Amy Ellis's Blog, page 2

The Blessed Mediterranean Buffet

I'm usually really good about taking leftovers to work for lunch and being quite frugal. But every now and then I treat myself to going out to lunch because I absolutely am a sucker for markets and street food. Conveniently, I work beside Leather Lane Market in London and have spent the past eight months I've been at my job sampling many of the amazing stalls they have, including getting briefly addicting to Vietnamese noodle bowls.

Leather Lane Market My beloved Noodle stall. However, I g...

I got a very serious haircut

If you noticed I hadn't blogged in a week it's because I've gone though a pretty serious change... 
I cut off all of my hair and have spent the last week coming to terms with it. 
Don't believe me when I say "all of my hair?"Before:

Sweet Baby Jesus After: It's all gone!!
The second picture was taken after a very long cry, a call home to my mother, an hour of angrily complaining that the hairdresser had "cut it wrong" and how I was going to go back and her her to "fix it," etc. 
Luck...

This Week's Walks [28/7/2016]

Lately, I've been trying to do what I like to call "self care" and take myself out of my office when I'm feeling grumpy or overwhelmed. I can be extremely introverted so working in an open plan office with a very social lunch atmosphere can really weigh me down.

To fix my recent cases of "the grumps," I've started to take walks during my lunch hour. These walks last anywhere from 15 minutes to nearly 50 minutes depending on where I end up and how long I need to be alone and unwind.

I usually ju...

Propagating Mint Plants

I mentioned in my last post that I had bought a lot of plants in the past few months and I was not kidding. My love of plants and windowsill gardening is pretty intense and as a British summer is just perfect weather for beautiful, flourishing plants, why not embrace it? 
When Pete and I went to the Columbia Road Flower Market about a month ago, I went a bit nuts (or as nuts as you can go on our budget and the fact we had to carry them about 45 minutes on the train!) and bought four plant...

Where I Am Now

It was November 2015 the last time I posted on this blog. Probably because I'm the worst but actually because I got a full time job and moved and had a lot of life changes (in a really good way.) Here's a quick run down of what I've done:

I graduated. I have an MA. It's pretty cool stuff. I highly recommend getting an education.



I got permission to stay in the UK for another 2.5 years. Woohoo! It cost a shit load of money and was the most stressful day of my life but I'm here with my boyfriend...

Photos from the Oxford Brookes Wellbeing Poetry Contest Prizegiving

I mentioned in my last post that I won second and third place in the Oxford Brookes Wellbeing Poetry contest and then completely forgot to follow up with some photos.

The reading was fantastic. I was in really good poetic company that night and the small audience was very receptive to all of us. I had a great time reading in front of people for the first time in a few years and my legs only shook a teeny-tiny bit.

Here's what the judges had to say about my poems, which you can read here:

Amy Ell...

Upcoming Poetry Reading in Oxford, UK

As always, I'm a bit last minute but I thought I'd post an invite on the blog. If you don't follow me on Facebook or Twitter, two of my poems placed in the Oxford Brookes University Wellbeing Poetry Contest which was announced on National Poetry Day. This week is the prizegiving and reading which means I will be reading my winning poems at Oxford Brookes University this Tuesday at 7pm in the Enquiry Centre of the John Henry Brookes building. Everyone is welcome to attend.

All of the winners of...

What I've Learned This Summer

My major project is winding down. I'm a few days from being able to turn it in and I'm currently waiting for my ProWritingAid program to give me a good consistency check on my report to help me catch American spellings I wouldn't see on my own. It's been a long, uphill battle working to build a website with meaningful and helpful content while keeping in mind the whole time that it's not just a website, it's my grade, my future, my degree. No pressure.

I've spent the whole summer writing conte...

The Self-Publishing Toolbox Launch

After a few months of work, I'm excited to announce that I've officially launched the website for my Major Project: The Self-Publishing Toolbox. YAY!


I am so happy that it's finally live and out in the world. After months of writing copy, decyphering HTML, CSS, and PHP coding, crying, groaning, eating chocolate, and becoming permanent fused to my couch, it has finally happened! I still have a lot of content to write and add so stay tuned and sign up for the mailing list for weekly emails with...

The Major Project Reveal

It's been a while since I blogged because I've been writing masses of copy for my major project. The other day, I realized that as much as I've mentioned/complained about the work I'm doing for my major project, I've never actually said what I'm doing so here's the big project reveal:

I'm creating a website which will act as toolbox for self-published authors or aspiring self-publishers to use as a resource.


I've gotten a huge head start on the project and have been working my little butt off t...