A photo an hour: 17 June 2017

I know what you’re thinking… wasn’t it only just photo an hour day? (That’s what I was thinking when I saw Jane’s reminder anyway). Actually, it’s been almost a month since the last photo an hour link up! To be precise, May’s photo an hour was precisely a month ago tomorrow. 2017 is definitely going too fast!

Anyway, for those of you who didn’t follow along on Twitter, here’s what I got up to on Saturday.

10 a.m. Obviously I started my day with a cuppa. I could just reuse the photos from previous months for this! (But I didn’t. Last month’s was different – see.)

11 a.m. Time for a shower. In an effort to make things different, I took a photo of the shower curtain this time.

12 noon. Off to the post box with this pile of happy mail.

1 p.m. Finishing off a birthday card to be sent to a Post Pals sibling.

2 p.m. Finally quiet time is over and I’m allowed to take away the recycling! (I feel like I should point out that this wasn’t all drunk at once!)

3 p.m. Back from recycling and the supermarket. Time for a tea on the balcony.

4 p.m. Housework – boring but necessary. Emptying the dishwasher.

5 p.m. Once you start it’s never ending! After sorting the dishes I hoovered and now I’m sorting clean laundry.

6 p.m. Off into town.

7 p.m. A choir Jan sings with was having a CD launch party and I was on my way there. Crossing the Rhine.

8 p.m. Beer in a fountain. How else are you supposed to keep it cool?

9 p.m. Drinking beer! They’re not both mine…

10 p.m. Still at the launch party. Candles on a table.

11 p.m. Waiting for pizza and it was too dark to photograph anything but this lantern!

Midnight. Waiting for a tram home. The building is part of the art museum.

1 a.m. Finally bedtime! Eeyore says goodnight 🙂

And that was that. A long day! How was your Saturday?

Linking up with Jane and Louisa, as always.

A Photo An Hour: 18 March 2017

I almost missed the photo an hour link up this month! Luckily I went on Twitter and saw that Sharon was doing it. As a result, my first photo was not taken when I got up, but half an hour later… and I ended up doing photos on the half hour instead of the hour. I took part on Twitter this time, but I also wanted to record it on my blog.

Jan had to go into work for a special project/organisation meeting thing, so I was alone all day! Here’s what I got up to:

10:30 a.m. Starting late means my first photo is not tea! Shower time.

11:30 a.m. It looks grey and miserable outside, but I need to go to the post office and food shopping, so out I go.

12:30 p.m. Shopping done, heading home through the park. But where are all the children? It might have been grey, but it wasn’t raining or all that cold! DO people here take the midday quiet time that seriously?

1:30 p.m. Aaah, there’s the tea that no photo an hour would be complete without! (Well, a cup that once contained tea anyway.) Lunch done, cuppa drank. Now what?

2:30 p.m. Thought I’d better actually do a bit of my OU course while I didn’t have any other commitments. Discovering Wales and Welsh for those that were interested. It’s a not for credit short course that you have 6 months to complete. I want to do a proper Level 1 course, but the Europe price is way too expensive!

3:30 p.m. Enough studying for a Saturday! Another cuppa while I leaf through cross stitch magazines for card inspiration.

4:30 p.m. Suppose I’d better do something useful! Emptying the dishwasher.

5:30 p.m. Writing to a pen pal. Spring paper seemed appropriate 🙂

6:30 p.m. Watching Come Dine With Me – my guilty pleasure TV show. It’s total trash, but I love it. The narrator makes it for me!

7:30 p.m. Another episode of Come Dine With Me. (And an awful picture! I forgot to take one with my camera and the computer refuses to acknowledge my phone so I had to re-download this one from Twitter!)

8:30 p.m. I had been waiting for Jan to let me know whether he wanted tea, but he apparently got stuck talking and forgot to message me. By 8:30 I was starving so I decided to just cook anyway!

9:30 p.m. Pyjamas time! Also note the confetti that is somehow still in my flat even though I’ve hoovered several times since Fasnacht!

10:30 p.m. In bed with a book. Once I’ve read this I’ll have completed the bonus round for Erin‘s reading challenge!

11:30 p.m. I’m off to sleep! There’s just time for one more photo of the view from my bed… purely to preserve symmetry, obviously 😉

And that’s it for this month. How was your Saturday? Did you do anything interesting?

Linking up with Jane and Louisa, as always.

 

A Photo An Hour: 29 January 2017

Yesterday was the first photo an hour of the year, and like most times that it falls on a Sunday my day was incredibly boring. Naturally that didn’t stop me from joining in though!

11 a.m. An embarrassingly late start, but in my defence we were visiting friends the night before and didn’t get home til nearly 3 a.m. Starting the day with a cup of tea in the amazing cup a pen pal sent me for Christmas.

12 noon. Cross stitching a birthday card.

1 p.m. Based on the amount of dishes I have to wash by hand you wouldn’t think we have a dishwasher!

2 p.m. Back to cross stitching, with more tea of course.

3 p.m. Still stitching… yes, that’s how much progress I made in an hour!

4 p.m. At some point Jan got out of bed (so those of you who were judging me for getting up at 11 can now judge him instead!) and put the BBC News channel on.

5 p.m. There was nothing on TV, so we put a Big Bang Theory DVD on.

6 p.m. Time to make a start on dinner.

7 p.m. Food! Pancakes, avocado and goat’s cheese spread (made by me) and crispy bacon.

8 p.m. We put a film on while we ate. Tale of Tales… it’s weird!

9 p.m. End credits of the film. It had just finished and I hadn’t moved yet.

10 p.m. In bed reading my book… auf Deutsch!

That was the last photo I took I actually could have taken an 11 p.m. photo, right before I turned out the light, but symmetry must prevail 😉

I promise I did actually move from the sofa at some point during the day – to shower and quickly pop to the shop – but neither of those things coincided with an hour so I look even more lazy than I actually was.

Linking up with Jane and Louisa, as always.

How was your Sunday? Did you get up to anything more exciting than I did?

A good idea…

Over the past few months, I have taken part in two separate tea exchanges through the International Geek Girl Pen Pal Club (If you’re not sure what the IGGPPC is, read this post). Although, when I say “exchange” what I actually mean is I sent out tea twice and only actually received any from my second partner… but anyway, I digress.

Obviously I couldn’t just stick some tea in an envelope with a brief note and call it a day, so the cross stitch threads came out. Here’s what I came up with:

The first one I designed myself (if you can even use the word “design” for something that’s mostly text), the second was adapted from a book.

Tea and cross stitch… two of my favourite things!

And in case you were wondering, for the exchange where I actually got something back I received a green energy tea and a Greek senna tea, both of which I’m yet to try.

A Photo an Hour: 29 October 2016

Yesterday was photo an hour day again, hosted as usual by JaneJane and Louisa. Here’s what I got up to on the last Saturday of October:

10 a.m. Tea in a cup that talks about coffee. Such a rebel!

11 a.m. Trying to find the right cross stitch thread. What colour is “straw” anyway?

12 noon. Getting dressed.. my tights have pumpkins on them! ❤

1 p.m. Jan got up, so I put the kettle on again.

2 p.m. Back stitch time! How cute is that tree?

3 p.m. I was ready but Jan still needed to iron his shirt. If you look closely you can see me reflected in the iron.

4 p.m. Finally at the autumn fair!

5 p.m. Food at the fair. It’s little pasta “horns” with mince , covered in raclette cheese (it tasted nicer than it looks!)

6 p.m. Jan went off for his pre-concert rehearsal and I did a bit of shopping.

7 p.m. After dropping the shopping off at home, I was out again almost immediately. By 7 p.m. I was at the church, where the choir was still rehearsing.

No 8 p.m. photo since I didn’t want to whip my camera out in the middle of the concert, sooo…

9 p.m. Leaving the church after the concert. Sorry about the awful quality of the photo!

10 p.m. A friend invited us round for a beer after the concert since he lives close to the church (yes, I have a friend in Basel!!)

11 p.m. More beer, but now in a bar

12 midnight. Waiting for a tram home.

Back home, I drank some water, brushed my teeth and went to bed, all before the next hour came around. I couldn’t have taken another photo anyway… symmetry must be preserved 😉

How was your Saturday?

 

A photo an hour: Sunday 12 June 2016

*I tried to write this post yesterday, but WordPress was having none of it, so let’s try again!*

Sundays are always the worst photo an hour days, mostly because there’s nothing to do in Switzerland. I’m not even supposed to hoover! (Although I sometimes hoover the bathrooms anyway since the fan in there is louder than my hoover and nobody would tell me I can’t shower on Sundays!). So welcome to the most boring photo an hour ever 😉

10:30 a.m. Starting the day with a cuppa. One of these days I’m going to start reusing pics from previous photo and hour posts to see whether anyone notices 😉

11:30 a.m. Folding some clean clothes. Can’t put them away yet since Jan is still sleeping…

12:30 p.m. Making scrambled eggs for lunch.

1:30 p.m. Herbal tea time.

2:30 p.m. Watching the news (also, I feel the need to point out that I showered between the last photo and this one. I wasn’t smelly all day!)

3:30 p.m. Jan put football on, but this was the match I had least interest in that day (sorry Turkey and Croatia!) so I only half paid attention to it while colouring in my new colouring book.

4:30 p.m. Still colouring, now with tea!

5:30 p.m. Starting to make some healthy snacks for a picnic type dinner.

6:30 p.m. Snacks!

7:30 p.m. Courgette crisps… kind of. They weren’t all that crispy. More experimentation needed. (I suppose you can call them zucchini chips if you like, but I prefer alliteration!)

8:30 p.m. Ready to support Ukraine! (Sorry Germany – I’ll support you again in other matches)

9:30 p.m. Watching football.

10:30 p.m. Football still on… keeping me up past my bedtime. Disappointed that Ukraine didn’t manage even one goal.

11:15 p.m. I didn’t want to wait up an extra 15 minutes for the hour, but I needed an even number of photos 😉 Didn’t really know what to take a photo of on my way to bed, so this is my glass of water on the bedside table.

That’s all. Told you it was boring!

Linking up with Jane and Louisa, as always.

A Photo an Hour: 20 February 2016

A small miracle happened this weekend… I actually remembered to take part in photo an hour! (Unlike in January, when I remembered it right up until the night before then ignored my camera entirely in the morning). It was Fasnacht day in my small town, so I actually did something other than sit on the sofa for a change. It still wasn’t the most exciting of days, but you can’t have everything 😉

10 a.m. Awake… ish. Can’t function until I have a cup of tea!

11 a.m. Cross stitching. Can’t show you what I’m working on yet 😉

12 noon. Finishing cuppa number 2 before going for a shower.

1 p.m. (ish). I was actually in the shower at 1, so more like 20 past. Getting dressed for the day.

2 p.m. It was raining and not much was happening, so we decided to eat something before the parade started. I chose meat on a stick (sorry vegetarians).

3 p.m. Parade time! And the rain had actually stopped.

4 p.m. “Who’s going to clean up all the confetti before the trams get going again?”

4.30 p.m. Bonus photo because I didn’t take an even number. My loot from the parade! A group with an anti-vegan float gave me the sausage 😀 Not pictured: the world’s smallest carrot and my flowers (which were already in vases). Jan got even moooore sweets, two oranges and a leek.

5 p.m. We thought we’d pop back out to see what was happening post-parade. It turned out there wasn’t much point in being there if you weren’t part of one of the groups, so we quickly came home. This is my hat after I removed the confetti! Some lingered…

6 p.m. Back home drinking more tea. The yellow flowers in the background are from the Fasnacht parade.

7 p.m. Time to make tea!

8 p.m. Tea time! Bratkartofflen (potato fritters) with sausage plus fish and spinach. An odd combination, but it worked.

9 p.m. Having a beer while watching what turned out to be an awesome episode of Farscape. We’re nearly finished now… what will I do when there are no more episodes?!

10 p.m. Off to read a book in bed. I love my starry PJs!

I should really have taken another photo at 11, which is when I put down my book and turned out the light, but the camera was across the room and I was lazy… hence the bonus photo earlier in the post to keep things even 😉

What did you all get up to on Saturday?