July 2020: the round up

My July round up is coming a few days later than I'd usually post it, and I wasn't sure whether to do it at all - but these round up posts are primarily for me anyway so I can look back on this crazy year and see what's happened, what I've achieved, what was going on at any point. So let's go!

July saw me turn 25 - drinks in the garden and a very quiet meal out with my family and my best friend. It also saw the pub re-open and me head back to work, albeit with track & trace, limited capacity and other weird changes. I had plenty of freelance work going on too, as clients started to re-open and needed updates for their website.

I also published a record four sponsored blog posts here on The Lilac Scrapbook in July, which was mad. Sponsored blog work is a bit like buses - you wait for ages without any, then all of a sudden loads comes along at once. I'm so proud of myself for securing this work though, and it's all "extra money" which is going straight to paying off my 2021 cruise.

I barely read any books in July, but I watched a lot of book content on YouTube as well as true crime stuff. The Chicks' new album came out so that's been on repeat alongside a country singer I recently discovered called Morgan Wallen - with a good dose of New Found Glory and The King Blues thrown in for good measure. We had a glorious month of football - not me personally, being a Newcastle fan, but it was nice to have the game back on TV despite the 'no crowd' thing! Time to look ahead to next season...

With the hairdressers being open, I also had a complete hair transformation. I'm naturally blonde and have been dyeing my hair a dark brown/red for years, but now I want to be blonde again... oops. So I went to Red Door Hair Studio (press trip, I have to disclose!) on Rodney Street (Liverpool) and asked Maria to work her magic. With the amount of red dye that had built up in my hair there was no chance of me walking out blonde the very same day, but we managed to lift it a lot and it's currently rose gold. How very boujee.

July had some good parts and it also had some really really horrible parts - we lost our beautiful dog, Macy, towards the end of the month. It was out of the blue and hit us all like a ton of bricks; I knew it would hurt to lose her but I didn't think it would hurt quite this much. Everyone has been so kind and lovely, and from the bottom of my heart thank you. I don't really have anything profound to say about grief and everything because that isn't the kind of person I am but it has really meant to the world to me and my family to know how much everyone is there for us.

So that's July! Now we're in August and it's still raining and things still aren't back to normal, even though we can go the pub and out for tea (eat out to help out, you know!) and go to Primark. Hopefully by the end 2020 we'll be celebrating in style and saying goodbye to this complete disaster of a year...