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...