A New Dawn, A New Day

Well, let me begin by wishing you all a very happy new year.  I spent the last evening of 2012 having a slightly incestuous date night with my cousin, featuring a lot of ice cream, multiple glasses of duty free prosecco and renditions of Auld Lang Syne by a whole host of artists, with my favourite being the Jimi Hendrix one.  It wasn't the wildest new year I've ever had but certainly one of the best, only made better by the lack of hangover this morning.  Rather than lounging in bed, groaning and drinking all of the Lucozade in the world as I usually would, I have instead been concocting an enormous batch of superfood vegetable soup and writing up a list of new year's resolutions for the first time ever.  I'm feeling really positive about 2013, in an uncharacteristic turn of events.  I think it's going to be the year that things happen.

I won't share with you my full list of resolutions, as I'm sure you aren't too interested by how little chocolate I intend to eat or how many words I aim to write.  However, I will tell you that my number 1 resolution involves me not buying any clothes at all between today, January 1st, and June 1st.  No, I'm not really sure why I've forced this upon myself either, except that the negative numbers on my bank statements are getting terrifying and I'm starting to wonder how on earth I'm going to cart all these items back to England come June.  To clarify, "no clothes" includes shoes/bags/jewellery/all other accessories, but I am still allowed to buy makeup and beauty products.  Thank God for the small mercies.

Rewinding a little from the new year festivities now and taking a look back at Christmas, I feel I should utter a few words of apology for having taken nearly a two week break from blogging.  I was at home, I was somewhat busy, I couldn't figure out a good spot to take pictures... all blind excuses, really.  I'm back though, huzzah, with a big fat dose of motivation for 2013.

Lastly, a quick word about the Blogger's Secret Santa that I participated in, which was organised by Vicki Higham from A Life of Geekery.  I had planned to do a longer post about this but unfortunately I was silly and dismantled by present before I had a chance to take a picture of it.  After it had sat under the Christmas tree for many a day, I was excited to finally tear open my parcel on December 25th and discovered a lovely Bodyshop gift set waiting for me.  It was the strawberry set and included an exfoliant, a shower gel, a body butter and a shower scrunchie, all of which smell divine and will come in extremely handy.  Unfortunately, my Santa decided to remain anonymous so I couldn't thank them so, if you do happen to be reading this - THANK YOU!

I'm going to leave you with a few pictures of my festivities now.  Warning: an awful lot of novelty festive knitwear is featured.

Good tidings to all,

Elise.