New Year- the obligatory 'Blog summing up introspective!'

It's funny, the concept of New Year- really it is just a certain date like any other to signify that 365/6 days have passed, I supposed we could celebrate a new year most days, like Unbirthdays, but anyway, it is nice to have a little moment to take stock. I'm not going to say much as that takes far too long and I am far too lazy (couldn't be doing with all that faffing through old blog posts!) but it is also nice to celebrate some things

One thing I thought I MUST share from this year is the kind and generous accolade I received from my dear blogging friend Ally.  Ally hosts blog awards every year called the Bloggies and awards a trophy and prize to the lucky winner.  Last year, my blogging favourites, Minnesota sisters, Megan and Nora, the Two Birds won the award.  This year, to my amazement and delight, Ally awarded the prize to me and the amazing Suzanne Carillo, stylist extraordinaire.  What touched me the most was the comments that Ally made about me over on her blog. She acknowledged those things that I do well, particularly my trying to comment as much as I can on people's blogs.   This is something, I Ialways try to do where I can as I think it is so important to acknowledge you've read something and also enjoyed it.  I've mentioned here before, I do get a bit despondent when I constantly comment on someone's posts and they never acknowledge my existence, even when they don't get many comments from elsewhere, but they comment on other people, but to hear Ally acknowledge that I try to do that, was really heartening and made that despondency recede somewhat! I will try my best to continue to uphold that aim!

It was wonderfully exciting to receive the parcel from the USA from Ally with this wonderful trophy, a present and a card featuring Ally Cat!  Thank you Ally and I want to say that Ally too, is a wonderful force for good in the blogging world- she constantly supports, has fun and acknowledges the good of people in a constantly supportive way and shares a true journey of her style evolution. If you don't know Ally, head over!

In other blogging matters, I have blogged more than any other year previously (319 posts) which is almost 30 more than in any other year!

I've met up with several lovely bloggers- Melanie , Sophie twice and Hazel and had a very lovely time on all occasions. I also briefly met the lovely Vix at a vintage fair!

I've even cohosted a link-up TARDIS Tuesday with the lovely Maricel who I miss for her cool, quirky and amazing outfits and Doctor Who equal fandom. I will try to do some more TARDIS Tuesadaying next year, there's plenty left to do!

I did Blog every day in May and did fairly ok with it- got to know a few more bloggers through it! I met some lovely new bloggers including Sarah by the Sea, Polka-Dot Pink and the lovely Penny-Blossoms,

I wore lots of things, bought too many clothes, lots from charity-shops and made a fair few things!

I've continued and started new regular features- What is it? reached its 30's and then went off the radar as interesting clouds left the skies and 5 brooches came along has reached its 13th post at least and the world has wondered how many brooches I own!

My number of followers reached the lofty heights of 169 GFC and 111 Bloglovin and then sadly dropped- current state of play is 167 and 112 respectively!

UPDATE:  I forgot to include reference to my book log- I read 81 books in 2015 which, though it is not my 100 books of 2009, isn't bad! I read MANY murder mysteries of a historical nature but also read some different books from my favourite genre!

When people discuss whether they should continue blogging, that isn't even a question for me- I like blogging too much for that and I count too many of you as friends to abandon it so I say, I hope to keep it much the same here in 2016, I am not one for dramatic changes and never have been. It might be quite nice to get a better header and template but I'm not going to bank on getting around to doing anything!

In the real world, I'd like to make a resolution to get to bed earlier by 10 if I can (pah!) and try and stay tidier (double pah!)

Now, enough about me, the word 'I' has appeared far too frequently in here, particularly in sentence openers, tut tut, so what about you? What does the new year in blogging mean to you, if anything!

Thanks for your friendship in 2015 and God bless.
x

P.S.  Dental update:I got a dentist appointment for this morning at 9. It wasn't my usual dentist who is away until 4th Jan.  He asked what the problem was and I told him and he asked if it had happened before. He asked me to open my mouth, looked at the back where I told him and then wrote me a prescription for 2 lots of antibiotics without doing anything!  So, I hope those start to take effect soon as the pain is not getting any better and I had awful ear ache today and my jaw is exhausted as I seem to be holding it in a certain way to avoid touching the gum with my teeth.  Hoping for some better sleep tonight as I haven't slept properly for days now! Clove oil has proved useful for numbing the gum for a while as is sleeping with my face on a hot water bottle! CBC has been kind and made me nice dinners and made me go ice-skating to try and avoid staying lying down ALL day.  We're going to a swing dance ball tomorrow night so I hope that will be ok.x

The Wellcome collection and the Disney tree!

On the 27th, CBC, WKWTTG and I dashed out of his flat to meet their parents at King's Cross to see them off. It was so sad saying goodbye to them after only seeing them for 3 days.

 After that, in true fashion, we sought something to eat and went to St Pancras.  We noticed this huge Christmas tree which was made up of Disney soft-toys.

 I took a fair few photos...

 After that, we decided to head out of St Pancras. It's a really impressive facade!

 We decided to head to the Wellcome Collection which is just up the road next to University College Hospital London.

We went into the Tibet's Secret Temple exhibition first which was very interesting but allowed no photos.

 We then headed to the Medicine Man exhibition.

 It was pretty cool and there are some hugely interesting historical exhibits in there! So strange to see Medicine innovations over the years!

 I should point out that CBC and WKWTTG were STILL in the Tibet exhibition (we suspect I may have missed a room) so I headed to the Reading Room which was is a GREAT place to go if you have time to kill in London, don't want to spend any money and fancy reading! You can read your own or have a look at the books in there.There's also anatomical jigsaw puzzles, drawing pads and activity ideas in there!

 As I looked at this dental model, I was in the throes of my worst day of pain from the gum ache so the thought of having to see a dentist with this kind of low-tech freaked me out!!

 Eventually they found me!

 And they proceeded to procrastinate for a while! I read my Terry Pratchett.

 I can imagine this being so nice and cosy to read on! I took an arm chair instead!

 You could self-diagnose yourself!

 In the shop, there were lots of interesting things to buy. We didn't buy anything but were rather taken by the cuddly germs and viruses and bacteria!
This one was the MRSA virus!

 DNA!

 Sore throat virus

 Stomach ache bacteria

Not sure what these are, but they were very cute!

 Ann Veronica Jannsens' 'States of Mind' exhibition was what we wanted to see- (see it here  in these fantastic ethereal snaps on Instagram) which has got amazing reviews but the queue wait was an hour and a half so we didn't make it in. It's on till Jan the 3rd if you fancy it!

 We went into the cafe for a cup of tea and then headed home!

I wore one of my Christmas presents from J and WOMOTM which was this pretty White Stuff shirt- with the snowflakes again of course!

The Wellcome collection is free and an interesting place to visit!

xx

A Christmas selection box

Hello there!
I'm back from my Christmas vacation in London.  Very different for me to spend my Christmas in the city and in Essex after a good few years in Northumberland or Kent. However, it was lovely!

I thought I'd include a little selection of some elements from the main days from Christmas Eve to the 27th.  No presents really included so far.  Believe it or not, I've not opened all my presents. I only opened those from CBC, his parents, my sister-in-law (who was my Secret Santa) and my Mum. I've still got a few presents at home to open.  It's quite nice to have come home and seen them and open one when I feel like it! I like the waiting and the anticipation!

Apart from that, I've had an absolutely awful toothache/swollen/painful gum (not sure exactly what it is but it is around my wisdom tooth that has half come through my gum and isn't quite through, thus food is getting caught between the tooth and gum I suspect so the gum has swollen and keeps getting caught between my teeth- can't shut my teeth properly so my jaw is aching and nearby throat. It's been since Christmas day which has progressively got worse and made me feel rather miserable- hardly eaten any chocolate or sweet stuff and have eaten less as the days have gone on- mostly just soup and cheese today as that doesn't hurt.  Ibruprofen is wonderful stuff when it starts working- it's just been horrible waking up in the middle of the night when it wears off!

Anyway, here's some extracts from the last few days which I have enjoyed:

 23rd- CBC's new raincoat arrives! We magically coordinate! Lovely to spend time together!

 Going to the local Craft beer place with CBC and N!  Had a nice time, went home via Waitrose and bought vegetarian lasagnas-spent the evening over at N's!

Christmas Eve-

Taking part in my first Christingle marathon.  My church does 4 Christingle services with tea afterwards.  I took part playing my flute for 3 of them- it was wonderful to be part of.  Over 800 people attended these services from the local community! The 2nd one was crammed alone with 270 people. It was a lovely service and the tea was delicious too!

 My Christmas Eve outfit! Christmas jumper with yet another combination of accompanying garments!

 Christmas morning- having had dinner at my sister-in-law's the previous night, we woke up in our first London Christmas. Having a first breakfast and then a second one when we joined the rest of the family out in Essex!

Present opening time- I had some nice pressie more about that- check out the brilliant Mathematical clock that WOMOTM got!

 Christmas day walk- rainy and yucky but it was good to get fresh air before dinner!

Christmas day outfit- dresses with long sleeves- appropriate in winter and summer!

 Christmas day bling- an interesting present someone male bought for their wife but was really for them. My Punkypins necklace again!

Obligatory Christmas dinner shot- Mmmm!  Didn't over eat-toothache saw to that! Look, I got the Hare cracker!

Boxing Day- everyone came up to London! We helped WKWTTG (brother in law) prepare a Vegetarian feast- Sweet potato, spinach dahl, coconut chutney, roasted butternut squash, swede, celeriac, Indian samosas and bhajees, salads, aubergines, mint and yoghurt dip.

A canal-side walk through the docklands!   

Interesting sights on our walk!

It was a lovely couple of days!

I'll share what we did on the 27th and 28th soon!

Hope all is well and you are all happy.

xx

May the force be with you!

Our friends organised a trip to go and see James Bond together on opening night in October which we did and really enjoyed so we booked to go and see 'The Force Awakens' on Saturday 19th December.  I've been really looking forward to it!

Having not done TARDIS Tuesday for a little while, I was keen for a little themed-dressing to attend it!

It originally began with this R2D2 novelty handbag I have. I bought this in 1996 in Miss Selfridge sale for £1! We'd been to watch Return of the Jedi earlier that year and I had to have it!  I've kept him ever since and he's made an appearance over the years! Almost had him 20 years!

I decided to try and white his colours with my outfit so it was a subtle cosplay.  Just the red hat and belt as that was the least (couldn't find my grey beret!) 

 The white dress which formed the basis of my Dalek dress.  Appropriate eh- from one robot to another.Ahem, droid!

 White trainers and my TARDIS blue cardie.

 And of course, I had to make a brooch!    Was rather pleased with my little R2D2 pin to finish off the look!

The film was excellent.  I couldn't believe I was finally going to see how the story continues!  I thought it was excellent and I didn't know they are making another 2 films so that is exciting!  Be prepared for some big shocks though! Star wars had a big influence on my life from those ewoks from Return of the Jedi- I LOVED the ewoks cartoons that I watched as a 7 year old and I wrote my own stories- I filled about 2 exercise books full of my own Ewok spin offs. And my sister tells me that I had a huge crush on Luke Skywalker aged 4-6!!!