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How can I not smile, when there’s not a cloud in the blue sky? The butterflies are fluttering about in a mesmerising mating dance. A gentle breeze sways branches that were just dead and bare only a few weeks ago and are now decked with colour. There are two things that make my City irresistibly beautiful: clean, unstomped snow… and glorious sunshine. It may have been a long winter this year, but after the cold, dark days where you just want to hide under your duvet for months the sun brings a burst of energy, and if you just let go a little.. you could go a bit hyper. Better not then.

I have to say that although the UK is officially in Northern Europe according to the UN, we do have a relatively mild climate. Our winter days are tortuously short and often bitterly cold, but our summer days are beautifully long and can be wonderfully balmy. I live for those long summer nights, when you can still see a hazy blue in the sky at 9pm and sleeping feels like a waste of time.

I can hardly believe that it’s already May. Today, the sun is shining. I’m looking forward to summer, although I know I’m getting ahead of myself. But I reserve the right to treat any sunshine as a sliver of summer. So today is summer. It’s pretty much as summery as it gets here anyway. I have a wedding to attend this Bank Holiday weekend. I hope that the sun saves enough energy to shine through for the happy couple.

Have any of you had the first BBQ or picnic of the year yet? I really feel like dining al fresco… I hope you get a share of the sunshine this weekend, even if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere and it’s quickly approaching winter…

Ha-ha-happy Friday :)

What a week. The weather has been like this. I need some light relief. Thought I’d share a lovely compliment I received via a spambot or person, who obviously has a better command of English than me. I am still trying to work out what this comment is supposed to be about…

Oh on the subject of language, I once visited a church in Norwich on my travels, and was asked by a friendly member of the congregation whether my accent was from Australia. It was a little awkward when I had to say no, I was just from down south I put it down to the cosmopolitan City that I live in, plus influences from friends. After all, I have been known to slip into a Malaysian or Nigerian accent without being aware of it much to the amusement of the company I was in. The latter actually happened first at work!

Anyway, enough about work, the weekend is here! I’m going to try making these easy peasy looking cookies for teatime tomorrow and having a little giggle over this clip about people changing the way they speak. And maybe I’ll be doing a little of this too:

Calvin & Hobbes, Spring | from Daily Calvin & Hobbes on Facebook

Do you find that the way you speak changes in different environments? Do you enjoy listening to and/or speaking different languages? What are your plans for the weekend? And dare I ask… what season would you say is in your part of the world at the moment?

Frivolous Fridays: Get your groove on!

OK. If you have not thought of what to do this weekend, here’s a suggestion. How about making some music. This Incredibox webby app is great. You can’t beat box? Well, let me introduce to you some dudes that can:

Screenshot of my dudes: click through to groove to my composition!

It’s really fun, I was hooked. And if you are really proud of yourself, you can pay €0.69 to download your masterpiece. Here’s mine.

Happy weekend!

Jumping on the bandwagon of lurrrrve?

Love Hearts at Westfield E20

This week has seen two festivals celebrated a lot with the colour red. The Chinese Lunar New Year and yesterday’s Valentine’s Day. Without further ado, I’m going to share some photos of my red week. No overdosing on chocolate for me last night in the name of love, just as I haven’t done Lent properly before, I don’t really do Valentine’s either. But there’s no need to hate. It’s always good to be reminded of our need to show love – I served up a good meal, and to make it truly a special and meaningful occasion, I didn’t take photos! (I have to say though, I made proper nice roasted potatoes for the first time, and they were delish if I do say so myself – I’m having the leftovers tonight and I can’t wait, ha!)

Chinese New Year of the Snake – took me a while to realise the numbers are a snake!

Red Tape – I used one to decorate one of my handmade mini sketchbooks

Fattet Moussaka at Le Comptoir Libanais with aubergines and pomegranate seeds – very yum!

Red Bike Racks at Westfield E20 – I really liked these!

Strawberry FroYo in the making

OK so this last one is not red, but I could not help it. I’m a one trick pony, old dog, old tricks… whatever, but after Christmas, I bought myself a heart shaped cookie cutter, and look what I did with it (I did have to pour out the runnier, outer part of the egg white though, as the hole is smaller than the one I usually cut out with a glass.)

Sunny Fried Toasties Valentines Edition

I must say I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Valentine’s Day. I avoid all the red aisles in the supermarket and gasp audibly at the hiked up prices of flowers and chocolates to my own embarrassment. But I’m thankful for the reminder to treasure those I love more and to show my appreciation of them. I thought this article was quite a meaningful one, despite romantic love being all well and good. From a glance at the comments though, a lot of people don’t agree. What do you think? Did you celebrate Valentine’s Day?

10 More Days to Go (ish)!

Well. That depends on where you are in the world. It also depends on when you are reading this post. It might even depend on when the Big Day is to you. And whether or not I can actually count. But as it’s a Friday, we are looking at all things frivolous. Let us not get all tangled up in the intricacies of how many more days there really are until Christmas Day.

The Gruffalo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have a real gem to share: do you love the world renowned Gruffalo story, written by Children’s Laureate Julia Donaldson and illustrated by Axel Scheffler? Well, Mr Scheffler was commissioned to illustrate the Royal Mail Christmas 2012 stamps and they are absolutely lovely! A sweet little video on BBC News magazine looking at his work and the Christmas stamps themselves can be found here. Does anyone fancy sending me a few Christmas cards in different sizes and weights? You have until next Tuesday or Thursday to get them to me in time for Christmas, depending on whether or not you are sending them by second or first class post or both from the UK

I am a lover of stamps, having inherited some albums from my mother and then sorted through bagfuls of them from my German landlady many years ago. It’s not just the actual designs, shapes and colours of them that I love, or even the fact that among them are many souvenirs of places I may never visit in my lifetime. I love how much I learned from them. In trying to sort them, I stumbled across nuggets of history, different languages and scripts, important personalities or things of nature and inventions. And then there are the celebratory stamps. No, I did not get the London 2012 collection (of which only the first class stamps can still be purchased until the end of the year), even though I was thinking of it. Will I get the ones of Gruffalo illustrator fame? I don’t know. Perhaps a signed souvenir cover will do!

On another note, did you know that today is… Save The Children Christmas Jumper Day? A day when you can do something good with those embarrassing jumpers your granny gave you every year (mine didn’t, poor you!) If you didn’t realise, or your granny was more like mine and you have not had time to knit your very own silly jumper with Rudolph or Santa on it, then I propose whipping up a quick jumper for your egg cup – oh yes, there are free patterns on the Save the Children website and they are seriously cute! Hopefully that will make up for my abrupt lack of woolly posts and lovely knits recently. My shoulder is still iffy, I think I need to pencil in the doc as my first appointment of 2013

Whatever you are going through today and through this holiday period, take care. I’m sending you some Gruffalo awesomeness – get your shrewd, inventive mind ticking. Wrap yourself up warm and pour a cup of tea, or get out those beach shorts and wriggle your toes in the sand (depending on which of the two is more relevant, and responsible, for you). Have a good weekend!

FF: Fashion {04 Cosy Charcoals}

A fun fashion post is long overdue as is a clothes shopping trip! We had our first snow of winter 2012 this week in London and I’ve been craving greys again in the cold weather.

I love warming greys in winter. Black is a little too austere, but greys are soft and snuggly. Charcoal knits simply cocoon you in cosiness when the pavements are frosty and the sharp winds chafe at your cheeks.

It’s not that cold yet, so a pair of courts/pumps are still perfectly appropriate (although I’d prefer flats in this style), but I am in the market for a good pair of boots and I’m thinking of replacing my tatty boot cut jeans with a new skinny pair. I haven’t braved that style transition yet. Yes, I know I’m a few years late, but I am notoriously lazy when it comes to actually buying new clothes.

I like to browse seasonal trends, window shop, walk around feeling all the fabrics, oohing at all the colours and textures… I just keep my purse tightly closed. Ha! No, I have not been spending my share to get us out of the recession, that’s quite clear from the chancellor’s Autumn Statement this week. My bad.

(Maybe I should think like Starbucks and make a donation to the Government in compensation for my tightfistedness! Their latest “extraordinary” move is rather mind boggling. Nevermind, Costa and even Pret have sofas these days and serve rather more decent coffee. Starbucks’ tax affairs have no bearing on why I haven’t visited in a long long time, so their limping U-turn is not about to drag me back. Still, I’d love to find a favourite independent caffeine haunt in which to wrap my frozen hands around a liquid hand warmer.)

Cobra & Bellemy Sterling Silver Turquoise Earrings ¦ The North Circular Slate Wool Snood ¦ Paige Denim Ultra Skinny Jeans ¦ Souffle Bow Sweater ¦ Target Mossimo Emerald Pumps

So, what are your clothes shopping habits? Does it get very cold where you are? What are your favourite colours to wear in winter? Do tell all

Wotta lotta spam… or yarn?

Seeing as it’s Friday… I wanted to share what I was chuckling over at the end of last week before I stumbled across this Freshly Pressed post on the subject of spam, which demonstrated that there is more than just the Internet that connects us all. Yes, I shared the exact same spammer with Nathan Badley of not-so-fleeting Freshly Pressedom fame (it appears that he’s been efFPeed more than twice). We received the same fascinating message which left us similarly flummoxed over a reference to ”brussels”.

Aaaanyway, I digress. I had read that message in my spam folder briefly, sniggered and then moved on. Because there was a more intriguing and amusing message that caught my eye. Its brevity and the tone of unmistakeable incredulity drew my attention and held it there: apparently I have a devoted fan that I have been so remiss as to have overlooked a number of times, to my detriment. I really must check my spam more often…

I Google’d SCK and found no conclusive evidence as to the identity of this elusive person. But after some soul-searching and remorse I realised that the random combination of letters and numbers supplied by my mysterious visitor in the place of a name, was designed to put me off the scent. And in view of my recent obsessions that could only mean one thing: my blog had been graced by the presence of the  SUPER COOL KNITTER.

SCK I am truly¹ sorry, please come back and share your wisdom with all of us. It is my fault alone, please don’t hold my negligence against my readers also. Winter is approaching (or has already approached, crept up by the door and started huffing and puffing through every little tiny unprotected sliver *shiver*). Those of us whose hair Winter has already ruffled and whose cheeks she has already chafed, would really love to wrap up warm in hand knitted scarves, jumpers and throws. It would be truly cool but not cold, if we could share knitting tips… you must have quite a treasure trove of them if you have made over four million attempts at catching my attention.

Ho Ho Ho (oops, sorry, too early… and fictional) hahaha. There. What a silly lot of ramblings. But these random things entered my mind when I saw that silly piece of spam.

I wish you a light-hearted weekend, perhaps accompanied by a bubbly glass of (cue drumroll) freshly pressed lemonade. For many, it may be a slightly tart and sharp glass of the stuff… but still refreshing in some way, I hope.

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¹ OK, perhaps my final paragraph would suggest that I am not nearly as sincere in my sentiments towards SCK as I am trying to suggest here. But I am cheered by the ingenious spam message. Direct and to the point

TGIF!

I’m very thankful to have made it through the week. I hope your week has been alright too. Thank you for your well wishes, I’m still sneezing a lot, so you may be more at risk of becoming ill than me now, if you come anywhere near me. I‘m on the mend though!

Funny how some humble Hobnobs and a hot cup of tea can bring comfort to a soul. This was tea-time today. I don’t know why, but merely looking at the oaty crumbs makes me happy!

I hope something simple makes you smile this weekend.

Frivolity and friendship (4) …and finally, for now…

Thank you everyone, for being so enthusiastic about the award nominations thus far. It certainly has been fun writing these posts. It has also helped me to get back into the swing of things, especially since the past few weeks have been exhausting and not all that pleasant. I’ve definitely been feeling very under the yucky weather.

Having already taken a couple of days sick leave at the beginning of the week, I sat up in bed one morning towards the end of last week, and was almost knocked backwards with a horrible dizziness and nausea. Thinking that I was perhaps very hungry, I dragged myself woozily downstairs to make some breakfast and tried to eat it. Half-way through my muesli and not feeling any better, I tried to put my head on the table. That usually works on dizziness right? Nope. I felt so ill, and yet the nausea was not the kind to make me want to throw up. It was horrible. I lugged my body back upstairs and crawled back into bed. I stayed there for another age and finally got up gradually around four in the afternoon. Actually, this time of year, I think we call that evening over here.

I hear that my symptoms were down to a bug that’s going round. I haven’t apparently been the only one to be KO’d by this monster. It took me days to get over the feeling of dizziness. I didn’t dare drive or anything. Hopefully that bug’s defeated for the winter. Hope those of you falling towards winter out there are wrapping up warm and are not inhaling germs from people who indiscriminately sneeze into others’ faces. Ugh. So inconsiderate. And disgusting. Please icky people on the Underground, smother your germs.

Aaanyway public health announcement over and, without further ado, let’s get onto the final award. The first three nominations posts are here, here and here. And the first ever, almost five months ago, is here. So feel free to check these out too for some great weekend reading, if you haven’t already done so!

The supremely creative Matt Gajdoš of Mister G Kids, in his nomination spree, put me forward for the Kreativ Blogger award which I graciously accept with thanks. More about his blog here and here! And in the spirit of all things creative, here are my three nominations:

• All About Ami – Stephanie is about as sweet as her delightfully cute amigurumi creations. If you love crocheted things, you will love this site. And there will be a long awaited first addition to the family this month, how exciting!
• How About Orange - Jessica, a graphic and textile designer, has a bright and fresh blog  featuring craft projects, lots of inspiration for people who like to create and not a little bit of orange.
• ziggyshortcrust – Last but definitively not least, the blog of my first blog friend ever. Ziggy is a friend of elves for a start, but there is so much more to discover than first meets the eye. For a start, she elfed my imaginary daughter for me. Just check this out to see what I’m talking about for yourself.

Thank you to everyone for taking your time to read and comment and like. Welcome to friends old and new! I do really appreciate your being here. Have a restful weekend.