Alphabet Dating - V Date!

For special occasions - birthdays, anniversaries, holidays - we incorporate the alphabet dates so we aren't trying to find the money for 2 dates in one week. V Date falls in November around Kirsty's Birthday so it was Kirsty's choice for what we did. She decided to do another escape room for her Birthday. There were 2 escape rooms beginning with V - the one we preferred is called Vacancy and is themed around a hotel room. But that was fully booked. So we chose Virus which is about a Zombie outbreak. We failed. It was very hard. Possibly because we don't know much about zombies. We did really well in the first escape room we did because we were interested in the topic so maybe a Zombie themed room was a bad choice. We will not give up though! We will escape one day! After we did the room, we went in some shops and Kirsty bought a book which then set off the alarms in every other shop we went in. For dinner we had TGI Fridays with Kirsty's birthday money which was delicious as always. We sat on the upper level and it was decorated for Christmas and looked very pretty. We watched Arrival at the cinema which was really good, we knew there was a twist in but had no idea where or what it was so all the way through we were trying to work it out. When we got home we lit the Birthday cake and read together. Then while she was in bed I drew her a last birthday present - a flowery border around a cute love quote to give her the next day.

Alphabet Dating - T Date!

For T Date Kirsty came up with the best idea - Trapped! Escape rooms are really big right now but it's hard to find ones that are suitable and reasonably priced for just 2 people. Breakout Manchester's rooms are for 2-5 people and are one of the cheaper options near where we live. We chose a medium difficulty room, Identify, the story of this room reminded us of Cluedo. We had never done an escape room before so at first we were a bit wary of what to touch and try, but we did get into it and start digging through stuff. We did really well for our first time and got quite close to completing it! We are planning on going back to do another room for Kirsty's birthday in a few weeks. We also had our annual Halloween 'party' (Trick or Treat). We dressed as Mary Poppins and Bert, watched a few films, carved pumpkins, had Halloween sweets and Pizza Hut.

Alphabet Dating - G Date!

For G Date we had a weekend at home playing Video Games and Board Games. We don't have much money spare at the moment so the money for this date was spent on pizza for dinner and some snacks - including Galaxy Chocolate and Green Drinks of course!. We set up chairs and a quilt in the living room and played Disney Infinity and Little Big Planet 3. We ate pizza while we watched Britains Got Talent. We carried on playing games the next day, where we also played Disney Scene It and Disney Scrabble. This was probably my favourite alphabet date so far because we were so cosy and spending quality time together just having fun!

Vlogging Is An Art

I absolutely love watching home videos from my childhood. I have a box full of tapes and rewatch the entire box every few years. It's not that I miss my childhood, it's just that I really like watching something so real and so 'spur of the moment'. Unedited/fly on the wall footage intrigues me. People being caught on film acting completely natural is just a beautiful thing to watch. I remember that the camera always came with us on holidays and was set up in the corner every Christmas. There are videos from me 1 day old in hospital, right up to a holiday in Paris when I was 10. Technology advanced significantly around this time. Smart phones and digital cameras came out and it became a lot easier to be spontaneous with capturing events. You don't need to set up a camera in the corner, you just film the main present on your phone. It does make me sad that I can only watch my family up to a certain point and then the videos and photos are few and far between. There are hardly any videos at all from our 2 week family holiday to Florida which is something I will always regret. I have the memories and photos but I wish I could watch more of what we did and how we were. I was 13/14 and would love to see my personality on film.
When I was 13 I bought a magazine with a free film camera in and took photos of a day out with my best friend. We bought a small photo album for the photos after getting it developed and it was a really fun day that we shared and captured together. I bought my own digital camera when I was 17 and used it quite a lot to take photographs of my time at University and the first few years of my relationship with my girlfriend. I also bought a DSLR whilst at University which I love for arty photographs but it's not really something I would take out with me on a normal day. I got a Canon SX700 for Christmas 2014 and I love it. It allows me to take really good photographs in the moment but also change the settings and use different filters to take arty photos if the opportunity arises. I now save my photos in monthly folders so I can look back on what I did that month, but I find most of the photos are posed selfies or nature and they don't really capture the moment.
Early in my relationship with Kirsty she would make little videos of us on days out. I really like that we have those memories. I filmed on our trip to Disneyland Paris for my 21st birthday but I did it with the intention of putting music over it so didn't talk to the camera. It's nice that I have something to watch but it's not natural. Kirsty and I bought a camcorder a few years ago and started doing YouTube videos. We would do question tags, quizzes, and talk about books we had read. But the main reason we got it was to vlog.
Vlogging has really taken off on YouTube over the past few years and I am so glad. Watching vloggers is almost like watching a reality TV show but far less scripted. It's the natural style of video that I love but you can still use clever, arty editing. At the moment I am loving Lucy and Lydia's vlog styles because although they are really natural on camera, they do put a lot of effort into capturing the moment and editing it all together to look really cool. Family vloggers like SacconeJolys are an inspiration to me because they capture some footage of their children every day, it allows them to see how their children have grown. They have footage from when their children started talking and walking and the first day of nursery. I don't think I would ever 'daily vlog' when we have children but I would definitely try to make sure I capture those milestones. I know some people would prefer to be in the moment, instead of picking up a camera. But I am definitely a person who wants to capture things to look back on.
Kirsty and I have a joint channel for our videos. We used to vlog quite a lot. We would film over Christmas, New Years, Easter, Birthdays, Trips to Wales and Holidays. The main reason we stopped filming so much is because we stopped going to so many places and started saving up for our wedding and fertility treatment. Also, I got quite depressed between 2014 and 2016 and didn't really do much of anything. My favourite videos of ours are from Summer In The City 2015. It's a YouTube convention with panels about editing and camera settings. There are also more specific panels for people who talk about books or share their relationships online, and the whole place is full of people who love filming or watching videos. Can you imagine?! A building full of people walking around filming themselves or each other and all of them love capturing the moment and looking back on it just like I do. It was one of my favourite weekends. I was around people who had a similar passion to me with my fiancee by my side. We met Jonathan and Anna Saccone-Joly. We learnt how to make our videos look better with lighting and background. We definitely prefer watching our newer 'sit-down' videos since improving the quality. And my favourite vlogs on our channel are from that entire trip because I can see how confident I am and how happy we are together. I remember it being the first time I was truly happy that year. Like the environment had fought through the depression and lifted me up.
We do still vlog every now and again with updates on what we have been up to but we don't tend to vlog unless we are doing something out of the ordinary, because those are the things we want to be able to remember. I'm quite a simple editor, just put the clips together and cut out the boring bits. Kirsty is more of an arty editor, she zooms in on funny parts and puts music in that makes it more interesting. Our vlogging is a constant improvement, especially now we have a 4K camcorder which we are going to insure so we can take it out with us. For me, talking to a camera is like writing in a diary. It's a way to talk about my emotions (which I generally find hard to do face to face). YouTube in general requires so many skills that are easy to forget. You need to know how to use a camera and change the settings to make the lighting and colour look better. Maybe you need to set up lights. You need to edit it, adjust the volume, add music or other effects, save it in the right format/quality. Kirsty has been going through all of our old videos and watching them so she can make the titles funny but relevant and add in appropriate tags. It's time consuming and may not seem rewarding when you think that less than 10 people know our channel exists! But every single time we finish filming a sit-down video, spend a day vlogging, or upload an old vlog we forgot about, we have completed something. We have finished a video that we can now look back on and that is reward enough.

Alphabet Dating - D Date!

Our D date was in the second half of February, and Kirsty chose leap day for us to do it on. It made it extra special because I always like to make sure I spend the extra day doing something fun. It was hard to come up with something beginning with D that wasn't something simple like dinner/dining out.
She managed to find a street in York called The Shambles which looks similar to Diagon Alley. It's rumoured that the set design team used this street as inspiration.
We also drew the street because we both love Drawing. I'm going to colour mine in funky colours eventually but these are the initial sketches we did on the day.
After that we walked around some shops and had pizza hut before getting the train back home.
It was a really fun, exciting date for a special day of the year!

How I Met My Girlfriend and How Our Long Distance Relationship Developed

This is a post I have been meaning to write for a while and have only been putting it off because it's hard to remember the full story in detail. Kirsty and I have been together for 4 years, 6 months now. I really want to write our story down, especially now we are planning our wedding. I want to be able to remember it forever.

So let's start from the beginning.

How did we meet?
Tumblr is a blogging site and I joined when I was in college in 2009 and used it every now and again for the next few years to post photos I liked or personal posts.
Kirsty had joined in January 2011 and updated her blog quite a lot.
When I was on holiday in Pontins with my mum for my birthday in May 2011, (our reflection is in the TV), I saw a post that linked to her blog.

I was getting ready to go out to see the shows with my mum and sent her a message (which she never actually got) and followed her blog. She sent me a message that said "This blog <3 You <3"

Obviously the hearts meant nothing at this point. She didn't know who I was. But it was such a perfect first message for what happened after.
She posted a link to her YouTube channel which had videos of her doing song covers and funny videos. I binge watched them all and really started to have a crush on her.

But she lived in South Wales and I lived in Manchester, a 4 hour train ride apart.
We would message each other every few days and just talk about films we liked or what we had been up to. We would send each other questions to answer like "do you have a crush on anyone?"
She sent me a letter which I stuck to my wall. We kept writing letters for the next few weeks.

One night in early July 2011 Kirsty posted her phone number and asked people to text her, so I did. I didn't tell her who I was at first but I think she knew anyway.

After that we would text each other every day and make YouTube videos for each other talking about our day.

Towards the end of July I realised I needed to tell my parents how I felt about her. I wanted to meet her and I couldn't travel that far without explaining why I was going. It took me about an hour to tell my mum and she told my dad. It's not that they're homophobic or anything like that but I never talk to my parents about personal things.
It was the day after I told them that they asked if Kirsty was my girlfriend. When you're young it's assumed that if you like each other, you're in a relationship. But when you get older you need to actually ask. I don't know why the rules change, but they do!
I was planning on asking her when we met but I was worried that she wouldn't understand why I was asking. She was 16 and I was 20. So I text her instead. I said "are you my girlfriend?" and she said "yea if that's what you want". So there it was! We became Facebook official in early August and I booked a train ticket to see her on 16th August and to stay 2 nights.

How did we meet in person?
We decided that I would stay at her house because it was easier and cheaper.
She came to pick me up from the train station with her mum, stepdad and sister. The first words she said to me when she got out of the car were "is there a bin in there?" I said "I'm not sure." What an amazing memory that seems to always stick with me.

We didn't talk in the car which was fine with me because I was so nervous, I didn't want to have to talk in front of everyone.
When we got to her house she took my suitcase up to her room and showed me around her room. She kept saying "this is my room" over and over again which I just found hilarious. It helped to make me less nervous. We went downstairs to eat pasta and then went back up and watched a DVD on her laptop. She went to get in her sister's double bed and I slept in her bed. It took me ages to fall asleep and I woke up really early the next day but she didn't wake up until 1pm.

I won't write down everything we did the next 2 days, but I will tell you that we listened to music together and she kissed me. I wouldn't normally kiss someone the day after meeting them in person, but we had already talked a lot and I felt a lot closer to her than I would normally.

We walked to McDonalds together and had an awkward meal where we didn't talk.
We kissed again at the train station before I got on the train and then we text while I was on the way home.
A few weeks later she came to my house and we went out with my family to a few places. I said "I love you" to her for the first time. We hadn't actually been out alone together (apart from the awkward McDonalds time). We hadn't been on a real date yet.

Our first date
I visited Kirsty in November for her 17th birthday. We decided to go to Frankie & Bennies together. It was our first date. I don't have any photos from that time. I don't remember what we wore. I don't know if we got dressed up. I know Kirsty paid and that there were fireworks outside while we were eating.
After that first date we went on a few dates to the cinema and bowling. Or we would just walk to a park with a picnic or sit on the swings and talk.

How did we move in together?
It actually happened before our one year anniversary. They say lesbians move fast! I think we moved fast partly because of our long distance relationship. When we were together, everything was fine. But in the inbetween times we were trying to afford the train tickets and just really missing each other.

 It took a lot of persuasion on my parents part but we decided that she would move in with me in Manchester and she would start Alevels here. I got a double bed which we spray painted with glow in the dark paint and she was moved in by September. We would bring more of her stuff home each time we went to visit her family because you can't bring a lot of stuff on the train, but we were now in a serious relationship and I still regret nothing about how fast we moved.

When did we get engaged?
We went to Disneyland Paris for my 21st birthday with my mum which was amazing. We decided to go again a year later, just the two of us. We booked it for September 2013.
We had been together for just over 2 years. I wrote down my engagement on cards and had a ring box made. We had already discussed engagement rings we liked when we looked in the Argos catalogue together. So I had a feeling she was going to propose soon. I wasn't sure if she was planning on doing it in Disneyland too.
We decided to dress as Mickey and Minnie on one of the days. I bought a red and white dress and Kirsty bought red jeans and had buttons sewn on.

 

We decided to wear those outfits on the 3rd day so I chose the 3rd day as the day I wanted to propose. We walked to the Sleeping Beauty castle and I asked her to come to the side. At first I couldn't do it and we were just looking at the ducks over the bridge. But I eventually managed to pull the cards out and read them to her. Then I showed her the box and ring and she said yes and I cried. (She didn't cry and I never let her forget it.)

Then she seemed to want to rush off so I had a pretty good idea what was coming. We went to the pirate ship but it was locked so we went inside the skull rock cave which you can see the pirate ship through. She didn't have cards. She told me how much she loves me and wants to spend the rest of her life with me. Then she pulled out a treasure chest box she had made and the ring and got down on one knee and I said yes and almost cried again.
We had got each other almost matching rings. For that first day of us wearing them we were both so scared that they were going to fall off on rides or just walking around so we were clenching our fists.

When is the wedding?
We started thinking about our wedding not long after we got engaged and started saving up almost straight away. We have settled on our dream venue which is about halfway between both of our families. We have planned our table names and wedding decor. We have picked which menu we prefer and designed our wedding cake. We have saved close to the full amount we need, including money for our honeymoon (a Disney Cruise in Europe). And we have a dream date in 2018 which we hope we are able to book late this year.

What next? We started trying for a baby in August 2014 using artificial insemination.
 It didn't work for 10 months so we took a break and since then I have had a lot of tests done.
We were referred to the reproductive clinic in January 2016. I have been told that I have low egg count and we probably need to self fund six rounds of IUI (it's less invasive than IVF), so we have started saving up for that but its going to cost around £13,000.

So that is our story so far! I may make more posts in the future about our baby mission.
I will definitely most more about our wedding planning.
And I am currently posting once a fortnight about the alphabet dating we are doing this year

Thanks for reading!