FLAT TOUR - MY STUDENT FLAT

Me and my boyfriend moved into a 'student friendly' flat last year when we started university in Birmingham. We live just outside of Digbeth, which I refer to as the 'arty' part of Birmingham. As a student and a music lover Digbeth is perfect for easy commutes and there's always something interesting going on nearby. The flat itself is furnished and decorated with hand-me-downs, items from charity shops or obscure vintage/antique's we have collected.

Overall we've spent less than £500 on everything we've bought, luckily the flat was 'part-furnished' meaning we already had bedroom furniture which saved a lot of money for us. But the bits we did have to buy make our little home personal and feel more like ours. The first time we stayed here was before we got any furniture at all - after ordering our first meal in out new place the plan was to sleep on the floor in the living room but with no mattress and nothing to do we gave up and got the train back home. Because of this first experience in the flat, and with it being completely empty, I think I freaked out a little and wanted to fill in with lots of stuff. When we were there first it felt so big and scary and I needed it to feel cosy and homely - I think I may have gone a tad overboard.

Lots of my family and friends have't had the chance to see where I live yet and I know that my Godmother was especially excited to visit the flat and see what we've done with it so hopefully this post can give her a better idea than the blurry FaceTime video she saw before!

The Kitchen 

The kitchen isn't anything special, we don't spend much time in here since it's basically the size of a show box and as soon as there's more than one person in there no one can move. We did try and make it look a little more 'pretty' by adding some fairy lights and plants but this room is mainly for function and not for comfort. Even though a lot of newer build flats feature open plan living spaces, I'm very glad that our kitchen is separated from our living room because it tends to get quite cluttered and messy due to the small size and the lack of counter space we have, I wouldn't be able to sit and relax while staring at the clutter that can accumulate in there.

The Bathroom 

Before I say anything about the bathroom I will apologise for the yellow tone lighting in there. Anyway. The bathroom is pretty much over run by my skincare products. Thank god there is this built in shelf otherwise I would have absolutely no clue where to keep my skincare stash. To keep things tidy I bought a variety of storage solutions including the little shopping baskets and the acrylic organiser, I hate it when things look messy so I aim to keep everything where it should be. M boyfriend and I each have a basket and then I also get the rest of the shelf - I have an addiction, I know. Boring things like cleaning products stay on the floor and then I had this gorgeous bamboo bar cart which doesn't actually fit anywhere else in the flat so it has been repurposed as towel storage, it's just too cute to get rid of. The shower itself dispenses more of a light mist than a shower of water but it gets the job done so I can't really complain.

We also have this obnoxiously large surf sign in the bathroom as there was already a nail in the wall here and we don't want to create too many holes in our rented walls.

Bedroom

The bedroom furniture isn't the most sturdy or the most aesthetically pleasing but again it works, I bought this bookcase for £20 from a charity shop which stores my books and some DVD's while also housing the TV.  There is a built in wardrobe in our bedroom but I couldn't hand my clothes in there for two reasons; one being that their is no lights and you can't really see in there, the second being that the rails were so close to the ceiling I never would've been able to reach my clothes so instead we keep all of our coats hung up and use the floor or the wardrobe to store our suitcases and any other random things we have.

My desk is overrun by art and cute toys, I don't really do any work at my desk but I store my make up and anything else that doesn't have a home here. We used command strips to hang up some framed pictures I got from Poundland as well as some pictures we printed off and also a large wall hanging to add some colour against the white walls and near black carpet. The love heart stringy decoration on the ceiling were another Poundland purchase, we originally bought them for party decorations but then we liked them so much we just kept them and put them up in our bedroom - they kind of look tacky but this why I love it so much.

Living Room

The final room! The living room is very long and narrow which is very different to the living rooms that I've seen before so we weren't too sure how to lay everything out. We tried loads of different floor plans but we were limited due to the small width of the room and the massive couch we had bought (for only £90 including an obnoxiously large footstool we had to leave at my parents). We kept pushing the sofa up against each of the walls to see where we wanted it until my mum suggested placing it in the centre of the room to create the feeling of two smaller rooms - one a living room and one a dining room. This worked out perfectly and stopped the room feeling so large, instead it gave that perfect cozy feel, plus whenever we have people round we can push the sofa back to create more space.

This room houses the majority of my furniture, the Parker-Knolls arm chair which I'm obsessed with sits beside this beautiful cabinet we bought for £15 from a charity shop. The cabinet doubles up as a bar with the drop down compartment as well as helping us store even more random items away from the world, on top I placed any little bits that needed a home (including Rufus, my Chinese foo dog) and above the cabinet hangs an antique mirror as well as some stunning korean wall decor which I love, the colours are just so vibrant. I have a lot of cabinets and drawers but somehow they're all full and we had to block out some light but storing our CD collection on the windowsill but I tried to make it look a little more pretty by adding yet more little decor pieces.

The 'dining' room portion of the living room is a jumble of different things so I suppose you couldn't really call it a dining room. We have our tiny table that we painted on day when we were bored, we also have a shoe rack and my mirror purely because this was the only place for them but oddly I think it kinda works? We also have my boyfriends record player and stereo over this side as well as my favourite chair. The posters are vintage and a gift from my Dad when we moved in, alongside the posters is a mis-spelled sign 'don't live you life, live your dreaes' which was also a moving gift. There are lots of plants and pictures everywhere, I'm surprised all the plants are alive (touch wood) and the pictures are all of friends and family that we now don't get to see very often so it's nice to always at least see their faces. 

I love where I live and I love who I live with, feeling comfortable in your own space is so important and living in my flat makes me so incredibly happy. Everything I own I am proud of and even though I have no space I will probably keep buying more random things and squeezing them in one way or another. 

INSURGENT SINGLE DEBUT - 'COUNTERPART'

Insurgent are set to release their debut single 'Counterpart' this week on the 21st of September and I'm so excited for everyone to hear it, I can't imagine what the band feel like! This is the first single Insurgent are releasing since forming in Spring of this year and since then they have been creating a name for themselves performing at well established venues across and outside of Birmingham such as The O2 Academy, The Victoria and The Flapper. I fell in love with this single whilst writing this review and am certain anyone else who listens to the single will feel the same.

(Will_pixx)

It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that 'Counterpart' is the first single ever released by Insurgent - how has a band managed to release a song of this quality so early on in their career? Not only is the production quality absolute perfection but the writing is clever and catchy. Bands with years on these guys haven't been able to pull off what Insurgent have done - I'm impressed to say the least.

The guitar tones are gritty and even though you could say they're pretty standard across the board of the metal genre, they work perfectly for what Insurgent are going for. The tone of the drums gives off a huge, full sound, everything about this single is big and fat and full - very metal. To be really picky, at first I wasn't completely in love with the pitch of the ride cymbal during the bridge, but after listening to to it a few times I understand how it fits into the mix of low end and helps break up the deeper sounds.

The vocals are so smooth and contrast beautifully against the heavy instrumental, the added vocal harmonies give a near ethereal effect leaving an almost ambient sound behind in all the madness of the high impact instruments. Teitge delivers power and anger while also sounding soft and near operatic. The harsher growl-esque vocal overdubs (which sound incredibly impressive by the way) help tie the vocal in with the instrumental rather than making 'Counterpart' a metal song with 'pretty' vocals - which this song isn't but some could argue it. The vocals remind me heavily of Maria Brink from In This Moment - very powerful and striking enough to stand out above all the sound behind her.

(Amy Demidow Photography - [love u amy <3])

Regarding the intro of this single - I'll be honest in the fact that I've never been a huge fan of heavy reverb, so the intro to this single isn't my favourite - but I don't absolutely hate it. Saying that I do still think the first 10 seconds of the song are a little redundant and could've been left out leaving the single to start with everything coming in heavy at the same time, for me that would've worked better with the hard impact and high energy feel of this single.

Last time I spoke to the band they spoke about taking inspiration from Alter Bridge, 'Counterpart' shows resemblance to their inspiration but not too obviously, this leaves the single feeling fresh and unique rather than a carbon copy which is easy to do unintentionally. The band also explained the lyrics for 'Counterpart' to me, "The song is themed around the internal conflict of trying to be yourself when people would much rather see you conform. It also goes on to discuss the way people respond when you do choose to behave in the way you want to."

After seeing Insurgent perform live a couple of times this past year I was super excited to see what they would release, and they've done more than just 'not disappoint'! The bands live shows sounded incredible but this 'Counterpart' has blown me away. Everything sounds so polished and professional, I'm almost worried that they won't be able to follow up after such an outstanding sounding debut single - I'm looking forward to hearing more!

Keep up to date with Insurgent on their social medias -

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/insurgentmusic/
Website - http://www.insurgentband.com

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/InsurgentBand/

I'M STUCK IN A RUT - EVOLVING AND ADAPTING

Watching people on social media living their 'best' life is getting to me - I know half of it is staged and the other half is someones best bits but it's making me feel sad. Since I've been on break from University and have moved back to my parents house I've been in a bit of a rut. I've broken the routine I had become so accustomed to for the past 10 months and now it's so close to the start of the next university year I'm looking at this time I've had off and realising I haven't done anything and that makes me feel rubbish because I hate not being productive.

I love being at my parents but I miss having my space and my own plans, just little things like planning and cooking my own dinner has changed and it's thrown me into the air for no apparent reason. It's most likely that I feel like this because it's my first big break from university and hopefully during the next break I can use this experience to improve my time. Don't get me wrong I have had a lovely time but I'm so excited to go back and start learning again and being back to my everyday life.

Being back in my hometown takes me back to the time before I started University and I have changed so incredibly much since that time. So much has happened this year and I'm not the same person I was then but I was in the same environment and I hadn't thought to change anything about it. As I've written about before I re-decorated my bedroom and even that small change really helped me start being productive again because the space I was in inspired me again and made me feel comfortable.

Another thing I've been working on is making peace with the fact that sometimes things just don't go your way. Sometimes there are days where you don't have plans or things just aren't working out and that's ok. I used to (and sometimes still do) get upset when I feel as though I haven't done enough, mostly this revolves around my blog. I want to write and post as much as I can but sometimes I don't have any ideas or I get too busy to dedicate time to writing or I just plainly don't have the energy, and I need to get it into my brain that that is ok - and I'm getting there.

Spending time on my own and relaxing is the best medicine for me to get me back to my 100%, everyone is different and different things help them improve themselves. I've started eating clean and drinking more water which is getting my energy levels up and I've started following yoga videos on YouTube whenever I can to relax and show my body some love. I still will try to bleach and dye my hair in the hopes that the change in my appearance will equal a change in myself even though I know its a time old method that will never work but at least I'm trying something.

I am trying to evolve to become a better version of myself, but sometimes there are situations that you can't control and we just have to accept that and adapt so we can learn and improve.