Real Estate | Photography

                                                                Make a house a home

A genre of photography I never thought I would fall into was real estate. It’s surprisingly a lot of fun! 

Alongside my portrait photography in 2020 I fell into real estate photography through a family friend. It is something I hope to do more of this year.

The aim of the images below is to advertise a newly refurbished house that was turned into a house share. If I hadn’t found my flat I might of moved in the rooms were stunning. Before I arrived another company “dressed” the home, I think that’s what it’s called please don’t quote me. They basically made the beds, decorated the bedrooms and sliced a loaf of bread. I loved walking round taking photos and seeing all the little details they had put together ready for me to do my thing.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous, it was a completely new avenue for me but I quickly fell into the routine. As a natural light fan I was worried the images would come out dark or grainy but they turned out great. I have been spending a large portion of my life learning new editing techniques, the amount you can do on Photoshop never fails to amaze me. I’m still exploring the tip of the ice berg. 

I wanted to show you some of the images I took last year. I have only done a couple of real estate shoots due to the pandemic and it takes a while to refurbish a house, I’m not expert but it’s certainly more than a month. 

Florida | Scrapbooking

"Boredom ignites your creativity" - Aaron Benjamin

My trip to Florida was one of those trips I had dreamed about for years so to finally be there it was a dream, over a year on and I still can't believe it. No I will never shut up about it. During the first lockdown I was unfortunately, like a lot of people in the uk furloughed from my job and although I was feeling extremely lucky to still be employed I was left with the feelings of how the fuck am I gonna entertain myself?

I always knew I wanted to create a physical space for my memories, not just social media. Yes I have this blog that I rarely post on and every year tell myself "jess this year you're gonna post at least once a month" and I usually start off pretty well and then come April I've stopped again. I needed something to entertain myself whilst I wasn't working and I've always wanted to have these photos in a physical form to look back on. 

That's how I fell into scrapbooking. 

I like to think of myself as quite a creative person, but a digital creative person. I can create artwork in a digital format but on paper I don't even like my own handwriting. I had seen a lot of Tik Toks about people scrapbooking all kinds of things and I was inspired to say the least. So way too much money later, I was ready to go.

I got a lot of my materials from the range and hobby craft. I can't go into a store anymore without looking at their craft aisle. Some pages are a lot more experimental than others but my favourite pages are Gringotts and the Harry Potter portraits, I'm obsessed with how they turned out.

I used the free prints app to print off all of my images (this isn't ad although I wish it was) you get 45/50 free prints per month just have to pay a couple of quid for shipping. All images are printed 6x4.

I wanted to just insert some pictures of my scrapbook to hopefully inspire someone to push themselves out of their comfort zones this lockdown and create something new. I found so much peace and joy making this scrapbook I've already planned the next one I'm going to make! 

No Bake Baking | Halloween

Spooky Scary Ghouls and Pumpkins 

Happy October, I love this month because in my christmas obssessed brain it's the beginning of the festive period. We have Halloween, bonfire night, thanksgiving for my American friends and then its the big day!

 

After the year we've had so far I wanted to really celebrate spooky season this year, I don't love Halloween but I do love autumn and frankly I will take what I'm given. Myself and Hilly decided to try some halloween baking, these recipies don’t include any actual baking just chilling in the fridge. 

I just want to begin by saying we didn't use any measurements we just eye balled it - I know I know it's incredibly professional here.

Strawberry Ghosts:

What you will need: 

• Strawberries
• 2 Bars of white chocolate
• Black icing - easier if it's in a tube

We started off melting the chocolate in a bain-marie (yes I googled that leave it out) I find this the easiest way but you could probably chuck it in the microwave. We melted the chocolate until it was completed lump free, once that was completed we delicately and gracefully dipped the strawberries into the chocolate. Once submerged we placed them onto a plate, then put the plate into the fridge. 

Once the chocolate has hardended (approx 15 mins) we took them out of the fridge and decorated them. Hilly is amazing at art so I allowed her the highest of honours by doing most of the work, especially decorating. 

They turned out great and tasted amazing! Would highly recommend if you're looking for a little spooky snack, would be perfect for a halloween film night. Plus its fruit so that makes it healthy...right?

Due to using 2 bars of white chocolate once we completed the strawberry ghosts we had a good amount of melted chocolate left. We decided to use these for our Rice Krispie pumpkins.

Rice Krispie pumpkins:

What you will need:

• White chocolate (melted)
• Marshmallows preferably white
• Orange food colouring
• Green Fondant 
• Matchmakers we went with orange flavour to add to the autumnal feel 

The first thing we did was added the marshmallows into the Bain-marie with the melted chocolate, it's important to continuously stir to avoid burning the chocolate. TIP: work fast 

Once we have our marshmallow chocolate mixture, we added our orange food colouring, again absolutely no measurements just eyeballing.

It immediately started turning bright orange so we quickly added the Rice Krispies along with the remaining food colouring. I have to say the colour of these pumpkins is amazing they turned out so vibrant. 

With this gloop use your clean hands to mould them into balls and slightly push the top and bottom in to create the pumpkin shape. We decided to use a muffin tin and before placing them in the fridge added the matchmakers as the pumpkin stalk. 

Whilst the Krispies are hardening in the fridge, take a sharp knife and the green fondant and start to create the leaves. We weren't super precise, some pumpkins have only one leaf others we piled a couple of leaves on top of each other. Using the same fondant we rolled it super thin and curled it around itself to create the stringy leaves?

Once hardened we removed the pumpkins from the fridge, added the greenery and once again Hilly drew cute little faces on them all to give the carved pumpkin effect, you could miss out this step if like me you aren't very artistically talented. 

Overall, I am super happy with how our baked goods came out, a perk of these recipes is you don't need to use the oven, and could melt the chocolate and marshmallows in the microwave if you so wished. I feel these would be perfect for a spooky film night or even a cute halloween activity to do with children.

Let me know if you make either of these or anything else you can think of! 

Massive thank you to Hilly for arguably doing all of the work, literally could not have done it without you. 

What I’ve been up to | Lockdown

2020 has taken a turn that no one expected.

For the purposes of the future 

- We are currently living through a global pandemic due to a virus called COVID-19 aka Corona Virus. As I am writing this we are currently on week 7 of lockdown which means not going to work/working from home and only going out for essentials. it's been weird. 

- As I am posting this I have no idea how many weeks it’s been I mentally disassociated in March. It's currently September and I'm back at work after having 12 weeks off.

I wanted to share a couple of things I have been doing during lockdown, not going to lie I wanted to be a lot more productive than I have been. I have been in the mindset of "i'm never going to have this much free time again..." so I cant decide whether to relax or be productive, i've decided to be a bit of both.

Driving

In January I passed my second test and bought a little red Suzuki Swift named: Taylor McQueen and having a car has been a real life saver for me this year. During lockdown I was able to safety travel to the supermarkets as well as I had somewhere I could be safe but out of the house. I went on endless drives as-well as just spending time at the beach in my car. 

Now we can socially distance within our bubbles it's been perfect as myself and my friends have been able to go for drives, go through drive thru's and just be in each others company without having to venture into the outside. 

Reading

I love reading and I kept wanting to just pick up a book and turn off for a while but I never knew what I wanted to read. The world of books is so vast I didn't know where to start, I decided to google 3 things I find intresting;  the 1920's, superpowers/fantasy and murder.

I found the book; The Diviners by Libba Bray 

I am about half way through and I am really enjoying it so far. I always find that reading before bed helps me switch off easier therefore fall asleep better so I've been loving that.

Entertainment 

Althought I've been trying to limit the time I am using screens, before lockdown I was doing really well due to being a work all day and then driving for 2 hours a day. Within the first week of lockdown my phone told me my screen-time was up around 300% I was gagged. 
Aswell as watching TikTok's for hours on end I have been watching lots of Disney Cruise Vlogs and Disney+ think im just bitter my Disney Land Paris trip was cancelled.

Evening Walk

I have been using my hour of government alotted hour of exerise to go on an evening walk and have a good natter on the phone. I've been trying to go a little later around 7/8 to try and limit the amount of people I could come into contact with not trying to get corona. I have loved this time to just chat with my friends and get some fresh air.
Due to lockdown restrictions starting to loosen I have been going in walks with my friends, meeting up for coffee or chilling in back gardens. Being able to see friends and family again has been a real game changer.

Gaming

I'm not the biggests gamer in the world my main gaming achievement is 100% in both Lego Harry Potter games, that being said Animal Crossing has once again taken over my entire life 200+ hours spent and really not that much to show for it. I used to love animal crossing on my Nintendo DS so when we were going into lockdown my want for a switch grew astronomically and my mum very kindly bought me one as an early birthday present and I have been addicted.
For my birthday in May my brother kindly bought me Luigi's mansion and my auntie Claire has kindly lent me some of her games to try out and I am loving it!

Volunteering 

My mum works in the NHS so once I was furloughed I decided to do something with all my free time and help out. I have been going into the practice two days a week (8 hours a week) calling patients ti see how they are doing during this time. I am really enjoying helping out, thankfully having previous work in a call centre has been really helpful!

Mental Health & Covid

Anyone with mental health issues will know that some days are better than others, I want to be more open and talk more about how my brain works on here as I find it helps me a lot to publically admit it to myself, my twitter can sometimes be a personal diary.

Covid has really been a rollercoaster in regards to my anxiety, I really struggled at the beginning panicked beyond belief I was going to catch it, as I think many people were. As the world started to change it and masks and social distancing have started to become more normal my anxiety started to calm a little.  

I am taking each day as it comes, we'll be alright.

Please speak up if you have any mental health issues people are great and they will help.


I want to remind you all that we are living in a pandemic you do not have to be productive! Use this time to do whatever you need to do, if that is sitting on the sofa watching Netflix all day, starting your own buisness or writing a book. Take this time to do what you need to do.

Stay safe and stay smart.

Alton Towers | Travel

If you go down to the woods today...you'd better not go alone 

 Due to not being able to leave the country due to corona but also finances... Beth and I decided to take a little mini trip to Alton Towers somewhere we have talked about going for years. I have talked about wanting to go to a cottage for years also so maybe that will happen soon *hint hint* 

Alton Towers is a theme park in Staffordshire, England about 4 hours away, both Beth and I went as kids with our families so nothing was new to us except that we were going as adults and without our parents. Since I got my car back in January we have been talking about the idea of going on a road trip and having a weekend away so we decided to risk it for a chocolate biscuit and give it a go *spoiler, it went really well*

I was a bit nervous to drive all the way as I had never done a long drive really, so like a couple of losers a few weeks before we did a test drive, yes we did drive to a service station and back I have anxiety people this isn't new! So that went great and I ironed out some things I was worried about and was ready to go!

We drove down on Friday in the aggressive heat, it was so hot I felt like I was driving a portable sauna.   As a new driver (passed in January) I was quite nervous but once I got onto the motorway it was fine, apart from the heat it was actually really enjoyable. Could probably do it again but not on my own because I'd get bored.

We stayed in a really nice premier inn in Stoke Trentham Gardens was only £74 for 2 nights, not sure if we just got lucky or they were socially distancing the hotel guests but we ended up in a really big room with a beautiful view. We ended up bringing our own pillows just as another Covid safety precaution. 

On the Friday we went to see my bestie Molly for dinner, we had Pizza Hut and chatted it was wonderful. 

Also huge congratulations to Molly and Jay, they are pregnant and I am very excited to be an unofficial auntie!

On the Saturday we headed to Alton Towers, I am not a fan of driving down country roads and it was country roads all the way I did it but I did not enjoy it. 

Saturday was so unbelievably hot, it was rough. The park was quite busy on the Saturday as it was sold out sat-tues, I hope the park was at a limited capacity but it really did not feel like it. Wait times were between 45-120 minutes which is unheard of for Alton Towers. 

On the Saturday we tried our best to do everything we wanted, we started the day by riding nemesis which was my favourite ride growing up and it did not disappoint me as an adult. We also rode oblivion and duel this day and they were both amazing.

On Sunday we decided to head to the park a little earlier so we could try and ride thirteen. I had spoken to a member of staff the night before and they explained that the park doesn't open until 10am however, they open the gates around 9:30 and allow guests to enter the park and begin to queue ahead of the rides beginning at 10. We arrived at the park around 9:30 and by 10:15 we had rode 13. Another amazing ride!

We then went on oblivion once again and headed home. I was nervous to drive from Newcastle as it was about 4 hours and was the first long drive I have ever done but Beth and Harry Potter audio books kept me entertained and although it was like driving in a sauna it wasn't bad at all.

I was hesitant to include this but I read a lot of forums and they really helped me with my confidence going to Alton Towers. I am plus size so theme parks can seem incredibly scary. For the majority of the rides I asked for modified seating which is the same size seats but instead of one strap clipping your restraints in there are two. This is due to the overhead restraints having a bump around the stomach. In modified seats there are two straps that go around the bump rather than over. The staff were amazing and incredibly helpful, there was certainly moments that made me incredibly anxious but reading lots of forums before hand helped to calm my nerves. 

The links below I found incredibly helpful but there are many many more online.

Forums

https://plussizedguide.com/plus-sized-guide-to-alton-towers/

https://forum.towerstimes.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=41926

http://ramblesofanimpatientgirl.blogspot.com/2016/05/plus-size-at-alton-towers.html

COVID-19 Precautions

Going on a trip during the current global climate was always going to be risky and nerve-racking but with holidays cancelled earlier in the year and all the stress Beth and I decided to take a trip. During the entire lockdown we have been as safe as we possibly can. Alton Towers was no different. 

Anytime we stopped at a service station or going in and out of the hotel we wore masks as well as sanitising and trying our best to keep our distance. 

In regards to Alton Towers, it was incredibly busy and hot. You were only required to wear a mask on the rides along with anytime you are inside the ride stations or shops. We tried our hardest to wear a mask at all times but it was just too hot to do so. It was hard to socially distance as it was so crowded but we tried our best and didn't spend the entire time within the parks.

I feel they are doing everything they can, from cleaning the ride vehicles to temperature checks before entering the park. In regards to the temperature checks it is a gun type machine held at a short distance from your forehead, if your over 38 degrees (I believe) you will be asked to take a break to cool down afterwards they will take your temperature a second time and if again it is over the limit you will not be allowed to enter the park. I found this extremely reassuring as just like bag checks you know everyone has had to go through this in order to gain access limiting the threat.

Overall I had a lovely trip away with my dear friend, it was the first time we have really had a trip together and it was super nice just to spend some time together and chill out after talking about it for so long. 

if you have any questions or concerns about being plus size or the safety precautions please leave a comment and I will try my hardest to answer them as I know I had a lot of questions before my trip.