Meadow of Daisies: January 2020

I absolutely love Vancouver and I think it may possibly be one of my favorite cities EVER!

Going on Holiday we stopped in Vancouver on the way back from holiday and we only got to spend 48 hours in my favorite city, so I am going to share where we stayed and what we got up to on our holiday.

What we did

Fly-Over Canada

If you're into Disney, then you will have probably been on the Soarin' ride. Then the FlyOver Canada is something that you absolutely have to do!

"FlyOver Canada utilizes state-of-the-art technology to reveal some of Canada’s most awe-inspiring sights as you have never seen them before."

You hang suspended with feet dangling, in front of a 20-metre spherical screen where a film takes you on an 8-minute journey across Canada, from East to West. There are also special effects including wind, mist, and scents, to make the ride seem more real than ever.

I would thoroughly recommend getting online for a time slot as this means that you will be let straight in and you can keep your tickets on your phone and it speeds up the whole process - and it is cheaper. Tickets are rather expensive but totally worth it!

Adults $27.00 (At the gate) $22.95 (Online). Students get a discount $21.00 (At the gate) and $17.85 (Online).

Find out more on their website - here

Cycling around Stanley Park

If ever in Vancouver this is definitely something that I would recommend, there is a specifically designed cycle path, to travel around and it is around a 3-mile cycle. It takes in some beautiful sights of Vancouver especially the sea which was really pretty and you could also see the cruise ships sailing in and out.

Stanley Park is situated at the northwestern edge of downtown Vancouver, it is one of Vancouver's main tourist destinations. The park haslots of lovely beaches, miles of well-maintained paved and dirt trails.

It was Vancouver's first park, with ever-blooming gardens, pristine coastal areas and roughly 500,000 cedar, fir and hemlock trees, Stanley Park have continued to live up to its "greenspace" designation for almost 130 years. For these reasons and more, this tranquil oasis is the perfect city escape.

Sea Plane Tour
Possibly one of my favorite things we did in Vancouver. We went on the Vancouver Classic Panorama. Which is the most popular tour of the city taking in the City and North Shore Mountains. The seaplanes depart from downtown Vancouver’s Coal Harbour and include a complete aerial view of the city and surrounding parks and beaches.

The ticket priceof $125.00 (taxes included), included complimentary hot drinks when you arrive at the terminal and also include a free pastry. The flight is a 20-minute tour, which really takes in all of the sights, which are truly beautiful. I think the best bit was taking off and landing on the water.

Visit Granville Island
An easy way to get to on the bus which a return ticket costs around $3. An absolutely amazing place with an amazing array of farmers markets all selling handmade fresh goods! If I lived in Vancouver I would go to Granville island purely for the markets every week, Iwish there was something like it in the U.K. if anyone knows somewhere please let me know. There are also some beautiful restaurants and spectacular views of Vancouver.

*The Harbour at Granville Island*

*Does this cupcake not look amazing, bought from the markets!!*

xoxo

Isabelle

January 26, 2020 No comments

In the past couple of weeks, I have been thinking about my social media and the people that I follow. I realized that I followed so many people that I was going onto Instagram and just looking at stories. It quickly became apparent to me that I never actually scroll through Instagram anymore and I am watching stories to clear the notification and not actually engaging in any of the content.

I have always felt apprehensive and a bit guilty for unfollowing someone, but I wanted to ‘cleanse’ my social media and make my feed something that I found inspiring and had content that I wanted to engage with.

So, I decided that it was time to go through my Instagram and unfollow all the accounts that I no longer engage with. Through doing this I also found that there were about 20 accounts that hadn't actually posted any content in years. I went through my following and looked at every account and asked myself Do I engage with this content? Is it something I am interested in? Do I want to follow the life of this person? If the answer was no then I simply unfollowed them. I managed to reduce my following by over 150 accounts and since doing this I have started to scroll down my feed more and found I am engaging a lot more with the content that I see.

I also decided to do this with my YouTube subscriptions. I haven't been through my YouTube since I first discovered YouTube, my sub box always seemed to have so many new videos but in reality, I didn’t engage with any of the content. I was subscribed to over 600 people and it became 'annoying' when I had a sub box full of at least 10 new videos all of which didn’t interest me.

Changing up my following has made me realize the following things:

1. Follow who you want, over time as you change the content you engage with will change

2. It's okay to unfollow someone, in time you'll feel better for making that decision

3. It's okay to take a social media break if/when you need it

I would recommend everyone to take 10 minutes to review who you follow online. YOU control what you see and what you engage with and in order to keep online a positive space, it is important to unfollow those who make you doubt yourself or aren't good for your mental health.

xoxo

Isabelle

January 19, 2020 No comments

Since I came to university there have been many different websites that I have found along the way that have become such invaluable resources for me while I have been doing my assignment and have allowed me to save so much time. Today I am sharing my top 5 websites that aid with my uni assignments and will help me so much whilst working on assignments.

1. Cite this for me

Cite this for me is a website that will generate references and citations for you, it has many different referencing styles. At my university, I have to use Harvard referencing however there are many different referencing styles including APA & MLA along with many other different citation styles. This has honestly saved my hours and is so easy to create references and citations.

2. Grammarly

A website that would probably be really helpful to use in A levels but has proved so helpful in university. On google chrome, you can download an extension so that whenever you write anything online be it an email, document, a blog post even it will pick up grammatical errors that I find work doesn’t always pick up.

3. Staying focused

I am the person that gets so distracted whenever I am doing uni assignments when I get bored and decide to take a ‘5-minute break’ which then turns into a plan out the rest of the week, check my socials, go have a snack, decide to have lunch, get distracted by housemates and before I know it my 5-minute break has turned into a ridiculously long break and I’m running out of time to complete my assignment before the deadline.

Block yourself from websites - I have started to use websites to block myself from certain sites and it really helps with productivity. When you google there are so many different results for web blockers. However, the best one I have found works for me is one called stayfocused. The website will limit the amount of time you can spend on websites depending on what you have set. I find it extremely valuable and keeps me focused.

Flora app - Although this isn’t a website, I wanted to include it anyway as another way I stay focused. Flora is an app when you go on and set how long you want to stay focused for and it starts growing a plant in the time you want to stay focused. If you open your phone and go on apps it will then make the plant you've been growing die

4. Search in document

I know this isn’t a website either, but it is something I only just realized you could do and has honestly made assignments so much easier. When I write assignments, we are not allowed to use contractions so when I get to the end of my assignment I can use the find/search document function (command + f) on a mac then I can search for apostrophes and easily see if there are any words I have written as contractions and easily change them.

5. Quizlet

A website that I do not use anymore, but I found it very helpful during school when I had to revise for exams. I used it too creates different quiz cards and found it extremely helpful as a way to learn information. Especially seeing as on Quizlet there are many different modes to learn information.

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