Introducing Grand-Dad to Photobooth

what money I have I'm spending on seeing these films!

Right....things that I've noticed

1) weighing out portions
Reading the back of packets and finding out what the real size of a serving is has stopped me over eating and also means my food is lasting longer! Sounds simple but it goes further than that; by eating the recommended portion sizes it stops you from over eating, which means you don't stretch your stomach making you feel hungrier later!

I've chosen not to prepare my lunches at the same time as I do my meals as I know that i'd just eat my lunch... I have no self control!

2) Splashing out a little has mad ALL the difference!!! Pesto for 98p, cream cheese for 50p and it sounds silly but cake mix for 22p have been the highlights of the past week. With basic staples that had absolutely NO flavour....[wall-papper paste I'm sure has more gastronomic appeal than cous-cous I'm SURE] but hey ... slap a bit of pesto in and you're away!

3) The whole week I've been craving sugar! That's where the cake mix coupled with the marmalade came into play! 22p basics cake mix would have been awful and dry....very dry! I had wanted to but Lemon curd so I could do a makeshift lemon drizzle cake but neither supermarket had any. which is why I ended up with marmalade. I boiled some down and added it to the mix along with one of my eggs and the rest of the orange-jam-syrup concoction was poured over the cake once it was done! I WAS SO HAPPY! Was it the best cake I'd ever eaten? NO Did I care? NO! I had cake! I was happy!

4) It is REALLY hard to eat healthily on a budget! Cheap food is not healthy! I could have bought 20 sausages for a pound apparently...NO THANKS! Pizza's for 40p! chicken nuggets for who even cares! I don't want it! I want fruit and veg! I walked past the market and there was a stall with the most beautiful apples! I think I may have to indulge this week on some fresh fruit and veg but then there s the risk of it going off! Right now it's a risk I'm willing to take!

5) Something else I've noticed is that there is pretty much NO VARIATION in my meals! I saved up some of the more 'exciting' foods till the weekend so I had something to look forward to! The joke was on me! It got to Saturday and my stomach  had shrunk! I made myself a breakfast of two fish fingers, an egg, half a tin of beans and two slices of toast......I ate.......most of the beans, half the egg, a fish finger and one slice of toast...I WAS STUFFED! I ate the rest for lunch I wasn't going to waste it!

6) I do not drink anywhere near enough water! The first few days I had a constant headache and often contemplated just going to bed so I didn't have to think about food!

6.5) I snack ALL THE TIME! I recognised all of the times during the day when usually I'd have had a biscuit or a tomato or an apple or some sushi...I don't snack on normal things...which is probably why I nearly jumped a five year old with a pear the other day!

7) Alot of people at some point in the life have lived on less than a pound a day! My favourite stories coming from students that have lived of chopped tomatoes and toast...and I thought I had it bad!

8) Some of my friends are not the kind of people you really want to be around when doing this challenge. Having bananas waved in your face or dominoes pizza just being left beside you....NOT FUN!

9)It is worth it! On so many levels that I couldn't have comprehended before I started it is SO worth it. I have had loads of interesting conversations and had so much support not only for this but also my Global Poverty Ambassador venture for this year!

Ok So this is the second year I have taken up the live below the line challenge; last year I didn't document it and up until this point I hadn't documented this years challenge either....so here I go. This year I am taking up the challenge as a Global Poverty Ambassador, but for Restless Development.

The Challenge (if you choose you accept it) Is to live below the extreme poverty line (country specific) for 5 days. In the UK that means £5 for 5 days food and drink, thats breakfast lunch and dinner....33p per meal. My goal is to raise £365 which is the equivalent of living a year below the line.

When I tell most people what I'm doing the question they all ask is why; I'm doing this for the same reason that I present the 1.4 billion reasons presentation, to give a glimpse into the lives of 1.4 billion people who have no choice but to live below the line everyday- and who have to make £1 cover a lot more than food and drink.

My shopping list for this week is as follows
loaf of bread - 47p
pasta - 30p
cous cous - 68p
pesto - 98p
cream cheese w/ garlic and herbs - 50p
pasta sauce - 39p
fish fingers - 60p
frozen mixed veg - 75p
instant mash - 20p
marmalade - 22p
gravy granules - 20p
6 eggs - £1
tin of beans - 27p
sponge mix - 22p 

the grand total of £6.78 leaving 22 pence to treat myself during the week WHOOP!

Ok today wasn't the most memorable day in my 23 years of living...

Breakfast - toast and marmalade
Lunch - 2 toast pizzas (surprisingly tasty)
Dinner - mixed veg and cous cous with a little bit of pesto......absolutely no flavour what so ever 

Tomorrow will be interesting to say the least! Over the past week I've had a constant headache that I'm going to put down to dehydration and a lack of sugar. My favourite meal last week (although it wasn't planned) was my left over chilli with pasta ...yes, it sounds vile but hey, small mercies!

Lets see how this goes!

If you'd like to sponsor me you can HERE
You can find out more about live below the line HERE
Find out more about Restless Development the charity I'm doing it for HERE

Thank you facebook for making me realise that... as much as I may have thought I needed to read Bossypants by Tina Fey...I DEFINITELY need to read this bad boy! “But I think the first real change in women’s body image came when JLo turned it butt-style. That was the first time that having a large-scale situation in the back was part of mainstream American beauty. Girls wanted butts now. Men were free to admit that they had always enjoyed them. And then, what felt like moments later, boom—Beyoncé brought the leg meat. A back porch and thick muscular legs were now widely admired. And from that day forward, women embraced their diversity and realized that all shapes and sizes are beautiful. Ah ha ha. No. I’m totally messing with you. All Beyonce and JLo have done is add to the laundry list of attributes women must have to qualify as beautiful. Now every girl is expected to have Caucasian blue eyes, full Spanish lips, a classic button nose, hairless Asian skin with a California tan, a Jamaican dance hall ass, long Swedish legs, small Japanese feet, the abs of a lesbian gym owner, the hips of a nine-year-old boy, the arms of Michelle Obama, and doll tits. The person closest to actually achieving this look is Kim Kardashian, who, as we know, was made by Russian scientists to sabotage our athletes.”

....namely the blog that I like to forget about [I don't like forgetting about you.... it just happens] I'm sorry for my lack of understanding about 'code' and 'computer languages'; especially since as a result you just end up looking like a hot mess. I am sorry .... I could try and rectify said situation... but we all know that in a week or two, I... yet again will forget that you exist!


yeah SOZ

Things that are important to me right now

Learning (French, to drive, more about myself)
Practicing (drawing, painting, guitar, religion)
Improving (cooking, self, education, my awareness)
Loving (family, strangers, me)
Embracing (opportunities, responsibility, friends, family, foes)
Balancing (roles, budgets, time)

....on that note.....

I'm going to stop caring about everything else......

I dont think there is much else!

My sign off for GPP is coming up very soon!

due to the intense studying of extreme poverty, I frequently end up on YouTube reverting back to video's such as the one below!.....

Eeer Yeah Hi!

Say hi to one of the new Global Poverty Ambassadors for 2012 for the Global Poverty Project

If anyone in the West mid would like to book a presentation on the 1.4 billion reasons to fight Poverty...

Hit me up!

On a serious note! I'm really excited about this up coming adventure, the people I'm going  to be doing this 'alongside' and the people I'll be presenting to! I think my first port of call is going to be my old school! Miss Evans was my Economics and business Studies teacher and I'm sure she'd love to subject her students to a lunch time presentation. Plus KE has an insanely active amnesty international chapter functioning there.

So the past month has been pretty busy, especially this past week. I saw Brand New live, had a few interviews, slept in a car park....or more avoided sleep in a car park, and then the NME tour with Azaelia Banks, Tribes, Metronomy and Two Door Cinema Club....WHAT A WEEK!

What I actually want to speak / write about was sleeping in a car park!

I finally joined in with the St Basils Sleep out!

The opportunity came about trough The Challenge and links I have there. The St Basils sleep out and St Basils aim as a Charity is to increase awareness about youth homelessness. the night before I'd stood outside the academy for two hours trying to get someone to buy Jonny's brand New ticket as he couldn't make it; it wasn't until after the show that I truly thought how cold it was going to be. Lets just say four  tops a hat and three pairs of tights under my jeans did me proud.

During our brief we feasted on pizza and spoke to the youth board, two of my challengers from Summer had apparently made it onto the board which I was CRAZY happy about. Jess and Sunjay (the Asian/Irish Kanye doppleganger)...now you see why my Summer was SO good. They quickly went over their presentation and in our 'pairs' we discussed our duties for the night. The Youth board were amazing and it was refreshing to see how much they'd put into this event especially when some of them had been so reserved when organising their Summer activities!

We prepared the site .....moved the cardboard, started heating the water for hot drinks, chopping up wood, starting a fire, blocking off the river ... the normal stuff. Gradually the young people started to arrive.....and they continued.....and continued......there was a steady stream of young people; Challenge Alumni and Guests arriving for nearly an hour. In total there were nearly 130 young people there; the biggest Challenge Society event nation wide! We were all excited to be a part of it. The mentors were all starting to question how we were going to cope with the cold and doing our duties....the challengers.....grabbed their cardboard box and sheet of plastic, found a group and started making their home for the night! They knew what they'd signed up for.

As mentors all we really did was neck cans or red bull that the red bull fairy had given us as a promotional thing, and encourage them to build structures that they could sleep in, the last thing we wanted was for them to moan, or structures that fell down....most mentors had no intention of staying up and helping Challengers re-build their homes for the night!.....yeah not too sure what we as mentors thought we were going to do!

I had the opportunity to speak to some young people ...(I say young they were the same age/older than me )....that had been involved with St Basils when they were younger and are now on the advisory board.  It was interesting to hear their different stories of how they'd ended up being homeless, how they coped, how they got out, what they're doing now and how that experience changed their outlook on life. I still cant imagine what it must be like to have been in that situation...YES I slept in a car park for a night but I was prepared, I was surrounded by my friends, I dressed for it, we'd checked the weather forecast first, I had hot drinks on tap, a fire, a near endless supply of cardboard, I was on a secure site all be it still in the midst of rats (it was still a carpark in Digbeth), we even had a band playing for half an hour.

We complain about so much and take little time if any at all to truly appreciate all that we have been given. There are so many people in situations much worse than ourselves. Whilst sat about in the car park with my hot chocolate I contemplated on just how much harder the predicament could have been but alas, I had chosen to be there..... it situations became intolerable I could have taken a bus home and slept in a bed, I had a job to go to in the morning. Since that day I have been full of appreciation for everything; down to the smallest of things. I am honoured to be in the situation that I am, with the opportunities I have available, the friends that surround me, the bed I sleep in. Every doorway I go past, every NCP I park in or bridge I go over I'm mindful that come night time that could be where an innocent member of society may be resting their head.

St Basils have 400 beds available in Birmingham for  homeless young people across Birmingham and hopefully soon they'll have some more as every night, those 400 bed are full...St Basils are currently turning people away each night as they have not got enough space.

St Basils

The Challenge

Moonrise Kingdom Trailer from Jason Weinberger on Vimeo.


uhh... Hi new Wes Anderson! nice to see you!

As Summer somehow managed to consume another few months and I fail at striking the balance with too much to write and no where near enough and the time restraints that come with both of these options. Eurgh rather than even pretending like I'm going to complain let me get it out there......I had one of the most amazing Summers EVER! I was pulled in every direction possible and although at times I may have moaned or thought that I'd taken too much on.. I wouldn't have it any other way.....I can say that in hindsight but at the time I may have ...and most likely did feel VERY differently! I don't even know at what point my Summer of no sleep started but it must have been after my birthday ...this year I turned 23...I couldn't tell you what I did for it but I'm sure I did something pretty low key this year and loved it. Near the end of june started my first "wave" with my job for Summer 2011 A Senior Mentor with The Challenge. I could wax lyrical for a paragraph or ten about the experiences I had, people I met and fear I overcame but I'm sure most people have heard enough about that from me chewing their ears off. let me just say if you have a spare three or four weeks next summer and enjoy working with young people then GET INVOLVED! Rock- climbing, abseiling, raft building, sailing, ghyl scrambling, caving, two day hike, camping on top of mountains in stone huts....I kid thee not!

After the joy that was Summer came a trip to Spain for all of Autumn with my dad because work was making me wish ill things to nice people!.....(saying i was in Spain for all of Autumn does not mean I was there for three months. I live in england and therefor my favourite season.....lasted all of November and then it was Winter) Spain was .....better than being at work! We'll leave that there.

Winter - work, no time, German market, London for New Years and a new love of exercise! all in all it's been ok it's now 2010 ...... I started writing this blog post in 2011 but didnt finish it. I make no resolve to post on here more often because I know that I wont; I do promise however that I wont forget to come back every once in a while!