Tomboy

 Growing up I was the youngest of two sisters, a complete daddy's girl and had a natural chilled out demeanor.

My best friends growing up were always boys, and continue to be who I connect better to still. Girls were always inside playing with their barbies or being dramatic - which I thought was boring, where as I was always outside climbing trees, playing street football or causing a little mischief. The kids on our street would coming knocking on our front door everyday after school to see if I could come out and play, not returning til sundown (about a half hour after my mum had yelled for me to come in). I loved playing sports, my mum would say "if it involves a ball no doubt Gemma will play it", she was spot on as I played football, field hockey, and basketball in school.  

Embarrassingly I wore a backwards baseball hat, skorts (a skirt with built in shorts), and a t-shirt for most of  my pre-teen years, occasionally wearing a dress on holiday or on nice occasions. After turning thirteen I dramatically changed. We had just moved from London to Edinburgh and in that move I changed from going to an all girls school to a mixed one. I started to care about what I wore although it still being a more street style, I wore makeup and got highlights and straightener so my hair looked nice.

I am still a tomboy at heart but I have become a womanly woman who is independent, adventerous and still  without the dramatic side I am girly. I truly  thankfully I found a manly man who loves to be outside in nature as much as me and tells me I am a beautiful woman.

 This past weekend we lay in bed on a Sunday morning thinking about what to do with our day as it was going be a beautiful sunny day but wanting it to be a lazy day also. My husband suggested grabbing our long boards and skating over to Coffee Bean to grab a nice cold drink and plan our trip to Italy coming up this summer, genius. I do admit as we set off on our skate session I told my husband that I felt like a kid, here I am at twenty seven years old in shorts, a tee, white plimsolls riding a skateboard. If it wasn't for my older facial features I swear I could of been mistaken for a 15 year old.

Is it  lame to still enjoy skating? Am I too old to dress this way? Am acting like a kid?

 Honestly I believe that even in my thirties or when I have kids of my own I will probably still like the same fashion styles, enjoy skate boarding and a whole lot more. I came to conclusion that 'once a tomboy always a tomboy', and just because I enjoy some stereotypical "younger" activities doesn't mean I am an irresponsible adult, I am just being me.

My spaces

It is coming up on one year that we have lived in our first home together. I have loved the freedom our landlords have given us to paint our place and make it our own. They say you never forget the first house you've lived in and I surely won't, it's small, has thee smallest closet to ever exist, a kid size toilet but has lots of windows, vaulted ceilings, a big tree outside our front door, on a quiet street, great neighbors and I love it!

I have two favorite spaces in our tiny home. First is our bedroom, we have a large room where our clothes are squished into the tiny closet and two dressers, a gorgeous cobalt blue accent wall that our queen bed centers on, sitting on rustic wood pallets, with an awesome latch hook American Indian wall hanging, placed above it. My father in law served in the 101st Airborne during the Vietnam War, where he had a failed jump due to all the parachutes being tampered with from a member of his platoon. His parachute did not open but luckily got his emergency chute open just in time to steer himself into some trees to break his fall. In doing so he was severely injured and the only man to survive the jump. Whilst recovering he endeavored to spend his time making a latch hook American Indian wall hanging, which took him a few months to complete. It was hung in my husbands room growing up, when we would be over at the house Carl would tell me this has to be in our house one day. His dad passed it on to us after we got married, we feel very honored to display it in our home not only because it looks cool but to remember that miraculous story of his dads survival.

The second space that I adore is the little corner of our living room that houses our record player with a salt crystal lamp sitting on top of one of the speakers and my husbands grandmothers old chest. The record player also belonged to my father in law, he gifted it to my husband in his teenager years when Carl fell in love with the heart and soul of vinyls. The chest is a very sentimental piece to my mother in law and us, as it belonged to her mum that has since passed. It is a few decades old so we cleaned it up and used it in our wedding as a representation of her memory and were allowed to keep it in our home afterwards. It now houses our ever growing vinyl collection of over 300 records. My favorite thing to do is wake up on the weekend make some coffee, open up the chest, pick out a classic vinyl like James Taylor, whilst my husband makes breakfast (he's the master of breakfast) and sit together in the stillness of our morning. Letting the music echo throughout our home and enjoy waking up slowing together.

Make your spaces special and your own. 

Real Life

Being a part of this blogger world can be quite intimidating, seeing everyone's perfectly worded blogs and social media post like instagram, twitter and more makes peoples lives look flawless. One thing I don't want to project is that my life always adventurous or perfect all the time. I had a friend say to me "You have the best life" of course I agree because for me I am genuinely in love with my life right now but it is not without it's flaws.

When I post on social media there is a level in which I hold myself too just like I am sure you do too. You want your photos to be creative, be somewhere beautiful, look pretty, on an adventure and so on but today I wanted to let you into my daily life and what it really looks like.

My husband and I both work full time, Carl is a civil engineer and I currently work two jobs; one as an office assistant and the other as a nanny. A regular week looks like this; we both work Mon - Fri about 43 hours a week, go to the gym four days a week after work, have family dinners on Tuesday, and go to the evening service at our church on Sundays. Obviously we never just have those things going on but that is the basis of our week. We currently are involved in a leadership group at our church on Wednesday nights, Carl is working on a side project for a friend most Saturdays until mid May and on Wednesday afternoons I help one of my best friends with her new handsome son, do some chores around her house or what happens more often than not we just hang out and chill . I cook a homemade meal for us every night, we sit and talk about our days, I do laundry every other day (bad side of working out so much), and on Fridays I clean the house top to bottom. Occasionally we go out mid week with friends for a drink or catch a movie or have friends over for dinner. What we thoroughly love are our nights in, just the two of us catching up on our shows like Gotham, New Girl and so on eating ice cream and going to bed by 10pm, we are not old or boring, we both have to be up and out the door to start work at 6.15am and 7am. The weekends are our absolute favorite; we sleep in, lay wide awake in bed chatting, laughing and being silly before getting up to make a delicious breakfast then on a whim decide what to do. We love to be active on the weekends which always looks different sometimes hiking, antiquing, beach, pier fishing, the odd camping trip, try a new brewery, have a movie marathon, vinyl hunting and sometimes doing a few of them all in one day, we like to call those days "stretchy days" where time seems to slow down.

We, like the rest of the world tend to document more of the exciting parts of our life. "The grass is always greener on the other side" is such a joke of a saying because I look at friends who have kids that tell me our life is so great but I think what a joy it is to have a family and enjoy that new stage of life. Don't take everyone's blog or instagram to literally as I am sure half the time most of them are at home in their jammies watching gilmore girls. My hope with 'following arrows' is to be real and genuine in how I live and love my  life in the boring daily chores to the crazy adventures.