FOMO or GOMO?

Eventbrite is the largest self-service ticketing platform in the world that helps people plan, find and sign up online for events. With me studying Events Management, i've used this a few times.

They are currently running a project in an attempt to squash FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), and to promote GOMO (Going Out More Often).

I'm going to share with you my plans for Autumn in the hope that it encourages anyone (including myself) to try stay away from being a Netflix potato and to go out and do something interesting instead.

Going for a walk or picnics with friends is an easy and purse-friendly idea!

With me starting 3rd year in just a few weeks, I want to try and keep a clear head and stay pretty inspired for the duration of the year. There are a few things that I have in mind that i'd like to do over the next few months in an attempt at this.

• Jump Arena: So many of my friends have been here and it looks so fun! My sister's obsessed with these kind of things so I know for a fact she'll come with me.
• Leeds City Museum: This is somewhere a lot of people I know have been, and for some reason i've just never got round to it. I find museums interesting, and this one is free, so I can imagine it being a nice cheap day out into the city.
• Warner Bro's Studio Tour: For my sister's birthday I bought us both tickets to go to the Warner Bro's Studio Tour in London because we're both massive Potterheads. We've still to pick a date but hopefully we'll be going in the next few months!
• Walks in the park: My student house is pretty close to a park, so whenever i'm feeling writers block, either on my blog or with my Uni work, i'm hoping a walk through the park will help clear my mind.
• Trips to the cinema: Okay granted, this may not be as cheap as my other ideas, but I do love going to the cinema. And instead of watching a movie on your laptop in bed, why not go out with a few friends and see something new?
• Kirkstall Laser Tag: Now i've been to the one in Castleford's X-Scape a few times, but whilst I was in Australia a new one has been built in Kirkstall, and i'm very eager to give it a go!
• The German Market: Anyone in Leeds knows that Christmas is finally here when the German Market comes to town. I just love looking at all the little stalls. You don't really need to spend anything, so here's another cheap day out.
• The Otley Run: Okay. I'll say it. I've never done the Otley Run. I KNOW. How can a student in Leeds admit this? However it is on my bucket list for 3rd year, and my housemates have already agreed to assist with this one.
• Shopping: Internet shopping is pretty dangerous for me. I could go online with the intention of buying a Christmas present, and end up buying 3 candles, 2 t-shirts, a new camera and some shoes. With this in mind, I want to do the majority of my Christmas shopping in actual stores, getting me out of the house more often but also cutting down on the frivolous spending.

Hopefully i'll end up sticking to this and will achieve at least half of these. If anyone else has other ideas on how they're going to try get out of the house more this Autumn/Winter period then comment below!

Annabel

October.

So here I am, procrastinating from my first University deadline of the semester with less than a week to go to get this essay done. So naturally, this is the time I decide to get a blog post written as I haven't in a while! I can't believe it's November already. It's nearly my favourite time of year and I almost can't contain my excitement! But we're not there yet. Here's what I got up to in the hallowed month of October.

I met Nick Frost! Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead are among mine and my boyfriend's favourite films and when I saw that Nick was doing a signing at my local Waterstones I didn't hesitate to get me and James tickets.

Cornetto?

I LOVE fancy dress and will pretty much use any excuse to dress up, so when my bestie Charlotte invited us all to her house for a pre Halloween party, I couldn't wait to make my costume.

My sister went as a zombified Sleeping Beauty and she also looked pretty awesome.
I wore a long black skirt and black top, with a long black cloak that my mum made for my sister when she dressed up at the Woman In Black a few years ago. I bought the horns from a fancy dress store and put in light green contact lenses.

My Maleficent make up!
(Please excuse the emoji's on my head they were not part of my costume)

I then made the staff out of white piping and stuck a polystyrene ball on top, then covered the whole thing in black tape. I did the make up myself, sprayed my hair black and then I was good to go!

Everybody's pumpkins! I think from this picture it's pretty obvious that my friends and I are massive Disney fans.

Close up of my pumpkin! Maleficent the dragon!

October is always a pretty hectic month for me. Those of you that know me well know i'm a dance teacher from February - October every year, with the annual show taking place in October half-term. This usually makes me slightly busy, but since this year I was actually in the show too, this made me very busy. On top of that I was working 2 days a week and at Uni for 4 other days. It's a good job this only goes on for a month because if it did any longer, i'd have probably had a mental breakdown.

My oldest group practicing their lift before opening night!

We had some amazing feedback about this years show and i'm so proud of everyone that helped and took part. It got pretty stressful at times but all in all I had such an amazing week performing and it sounds like the kids did too!

Interval madness.

That's all that really happened last month. Pretty much most of my time was spent preparing for halloween and the show so I didn't really have time for anything else. This month i'm going to Rome so my next monthly round up post will be a little more exciting!

September.

Another month down. Only 3 to go and it's 2016! This year is completely flying by and it seriously needs to start slowing down!

So the beginnging of September wasn't actually that exciting. It started off with a lot of after holiday blues following a brilliant week in Mallorca. Mostly because I was poor, I didn't really do much for the first couple of weeks.

Then my best friend, Tom, at work had his leaving do. It's weird and sad that we'll never work together again (i'm pretty sure everyone else is glad that Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee have been separated), but he's moving to University so i'm also super happy for him.
So anyway, back to the leaving do. We went to Roxy Lanes in town and had 2 rounds of bowling. Never drink and bowl.
Ever.
Before you know it bowling balls were flying all over the place and people were racing to take each others goes. I'm pretty surprised no one broke their foot to be honest (Dayle was throwing them backwards). After that some of us moved on to Tom's house where more drinking and fun and games continued. I remember it took around 2 hours to order a pizza and have it delivered. I don't think i've ever been so angry at pizza before. The next morning was the typical walk (or taxi journey) of shame in last night's clothes. Classy.

Another weekend I went to an 18th which resulted in a spontaneous trip to town. Which then resulted in another walk of shame the next morning after staying at my other bestie, Mary's house.

Then it came to starting University again. Here we go with second year. Before I know it i'll have no social life and will be permanently glued to textbooks and writing essays.

It's not been the most exciting of months, but with my dance show being next month, October should be more interesting!

Get To Know The Blogger

Recently my pal Thomas (mentioned quite a few times on this blog) tagged me in a questions post located here for me to answer.

1. Do you have a middle name? I do not. I'm usually quite reluctant to tell this story but I want to answer these as truthfully as possible. When my sister was born, I was a very jealous 6 year old because my new baby sister got a middle name and I never had one. I know, how rude. So I decided to make up my own. Annabel Star Riley. My Mum tells this to everyone we meet so naturally, I get called Star a lot.
2. What was your favourite subject in school? I loved Art. I've always been very creative and get my drawing skills from my Dad. I'd spend hours drawing in my sketchbooks and adding things to projects. It's the only thing i've ever received an A in.
3. What's your favourite drink? Wine. Unless it's none alcoholic, then it's more wine because that's ridiculous.
4. What's your favourite song at the moment? I hate this question. I can never pick one song to focus on. I usually have a top few but at the moment i'm liking a lot of different things.
5. What would you name your children? It's kind of a Riley family 'in' thing, but my Granddad used to love birds, especially Robins. I absolutely adored my Granddad and ever since he died 5 years ago it's always been a thing to see a Robin and know that Granddad's looking out for us. It's because of this I want to name my first girl Robyn.
6. Do you participate in sports? That's hilarious.
7. What's your favourite book? Nope. Impossible. You can't do that to me.
8. What's your favourite colour? Purple. My room looks like Barney threw up.
9. What's your favourite animal? I really like Dolphins and Tigers. For as long as I can remember it's been my #1 dream to swim with Dolphins. I finally got to do this in Mexico a few years ago. Next on the bucket list is to cuddle a Tiger cub.
10. What's your favourite perfume? I've been using Thierry Mugler's Alien for a while now and I love love love it, however in Duty Free on the way home from Mallorca last week I treated myself to a bottle of Marc Jacob's Violet which i'm quite liking right now.
11. What's your favourite holiday? Definitely Christmas. I'm one of those sickeningly happy people that get way too excited when the Coca Cola advert first screens in November. And I still can't sleep on Christmas Eve.
12. Have you graduated from High School? I have indeed. Just under 4 years ago.
13. Have you been out of the country? A few times yes. I've been on holiday to Jamaica, Mallorca, Menorca, Lapland, Paris, Belgium, Mexico and Spain. I've never lived or travelled abroad, but I'm planning to do both of those in the US when University is out of the way.
14. Do you speak another language? Not fluently. I know quite a bit of Spanish which I try use as much as possible when i'm on holiday there. I'd love to be fluent one day though.
15. Do you have any siblings? I do. She's my favourite human and the bane of my life, Emma.
16. What's your favourite store? Either River Island or Waterstones.
17. What's your favourite restaurant? I could eat at TGI Fridays every day of the week. I got pretty close to this once. I felt like I had to work out for months afterwards though.
18. Do you like school? I didn't like High School. I was bullied towards the beginning so that wasn't fun. But I really enjoyed 6th Form.
19. Who are some of your favourite YouTubers? I really don't watch YouTube videos that much. Just the likes of whatever pops up on Facebook. I'm subscribed to Tom Fletcher from McBusted who seems to pull out a classic video every month, and I also quite like Zoella's videos.
20. What's your favourite movie? Jurassic Park. Hands down.
21. What are some of your favourite TV shows? The Big Bang Theory, The Vampire Diaries, FRIENDS, Sherlock and Game of Thrones.
22. PC or MAC? I love my MAC more than I love myself.
23. What phone do you have? iPhone 5s in gold (debating getting the next iPhone when it's released though)
24. How tall are you? This is pretty much the same answer Tom gave but my situation's the same. I think i'm 5'8" but Mum tell's me i'm 5'7" so ok.
25. Any pets? I have a demented cat called Freddie. I'm convinced he is the spawn of Satan.

There you go, now you know me a little better! I now nominate Emma.

I'm back!

'Afternoon Bloggers.

Apologies for the little 'hiatus' I've taken over the past couple of months. I think it's probably the busiest I have ever been! I've got loads to catch you up on so there'll be a few blog posts in the coming weeks.

Another reason for the pause in posts is that I can't seem to settle on the theme and layout of my blog and I ended up getting a little frustrated! Any suggestions/ideas will be greatly appreciated.

Will post soon!
𝕒𝕟𝕟𝕒𝕓𝕖𝕝

The Liebster Award.

Just recently I was nominated for the Liebster Award by the lovely Pinkie Prim. Thanks for the nomination! I love your blog and your photography is excellent.

The Liebster Award helps promote low-key bloggers with under 200 followers that you think deserve more recognition!

There are 4 rules:
1. Thank and link the person who nominated you.
2. Answer the nominator's 11 questions.
3. Nominate 11 blogs with less than 200 followers who you think deserve this award and include their links.
4. Create 11 questions for these nominees to answer, and notify them via social media/blogs.

Here are the questions that Pinkie Prim asked me:

1. How many times have you been abroad and which holiday was your favourite? I've been abroad at least 10 times to various countries. My favourite place i've visited so far is Mexico, but my favourite holiday is the one I go on every year with my family to Mallorca.
2. What are your 3 favourite make up products? Soap & Glory's Supercat liquid eyeliner in black, MAC's Rebel lipstick and Browzings by Benefit.
3. What is your favourite clothing shop? Topshop, i'm obsessed with their jeans.
4. Do you have any pets? I have a cat called Freddie. You can read about him here.
5. Which breed of dog is your favourite? I've always wanted a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel ever since I made one called Charlie on Nintendogs.
6. When did you start blogging and what do you like/dislike about it? I started this blog just over 2 years ago. I love that sometimes I can escape from the real world and be completely honest in my posts without feeling judged. I've always wanted to be a writer so creating things for people to read is very enjoyable. However, sometimes I get a bit of writers block and it can really bug me for a while. All I want to do is keep writing posts but on occasion I am out of ideas.
7. What make up products do you use on an everyday basis? Rimmel Match Perfection foundation in True Ivory, Rimmel Stay Matte powder in Transparent, Benefit Browzings in Dark, Soap & Glory Supercat liquid eyeliner in Black and Maybelline Colossal Go Extreme mascara in Leather Black.
8. Do you prefer the countryside or the city? I love living in the city. I couldn't imagine it any other way. However every now and again it's nice to take a little vacation in the countryside for some peace and quiet.
9. What is your favourite type & brand of chocolate? I can never get enough of Galaxy, but white chocolate has to be the best.
10. What is your favourite TV programme? The Vampire Diaries.
11. Who is your Celebrity crush? Zac Efron. 

I now nominate these 11 blogs to take part in the Liebster Award! Just click on their names to check their blogs out:

1. Pretend It's A Plan
2. Pretty Little Vibe
3. Abby McHale
4. Beauty From Within
5. http://Emma
6. Little Bit Of Everything
7. Jessica Victoria
8. Make Up, Music and Fashion
9. The Beauty Solution
10. Jenna Loves Beauty
11. Quirks and Queries

My 11 questions:

1. What's your number 1 dream?
2. 3 things that you couldn't live without?
3. If you could change 1 thing about the world, what would it be and why?
4. Why did you start blogging and what do you like about it?
5. 1 strange fact about yourself?
6. If you could be someone for a day, who would you be and what would you do?
7. Pepsi or Coke?
8. What music do you like to listen to?
9. If you could travel to 3 places in the world and go nowhere else ever, where would you go?
10. Who is your role model?
11. Dogs or cats?

Make sure you check out all of the blogs that are tagged in this post!

Shoutout to mini me.

This is my sister's blog, she's only just got it so follow and be patient - she'll post soon!

http://emma-riley.blogspot.co.uk/

She's super cool.

Here is possibly the only nice photo we have together (We pull silly faces a lot)

(She's the one on the right)