The Nature Effect

I've always had a fascination with plants and the environment around me. As a child I would pick flowers and crush flowers, I even had a massive book for identifying flowers which I would spend hours looking at and I still do. My Father and I loved gardening and we were very fortunate in the fact that we had a massive garden and so we had an acre of land which we would plant everything on. Unfortunately we no longer live there and we rent the house out and the new owners have let our beautiful garden go wild. I remember that as child I once went to the school fair and they were selling some shrubs. I went up to them and told them the names of all the plants that they had on their stall and they were shocked that 9 year old knew the names to so many plants so for me I know it has always been a very large part of my life.

For me nature I believe that nature is such a big part of everyone's happiness and that plants seem to make people so much happier. For a lot of people it's a subconscious thing because they only have a dying mint plant for the shops and that's the extent of their plants and these people don't realise or appreciate the beauty and happiness that plants and wildlife brings to them. For others, such as myself, whenever i go out i find myself observing and taking in every plant I see.

Why discuss plants? I just think that many people don't appreciate them and they fall into the former category. The beauty that plants are able to create is amazing and they form such a large part of the planet and we rely on them so much yet many seem to dismiss them, without plants we would not be alive.

I wrote this because I was sat on my terrace outside my house surrounded by many beautiful plants and recently I don't feel as though I have been appreciating them as much as I should. It may seem stupid because of course plants can't hear us but it is still good to knowing accept that plants, wildlife and nature surround us and by seeing accepting the beauty and the necessity of plants we can change our state of mind and obtain a more peaceful and calming state of mind.

  

All my love xxx

What to do with 11 weeks (or Saturday a afternoon)

So here I am will 9.5 weeks ahead of me and having already wasted one of socializing I must now treasure the rest. So here are my aims for the summer and what I shall do when I find myself in bed staring into space and getting lost in my mind.

1- READ, I cannot tell you enough how amazing reading it because it truly is one of the best things

2- Sew, now this depends on the you but personally I adore sewing and think it is therapeutic

3- Knit, again not for everyone but I have to stop myself from staying up all night to knit because it is so obbesive

4- Paint, or draw just make something that allows you to observe what is around you

5- Walk, explore find somewhere you've never been and get your mind to see the world and see the beauty that surrounds us yet so many people ignore

6- GO ON YOUR PHONE LESS. This is something I am working on because for me it feels like a problem when you're on your phone for 8 hours a day. Know when to use your phone and when to just leave it and look around you.

People always say that they are bored and admittedly so do I but that's an attitude I am looking to change. If you are bored you are not trying. Bordem is no one's fault but your own, bordem stems from laziness and laziness stems from bordem. Don't get drawn into the vicious circle of bordem, cut the strings with it and let it know that it's not welcome back as this will directly result in your laziness decreasing.

Have an inspiring day and enjoy what you have xxx

Alive?

So apparently I am alive. I can't remember the last time I posted on here but I do know that it was a long long time ago.

I believe I started the blog in 2014 but don't take my word for it (I just checked and it was august 2014). That's three years ago and I haven't written a blog post about in almost a year and a half. Therefore I have changed as a person significantly, even reading back on the last post I made I no longer listen to that msuic and I'm sure in 3 years I will have again changed music taste.

However when I talk of change I wasn't talking of just music taste. As a person I have changed, my outlook on life as a whole and my life has changed. I no longer fear death to the extent that I used to, however I still ponder upon useless information.

Maybe a less important but still significant is that I am now vegan, I won't talk about that now but I am vegan. I hear your sigh of hatred and fear of me trying to convince you to be vegan however I will not force anyone to become vegan so you can continue reading without fearing the "that chicken got raped, then they stole it's milk and now you are frying it you inhumane person" talk.

On a unrelated note I just finished my exams (well two weeks ago) so I now have the whole summer ahead of me to not socialise. I have many plans and few involve seeing people so hopefully I can return to school full of energy and ready to sleep though A-levels

So why have I returned then? Well I have 11 weeks - 2 weeks so 9 weeks ahead of me and so naturally I must find something to do and blogging seemed like a very good idea.

So I now leave you as despite it being the holidays I am trying to not go to bed at 3am. I failed last night due to me obessively tidying till 3:30am.

Enjoy your day and focus on the good not the bad xxxxx

Motavtion- The Calm Before the Storm

Hello there, how are you all? Hope you’re better than me this week I have just recovered from an awful cold only to get a weird stomach, oh well I’ll live there are people who are suffering worse than me. Despite the fact that tis weeks topic is motivation I have found it very hard to keep myself motivated this week as I have not been sleeping well and I have struggled to have enough energy to last me the whole day. I currently feel like I could pass out I am so tired and I’ve not even done any exercise today. For that reason I want to share some calming for those moment is life when you just feel like sleeping away your problems you are so stressed. This week I have three exams and I haven’t revised for any off them because I’ve been doing homework so I made this playlist to put on when it all gets a bit much and I can just want to disappear for half an hour.

-        “Never be like you”- Flume, Kai

-        “Rumour Will”- Rudimental

-        “Retrograde”- James Blake

-        “What about us”- Flume, Chet Faker

-        “Warm Thoughts”- Flume

-        “Drop the Game”- Flume, Chet Faker

-        “Loud Places”- Jamie xx, Romy

-        “Bad Blood”- NAO

-        “The Journey”- Tom Misch

-        “Love for That”- Mura Masa, Shura

Or view the playlist here

This isn’t going to make you feel motivated but sometimes it’s important to take a break and relax, motivation is good but everything is good in variation. Sometimes there needs to be a calm before the storm.

Sorry it’s so short but this week has been so stressful and the week coming is not going to be any less stressful.

Sleep well (if you are going to sleep like me) or have a good day (if you have just woken up)

Tavi xxx

Motivation- Hobbies

Guess who’s back after far too long? It’s Octavia, I have been gone for far too long and I apologise but I have had so much school work and I’ve been busy pretty much every weekend since the year began. Mainly with scouts or school work, both of which seem to have taken over my life, scouts I enjoy school work not quite so much. Right now I have a whole sheet of maths questions and a 40 mark question to answer for drama, my teachers clearly love me very much. Anyway I didn’t come here to talk about my school life I came here to talk about my after school life.

This time last year I did nothing after school at all, I just used to come home and sit in bed watching Netflix till I went to sleep, which made me feel very unfit and didn’t give me any motivation to get out there and explore. I think everyone needs a hobby that they can do in there downtime so that they are not always attached to a screen and so that you can have some motivation do actually do other stuff as well. So firstly I am going to share what I do after school (in the summer term)-

Monday-

-        3.00-4.00: athletics

-        5.00-6.15: Helping out at beavers

-        8.00-9.30: Explorers

Tuesday-

-        3.00-7.30: sailing

-        9.00-9.30: swimming (depending on the amount of homework)

Wednesday-

-        7.00-9.00: young leaders (every other week)

-        7.00-9.00: swimming (every other week)

Thursday-

-        6.00-7.00: ballet

-        7.00-8.00: swimming

Friday-

-        7.00-9.00: swimming

So after writing that I have suddenly realised how much I do after school, I never realised I do so much. I may also be starting the flute again on a Wednesday or Friday so that’ll add more to my week. I enjoy it all though and there is not one of those things I would give up. I’m not suggesting you do all of these activities because you’ll end up like me with no social life but maybe pick one and do it every Monday. If you set it into you routine you can just fit everything else around it. Don’t tell me you don’t have enough time either because if you are reading this then you clearly have some extra time in your life.

Anyway I also want to talk to you about something else that I have just thought of and that is a monthly topic. Each month I will decide on a topic to focus all my blogposts around and you will hopefully get 4 of them a month, one rambley (like this one), one with photos, a creative post e.g. baking and a random post. Hopefully this will help me post more and have a more structured blog.

This month’s topic is motivation

Anyway I have now gone on for far too long, I shall see you all sometime next week (hopefully).

Much love Tavi xxx

             

 (also I changed the text hopefully this is easier to read xx)

A little bit of Happiness....

Hello, I’m back and it’s a 2016, I wish you all a happy new year and I hope that this year has gone well for you so far, and if you have made resolutions I hope that you have managed to stick with them, one more day and you can say you managed to keep it for a week and then there is only 51 weeks left. So you may have wondered where I disappeared to too, and honestly I just have been ridiculously busy doing homework and spending Christmas time with my family but I am now back and I want to give the blog a makeover and be more committed to the blog and give you more posts on a more regular basis.

Earlier on in the post I talked about New Year resolutions and I do think that they are important but I also think that people should be more honest with their new year’s resolutions. I think that a lot of people make not unrealistic resolutions as such more resolutions that will not benefit them and make them feel good all year round. Probably the most common new year’s resolutions is too be more healthy and do more exercise, and I don’t disagree with doing exercise I just think that people should not just think about themselves when writing there New Year’s resolutions. They should think about the people around them, the homeless man that they walk by every time they go to the gym, the people who started this year on a low thinking that no type of New Year’s resolutions would make things better or the people who will have to start a new year without a loved one. We all need a little help from everyone so this year as well as being happy make someone else’s day better.

This year give someone a little bit of happiness.

I hope you all had a good Christmas and enjoyed spending time with your family and celebrating the birth of Christ. I shall see you soon (hopefully)

Lots of love Tavi xxxx

BLOGMAS DAY 16- ITALY

Guess whose back? Yes it’s me Octavia; I took the last two days off as I have had a cold and I have been busy and tired and yea. Anyway as you can tell from the title of this post today I am going to share the rest of my holiday photos as I never actually shared them with you. Very different from the last set of photos which I was skiing in. Whereas in these photos I am now in 42°C/107°F (far too hot for a Brit like me) in Italy, so I hope you enjoy and I shall see you on the other side of the post.

Well that was fun looking back at that holiday it was also making me feel hot and glad to be living in England where it is currently 7°C/47°F (too hot) which is more my temperature at bit hot at times but it will do ;). I also I am very proud to say that I now own everyone’s Christmas presents and also a few presents for myself, exciting times with Octavia.

I shall see y’all tomorrow for another day of blogmas (it will actually be today as it is 12:34am right now)

Byeeeee Tavi xxxx

BLOGMAS DAY 15- SKIING PICTURES (APRIL 2015, COURCHEVEL)

 Hylô (hello in welsh) how are we all? I have swum 1km today and it has left me very tired, I am ready to go to sleep any second now. Lucky there is only one day left of school then it’s the holidays so I have something to be excited about. Although I have no one’s present and it is a real issue as people will have got me presents but I won’t have got them presents, so that may be awkward.

Anyway I am going to get onto todays post, which is a very belated post as I was having a little scroll though my blog posts and I am 99% sure that I never shared my skiing photos with you and I had such a good time skiing it one of my favourite sports, probably my favourite actually. So here are my skiing photos from April 2015…

Well I hope you liked those there weren’t actually too many so that’s good, I remember when I used to post like 150 photos, I make myself laugh sometimes. I shall see y’all tomorrow after I have broken up for the holidays.

Hwyl fawr (goodbye in Welsh)

Taviaaa xxx

BLOGMAS DAY 14- SCOUTS

Dzień dobry(hello in Polish) I have just been climbing basically all evening and I’m now so tired and latterly want to sleep on my keyboard but I have mussed too many days so today I bring you a post. It may not make any sense but at least you get something. I want to write about scouts today because I am always doing stuff with them and go to a scout meeting 2 or 3 times a week plus the weekends sometimes, so I feel like I should share with you why I love scouts so much.

·         So I speak about this reason all the time but I have made so many new friends with scouts, I really want to do the world jamboree (a big scout meeting)because I love meeting new people who all have different perspectives on life and the way we look at things.

·         All of the expeditions that I get to do they are all so fun even though I get cold and wet I always have fun and the leaders put so much effort into the days to make them amazing.

·         It has given me so much confidence I will soon have to be young leader and help lead a group of small kids, which is so much responsibility but I’m still excited.

·         I can be myself not pretend to be some super girly girl or pretend to like things I don’t, not that I do that much, but I think to is important to feel confident in yourself and scouts has really helped me do that and helped me develop as a person

·         And most importantly it is where I have the most fun I get a weird hangover after scout camps where I feel really down and upset that they’re over.

I don’t know what else I can say to make you want to join scouts but really just do it you will not regret it, EVER. My experiences that I have with scouts will last with me for life and will probably be be a leader when I am older, it just has this lovely vibe around it which I never want to lose.

Anyway I shall see you tomorrow for a picture post xxx

punkt zdobyty fuksem (Goodbye in Polish)

BLOGMAS DAY 13- SECRET POSTS

Hæ (hello in Icelandic) sorry ended up not posting yesterday my Father decided to remove my laptop when I was brushing my teeth and so I never actually got round to posting it but oh well you have it now and you get two, you will probably (hopefully) get two tomorrow as well just so that I can catch up and also two on Thursday. Something very weird happened on this blog today, so I normally get 20ish views a say but today I have got 165 and I just kind of sat looking at my screen thinking who is reading my stuff. So please comment if you are reading because otherwise I get worried I may have a stalker. Anyway on to the post today and it is all the post that I started then never posted so prepare yourself for some cringe.

This one is called “As I see him Standing there”-

In year 8 (7^th grade) I was having some serious friend problems which consisted of me being friends with many different people, this left me feeling insecure and not sure who to trust, so much so that when someone doesn’t  reply to my message I get panicky and worry that they hate me. I am now very attached to all of my friends who I trust, but that’s a whole other blog post about my life as a teenager. I am telling you my life story because this is when it all started. I began worrying about really stupid things and would come home from school crying.

Apparently I really hated my friends; this one is simply titled “friends”-

Friends, they support you, they talk to you, but most importantly they love you, but what if they don’t what if they don’t love you back? What if they are just there? Just another person?

aThen it hurts, hurts so much all you want to do is die, huddle up and die. Sometimes friendship just feels like a balloon, you can hold on to it for as long as you like but you have to take care of it, or it will pop and float away never to be seen again, but what happens when you’re protecting the balloon, but actually you’re only holding the string, the balloon has floated away. That’s how I feel at the moment, I always try to take care of things and find it hard to hurt anything, and if I do hurt something I will be like a broken disk stuck on saying sorry. Which is why my friendships last, or so I thought. Now I just feel like my friend has floated away and all I’m left with is the string that I’m supposed to use to try and tie everything up, fix what can’t be fixed.

***

So there are actually only two posts that I have written then never finished but I also want to give you a link to some of my favourite posts that I have written this year

TheShadow

TheMirror of Representation

Untrusted

Honestly I love these posts they remind me of when I wasn’t as confident and when I wasn’t the strong person that I have become. Anyway I hope you liked that throwback post.

Lots of love Tavia xxx

Bless( goodbye in icelandic) my favourite so far

BLOGMAS DAY 12- TOP 10 INSTAGRAM ACCOUNTS OF 2015

Hello, how are we all, good I hope I have an English assessment tomorrow so that will go badly. Anyway I have just got hope from explorers and it is 10:00 so I am just going to do a quick post about Instagram, because it is a wonderful thing is it not? So here are my top 10 Instagram accounts that you should go follow (in no particular order)

1.   @scottcbakken

2.   @ballerinaproject_ (if you’re a dancer)

3.   @livingitrural

4.   @alliemtaylor

5.   @robstrok

6.   @griffinlamb

7.   @samuelelkins

8.   @littlegreenshed (fellow blogger)

9.   @lobsterandswan (also a blogger)

10. @ianandrewnelson

And so that is all of my favourite Instagram’s of 2015 I would recommend following them all as all of their accounts are great especially @abirdhouseofablog’s account. Actually I haven’t posted on there in 15 weeks so maybe I should do a lovely Christmas post.

Anyway, have a nice Tuesday tomorrow. Much love

Tavi xxxxx

BLOGMAS DAY 11- "CAMPING" IN DECEMBER

Hallå (hello in swedish) so yes, I may have disappeared, but I have been camping and doing homework so yes life goes on. Anyway it is definitely not the 11^th today but I can’t just miss a day, so I will have to post two or three one day. As I was saying, I have been camping this weekend and so I thought that I would write about it.

So you all may think that camping in December is crazy but I go to scouts and they make me do all sorts of crazy stuff that makes me cold and smell of wood smoke. I am currently doing this thing called the “Dragon Camp Challenge” and we have to camp out once a month for one night, every month for 1 year, and so this month is December and that is why I am camping in December. Now when I saw camping I should really put some commas around the word “camping” as I wasn’t actually camping I was hammocking, and it wasn’t actually too bad I did also bring a tent as I wasn’t sure what was going to happen but I didn’t actually go into the tent the whole time I was there #proud. We arrived where we were camping at about 3.00 after a long and hard walk of 9km so we only had 1 hour to set up everything which just about manged to do. Then there was the fire to start because if your camping in December it is advised that you make a fire, so that was done then we played some wide games (basically big games of hide and seek and stuff). And then disaster struck and we realised that it was raining, not little feeble drizzle proper rain, and so we all got soaked, always bring many clothes when camping in wet December, I think I got though 3 different pairs of trousers, 2 jackets and 5 tops, and that wasn’t enough. Overall I had an amazing weekend as always with scouts, and I am so excited to do the next camp so I will report back to you about that also.

  

Bit of a side note here but you must may now call me a hero as I have saved a sheep (I will put some picture in) we found Billy the sheep on our walk back and being the nice people we are we saved him and I hope that her is doing very well.

So I shall see you very soon, sending you all my love xxxxxx

Adjö

Octavia xxxxxx