A little letter from me to you

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Dear my lovely readers, bit of a deep post today but it's something I've wanted to do for a while, this is the sort of thing you can't just sit down and write whenever, wherever because the words won't flow freely. I'm all cosy in bed right now, feeling inspired. Basically I think it's about time I shared some positivity with you all. Hopefully this won't turn into a ramble but if it does, I know it will be worthwhile.

Where to begin, life is crazy isn't it, unfortunately everyone has rough patches, the reason being that you will come out of the storm into the sunshine a changed person. You will come out of that dark tunnel into the light with a new outlook on life, it may take a while but believe me, it will happen. I used to think that all of that was a load of rubbish, it's so easy just to look past it and say "yeah right" when you think that your life is in the centre of that storm, or deep inside the tunnel with no where to turn. Four years ago, my life entered that storm, that tunnel. Things weren't easy, me and my family were affected in so many different ways, I felt like my life was just tumbling down a steep hill into a pile of nothingness. That storm did begin to clear up, as all storms do, however, the grey clouds remained as I had ended up a stranger to myself. At that time, I hadn't yet become this great person in the sunshine with a positive outlook on life, I felt trapped. My confidence had hit rock bottom and even answering the register would be one of my worst nightmares. I would start to panic as I felt the eyes of my classmates turn to me, staring at me. Being asked a question in class made me wish for the ground to just open up and let me in, my hands would get clammy. I would begin to shake as panic filled up inside of me, even though I knew the answer, words just wouldn't exit my mouth, they wanted to be locked up in there. It was not nice. I found it so hard to talk to people, making friends was such a hard task, I just couldn't do it. I felt extremely lonely for a while, I didn't know what to do.

To this day I'm still not sure exactly what I did. I just know that the pieces started to fit back together, it will happen. The number one thing that kept me strong and pulled me through was quotes, and quotes told me a lot. I'm going to do another post on quotes soon, I put this one together way back when my blog was just a baby, looking back I was all about not giving up, which is something I didn't do. The number one lesson I have learnt from my past, and for anyone who is struggling please take this in, life really is too short to be anything but happy. It takes a lot for me to get angry or annoyed these days, I'm genuinely a very happy chappy. One thing that does make me a little sad however, is hearing people complain about silly things, my Twitter and Facebook feed is constantly bombarded with people expressing their complaints about some minor problems which in reality, aren't problems at all. I no longer get involved with silly, pointless drama, if it does come my way I simply just say "I don't want to argue, I'm not going to talk about it" and I can tell you it's one of the best things I have done, life is so much more relaxed. Why spend your life feeling angry? Why would you want to spend precious minutes, hours, days of your life feeling that way? We should all realise how lucky we are and that life really does go by quickly so why waste it feeling unhappy, this is something which now crosses my mind everyday. I have a roof over my head, I have tasty food, I am healthy, I have an amazing family, amazing friends and the perfect boyfriend. I am so lucky and so are you. For example, "if you can read this you are more fortunate than 3 billion people in the world who cannot read it at all". There are unfortunately people way worse off, and I wish I could make it all better for them. We should be grateful for the life we live, we should make the most of it and live it to the full. There is no point in spending your life filled with negativity, see the positives in everything, be as happy as you can be, take each moment and make it beautiful, create big goals and never give up on your journey to reach them. I am now determined to do voluntary work abroad and travel America, I want to travel the world to be honest. I aim to become a social worker, I want to help people dig their way out of tough situations. I may still have confidence issues but I'm working on them, I have come a long way, I'm far from what I once was. This is me. I hope this is me forever because I don't think my outlook on life can get much better. I think I will leave it there. 

I hope I have been able to reach out to at least one of you.

Remember, life is beautiful.

So are you.

Love,

Rachael xx

Inspiration 2

Hello m'loves, I hope you are all doing good. For hours on end last night I found myself scrolling endlessly through the wonderful pages of Pinterest, Lockerz and Weheartit. Like I said in my last inspiration post (fashion and hair) I have just recently discovered these websites full of amazingness. Basically they have hundreds, thousands, possibly even millions (okay, that may have been an exaggeration, who knows?) of inspiring pictures of all sorts. I'm sorry if this is a little too soon after the last one I posted but I get excited when my screen is filled with lovely pictures, this was originally going to be a nail and make up edition but I got a little carried away in the boat of nail art and I just wanted to show you it all! I'm not one to venture into nail art myself, I think it can look absolutely amazing but with my impatience and unsteady hand I can see it ending in disaster. However, these new discoveries have definitely made me want to get my creative head on and have a good go at some nail art, maybe I'll start of with a bit of ombre, seems easy enough to do with a make up sponge, I still usually manage to mess up the most simple of things though. I would love to try the newspaper nails too, I love how they look! Any ways, here are some lovely nail art designs for you to feast your eyes on and maybe get inspired by.

'nail art edition':

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24

25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33

Once again, I have tried my best to link all pictures back to their original source, it aint as easy as it sounds though so do please forgive me!

So, which are your favourites? I really love them all, my little mind can't choose! Do you have the patience to experiment with nail art or do you prefer to just whack a colour all over each nail? I do hope you enjoyed this post and if you have accounts on any of these sites you could always give me a little follow if you fancy it. As for life, we've had communities week at school and I've been stuck doing gardening, it wasn't too bad when the weather was nice apart from my horrible sunburn. I literally have a 2nd degree burn on my shoulder, it looks like so many layers of my skin have been burnt off and there was a horrible looking, huge blister there yesterday, it's definitely made me very wary of the sun, I've never been burnt like this before! Please wear your sun cream guys! On Thursday when it was bucketing down we were made to go litter picking around the area with the council. Torture I tell you! I'm pretty sure everyone thought we were on community service, it definitely felt like punishment! We ended up looking like drowned rats, at least we got an early finish out of it. Yesterday I made some bunting for our garden with pretty material and I rather enjoyed it. Next week is futures week, all about university, fun stuff eh. 

What have you been up to?

Thank you for reading. Love, 

Rachael xx

Inspiration 1

Hello you lovely people! Hope you're well. So, I have spent the past few days in my pyjamas lazing around doing absolutely nothing productive, nothing wrong with that though is there? It is half term after all. An all nighter last Friday and another few very late nights have totally, well and truly messed up my sleeping routine meaning I have been waking up and falling asleep at silly times leaving me feeling all out of energy throughout the day. However, what this has led to is a bit of a new obsession; inspirational photo websites. They are crammed full of gorgeous photos which you can add to your own collections. I have managed to sign up to pinterest, lockerz and weheartit over the past few days and have spent hours and hours on each of them, I also signed up to tumblr but I have no idea what I'm doing on there! I'm probably not even using the others properly knowing me. There isn't much difference at all between the other 3 websites, especially pinterest and lockerz but they have all grabbed my attention and I have found so many photos that I want to share with you. I think I may do a few of these posts if you like them because there are so many lovely pictures on the sites that I want to show you, lets call this the 'fashion and hair edition':

1, 2, 3, 4, 5

6, 7, 8, 9, 10

11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18

19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25

* I have tried to link the pictures back to their original source, I am aware I haven't done a very good job, I just linked to where the picture took me. 

I don't know much about copyright and stuff, just tell me if I'm going to get wrong please, thanks... 

So, what can I say, aren't they lovely? I absolutely love all of the outfits, I noticed a lot of lace, but this time on the bottom half, I think I like it. I'm totally in need of a big clothes shop, it has reached the point where nothing looks good any more and my wardrobe doesn't excite me like it used too, yes, my wardrobe used to excite me. I'm also totally 100% sure that I am going to ombre my hair, many say that it has been done to death but honestly, in my 'real life' I haven't seen many people with it at all. I have wanted to do it for so long but didn't want to have to bleach my hair but what the hell, I'm going for it. I did want to do something crazy like pink or purple at first, I would love to have totally pastel hair if I had the balls but I shall not stray too far out of my comfort zone and go for a caramel colour. Hopefully that'll happen soon! Many pictures I came across totally inspired me to buy a curling wand and to start styling my hair properly, how gorge does Kristen Stewart look? For ages now I have just been lazy and left it in its natural state day in, day out, very occasionally reaching for the straighteners and I must say it looks rather lifeless so some styling and heat damage is needed I think.

I hope you're all having a nice weekend, if you have an account on any of these sites let me know! Also, do you like these type of posts? Thank you for reading. Love,

Rachael xx

Do not let the opinions of others consume you

I love quotes. That is all. They really do make me smile and take my thinking from negative to positive when i'm down, I do enjoying rambling on in my posts but i'm gonna give you a break from my rambles and let the pictures do the talking, possibly cheating considering the pictures contain words, oops. Personally my main issue is confidence so I am most inspired by quotes concerning that issue, I really hope you can take something from this post and know that everyone has their own insecurities but no matter what, you CAN overcome them. Of course there are so many more amazing quotes out there but these are just a selection from my little 'quotes' folder. The last one is actually a photo of my own bedroom wall, I love having it there as whenever I or anyone else walks in there it is to make you smile. If you are wondering I purchased it from ebay here, the company have so many other great designs too! Some people may say we shouldn't need reminders to be happy but I really recommend writing your favourite quotes wherever you can to give you a little boost when you need it most, I cannot remember exactly where I found the above pictures but they are most likely from here, such a great blog with some really inspiring quotes. I hope you enjoyed this post, what are your favourite quotes? 

Thanks for reading. Love, 

Rachael xx