Five photos

When the lovely Gemma tagged me in her "Five photos that make me smile" post, I ran my battery down to zero trying to work out how to select five photos from what must be the thousands I've uploaded over the last eight years. Eight years? How is that possible?

What was easy though, was what I wanted to represent. I know exactly what makes me smile...

Family
Nuclear, extended, blood, those I've acquired through marriage, those I've lost over the years and my god family - they all count. They all matter.
My wonderful, amazing family make me smile.
Even the crazies.
Especially the crazies!

Mr G
I found a goodun. I snared him. I'm keeping him. I'm not smiling because I'm married to him. I'm married to him because he always knows when and how to make me smile.
Always.

My friends
I wrote a long smushy post about this a while ago. Wow, how things have changed. Some of the faces have gone, new ones have arrived (hello WAGs, Dirty Thirties, Pineapple Club, work roomies old and new), but the sentiment still stands... that I am lucky beyond my wildest dreams to have the love, support and companionship of so many lovely people that are here, beside me because they want to be, not because they have to be (through marriage, blood or shared office space!)
My friends make me smile.
I hope I make them smile in return...

Opportunity
The world is my oyster.
I can go where I want. I can be who and what I want. I can believe what I want. I'm so lucky that I have choice, means, direction and support.
This photo represents two things - travel and work (yup, these days, my work makes me smile - check it here).  Traveling broadens horizons, I get to see, feel, experience new things. My job affords me the means to do that, but often presents opportunities (in this photo I was en route to Paris to start my secondment . One of the best things, ever. Ever!). Having a job that challenges me and surrounds me with inspiring people means I also have a reason to get up in the morning and take on the day. Having opportunities make me smile.

A place to call home
Opportunity, travel, the world is my oyster. But I have a place to call "home". I know I will always have somewhere to go. I know where home is. I know where I belong. I know where I'm safe. Somewhere to be still, calm, secure. I know that no matter what. No. Matter. What. I can go "home" and be welcomed, loved, nurtured and healed. It's not a place per se (though my family home and the home I bought and made great with Mr G make me very happy indeed), it's a feeling. A feeling not everyone is lucky enough to have and so I cherish it.
It makes me smile on the inside.

I suppose in the literal sense the effort I've put in to making our actual house full of fun, love, pretty, and parties also makes me smile.

Who was it that said "They say a person needs just three things to be truly happy in this world: someone to love, something to do, and something to hope for"?

Don't say "Instagram"...! Whomever it was, I'm minded to agree.

So there we go - five pictures (yes I know I bent interpreted the rules slightly) that make me smile.

Thanks Gemma. YOU make me smile!

As an aside, this post has been a bit like therapy for me. I haven't blogged for a while as I lost a bit of my spark. I lost some people that I thought my spark depended on and I found it hard to articulate those feelings of hurt, loss and bewilderment without reference to that loss.

However, I've always tried to be grateful for what I do have rather than dwelling on what I don't (cough, Chanel handbag, cough), and I've just realised that this situation is no different.

So in writing this status-update-that-grew-in-to-a-blog-post post I managed to get it off my chest and get back in the game.

I've also been bonkers-mad-busy. Double busy.

So, now I'm back in the game* look out for a "catch up" post!

There'll be pictures. Lots. And they'll all make me smile.

Ciao 

*too many Micky Flanagan references? :-)

When I get home

Don't get me wrong, I am loving Paris - luh-uh-uvving it, daaarling (quick SCD reference there) - but as my return date approaches, I'm thinking more about what I'll be doing when I get home. Resting, mainly I hope. That and catching up on everything I've missed... which is mainly TV and food, which says a lot about my life I suppose. Hmmmm, just call me Onslow...

Although I'm not really missing home at all, and I'd happily stay for a few more months (with the caveat that my loved ones would have to continue visiting me, of course), I am however missing my sofa, Sky+ box and local take aways a lot. I have only two English speaking channels (BBC World News which shows death, destruction and financial ruin ona  continuous loop and BBC Entertainment which shows 90s sitcoms, mainly) and watching catch up TV on my iPad basically results in me being distracted by YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. I have no sofa, just a chair and my bed to sit on and though I can find various international cuisines here, but Fish n Chips ain't one of them!

So, I'll be home this weekend and I actually can't wait to snuggle on the sofa with Mr G in my Reindeer PJs, with take away Thai, and fish n chips (yes both - I want them so badly I refuse to choose!) my body weight in cinema sweet pop corn (and that's a lot of pop corn because I have put on a LOT of weight) and a bucket full of tea and get stuck in to the list below...

1) Bridget Jones' Diary - because I'd like just a little reminder of how lovely London is in the winter, after all the loveliness of Paris.

2) The entire Harry Potter series, from start to finish – goosebumps! No explanation necessary.

3) Love Actually – Christmas is coming! CHRISTMAS. IS. COMIIIIIING!!! Literally nothing makes me as simultaneously sad-and-happy as this film (Sappy?). And is there anything more perfect than "To me, you are perfect"? And of course, more London...

4) Moulin Rouge – ahhhh, Paris... Glitter. Music. Dancing. Sigh. And talking of Paris….

5) Midnight in Paris - a love affair with the City of Light and its inhabitants of old... and some fabulous costumes, of course!

6) Pride and Prejudice - It has to be the 1995 BBC version, because Jennifer Ehle IS Lizzie Bennett and Julia Sawalha is the most perfect Lydia. Makes me yearn for a stately home Christmas lunch and afternoon tea in bone china! Ok, technically it's not a film, but it's on a DVD so it kind of counts... "Mis-Ter Bennett!"

7) Heathers - just to darken it up a little - it can't all be happy happy joy joy, you know.

8) The Muppet Christmas Carol - taking the line "no cheeses for us meeces" to heart (too. much. cheese. consumed. urrrgh.) and a bit more London.

9) Elf - because "I just like to smile! Smiling's my favourite" - FACT - and because I love NYC like I love London and Paris.

10) Jurassic Park - ahhhh, memories. "Clever girl...!" and also, just stay away from the dessert buffet. Nothing good happens there.

11) Home Alone - because, you know, it's not Christmas without "Keviiiiiiiin!" and that wonderful, wonderful Christmas tree at the Rockerfeller Centre.

12) Top Gun - to remind me of those sunny, sunny, sunny California days as the nights draw in.

13) Miracle on 34th Street - because, you know, Christmas, New York, Lawyers... it's all there. Also, I just love Elizabeth Perkins.

14) The Hunger Games - because Catching Fire is almost here, and I've missed my biggest girl crush. She's been quiet for a while...

15) Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows - last Christmas we watched this five times in three days as it happened to be on every movie channel going. Easy watching and I think I may have learned something about pre-war European history... maybe.

So that's Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning taken care of, now what to do with the rest of November...?

Releasing my inner child at The Fling Festival

This weekend, some friends and I took ourselves in to our local town centre under the premise of "releasing our inner children" at The Fling Festival.

I'd heard good things and was excited about the promise of just being silly and having plain old simple fun in the sun. I like a good cocktail bar, a pretentious venue, a swish restaurant, the next big thing on the club scene and a dressy night out more than most (if I can afford it!) but I hate the "too cool for school" mentality.

I like to go out and have fun for having fun's sake, and not to have fun because someone else thinks it might be cool. I'm a geek, a goon and a bit fat goof.

I like fancy dress. I like cheesy tunes. I like being silly. I like hanging out with people who think the same.

Turns out The Fling Festival is my new silly happy place (after Disneyland and Vegas) and I fitted right in.

We turned up, collected our wrist bands and did a quick reccie of the site to discover, amongst other things giant water lilies, a chaise lounge set up for sung riverside therapy sessions (Melodies for Maladies anyone), an interactive metal "tree" and an army of moving bins that squirted water at passers by, a Human Juke Box (pay 10pence and Juke Box Jenny'll sing for you!), a story telling tent, a debating tent (I had to stay away from that one), a stand for checking in your "emotional baggage", an interactive puppet show with a full whizz-banging Roald Dahl style chemistry set and puppets, a skating rink, a school sports day arena (5-legged race? girls vs boys tug of war?) faery wand-making workshops, a tent teaching different styles of dance (from burlesque to hip hop and everything in between), a Bollywood tent (with food, music, stories and dance), body painting (both painting for your body and using your body to do the painting), a party bus (complete with conductor and tickets), a silent disco and a giant sandpit with buckets and spades in amongst your usual festival stands, stages and tents offering an array of food, drink, cocktails, music, comedy, cabaret and burlesque.

My favourite area by far had to be the Rubbish Area. On first look it gave me shivers as it reminded me way too much of one of my recurring nightmares about the junk yard witch from Labyrinth, but after a few Pimm's Slushies (yup, you heard me) I was brave enough to face my fears of piles of other people's junk and got settled on a floor cushion with my glue gun and did what my inner child does best... making silly costumes out of crap I find laying around!

After that I spent the rest of the day trying to keep it on my head and telling people I bought it at M&S.

I'm saving it for next year so I'm ahead of the game!

Hat and a mask

The Human Juke Box



Chemistry and puppets

Treasure from rubbish

Skating!

Wand-making



Dancing... silently

posing... stupidly



The beach



The Forum



The End!

One year on... (part 2)

A year ago today we moved in to our new, and current, home. I had a quick flurry of activity before Christmas, ripping up floors, tearing out the bathroom, knocking down banisters and painting everything I could get my hands on.

We started with the lounge diner and got halfway through the bathroom and two of the bedrooms and then Christmas party season kicked in and my motivation went out of the window.

One year on and we are almost there. Everything we needed to address has been ripped out/up/off or just freshened up with new paint until we can renovate more fully. Putting in proper fitted (and some non-Ikea)furniture, building extensions and loft conversions and moving chunks of the house around is now the motivation for a full savings plan.

But for now it's just down to minor details and finishing touches.

The lounge remains as it was, but with more kitsch clutter collected here and there

Lounge-diner - pre-kitsch clutter-ification!

What is currently the master bedroom started as a pink girly room, with ill-thought out fitted wardrobes and a fitted desk, and is now calm and serene in grey. I'm still undecided on whether I prefer the front or the back of the house, but for now, I prefer this wallpaper, so we're staying put! It needs a picture, mirror or shelf above the head board I think and some girly prints on the facing wall.

Master bedroom - before

Master bedroom - after.

The box room started out as a nursery and is now a cute and cosy guest room. We need to properly frame the pictures and find some more colour for the bare wall and also a head board, or maybe a day bed replacement to free up some floor space. Hmmm. We'll see.

Box room - before

Box room - after

The second bedroom was full of scary seventies built-in wardrobes. Granted, they were good quality, because cor blimey did they take some welly to get them out, and they provided positively cavernous storage space, but they were hideous. So out they came, to be replaced with some funky retro wallpaper and bright yellow and teal accessories. After strip one of the paper went up I decided I hated it. But I'm not a quitter, so I finished the job (with a few deliberate errors) so I don't expect it to stay there for long! Again, we need some wall art and maybe a big chunky mirror to bounce some more light around.

Second bedroom - before

Second bedroom - after

You will notice that my dreams for an Alice in Wonderland room did not become reality. However I was allowed to indulge my crazy in the bathroom. We ripped out what was basically a brand new, but boring suite, with a silly shower arrangement (over the slanted end of the bath - I'm just not bendy enough for that!) and mis-matched tiles (but not mis-matched in a good way!) and filled it with stripes, polka-dots, glitter, pink, flamingos and burlesque girls. I love it!

Bathroom - before

Bathroom - after

Some of my bathroom details!

So now, we need to decide on some finishing touches to make the walls look less bare. I do hate a bare wall!

We also need curtains everywhere, but I just can't decide on styles, colours and sizes so I'm currently stuck in FOMO-paralysis land. I'm also umming and ahhing about art, pictures, storage and accessories.

I love this fancy storage shelf for above the bed in the master bedroom...



Baroque shelf from Design55

  
... and these continent prints, perhaps in yellow and teal for the second bedroom, seeing to visit them all was one of my only two life goals!

continent prints from UrbanTickle on Etsy



I also need to get my act together and get these picture cards framed and on the wall in the box room. They work well with my obsession for collective nouns, national dress (particularly a bowler hat) and travel! 

greetings card as pictures, from Woop Studios

I'll keep you updated!

One year on... (part 1)

This weekend will mark the one year anniversary of two significant life events:

It started with prosecco in The Marylebone...

1) First time of complete drunky-drunk memory loss. Scary.

I accidentally got obliterated-drunk on gin mojitos in The Marylebone for a friend's 30th birthday (nope, not replacing the rum with gin, replacing the the soda with gin, and keeping the rum. I hold the naughty barman responsible), crawled on my hands and knees from Mornington Crescent to Camden High Street tube in a silk dress as my wedges made it impossible to walk on the cobbles (what the....!!!!! - I never ever take my shoes off to walk. It's just not classy... oh right... ahem), gave myself minor concussion from falling backwards, like a rigid plank, on to the station concourse, vomited on my parents' driveway (we were homeless and living there at the time) and face planted in to the ground. I then yelled at my rescuers (my Baby Bro, his long-suffering girlf and my husband - who had been stationed at various train stops to capture me as they had no idea where I'd got on, and where, or whether, I'd get off) to "STOP MAKING A SCENE!". I should add the word "apparently" at the beginning of all of these sentences as, for the first time in my life, I have complete memory loss.

Hmmmm.

Not my finest moment.

The next morning over breakfast my father reprimanded me like the naughty child I am, my husband got up at the crack of dawn to get to work and left a bucket by head, my tee-total bro smirked at me, my parents' friends looked at me with sympathy (and at Mr G with DEEP sympathy) and my mother extended an olive branch of Fanta, bacon and paracetamol in my hour of utmost need... and then laughed at my unfortunate state.

Why not hide away and sleep it off in a darkened room, you ask? Why not stay away from them all... at least until I'd sobered up?

Well, life event #2 was about to happen...

2) Moving in to our new house, with the help of all. The. Family.

Yup... including the parents-in-law who were NOT impressed with the smell of stale gin and prosecco seeping from my pores, my waxy complexion, my inability to temperature regulate and so huddling in corners in Uggs and a hoody whilst they tried to keep cool whilst lugging furniture and my feeble attempt to look upbeat and excited about "house moving day!!! yay!!!".

At one point my Baby Bro and Baby Sister in Law found me on the floor in the "blue bedroom" (there was no blue bedroom - I think I was hallucinating!), head between my knees and sweat beading on my forehead as I tried to keep from passing out.

I updated my Facebook status to read something about doing the LMFAO shuffle with one of the moving boxes on my head like the robot in the video (clearly whilst I was still morning-after drunk)... and shortly thereafter, grabbing a box due to a wave of nausea.

I was not flavour of the day. Or month. Or week.

There was only one thing for it. I popped open the "yay, we've moved in" prosecco and took a long cool swig to steady my shaking hands and get me through the rest of the evening.

... and ended with prosecco in our new garden!

One year on, I'm planning to keep it classy at our anniversary BBQ... I might vom in the loo, rather than all over the driveway this time.

Sorry.

That was gross.

I've let my family down. I've let you all down. I've let myself down.

I'll stick to the elderflower presse...

We joined Nespresso club

It was BIZARRE.

We tested a few models at Selfridges and then purchased our chosen machine at John Lewis. We then trekked down Regent Street, lugging our cream Magimix Citiz complete with Aeroccino 3, to purchase some capsules (Dulsao do Brasil and some decaf for making espresso martinis) and to formally join Nespresso Club.

We arrived at the Boutique and it was like being welcomed in to first class or an Aston Martin show room. Soft lighting, stylish design and Nespresso brand ambassadors with breathy voices.

"Welcome to Nespresso. Can I show you through to the tasting bar?"

Crumbs! Mr G had pins and needles in his face from all the pre-purchase samples he tried and I'm coffee-free for the time being after an involuntary caffeine purge last week when I caught a stomach bug, so we declined the offer and got in the queue to register and to buy our first capsules.

A queue?!? For registration and coffee capsules?!?

Anyway, when we got to the Coffee Capsule Purchasing Desk we began our Nespresso Club initiation ceremony.

I think I lost points for not taking it seriously enough.

In her best breathy, welcome-to-first-class-madam voice we were asked: "would you like a leather key fob or a membership card?"

Uh... both, please?

She then swiped them like electronic hotel key cards to activate them... Really?  What am I supposed to do with an activated Nespresso card. What is is activated for?

Oh hang on. I'm about to find out.

(Breathy air hostess voice again) "Has anyone told you about The Benefits of Nespresso Club?"

I was then demoted to the bottom of Coffee Class for giggling during the speech about Nespresso Assistance which includes

• 3 year extended warranty
• 24 hour helpline with direct access to Nespresso experts in case of coffee-related emergencies
• Should our machine break they will collect/repair free of charge (under warranty)
• A courtesy machine will be provided in cases where the machine has to be taken away for repair, to ensure no interruption to our coffee schedule
• A first look at special edition coffees
• The card/key fob tracks our purchases so they can profile our coffee preferences and assist us in future coffee buying decisions (a-ha!!!)
• A recipe book, tips  and instructions for making all coffee related drinks, desserts and cocktails.

For. Actual. Real.

I shit you not.

....

....

.....

!?!?!

Then it was time to register the machine and get our membership pack, which was not too dissimilar to the manual I was given when I bought my last car.

Breathy Nespresso brand ambassador: "I see you bought the machine at John Lewis"

Me: "wow, that was quick - is that registered on our profile already?"

Breathy Nespresso brand ambassador: "No madam, it's in a John Lewis Bag"

Mr G: *snort*

I flunked Nespresso School. Big time.

But in all seriousness, we tried it last night and it's yum and fun! And, really, if you asked me to recommend a coffee machine/company/service now, the first thing I'll say? Get a Nespresso.

I have been assimilated.

Mr G loves it like it's our first born and keeps going in to the kitchen to caress it.

First rule of Nespresso Club? COME ROUND FOR ESPRESSO MARTINIS ASAP!!!!