100 Happy Days #1

The first instalment of my attempt to catalogue 100 Happy Days... :-)

 

 

 

Saturday 11th January

 Strawberry cream scones at our favourite local viewpoint :-)



Sunday 12th January

 
 Finally - new carpet is laid in our refurbished bedroom!



Monday 13th January

 Not sure what this duck was doing at work - he appeared to be paddling in a circle whilst sipping the water!?



 Tuesday 14th January

 This delicious cheesecake was bought in readiness for the next night's dinner party...



Wednesday 15th January

 A tasty dinner party at my lovely friend M's house - Lorraine Pascale's Glam Mac and Cheese!



Thursday 16th January

Double the amount of pasta bolognese cooked for dinner that night meant the next day's lunch sorted!

 

 

 

Friday 17th January

 

Friday night settled down on the sofa with Pretty Nostalgic magazine.



Saturday 18th January

Amazing new curtains from Poundstretcher - just the right pattern and certainly the right price!



Sunday 19th January

My favourite shortbread company had their festive biscuits reduced in B&M :-)


  

Monday 20th January

 Fancy-pants hot chocolate before bed tonight!
 

 

Are you taking part? I'd love to see what's made you happy as well!

This Weekend at the Duckpond

We have mostly been...

  

Participating - in the first Photo an Hour challenge of the year. Janey from Is That You Darling had the idea to do one each month and I'm definitely up for that! (blog post to follow tomorrow)

 

Feeling - decidedly middle-aged. The 52 Lists prompt this week was 'things to do on a rainy day' and one thing we like to do when it rains is play some board games (although the post hasn't actually materialised yet - see below...). So our Saturday night was spent on the sofa - playing Scrabble. Oh yeah, we're so rock and roll...

 

 

Hanging - new curtains in our new room. We finally found some the right size and colour at a bargainacious £12.99 in Poundstrecther. There will be a room tour (possibly even a vlog) at some point when all the pictures have been hung and all the little things tidied up.

 

 

Phoning - for an ambulance. Well not me, Andrew did the ringing and it was for his dad who spent Saturday into Sunday morning with severe food poisoning/gastro-enteritis and then ended up in agony coughing up blood. After a long wait in A&E it turned out he'd actually vomited so hard that he'd torn his oesophagus - which is exactly as fun as it sounds. He was in surgery for 5 hours overnight and at the moment is stable in the Intensive Care Unit in Bristol.

 

Rearranging - a few blog posts. I'm moving this week's 52 Lists post to 28th January and then I'll carry on as normal with whatever this week's prompt is. I also had a January sale outfit post (an actual outfit post, something of a rarity on here!) all set up but obviously my chief photographer was a little bit busy with the NHS yesterday!

 

 

What did you get up to at the weekend?
Hope your weekend didn't involve ambulances or hospitals!

This Weekend at the Duckpond links up with Point and Shoot from Snowing Indoors

 

Water, Water Everywhere

I don't think anyone in the UK could have failed to notice that over the last few weeks, the heavens have opened and large swathes of land have seemingly sunk deep beneath the waves.

 

You might not realise that a quite a lot of Somerset is actually under sea level and it's only the drainage and pumping system on the Somerset Levels which stops it flooding permanently. In times like the last few weeks though, the rains get the better of technology and this happens...

 

 

 

 

 

Luckily where we live hasn't received any flooding but within only a 20 minute drive you can see miles of fields underwater.

 

Hope you've all kept safe and no-one has floated away! :-)

The Midweek Hop - When We Were Very Young

The other half's guest post - three music videos on a theme...

(inspired by Desmond Carrington's 'The Music Goes Round')

The legendary 'Wurlitzer 1015' 1946 Jukebox
 

 

 

This weeks theme is...When We Were Very Young

 

Inspired by Winnie the Pooh Day this Saturday (18th January) - all the songs (loosely) relate to bears...
Yep, Winnie the Pooh day actually exists - if you're anywhere near the Lake District, drop into Hundred Acre Wood and see if you can find The Enchanted Palace!



1. The Bear Necessities by Louis Armstrong


The classic jungle bear tune!
Taken from the 1967 Disney film, 'The Jungle Book', Louis Armstrong's version was never released as a single. 


2. Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear by Alan Price


Obviously dancing bears were two a penny on the streets of the 1960's...
'Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear' entered the chart on 2nd March 1967 reaching Number 4.


3. The Teddy Bears Picnic - Henry Hall and His Orchestra

The lyricist was from Taunton in Somerset and apparently the inspiration for the words came from a small scout hut in the town!

'The Teddy Bears Picnic' is from before the charts began - Henry Hall first popularised the tune in 1932.

 

 

Happy listening!
 

This Weekend at the Duckpond

We have mostly been...

 

 

Taken - aback by the sheer scale of the flooding on the Somerset levels.

 

 

Enjoying - a cream scone at Ebbor Gorge viewpoint (yet another place to go and see the extent of the flooding).

 

 

 

 

Buying - and laying a new carpet for our refurbished bedroom.

It's finally beginning to look like a proper room again!

 

 

 

 

 

Getting - excited at my new kettle and in particular, the toaster.

It toasts! It defrosts! It reheats! It pops!

(jeez, I sound sad...) :-)

 

 

 

 

What did you get up to at the weekend?

Bristol Blogger Meet with Lush and Benefit

Friday 3rd January.
I'm sat at work counting down the last 20 minutes or so til we can leave at 5pm.
A Twitter notification pops up on my phone.

It was Lily and apparently there was a Bristol Blogger Meet Up the very next day. I vaguely remembered it as something I was going to go to but didn't actually get round to emailing the organiser, Beky to say I was going.

Several tweets and a couple of quick emails later, the next day I was catching a bus into Bristol to enjoy a day of smellies in Lush, make up with Benefit and the chance to meet lots of new and old blogging friends.

 Delicious sweets at the Benefit party!


Beky (from Beky Lou) had organised the day will help from Danni (from Danielle Saint) and after some introductions on the stairs at Cabot Circus we all toddled off to Lush for the first visit of the day. The staff at Lush managed to fit all 13 of us into the shop at once and showed us the colours and sparkles of Lush's famous bath bombs followed by the chance to try our several products and receive lovely hand massages. We all went round and took pictures of the colourful products as well - it was quite refreshing to be in a group of people where you don't look weird pulling your camera out and photographing everything in sight!

 

 

 

After Lush, myself, Lily and SJ moved on to the more important matter of food and headed to Wagamama for lunch before browsing round the shops and testing lots of make up in Harvey Nicks.


The second visit of the day was to the Benefit counter in Boots where they'd gone over and above the call of duty and laid on a pink girlie party for us up in their staffroom complete with cakes and sweets. The lovely Ashton from Benefit went through all the products, using Beky as the guinea pig to show all of us what each bit of make up looked like. There was a quiz as well which I think I answered only about 2 questions from! Thankfully Ashton realised that hardly any of us knew the answers so pulled the names from a hat (literally a hat - SJ's hat!) and I won one of the prizes!

 

Both Lush and Benefit provided us with well-stocked goody bags plus Beky had also put together a bag full of things to try and sample. It was great fun unpacking them all - just have to find some room in the bathroom to put them on display before using them!

The Benefit Goody Bag...

The Bristol Blogger Meet Goody Bag (courtesy of Beky and Danni)...

 

My Quiz Prize!

The Lush Goody Bag...



Thanks to Lush and Benefit for the lovely gifts to try and huge thanks to Beky and Danni for organising it! 

 

Projects for the Year - 52 Lists and 100 Happy Days

I like a good list (don't all bloggers?) and I'm certainly not someone to turn down a good challenge so when I spotted the 52 Lists Project on Jenny's blog (Sunny Sweet Pea) I decided to sign up. It's organised by Ema from Made in Hunters and the idea is that every week, she'll email you an idea for a list. Last week's prompt was 'Resolutions for 2014' (which I blogged about here) and this week is 'Your Favourite Moments from 2013'.

 

Source: Made in Hunters

 

I find it really difficult to pick only a few favourite moments but I did a round up post last week which I'm going to be really cheeky with and direct you all to my other blog post.

 

 

 

 

The other project I thought I'd take part in is the 100 Happy Days Project which I'm sure you've seen popping up all over the place - I think every man, woman and their dog is taking part!

The premise is that it's incredibly difficult to find something to be happy about every day - so the challenge has been set to find something that makes you smile each day for 100 days. Apparently 71% don't complete the challenge so obviously that's like red rag to a bull to give it my very best shot!

 

Source: 100 Happy Days

 

 

My 100 days is going to start today (Saturday 11th January) and conviniently the 100th day will end up being on our 7th wedding anniversary (Monday 21st April). I'm going to Instagram a picture every day tagged with the #100HappyDays hashtag and also spend a bit of time seeing what's making everyone else happy as well. I'll also share some pictures on here as well over the next 100 days.

 

 

 

Anyone else taking part in either of these projects (or anything else)?

Leave me your links lovely people! :-)