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Travel

How to Sleep in 9 Beds in 8 Weeks: A Timeline of my Summer Travels

posted on September 12, 2016

How to Sleep in 9 Beds In 8 Weeks

Step 1: Flee home

Have an annoying family member or friend room with you. Said family member needs to not let you sleep at all at night, to the point that for two weeks running you fall asleep at sunrise on a daily basis. Want to hit things. Decide to remove yourself from the situation instead.

Step 2: Get on a train. Get on another train. Get on a plane. Get on a car. Get on a bus. Be picked up by a darling blog acquaintance who offered to host you for a bit.

Bed #1: Woolwich. Double mattress on the floor. Soft-firm. Skylights. Uncomfortable for doing things but excellent for sleep. First night’s sleep in a month. Brain barely remembers how to have nightmares, it’s so tired.

Step 3: Continue to use kindness of friends to stay the fuck away from home.

Bed #2: Taplow. Double in a guest room in a cottage. Wiry but comfy as fuck. Comfy armchair downstairs to do things. Middle of fucking nowhere. Weird dreams just the once. Must leave because unexpected construction on listed building’s façade. So long, estate cat.

Bed #3: Brixton. Double bed with a duvet that does not even remotely cover the mattress, somehow. Homemade decals of London things on the walls. Pretty cute from afar.

Step 4: Get on another bus and another bus and another train and another plane and another plane and another bus to meet your best friend and crash with her.

Bed #4: Tallinn. Cot in best friend’s room that her parents got for the occasion. Thank you, her parents. Soft mattress that moves around a lot on the structure, but comfortable nonetheless. However, as it’s a longer stay and I get to relax, so does my brain and I start remembering my weird dreams and nightmares again. I even have one of my recurring dreams about this girl I knew in high school and me fumbling towards a relationship, which is one of the only 100% good dreams I ever have, and one of the few that make some modicum of sense outside my sleeping head, which is why I submitted it to Adjustamatic for their Dreams Explained campaign. I don’t know if they’ll get around to it, but it’s always nice to be asked about your dreams, seeing as how no one ever wants to hear about other people’s (including me).

Bed #5: Friend’s sofabed when she visits her parents because it’s bigger. Bigger. A little hard. I get to stretch my legs, though, so a+. The weird dreams remain.

Step 5: Take a job somewhere else and spend the weekend there, in two different places, one of which you stayed in before but it just so happens you’re staying in a different guest room this time.

Bed #6: Taplow. Single. Tall as fuck but also very comfortable. Estate cat greets me in the morning with mud. Good times.

Bed #7: LHA London’s Bowden Court. A single. Makes a weird noise when I move in a certain way, but otherwise perfectly adequate. Not into the shared bathroom at all though.

Step 6: Go back to best friend for four days. Have a nightmare on the second day that you wake up at midnight, which is only a terrible thing because you know that feeling as it has happened before, when your sleep schedule was significantly more screwed up. Find a flight towards your next crash pad that arrives so late you can’t continue your journey. Book hotel in city.

Bed #8: Bremen. Novum Bremer Haus. Sweet basic hotel, reminds me where I stayed with my parents in Valencia in 2006. Clean and tidy and comfortable. Hot, though, and I got bit by mosquitos. Slept excellently though.

Step 7: Take bus to original destination. Be picked up by a longtime friend and driven to their flat in Leeuwarden.

Step 8: Hit week 8 in their guest room, with one of their cats on bed #9.

Post in collaboration with Adjustamatic.

7 Comments

Diaries Life + Style

Life / Summer Moves

posted on July 16, 2016

Life / Summer Moves / lixhewett.com

Since my last life post, my grandma moved in with us and my sister moved into my room. This was at the beginning of June, and has been better and worse than I expected. I’ve barely had to fight for time alone since my parents rearranged the furniture in the living room and fixed the armchairs, but nights… oh, nights. I don’t want to hash it all out again, as I rant about it every morning because it happens every night, so let’s sum it up by saying that my sister won’t let me sleep at night — sometimes literally, to the point that I can’t manage to fall asleep until sunrise — and it’s taken a massive toll on me. I am a zombie, if a zombie couldn’t even gather the strength to eat brains and relied on wine for short bursts of energy to get the bare minimum done.

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I always intended to get the hell out of here as soon as my sister moved in because we do not get along as roommates at all; I’m always compromising and I need too much alone time; she wants things however she likes and doesn’t care for the needs of others. I get frustrated easily, and she gets mad and cruel easily. It’s a recipe for disaster, however well we were getting along back in May before we had to share a room. Long story short, my grandma only stays with us six months, then six months with my aunt, then three-six with my other aunt, then back here for six months. So I wanted to be out of here for as much of the six months as possible.

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4 Comments

Fashion Inspiration Life + Style

Wishlist / Summer Shooting

posted on July 9, 2016

omg you guys so I got my new camera and I’ve got NOTHING TO WEAR. *tears hair out* *tears wardrobe out* I am MOST DISPLEASED. It’s easier in winter because I can mix and match things! But see, as soon as it’s hot outside I’m the kind of person who reaches for a dress and calls it even. I even get dresses I can’t wear bras underneath, just to wear fewer clothes. And here we are, having shot the mustard and the denim and the red scallops and the orange pattern, and now what? Now. What? I’m going to London and I’m going to Tallinn (expect a life post explaining this tomorrow, I’m committing to tomorrow) and I got nothing to wear that I can proudly post.

And so this wishlist was born.

summers

Blue Maxi Dress (Boden) / Scallop Point Flats (Boden)
Jersey Top (Joules) / Bleach Roll Hem Denim Shorts (Miss Selfridge)
Navy Suedette Ballet Pumps (New Look) / Cream Canvas Wedge Sandals (New Look)
Print Handkerchief Dress (Simply Vera @ Kohl’s) — find discounts for Kohl’s here!
One-Piece Swimsuit (Speedo @ House of Fraser)

Gimme. Gimme all of it.

2 Comments

Closet Cosplay Fashion Life + Style Outfits

Style / Rose Red

posted on July 4, 2016

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You know when some of your outfit pictures kind of tell a story and you try to arrange them in a way that makes sense but you didn’t intend on them telling a story so you have three different mini shoots, there is no beginning or end and it basically doesn’t work?

Think of that as you scroll down this post.

The color palette is very much inspired by Snow White, and it’s partly for the same collab I mentioned when I posted Marigold and told you that was my closet cosplay version of Belle. It also happens to do a nice job of showing off all of my brand colors, so I’m probably going to start slapping the photos everywhere. There are many, and it wasn’t even what I’d call a successful shoot. It was hot, my sister kept getting distracted, and while I deleted most photos I deleted because they were out of focus, dark, grainy or all three, I also deleted a not-insignificant amount because of questionable faces.

That still left me with thirty-three. Five months and I’ve utterly lost my ability to be concise in my picture-taking. I will get there again, I’m sure, but — do think of that, too, as you scroll down this post.

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5 Comments

Food & Drink Life + Style Sponsored

Drinks / Wimbledon-Inspired Strawberry & Ice Cream Creamy Milkshake

posted on June 27, 2016

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #CollectiveBias

Strawberry Ice Cream Drink / lixhewett.com

There’s a lot about this post I don’t do often, from caring about sports to sharing recipes to trying to style a glass in a way that’s not massively boring. Low end of the learning curve here, for sure, on all accounts. But I do like tennis — along with gymnastics, it’s the only sport I ever make an effort to watch, and pay attention to — and Wimbledon has always been my favorite grand slam, probably due to the movie Wimbledon, it being played on grass (truly the best look for tennis, all right #shallow), and also the fact that my love of London goes way back and extends to most things even remotely within its borders.

I’m only vaguely aware of the strawberries & cream tradition for Wimbledon snacking, and mainly surprised y’all have strawberries in season that late in June; it was a quest and a half finding them now, which saddens me because I’m not ready to start making cold drinks until June, so I missed most of strawberry season this year. This has not always been the case, though, which is how this drink came to be one of the years I followed Wimbledon religiously.

This shoppertunity for SocialFabric seemed like a fantastic way to share the recipe with you, though, and I’m very glad I got to do so — all of two years after first mentioning it on a iced caramel coffee post.

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3 Comments

Closet Cosplay Fashion Life + Style Outfits

Style / Marigold

posted on June 24, 2016

Style / Yellow Dress & Criss-Cross Ring / Retro, Romantic Outfit

The sun is up, the sky is blue, and I’m cozying up next to a fan in my room because the heat outside is already unbearable. I was made for kinder climates, and cities with Starbuckses in them. Whiny though it may be, I would like it to always be spring. I want to wear sundresses — the flimsiest of dresses — and not melt in them. Alas.

Continuing on the theme of how I’m a geek and stuff, here’s an outfit I put together based on, initially, the dress reminding me of Pushing Daisies, constantly staring at me every time I went into H&M looking for basic long-sleeve tees and whispering, “the facts were these: you began to want me two months, three weeks, five days, four hours, five minutes and thirty seconds ago.” I was helpless to its honey bee charms and my brain associations.

But then, far from closet cosplaying Chuck Charles, as I may or may not do at some point, I let the dress tell me it wanted retro glasses and maybe some black to balance out the sweetness a la Aria Montgomery, and then I picked up a book for a prop as I went out and suddenly I was a little bit more Belle than Chuck, embodying the disgusting cloying romance of:

1. summer
2. breaking out my new 6D
3. showing off my beautiful criss-cross ring from OneByOne Jewellery,
and 4. finally having something to show for my previously only hypothetical presence in a Disney Princess collaboration series on which I joined beauty youtubers Leah, Clare, Victoria — this is my first bit, but not my last.

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7 Comments

Madrid Spain Travel

Travel / 8 Hours in Madrid

posted on June 16, 2016

8 Hours in Madrid, Spain / Lix Hewett

When I went to Barcelona in March, I had to deal with the dearth of direct trains from there to my hometown of Ciudad Real. In the end, I decided to take a train to Madrid, stay there for a few hours, and then take one of the many, many Avant trains back home. It was a smart financial decision, and I knew I could easily camp out at a Starbucks near Atocha for the time it took to wait for a train, even if I couldn’t arrange a meeting with anybody!

Camp out I did, but I also got to see someone I hadn’t since I’d studied for a whole three months at university in Madrid in 2007 — a fandom friend who took me to see lovely book stalls (I could have bought things, but I’m always happier shooting them!) and have a nice tea at a little hidden bakery nearby. This is a photo diary of those eight hours — 1 PM to 9 PM — I spent in Madrid between trains.

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4 Comments

Home & Living Life + Style

Home & Style / Summer Lounging

posted on May 26, 2016

It appears the fight is slowly fizzling out of spring and summer is beginning to settle in, which, despite me being a massive homebody, somehow makes me want to be outside all the time. I have a small patio that’s a bit of a pain, and one of the things I’d like to do when I have the money is create a bit of a lounging space for summer nights (summer days are dangerously hot over here, let’s not even) to read and chat and have supper. I’ve put together some of my favorite looks from Pinterest, and found pieces you can use to get the vibe.

outdoor-lounging

sources: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4

get the comfort: antilles daybed (omg gimme) / sunbed + coffee table / dining sets / outdoor fireplace / outdoor rug / floor lamp

And here’s an idea of what to wear during those lovely relaxing times:

summer-loungewear

maxi dresses / sunglasses / swimsuit / backpack / hat / shorts
sundress / shell top / espadrilles [find more offers for New Look]

This post is a PR collaboration.

Where do you like to hang out in the summer heat?

3 Comments

Travel

A Pop Culture-Infused Travel Wish List

posted on May 18, 2016

travel-wish

(You could call it a bucket list, but I don’t think I would like the pressure.)

Have you ever tried to remember how you became interested in a place? I figure remembering when you learned of it is a lost cause for big cities, and most of the places I think of when I think of places I want to go are exactly that. I find my brain works in a bit of a pragmatic prioritizing way — if you asked me where I look forward to going to in the near future, I would rattle off European capitals for as long as you could bear to listen to me, and then I’d be like, “And when I’m done with that, if I have the money and I can get a passport, then I guess we can start in on the United States?”

I took a different tack for this list because it turns out that most of the European cities I want to visit got on my list by being pretty and near. Meanwhile, my feelings recall US states along with flashes to TV and movies and books, because at my geeky core, I am basically made of stories. That shit runs deep. So let’s talk about it.

Paris

The other day I came across someone pointing out how many restaurants in Paris have café gourmand on the menu, which is, I kid you not, coffee plus four mini pastries. Is that the greatest thing in the world or what? I must remember this.

Paris is obvious and a pop culture favorite, and to tell you the truth a lot of what it makes me think about is sort of muddy and hard to pin down — the feeling of spring and hearing music coming from a few buildings away and reading fanfic that wasn’t even set in it.

But then there’s things like Anna and the French Kiss, with its inclusion of Notre Dame; Ratatouille and its illustrated views and music; the streets of Paris as drawn in Tomb Raider; and all the interior spaces in Julie & Julia.

And then I could get swept away to Monte Carlo, and it would be like the movie Monte Carlo, and I would be a happy, happy girly-ass geek.

New York

Ah, the capital of American TV. The only show I’m currently watching is set in Brooklyn, though the setting barely registers most of the time since it’s a workplace sitcom.

But many shows go to town with the landmarks and architecture. There’s Gossip Girl, obviously; I want to have lunch on the steps of the Met. I want to walk around Central Park and I want to pose around the brownstones in Greenwich Village. I want to go to The Strand, because Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares started out painfully relatable — Dash is a snob just like I was at seventeen — and became a true delight. I want to reread Princess Diaries and take note of everywhere she is and goes.

I want to experience Manhattan, mostly, because I am still a little bit like Dash. But it’s also just the kind of place you have to go at some point. And I know so very many people who live there, including my she-may-not-think-we’re-friends-but-I-say-we-are, Jen Hsieh, and my new accountability partner who has absolutely sold me on Brooklyn via her blog.

Savannah

Truthfully, this is a healthy mix of pop culture influences and blogging and Pinterest; it seems the perfect nucleus of that Alabama/Georgia/Mississippi appeal. I’m working hard to interrogate my interest in the area and its architecture because of its links to slavery and the Civil War, and/but/so I’d really like to visit. On top of that, there is Hart of Dixie. Which is set in a fictional town in Alabama with frequent mentions of Mobile, and oh does anyone remember Ashley Tisdale’s character on Hellcats? She was called Savannah! Yeah, sometimes I reach a bit.

Seattle

This is a mix of fandom and Grey’s Anatomy. And maybe a little bit Twilight, which I only watched the movies of because of the setting, so I must have had a connection to it before that that I can’t quite pinpoint! I imagine it’s the rain and the greenery and my friend Katie, not that she lives in Seattle, but she’s close enough. And Seattle culture sounds very much like the kind of place I would be happy in, with all its indie bookstores and whatnot. It’s one of the US cities I’ve wanted to go the longest.

San Francisco

For reasons far beyond my understanding, the Princess Diaries movie is set in San Francisco instead of New York, and it is an absolute delight, though not any more delightful than it would have been if set in NYC as the books are — it’s been thirteen years and I’m still just baffled. But I’ve got a reason similar to one of my New York ones here, and that reason is Lola and the Boy Next Door. That’s by the same writer as Anna and the French Kiss, and I had similar trouble getting into it as with Dash & Lily’s Book of Dares, because Lola is a bit of a special snowflake. But San Francisco is painted with love, and I kept flashing back to the Princess Diaries movie, and now I want to go there.

Copenhagen

Ready for an absolutely guilt-free pleasure? Watch The Prince & Me. More of it is set in Wisconsin than it is in Copenhagen, but the movie – being American – gives Copenhagen the Rome montage treatment, with Paige pointing out buildings from her taxi, and you put that next to my love for modern royalty AUs in fanfic and I am thoroughly ensorcelled. (Choice of word entirely due to BBC Merlin fandom, where said stories – set in Britain, and the reason I most want to properly explore Covent Garden – abound.)

Santorini

I wouldn’t think much of Santorini – the architecture hits oddly close to home, in a bad way – if it weren’t for the emotional link to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Lena spends much of the books and movie around the steep streets and white houses, in sundresses, with the sea surrounding everything. It’s gorgeous, and every time someone I know goes there, the photos they come back with make my breath catch.

—

So, that’s the pop culture side of my travel interests. What’s yours? What cities do you want to visit because of a movie? Do you associate any of mine with a different TV show? Tell me in the comments or on twitter!

Post in collaboration with Travelbag.

5 Comments

Things I'm Thinking

Life / Not Another Life Post

posted on May 15, 2016

Yes another life post. Duh.

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It’s been a little while, and I don’t have relevant photos to break it down with as usual because I’m still working my way through those three days I spent not-in-my-hometown in March, so I’m going to jump right in:

1. I got Snapchat. I’m @lixhewett over there, predictably, and I post a lot of my face — with and without snapchat filters that make me look like a koala/goth/comic book character — and a lot of my cat. Sometimes there are glimpses at my notebooks and whatever I’m editing on my laptop at the time. Occasionally I whine. If you’re interested in seeing that kind of thing from me, you’re welcome to follow.

madrid_about_04

2. I finished my very first bullet journal, of sorts. I call it bullet journal because it’s a notebook that I use in specific ways, but it’s very very low-key — I draw up a 10-day chart for my habits every four or six pages, and then the rest of the pages are divided in two vertical halves to host a) daily to-dos and b) rolling to-dos. I have no intention of making it any more complicated. (I do want to start using my planner more, but that’s an entirely different thing). It’s not perfect, but it’s working well so far, and I’m just going to hold on to that for a bit.

3. Over the month of April I tweeted a poem every day under the hashtag #aclassicnotion. For the most part, it’s free-verse work by female poets from the last hundred years. It’s all poetry I really, really love, because it’s my first time doing something like this and I had no reason not to reach for my favorites. If you decide to have a browse, I hope you find something that speaks to you.

4. I wrapped up week three of onefiftydips! It’s already been five days and I’ve not started week four yet. I’m keeping up with my exercise chart and everything, but the super low bar I have for workouts is about a fifth of a program workout, and everything else I do is flexibility and balance things; my endurance sucks, and dips are the only thing strength exercise I don’t hate. Still: progress!

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5. Baking and being scared of feeling dirty do not mix smoothly. Thought y’all should know.

6. If my purpose in life were to be a pillow for cats, I would be happy. Just let me know, universe dear, so I can stop worrying about other shit.

5 Comments

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Meet Lix

Welcome to my blog! I'm Lix: full-time graphic designer for bloggers and freelancers, and part-time photographer. I'm an unapologetic cat lady and perpetually angry feminist nightmare. I like attention and pretty things, and that's why I run a lifestyle blog. Learn more.
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