The Liebster Award

The Liebster Award is a blogging tag where, after being nominated by someone, you are to answer ten questions that the person who tagged you asked. You then tag ten other blogs who are to answer ten questions that you made up!

As for any awesome thing, the tag has rules:

Uno. The tagged blogs must have less than 200 followers
Dos. In your response, the person who tagged you should be mentioned
Tres. So those who you tag can respond, you should let them know!

I was tagged by the fantastical Lulu from luluslittlebiglife.

These are the questions I was asked:

1. When you bake what is your go to thing to make?
Although I love a good baking session with new things or big things, I'm a sucker for just quickly making some fairy/butterfly cakes (and then proceeding to eat most of the eighteen in one sitting).

2. What is your favourite book?
This question has made me sweat a little as I have so many favourite books. So, excluding the Harry Potter series and The Hunger Games series, I'm going to just say the most recent favourite book of mine: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green.

3. What item of clothing are you wearing the most at the moment?
I feel like as soon as my baggy red jumper from Topshop is back from being washed, I wear it!

4. Cardigans or jumpers?
My life is very jumpers galore!

5. Would you rather not wash your hair for 2 weeks or go 2 weeks without wearing any makeup?
I would go two weeks without wearing any makeup.

6. What is your favourite fast food?
Pizza, pizza, pizza, pizza, oh and pizza!

7. City that you would love to live in one day?
I would love to live in New York because everything about it sounds exciting: pretty sights, shops and the accent!

8. What are your makeup essentials?
I would say that Barry M nail varnish makes me happiest, but I also love sea salt spray and Benefit They're Real mascara.

9. Who is your favourite blogger?
I love too many blogs but because it was Sprinkle of Glitter's and Zoella's that introduced me into the world of blogging, I must give them the title.

10. If you haven't already would you consider making youtube videos?
I love watching people's youtube videos and am in love with a few too many youtubers but I, personally, wouldn't make videos because my personality doesn't really suit it and I prefer putting thoughts and events into words.

 

The fabulous blogs I am tagging:

 

http://wondercanyon.blogspot.co.uk/

http://xbeautybow.blogspot.co.uk/

http://louiseerin.blogspot.co.uk/

http://stacieesteenblog.blogspot.co.uk/

http://atruevirgonian.blogspot.co.uk/

http://mylittleposie.blogspot.co.uk/

http://naturallyjes.blogspot.com.au/

http://jessssicahart.blogspot.co.uk/

http://emilybebs.blogspot.co.uk/

http://stnkrbug.blogspot.co.uk/

 

Ooooo, I do love a bit of centralised text!

 

Questions for you to answer:

 

1. What is your favourite flower?

 

2. What would your number one blogging tip be?

3. What's your favourite season and why?

4. What would your ideal way to spend a rainy night doing be? (PG please guys, ha!)

5. Why did you start blogging?

6. If we were playing one of those "get to know each other" games, what would your fact about yourself be?

7. If you could go to any other country right now, where would you go?

8. What is your favourite type of book AND blogpost to read?

9. What is it about blogging that you love the most?

10. What is your favourite social media website?

 

To round up this post, I'd like to say a big, warm thank you to Lulu and to those who I've tagged, please let me know when you respond (if you do) and send me a link to the post! I think The Liebster Award is amazing. Not only does it raise awareness of smaller blogs, it's fun! I was so excited writing the whole of this post! A sense of unity is created with things like this so definitely check out the blogs I've tagged and also Lulu too!

 

Fairy wings & Buttercream,

 

The Girl in the Moonlight.

P.s. I don't think anyone I've nominated has been nominated before. If you have and I've nominated you (sorry!), please let me know if you can so I can tag someone else! Thank you!

The Loveliest Things in Life #2

A couple of months ago I wrote a blogpost about The Loveliest Things in Life but I know I missed a lot of things off of the list.

Making someone smile.

One of my favourite feelings is the fuzzy feeling I get in the evening after making someone smile. Some may call it an ego boost but being on this planet, for me, it is vital that people know I appreciate them and that, in turn, they'll remember me, in the course of time, for doing something nice. It might be writing my best friend a letter, sitting in the living room with my mum or telling a stranger I like their coat. It all counts.

When it comes to friends, I know it's important to make them smile for no reason at all or at a time when they really need it. It might be when they're perfectly happy or when they're upset. It could be as simple as sending them a text or having an hour long call with them (you know the ones where you hang up smiling). I might surprise them with their favourite chocolate bar or arrange something. It could be bigger. Whatever I do, I want my friends to know that I'm there: to talk, to cry on or to just be there.

With family, it's harder as I'm around them most but I know it's my family who need to know I appreciate them the most. So I'll buy my brother a film he really wants or make him his favourite food, I'll help my mum out with the dinner or watch TV with her and I'll act silly with my dad or arrange a day out to his favourite place.

What about making a stranger smile? Passing an elderly couple and smiling at them is one of my favourite things to do because that might just well make their day. Whenever I'm buying something at a shop I like to wish the person at the counter a fabulous day because they may come across some people that are rude or make the day harder. Or I like to help someone when they need it: pick up a kid's toy when the mum's got a thousand things in her hands; reach for something in the supermarket when someone can't; do something little to make someone smile for the moment.

Now, I don't try to make someone smile so that when I'm watching Eastenders in the evenings I can conclude the day by thinking "wow, I'm great." That's not what it's all about. Making someone smile means they'll get something out of an action that I do too: a little or big slice of happiness.

Smiles & Surprises,

The Girl in the Moonlight.

Summer Dreams Ripped at the Seams

Summer has been fab this year. College has been tough and stressful but so worth it and I've spent this summer feeling nothing but chilled. I've never been bored and I've also appreciated days where I've just eaten sweets and watched films. We've also had lovely skies like this:

Summer dreams ripped at the seams... Back to college I must go.

Although I have that horrible "ugh it's time to go back", grey-sky feeling about my second year at college, I am motivated. I'm feeling the fear of the year to come, but I'm excited. As I'm feeling both ends of the spectrum, it means I can work hard to reduce my fear but also not forget to enjoy the fun parts of college that will happen this year. Although I'll have exams and stress, I'll also have days out and nights with friends and this can't be forgotten amongst the mist of notes and panic. These are the things that will make it bearable. Getting everything sorted for university will, in turn make me motivated to get the grades that I need.

Aims for this year:

- I must read more. Although I've made time to read this year, I've not read as much as I would do and so when I'm a bit tired, instead of complaining and moping, I shall read! In turn, some of these books will be ones that will help with my university course.
- Prepare for university. This is so important. I've got my places figured out but I need to understand each different university course as well as booking everything I need.
- Ultimately I have to work my mismatched socks off. There's no more to it other than: I cannot disappoint myself.
- I need to learn not to publish a post if I'm not happy with it. I've been so focused on making sure I publish regularly (three times a week), that I sometimes overlook the fact I'm not happy with the post. Planning what I'm going to publish when has definitely helped with this as it means I know what posts need to be done and I have ages to think about it.

I wrote a post in the middle of July about That Feeling. I said that I hoped the feeling would stay with me and, all summer, it did. I have had the best summer and I am so sad it's over - so sad - but life goes on and all that.

Blue Skies & Fluffy Clouds,

The Girl in the Moonlight.

The Fault in Our Stars - John Green

*Many traces of spoiler... Like, seriously, some real spoilers. This may be more like a retelling of the novel than a review.*

You know when people claim to have not been prepared to experience something so mind-blowingly amazing that they now see the world as a more meaningful sphere of metaphors? I experienced it and I experienced it oh so much. When I purchased The Fault in Our Stars I knew I would have my heart taken away from me on a rollercoaster cart, ready for the ride of Hazel Grace's life, but I didn't know my eyes would rain quite so much. (Oh, Mr. Green, my love for metaphors has increased).

Oh, and hold on tight because this is going to be a long post.
























Let's start with the characters.

 

Hazel Grace is one of my favourite characters ever. She's courageous, funny and so selfless. She always seemed to be protecting other people's feelings and although it broke my heart because she didn't have to, she did all the same. She was also so outrageously, inappropriately funny and it made some really sour parts of the book lighter. She had an attitude that made horrible truths easier to take in. "Even cancer isn't a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive." This quote just epitomises Hazel Grace, her justifying the destructiveness of her own illness.
 

I'm not going to talk too much about (one of) the love(s) of my life Augustus Waters because I will soon be posting a Fictional Fantasy post about him but he is just awesomeperfectlovely. From the moment he was mentioned in the novel, I knew he would tattoo my heart with his every organism. The way he saw things as a metaphor and his view on life lit my heart with wonder. Oh, and he's so gosh dang charming.

The parents of Hazel Grace played such a big role in the novel with setting up how heart-breaking the novel is." As Hazel stated, the thing worse than being a sixteen year old with cancer is being a parent with a sixteen year old child with cancer. Throughout the whole novel, whenever one of Hazel's parents was mentioned, this would play through my head, making every tear from her father sting me all the more. I, like Hazel, felt the best relief near the end of the novel when it was made certain that her parents would eventually be okay after she was gone.

 

I had built myself up to meet Peter Van Houten, this wonderful author, the image of him in my heart mirroring Hazel's and so when May came, I felt Hazel's pain with her. Her one wish, her one real wish turned out to be horrendously disappointing. I turned to my brother after I read it and complained about how he ruined Hazel's dream and then he reminded me, it's fiction. Still. What's more, Van Houten, by the end of the novel is still an alcoholic. That's raw and as much as I would have loved for him to be okay (I hope, beyond the pages, he is - I really want to email John Green about this), he wasn't and, well, that added to the realism.

Augustus and Hazel's relationship is at the top with all of my favourite romantic relationships because of one thing: their differences and similarities made a coherent whole. Everything about them worked so well; they understood each other and they wanted to understand each other. What was even more touching was how in love with each other they were before they were together. Hazel didn't want to be with him so as to make sure he never ended up hurt and Augustus wanted to be with her so they could be happy together.

"I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly and then all at once."    

 

Augustus's fear of oblivion is a part of the novel that made me think. He feared being forgotten because, in time, there would be no one alive to remember.
"Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That's what bothers me the most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease."
No matter how strong Augustus appeared, how sure of everything he was, he was vulnerable and he had fears. He wanted to make a mark and he feared not making it. Well, he made a mark on my heart, that's for sure.

The part of the novel that broke my heart the most about the novel was this: "...I was beginning to suspect that even if death didn't get in the way, the kind of love  that Augustus and I share could never last." I don't like to believe it's true, but, in my head I linked it with oblivion: nothing ever lasts. Although when I read the quote it caused me to dampen the top of my top, tears not staying at the bay for anything, I know it's exactly what I love about the novel. I really love how honest it is.

I've not felt sadness at a novel like the day I read of Augustus's exit. I went to bed and Augustus was alive and charming Hazel and me. I woke up to read and before long he was dead, gone from the pages of the novel. There's some sense of realism there. That's why my throat was caught and my eyes pricked for a second before I really began to sob.

I'm glad that the book was left where it was because, despite the novel spelling out Hazel's death and what happened after, without the "scratches on a page", we know that beyond Hazel's death, her mom's happiness will exist despite the pain and her parents stay together. I just know it. Mr Green, I thank you.

I've never been so touched by one novel before and heck, not many novels have made me cry quite like this one. I was left with a muddle of thoughts and sadness but enlightenment. Not only did this novel bring me great joy with opening my eyes quite so much, the tears it created meant some really moisturised cheeks! The Fault in Our Stars is full with lines that made me stop, re-read the sentence made up of everyday letters that formed something so special and let the words make my heart pound until I was ever so slightly over the hauntingly perfect or beautiful words. Every special line is in my memory, etched with the romance and the tragedy of it all. True, the overwhelming sadness I felt was genuinely heartbreaking, but it's the most raw, true and touching novel I've read.

I could ramble on (as I've done above) about how amazing this novel is for a days and days without thinking I've not covered everything. The Fault in Our Stars is a love story, a fight, a tragedy. The Fault in Our Stars is a masterpiece, a tear-provoking work and a story that will never leave me.

John Green, this novel was more than "scratches on a page."

Crooked Smiles & Metaphors,

The Girl in the Moonlight.

August's Awesomeness

It makes me want to have a tantrum and go and play with my colouring pencils as August is over but I must talk about my favourite things of the awesome August.

One of my favourite things is that Nina Nesbitt is the music to the new John Lewis advert. It excites my heart oh so much! Hearing her cover of Don't Stop on the advert makes me jump up and down with excitement and it is now available on iTunes! I'm a huge fan of Nina and every time she releases something on iTunes it will be on repeat for many, many days! I absolutely love her cover of the fabulous Fleetwood Mac song and it puts me in the greatest of moods.

The Dinosaur That Pooped A Planet is officially out! Being 17 did not stop me loving and re-reading The Dinosaur That Pooped Christmas many times and it didn't stop me loving Tom and Dougie's second children't book. I've bought many copies for family members and I know they'll love it too! You can buy it here and many other places. I will be putting up a blogpost up about it very soon!

Louise, Sprinkle of Glitter uploaded and amazing video: Having Hope. I love it when Louise does these kind of videos because they're nothing but honest and bright (I'll explain). This video left me feeling nothing but (if I were a colour) yellow; I feel refreshed and with renewed prospects. The world looks more hopeful. I feel happier and excited about what's to come. After Having Hope, I really did feel hopeful. Thanks Louise!

I really love The Vamps and I had a lot of excitement for their video for their debut single Can We Dance. I've loved The Vamps from the very first day and so was naturally very proud of their first video. I love it. Can We Dance is an amazing song and I saw only a good response to it on Twitter and YouTube. Make sure you pre-order it on iTunes for extra awesomeness too!

Here I shall talk about two trailers that have been my favourites of August. As the Sherlock, season 3 teaser trailer came out this month, I must talk about it. I have watched this beautiful creation many times. I just can't wait. Sherlock just looks... And Watson is... I just need to see the first episode now. What else can't I wait for? THOR 2 ASDFGHJKL. The trailer is just epic and it makes my wee fangirl heart cry. Oh Thor, you perfect man.

Even though I had Brand New Day already on my iPod there are extra treats on the EP including an acoustic version of with Nina Nesbitt which is just... perfect. Each track is amazing and I just can't stop listening to it. Kodaline have my heart and make me feel all summery and are also perfect for cold nights and hot chocolate. They are a must for all seasons.

So this month has been so awesome in terms of music as well as visual wonders; a big cheer for August! Now I'm off to draw a flower.

Blogposts about other things I've loved this month:
McFly reaching the ten year milestone
Christina Grimmie's album
Summer break
Les Mis
Hola-holiday!

Dinosaurs & Hearts,

The Girl in the Moonlight.

YouTubers: Lauren Aquilina

Although I'm not sure she's defined as a YouTuber, more so a singer/songwriter, I found Lauren Aquilina via YouTube and her covers here and I'm so glad that I did.

Lauren's voice is the kind that causes hairs to stand up and make my insides feel all fluffy! Her music really chills me out and she writes it herself - there's nothing more I love in an artist than one who writes their own songs! As well as this, she plays piano and it's just perfect. The lyrics are always so meaningful and pretty and I always have the melodies she's created in my head. She is clearly so passionate about her music and that makes my heart smile; when she plays her music live, it's not just her voice or song that gets me, it's how much the song is a part of her. Wow, that just got deep. I get so carried away into a better world when I listen to her music. She is one of those rare artists that can make any day better.

 

"You're in control, rid of the monsters inside your head."

 

I also feel like I relate to her music. I'll sit there and just think "yup, I get it" and that makes me play the song on repeat for hours as loud as possible, yelling emotionally (and as gracefully as I can) the lyrics along. Golly, I'm getting teary thinking about it.

I love Lauren Aquilina so much. Her talent is incredible and she's so dang talented and I can't wait to one day see her live. I'll be the one freaking out.

Favourite acoustic version of one of her songs.
What I'm listening to right now.
Favourite cover.

Have a cheeky listen to her Fools EP (and love it).
Check out her amazing Sinners EP.

Raindrops & Pianos,

The Girl in the Moonlight.

A Cynical Romantic Sees Love #3

As I've spoken before about being both cynical and completely in love with "love", I'm going to talk about another experience where my pessimistic eyes have been opened.

Love comes in different packages: the love you feel for a friend; the love for a family member; actually being in love and so on. I watched two versions of love wrapped up in one lovely moment that I had to force my eyes to be drawn away from. Recalling the moment even makes me smile.

On holiday I saw love in the form of a family and the love the two parents of the family felt for each other. In the pool was the dad, holding his baby boy with his older boy beside him. There were nothing but smiles. The mum was outside of the pool taking a picture, capturing this perfect moment: all of her lads having fun on holiday. The dad was grinning wildly, the mum proudly, their happiness and pride both showing their incredible love for each other and their own picturesque family.

The eldest son was showing off his water tricks and his dad praised him, saying that he would soon be able to teach his little brother. I couldn't help wonder how much he wanted his boys to stay that age or whether he was excited to see them blossom. I'd expect a bit of both, but he was definitely enjoying this perfect moment.

After they came out of the pool the eldest kid asked for an extra treat with a cheeky smile and they of course, said yes because the boy seemed a gem and they clearly loved him (as you would) with all of their hearts. The baby boy giggled along and the family packed up their stuff, sure to be enjoying more lovely moments that evening.

The love between couple was perfect. They would smile at each other, their sons lighting their eyes with pride but their love that existed before their children shone like crazy too. They had their own little moment within the moment, the smiles they shared between their children talking, the smiles in their eyes.

There are two special things about this moment:
1) Although I can only assume, this one short moment was probably one among many moments that they have experienced before and just a slight happening in the mist of happiness they are to experience and yet, it caught my eyes and heart.
2) The love the parents had (and have, I hope!) for each other lead to this second form of love and that's just too precious.

It's crazy how much this one experience made me incredibly happy.

Splashes & Smiles,

The Girl in the Moonlight.

A Cynical Romantic Sees Love #1
A Cynical Romantic Sees Love #2