It certainly has!
Bookshopping…
Vegan cake scoffing…
Aimless wandering…
& kitty befriending!
Hello Spring!
*
Like shiny things? Check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!
Hello everyone! Exciting news: I am headed to the Isle of Lewis next week!
Lovely Boyfriend are going to go and stay in a wooden hut next to the sea, with no internet connection or phone signal — and we’re hoping this will translate into writing, writing and more writing!
We’ll be very close to the Callanish standing stones (That’s them up there, in a stunning photo by the lovely and excellent Ms Julie Howden), on the other side of the island to Stornoway.
Basically, I would like to know from you: what should I do with my holiday?
We’ll be spending two or three days driving from Edinburgh up to the crossing to Lewis, so first of all — what should we stop and see on the way? Is there anywhere amazing we can stay over to break our journey? We’ll have a car and all our camping gear, but we’d also be open to hotels, B&Bs, hostels, tree houses, hobbit holes — whatever!
Secondly — what should we do while we’re on Lewis? What should we see? What time of day should we see it?
And thirdly — with Lewis as our basecamp, where else can we go? Which islands should we explore? Where can we see seabirds and ocean-dwelling critters?
Importantly: what can we do when it’s raining? What should we do if, by some miracle, it is fine? What will we need our wee car for, and what can we go and do on foot?
(Photo credit)
Please do share your thoughts, ideas, recommendations, fangirlings, warnings and personal stories here in the comments box (NB: there is a mod queue), on Twitter, or by emailing claire[at]onenightstanzas.com
Thank you a million!
*
Like shiny things? Check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!
Point 6 in my 30 by 30 post was “get out more,” and I thought I’d start right away. So I went on a writing holiday, to the countryside that’s inspired some of the real greats. Here’s some stuff I got inspired by:
What are YOU loving this week?
*
Like shiny things? Check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!
1. Baked some tasty vegan treats.
The above cupcakes are triple chocolate ganache truffle cupcakes and yep, they’re totally vegan. Dark chocolate sponge with chocolate ganache in the middle, chocolate not-butter-not-cream frosting, and a Moo Free truffle added to the top for good measure! The rather beautiful cake dome was a Christmas present from the loveliest Lovely Boyfriend. Though it looks like a vintage one, it’s new, but it is made out of 100% recycled materials! Amazing gifting, methinks.
The aforementioned LB requested “a gigantic mince pie” for Christmas dinner dessert, so I duly made a full-size 9-inch diameter mince pie with rather delicious boozy mincemeat. I had some scrappy little bits of rolled shortcrust pastry left over, so I used them to make these: the world’s ugliest mince pies. They obviously still tasted great, though!
2. Had some even tastier vegan treats made for me.
I think I may have already mentioned here that Lovely Boyfriend is the best vegan cook since Isa Chandra Moskowitz, yes? Well, over our winter holiday he’s had even more time than usual to cook up a storm, so my belly has been extremely happy. Lots of people have been curious about how the heck you even do Christmas as a vegan — the answer is, the same as everyone else. You eat lots and lots of extremely tasty stuff! This was our Christmas morning breakfast:
That’s Isa’s own tofu scramble with a Lovely Boyfriend twist: a Christmassy spice mix featuring lots of rosemary, and extra mushrooms. All on a sesame bagel and served with champagne, because Christmas.
I didn’t get a pic of our Christmas dinner because it seemed rude to be a food-snapping hipster blogger in front of our guests (also I was too keen to just SCOFF IT), but again we are indebted to The Great Isa. We had a version of this stuffed seitan roast, with a more traditional sage-and-onion type stuffing to make it more Christmassy. Plus all the usual roast potatoes and veg type stuff, and then my uber-mince-pie with vegan ice cream and these to finish. Delish!
3. Received many amazing gifts.
I couldn’t really do a gratitude post at this time of year without thanking everyone who bought me gifts over the festive period. Thank you, amazing people of my acquaintance, for giving me so many thoughtful, useful and beautiful things. I especially want to thank the folk (a lot of you this year!) who shopped local, supported small businesses like mine, bought secondhand, and/or made charitable donations in lieu of presents. You rock.
I also love that so many people got me gifts that are so ‘me’. (This seems to happen a lot, so I hope that means I’m easy to buy for. Or perhaps I am just easily pleased!) This vintage typewriter calendar was clearly an obvious choice… and now I have one for home and one for work! Perfect!
4. Met the newest member of the family.
My parents have always been cat people. Seriously: their house is full of cat-related stuff. Cat mugs, cat ornaments, cat coasters, cat Christmas tree decorations… they really like cats. So they were devastated when their faithful furry friend Beatrice went to the great cattery in the sky back in 2012.
After a period of mourning for “Little Bertie,” as she was affectionately known, I was extremely excited to hear that they’d decided to rescue a new fur-baby. World, meet Benny! He’s been part of the family for nearly three weeks now, and he’s a super cute, slightly eccentric TOTAL BABE. As you can see, he knows exactly how beautiful he is and loves having his photo taken.
Like me, he’s also a stove-worshipper. Smart kitty.
5. Bought a lot of books.
I know, I know, so what’s new? In short, I made the mistake of going to Bookcase Books in Carlisle while on my New Year travels.
I’ve blogged about this place before. The bookshop occupies two big townhouses that have been knocked together, and there are books in every room, including the two basements and the huge attic. You can also buy the artwork, paintings and oddities (I found an antique book-press I so wanted) which are displayed in the various corridors and staircases. There are over thirty rooms full of books here. It’s AMAZING.
Hours of book-browsing fun, and only an hour on the train from Edinburgh. Just sayin’!
6. Did a lot of plotting.
I love New Year, perhaps even more than I love Christmas (and I really love Christmas). I’m very good at saying “yes” to things and ending up super busy all the time, and very bad at pausing to take stock. So during that between-Christmas-and-going-back-to-work lull, I try to do as much mental stock-taking as I can.
There’s always a lot of journalling. This year, I’ve been reading posts like this and thinking about ways to make new year’s goals and resolutions (which I always make, regardless of how uncool everyone says it is) that are meaningful and will last. I prefer to set new year goals — a list of things to achieve — rather than make resolutions, because goal-setting feels way more positive than ’stop doing this thing you do because you like it,’ and ‘do more of this thing you don’t do because you hate it,’ etc. (For example, this year I’ve got ‘find a yoga class I like,’ rather than ‘do more yoga.’) But I have also committed to a couple of “higher resolutions” (the big stuff), which I hope to work on all year.
[One of them is: get better at being sociable. I am generally bad at making new friends, especially with women (this article, the part about rejection, rang so true with me). I have this assumption that most of the people who hang out with me only do it out of some masochistic form of politeness. I'm sure you'll all agree that that mindset is pretty toxic and needs to go. It's been with me a long time, but this is the year I intend to at least begin to cut that shit out. And the other big resolution is a secret for now, because I don't want to jinx it. If I manage to keep it, then all should be revealed in due course.]
Finally, I also use New Year as a time to think about the past year, and what I achieved. Every life coach/internet guru/mindfulness blogger and their dog is keen to point out that saying thank you for the good stuff in your life makes more good stuff happen. So that’s why I write Things I Love Thursday posts (still), and it’s also why every year I write a ‘in [year], I…’ post. Usually I have to go through my old diaries, Facebook updates, and blogposts to recall what I did. So much good stuff gets instantly forgotten and I’m always gobsmacked to revisit it… which is another reason why this process is useful.
If you haven’t done any 2014 plotting or 2013 revisiting yet, try it! The year is young! I highly recommend it.
What are YOU loving this week?
*
Like shiny things? Check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!
Last week, Lovely Boyfriend and I ended up in Munich. I say “ended up,” because it’s not a city we’d ever have thought to go to, really (sorry, Munich!). However, I was offered a lovely writing-related opportunity there, so we decided to take advantage of the trip and have a mini holiday.
Turns out, Munich’s pretty fab. We loved the fact that there seem to be green spaces all over the place — and the city is full of trees. Almost all of them were turning for autumn, so we got to see all the beautiful coloured foliage.
For a city that was almost completely rebuilt not all that long ago, it feels amazingly full of history and culture — at times, we felt like we were in Paris! (And you guys know how much I love Paris.)
Speaking of Paris, we spent a lot of time stomping around Munich’s “English Garden” — a huge public park designed to resemble the parklands of an English country house. While there, we came across a little bridge covered in “love locks” — padlocks scratched, painted or engraved with the names of couples — just like on the Pont de L’Archevêché, Paris.
We did a lot of wandering around Munich’s various neighbourhoods, nosing in shop windows and seeing weird and wonderful sights. I’d recommend the University area around Maxvorstadt (especially Turkenstraße), and the neighbourhood of Schwabing (especially Augustenstraße — number 100 Augustenstraße is an amazing English language bookstore!) for this sort of activity, if you’re Munich-bound!
If you do ever find yourself on the aforementioned Turkenstraße, you need to stop by Cafe Katzentempel, which translates, of course, to Temple of Cats! These folks are passionate about two things: great vegan food, and taking care of their resident gaggle of rescued cats! I particularly loved Gizmo, Munich’s own Grumpy Cat, who took up residence in the window seat (on top of a customer’s coat) and sat looking at the world and all its horrors with total disdain…
Munich seems pretty cat-friendly in general, actually. No dogs allowed, but cats may, apparently, tip-toe in!
And of course, I can’t go on holiday without photographing some local graffiti! “Blood on the streets” was on one of the University buildings near Turkenstraße, “Love you til the end!” was in Schwabing, and “Stop Amazon” was near Rosenheimerplatz S-Bahn.
What are YOU loving this week?
*
Budding writer? Creative person in need of a fun job? Check out the various resources and services at Bookworm Tutors. Alternatively, check out Edinburgh Vintage, a totally unrelated ’sister site’ full of jewels, treasures and trinkets. If you want to get in touch you can follow OneNightStanzas on Twitter, or email claire[at]onenightstanzas.com. I reply as swiftly as I can!