Six degrees of separation – from Beezus and Ramona to…

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but once I saw the starting point I really wanted to join in. I used to get Beverly Cleary books from the library when I was about 7 or 8 – I remember choosing the first one because I was so excited to see that a real life author had my name! Obviously being British mine is spelled Beverley, like the town in Yorkshire.

So, the idea of this game is that everyone starts with the same book – in this case Beezus and Ramona by Beverly Clearly – then adds six more books, each of which links in some way to the one before it, and we see where we end up. The host is Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best and the link up takes place on the first Saturday of the month (yes, I’m a day late linking up).

So, as I have said, Kate’s chosen starting point this month was Beezus and Ramona – very fitting giving Beverly Clearly died not long ago. This is about two sisters – Beezus (real name Beatrice) is the older sister and she often finds it hard to deal with having a little sister like four-year-old Ramona, who usually means well but is quite a handful!

For my first link, I have chosen another story about a mischievous younger sibling. My Naughty Little Sister by Dorothy Edwards. This one is a little old-fashioned now (it was first published in 1962) but still great fun to read, featuring such stories as the time the narrator’s naughty little sister fell in the stream and got all wet or ate all the trifle at her friend’s birthday party.

From one naughty girl to another… my next link in the chain is The Naughtiest Girl in the School by Enid Blyton. I loved Enid Blyton as a child and I found her Naughtiest Girl books fascinating – a school where the children mostly govern themselves with the teachers only stepping in occasionally? So interesting (to seven-year-old me).

Sticking with the boarding school theme, my next choice is The Chalet School series by ELino M. Brent Dyer… the first of which is The School at the Chalet. I first discovered a few of these books at my grandma’s house (they originally belonged to one of my aunts) and since I loved them so much she let me keep them. I then went on to collect as many as I could, mostly from second-hand book shops (although books 1 and 2 were published as a collection under the title “School Stories” so I got that one new for one of my birthdays). To this day, I absolutely adore this series about an English woman who sets up a school in the Austrian Tirol. It later moves to Guernsey and then a Welsh island because of the Second World War and eventually ends up in Switzerland.

I feel like I should add another book with a Swiss connection since I live there, so up next is Heidi by Johanna Spyri. Do I need to tell you what this book is about? Heid is an orphan who’s aunt sends her to live with her gruff old grandfather in the Swiss mountains. Just as she’s got settled in and come to love the place, her aunt turns up again and forces her to move to Frankfurt to act as a companion to a sickly girl named Klara. Will Heidi ever see her beloved mountains again?

Next, another book about an orphan who is sent to live with relatives – Emily of New Moon by L. M. Montgomery. Emily is slightly less famous than Montogomery’s other orphan, Anne (of Green Gables), but after reading this book for the first time last year I discovered I actually prefer Emily to Anne!

My final link is a little tenuous… but the title of the last book made me think of Emlyn’s Moon by Jenny Nimmo. This is the second book in the Snow Spider trilogy, another series I loved and adored when I was around 7. The Snow Spider was always my favourite of the three books, but I loved the main character in this one – Nia, the middle child in a large family who has always been led to believe that she’s the dull one who can’t do anything but proves she’s really quite special in this book.

So, that’s my chain. All children’s books, all quite different, and all but one very much loved by tiny me.

If you want to see everyone else’s links, see Kate’s post here. And if you want to join in please do – I would love to see what you come up with (obviously don’t forget to link to Kate and also add the link to your chain on her post).

That’s all for today. I hope everyone is well and happy.

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Happy TARDIS birthday Kezzie!

Hello lovely readers. I am doing something a little bit different today.

It’s the lovely Kezzie‘s 40th birthday (HAPPY, HAPPY BIRTHDAY KEZZIE! I hope you have a wonderful day) and since she can’t have a celebration she has asked her blog readers to join her in an online fancy dress party.

Kezzie takes part in something called TARDIS Tuesday, which involves cosplaying as characters from Doctor Who and then posting the pictures each Tuesday. So Kezzie asked whether her followers would be willing to take part in TARDIS Tuesday. Now, obviously you will have noticed that today is not Tuesday. She wanted us to publish our posts a few days early to give her a chance to gather all the photos and put them in a master post on actual TARDIS Tuesday.

The idea was that we would try to imitate something from Doctor Who using items from our own closet – so now buying anything specially. After ages and ages of scrolling through photos from all eras of Doctor Who, I finally found an outfit I thought I could copy.

Photo taken from https://joesiegler.blog/2013/02/the-sensorites-review/

The outfit I am trying to copy is on the very right – that’s Susan Foreman, The Doctor’s granddaughter. As you can see, it’s in black and white – this episode was broadcast in 1964. The man on the left, William Hartnell, is the very first ever Doctor of Doctor Who! So, Susan is wearing a blouse/shirt – presumably white – a pinafore dress in a dark colour and knee high socks that also appear to be white. I then managed to find this DVD cover in which the dress is blue. So this is the outfit I eventually came up with.

I don’t have white knee socks (in fact, the only knee socks I own are highlighter pink with luminous* yellow and green patches, a joke Christmas present years ago!) so I went with white tights instead. My white blouse is different to Susan’s but I think it works and the dress is fairly similar if we ignore the rainbow! I couldn’t find a single image from The Sensorites online that actually showed Susan’s shows, but based on what you can see of her feet in the image above and looking through the galleries on the three episodes from series 1 of Doctor Who we own (episodes 1-3) she seems to be wearing the same shoes as here:

Photo from: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00nn0vh/p00nmwf4

I also tried to tie my hair back in a way that looks short – although not as short as Susan’s!(Story interlude: many years ago, when I was about 11-13 years old, I had my hair cut really short. I then moved schools and was asked numerous times “Are you a boy or a girl?” by people who obviously thought they were original/funny. Since then I’ve hated the way I look with short hair!)

If you want to know where the clothes I am wearing came from, here’s a breakdown: the label in the blouse says “Clockhouse”, which is C&A. I think I bought in when I lived in Austria in 2005/2006. The dress is by Run & Fly. I bought it two years ago and they don’t seem to sell it any more but they do have some other amazing pinafore dresses, including one with a dinosaur print! The tights were most likely C&A or H&M and the shoes came from New Yorker about 10 years ago (and what you can’t tell from the photo is they’re absolutely destroyed!).

OK, that’s all from me. I will add the link to the fancy dress party once it’s up so you can see everyone else’s outfits. For now please pop over to Kezzie‘s blog and wish her a very happy birthday! Oh, and let me know what you think of my attempt at being Susan!

Style imitating art: Nebra Sky Disk

When I saw the inspiration for this round of style imitating art I immediately knew I had to join in. This time the host is Salazar herself, creator of Style Imitating Art, and she chose the Nebra Sky Disk.

When I showed Jan what the inspiration was, he said “Good job you have a dress that’s the exact right colour for the background!” He was referring to one that my mum bought me when I was moving to Austria to be an English language assistant. That was about 15 and a half years ago by the way so it’s held up pretty well! It’s from Primark, if you were wondering.

I added a pair of tights with stars that match the dress (purchased at Karstadt in Karlsruhe, 7 or 8 years ago) then I remembered a necklace that my sister had given me for Christmas a few years ago.

It was Jan’s idea to add the star lights that we still had on the bookcase from Christmas. Please ignore the state of my hair – I thought I could get away with not washing it for one more day but it really does look quite limp and greasy.

Here’s a close up of the necklace. It’s so pretty!

How would you interpret this art in an outfit? If you would like to join in send a photo to 14shadesofgreyblog@gmail.com by Tuesday, 26 January. It can be a flat lay if you prefer not to send a picture of yourself. Then go to 14 Shades of Grey on Wednesday for a round up of everyone’s submissions.

A Touch of Whimsy: Adventures Through Wonderland readathon

Hello friends! I spontaneously decided yesterday that I want to participate in the Adventure Through Wonderland readathon in September even though I have nine books to read for another readathon, I’m only halfway through the bonus round for Erin’s challenge (with only one book that overlaps with said other readathon) and I really don’t have time to dedicate to reading at all for the rest of the year because I need to be cross stitching in any and every bit of spare time I can find (oh hi Christmas cards that I should have started already!). But it’s a middle grade readathon and we all know I can’t resist an excuse to escape into children’s books!

The readathon is hosted by A Touch of Whimsy, which is a book club run by Lexi and Kalyn (who I don’t know, but I’m sure they’re very nice), and guest hosts Gavin (who runs Believathon aka my favourite readthon ever) and Jade (who runs the Middle Grade Monthly bookclub with Gavin).

So… categories. Books. Y’know… the important things.

Down The Rabbit Hole: Read a book set in another world. The Magical Misadventures of Prunella Bogthistle by Deva Fagan. A story about a bogwitch whose curses just won’t work. It’s definitely not set in our world!

Flower Garden: Read an aesthetically pleasing book. Obviously this is very much up to interpretation, but I’m going to read Asha and the Spirit Bird by Jasbinder Bilan. I mean, I don’t know about you but I think this cover is p-r-e-t-t-y.

Eat Me, Drink Me: Make yourself a cozy reading snack. As you can see, this prompt doesn’t involve choosing a book. I’m sure I can managed to make myself something yummy to eat while I read at some point during the month.

The White Rabbit’s House: Pick a book for a cozy night in. Escape from Mr Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein. This book sounds like so much fun and just perfect for a night in – especially if it continues to rain as it has been doing.

The Queen of Heart’s Palace: Pick a book you think you’ll love. Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus by Dusti Bowling. I’ll be honest, I’m mostly including this book because I’m also reading it for Bookoplathon and if I don’t double up somewhere there’s no way this is going to work! But I also genuinely think I’m going to love this book… which is why I added it on Goodreads in 2017! High time I got round to it…

Cheshire Cat: Pick a strange and mysterious book. Potkin and Stubbs by Sophie Green. This is the Middle Grade Monthly book for September and I’ve been looking for an excuse to buy it for over a year now! Hopefully it arrives soon.

The Mad Hatter’s Tea Party: Join us for our live costume party. On 3rd October the hosts will be going live for a costume party where they discuss the group book (which I will get to in a second). It’s actually taking place at midnight my time so I most likely won’t be watching, but I wanted to include the prompt for completeness sake.

Bonus: Group book. The Train to Impossible Places by P.G. Bell. This book sounds magical and wonderful and I cannot wait to read it (even if I can’t watch the live show).

So, there you have it. Let’s see how many of these books I actually manage to get to in September…

An art tour of my home (Bloggers Art Gallery)

Hi everyone! Kezzie came up with this idea of a kind of bloggers art gallery – basically a link up to allow bloggers to share the art they have in their homes. The interpretation of “art” was left completely open – paintings, sculptures, carvings, glassware, a beautiful patchwork quilt. Whatever art means to you. I thought it sounded fun so I decided to join in.

For my post I wanted to a kind of virtual tour, as if I was actually walking through our flat with you telling you about the things we have on display.

The first thing you see when you come in the door is one of my favourite pieces in the whole flat! My cousin sent me this for Christmas 2019 and she informs me it’s by an artist local to her in Shrewsbury. Regular readers will surely remember it as we got it framed only recently.

If we turn to the right and continue down the corridor, the next thing we come across is two decorative tiles, hanging above the cabinet where we keep towels and other things. I bought both of them years ago on Dawanda – the former German version of Etsy. The cat one is a copy of a piece by Rosina Wachtmeister, an Austrian artist. I think they’re made using serviettes but don’t ask me how!

Appropriately, the fox card is actually from Kezzie herself! It was far too pretty to put away so it lives there. The gap on the left usually contains a framed photo of my godson but I took it down before taking this picture… privacy and all that.

Some of you may remember that where the red panda now hangs used to be home of a fox that was drawn for me by blogger Alison. Never dear, Mr Fox is still around! He’s just moved further down the corridor to be with a second piece of zentangle inspired artwork that Alison sent me in memory of our twins.

Having reached the end of the corridor, we now enter the bedroom, where we only have one thing on the wall (I need to do something about that!). This hedgehog is a digital print made up of lots of triangles. I got it from a charity auction in aid of PostPals.

Next door to the bedroom is the spare room. In there we have something that isn’t art as such, but we found interesting enough to frame. It’s a very cool jigsaw. (It’s also a pain to photograph thanks to the reflection from the window on the other side of the room!)

Exiting the spare room, we find a very important piece of art to our immediate left – a gift from my godson. I’ve removed his name from the photo, but the date shows he was almost 3 when he painted it.

There’s no art in my office so we’ll walk straight past that door and continue down the other side of the corridor. I won this bee in the same PostPals auction as the hedgehog.

We’re back to other end of the corridor now. To the left of the front door is a shoe cabinet, which houses a watercolour postcard I bought the first time I went to Paris. The little bowl was a gift from a friend in Luxembourg – would you believe it’s made of paper? And obviously the little painted chalice is from Rome.

On the wall above the postcard, next to the living room door, we find a peregrine falcon. My dad’s girlfriend’s dad painted it for me years ago!

Into the living room next, where we turn left along the bookcases and find this poster of Paddington Bear. I’m not sure whether it’s strictly “art” but I love it!

Three pieces reside on top of the cabinet that houses our wine glasses. Jan’s sister drew the gorilla. The two cross stitches are mine – Death of Rats was a gift from me to Jan years ago and he gave me the Me to You bear kit, which I then stitched.

Above the TV is a shelf that’s full of DVDs, and also houses two little foxes. Both were painted for Jan by his sister and I adore them!

Below the shelf, to the left of the TV, is a cabinet, and on top of that cabinet there are two cards featuring artwork by my aunt. She does them as Christmas cards, and these two are the most recent. I have others that aren’t on display, including a koala from when they lived in Australia. I wonder if you can guess where they live now?

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Also on that cabinet are a painted stone and two postcards, all by Jan’s sister. The stone was a recent gift to Jan, the postcards are older.

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Moving around the room, on either side of the window we have two things that we had framed years . Inn the left is a print of a Rosina Wachtmeister painting (she of the cats in corridor – she does a lot of cats, but this one doesn’t feature any).

To the right of the window is something that was actually an advert for an event at a French cultural centre where Jan used to help out. He liked it so much that he wanted to get it framed. I’m not actually sure what it’s supposed to be.

Above the sofa is a poster of a painting by Edward Hopper. Jan has owned it for years, I think since before we even met. He likes Edward Hopper… I’m quite honestly indifferent to him.

Finally we head into the dining room part of our open plan living/dining/kitchen area, where we have a frame containing some mini cross-stitch motifs that I stitched for myself years ago.

And that’s the end of my tour. We don’t have any sculptures or anything cool like that, there’s no wall space in the actual kitchen area and we don’t have any art in the bathrooms.

I’m looking forward to seeing what kinds of art other people have in their homes. Once the various posts are up I’ll add the links here in case you want to see them too.

Alison’s post.

Ally‘s post.

Anca’s post.

Hazel‘s post.

Ivana‘s post.

Julia‘s post.

Kezzie’s post (host).

Mike‘s post.

MK‘s post.

Louise‘s post.

Ros‘s post.

Sophie‘s post.

Sheila‘s post.

Thrift Deluxe‘s post.

Vix‘s post.

Wembley‘s post (on Facebook).

Style Imitating Art: Liberty Head

Yes, it’s another outfit post. When I saw the inspiration for this week’s Style Imitating Art, I immediately had an idea for an outfit I wanted to submit. This time, the piece was chosen by Kim from Fierce Fashion and it’s Liberty Head by Peter Max:

The first thing I noticed was the stripes down the middle, then I noticed the white and coral type colours and realised I had the perfect pair of trousers. Then, with the main colour being blue, I decided I had to add a blue top. So here is my outfit:

When I asked Jan to take the photo for me and showed him the inspiration, he asked whether I planned to wear something spiky on my head. I told him I had chosen the necklace to represent the spiky elements, but then he spotted the crown on the bookcase, left over from a Three King’s Cake, and persuaded me to put that on. Nonetheless, here’s a close up of the necklace:

By the way, you may notice my hair’s changed colour since my last SIA post. I dyed it last week but it didn’t work as attended. It was supposed to be purple! It doesn’t look too bad like this though.

Some things in this outfit have featured in previous rounds of SIA: the necklace (gift from my grandma), shoes (Deichmann, 2 years ago) and T-Shirt (don’t remember). The linen trousers were from C&A last year, purchased for my holiday in Spain and Portugal!

I’m fairly late with this post again, but if anyone wants to spontaneously join in send a photo of your outfit (on you or as a flat lay) to Kim on fiercefashionblog@gmail.com by tomorrow – 2 June 2020. There will then be a round up of all submissions on her blog on Wednesday.

 

The Make Your Mythtaker readathon

What can I say, another month, another readathon? This month, I took part in Believathon II, and for June I plan to participate in something just as cool.

The Make Your Mythtaker readathon was designed by Ashleigh and Charlotte, the hosts of Myth-Take Reads – an online book club focusing on myth, folklore & fairy tale retellings in fantasy books. I’ve never actually participated in the book club, but I follow Ashleigh’s YouTube channel, A Frolic Through Fiction, and when she announced this readathon I knew I just had to take part. The idea is to pick a type of character you want to be from one of four groups – Warriors, the Royal Court, Rogues and Sorcerers. Within each group are four common characters from fantasy such as a knight, a monarch, a pirate or a faerie. For each character, there are four prompts to choose a book for. Once you’ve read those books in the specified order you will have “made” your myth-taker character. But each character also has a cross-over prompt, so you can for instance start as a jester at court then cross over the the oracle path with your third book and finish your journey by completing the final oracle prompt. Or, if you’re an overachiever like me, you can create a backstory for your character that mashes up three different paths and end up with a plan to read books for all four prompts in all three paths…

… which brings me to…

My Character

Image made using https://www.dolldivine.com/historical-witch-creator.php

Eloria Celest Teluma is the daughter of a powerful witch and a minor noble. At the age of five, she had a prophetic dream in which she foretold the death of the queen’s eldest son in a fall from a cliff. She and her mother immediately set out for the castle, but arrived too late to prevent the prince from leaving for his trip. The dream came true, and Eloria thus came to the attention of the royal family, who promptly installed her and her mother in a tower on the castle grounds. Now 21, Eloria spends most of her days making potions for the ladies of court and assisting with births. She has had two more prophetic dreams.

So, my Mythtaker has elements of three different fantasy characters: witch, courtier and oracle. Since Eloria is mainly a witch, that will be primary path and the one I shall be following first. Here are the prompts and my choices:

Read a book featuring an animal: The Bad Luck Lighthouse by Nikki Thorne. This is the Sequel to The Last Chance Hotel and features a talking cat named Nightshade.

Read a book with a foiled cover: A Heart So Fierce and Broken by Brigid Kemmerer. Another sequel, I’ve wanted to read this since I finished A Curse So Dark and Lonely. The writing on the cover is foiled.

Read a book featuring a magic battle: Magic Bites by Ilona Andrews. Someone on Twitter told me this features a magic battle so I hope it does!

Read a book featuring occult themes: The Babysitters Coven by Kate Williams. Coven.. witches. Occult. This is described as ” Adventures in Babysitting meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and I am excited for it!

Next up is courtier, since our Eloria is descended from a family of minor nobles and lives at court.

Read a book with a big cast of characters: Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb. Another sequel. The first book had loads of characters so I’m assuming this one does too. It’s also 675 pages, because apparently having a 12 book to-read list isn’t enough for me… I have to have long books in there as well?!

Read a book with one (or more) of the royal colours on the cover – red, purple or gold: The Land of Neverendings by Kate Saunders is mostly purple with some red.

Continue a series: I appear to be continuing several series, but for this prompt specifically I will be reading Everfound by Neal Shusterman and finally finishing the Skinjacker series. This one has 528 pages. Why do I do this to myself?!

Read a host favourite: Each of the hosts picked six favourites and I picked one from Charlotte’s list that I already had on my want-to-read list, The Twisted Tree by Rachel Burge.

Finally, I shall be fulfilling the prompts for the oracle path:

Go into a book blind: The River King by Alice Hoffman. I picked this book up from a free public bookcase for no other reason than I’ve heard of the author (but never read anything by her). I know literally nothing about it!

Read a book with a foiled cover: Twister by Juliette Forrest has foiling on its cover (which, by the way, is stunning!).

Read a book about books. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman. I’ve had this book for ages and I’m not 100% sure on what it’s about, but there’s a library… and library implies books, yes?

Read a 5-star prediction: Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng. I’ve seen this praised a lot and I am hoping it will be a five-star read for me.

And that’s it. Here’s a picture of all my books together. It’s a big stack!

To find out more information about this readathon and see the prompts for the other characters, watch Ashleigh’s announcement video where she explains things so much better than me! You can also find loads of information on the Myth-Take Reads Twitter profile. And now I’m off to attempt to finish my current read so I can launch straight into #MakeYourMythtaker tomorrow!

Style Imitating Art: Teapot

Hello friends! For the first time in a while I remembered Style Imitating Art exists so I’m joining in. This time the inspiration is a gorgeous teapot made by the British Royal Worcester Porcelain Company. My outfit’s connection with the prompt is a bit of a stretch, but allow me to explain…

First, let’s take a look at the inspiration.

As soon as I saw the teapot, my first thoughts was that the pale blue/green colour on the left reminded me of a dress I own. Other than one colour the dress and teapot don’t have much in common though…

 

So I added accessories to try and make it look more like the art. It’s difficult to tell from the photo, but I am wearing a necklace, earrings and a bracelet.

The necklace (which has featured in an outfit post before) and bracelet reminded me of the teapot’s handle. The earrings feature birds. Nothing like the actual birds on the teapot, but still birds!

Since we were going outside, I needed a hat so I grabbed one that had patterns that  vaguely reminded me of the right-hand side of the teapot and parts of the handle. The band around the hat also reminded me of how the teapot is split into strips of colour.

Finally, my shoes (which I didn’t take an extra close-up of) are black because of the black on the teapot.

As for where the items in my outfit came from… for the most part I can’t really tell you. The dress was ordered online years ago but I don’t remember where from. I purchased the hat in Spain (exactly a year ago today, actually) on arriving there only to find I had forgotten to pack a hat. And all the jewellery was gifts. The shoes are a brand called Rieker and I like them a lot. They’re comfortable.

I actually had Jan around to take a photo of me this time, so no awkward attempts at selfies. Instead you get my weird facial expression of “how does one smile for an outfit post, exactly?”.

I’m quite late to the game, but if you wanted to spontaneously rustle up an outfit you have until tomorrow (Tuesday, 18 May 2020) to submit it to Danael on livingoutsidethestacks@gmail.com – you don’t have to take a photo of yourself wearing it, a flat lay of what you would wear is fine – then check out her blog Living Outside the Stacks on Wednesday to see everyone else’s submissions.

Post isolation fantasy choices challenge

Kezzie has put together a challenge with some questions about what people will do when all the restrictions are lifted and we can safely go about our lives again. I thought it would be a fun thing to ponder so here are my answers.

1. Restaurant you would go out to.

We usually go to a vegetarian/vegan restaurant called Tibits whenever I’ve had to go into the office in Germany. We haven’t been since the beginning of March and I’m actually starting to miss it! Or I might like to try a restaurant that we haven’t been to yet.

2. Friend you would meet up with first.

As I mentioned in this post, I don’t really see many friends at the best of times, but I had been planning to meet up with my friend who lives Karlsruhe and her boyfriend once the weather got warmer so  hopefully we will get to do that before the summer is over!

3. Place you would go.

Realistically it will probably be Germany to work since I’ve now missed 3 of my regular trips there 😅. But if we’re talking fantasy answers I would love a weekend away somewhere. Maybe up a mountain somewhere in Switzerland.

4.  Shop you would go to.

I don’t really do much shopping outside if supermarkets – Switzerland is too expensive! So it would probably just be the department store Manor to buy stickers (I use them on the envelopes when I send cards for Post Pals or letters to my pen pals). Or I would go to the bookshop, wistfully read all the synopses then leave without buying anything because they’re sooo expensive. I can honestly order a book from Waterstones in the UK and pay less for it including postage to Switzerland!

5.  Food item you would buy/eat.

The only thing I haven’t been able to buy is yeast and since I planned to make hot cross buns with it I feel like that ship has sailed!

6.  Cake you would eat.

If I want cake I can make it (as long as if doesn’t involve yeast!) but I do love the chocolate, pear and hazelnut cake from the restaurant at Papiermühle so I would have to say that.

Toblerone cheesecake

7.  Show you would/will go to see

We didn’t have any planned so I would have to see what’s on once events are allowed again. I’m hoping for another good comedian to come to Switzerland. Bill Bailey would be nice!

8.  Concert you will go to watch.

Jan is still hoping a project he’s involved in will go ahead in October so most likely that.

9.  Relative you will hug first.

My mum had been planning to come over in June so if we can rearrange that it will be her. But honestly I don’t even know when I will see any member of my family again. Flights probably won’t be going for a long time 😦

10. Holiday you would go on.

It would be great if we could rearrange the Poland trip we had to cancel. Or maybe I’ll take a trip to the UK and hug all my family!

11.  Other activity you would take part in.

I had been planning to sign up for a beginner’s crochet course at the end of March so if that’s repeated when things open again it will most likely be that.

12.  Thing you would do at work.

I am still working as normal and I already worked from home apart from on two days a month, so there’s no task that I need isolation to be over to be able to do. However, things were really slow this week so I am hoping our customers will get back to work so they can send us things to translate!

13.  Item you would buy.

I don’t think there is anything I want/need that I couldn’t just order now. Maybe we will finally get round to buying balcony furniture?

That’s it. I really enjoyed thinking up these answers. Hopefully I will get to actually do some of them this year! If you want to answer them too I would love to see your answers and please also link to Kezzie’s post and stop by to say hi/let her know you’ve done it.

Three things for February 2020

Good morning!  I’ve kind of been neglecting this space recently so I thought I’d do this as something fun that’s also quick and easy. Shamelessly stolen from Audrey.

Three things I liked about February

1. Our trip to St Gallen

2. Pancake day!

3. Watching Good Omens

 

Three things I’m looking forward to in March

1. Poland. We’re meeting my family in Krakow for a few days then Jan and I are going to Wroclaw.

2. Lighter evenings so I can leave the house after work without having to worry about people lurking around corners.

3. …I cant actually think of a third thing. Clearly I need to male some plans for March.

 

Three vegetables I eat the most

1. Carrots

2. Courgettes

3. Chick peas

 

Three grocery items I buy every week

1. Milk

2. Bread (for toast)

3. Chicken

 

Three things we go through like crazy in my house

1. Teabags

2. Dishwasher tabs. I seriously don’t understand how we got through so many with just the two of us living here.

3. Margarine

 

Three things I always have time for

1. Reading

2. Sending birthday cards

3. Catching up with other people’s blog posts

 

Three things I never have time for

1. Writing posts for my own blog

2. Housework (you may think I exaggerate but you haven’t seen the absolute state of my flat!)

3. Cooking anything that takes longer than 45 minutes total  (including prep). I want to but I just can’t!

That’s it. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. (P.S. The photo at the top has nothing to do with anything  – I just needed something to put there.)