March

It's been a whole month since I've posted. Partly I've been busy, mostly just lazy but also I've been changing my routine so my Sunday afternoons I had been spending writing these posts have been busy for the last...well, month of Sundays! I'll try to either change the time I set aside for my posts, or maybe change the blog to once a month updates.

One of the things I was doing in February was moving. I'm in a new house now sharing with I think 4 others. I've been here a month now and still haven't seen everyone who lives here. They are all med students so they stay pretty busy and the house is very quiet. This is a picture of my room just after I had dumped all my stuff. It is looking better now ;)

 

I went up to Scotland with my boyfriend for a wedding and we stayed at his parent's house. These are just a few pictures from his backyard. They have a fantastic view of the surrounding area.

They also have some cute ducks, and chickens :)

Best of all two cats! One was super friendly and the other very shy. They are both orange and white like this one.

 

For the church's walk in march we went to Hayfield. Someone in the area has a sense of humor. We found a couple of interesting signs along the way...

 

Not sure if this sign is legible at this size. It says...

Private

No Parking

The last car that parked here is still missing

 

A view of the path we were following. We had been concerned it would be cold that day. I was wearing about 4 layers. But ended up taking the jacket off...as long as the sun was out.

Sheep, in the UK! Shocking stuff ;)

You can let me know what you think, but I see two buffalo when I look at these hills...

 

We had a Mardi Gras party at church. I've never celebrated it before so when I was googling it quite a few sites listed King's Cake as being THE traditional food. I spent most of the day making this cake. I don't think it looks great, but there wasn't a scrap left for me to take home so clearly it tasted good enough! I thought it tasted alright but wasn't anything special in my mind.

 

Basically, the dough has to rise like a bread, which is why this took all day. Then I have a filling of brown sugar, raisins, and pecans and roll the dough up and curl the end together. The ends didn't quite stay together but it still achieved a round shape so I'm satisfied with that part of it at least.

 

There is also suppose to be a baby hidden inside the cake, but I skipped that part. I didn't want to be responsible for someone accidentally choking or something. Plus I didn't have a plastic baby on hand to hide in the cake...

 

It is finished

I've turned in the final, final draft for school! I can now breath easy again and move on with my life. Gotta focus on all those things I had put to the side, like finishing my NaNoWriMo novel and finding a steady job. Fun stuffs.

It is Superbowl Sunday! Haven't decided yet if I'm going to watch it or not, but it feels like I'm obligated to...being an American in the UK. I was a lot less interested when I was in the states but the parties were always good :)

Went on a walk yesterday. The weather was suppose to be rough. Cold and rainy. We managed to skirt just ahead of the rain but it was very windy. There was also a bit that was uphill that I found a bit tough. I think these leisurely walks are about as strenuous as I can take, sad to say. Got some nice pictures to share with you guys!

We took a 5 mile walk in the Saddleworth area, near a little place called Delph.

There has been quite a bit of rain lately so a lot of our path was muddy. Once or twice we weren't sure if we were following the path we were suppose to or if it just looked like a path from the rain run off.

Cool little spot we found. The sign says wisdom, it's a bit difficult to read in this picture. Behind the sign you can see a mini waterfall and it runs under the stones there. Don't know if it normally runs that well or if it just a trickle when there hasn't been tons of rain but it was certainly a neat find :)

January

Yes, I am still alive. I'm busily writing my script. The end of this month is the final deadline for school so I am spending a lot of hours staring at my computer screen, trying to will myself to write. It doesn't make for interesting blog stories.

But also, I've been a bit lazy too :P

It took a little while for the lights at the town hall to be taken down. I got this picture of santa taken during the day which actually turned out better than the one I posted of him when he's all lit up. I still think it was the cutest santa I've ever seen.

Took a walk through the city for this month's walk. There are always interested signs and stone work. This one in particular caught my eye.

Most of where we were walking was a canal walk. This bridge is from the 1800's. I believe what we decided is that there use to be a canal running underneath it. Clearly there isn't now, but the bridge still stands.

Some fun street art. Very creative use of plant life :D

 

Now, I've told my family about this place before but I finally went back and took a picture of it. This is what Europeans, or at least the British, think is our candy...

It just makes me laugh. Certainly not the breakfast of champions but Americans certainly don't think of these as candy. There's breakfast and snack food. Maybe the jello that is a kiddie desert at least. Pancake mix and syrup...Velveeta cheese?!

 

I'm too easily entertained by this I think. The store has actual candy in it, but now you know that we Americans eat candy for breakfast :D

I may be back to posting regularly again in February. We'll see.

Carols

Well, I enjoyed a lovely Christmas here in the UK visiting friends and skyping with family. One of the questions I've been asked was about carols sung at my church here. Most Sundays I don't know any of the songs that we sing at church but I recognized most of the carols they sang. We sang Angels We Have Heard on High, O Come All Ye Faithful, Good King Wenceslas, as well as songs like Jingle Bells and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer at the carol sessions, though not in church services ;)

Some of them I wasn't familiar with so I thought I would share these with you. I've looked these up on YouTube and will link them so you can hear them.

This one sounds familiar but I don't remember ever singing it before. It's a nice song. When I heard it, it reminded me of the movie The Small One. I may have to add this to my Christmas song list.

~> Little Donkey <~

In The Bleak Midwinter was sung at ever carol singing and maybe on every Sunday in December. It is very popular here but I had never heard it before.

~> In The Bleak Midwinter <~

This last one we sang in church on Sunday and I thought it was a fun little carol. In church we only sang 6 verses but when I was looking for a recording to share with you I found that there are actually quite a few versions of it. I've decided to share two videos of it I liked.

The Cherry Tree Carol, this one is similar in style and wording to what we sang in church.

Judy Collins version, while looking there were a lot of folk song renditions of this but I really liked this version. It has quite a few more verses than what we sang and changes up the wording a bit and if you look it up yourself I'm sure you will find even more variations in tune and words.

Happy Holidays!

Advent

I'm sure there are a lot of advent traditions that I don't know about. There is of course the little kits you can buy that have a piece of chocolate you open each day. I had one of those last year. In years past my mother has done cookie countdowns from allrecipes.com. Those were some delicious countdowns :D While I'm watching the cookie countdown this year, I cannot eat 25 batches of cookies on my own so I'll only be doing a sample from that advent. Instead I'm doing a drawing a day to decorate my walls and make my place a bit more Christmas-y.

So here is my normal wall of drawings. It slowly evolves whenever I draw something I can stand to look at more than five minutes :P

 

And here is the start of the Christmas wall. Already falling behind, but it's not too late! I'm just drawing whatever comes to mind that I associate with Christmas in some way. Ice skating for example is not specifically a Christmas thing, but I associate it with the time of year and Christmas season :)

We had a few hours of nice sunshine this week so my roommate and I went for a walk in Platt Fields. I took a picture of the birds that are sticking around for the UK winter. I don't know birds so I don't know what they are called...

This one walks like a chicken but when I got too close with my camera it hopped into the water like it was a duck...I wouldn't think swimming would be its forte with those feet but what do I know?

Oh! Duck and a Canadian Goose. I do know a few birds :P They were focused on eating the grass, or the moss in the grass. I know when we had ducks they ate all the mosquitos, but the sign in the park says not to feed the geese because they should be eating the moss. More nutritional for them apparently. It looked to me like they were chewing the grass...but again, I don't know much at all about birds. I'll have to re-read their sign again. It is full of rules about what you can and cannot feed the wild birds.

Christmas Season Begins

It's DECEMBER! I did it. Yesterday, November 30th I sat down and wrote the last 8,000 words I needed and I completed NaNoWriMo this year!!!! I'm so excited. Now I can sleep again.

Although I have titled this post as the beginning of the Christmas season, I've got to backtrack a bit first...to Thanksgiving!

I got to celebrate an amazing Thanksgiving with my friends from church and I made two traditional things, green bean casserole and "pink stuff". My sister insists that "pink stuff" is the proper name for the cherry pie salad you see above. Now, normally when my grandmother makes it, it at least is pink. I could only find dark cherries however so mine is Purple Stuff. It does not look nearly as appetizing as my grandmothers, but it tastes good and really, that's what matters :P

 

I also took a picture of the green bean casserole...but it was just the top layer of crispy onions. An incredibly boring picture, but rest assured. I can cook a yummy batch of green bean casserole now.

 

 

I went to the Christmas market this week. Albert Square is all decorated for Christmas and there is a bunch of booths out that sell Christmas paraphernalia, crafts, and food :D My roommate was disappointed that the food wasn't all traditional British stuff and was actually all themed from other countries...but it made sense to me. They don't do this entire event for us international visitors and British people wouldn't fight the city center traffic to eat food that they are going to make at home, or get at the local pub ;)

The building is Manchester Town Hall. The clock tower light changes color which is very cool. I tried to get a video of it but the moment I got my camera switched to video it wouldn't change. You will just have to imagine it :P

The big light up guy under the tower is santa! My pictures didn't turn out very clear of the lights, but it's very cute and reminds me of the Santa on Invader Zim :D

 

And now the season of Christmas baking begins :D I've started off with a delicious crustless cranberry pie, suggested by my mother. My roommate is a fan of this one and I will have to bake something new soon...probably tomorrow!

 

I want to do the cookies with a mini-reeses melted in the middle, but Sainsburys doesn't sell mini-reeses. I have found them at a few stores but they are a bit expensive because they are sold as a specialty American item rather than finding them in the baking section...It's a hard life.

 

Chatsworth House

Last trip with the International Society for this year. It is cold now. So cold. A few hours outside at Chatsworth was enough for me. I think I will spend most of December curled up with a book or three around me. I see some lazy weekends in my future :D

Saturday I was at Chatsworth House for their Christmas Market but also was surprised to find that they have decorated the house in a The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe theme which was really cool! I hope you enjoy the pics :)

I'm collecting odd sign pictures now. The blue sign is pretty clear but the other one...

 

Enter the house/wardrobe...

And find yourself in a winter wonderland - Narnia!

They had Tumnus' fireside, the beaver's home, the wolves with an arrest warrant...Lots of cute things to see and discover.

When not decorated with Narnia Christmas decorations the house is known for things such as its painted ceilings.

This was in their Modern art collection. How cool is that? I wouldn't mind a bed like that.

There was also an impressive sculpture collection, this one being one of my favorites. I guess Aslan had missed a few to bring back ;)

Besides the interior, there are also 150 acres of grounds to explore. The gardens were gorgeous and I had a great time walking around, even though it was cold.

They had a maze! I think I found every dead end, but I also found the middle...you know, eventually. I was expecting a sculpture or something...but the middle was just dirt. I felt a bit cheated from all my effort :O It was still fun though and I had a moment of doubt that I was even going to find my way out...but I managed ;)

After Chatsworth we made a short stop in Bakewell. They are well known for the bakewell tart so I ordered that and spent most of the time there in a café :) We were there for barely an hour so it was nice to sit in the warm indoors and just enjoy a tasty treat.