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.



Just another week

Well, I didn't do much at all this week. No pictures or stories to share. I've been very boring this week and just working on NaNoWriMo. I'm at 20,000 words so only 30,000 to go....You'd think since I had so much time to work on this week I'd not be behind anymore, but that would require I unplug the internet and resist the temptation of Dota 2. Even then I find myself oddly addicted to spider solitaire...ah the good old days when I distracted myself with my allotted 15 games of Sudoku per day.

I also went to the library and have been reading. On the one hand, it does inspire me. I remember why I love the fantasy genre so much and I'm reassured when published authors have written things that I would have done differently, or that our teachers would label as "wrong". But it does take away from time I perhaps should have spent writing. Ah well.

One of the books I read lately was Alan Garner. His children's books were recommended to me. I think I may have mentioned this before but I don't think I had read it at that point. Anyways, I read Elidor. It is very much a children's book but I still had to whip out my dictionary a few times because of some British words I was unfamiliar with which made me feel a little silly. It wasn't a ground breaking work of fiction, not on the level of C.S. Lewis or Lloyd Alexander, but it was enjoyable to read because the characters were based in Manchester and I recognized some of the street names. It was written in the 1960s so some of the area has changed since then, but the places named in the city center I recognized. Once again, if you can find it I would recommend you read it just so we can compare notes on it if nothing else ;)

A Castle and a Village

Went on another trip this weekend :) This time to...

Caernarfon Castle
and
Portmeirion Village

Caernarfon Castle!

One of the castles built by Edward I, this one was designed to be both defensive and a palace all in one.

 

This was another trip in Wales so the mountains there are in Snowdonia.

Caution, this door is hobbit height...Exactly who needs to be warned to duck? Won't you figure that out when you are too tall for the door???

I think this is one of my favorite pictures I took :D

 

The castle is apparently well known for the Eagle Tower here with its three turrets. This picture also shows off the fact that the towers are polygonal, not round which the signs also liked to point out, so I'm passing along the observation ;)

Portmeirion Village! The village was designed by one man. He set out to prove how you could build at a beautiful site and not destroy the natural beauty. The village is certainly very nice and I could see how the paths were probably planned with the land. Very quirky styling though.

Past the village there is a bunch of walking paths through a forest. I wandered around in the woods for about two hours. This tree was one of the interesting plants that caught my eye. The trunk made me think of elephants...which go "toot", do you wonder what the fox says?

No! Don't click the link!

...

Too late? Well that was the song I then had stuck in my head the rest of the time I was walking in the woods >.< No, I didn't see any foxes.

 

My new personal rule. Don't let my sister share YouTube videos with me over Skype. Ever.

Besides the strange trees there were also some small ponds which were gorgeous, a "ghost garden" and a dog cemetery.

 

And that's all for this week!

NaNoWriMo

It's November - National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), Guy Fawkes Day (Nov. 5th), and Thanksgiving (Nov. 28th this year).

As I mentioned last time, I have turned in my first draft of the script I'm writing for school. It is nice to not have to think about it for a bit. Once I receive feedback from my teacher I'll throw most of it out and rewrite it, and later rewrite it again. In January I'll complete my third draft and be done with it...for the purpose of school. If its decent by then I may look into trying to sell it. If its still pretty awful and I'm not totally sick of it I guess I'll just keep rewriting.

I have some downtime from that right now though so I'm going to be participating in NaNoWriMo this November. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel, or a good portion of one, in the month of November. By November 30th I should (hopefully) have 50,000 words of a novel. That's 1,667 words a day. Right now it's not too bad, but eventually I'll be writing the novel as well as rewriting the script as well as looking for a new part-time job. November promises to keep me very busy. At the moment my word count is...2,528 so I'm already behind :/ Today isn't over yet though!

I went on the church walk on Saturday. I didn't take nearly as many pictures as usual but I've got one here to leave you with...

Penrhyn Castle

And this week, some pictures from Penrhyn Castle which I visited last Sunday...

This is a much more recently built castle, 1800s rather than the 1200s of Conwy Castle. It was built as a vacation home for a very rich lord, rather than a military castle. Lots of stylistic differences some because of the time they were built, others because Conwy and Penrhyn were built for such different reasons...

The entrance...You are crossing a bridge here, but there was never a moat (not that anyone mentioned in my hearing at least). It is there purely for looks and to be impressive. Mission accomplished.

 

This castle is located in Wales and you can see Snowdonia National Park in the distance.

(Where it is on a map)

The interior of the castle is kept to reflect the how it would have looked in its heyday. One of the first things I saw going in was the grand piano here. Excellent start.

 

And if the piano alone wasn't enough, the second room I found was the library. Lots of gorgeous wood furniture, as much as possible they've kept the original décor.

One of the bedrooms open for the public to see. This is the slate room. There is a lot of slate in the area so lots of the architecture and furniture utilized it. In this room, the bed is made of slate. It looks very nice but...it doesn't sound very comfortable. Queen Victoria visited the castle at one point and was meant to stay in this room, however upon arrival decided she didn't like it and was given another room to sleep in.

Another of the bedrooms (not the one Queen Victoria ended up using). The wallpapers and fabrics are all the original ones. Some of the fabric has been falling apart and the National Trust has had to replace some but they go out of their way to duplicate the original exactly. So if it is looking faded, it is probably the real original, but if it is looking fresh then what you are seeing is probably what it looked like at the time...So some give and take here.

The dining room. Very ornate and impressive and yes, those paintings on the wall are huge.

There is also the servants quarters. Along one of the walls is all the bells, too many to get into one shot. It was a whole hallway lined with bells and their accompanying labels :)

A close up shot of some of the ivy crawling over the walls and a window.

And here, where the ivy still has leaves.

I did some drawing while I was here, but just small sketches. We spent more time here at Penrhyn but it didn't feel like it. I had just enough time to go through and see each area of the castle and then it was time to go. No time to go back and sketch my favorite bits.

In other news, I have finished the first draft of the script for school. Whew. Was getting pretty stressed last week. It is a relief to have this draft finished. I'll take a bit of a break from it this week, until my teacher gives me feedback. Time to dust off all my other projects I've got and make some progress with them. I'm planning on participating in NaNoWriMo this year. So in November I will be writing a novel as well as rewriting my script...Should keep me plenty busy!

Conwy

Hey,

I had a great time on the trip and I took lots of pictures. Enough to split them into two posts. So today you get my Conwy Castle pictures. I will probably save the other for Sunday...because I'm not doing anything interesting this week to give you pictures of :P

CONWY CASTLE

 

Another trip where I was on my own in a crowd. The castle is open for visitors to explore as they want and I walked through every doorway and shady stairwell I could find.

 

Some stairwells were pretty dark. The sliver of light coming from the arrow slits (also known as arrow loops).

A very tiny stairwell and a small doorway. I didn't have to duck through any doorways, but if was just a bit taller I might have needed to...

Picturesque view from the castle.

 

The city beneath the castle. The wall that was built is still standing and goes through the town. It has grown a bit beyond the walls now. I didn't realize until later that people are allowed to walk along the wall! By the time I realized it was time to get back on the bus so I only got to climb up, then go back down.

Having trouble seeing the wall?

Here's a guide :)

The wall from the outside.

Is it just me...? I go to Wales and find a pub...that sounds like ice cream, but looks like Mexican fast food. I did a double-take when I passed this in the street.

This lil' place claims to be the smallest house in Great Britain. How small?

Here are some people to give it scale. That is a doorway I would have to duck to use. Welsh people aren't terribly short. Who were these buildings sized for?

How cool would it be to drive around in a city where you can give directions like, "turn left and head toward the castle" :D

 

I did some sketching while I was at the castle. This one was from the top of a tower. I didn't quite finish it because it started raining...But I got the idea down.

Just a quick sketch. I drew this on my way out of the castle and I was getting hungry >.<

Drew a window...from a window. I was hiding from the rain. I had an umbrella, but I can't hold that and sketch at the same time ;)

 

Those are the highlights for the Conwy portion of my visit. Next time, Penrhyn Castle