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.

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!

think happy | 51/52

Right, so it's once again Sunday, which means that there's only one week of these Sunday posts left now!


1. Street on Monday was 50/50, but I'm putting it in for the good half anyway. Hannah was feeling very down and I couldn't do anything to help her. But, on the plus side, she started to enjoy herself slightly when we got down to actually doing our dance. There's a bit where we have to do sexy walks, and we love that bit ;)

But Danny was taking part in it too, beating the whole lot of us girls at being feminine! He tried to get George to have a laugh with it too, but he just manned-it-up instead.


2. Contemporary was rather enlightening, to be honest. I figured out that I can't do forward rolls from standing - only from the floor, and even then it's barely! It's a good job we have crash mats, because I jump into them more than roll.

But, Jack didn't even say hi before class, let alone give a hug like normal. He later let me know that he was annoyed at something, although I didn't ask what; hm, it seems like everyone is in a bad mood recently! It must be the coming of winter making us all feel so gloomy.


3. This evening, I went out for a meal with my family for the first time in a long time. We went to our favourite Indian restaurant, and we had a great time!


4. Dance yesterday was good yesterday! We had ballet quizzes to fill in for Jade, and Kerstin worked us hard in both ballet and pointe classes!


5. Today is Greg's birthday, happy 17th!! Hope you had a great day, after getting a red card yesterday! Good job you didn't get a ban, that would've been an awful birthday present xD Don't underestimate your tackles xD

Today Will Go Down In My Diary, That's For Sure...

You may have read here that my town had a music festival today. I went with my dance school to perform two dances, one at 12, then one at 3:35.

After the first dance I went on the waltzers, since there were loads of big rides at the festival, as well as food stands. It's the fastest fairground ride I've ever been on in my life, so much so that my neck ended up almost snapping backwards and now still really hurts, yay for whiplash! But it was so fun at the same time, and Imi and I (who I shared a car with), screamed so much and had no hands for most of it. Our friend Katie was watching because she hates that ride, and now I know why!

Then I proposed that we go see our school friend Eve singing in the acoustic tent, but Katie didn't want to, so Imi and I went to watch by ourselves. Towards the end of the set my friend Dan turned up and watched with us. We've been talking for only three days, but it was so great to actually meet him!

After Eve's set we went to find Katie, and ended up just standing around talking for a bit, while she tried to rub off the glitter on my shoes. That failed.

Katie dislikes the glitter xD

Then Lydia and Sacha, more of our friends, went on a ride and we watched for a while. Dan and I decided to get away from the noisy fairground for a bit, so we went and sat in the park in the middle of town. We had so much fun!

The girls were in the car on the right

Then he walked me back to the festival and went home, so I had to be sneaky and sneak past the people collecting money for charity on the gate! I was five minutes late to where we were supposed to meet before our dance, so it was a bit awkward walking up to everyone, but oh well! I'd rather have a good time with my friends!

Anyway we danced our last Sadler's dance, I saw a girl I know called Ashleigh, then I had an ice cream with my mum and went home. That was today! Let's just say that it wasn't just the waltzers that made me feel funny!

Think Happy...40/52...

I've had such a long day today, which means I'm shattered now, and I can feel my eyes closing as I type this. I went up to the Peak District today with my parents and one of my brothers, and we did so much walking. I took hundreds of photos, but I'll save them for another day.


1. PEAK DISTRICT! I had an amazing time, here's a selfie!

2. This week was pretty cool. I had a full street dance class on Monday night because I didn't have to go out and practise a performance dance with Shanice, Mia and Hannah. It was also pretty cool because a guy called Luke was there. We were in the same class in year 7, but then he moved to Hannah's school and became close friends with my cousin, Jasmine. It was awesome to see him and dance with him for the first time in over three years!


3. Contemporary was different on Tuesday. Not necessarily a bad different, just weird different. For a start, we had a new teacher, a girl called Becky instead of Tanveer. I dance with her anyway in other classes and she's covered contemporary before, but her dance style is very different to Tan's. Tan's are/were very physical, maybe that's because he's a guy, and I love them so much. Becky's, however, is very slow and lyrical, which explains her song choice. It's different, and it's challenging me to use emotions more in my dance!


4. Erm, what else happened this week that was good. Oh, we had sports day on Thursday. What made it good was that I didn't compete, so I sat in the sun for two hours and tried to get a tan. Like that was going to happen! What sucked is that my form came third (out of our year group). We had won the cup three years running, and this year the girls won all of the finals, but the boys didn't even make it to any finals, causing us to lose the crown. But still, it was fun missing two lessons.


5. Dance yesterday was pretty good, actually. We did more stretching and strengthening, and Hannah and I took some photos.

6. On both Wednesday and yesterday I went to my friend Katie's house and helped her practice her flips and front hand springs. And I discovered how amazing the shutter speed changing mode on my camera is :D

7. I bought a new rubber ball, so now I can actually roll my feet out before ballet - score!!


And I think that's all for now, to be honest. This morning I had a bit of a relationship malfunction, but you know, you just get on with it. Have a good Monday!

Oversplits and Sneak Peak Video...

I guess my mood has changed right around since this time last week! It's funny how one day can change everything, really. Today really has been great, well, except the weather, which was downright dreadful, but we can gloss right over that.

I've really been enjoying my normal ballet class at the minute, because we've been working on stretching and strengthening, and these are things I really enjoy. I love that I can continue to improve my body, and although it is slow-going, you can really glow and feel such accomplishment when you can finally do a trick or something after a lot of hard work.

Today, we did very basic splits stretches (butterfly, pigeon, straddle with a partner, centre splits on a wall) and then went into splits. I can say that I didn't get very far in those proceedings. I then got a baby chair for both Hannah and myself, and we did oversplits with our front leg on a chair. I was able to push into flat splits from here, and this is something I do in contemporary class on a Tuesday too.

Hannah abandoned this effort pretty soon to work on her leg holds. I borrowed her chair and did oversplits with a leg on each chair.I haven't tried this for a long time and it gave me such a great stretch. I did this firstly by touching the ground with my hands, to get my bearings. Then I let go and sat in it, which made my legs shake. I was putting my entire (very heavy!) weight on it and I got just over 180° in my left leg splits! I didn't have time to do my right leg this way, since I wanted to try splits on the ground straight away, which I got flat! It's amazing, the difference you can get by just oversplitting.

This is the result of my stretching, Hannah had this awesome idea for a photo. I'd brought my camera, so I put it on a timer and took this.

After this class, Hannah and I used a spare studio to learn some new choreography, for a dance that we'll be uploading to our YouTube channel! The quality isn't the greatest and we have a lot to clean up on it, but here you go!

I hope you enjoy this sneak peak! Apart from Facebook, if you have me on that, this is the only place you'll see it, so enjoy, my exclusive audience!

But in other news, we had a dance performance at a local school this afternoon, from our London dance crew, and luckily the weather held up for us. I went wrong in the second dance, but I guess I deserve it for not thinking about it for a fortnight!

Thanks for reading this lengthy post, I hope you enjoyed it :D

The Scottish Play...

As I'm sitting here typing this, I am sneezing and scrubbing my eyes like mad, and drinking plenty to combat a sore throat and headache. I'm cursing hayfever a lot today; I've had too many lessons in silence with my head bent over my work, and also a PE lesson on the running track, which all increased my snotty-nose-iness.

This morning as soon as I woke up, I just knew that today wouldn't be my day. I woke up thoroughly exhausted from a trip I went on last night with school, and took three quarters of an hour getting ready in my room, leaving only fifteen to pack my bag, eat and do everything else I needed to do. And I was already sneezing my head off. So that went very well. And to top it all off, we had to do long-distance running and sprints in PE, my idea of Hell on Earth!

What trip did I go on last night, you may ask? It was a school trip to see a performance of Macbeth (see here for my favourite comedy sketch) in a beautiful park not too far away, and it was amazing!

I'm on the far left

Here's a photo of me and some of my school friends!

Thanks for reading!

Annual Dance Show...

As you may know, I've had my annual dance show over this weekend, and I've loved every minute of it! I've literally been to my school (where the show was held), came home to sleep, and went straight back to school in the morning, and put this cycle on repeat. Normally we hold our shows at a different school, one that specialises in performing arts and so has a huge stage, but this year we were double-booked twice, so we just came to my school instead.

It was really nice to be at a new venue for a change; it really made me think about what I was doing and how I would have to be on stage, since it is so much smaller, and is also raised up from the floor of the hall.

Last year I started working with a class of little ballerinas, and watching them perform in the show made me so unbelievably proud; I was squealing and Hannah had to pinch me to shut me up! Also, I've befriended three of the girls from the class, who happen to be sisters - Ella, Alanah and Kayln. Kayln is the youngest and whenever I see her, she seems to have to either sit on my lap or have me pick her up, as was the case before the show yesterday. I went to her changing room to wish the three girls good luck for the final show, and I ended up holding her for twenty minutes while I was talking to her sisters and Jack.

Don't they all look so sweet in their tutus?! In the last three photos there are three sets of sisters! Only two girls from the group are missing, since they were in another dance at that time.

Now for some other photos! 

Hannah and I chilling in our 'Dance the Night Away' costumes

Danny finding all the lost music files

After the second show, Hannah and I waited at school for a couple of hours until the next one, even though I only live down the road. We were tasked with occupying Emelia and Georgie for a while!

Georgie looking tired backstage after the second of four shows

Watching some of the older girls having fun on stage in between Saturday's two shows

'E' for Emelia

This happened by absolute chance!

I think Hannah was tired out!

Stage selfie, like you do;)

Collapsing on stage

Mess of shoes

Slightly dodgy angle, but these are the skirts for 'On My Own'

Mine (left) and Hannah's (right) matching ballet shoes. They were brand new, now look at them!

Now this was one of my favourite costumes, we even had the makeup to match. These were for 'What Do You See?' (Doll on a Music Box from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang). Luckily, the lipstick on our cheeks wiped off fairly easily before the finalé.

Jack walked past with a girl from my finalé line and saw these costumes and makeup for the first time, just before we danced this dance for the last time. His comment was something along the lines of: "I know you get embarassed when you see me Carys, but you don't have to blush!" How very original of him xD

My mum took this photo of me with my absolutely gorgeous dance teacher, Hayley, after the last show! She's literally a second mum to me!

And here I am receiving my trophy! They keep getting taller every year!

And here is the long-anticipated photo of myself and Jack! It's our first photo together, surprisingly, but he really is one of my best friends, he's amazing! It's going to be weird not seeing him everyday now, after having seen a lot him three days running!

That's all for now! I really hope you enjoyed reading this post; this weekend has been one of the greatest I've had in a long time, I really wish I could do it over next weekend! I may post more photos at some point, when Hannah sends me the ones she took of the shows. Thanks again!

Think Happy...33/52...

So much has happened this week, wow! I've broken up from school now, meaning I have a week off, which is a welcome relief!


1. I haven't sweated so much in dance class in such a long time, but in contemporary on Tuesday I was working so hard that I beat my record! Lovely image, I know, but I love pushing myself in class, even when I feel faint.


2. Our English class on a Friday is the last lesson of the week, so this week our teacher let us watch some of this version of Macbeth to finish the half-term. It was really interesting to see how it was put together in comparison to the original play. Which reminds me, in exactly one month's time, I'm going to see Macbeth live in a park a short drive away with around sixty of my fellow pupils. I'm hoping that, as it's summer, we'll be able to have a picnic and sit on blankets to watch, which should be fun!


3. The dance shows. I mean, wow. It was so much fun to be able to dance with all of my friends, and make so many more! I'll be posting about it tomorrow. And it will be done, unlike the times I said about writing posts for Cats and Sadler's Wells Theatre. I might actually write them at some point in the near future!

With my gorgeous dance teacher!

Think Happy...31/52...

Hello again, how's everything going? Last week was partly hectic and partly relaxed, I've not had such a mix in a long time, it's seems to have been super busy all the time since my birthday last year! Let's start from the beginning of the week...

1. Monday was good, I walked along to the nursing home and danced there. I ended up dancing a duet with a girl from my contemporary class, then the little girls from the ballet class I teach did one of their dances. I then did two solos, both of my pointework dances, as the other girls from my class weren't there. The old people we danced for (not meaning to sound disrespectful at all!) loved us, they had such big smiles on their faces!


2. On Tuesday I had my last exam, which we ended up having a fire alarm go off in (!) so it was nice just to go home afterwards and then go to contemporary class. My friend Jack dances in the class just before mine, so I got to see him and we yelled hi across the studio and waved! Aha, it was a good class :D


3. I've had the rest of the evenings last week doing almost nothing, apart from the odd bit of homework. It's felt so good just to be able to relax after having had so much revision to do! This time next year, however, will be another matter entirely! I'll be sitting my actual GCSEs!


4. On Wednesday I went to see Hannah's school production of Phantom of the Opera, and my gosh, it was so perfect! I can't sing enough praise for the cast, they definitely did the show justice, without a doubt!

5. On Saturday I got to see Hannah again and praise her for her performance. She's been so busy that we've hardly had a chance to talk, which was sad. But we danced together for hours; it was nice to see her again!


6. Yesterday (Sunday) I had to go to my school for four hours, from 10am until 2pm. We seniors and adults (plus some of the small children) from our dance school were required to go in and run through our show, which is now in eleven days!

For the first hour and 45 minutes, we had a 'tour' around the part of the school we're going to be in, and we practiced some dances in the back of the hall while the stage was in use. One of the songs being run through on stage at the same time was Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat from Cats the Musical. Remember I was in a production of that the other month? Well Shane and myself danced our version of the dance at the back of the hall, resulting in a few strange looks but we had so much fun! I don't even know how I remembered it all to be fair!

For the last two hours or so, we ran through the seniors' and adults' dances on stage. The stage is really quite small, so Strangers Like Me (my contemporary dance) didn't quite go to plan, but overall it wasn't too bad! At the end of Strangers Like Me, Tan, Harriet and myself get to jump off the edge of the stage and onto the floor, which is so fun!

But one of the most fun parts about yesterday was spending it with my friends. Hannah, unfortunately, wasn't there as she needed a day off from dancing, but I had other people to hang out with. I was with Hollie and Louise for quite a lot of the time (when I wasn't dancing, which was rare), Shane, Imogen, Katie and Jack. I haven't spent so much time with them for a while, so it was nice to be able to, even just between dances.


7. Oh Skype, where would I be without you? Drowning in a pool of my own loneliness that's where! So yeah, I was on Skype last night with Jack for over an hour, and his sister (who I danced with in London) and his mum were both chatting away with me too! It was so much fun :D

Moving On...

An old friendship bracelet I've been wearing recently. I used to be so close to the girl who gave this to me, only now she does not even bother to reply to my numerous messages, even when I heard some worrying news about her and had expressed my worry for her. I guess some people just no longer want to try.

On a more positive note, I have now found myself some people to sit with at school and some friends within my classes. None of them are really people that I talk to outside of school, I don't text them or send them a message on Facebook very often, but they're, for the most part, nice girls to be with during school.

But most importantly of all, I have found some very close friends within my dance school and theatre company.

 My best friend, you'll know this if you've been reading for a while, is Hannah. We've been dancing at the same school for almost eleven years now, but we've only been talking and dancing together for about a year and a half, if that! Now we dance together three times a week and we are quite literally inseparable! We 'declared' our best-friendship one year and two months ago this Monday coming.
In fairness, I've never looked back, she means too much to me to let go! The past couple of weeks have been difficult for both of us; we've hardly talked as she's been at rehearsals and the shows of her school's production for Phantom of the Opera, and I've had fourteen exams. Luckily we have dance together tomorrow to rehearse for our annual dance show.

Another of my close friends is a guy called Jack. We've only been close for a couple of months, if that, but we're already pretty close. We've hardly spoken in person, but that's simply a result of us not taking dance classes together and going to different schools. We have one class after each other and we always say hi then; his smile really is so infectious! We will be having three weekends together rehearsing and performing together now, so time to make memories and photos!


Thank you for reading this post, I think it's the most personal one I've done in a long time, if not ever. Do you like reading things like this? Let me know what you think!

Think Happy...30/52...

Hi everyone, I'm posting this today because it's the last day of the long weekend we're having here in the UK.


1. I filmed a dance cover! You may have noticed that I had to take it down, but it still happened! Sorry about that guys.

2. Today I danced at the nursing home again, and I ended up dancing a duet with Holly, a girl who's five years younger than me, and two solos. Everyone there had such big smiles!

Georgie in costume!

3. This afternoon I went to a Fayre in town and saw a couple of my friends from dance there. I also saw a guy from my maths class performing with his gymnastics class. I knew he was a professional, but oh my gosh he's so unbelievably amazing! There were also Irish dancers, and they were so good too!


4. My brother made soup at school, it's my favourite recipe!

5. Exams are almost all over! Just one left tomorrow.


6. My friends (one or two in particular) are making life so good right now! If you're reading this, then you know who you are!


7. I'm feeling inspired for my photography!



Thanks for reading, yet again, I'll see you tomorrow for a song recommendation :D

Ballet Basics: The Positions of the Feet...

Seeing as I didn't have any requests for ballet steps, I decided to make a simple tutorial of the feet positions for you.

Let's get started!

First position. This is the most basic foot position, excluding parallel, and it is the first thing you learn. Ensure that your heels are together and your feet are turned out as far as you can, making sure that your knees are pulled up.

This is second position. Once again, turn your feet out and pull your knees up. Don't let your feet be too far apart, but also don't keep them too close together that people mistake them as a really awful first position ;)

Now, this is third position. I think you should take it as certain that you need to turn out and pull up now, so I'm not going to repeat myself again, you'll just thinking I'm nagging you! Just remember!

This is fourth open. Before you nag me, let me just say that, yes, I do know that this isn't the correct position, this is. My model and I were being hurried along before the next class got into the studio, so I wasn't thinking straight. Basically, your heels should be in line with each other.

Fourth closed. I remember that this is closed because you're squeezing your thighs together and therefore closed. The heel of your front foot should be in line with the toe of your back foot.

Finally, this is fifth position. It seems so natural to me now, but you must remember to turn out that back foot too!

Now, would you like to see my model? Alright, meet Hannah :)

Alright, so that marks the end of today's post, I hope you enjoyed it! Would you like to see any particular guides next week? I'm running out of ideas and we've barely even started! Aha, bye for now ♥

Think Happy...20/52...

I'm so sad that the holidays are over, I wish I had another week off school! But anyway, a lot of good things happened this week, and I can't wait to share them with you all!

1. My new beauty post! Check it out here if you haven't already seen it :)

2. The Cats arts and crafts day! Post about it is right here!

3. I went to Hannah's house after Cats on Wednesday, and we spent the whole time watching our friends' Youtube videos here and here!

4. I had a two-hour long contemporary class on Tuesday night to learn a whole new section of one of our dances, and although I nearly broke my knees (long story!), it was so much fun! My friend Harry (from school and Cats) will hopefully join after our Cats show!

5. Four and a half hour long Cats rehearsal today! Wow, it was so much hard work - a couple of hours of general rehearsal learning new numbers with our new cast member (hi James!), followed by a full run-through of the show which took almost two hours!

I'm really loving these couple of hours a week I spend with this different group of people, I've made a couple of new friends (Shane, Harry, Katie, Abi, Megan, Ariane, Tia, and the rest!) and met a whole load more! It's definitely helped build my confidence levels, since I can now sing and dance on my own in front of about thirty other people, whereas before I struggled to speak in front of my class at school!

In other news, Abi sprained her thumb today doing a cartwheel! She's more than slightly annoyed, and let's pray that it heals in time for her National Cheerleading Competition in two weeks!

Anyway, that's about all the good news from this week, other than having heart-to-heart conversations with one or two of my friends!

I hope you all have had a lovely week!