more.
• At the very start of the month, I invested in a 12-week blogger course which I am part way through and I am loving it. Each week during the course material I am making notes and giving myself ideas of things I want/ need to be doing.
• I picked up the Maroon 5 ‘Songs about Jane’ vinyl around my birthday for a blast from the past and I have enjoyed playing it no end!
• I’ve also bought some new clothes for our sun holiday in March including shorts, a new swimming costume and some pool/ beach coverups so I’m pretty much ready to go.

Things to do in February

• We need to finish packing up the flat in February as we may be moving out this month and we want to make sure we’re prepared for the move.
• Pitch out some more feature ideas and sponsored post collaborations to improve my outreach and hopefully sign off some new work.
• Stick to my budget plan for the month to ensure I’m not spending money unnecessarily to make saving easier.

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