Good afternoon everyone, wow what a beautiful day! Unfortunately as most of you will understand I am only viewing this beautiful day from a stuffy office window. Although I made the most of my one hour lunch break by finding another spot to eat my sandwiches in peace and read more of my book. The spot I want to share with you today is St Radigunds Garden.

Sitting there on the well maintained grass area surrounded by period properties and the sun beaming down on my face it was lovely, again only a few minutes walk from town and directly opposite one of the oldest pubs in Canterbury- The Parrot. Only a small little spot but ideal for ones lunch break when desperately needing to escape the office politics! Reading the information plaque the garden was once an excavation area, right infront of me was some original Roman walls- How exciting.. I day dreamed about appearing on time team, wellies on and knee deep in mud!

Go and have a little ponder- It is worth a look!

Canterbury has many beauty spots and I am very keen on stumbling across as many of these as possible whilst living there! Towards the end of last year my mum bought me a wicker picnic basket. This basket has a particular spot in my heart as I only get to see my mum every three months but when I go exploring I feel like my mum is right beside me..

I am going to start sharing the places I visit to hopefully give you some ideas and new places to visit throughout the summer months! Todays share is Abbots Gardens in Canterbury (see map) Luckily for myself it is a stones throw from my house but a truly beautiful and serene spot! Sitting on the grass listening to the sound of the rushing water for me was a little bit special. The gardens are only a few minutes walk from the town centre but yet ever so peaceful, so why is it so beautiful? From the exact spot I was sat at you could see Canterbury Cathedral which is spectacular by any means, the Marlowe Theatre; most talked about new structure in Canterbury and my personal favourite the boat tours going up and down the river, truly beautiful!

I only sat there for an hour today whilst enjoying an ice lolly on my lunch break but I can assure you I will return there regularly- If you see me do say hello!

You live in a world where unfortunately social networking has taken over! As much as I say 'unfortunately' I still find myself glued to Facebook and Twitter all the time (If your on twitter get following!) One week ago I finally reflected on my social network usage time and realised I probably spend at least two hours a day pondering round home pages and news feeds, which is utterly ridiculous! Purely for the fact you put so much effort into that 'funny' tweet or 'look at me' status and get absolutely nothing in return- Maybe a 'RT' if your lucky. At this point I thought I had grown up and established that I need to start making my time on these networks worthwhile, so instead of reading about someone having a new hair cut or losing some weight I have started following more interesting and real people who I can learn something from! 

I have always followed someone called Maverick Sabre, some of you may not have a clue who he is but personally his soulful voice sends shivers down my spine! I follow him on twitter and I am very proud to admit he has tweeted me back before agggggh, a few weeks ago he tweeted a competition through Motorola to win tickets to see him perform at a secret intimate venue. All I had to do was enter my name and email address and thought wasting a few minutes that day wouldn't do any harm! Saturday just gone I opened my emails to discover I had won two tickets, I screamed and jumped up and down- I have never won anything in my life never mind going to see him!

The event was last night and it was held at Netil House in London, the venue is an old warehouse and our party was on the roof! Walking up the many flights of stairs was well worth the effort because I walked out into the London skyline, lights glimmering, music playing and a very relaxed feel; it was beautiful. When Maverick Sabre entered myself along with the forty nine other guests all went crazy, he was not even a meter away from me singing acoustically it really was a special moment! Then too add to the excitement when he finished Radio 1s MistaJam took over the crowd, he played a brilliant set that changed the quiet intimate crowd into lively party animals; every person was jumping around to the sound of the beat.

Upon leaving I realised I had just experienced something very special and as much as I complain about spending so much time on various networks without doing so I would have never won the tickets. I shall carry on with my 'addiction' to the internet and the channels you can be a part of, I now see the networks as ponds of opportunity and after all every fish has to start somewhere! 

The majority of us have to work in order to survive, by survive I mean to pay the bills, eat meals and hopefully have a little bit of spare change left over to let our hair down now and then. However this is a catch 22 situation because most people I talk to are not happy at their workplace. I am included in those people, I work full time in Canterbury and couldn't ask for better colleagues but the job is very demanding and extremely repetitive ( I am sure many of you can understand) When you work in such a role it is very easy to feel like a robot as you go in and do the same thing every day of the week. As I have mentioned previously I am a creative person and long to become a journalist so while I sit at my desk pondering over my life plan I can't help but feel a little sad that I am not on the right track yet.

Sundays are usually my reflective day to decide how next week is going to be the week my life changes, how many of us promise ourselves that? Whether it is going to the gym or walking to work all of us often decide to change our routine starting from Monday. Usually on Sundays I dread the thought of a ten hour shift tomorrow, today however this is different! My manager decided to make all of us working for him feel valued on Friday. Only a small gesture in the form of treating us all to a cake each but it made every single person I work with feel appreciated however this is a value that cannot be under-estimated! So tomorrow I am for once in a long time looking forward to going in and doing my job because for once I feel like I am doing it well! How do you make people feel appreciated? Maybe this is something we should all think of more as plenty of us are guilty of trying to make people feel worse to make ourselves feel better.

Lets all try this tomorrow and see if it makes just the slightest difference? Let me know how your good deed of the day turns out! Happy Monday everyone!

Whilst doing my grocery shopping today I was horrified to over hear a conversation between two women in the veg aisle. They was discussing the sell by date on a packet of brussel sprouts "Oh dear I cannot buy these the use by date is in a few days" Maybe I am a bit naive but it horrifies me that people actually pay attention to these dates, I bought myself a packet of brussel sprouts on the 4th of Feb and only used a few of them today, they was perfect and will be edible for at least another week. I cannot stand the thought that so much food would go to waste and that people would waste so much money in these current times on replacing food that is edible.

So many of our supermarkets make millions in revenue every year, millions that plenty of people cannot afford to be spending. Having recently moved out and becoming independent I guess I now understand how vital it is to scrimp and save. It also raises the question is there anyone or any campaign out there that can educate people on how to save money on food? I am proud to say I managed to do my weekly shop for £12.52 today. I of course admit that is not for a family it is just food for one but I believe that if we was all to be more educated about something so vital as food, it could save us all pennies for a rainy day! Before you ask all my recipes for this week are healthy also so it isn't that I have just bought packets of processed food!

If you have any ideas/recipes that are well fitting with the above I would love to hear about it!

I have recently moved to Canterbury but lived in Whitstable for many years beforehand, anyone who has lived or visited Whitstable will appreciate it has a large art culture,growing up in Whitstable I have adopted this creative culture and consider myself a creative person. I enjoy nothing more than wondering around in the fresh air with broken bits of charcoal bouncing around in my pocket, however my real passion is looking at oil paintings. I wish I could work with oil but I just cannot get the hang of it!

On Monday I was invited to go and see the I Am exhibition at Hernebay. The art in the exhibition is all submitted by five students at UCA, walking into the quaint little room one painting in particular caught my eye. A student named Natalia Szelma had produced a beautiful oil painting of a girl laid on her front. The details and colours in the hair against the wooden boarded background just looked fantastic! Natalia finishes her studies this year and will hopefully be displaying her work in galleries around the county, I wanted to mention this because I think appreciating local talent is really exciting and something we should all take pride in!

Seeing that painting has got my art senses tingling and I am currently looking for courses for beginners to learn how to use the paints (Well how to make them look good rather than just a blob on the page) I shall let you all know how my journey to become an oil painter goes!