7. read all the unread books on my shelves

I imagine that those of us who are avid readers all have a books to read pile. Either by your bed, on their own shelf on your bookcase or maybe even on your desk. I'm talking a physical pile of books, not a list of books you keep as something to read one day but an actual stack of books.

You tell yourself you won't buy any more until you've depleted that pile. But then you find yourself in a bookshop whilst wasting time on your lunch. Or you see someone raving about a book they've just read and it's cheap online. Maybe you're in a charity shop and see a book with a cover that jumps out at you. Since you're known for your love of books, family and friends buy you gift vouchers which you just have to spend. This stack of books becomes something that is constantly topped up but the bottom of which is never reached.

I have a stack of books that I have been meaning to read. Some of the books in this stack have been there for nearly 5 years. That's a really long time to have not read a book. I'm actually a bit ashamed to admit that. So another of my ideas for my 30 before 30 list was to read through this stack of books.

As you can see it is not a small pile. It is a pretty varied mix so I'm hoping that will keep me interested in working through it. I tend to dip in and out of reading but have been doing it more frequently since I purchased a Nook eReader. Whatever you do, do not ask me about the books I have to read on my Nook, I'm not including those. Otherwise I would be spending the next 11 months doing nothing but reading. Which sounds glorious but is wholly impractical.

Reading is one of life's finest pleasures so I'm looking forward to working on this. I won't promise not to buy any more books but I am going to prioritise reading these first. I'll keep you updated on how I get on.

6. attend a beer festival

When I wrote up my 30 before 30 list, I aimed for realistic achievements. #6 on my list was attend a beer festival. Now I have to confess, we already had this planned before I wrote up my list. So was this a cheat of an idea? I don't like to think so. You see at the start of the year, the only resolution we made was to drink 52 beers in 52 weeks. And when I say beer I don't mean lager. I mean ales and stouts and the like, real beers. We hit 52 beers ages back so I decided to double my target to 104 beers by the end of the year. So we talked quite a bit about exploring new bars and even attending a beer festival to get the best variety of brews.

It was with that in mind that we bought tickets for the Independent Manchester Beer Convention (IndyManBeerCon/IMBC). From their own website IMBC describes itself as "a world class showcase for the best breweries from the UK and beyond. Taking over the stunning surrounds of the Grade II listed, architectural gem Victoria Baths for its 4th year from Thursday 8th October to Sunday 11th October, IMBC brings together the most progressive, forward thinking breweries from across the UK, Europe and USA for a multisensory, headlong, hop- forward beer extravaganza."

With 6 sessions held over the 4 days we bought tickets for Friday evening and Sunday. So after work on Friday, we headed down to Victoria Baths. Now considering this was both our first trip to Victoria Baths and our first beer festival, that Friday evening was a little overwhelming. Victoria Baths is a beautiful building so we were a little distracted by our surroundings and quite baffled by the huge choice of beers. We wandered from room to room, trying to make sense of the online beer list, and navigate around the crowd (beer festivals can be quite the sausage fest if you know what I mean). In total I had a solid 6 beers on Friday night but now of them really stood out to me as amazing. Nothing I fell in love with.

Sunday was a much better experience. Seeing Victoria Baths flooded by natural light was stunning and I can massively see the appeal of getting married there, it's such a special building. The crowd didn't feel as overwhelming on the Sunday and I made the choice to stick to the types of beers I like. For me that can be a dangerous game as I am a dark beer girl, give me your stouts and porters please. But I loved it. I drank some really delicious beers on Sunday. The walk home was a bit more stumbled as I drank a heftier 8 beers in total but I have no regrets.

Overall I had a great weekend at IMBC and I would definitely go again in the future. It was such an interesting experience and helped me hit my boozy target for the year (I'm actually up to 107 beers now). I'm sad we didn't take more advantage of the amazing canning service, where you could get any beer canned to take home but lesson learnt for next time! What a great way to kick off my 30 before 30 though.

30 before 30!

On 3rd October, I turned 29. The idea of this did not remotely bother me leading up to the day itself. I don't get all worked up about birthdays, it's just another day after all. But come the big day and this phrase kept ticking over in my mind, '30 before 30'.

It was perhaps inspired by a friend's Facebook status about what she wanted to achieve before her 30th. I scoffed at it initially. Discussed it with my boyfriend (who turned 30 earlier this year) and laughed about the ridiculous goals that people in general set for themselves.

But then that phrase kept going round in my head. Before I knew it, I had 6 ideas written down. Then 11 ideas. And then I was sitting at my desk trying to think of 19 more (and feeling very frustrated when they weren't immediately obvious).

I wanted to set ideas that I believe are genuinely realistic and achievable. Researching the concept of '30 before 30', I came across list after list that were filled with ideas which were financially impossible unless you are flush with cash or incredibly well connected. I am neither of those things. I also wanted to avoid setting ideas that resembled the usual dross you see around new year. This isn't about changing who I am as a person or setting myself up for failure. This is about experiences, achievements, and ideas that I could actually do.

So here's my list, my '30 before 30'...

These aren't in any particular order, I recorded them as I thought of them. And my boyfriend has already sweetly pointed out the contradiction of buying a car and working towards being debt free. But c'mon, I'm not looking for an expensive car and by the end of this year I'll be down to just my loan to pay off. 

Now I did plan to write a little explanation for each of these but I think this post has been long enough as it is. Some of these things are already in progress which is a pretty encouraging start! By posting this then I'm already working on #4, revive my blog. And I plan to post for each idea I achieve so you can look forward to at least 29 more posts in the future.

Wish me luck!

A revival

It's been a long time since I felt I had anything worth posting on here. There's been some changes in my life but I'll get round to posting about those in due course. For now, I wanted to say hello again. Let you know that more things are coming. In fact another post is just around the corner.

However I felt it's polite to say hello before jumping right back into blogging.