A couple of weeks ago I moved back up to Durham and into my new student house for my third year of university, so I thought it was about time for a tour. The intervening days have been extremely hectic, what with unpacking, sorting out my room and generally getting used to living in a new space. Then a week after I arrived my best friend came over to visit for a few days so we spent some time sight-seeing around Durham and Newcastle, and now all of a sudden I'm mid-way through my first week of lectures! How on earth did that happen... This year is going to go so quickly!

Anyway. Onto the tour. The new house is only about a 3 minute walk from where I lived last year so I was able to transfer quite a lot of stuff to the new house in June, which was handy as it limited the amount of stuff I needed to bring back up north with me (although we did basically have a full car which is kind of worrying in terms of bringing it all back again at the end of the year... But we'll cross that bridge when we come to it).

The house itself is much older than the place I lived in last year, and it's more of a traditional family home type of house with three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and a bedroom, living room and kitchen downstairs. My room is one of the double rooms so it's quite a bit bigger than a couple of the others which is great because I rarely go to the library and tend to spend a lot of time working in my room instead.

My desk area is one of my favourite parts of the room, it's so well-designed with the desk in the alcove part of the wall and the shelves above it. On the shelves I have some files, books and DVDs, and then some decorative bits and bobs like candles, polaroid pictures and my camera. I've also stuck some cool photos and postcards up on the wall under the shelves which I'm planning to add more to.

A new feature of my room is the monitor screen which I got recently and have looked up to my laptop via an HDMI cable. When I did an internship over the summer I had a similar set up and it quite literally revolutionised my life as you can drag and drop things between screens and basically multitask, so I wanted to try and replicate it this year at uni - so far it's great, I can watch YouTube in one screen and actually be productive in the other but I'm hoping it will be more useful for uni work as I'll be able to view readings more easily and take notes at the same time.

Apart from that my desk just has the standard stuff: pin board (which I've yet to pin anything to), pots of pens and highlighters, and an organiser for papers - plus of course my world map poster because geography is life. Down on the floor is my printer, which is essential.

My bed is also one of my favourite parts, mostly because of the fairy lights and my photo/light arrangement which I have up on the wall above the bed. I got the photo lights at a bargain store for about a fiver and I LOVE them, and I have another plain set wrapped around the bed frame. And of course, my geography bunting is up because you can never have enough maps around!

I have massive amounts of storage in my room which is so useful but to be honest most of the wardrobe space is empty at the moment because I also have a chest of drawers which has the majority of my clothes in. It also serves as a sort of dressing table since I have my makeup, jewellery and hair stuff on it. Above it I have my 'Durham tube map' that I got from Etsy which is the coolest thing ever.

Luckily my window is huge so it lets in a lot of light, and the view is just some trees so it's very calming to look out of. The windowsill is also a handy spot for displaying my framed photos and a plant, and I put my fluffy pink fairy lights up to add a bit more colour (even though they no longer work because the batteries exploded, but they still look cute).

And that's my room! I think I've made it my own as much as I can and I'm really happy with the result. Here's to living here for the next 9 months!

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