into the magical realm

Today I whipped up a quick edit of a shot I took last month. I used this photo I found on Flickr.

wales | day two

It's been a long time since I wrote this, but here you go - part 2! It's a very picture heavy post!

So the first thing we did in the morning was explore the wooded are in the middle of the caravan park. It was a huge sort-of indent in the ground; there was a stream and lovely nature walks to follow.

I was trying to get a family portrait (minus myself and Eben, who chose not to join us), but ended up with this, which I find equally funny. It just shows what our crazy little family is like!

Of course, I couldn't pass this little beauty and ended up with this picture.

The walk took us down to the sea, which was incredibly windy and cold. Sometimes I really regret not taking fingerless gloves everywhere with me!

Ta-dah! A lovely portrait of my parents.

There were three gorgeous dogs  playing around on the beach whilst we were there. They wouldn't stop dancing in the water and chasing footballs that were thrown for them.

The boys were rather proud of themselves here. Gabriel has learnt the art of drawing in the sand.

Here we go. This is my absolute favourite photo of these guys!

Time for a selfie with my beautiful little brother!

And one taken when he was least expecting it!

After the beach, we ate and my family went swimming. Meanwhile, I sat in the café/restaurant with a Slushie and the wifi. As nice as it was to take a break from everyday life, there's only so long you can go without talking to your friends, mainly the ones who live abroad or were holidaying in Italy.

Anyway, then we drove the short distance into town and sat down with good old fish and chips.

We saw these birds perched on a nearby roof as we sat looking out to sea with our food. Nothing like food at the seaside! Luckily, the weather had turned for the better by this time, so we didn't get rained on.

Walking along the quay gave us some spectacular views!

This was probably my favourite part of the day. The boats looked so, so pretty!

We found a lovely little park overlooking the water here, so we sat with ice creams and listened to a local guy busking. Well, he was just sitting in the park singing with his guitar, but then everyone went up to him with money, which surprised him a lot. But he shouldn't ave been surprised; he was incredible!

When we got back to the caravan, we looked at the town we had just visited, and saw this huge amount of smoke! So glad we got out of there when we did!

It was so good watching the sun set over the sea. We'd missed it before, but it was the clearest night and looked amazing.

tunesday

Who else is excited for S Club 7's reunion?!

pointe shoe padding

I've finally found the perfect padding for my pointe shoes! I've trialed it for four weeks now, and it's working really well.

My shoes, disgustingly gross ouch pouches, and the toy stuffing I use as lamb's wool. I make sure to stuff my pointe shoes with carrier bags (they have to be matching, OCD! ;) ) when I'm not wearing them, so they can force the moisture out and not destroy the glue.

The synthetic stuffing is also working really well! I love using lamb's wool but didn't have my own, so I was resourceful and this works equally as well.

Now, my new favourite thing to do is the blister plaster on my toe. I had a blister here some time ago and it still hurts so much when it rubs on my shoe, so this is really useful and enables me to not feel a thing on it while dancing.

Plaster + tights.

Plaster + tights + ouch pouch + shoe.

Plaster + tights + ouch pouch + shoe + legwarmer.


I can't get over how much I love these leg warmers! They're really cosy and so pretty! Anyway, I hope you liked this post! What's your perfect pointe padding?

teeny tiny mario mushroom

So I was looking for something to do this afternoon, and I ended up armed with my crochet hook and embroidery thread. I've found my love for micro crochet in the past, and today I played around to make this!

It's super tiny at only 18mm tall, and it's so cute!

Here you can see how small it is compared to me!

And here ;)

Anyway, I made it using two strands of embroidery thread and a 1.25mm hook from this pattern. It only took a little while to make, and everyone loves it :P

tunesday

I'm pretty much obsessed with this song now! Our big ballerinas did a pointe dance to this at a previous dance show, and I now have ideas myself for a contemporary piece. Thanks Aimee for reminding me of this!

tunesday

Apologies for my recent absence, but I've had too much stuff to do for school, I really need to make a schedule. Anyway, I was using this to help me concentrate when writing my entry for a creative writing competition; it helps so much!

the stress is killing me...

Right, I struggle to say things out loud, so it's best I explain through this blog. I've been under such a lot of stress recently.

• I'm really stressing about my GCSEs, which are only months away!
• I'm trying to juggle extra time at school after 3.30 every week to stay for my AS level. Coursework starts in a couple of weeks, so I'll be drowning in that before long.
• My mocks are in December and I'm frantically trying to revise for them.
• I'm struggling to get to dance classes on time through the sheer amount of homework  I have to do.
• I think I've more or less lost one of my closest friends, so I'm pretty bummed about that now.
• I'm doing extra stretching sessions in my very short 'relaxing' time, but more rececently it's become 'revision and stretch' time.
• I have at least two exams a week, and that's pretty stressful in itself.
• I'm not getting enough sleep. I'm trying my very hardest to sleep, but it's just not working. I guess my brain is far too busy.
• Trying to keep up to date with this blog.
• I hardly have enough time to even make contact with my friends. Sucks.

Now, to everyone else, these things may seem extremely trivial, especially as I'm finally getting into the real world, and everyone else has much larger problems than I do. But these things are all so important to me, so I'm trying my hardest to fit everything in and it's not quite working.

And because of these, I'm getting very snappy at everyone; I constantly seem to be in a bad mood, and when talking to people, or even writing on the blog, I seem to be saying things I don't mean. At least, I'm not explaining them properly.

I get so caught up in the moment and writing really helps me to just get it out, so my head can feel a bit lighter again. I guess I just haven't been thinking about anyone else recently and have just been trying to make my 'burden' a little lighter, and that's so selfish of me, and I hate it so much.

It's all becoming a lot now; I'm doing too much. I think I may break soon if I don't do something. Or I'm going to have to leave something behind in the wayside. And that will have to be some form of dance, I guess. School is a priority until I get my grades, as much as I hate that idea, it's true. I love dance and my school more than anything, but GCSEs come first.

Please, God, help me, and I will repay you. I don't mean to hurt anyone, and this is really hard to admit I'm doing wrong but I am, and all I want to do is fix it.

Please.

think happy | 52/52

I'm so glad it's Sunday now, I've not stopped all week. Welcome to the real world Carys! But seriously, it feels good just to be able to sit down and do my own thing after so many exams.

You may also have noticed that this is the last Think Happy! I've been doing this for a year now, and I'm going to stop these Sunday posts. In return, I feel I'll be able to post more freely about other topics, so hopefully that means more posts! Yay!


1. Last night I went to a joint birthday party two of my friends hosted, and I had an amazing time, except the blisters! Ouch, you shouldn't dance in heels for three hours, I don't envy you uni/college lot who party multiple times a week!

On the other hand, we got a lot of dancing done!

Storm, me and Imi

2. I also really enjoyed dance classes yesterday.

Slightly blurry photo of me in my crazy colours! Normally I wear a black skirt, but I went for red for a change!

In pointe, I decided to film some of the work we did, and watching back the footage has given me more of an idea of what to do to improve. I'll be doing this more often!

3. I figured out the most perfect in-pointe-shoe padding for my feet at the minute! Will be writing about that this week, I found a couple of new tricks that completely take the pain of pointe away for me.

4. I've been working on my splits, although only in dance classes. Monday night consisted of street dance, but I can't remember if we did splits then or not. I think we did. On Tuesday night at contemporary, Becky got out the crash mats again, so everyone could practise their forwards roles. I'm not doing one in our dance, so I just sat by the mirrors stretching out my back and stretching my splits, which felt so fulfilling. Last but not least, in ballet yesterday Kerstin had us doing some splits stretches, and I didn't have to do as many as usual to get my splits, which I was so proud of!

5. Best til last.........

I GOT A CLEAN DOUBLE PIROUETTE ON MY BAD SIDE! Wooo!!!

To make it seem even better, I wasn't exactly trying either, I was attempting a single but ending up just carrying on, and who was I to stop it? Unfortunately, my camera was being a little shit and decided not to record this, or my wonderful pirouette/piqué turns across the room, which more than annoyed me! But at least people saw me do it, and my camera recorded my courus!