This Week I Have Been Mostly…. Florida Edition!

And we’re back! This week, I have been mostly recovering from jet lag….

We landed last Saturday morning, and were immediately confronted with car troubles, when all we wanted to do was drive home and sleep and then dribble on the sofa whilst catching up with Bake Off.

We still managed to do some of that, but only after a good few hours of stress levels we just weren’t capable of handling at that point in time. What a bump back into reality, eh?

Car all sorted, we were able to reflect on what was a really great holiday. Two weeks of making it up as we went along in Orlando, was just what we’d hoped it would be. I’m not planning to write a dedicated post on everything we did, however, I’ll just give you a little rundown now AND I’m planning on posting a couple of food related posts, all about what and where we ate (that’s the important stuff, right?). There are some amazing little places you can find, if you just know where to look. So I’m going to tell you – keep your eyes peeled for those posts, over the coming weeks.

Anyway, here’s what we got up to:

We started off our trip with the traditional breakfast at Cracker Barrel. I’ll tell you more about this place in my food post, but it’s a really lovely relaxed ‘country’ style restaurant that serves a pretty decent breakfast.

We visited some of the little towns around Orlando. This is Celebration and is so pretty.

We went to a NFL football game, and saw the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play the Pittsburgh Steelers, which was a great experience.

We ate a LOT of great food, saw some amazing places and tried not to expire in the 40c heat!

We visited the Kennedy Space Center which was something on my bucket list. It was really interested and such an amazing place to visit.

We did some Disney World Resort hopping and saw some resorts we’d never been to before, and also visited the Magic Kingdom for one of their Halloween parties.

It really was a great trip, and felt a bit like we managed to finish off the things we didn’t do last year, but simultaneously warm ourselves up for our proper Disney World holiday next year!

But now we’re home, we’re back to it! Halloween is around the corner, and though I normally post quite a lot with regards to scary movies this time of year, I only have one post like that planned this year. So if you’re a fan of Blumhouse, keep an eye out for that post coming shortly. I also have plenty more recipes coming as part of my 2018 Food Challenge, and I also need to tell you about a live podcast recording I went to recently.

There’s so much to come! Stay tuned 🙂

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

This week I have been mostly wanting to crawl into a hole, if I’m honest. I haven’t had the best of weeks mental health-wise, and it’s been hard enough getting out of bed, let alone actually wanting to do stuff or eat any food.

I go through periods like this, but I’ve been feeling fairly ‘off’ for around a month now. It’s been various different things that’s caused it, and I’m sure anyone I spend time around, friends, family, colleagues would say they hadn’t noticed any difference. I’m fairly good at hiding it. It’s my full-time profession, you know.

Other than feeling like a head-case, I had my birthday last week. I turned 35 – and before you assume, no that’s not why I’ve been feeling low. I enjoy getting older. I think I might struggle with 40, but that’s a way off for now.

I took the day off work, as I usually do for my birthday, and spent the day in my PJs, watching YouTube and then saw My Neighbour Totoro for the fist time. I really enjoyed it! Film 4 are currently having a month of Studio Ghibli films, and so I’m recording them all so I can watch the ones I’m interested in! We ate Chinese on my birthday evening, and enjoyed a relaxing evening in. It was exactly what I wanted, and needed.

The following day I was totally spoiled by my work colleagues, and they got me some amazing gifts. I’m a lucky girlie!

A couple of days after my birthday, I got a belated birthday treat – Ariana Grande released her 4th album.

I’ve been listening to it non-stop since, and I will say on first listen I wasn’t into all of the songs, but now I love them all. My favourite is Goodnight and Go, which takes some of Imogen Heap’s song of the same name, and makes it very Ariana. It’s stunning and makes me tear up every time I hear it! There are a lot of tracks about her past and current relationships, anxiety in general and some which speak to the tragic events at her concert in Manchester last year. She even made the final track ‘Get Well Soon’ to be 5:22 (the date of the attack) by adding 40 seconds of silence at the end. I always loved Ariana Grande but this album has cemented it even more. It feels more grown up, still fun, but a little more ‘sorted’.

This past weekend we watched A Quiet Place and really enjoyed it. Since I love film so much, a guy at work told me about an awesome app called Letterboxd (which is also a website) where you can rate and review every film you can imagine.

 

You can add them to your activity feed, which diarises when you’ve seen them, and you can add movies you want to see in the future to your watchlist. I find this function to be really useful because I’m always seeing trailers for films, or hearing about them, and then forgetting I wanted to see them! You can also follow people on the app, and this means you’ll see films other people watch, who might have similar tastes to you. It’s a great way to discover new movies! It’s also user-friendly and looks great so that makes it the kind of app you want to use. No, this isn’t a sponsored section – I just really it! If you have this app, or decide to download it, feel free to find and add me. I’m Groggits (of course!)

We’ve been continuing to plan our Florida trip, and 17th August saw Disney World’s first Halloween party of the year. Yes, in August! It’s barmy that they’re making them earlier and earlier every year, but the first party was sold out, so I guess there’s demand for it! But the coverage of the party looked great, and seeing all the Autumn decor up on Main Street USA has made me so excited to go back! We’ve even found more places we want to eat at, and I can see me being the size of a house when I return…. eek!

So that’s my little life-update for now. I’m very much ready for a proper holiday, and we’ve got a few exciting things to look forward to ahead of the holiday, so I’m hoping my mood will improve between now and then. Either way, I need to remind myself not to be too hard on myself.

Here’s to beating those obstacles.

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

And so the wonderful run of hot, sunny and dry weather continues. I’m totally loving this weather, though I could do with it being a little warmer in the day and a little cooler in the night. We were promised a thunder-storm on Friday which turned into about an hour of rain, which was much needed.

So, a couple of weekends ago, we headed to London’s Hyde Park to see Bruno Mars performing at the British Summer Time festival. I’ve gotta say, festival food has changed a lot. I actually looked forward to some food van noodles, but there wasn’t a noodle to be found. It was all artisan pizzas, chicken wings and vegan falafel. They had sold so many tickets it took us an hour to get to the front of the line for chips, and we’d chosen the shortest line to queue up at! They weren’t even that nice… But that wasn’t why we went.

Bruno was, of course, amazing. He always is! Gary got me some merch (I hate that word) when I got chilly, and now it’s too warm to wear the sweater I got, but I loved wearing it that night. I’ll crack it out again in a few months.

I also visited a launch of a new type of corporate Christmas even (Christmas in July!) and had a lovely evening with my bessie (who I’m lucky enough to work with!) drinking fresh mocktails and eating the most amazing calzone from The Calzone Kitchen. The tunes were banging, the sun was setting and it was nice to have some catch-up time!

This past weekend I visited the Cosgrove Craft Fair to see a friend’s stand. Apollo Creative, you may remember, made my Mum’s birthday present recently. I picked up a couple of bits for my home and a gift for my niece. Check Apollo Creative out on instagram!

We’ve been having some quiet weekends of late, since we’re trying to save some cash for our upcoming holiday, to Florida. We have a few more little trips lined up, but nothing major (from what I remember!)

I’ve also been thinking about how I want to ‘cover’ my holiday on my social media channels. I usually just post the odd photo when I’m away, since I’m taking a vacation and I want to be ‘off’ for the duration. But since we now have instagram stories and IGTV I was thinking I might do some videos, a bit like I did last year, of places I’m visiting, stuff I’ve bought etc. Do you think that’s something you’d like to watch? Obviously I’ll write some blogs on my return, too 🙂

That’s it for now. Do you have any exciting trips coming up? I’d love to hear about them!

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

Another catch-up post? I know – this is a good thing. It means things have slowed down to the point, where I have some time to reflect on what I’ve been up to, rather than just go with it!

I have been LOVING this warmer weather. I really do feel like we’ve gone straight from Winter to Summer, leaving Spring behind. I also love thunder storms, and we’ve had a few corkers! I’m enjoying seeing all the plants coming up in my garden – so many different colours and shapes popping up out of nowhere – I have no idea what any of it is!

I’ve been busy planning things for my upcoming holiday to Florida, in September. We’ve booked in some really fun things, lots of places to eat, and my shopping list is well under way. We’re there for two weeks this year, and I’m pretty sure we’ve already filled each day!

I’ve also got my Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween party costume sorted, for this year. Even though this isn’t a Disney World holiday (same as last year) we’re still going into the Magic Kingdom park for one evening, for the Halloween party.

Can you guess who I’m going as? Hmm….

Aside from this, I’m still really enjoying my calligraphy course, and have started doing a few mini projects. I’m not pressurising myself to get them done in a certain time frame or in a certain way. I’m letting them happen organically, which works well for me.

They mainly happen to be Disney themed, but that shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone really….

I’ve also been adding art to my office walls. Again, I want this to happen organically, and we visited Homesense recently, and their selection of framed art was really great. We ended up getting three pictures for my office, and two for around the house. I happen to have chosen all illustrated pieces for my office, and these two look great on my wall.

Lastly, I’ll just mention that the jewellery making masterclass I attended with the MK Bloggers group earlier in the year, was featured in the events supplement of Blogosphere Magazine this quarter. It was fun to see my face in print!

So that’s it for now. I have a week off coming up, and some fun things planned for that, and stay tuned for more recipes too. Are you enjoying seeing my 2018 food challenge recipes each week? Let me know what your favourite recipes have been so far – I’d love to know!

Until next time….

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

I’ll be honest – this week I have been mostly TIRED! The past heatwave created a ‘pollen bomb’ and so many people have been suffering with hay fever symptoms despite not having normally suffered.

As a big sufferer of hay fever I have been struggling BIG TIME and after mowing my lawn a couple of weekends ago, it seems to have been a downwards spiral. I’ve been suffering with a sinus infection which is causing a lot of pain, headaches and I just want to keep my eyes shut all the time to relieve the pressure.

Despite this, I’ve still been busy at work and at home. The recent bank holiday was glorious. It was amazing to soak in the sunshine and kick off what seems to be some more settled spring-like weather. I saw family and spent time on hobbies and just relaxed a little.

The following weekend I was sent to a newly opened local Escape Room to cover for About Milton Keynes, a local information website. You can read my article here, and see how I got on! I’d never done an Escape Room before, but I’m certain I’ll be trying out more in the near future!

I also got to spend some time with some good friends, and continue planning our impending trip to Florida in just 4 months time. It’s getting nearer and we’re super excited. With some great things planned, places to visit, and so much new stuff. There’s never enough time to do everything in Orlando, hence the multiple visits. I swear you could live there and still visit somewhere new each week.

Between now and then, we have tonnes of exciting things planned, overnight stays, visits to London, concerts and events to attend. I’m sure the time will just whizz past and before we know it, it’ll be Christmas again (OMG!)

So that’s what I’ve been up to in the past week or so…. I’m now off to tend to my poor painful head…. maybe a nap is in order!

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

Hello from a glorious and sunshiny Buckinghamshire. I hope you’ve all been loving the weather we’ve recently been having?

I’m aware that by the time this post publishes, we could be sitting in jumpers and staring into the grey abyss, but as I write this I’m soaking in the sunshine, enjoying the cool breeze and sipping on an iced coffee.

I didn’t realise how much the weather affected me until a few years ago. Up until about 3 years ago my favourite season was always Autumn – not too cold but nice and crisp and you could wear cute jumpers and feel all cosy wrapped up and snuggly. And then I went to Florida and it broke me – in the best possible way. The sunshine, the humidity, the heat. Being able to whack on a summer dress and sandals and fly out the door. The wide open skies with only fluffy white clouds.

Everyone is happy, everyone looks healthy. My skin was smooth and tanned, my mind was calm and I was getting so many important vitamins into my system. From that point I was a summer person. This year’s winter felt colder than ever. My joints hurt, everything felt dark and dull. Even this heat wave hasn’t been hot enough. I need at least 30c and humid…. I’m ruined!!

So needless to say I’ve been enjoying this taste of summer, and I can’t wait for it to return soon.

Other than soaking in the weather, I’ve been busy doing other things. At my job we celebrated 10 years of the business and all headed to Alton Towers.

It was my first time there, and since it was a chilly grey day we were able to ride every ride with no wait times on the majority. It was an epic day. My favourite rides were Oblivion, Thirteen and the new coaster The Wicker Man (UK’s first wooden rollercoaster in 20 years). Alton Towers is on a massive site. I was very impressed!

I’ve also been cracking on with my calligraphy course. I’m nearing the end of the second module, learning minuscule (lower case) letters. I’m actually really impressed with how much I’m improving. This course really suits my learning style and I’m brimming with inspiration of how I can put it to use as I continue to learn. I’m waiting until I’ve learned both minuscule and majuscule letters (and possibly how to connect them!) before I start being too creative, though!

We recently went off to London and to a restaurant we’d seen on Masterchef called Eneko, and had an amazing dinner there. I’m posting a separate review all about it, so keep an eye out for that.

As you’ve no doubt seen, I’m still completing my 52 new recipes challenge and I’m really enjoying putting the effort in to discover and then make the recipes. If you want to see what I’ve made so far, you can do so by clicking this link. I’ve got a few ideas of recipes I want to try in the future but I’m actually enjoying looking up what I fancy on a weekly basis.

So, without a crystal ball I can’t predict what the weather will be like as you’re reading this post. I hope with all my heart it’s sunny. Even if it’s not in the mid to high 20’s like it has been, I hope it’s still sunshine!

Until next time…

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

Hi guys, I thought I’d take the opportunity to check in, as it’s been a little while since I posted one of these. I didn’t expect to be sat here writing this post, whilst outside the place where I live is covered in snow AGAIN. It’s mid-March! I need some Spring now. I hope you’ve been enjoying the food and beauty posts that have been coming up. I even posted a book review!

These past few weeks I’ve been a bit quiet on social media. Well, specifically on Twitter, I’ve been loving instagram. I just haven’t had anything to say on Twitter to be honest. I like to follow the rule of ‘if you’ve got nothing nice to say then don’t say anything at all’. I feel like I’ve had to hold my tongue a lot in the past but for a few reasons the past couple of weeks have been particularly tough. I don’t want to start becoming part of the problem. And then twitter drama in the blogging community this past weekend, cause a LOT of angst amongst people I follow and it’s meant some people have shown their true colours, even though I pretty much always know where to look when it comes to the drama. I fear the twitter community, for bloggers anyhow, creates a fake level of self-importance. I mean, the whole industry is based on the assumption that people want (and need) to hear what you think, so when it’s done in 280 characters, it can cause confusion and conflict. Anyway, I stayed out of it, but managed to put my two cents in with a tweet which covers both sides of the argument;

“Don’t be a dick. The end”

I didn’t need 280 characters to make my point.

Speaking of social media – does anyone remember Vero…..? That lasted all of 20 minutes didn’t it? I suppose if they’d made it so that you could actually use the app when the big rush happened, people might have bedded in, but I forget it’s on my phone. After 3 days of not being able to login, it didn’t really make an impression and so to me it’s another dead platform….. I might be wrong in the future, but for now buh bye Vero.

The past few weeks have been tiring! Work has been busy, I haven’t been getting good quality sleep and I’ve been feeling run-down and not entirely well. I need Spring to happen now. I long for the sunshine, and the warmth, and not having to wear all my clothes in one go. Unfortunately, I think my hayfever season has started, so even though there’s currently snow on the ground, I’m taking antihistamines, and they’re making a difference…. I swear I should have been put down a while back.

I’ve got an exciting event to attend at the end of this week, and that involves meeting some new people. Something I’m always nervous about, but feeling (at time of writing) fairly okay with. It’s local, and it’s doing something I’ve never done before, so I’m excited. All part of trying new things this year!

I’m still plodding away with learning calligraphy (which you can follow here on instagram) and I’ve been reading a lot more than I usually do. The first book from the Slow Sunday Book Club has been read, reviewed and discussed (see start of post for my review link) and the second book has been announced: Surprise Me by Sophie Kinsella. It’s not my usual choice of reading material so I’ve yet to decide whether I’ll be joining in this month, but I did pick up another book on recommendation from Amyleigh at Northern Blood. It’s called A Monster Calls, by Patrick Ness. She’s got great taste in reading material so I’m looking forward to diving into it.

G-Man and I have just completed watching the 3rd and final season of the Netflix show Love. It’s a Judd Apatow show, and I love all his stuff, so if you do too and you haven’t watched it, I highly recommend it. It’s really really good. I’ve also been watching Crashing, after being told by Gary I had to. And he’s right, it’s a good show (which also Judd Apatow’s involvement) based on the true story of the main actor, who is trying to make it in stand-up. I’ve been really enjoying TV and films about stand up recently!

So for now, I’m still stuck in my state of hibernation, which really isn’t helping my mental state of ‘let’s stay in bed and sleep until summer’, because really I’m eager to actually get up, go out and do stuff. But the weather and the coldness is making me feel slow and lethargic. I just want some sunshine! Maybe, if we all wish for it hard enough, it might just happen? Ready…….. GO!

 

 

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

I didn’t really want to follow my last post with another post about moving house, but let’s be real – when you move house it pretty much takes over your life. It IS your life.

We’re in, we’re feeling settled and we’re almost unpacked. Which is amazing, and more than I could have hoped.

The actual moving weekend was mega stressful and I’m not going to lie – I never want to move again. Which is what I said the last time, but something tells me this house is more of a keeper.

Over on instagram I’ve been sharing elements of the house. Once it’s more finished I’ll share some more but until now, head over there to see tidbits going forward.

But the house is amazing, I’m very much revelling in the fact that I have a dishwasher once more. And even though by square foot this house is smaller than the last, it feels so much bigger. The space is useable and well-planned out. The kitchen is the star of the house and since it’s such a social space, I’m really looking forward to having people over once we’ve got our dining table in. I’m in love!

Other than moving I’ve been doing a lot of catching up on tv I missed when we were packed up, which is great because I’m having to force myself to STOP UNPACKING every waking second. So we’ve watched all of Twin Peaks (omg) and have started re-watching The Wire again. I think I might dedicate a whole post to Twin Peaks – not that there’s really a huge amount of coherent writing to be had on that subject, but we’ll see. Great British Bake Off is back, as is Dr Foster and American Horror Story (though I’m not too keen on the first episode I saw of this…. I’m not a fan of clowns.)

So my posts will start to feel a little more normal going forward. I’ve got some exciting stuff coming up and some exciting projects I’m working on, so keep your eyes peeled for those. If you’re a fan of Halloween and scary movies I have some posts, I’m really looking forward to writing, in the pipeline and of course there’s my trip to Orlando to look forward to!

If you don’t already follow me on other social platforms, you can find me on twitter as @Shutterbug_Blog on instagram as groggits and on YouTube at the Musings of a So-Called Shutterbug channel. So follow me over there too, for stuff as and when it happens!

Until next time 🙂

I’m Moving House!

At the time of writing this, I’m in a house surrounded by boxes. I have no idea where anything is. Half of my belongings are in storage, and I can only hope I have kept back enough underwear for the next few weeks. (Yes, I own a washing machine, so we should be cool)

(I definitely won’t miss that avocado bathroom suite…..)

By the time you read this, with any luck we should be moved into our new home. And fingers crossed we’re mostly unpacked!

This move has been a whole year in the making. From deciding to put the house on the market when we returned home from Orlando last year, to now being moved in. It’s been a hard 12 months with ups and downs, stresses and uncertainties. But now we’re here.

We did it!

The last handful of posts you’ve read on Musings had been pre-written and scheduled so I didn’t need to worry about writing, or whether there’d be internet to post. But now we’re in I’m hoping that this new chapter in my home life will begin a new chapter for this blog and my social media channels.

I’m excited, and I hope you are too! Stay tuned!

 

This Week I Have Been Mostly….

It’s been a while since I posted a life update, mainly because I have had so much stuff in ‘pending’ that I haven’t really been able to talk about.

But in the last few weeks we have started packing up our house. We’re moving!

A while back I posted some tweets on twitter, as we were trying to decide between two houses (large house, not great area OR smaller house, nice area) We decided to go for the latter, and ever since we’ve been waiting on the chain. It’s been a struggle and frustrating, but things have started to move along, and after a long wait we’re looking at an early September move.

And once that’s all done, I can finally start looking forward to the other amazing thing happening this year, which is our return to Orlando! In October we’ll be flying out to stay with friends for a week of Florida sunshine and a teeny bit of Disney magic (more of that in a later post).

Over the last few weeks, apart from packing, we’ve been hunkering down and trying not to spend any money or do anything too extravagant. We started to watch Breaking Bad on Netflix and we’re almost at the end. The final season has been the most interesting so far, but I’ve almost given up on it a couple of times. It’s just not been as amazing as people have made out.

I also celebrated my 34th birthday, and spent the day chilling out and pottering on odd jobs. It’s nice to spend it low-key some times. Maybe I’ll do something exciting next year for my 35th. But I like the quiet and calm, especially ahead of a big house move!

On the social media side of things, I was excited to see I’d hit 1k followers on Twitter, and also gained a few YouTube subscribers since my last video went live. I’m hoping to begin posting those regularly again once I’ve got my office set up in the new house. I also alluded to a YouTube project I wanted to give a go, on twitter, AGES ago – I still intend on doing that. So if you showed interest I’ll be in contact with you once I feel ready to begin.

So that’s what I’ve been up to the last few weeks; not much to tell! But I’ll be sharing things as they happen (and whilst I have internet!) and you’ll be able to take this exciting journey with me!