Spare a Thought This Christmas

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Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy, comfort and laughter. It's a time where we gather around our friends and family whilst taking for granted the stuffed turkey (or quorn in my case), the presents under the tree and the copious amounts of alcohol. As we dance around the Christmas tree, sing songs around the fire and laugh gleefully at the Christmas cracker jokes, it's easy to forget that there's people that won't be celebrating Christmas this year.

Walking through Manchester a few days ago, I was confronted by many homeless people. Call me naive or whatever you like, but being from a smaller town it's something that I'm not used to seeing and it took me by quite a shock. Each Christmas I go through the emotions of feeling lonely and isolated. I don't have much family apart from my parents and my aunties and uncles never have the time to see me. My favourite and most doting auntie died only nine months ago, in all fairness she was the only person that really understood me. Each year I always crave the big family parties that I see on Christmas films and the television, but before I met my fiance it was difficult. I'm an only child with no grandparents. These days Christmas is larger as my fiances family and mine get together and it makes such a difference. Feeling lonely at Christmas is one thing, but having no-one there at Christmas is just unimaginable for most. Looking at the people on the streets, I couldn't help but want to shed a tear. Of course, there were people that looked like they probably did have homes to go to, but a select few looked like living on the streets was the only thing they knew. Walking back to the train station, I decided to look on the Shelter website and the facts took me by surprise.

The slogan for the Christmas Shelter appeal is 'One homeless child at Christmas is a tragedy, 80,000 of them is a disgrace.' When thinking of children at Christmas most people think of santa claus, opening presents and Christmas stockings, not being homeless. It's surprising how one encounter with an homeless man the other evening has opened my eyes further to a national problem that we all are slightly oblivious to.

This Christmas all I ask from you is to look around you and cherish the moments with your family. To think about all the people less fortunate and to give a little Christmas goodwill to those who need it the most. I will be donating money to the UK Charity Shelter this Christmas and although I can't offer them a mass amount of money, I hope that my contributions will somehow help one person have a good Christmas that they deserve. After all, everyone deserves a home.

http://england.shelter.org.uk/

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Save The Date: Forevermissvanity Wedding

The New Year is always full of excitement, wondering where you will be in a year from now and what changes will be coming your way. Next year I've decided to go all out and go for probably the biggest and most stressful year I could possibly have. Although I say that like its going to be a bad thing, next year is seriously going to be one of the most exciting years of my life. The reason why? There's a clue just in the top image. I'm getting married.  Not only am I getting married, but I'm also graduating from uni, moving from the parents house and potentially getting my first ever job all in 2014. For the most part I'm incredibly excited, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't incredibly anxious as to how I'm going to juggle it all. Preparing for a wedding is harder than it actually looks, trust me. I remember going into this whole engagement malarky quite naively - "Yes darling, we will have a wonderful wedding and it will be incredibly easy to organise. Don't worry, it won't be anymore added pressure on top of university, how hard can it be?" Well it wasn't until a few months ago that I realised such things as 'favours' and 'save the date' cards existed. I was a complete novice in a world that presumes because you're a woman you should know exactly what goes into a wedding.

A few weeks ago, whilst going on my daily prowl through my Twitter feed I saw a request for bloggers to review Save The Date cards. Realising that there's only 10 months until my wedding and I'm severely behind on my preparation I thought I'd give it a go. I was asked to choose a design from the Paper Themes website and hey presto, they arrived a few days ago in this beautiful box (check me out in my onesie) looking every bit better than I ever expected.

Mine and James' wedding is very much vintage focused. We wanted to do a 1950s theme, but it's become more of an amalgamation of all our favourite decades from the 50s through to the 60s and 70s. Both of us had no clue what we wanted our save the date cards or  our wedding invitations to be like, but when we saw these we knew we had to have them. Paper Themes specialise in vintage wedding stationery, making them the perfect company to make our save the date cards. There's a variety of designs and best of all, they are fabulous quality. The invitations I ordered are not too flimsy, beautifully embossed and more importantly they are the perfect size for a wedding invitation. Paper Themes have been providing happy couples with wedding stationery and invitations for over 100 years and with years of expertise, they know exactly what would make your wedding invitations stand out from the crowd. 

Unfortunately I'm unable to invite all my wonderful followers to my wedding, but make sure you save the date as I'll be blogging all the way to the aisle.

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