Fitness Challenge!

Hey everyone!

Not-so-long time, no see! I really need to relaunch this blog and actually use it more... But anyway, I'm back with a post that is intended more for me rather than the few people who read my blog. A long time ago I watched a YouTube video by a guy who does psychology videos. The video was about how to be more successful and step one was telling people about what you were aiming to do, so that if you weren't successful you would feel like you had let others down also. I'm not sure if it works but I'm going to give it a go!

I realised today after receiving some clothes from a wonderful friend of mine that I needed to lose weight; like everywhere. I'm never really private about my weight, if someone asks I'll just say (I weigh 13 stone and 12 pounds, or 195 pounds, in case you were wondering). In a perfect world, I'd have slimmer arms, legs and there'd be hardly any fat on my stomach. I've tried diets before, I mean haven't we all? However, I've never been successful so...

This is my target: starting from Monday (that's the 28th September), I want to go on an all out health blast or whatever you want to call it. These are the things I'm going to be doing:

• Drinking a pint glass of water when I get up (this has been proven to help with metabolism!)
• Cutting out Pepsi and anything with lots of sugar
• Avoiding processed foods
• Avoiding McDonalds and other fast foods
• Doing a leg workout every two days (click here to see which workout!)
• Limit myself to 1,820 calories daily (this allows me to lose 1 pound a week)

Doing all of the following will allow me to lose 1 pound a week and generally become healthier. I might create another challenge page like the one I use for the book challenge.

My question for the comments is, have you ever been successful in a diet? 

Love you all,

Ems!

Why I Love Reading

Hey everyone!

As promised, I return with another post that isn't titled "Where I've been"! Whilst I may have been stuck for creativity in these posts, one idea just occurred to me after having finished The Hunger Games for the second time; why do I sit and spend my nights reading? My response to most people when I get asked this is "Because I enjoy it" but I mean... That's not exactly worthy of a full post is it? So I thought I'd try and explain it a bit better.

Now, you can check my Book Challenge page to see what books I've read this year. I keep a full track of them, with a word count and an average books per month (I'm good at maths, I thought it should be included). Anyone can see from the books I've read, that universes / series are what I read most; Mortal Instruments is possibly the best example. Don't get me wrong, I love standalone books as well (All The Bright Places, I'm looking at you!) but series appeal to me more and there is a reason for that; immersion.

There is something I always look for in a book and that's whether I can immerse myself in it. Lets say there are two highly rated books in front of me, but I can only afford one. One book is set in a parallel universe to our own and is part of a six book series. The other book is also set in a parallel universe but is a standalone book. I will almost always choose the first book because I can immerse myself in that universe. When I read series, I can imagine myself living as part of that world. There was a night during The Mortal Instruments section of the year where I dreamed I was one of the Nephilim - I was part of the Shadowhunter universe.

Everybody has something to help them cope in life. Something that provides an escape from this world for a short amount of term - books are my escape. I can immerse myself in a book and imagine I'm there. Dystopian books to me (Divergent, Hunger Games etc.) are the best for this. It's a world where nothing is really like ours because most of the time, the world has changed so much.

And that, is why I love reading! If you haven't already, check out my book challenge page and spread the word about the blog, it'd be great to start having traffic again!

Love you all,
Ems!

Wait... I have a blog?

Hey everyone,

My last 3 posts (if I remember rightly) have been "I'm back, I'll post again soon" and just stuff like that. Now, you'd think this one would be like that but I thought I'd do just a catch-up and then a few little random things to make up for it!

Okay, so where have I been (I answer this like every post)? Well, I just got caught up in other things. I had a great July - I read 5 books and, you know, just went abroad to Amsterdam! I'm also officially in my last year of secondary school so that happened. August... Well I've done nothing. I lost some friends because they didn't talk to me at all and I felt left out, I made some friends with people I didn't ever expect to be friends with. I also got an old friend back who, I have to admit, I've missed a lot...

As for these random little sections, maybe I'll do these more often. Tell me in the comments if you like this idea rather than regular random posts.

Books I want right now

Vampire DiariesOkay, the picture above is of the fifth book in the series but I already own the first four despite not having read them. Vampire Diaries focuses around teenager Elena Gilbert, who falls in love with the irresistible Stefan Salvitore. Anyone who's read Twilight knows how this goes; love triangle (with Stefan's brother, Damon) and a vampire family. Don't judge it by this though; if it's anything like the TV adaption, there very very different books.

Cinder

A friend told me about this one because she couldn't stop mentioning it for at least a week... Cinder is the first book in The Lunar Chronicles, which has been described to me by the same friend as "Fairy-tales but with a twist". When I had a little Google, the story is set in a futuristic world with androids and humans all existing together. It sounds so amazing and I haven't even read the blurb! Basically, it seems as if the writer has took fairy-tales and made them exist in a dystopian world. Besides Hunger Games, I love Dystopia's so this is definitely on my to-buy list.

Visit to Amsterdam

So at the end of July I visited Amsterdam. Whilst I was only there for a few hours, the cruise there and back was definitely something. The two best nights I've ever had occurred on there, so it is definitely worth writing about. We set sail from the port at five in the afternoon, and arrived at ten  in the morning the next day. In the 17 hours in between, we had an all you can eat dinner which was amazing, and sat and watched the sea on the top deck. I can easily say that sitting with a bunch of people I barely know, talking about random things whilst looking at the deep blue sea is definitely a memory I'm proud to have.

In Amsterdam, we didn't do too much. We drove into the city which took about an hour, then went to the Anne Frank museum in the morning. I'm not big on history so okay, it wasn't my favourite thing but it was still pretty cool to learn about. We had lunch (Kettle crisps, M&M's, Bitter Lemon and a Pain Au Chocolat) and then went on a canal tour. Amsterdam is such a beautiful place and I want to go back so badly.

The return trip, well it was the same as the way there with the exception that I spent a bit of time on the top deck with some people I now call friends - yes, I've learnt the definition of that word. Anyway, with a couple of filters and a bit of editing, here are a couple pictures from the trip:

Word Association Game

For those of you who don't know what this is, you say a word and think of a word that relates to it. So if I said 'tree', I might think 'forest'. Basically I'm adapting that into a game on here, and I'll explain why I associated them (it's random but still!)

Rubiks - There's a Rubik's Cube on my desk.

Cube - I think of the company, I think of a cube.

Volume - You work out the volume of a cube in maths.

Sound - You can change how loud sounds are by changing the volume

Wave - Sound travels in waves.

Sea - You find waves in the sea

Saw - See-Saws?

Movie - Saw is a movie

Paper Towns - Paper Towns is a movie

John Green - Wrote Paper Towns

Uncle John - He's a character in Vampire Diaries, John Green made me think of John's

Vampire - Vampire Diaries... It's pretty self explanatory!

Blood - Vampires need blood to survive.

Red - Blood is red.

Mortal Instruments - I've "read" Mortal Instruments (and loved it!)

Clary - Main character in Mortal Instruments

Okay... I'm stuck! Oh well, that would have been better in video form but I don't vlog so...

Places I Want To Visit

Everyone has that place that they've never been, but have always wanted to visit. I've got lots of them so here are my top three!

Times Square, New York, USA

Some people prefer quiet rural areas... Cities to me are a heaven. I love big cities with lots of noise and Times Square, is the perfect example of that! It's the city that never sleeps and to me, being able to go to a shop at one in the morning is just so weird that it makes it brilliant. I mean, I had a picture of Times Square hanging above my bed for almost three years. This is definitely one of the places I want to visit the most.

Rome, Italy

I don't know much about Rome; people have told me that it's beautiful whilst some have said it's not that great. From what I've seen in films and TV shows, the city looks brilliant and whilst it isn't the busy, twenty-four hour city New York is, there are so many things to see and do. That photo alone makes me envy people who have been...

Los Angeles, USA

There is no where I want to visit more than California, especially Los Angeles. There's nothing I could really say I like the best, but the combination of busy city life, plus sandy beaches, plus all of the sights (Santa Monica Pier, Universal Studios, Disneyland etc.) I don't think I could run out of things to do if I visited. Also, I really want to go to Stanford University after college (I need like top grades in every subject) and I wouldn't mind the road trips down to LA.

I know I've been gone a while, I know I don't post often but what you've got to know, is that I'm not dead and I'm still going to be mildly active. I hope this makes up for two months worth of blog posts! There's a lot of random stuff here; do you prefer this or prefer me making big posts about a certain topic? Tell me in the comments!

Love you all,

Ems!

How time flies...

I'm not even going to start this with 'Hey everyone!' because this post is special... Sort of!

My last blog post, was a month ago - an entire month. I had no idea that it had been that long, and so I apologise. As always, I owe an explanation to where I have been, what I have done etc. etc.

Over the past month, I had mocks exams. I had a Maths, an English, three Science, an ICT, an RE, and a Geography. My results varied over the exams (I got an E in English, I'm in top set and I'm supposed to be getting an A..) but oh well, they were mocks! I've read quite a bit lately, as I finished The Infernal Devices trilogy which has shattered my heart into a billion pieces. The love I have for The Shadowhunter Chronicles and Cassandra Clare is huge and eternal. The majority of my time has however been spent on Java/Minecraft. I aimed to code an add-on for the game, which has taken up an hour at least every single night. It's going well, but it's a long and tedious process. The end result is fantastic though!

I had a couple of weeks in the month where I was slightly depressed as well. Those are over for the time being, but I have no doubts that they'll come flying back at some point in the near future.

That is my update for the time being. Knowing me, I'll begin to post regularly again soon for a little while. For the time being, I give this advice to all of you reading; Be yourself. If you can't be yourself, be Nephilim.

Love you all,
Ems!

Being Yourself

Hey everyone,

Wow, this is my second post in a day and there have been times when I've done zero posts in two weeks. This post is about something that gets to me a lot, and recently started getting to me more. You know how you get a lot of quotes on Tumblr or Twitter or whatever which says about 'Hiding ourselves behind a mask'? They're all true, I mean that's what we do. We're never ourselves around people. If you think something nasty, you don't say it and you just push it to the back of your mind. Here's another quote for you: 'When you're wearing a mask all the time, it soon gets hard to breathe'. I found that one online and I loved it.

Basically, here's the problem with me. I can't be me at school because I find it too weird. I mean, you would never see me walk into a school wearing a skirt because that's me. I worry too much about people's opinions. It's the same anywhere in public. I also can't be me at home because my parents don't know about me being Transgender. So if I can't be me in public, and I can't be me in private, where can I be me? That's where my quote comes in; I'm constantly wearing this 'mask' that it's eating away at me. I can never be myself, because of people and their opinions. I can't speak for other people and their 'masks', but for me, wearing that mask all the time starts to kill you inside. It eats away at you like a cancer. I can be me in five years time though, when I finally get the surgery. However, when you're waiting for something to happen, it always seems to go slower. Five years is like five lifetimes.

Here's the other thing. If someone irritates me, I can't say that to them without backlash. It's the same for everybody. Being two faced has become the norm, and because of it we've lost our freedom of speech. We aren't honest to people because again, we care too much about people's opinions. Because we aren't honest, people don't change because they don't think they've annoyed you or upset you. We just can't be honest with people.

These are just two things that are eating away at me. The people closest to me don't know this, but I've had a rough week. A lot happened that I haven't told people but I still kept up a smile. That's what we've all learnt to do right? When you're unhappy, don't show it. That's like the number one rule of my generation.

Love you all,
Ems!

Revenge - The Final Episode

Hey everyone,

If you watch the show Revenge, this is going to contain spoilers so don't read on. Last night, after four seasons, Revenge unfortunately ended. I love this show so much, and after watching the series finale like ten minutes ago, I think I just died a little; it was the perfect ending and I am now in tears.

Revenge was about a girl named Amanda Clarke, who now goes by the name of Emily Thorne. When she was a little girl, her dad was framed for murder and taking down a plane. Amanda then returns as an adult to where she once lived, and seeks revenge on those who helped to set her dad up. Top of that list, is the Grayson family; Victoria, Conrad and their two children Charlotte and Daniel. Charlotte and Daniel did no wrong, but Victoria and Conrad were the masterminds behind everything. The first few episodes focus on a few of the other people who helped out but everything after episode 5 I think, is mainly about the Grayson's.

A lot happened in between, but in the finale, everything finally came to a close. Amanda ended up with the wonderful Jack Porter, a couple we've been wanting since the very first episode! Victoria... Well let's just say she won't be coming back. The dearly beloved David, he unfortunately died also. As for the funniest of the cast, Nolan, we think he's getting a spin-off series. No one knows for sure I don't think, but I think it'll be announced rather soon. Where there's a spin-off, you see characters from the other series. I think Amanda might be turning up there.

Anyway, that's just a little quick post. I loved this series so much and now that it's ended, I think a piece of me is missing.

Love you all,
Ems!

Birthday Week!

Hey everyone!

I needed to do a post on this, and now I've finally got around to it! Last week, or 9 days ago to be precise, it was my birthday! I got a couple of things, but it's quite a pain uploading photos so I'm just going to write.

I didn't get much off my family because my main present is a trip to Amsterdam with my school in July (that, will be a good post!) but they did get me:

• A Mug Cake book 
• £10 voucher for Primark
• £10 book voucher
• £20 voucher for Waterstones
• £10 note

Now, here's the big bit. With the Primark voucher, I got a Captain America jumper which I will try and add a photo of at a later date. The big bit though, is what I got with the money. As you should know, I sort of love books and reading so I sort of got carried away. Using some money I already had as well, this is what I got:

• Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
• Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare
• Clockwork Princess by Cassandra Clare
• The Shadowhunter's Codex by Cassandra Clare
• Gone by Michael Grant
• Evermore by Alyson Noel
• Ashes by Isla J. Bick
• Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia

Too many? Of course not, you can never have too many books! I also got a notebook and sweets from the wonderful Fields, £5 and two bars of Hershey's!

I suppose I should ask a question. Out of the books I bought, have you read any of them and if you have, what did you think? 

Love you all,

Ems!