This year marks the 20th anniversary of Grace. Over the summer, we decided that we’re going to re-visit some previous services and this month it’s the turn of ‘The Table’.
If any of you fancy finding out more about Grace and what we do, this would be a good service to come along to, we’re all friendly and one of the things that we do really well is food!
You can find out more here.
This month’s nail varnish colours. Just in case you were wondering, when I paint my nails, I start with the Mavala Nail Hardener, base coat is the Sally Hansen Miracle Cure, then for a topcoat I use either Sally Hansen Insta-Dri or Seche Vite or Essie Good to Go. I prefer the first two but am using up the Essie! Once a week I use cuticle remover (this one) and I try to remember to oil my cuticles regularly but tend to do it more in the week, when I’m at my desk than the weekend! All of that sounds really high maintenance but is more time consuming to write than to actually do!
30 September
M&S – City Grey. This doesn’t have fantastic staying power but I love the colour.
02 October
MUA – Shade 9. MUA is a bit hit and miss. I have a couple of £1 eyeshadows that are great! However, this was a nightmare. Was difficult to put on, the brush was useless and it took 3 coats to look anything like opaque and the coverage still wasn’t perfect. To add insult to injury it chipped when I was in the shower and I suddenly remembered why it had been sitting in the drawer forever, so this is the last time I’ll wear it as I threw it away.
Barry M Gelly – Blackberry, I love this colour but am actually finding it a bit too shiny. Also my nails, for the first time in an age, actually needed filing back. Over the summer they just broke once they got to a certain, not very long, length.
5 October
The varnish chipped badly chipped while I was defrosting the fridge on Saturday night, so I took it off, put the base coat on and what with one thing and another they stayed like that for a couple of days!
10 October
Essie – Mesmerize. Essie strikes again with the great colour but a stupid name! and yes blue is my favourite colour and for my nails, my default colour!)
14 October
Essie – Angora Cardi and I managed to scrape the top of one of them on the wall so a white mark!
17 October
Barry M – Blueberry Ice Cream
23 October
Marks and Spencer Autograph in Mink – Painted in a hurry and chipping by the time that I took the photo on the afternoon of the 24th.
30 October
Essie – Angora Cardi. After 4 days of bare nails back to this one.
1 November
Barry M – Cyan Blue, trying much harder to paint my nails properly!
Essie – Bobbing for Baubles (they really do have ridiculous names!). This is supposed to be a blue-gray but on my nails looks almost navy.
I decided this week that I like having the task list update to keep me accountable! I’m going to set it to publish on Monday afternoons, please feel free to ignore if you don’t want to know, I won’t be offended!
Kitchen
Cooking
Bathroom
Bedroom
Living Room
Hall
General House things
I also sorted out another two drawers, rang the bank and took a dress to the dry cleaners. I’m feeling pretty smug about how much I got done, I didn’t try the ‘disaster bread’ again and I forgot to buy the Trex for the pastry but I will do that this week, it won’t take five minutes!
On Friday evening Ma and I dragged ourselves all the way to North London, to see Handbagged at the Tricycle Theatre. The play was really good, very funny.
The wine before the play was much appreciated and we ended up as we sometimes do talking to a man and his daughter who were staying in London for 5 days and were packing in all the culture they could. I felt quite exhausted thinking about their schedule!
Normally, my weekends only really work if I get a day to attend to the housework and shopping, however this weekend a whole day at home was not going to happen! So I got up at 9am and just got things done! By 2pm, I’d tidied the bedroom, the living room, sorted the rubbish , backed up the laptop, phoned the bank, done the food shopping and picked up a parcel. All that and I left the house in good time to meet Ma on the 2.53pm from Shepherds Bush to Watford.
At Watford Spiderman came to pick us up at the station.
We played some games with Ol and had some indoor sparklers.
We had dinner at Ban and Lu’s (sausages and mash, apple crumble for pudding, brilliantly cooked by the whole family!) and went to watch the fireworks.
Train home and I still wasn’t done, I started the oven cleaning process, the sourdough, took another load of washing out, painted my nails and went to bed.
On Sunday, I started with housework, cleaned the oven, the kitchen and the bathroom. House done, I went to the cinema. I was going to go to see Thor: The Dark World by myself but Ma (who really enjoyed The Avengers, much to her surprise) opted to come too. The film was good and Ma and I were both happy with the eye candy! We headed to Westfield for champagne and lunch!
I got home, made bread and chilled until bedtime.
It’s been a really good weekend, where I was productive at home AND social. So I’m rested and ready for the next week of work!
Lorde – Royals
Because I do flirt with modern music…
All around the Interwebs, bloggers have started ‘holiday’ goals, aims and challenges. Cassie is doing a 4/40 challenge, Krissie is doing Thankful in November, Julie is doing 30 Days of the Little Things, Ange is doing Yoga in November, Angie is aiming to loss a stone before Christmas and is unpicking how and why her eating habits are out of whack. All of these are great motivators for a rough time of year and some of them have beautiful printables.
None of them are quite right for me though, the emphasis on Thanksgiving in some of them is wrong for me because as I pointed out (ok you could say ranted!) recently, we don’t do Thanksgiving or the ‘holiday season’ here. Last year I stole modified Cassie’s All About the Numbers challenge and instead did a Countdown to Christmas. Although I wasn’t entirely successful, it was a great way of reminding me to think about my habits, generally at this time of the year my ability to make healthy decisions waver in the face of feeling a rubbish and being social, I need to do something about that so from tomorrow until the 22nd December, which is exactly 50 days, I’m going to commit to the doing the following.
Spirit
I’ve signed up to Thankful in November with Krissie.
During Advent, I will go through the Do Nothing Christmas book day by day
My hope is that spending this short time every day to reflect and be grateful will be good for me.
Mind
8.30pm cut of for laptop/ipad/iphone usage on school nights.
I find it really difficult to sleep especially around this time of year, I know that cutting back on my screen time makes a huge difference to the quality of my sleep and how easy it is to get to sleep so time to do this again.
Bed by 10pm on 30 of the 50 days. Getting up by 6.30am on workdays and 8.30am on weekends.
It’ll be harder during December as life gets more social and I know I’m slightly obsessed by my sleeping patterns but I know enough to know that good sleep starts with defined times for going to bed and get up times.
Body
Sit-ups/push-ups/squats
10 a day, adding one each day, which should be interesting!
Stretches
Twice a day, I am doing them in the morning at the moment, but I know they need to be done twice a day and I really need to push myself to do the evening ones!
That’s it. Nothing major, just little things that I know make me feel better.
Kitchen
Cooking
Bathroom
Bedroom
Living Room
Hall
General House things
As I haven’t been making anything new because I’m not drinking at all during the week and therefore have been struggling to find time to make and photograph ‘new to the blog’ cocktails, I’m going to re-visit some of the old ones!
This is from last year, when I came clean about how much I don’t like to wash up on a Friday Night!
While my normal preference is for a Perfect Manhattan (half dry/half sweet vermouth), straight up. Michael picked up the habit of an ‘on-the-rocks’ Manhattan while he was living in the US and introduced me to it. I’ve found that it works better sweet and I use the everyday whiskey in the cupboard instead of the rye. Generally something Irish and blended, often Jamesons, at the moment Waitrose’s own.
Could we call it a Manhattan-ish? Whatever you call it, it doesn’t involve washing up more than one glass. Sometimes on a Friday night, that’s just perfect.
What
Ice
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2oz whiskey
1 oz sweet vermouth
Maraschino cherry
How
1) Put the ice in the glass
2) Add bitters, whiskey and vermouth
3) Stir and add cherry if using.
4) Drink!
Happy Friday! ‘Happy’ November. This week has been a slog for me, I’m off to see Handbagged tonight and it better be good because I’m going all the way to Kilburn, North London is practically a foreign country! Tomorrow we’re off to see the fireworks so hopefully it won’t rain. Here’s some links for reading over the weekend.
1) Weather and why we totally fall apart at the thought of a bit of wind (or snow).
2) Writing for young adults. I’ve been saying this for again
3) Inequality isn’t really about the young versus the old.
4) Is it from Ikea, is it a Death Metal Band.
5) The joys and problems of Yorkshire. For the record, I love Yorkshire it is the home of my favourite castle and it has many charms but better than London. Nope, not buying it!
6) World War I and II as a Facebook News Feed. Silly.
Nic Dempsey 