365 days in 30 ways - REVIEW

It's over, how did I do?

1. Bake cakes for my new flatmates.

Okay, so most of them had left before I actually made them, but Sunny, John and Adelina liked them...

2. Get a poem published.

3. Meet up with someone I met online.

Marinassia, Megan, Dan and Ros.

4. Raise £100 for charity.

5. See a famous comedian live.

6. Pass the first year of my degree.

With a first as well.

7. Keep my cacti alive.

Technically I killed one of them, but the other two are alive and well.

8. Meet someone famous.

9. Go to the Torchwood paving slab in Wales.

10. Learn to play poker.

11. Go to Pride.

Liverpool with my Mummy :)

12. Go on the London Eye.

13. Pass the 21 Day Challenge.

14. Stop being superstitious.

I didn't put my new shoes on the table, but that was for my mum's benefit.

15. Fit back into my size 10 clothes.

16. Learn sign language.

17. Swim in a river/lake.

18. Join a writers society.

I paid the joining fee even if I didn't go, so it counts.

19. Have a snowball fight with strangers.

Technically my flatmates and some people they knew, but they were strangers to me.

20. Be part of a flash mob.

21. Take a first aid course.

22. Get a Henna tattoo.

23. Get a job.

24. Get a book signed.

Sent a signed copy of Like Bees to Honey by the wonderful Caroline Smailes.

25. Take up yoga.

Wii Fit yoga, but it still counts.

26. Have a nerdfighter t-shirt custom made.

27. Sell something on eBay.

28. Cook a meal for my best friend.

I made Sarah some pizza, so I'm counting it.

29. Blog about all of the things that are on my 'wall of stuff'.

Can't actually happen now as it's been taken down :(

30. Have regular blog readers who aren't my mother.

Welcome, reader!

I did pretty badly really, didn't I?

Expect the coming years list in a few days

Advent calendar dilemma

When do you eat your advent calendar chocolate?

I feel like a big kid still having an advent calendar at the age of 18, but I’ve done it for the last 17 Christmases in a row so why would I stop now? I think the most childish part of it is that my mother bought me my advent calendar again.

For anybody interested, it’s a Mars one, which means it isn’t quite as good as the Cadbury one I had last year, but it is still pretty good. The window for Christmas Eve is really big as well so that’ll probably be a fun-size Mars bar I imagine.

But there is a dilemma which I face every morning when it comes to eating my advent calendar chocolate. Obviously you have to brush your teeth before you leave the house (although this doesn’t seem to be obvious to some people in my lectures, but so is life) but this will have an effect on your enjoyment of the chocolate.

The basic problem I have is: do you eat your advent calendar chocolate before or after you brush your teeth?

If you eat it before, then the taste of the chocolate gets washed away when you brush your teeth. However, if you eat it afterwards, the chocolate will taste funny. So, what do you do?

The bestest says she brushes her teeth, eats breakfast and then eats her chocolate, which seems to make sense as a logical sequence for when it comes to eating chocolate. But, I don’t eat breakfast. And I brush my teeth after breakfast if I ever get it because food gets stuck in my brace.

I still don’t know what to do in relation to eating my advent calendar chocolate and brushing my teeth. If anyone fancies giving me a solution that still allows me to have my daily December fix of chocolate in the morning before I have to go and do something else but allows me to have the most enjoyable chocolate experience that will last me the whole day.

Am I overthinking this? I should probably just eat my damn chocolate and get on with it.

365 days in 30 ways update: I received a parcel in the middle of last week, which contained a signed book by my lovely name twin Caroline Smailes. It also had a post-it-note which says ‘All the bestest lasses are called Caroline’ which now has pride of place at the top of my wall, which I will be able to resume showing you in January.

Number 24, checked off.