Jaz Design

Where did you begin the year 2007?
The mister’s dad’s house

What was your status by Valentines Day?
In a relationship

Were you in school anytime this year?
Uni

Did you have to go to the hospital?
Don’t think so

Did you have any encounters with the police?
Nope

Where did you go for vacation?
Does Sunderland count? Hahaha.

What did you purchase that was over 100 dollars?
This laptop, car insurance, rent?

Did you know anybody who got married?
The mister’s dad.

Anybody who passed away?
Not directly

What concerts or shows did you go to?
Muse at Wembley Stadium – twice

Describe your birthday:
Awesome evening out with friends and the mister, then looking after the hungover mister with lots of spoiling in between.

You favorite moment(s)?
I’ve had quite a few. Now is pretty awesome, listening to the mister play guitar.

What was your best month?
They all had their ups and downs

Made any new friends?
Yeap

Favorite night out?
I had quite a few

Other than home, where did you spend most of you time?
Library…

Changed your hairstyle?
A fair amount, yes

How old did you turn this year?
20

Do you have a New Year’s Resolution?
To not eat chocolate

Have you had any regrets?
No, just lessons learned

Attend any sporting events?
Nope

Have you gotten sick?
Glandular fever.

If you could give your life to get anything back, what would it be?
What would be the point? I wouldn’t have my life, so how would I enjoy or experience the thing I got back?

1. Will you have a boyfriend/girlfriend this Christmas?
Yee

2. Have you been naughty or nice this year?
Depends on your definition

3. What is the most expensive thing on your christmas list?
I guess jewellery was, everything else was around the same price mark… subscription to Adbusters magazine, new duvet plus set, money…

4. What do you want this year?
For Xmas? Or next year in general? To be happy and successful.

5. Do you still believe in santa?
Yes, I saw him riding the escalator in Debenhams.

6. Which is your favorite reindeer?
I don’t know.

7. Big tree or small tree?
A forest

8. What do you leave for santa?
Nothing… if everyone else does, he’s surely about to have a coronary by now from eating all those cookies. I don’t want to kill santa, do you?

9. Do you get a lot of presents ?
Not really, but they’re always awesome. Especially the ones I know I’m getting this year.

10. What is your favorite christmas movie?
Nightmare Before Christmas.

11. What is your favorite christmas song ?
All I Want For Xmas… is YOU. Last year I had it blaring out of my car on the way up to my mister’s

12. Red, Green, or White lights?
White

13. What is your christmas wish?
That everyone gets what they want.

14. How many days left until christmas?
I don’t know, four maybe

15. How will you spend christmas?
Spending the morning with my mister, then going home to see my Mum, so actually a significant part of it will be spent driving.

16. Do you still wake up early on christmas morning?
No not really

17. Do you still get presents from santa?
I’m getting a stocking this year, but I don’t think it’s really from santa…

18. Any christmas traditions?
Eating, if you can call that a tradition.

19.How was last christmas?
Amazingtastic

20. Is your house decorated?
MY house isn’t, but my mum’s is

21. Do you get all dressed up ?
Not really

22. Have you gone to any christmas parties this year ?
No

23. Favorite christmas memory?
I have lots, most recently I guess would be waking up with the man of my dreams on Xmas morning Haha, I’m so soppy.

24.When i say christmas what is the first thing that comes to mind?
Cheer.

25. Ever get your heart broken on christmas day?
No

I know these aren’t technically perfect photographs, but I love this and it’s dreamlike quality. I always think when the mister is playing his musics that it’s like making magic, even if he’s playing covers, it’s still beautiful to sit and listen, I think it’s amazing anyway, being able to create and such. I can’t articulate it well, but I’ve tried to capture it here, exactly where it happens, and while it’s not technically perfect, it has the qualities I wanted.

Also I was taking pictures because he got a new guitar, it’s shiny black and terribly sexy.

Also available on deviantArt as prints. MM1 + MM2

Not when it’s about chocolate it’s not.

As evidenced by this post right here, I love chocolate. The mister and I have come up with some kind of wager. A year of no chocolate. I get something at the end of each month I manage, but we haven’t decided what yet. Don’t say chocolate This all commences at the usual time, January the first. According to those money totals, I would save about £215, which is loads, although that spending may switch to caramel and cherries.

This also means I only have a week to eat all my Christmas chocolate, haha, oh no! :S

The longest I’ve ever gone is eight months, broken only by being polite in a family situation. To be honest I think those are a fair exception since being polite in a family situation is not a common occurance ;P but the mister says otherwise. If his mum ever makes me tiramisu I am screwed, but there’s no way I’d ever say no to that! Haha.

Wish me luck, I’ll keep you posted

ETA: Changed it to no *buying* chocolate.

I know it’s been a good long while. I’ve been so ridiculously busy finshing up the last of my coursework – some of which I may share in the not too distant future – and working amongst trying to stay sane and see my friends, Mister, family etc.

Whilst it’s been terribly stressful to the point of losing my mind, I’ve also had some awesome times in the last few weeks – seeing an old friend in London for the day after 4 years of not seeing each other, attending my Mister’s dad’s wedding which was just such a lovely day, spending time with the Mister – romantic meals and whatnots, seeing the Michelles. It’s all good.

Also, speaking of the Mister, he just won the Design4Science competition for our category (Web and Multimedia) – FIRST PLACE. The piece of work he did is awesome, and I’m not just biased You should still be able to view it here. If you’d like to read more about the competition, check out the Design4Science website. I’m so proud, as you can imagine. His work will be exhibited in Sunderland, Manchester and Stockholm.
Also, I was tagged, sooo…

Instructions:
Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot:

1. Fat Chick Crafts
2. Put a Sock in it
3. Suzy Sells Sea Shells
4. Enjambed
5. The Daily Ghosthand

Next, select five people to tag:

I think I’ll stick with the people already tagged… since I don’t know who else has blogs? I’m so out of the loop.

1. LK
   
2. Cherie
3. Christin
4. Twain
5. Sniggs

What were you doing 10 years ago?

Worshipping the Spice Girls, attending junior school, living a life free of responsibility. I was about to be ten, so actually I guess I would have just finished school for the summer. I’d just moved off of the farm I lived on for a year, I wasn’t too happy about that. I loved the farm.
What were you doing one year ago?

Desperately longing to tell my Mister how I felt and not doing I keep a diary and I started a new notebook about this time last year, it never ceases to amaze me just how much has happened for me in the last year. Never. I was probably sitting in exactly the same place, well not exactly, over on that other desk, working away like a busy little beaver, daydreaming…
Five snacks you enjoy:

1. Cookies
2. Kekkle chips
3. Cheese baps
4. Cornflakes
5. Pancakes

Nice and healthy then… haha.
Five songs that you know all the lyrics to:

1. “Wonderwall” by Oasis
2. “Invincible” by Muse
3. “Unintended” by Muse
4. “Butterflies and Hurricanes” by Muse (I could just write, all the Muse songs, and be done with it)
5. “Sleeping with Ghosts” by Placebo

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

1. Cry?
2. Give some money to my Mum, other close family
3. Invest some, aren’t we supposed to be frugal and things, pensions? High interest savings accounts? I’m sure I’d do that with some of it.
4. Buy all the cameras.
5. Buy a PS3 just for the sake of two games.

Five bad habits

1. Sleeping
2. Eating rubbish for breakfast
3. Not making important phone calls. (will keep this one too)
4. Procrastinating
5. I only have four, I’m perfect No I’m sure I have others.

Five things you like doing:

1. Making arts
2. Spending time with the people I love
3. Reading
4. Photographering
5. Sleeping

Five things you would never wear again:

1. ?? I don’t think I’ve ever made that much of a fashion tragedy, not that I can think of anyway.
2. Ok maybe this pair of massive cheap boots that were impossible to wear, but that’s not by choice.

Five favourite toys:

1. People…
2. My cameras
3. Play Doh
4. ??
5. Stuff

Just a general blog about general things. I was thinking about what kind of focus this blog should have, maybe think about target audience, but I think I’d find that too hard. I like to talk about random things, things that go on in my life an so forth. Thus, I suppose my target audience is people with similar interests (I do need to update my profiley thing actually…), and my focus is just plain everything.

I’ve had a good week. Made my second trip to London since I’ve been ill, mostly to see my Mister, mostly It was good to have a day out. I’m not a fan of London but I did have a good day.

We had lunch down at St Paul’s – there’s a large Marks and Sparks food court there, they had this amazing vanilla and maple syrup smoothie thing – lush!

Then we hopped across the river to the Tate Modern. I’m not big on modern art, but I do love Cy Twombley’s ‘Four Seasons‘. Mostly because of the way he uses such a variety of materials, mostly. They’re just stunning pieces. I also really liked ‘Billingual’ by Juan Usle – however I can’t find a good photo of that online.

We were going to get the boat to the Tate Britain but missed the last one, so hung out on the grass outside the Modern for a while since the weather was so nice. Mosied back in a Waterloo direction and watched the sunset from the banks of the Thames over the Houses of Parliament.

We found dinner at a fancy Pizza Express restaurant, and ate far too much. It was so good though. I haven’t been out to dinner in ages, much less taken out to dinner, so I felt really spoilt We wandered down the river and looked at all the lights. All in all, a good day out.

Monday I did my first ever drive to Bognor to see Linz. J used to take me but we used to go the long way round, so going the proper way involved a lot of guesswork and following road numbers. We got some chips and wandered down the beach at dusky time. It was really good to see her.

I took my Mum to Brighton on Tuesday, we went shopping (picked up some guitar strings for the acoustic – my Mister appears to have got me back into playing), and then got ice creams and fell asleep on the beach.

Wednesday I drove up to see my Mister in Harpenden, got stuck in the most horrendous M1 traffic I’ve ever seen, and so came off at the first junction and guessed my way to his, and got quite lucky with my guesses really. Had a couple of nice meals with his family over the duration of my stay – tried some new food too which is unusual for me, it was good.

Friday we came back and went to Sainsbury’s in search of this easter egg I’ve wanted for about a month. They didn’t have it, which is very unfortunate as all their eggs were 75% off and as the one I wanted was a tenner originally, that would have been an amazing deal. I got a different egg that would have been equally expensive – a Lindt chocolate thing with a box of chocolates – and while the chocolates were amazing, there’s no way I would have paid a tenner for it! The Mister picked up a load of little Lindor eggs which were only 13p – if you wish to stock up on chocolate, head over to Sainsbury’s.

The past few days, when not working or doing other things, have been spent playing Sim City 3000. The Mister built up a city together and have actually done quite well so far. We got hold of a copy of SC4 Deluxe, and have developed a region as a starting point for both of us to see how we do things differently. I swore I’d never play Sims games again, but I guess I was mistaken. We’ll have to wait and see how City of Ghosthands does

I completely lost track of my spending last weekend. All it takes it to stop doing something for one day and then you’re track’s completely broken. So, didn’t make it a month. Plus the spending I did on Tuesday would completely wreck my percentages.

That said, I’m very happy with my Tuesday purchases. I’ve been looking for some decent black jeans for about two years, plain black, not very dark grey. Black. I found some amazing ones in Bay. I also got this weird dress/top thing from New Look which looks really cool. I’m clueless with fashion, but the stuff that’s in fashion is a bit weird at the moment. I got some other things too… basically spent too much money, but for some reason I felt like I needed to.

I am managing to hold back on buying a new mobile phone. I really dislike my current phone, but until that breaks I really have no excuse to purchase an extravagance that costs 150 of the English pounds. It won’t offer me many benefits, better mobile internet, but who really needs to be connected 100% of the time… and it’s pink. And shiny. But. I’m going to wait until summer to make a decision about this, hopefully by that time I’ll be earning, and that would be the sensible thing to do.

Going home tonight. Easter break. Gonna get some Ben and Jerry’s on the way home and cuuuddllle up with mah hunnnie.

Redyed my hair – it’s now half black and I rebleached the other side so it’s really bright blonde. That side is going to go pink in a week or so

Yesterday the other half an I went to see 300. He likes Miller and knows about these things, whereas I have no clue about things like graphic novels and was mostly going because I liked the trailer, and I’ve dragged him to every shitty horror flick that’s come out since October. I was surprised, I thought the film was amazing.

It was certainly visually stunning, although I’m not so sure I’d have been so accepting of the obviousness of CG had I not known it was based on a graphic novel. Either way, they really went to town on it. I especially loved this technique that I’ve only just started noticing appearing in movies, where, for example, someone shoots an arrow, the camera pans in on the arrow, time slows down and it moves around the arrow before it speeds up again, drawing you in and making you feel a part of something otherwise quite flat. It’s almost 3D without being 3D.

Gerard Butler was impressive, I’ve only seen him as the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera, it was very entertaining to see him do something so different, and do it so well.

The story wasn’t that strong, it was mostly about the fighting which is fair enough, but they did manage to put enough of a storyline in to have me crying by the end of it (I felt like I’d been hit with an emotional bus, but I think that may have just been me). There were some very touching moments, some downright scary moments, but mostly, a lot of bloody moments. But even then, they were well engineered bloody moments.

The soundtrack, the soundtrack, the soundtrack, I adored it. Rocky vs classical, always a winner with me. I thought it fit the movie very well. I’d recommend the movie, assuming you can deal with slow motion decapitation… or just generally a lot of slow motion. I read somewhere they filmed most of it at 50-150 frames per second – shows just how much slow motion they did or planned to use!

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I realise now on DA you get a free prints account, so I just messed around with the options to see what would happen, as a result, this photo of the sunset over Southsea is available as a print.

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All else is going alright. Got a lot of work on at uni, but it’s all good things. Thinking of things to write about for a dissertation, working up a design for a competition, running a business focussed on environmentalism (proper website and details available next week), it’s all good.

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Thursday 21st March

Nothing!

Wednesday 20th March

Chocolate chips 0.49
Pizza 1.15
Broccoli 0.46
Butter 0.46
Chips 0.88
Enterprise Investment 30
Car Insurance 476.04 (not including this in percentages as it tips it too much, just included for records)

Totals so far…
£235.35
Necessary £179.96 76.46%
Unnecessary £55.39 23.54%