NCL-DXB-BNE

After frantically selling/throwing away all of my personal belongings, moving out of our house and packing and re-packing a 30kg suitcase we were ready to fly to Brisbane.
We had a lot of emotional goodbyes, especially my boyfriend's parents, 'You're leaving forever' 'We'll never see you again' - cue guilt and stress! But we reassured them we'd be back, we were going on an adventure, to try it out, nothing was set in stone and who knew if we'd even like it!
We relaxed a little on the plane and excitement took over, our next stop was Dubai!
Dubai was incredible. I loved it so much and it was a great start to our adventure. We stayed at the Intercontinental which was insane.
We went to the Burj Khalifa, Wild Wadi water park, old town Dubai, Bubblicious brunch and on a sand dune safari.
Brunch was my favourite thing ever; all you can eat international food stations and unlimited cocktails and champagne! The dream!
In true Brit style we got wasted and ate way too much. We went back to the hotel and scoffed a Birthday cake that had been put in the room for my sister's boyfriend, did drunk gymnastics/head stands and tried to drink even more. This culminated in me waking up to the sound of my boyfriend filling the bath with vomit and sicking on my bikini and towels. What a time to be alive!

Although it was super muggy and hot in Dubai, I loved how lavish everything is. The hotels, malls and restaurants are all huge and expensive and we really felt like royalty at the Intercontinental.
Before we went to Dubai, I read about the cultural differences and respecting the culture: you can't hold hands or kiss in public, you have to be covered up and people had told me when they'd visited they'd felt a cultural difference which made me skeptical about our trip.
I have to say I didn't really feel this difference. I thought I would feel restricted and I didn't at all. But then again snogging in public and wearing skimpy clothes aren't really my forte.

So after our amazing trip in Dubai came to an end, we boarded our flight to Brisbane!
We were met at the airport by my cousin. One of the main reasons we chose Brisbane was because my cousin and his wife live here. They said we could stay as long as we needed while we got sorted with jobs and a flat. This was amazing to have, I don't think we'd have been able to move to another city knowing we'd have to pay rent straight away and having the comfort of being with family made the move easier.
We lived there in the suburbs for a few months, going on day trips, flat hunting and enjoying our time off work. We always knew we'd live in the city, but living in the suburbs cemented this for us, we needed to be near the action!
We moved to a 5* newly built hotel in Fortitude Valley, close to great restaurants and bars, a short walk into the city and it has a pool, gym and looks onto the Story Bridge. Oh and IT'S A FIVE STAR HOTEL!!
We were very excited!
Downsides: I HATE flat viewings and our flat came unfurnished so we had to buy our furniture off Gumtree. Cousin had to get van, pick up stuff, move all stuff to city = ball-ache.
We've lived here nearly 5 months now. It's the first time my boyfriend and I have lived just the two of us and we love it. :)
Although the job hunt hasn't exactly gone to plan...

Re-Rewind

So let's go back to where I left off in 2014: final year of uni. One of the hardest years of my life, so much work, so many decisions. I remember feeling like I didn't want to do it anymore, not just because it was hard, I starting thinking what if fashion's not for me, do I really want a job in fashion?
My placements hadn't given me much faith in the fashion industry and I wasn't really aware of what options there were for me.
But if I am anything, I am persistent! I had put in so much hard work over nearly 4 years of uni and wasn't about to quit. So I finished the year with a 2:1 which I was so over the moon with! But I was also a bit dead inside haha
I was really pleased with my accessories collection and when I look back on it now I'm really proud of it, even though then I was sick of the sight of it!

http://www.northumbriafashiondesignandmarketing.com/annarichardson/

The Mercury bag, based on liquids, made with screen printed liquid satin.

So then I started applying for jobs. I couldn't get a job in retail as I had no retail experience and there are hardly any other fashion based roles in Newcastle; confusion once more! Do I move? WHAT WILL I DO?!

After waitressing for a bit at the hotel my sister worked at, I applied for a job at Handbag Clinic, a handbag repair workshop just outside of Newcastle.
It was a dreary 45 minute bus out of Newcastle, in an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere.
But it was in fashion right? The place was okay and the people were nice and I got offered the job the next day.
The job was as a stitch technician, repairing handbags by hand-stitching; stitching ripped handles, linings, pockets, making new parts and attaching hardware.
Although we had targets to meet, it was pretty relaxed, I was enjoying not having to talk to customers and I made some great friends. The job was easy enough and enjoyable and I was getting some practical fashion experience.
I had been there almost a year when they asked if I'd like to work in their retail shop in Newcastle as an in-store stitch technician as they had one in Chelsea and it worked well.
I was chuffed to be asked and also super grateful as it meant I could walk to work and not have to get the awful bus super early in the morning. And I got a huge pay increase!
It was all top secret and I wasn't allowed to tell anyone I worked with as they were firing some people for me and someone else to swoop in and run the shop. This was so difficult, I literally left the workshop one day and never went back.
But then I had a great year in the Handbag Clinic shop, gaining customer service, retail and sales experience. I was a lot happier, walking to work and interacting with people on a daily basis, managing my own time and workload.
And then I decided it was time to move on, our house contract was coming to an end so we thought instead of renting again we'd just move to the other side of the world...

Twenty-Eighteen

So it's been a while since I wrote: about three and half years!
I've been reading through my past posts and realised how much I love to write and it's great revisiting past memories. (Good and bad!)
Most of my previous stuff started as I'd moved to London, strangely enough I am re-starting my blogging from Brisbane, Australia where I moved to 6 months ago.
Apart from the obvious similarities in moving away from home, starting a new life and job in a strange and far away place (a lot further this time!) I guess as in London, in Brisbane I find myself alone sometimes and needing a hobby; hence the blogging.

I have far too much time on my hands at the moment for thinking. I listened to a podcast with Fearne Cotton and Matt Haig (Reasons to stay alive) and they were explaining how writing is a therapy and makes your feelings tangible. As much as you don't want other people to know what you have been going through, it's important to tell people as you just become introverted and it's as if those feelings don't matter as you've just kept them bottled up.
I'm learning that I need to express myself more, I've seen a huge change in myself over the past three years. I'm no longer as care-free, maybe that's just something to do with getting older and knowing more and being more aware of what's going on around me, but I feel I'm struggling a bit more than a few years back.
But I'm kinda okay with that, knowing that I can get through hard times and see a brighter future ahead. It's just trying to get there that's the issue!

I'm starting to wonder whether I run away from things and think I'll find something (or myself) away from home, but obviously all of my baggage just gets carted onto the next place.
I'm looking for work in Brisbane which I'm not having much luck with and I find myself feeling lost and without purpose. I'm applying for all these jobs that I really don't care about! I have no idea what I want to do with my life, what job I want to have, which I guess most people feel at some point but I need to find a way to discover that.

So onwards and upwards with self discovery...

I'm feeling 22

So my 22nd birthday is rapidly approaching! Amongst all the uni work I have managed to arrange a lovely weekend involving lots of prosecco, food and afternoon tea. I'm feeling pretty happy that it's at the start of the uni year where I can enjoy myself for the weekend and the work load isn't too much.
Although I am known for leaving things until the last minute so I am determined to push aside my urges for trebles in Newcastle and knuckle down after the celebrations!
I have a table booked at the Silk Room in Newcastle for a meal (review to follow!) From what I've seen and heard it's very nice and fancy! I will be queen for the weekend!
It's made me think about birthdays, how much of a big deal it used to have to be, you'd have to have to best party and you had to invite loaadddss of people (some of which were just invited to make up numbers). I'm surprisingly excited for this birthday, maybe as it's my first with a boyfriend and I'm hoping I get spoilt haha but I'll have the important people there and who doesn't like being centre of attention for a day...or a weekend!
Up-market food and champagne cocktails called for a new outfit, so I'm wearing monochrome; a black bardot top and a white skirt. I've wanted a white skirt for ages and found one that I love and is a really good fit from Missguided.

Black Bardot top: Missguided £4.99 White Chain Skirt: Missguided £19.99
Jewellery: All Primark £1.50-£3
Boots: Fashion Union £32
Studded clutch: Marni £590

You might be thinking "hang on, she's got an outfit for around 60 quid and that bag is £590?!" The bag I actually have is pretty similar to the one in the picture and it got it from Primark a while back for around 6 quid! Pretty big saving! I think £600 is a little steep for bag although if I could afford it I'm sure I would splurge!

I do love a bargain and although I think some things need to be invested in if you want them to be high quality and last the season, for now I'd rather spend my money on boozy bubbles and having a good time!

Happy Birthday to meeeeee!!

You've got time

Running parallel to the theme of 'growing up' in my last post, comes the theme of time. Time moves on, we grow, everything is constantly changing around us with time. 

A contrast that could be considered here is life vs death, death is inevitable in life and as time goes on it gets closer...(how morbid!); our biological clocks are literally ticking away.

Change is a by-product of time. We have physical changes to our bodies, evolution, growth and decay in plants and animals, climate, our economy. 

I've read somewhere that time was a human invention, a way of categorizing change in our lives.

One of my favourite quotes is one by Dr. Seuss: 'How did it get so late so soon?' which I think describes most days for me! 

I will have set out with the greatest of intentions but time goes so quickly and my procrastination levels are so high that the day is over and I have achieved very little.

Although, similarities could be shown within any career: if you are in a monotonous job, your daily achievements could also be very low and your day unfulfilled apart from the promise of cash for your hours.  

This then made me think if death is inevitable, what are we really living for, is it getting the cash from these jobs so that we can have a few holidays a year? Or if we go really deep into it, do we discuss the meaning of life?! When I first considered life vs death I felt this was more a literal term; change in the physical sense, but it could be argued that we aren't really living anyway...

Literal time is shown in clocks, hourglasses and we even use the sun to tell the time. We have certain things to do at hours in the day; we wake up in the morning and sleep in the evening. Different parts of the world are ahead or behind in time and we fly through time zones to reach a destination. 

We know things from the past; past monarchs, inventors, deaths, discoveries, animals and disasters due to records and the trails they've left behind but we know nothing about the future...nothing is certain. 

Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, the list is endless but we can't find the time to fit everything in.

I like the below quote too, as it refers to time as a value. Although it is an inanimate object, it spoken about as tangible and compared to us using it as money.

Time is always used as a metaphor. Time is money. Time is a healer. Time is a gift. There's so many angles to go down! 

Let's hope I have the time to look at everything! 

Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional

I've been looking at the theme of 'growing up' as a starting point for my final year research. This stemmed from an interest in kidswear which led onto children's literature. The books that stood out to me were Peter Pan and Alice in Wonderland which both contain this theme. It made me consider the contrasts of wanting to stay young and wanting to grow up, which I think we go through in life constantly. The strains of work and responsibility make us want the simplicity of childhood and that 'ignorance is bliss' feeling where you don't have a care in the world.

On the other hand, being younger than legal age for drinking, doing naughty things and not being old enough to come home when we wanted made us wish we were older.

I'm sure most of us would say that once we became older it wasn't all it was cracked up to be!

I've read a lot of theories on Peter Pan. There are a lot of sinister analyses of the story, but ultimately J.M.Barrie based the characters on his life and his relationships. 

The main theme of the book is that all children must grow up; Wendy goes back to her parents, she can't be like Peter: he is there for her to learn that she needs to go home and accept her responsibilities and she can't stay young forever. Peter is irresponsible and naive and is there to show Wendy and the reader what you cannot be rather than what you can be.  

On the contrary in Alice in Wonderland, Alice literally grows and shrinks with different encounters of food and drinks within the book. Analysis of this shows that growing up is unpredictable and Alice has to deal with being too small or too big in certain situations. 

So alike Peter pan, we are shown that growing up is inevitable and responsibility has to be taken, even if it is a bumpy ride!

I find it really interesting going back to books and films from childhood and rediscovering the adult themes in them that you would never have noticed before. It makes you wonder do we take these themes on subliminally or are they there to be discovered when we are older. (We only realise when we have grown up..oohhh! Think I'm getting too deep into this!)

I like the contrast shown here of staying young vs growing up, which has spurred me on to look at other contrasts and bring this into a fashion sense. I think this would be a nice theme for kidswear too as it is directly linked. 

And on that note I'll wrap this up as I think I've aged writing this post!
My brain hurts.

Feeling pun-derful!

I love puns. I really do find them hilarious. I always have, but seeing a wooden fish sign at a friend's new house saying 'Seas the day' spurred a weekend filled full of pun-derful moments.
I think I have found my (somewhat nerdy) hidden talent.

From the veggie:

To the animal world:

To the rude but informative:

What's not to love!
I am currently trying to find some way to incorporate puns into my final year collection along with cute animals and vegetables, how hard can it be?!
Anyway I better get back to my book about anti-gravity, I just can't put it down!