country wedding

july seems to be the month of weddings around here. we have two weekends back to back! the first wedding was a co-worker of adam's who i had only met once, but i was easily convinced to go since i haven't ever been to an english wedding. i was also intrigued by the fact that it was in the country (near where adam lives) at a really old church. i love getting out and about away from london on the weekends!

i wasn't feeling great last saturday thanks to my having caught the office cold, but i figured i could do a 4-5 hour afternoon wedding no problem, especially since it started at 2 pm. what i didn't know is that english wedding events are TWICE AS LONG as american ones and i was actually in for a full day/night of festivities. ha ha.

i loaded up on cough drops and decongestants and we drove through winding country lanes (some of them one-way roads, more scary than regular english car travel) to the top of a hill, where we happened upon a beautiful old church.



adam was looking dapper in his new suit and i had SQUEEZED into my old go-to dress for these types of events. (i think this is the last summer for said dress. i must have bought the darn thing during my peak running days when i was much leaner. luckily it still fit, but adam had to zip it while i sucked in!) the ceremony was very lovely (and just long enough to feel official without being too extravagantly long), but we had some behaviour issues whist sitting in church. one of the readings was from 'the owl and the pussycat', which i vaguely remembered from my childhood.

the last time i heard this poem i either wasn't paying attention or was much more mature than i am now, because at the wedding, every time the reader said the P word, i had to fight the urge to giggle! i was really struggling to keep myself under control and the guy just KEPT SAYING IT. i stared straight ahead, trying to remain stone faced and saw that the woman in front of me (who was twice my age) was shaking with laughter. no help there. to my left, adam's eyes were squeezed shut and his face pinched in a failing attempt at self control. the woman to my right (also older) had tears of suppression streaming down her cheeks. i know it is a beautiful reading and i feel bad for laughing but it really was funny. especially when the reader had a posh dick van dyke accent and absolutely no sense of humour. oh, the humanity of it all!

we made it out of the church without making terrible fools of ourselves and then to get to the reception, the bride and groom led us down a wooded path and through a meadow to get to the bride's parent's home.







such a gorgeous place but i do wish i hadn't worn 3-inch silver strappy shoes for such a hike! the reception was in the backyard and we enjoyed refreshing pimm's, tasty canapés, and a good dose of afternoon sun before finally settling in for a fancy barbeque-style feast.







as favours, the bride and groom gave away little pots of homemade jam with custom labels. such a cute idea! swing dancing followed the meal (the newlyweds had choreographed their own first dance!) and we finally left around 9 pm. a great experience for my first english wedding, two enthusiastic thumbs up!

reunited + time warp

my oldest friend in the world, jenifer, has moved to london! temporarily, but for the next six months i get to share a city with someone i thought would perpetually be hundreds or thousands of miles away. hurrah!

jenifer and i met in kindergarten at the boyd e. smith elementary school ballet class. my mom has a photo of us somewhere sporting pink tutus and cheeky 5-year old grins. from this early meeting right up through the first few years of college, jenifer could always be counted upon to be a partner in crime. our parents and society in general used to fear the products of our combined brain power, which resulted in genius schemes such as our hitchhiking field trip to Norwood (pre-driver's license, obviously), or the fabulous night we changed the local perkins sign to read 'come in for a hemp feast'. we lost touch during the end of college and reunited in our mid-twenties, only to find that we were working in the same field for competing companies!

anywho. my girl has been in new york for the last few years but thanks to a lovely american boy who has moved to london for his job, jenifer's here too. we were finally able to meet up tonight at my favourite local beer garden - the wool pack.



the weather in london was 60 degrees and sunny, just right for a few drinks after work. whenever the two of hang out, the world seems to go into a time warp where hours pass like seconds and before you know it, oops! the sun's coming up! it happens every time. the problem is that when one of you lives in bermondsey and the other lives in fulham, and the tube shuts around midnight, you kind of have to be conscious of the hour.

we accidentally drank until 10:30 (pub shuts at 11, so we were technically early) and we really wanted a curry, which was a 15 minute walk from the wool pack and also the wrong direction of the tube station. but, lovage has the best curry this side of tower bridge (in my opinion. they put a lot of care and artistry into their food!) so we decided to roll the dice. dinner resulted in another time warp and before we knew it, it was after midnight. we frantically asked for the bill as i whipped out the blackberry to check tfl to see if the trains were still running, which they were, but it was impossible to tell when the last train would be.

we hightailed it back towards london bridge and were side tracked by several of my co-workers who were still hanging outside the local pub. doh! we finally made it to the station and she got the LAST westbound jubilee train before it shut for the night. whew! must learn to pay more attention to what time it is, or start drinking much earlier to help counteract time warp effect...

modern woman

after much chiding during my visit to cincinnati last week, i really am going to try to keep my blog more up to date than posting every three months!

so. i moved into a new apartment on 1 april this year, which was a big step for me as it meant no more hostel-style living situation with four roommates. it was also a big step because it was a pseudo-move-in with adam (pseudo because he still has the place in kent, lovingly dubbed our 'country home'). the apartment is fab, with 10' ceilings, three rooms (including a bedroom), a good sized bath, and a modern kitchen.

the kitchen is probably the best room, hands down. i can't decide what i like more - having my very own large (large for the UK, anyway) fridge, the delightfulness of the gas range, or the perfectly even cooking that the FAN OVEN provides.

what i wasn't so sure about was the dishwasher. to be clear, i grew up with a dishwasher. i've always had one, and when i lived on my own in cincinnati, i filled that thing up and ran it at least 2-3 times per week. heck, even the house share had a dishwasher BUT with four roommates and a limited supply of things like pans, spoons, etc. i got into the habit of washing by hand. it was easier and it made sure all the housemates could have access to what they needed without waiting 2 days for the dishwasher to be run (it always prevented the quandary over whose turn it was to UNLOAD the dishwasher).

adam's country pad doesn't have a dishwasher and he wasn't fussed about using the one in our swanky new kitchen. we've been washing everything with one of those handled brushes that foams soap out the end (these are brilliant). however, when we were in the states last week, we got into the habit of using the dishwasher since my parents gave me funny looks when i tried to wash everything by hand.

we realised how much easier it is to use the dishwasher, especially after you've worked till 9 pm and can't be asked to even MAKE dinner let alone clean it up. why waste your energy scrubbing those pots when a machine will do it for you! i have to say, one reason i didn't use the dishwasher was that i felt guilty running using so much water. But, since i don't have a water meter in the new place and i have to pay 'even billing' based on my whole neighborhood's water usage (it's stupidly high, the way) i may as well use it up!

(sorry, momma earth but i've been guilty of running the dishwasher half empty and probably will continue to do so. hopefully the fact that i walk to work and recycle helps counter balance my horribleness...)

she's crafty (or trying to be)

one thing i really like to do but almost never have the time (or resources) for is sewing. in the states i made all sorts of things - pillows, chair cushions, skirts. in london, i don't have a sewing machine or the space to make a giant mess with fabric. adam's mom kindly lent me her 1964 singer machine for a bit, and i spent several happy hours hemming jeans. sad, i know.

however, part of my new year's resolutions involved trying to be more creative. this coincided with the arrival of a care package from my mama, which included my copy of amy butler's book "in stitches". i've had this book for several years and have always fantasised about making this:



the pattern is seven (!) pages long and in addition to using a lot of scary quilting-related words, looks wicked hard to make. i really yearned for a cozy quilt to put on my bed (blanket makes a better afghan. and he sheds) but i wasn't sure how wise it would be to spend £100 or more on fabric and materials only to find that i actually suck at quilting/hate sewing lots of quilting lines/etc.

so i went hunting for a class to take in london and came across this at the make lounge: log cabin quilted cushion. i liked the idea of something non-committal, e.g. a cushion. if things failed i would only be out £56 and would at least get a pillow out of the deal.

i showed up to the make lounge after work, which meant i was exhausted, slightly frazzled, and more than a little sniffly with a stubborn cold that just refused to go away. i had registered for the class weeks in advance and i was seriously considering ditching to go home and lie in my bed and watch mindless television. i'm so glad i didn't! i was the last one to arrive, which meant that the fabric selection was kind of picked over. normally this would bug me but instead i was thinking "who cares! it's just for practice!" - so i had fun and pulled a bunch of fabrics that i wasn't entirely sure went together. i did choose a "unifier" swatch though, which represented all the colours of the random fabrics i had chosen in one piece (i think i learned this tip in the interior decorating class my mom and i took about 8 years ago!) my unifier fabric looked like this:



surprise, surprise, the fabric designer of this one is amy butler. i really love amy's style and the fact that she's a fellow ohioan. she somehow manages to make even the most country-style farmhouse stuff seem chic.

anyway, i digress. as i mentioned, the type of quilting we were doing was log cabin style, which means you start with a central square and then attach different rectangles building as you go. normally i find that i'm too impatient for things like measuring, cutting, etc. but it was really therapeutic and there was something very satisfying about building my little cushion!

after all the pieces were stitched together to form a big, patchwork square, we spray glued the patchwork to batting (fluffy cottony material) then spray glued it to a backing piece. then came the hard part - measuring and drawing on the quilting lines. the quilting lines are what hold the piece together and give it a bit of texture. our instructor said we could do 1/2" or 1" space between each line. i opted for 1" because i really didn't want to be there all night sewing straight lines. i'm horrible with math and measurements and so was slightly terrified at the prospect of messing up, but it was really easy with the clear rulers the studio provided us. sewing the lines was even easier than i thought and actually went very quickly! before i knew it, i had finished quilting and was sewing up the easy peasy envelope piece for the back of the cushion.

in a mere three hours, i managed to produce something that looks roughly like a quilt!



and the fabrics that i chose willy nilly? i think they look pretty good together, all things considered. at any rate, the class made me realise i would really enjoy creating a full quilt and gave me the confidence to start hunting for fabrics. if only i had the space... :-)

copenhagen!

adam and i celebrated our one year dating anniversary this week! to commemorate the event, we decided to go to copenhagen. i have been wanting to venture north for a while and it's really, really cheap to visit denmark right now (probably because it is really, really cold). of all the places i've visited in the last year, copenhagen is one of my favourites. clean city, friendly people, super easy to navigate, and beautiful. i could have easily stayed a few extra days but alas, these weekend trips always go too fast. we stayed in a little three-star hotel called hotel maritime, which was tiny but cheap and clean. the shower was actually a wet room and true to its name, the whole bathroom was wet by the time i finished bathing. was kind of fun though.

a few pics from our adventure


we were struck by the clean modern design of the airport, although it took me a minute to figure out what i've dubbed the "star wars" bathroom. you have have to stand in front of this door here and it eventually opens automatically. it felt very intergalactic.


for grandpa. these were on display in the airport...adam said they were in london at one point.


our first night there, we stopped in a pub whose name i can't pronounce. speaking of which, i tried to order gløgg but wasn't pronouncing it right so i went back and forth with the bartender a few times (glogg? glugg?) before i finally spelled it out and he went "oh! GLOOGG." gløgg is sort of like mulled wine with raisins and nuts in the bottom. my flatmate who is from sweden made some at Christmastime, so i was excited to try it again! very nice when its 10 degrees outside.


front of the pub i can't pronounce


i had a cold during our trip and thought a hot toddy might help (it did). except the bartender made it with rum, which i've never had before? i always thought they were whisky drinks but what do i know!


the danish are crazy for cycling and copenhagen was the most bike-friendly city i have ever seen. it is also a very peaceful, nice city and people seemed to leave their bikes everywhere, some of them unlocked. perhaps i'm being naive but it seemed a lot safer than london.


we made it down to the canals late afternoon on saturday and were amazed that the water was frozen! (my swedish flatmate said "duh! it's winter!" when we told her this :-) the canal looked like a giant slushie. blueberry flavour, if you really must know.


tiny jen next to big frozen canal.


this is about as much skin as i was willing to expose. even with a shirt, sweaterdress, cardigan, coat, gloves, hat, two pairs of socks, and tights i was FREEZING! the wind bit through every layer of clothing, although the sun helped us from turning into blocks of ice.


adam in a postcard.


simply amazing. i could have stood looking at this canal all day, except my eyes were starting to freeze.






i fancy a swim!


is this a toilet? who can tell! funny name though.


i've got my eye on you, bear-hat-guard-man.


hello from the danish palace? we don't really know what this was, we found it on accident.




the original little mermaid. i bet she's cold sitting there on that rock! it took us ages to walk there and adam kept looking at every statue we passed and saying "i'm pretty sure that's it", even if the statue had male genitalia. we really just wanted to hole up somewhere with a hot drink.





for dinner we headed to a small local restaurant/bar to sample the danish fare. the barman next door had recommended it, and so we turned up at 8 pm for dinner. 8 pm seemed late to us but the place was nearly empty when we arrived, save the barmaid and a guitarist. the restaurant had great artwork everywhere, including these sketches.


the man on the right is the guitar player, who came and talked to us before the place filled up. he sang mostly in danish and played all acoustic, but did a few songs in english as well. the restaurant had filled up by then and everyone - lads, older people, etc. - all sang along! it was really fun, really good atmosphere.


we wanted a true danish experience so we asked the barmaid what to order. she suggested pork roast and a danish hamburger for us to share, and said we wouldn't need starters. she was right! the food was amazing. the pork still had scratchings on it, the burger was medium rare (with egg on it) and they both came with boiled potatoes and pickled things. it was like going to grandma's house for sunday dinner (except grandma would be danish). we licked our plates clean.


the restaurant. i can't pronounce this one either.


denmark still have their own currency even though they are part of the EU. we liked that some of the coins had holes in them, and most of them had hearts on them as well. very pretty money.

i would definitely go back!

sunday roast™

the iPad, the stylus, and me

living in london means that my family misses me a lot, which means that i get wicked Christmas gifts like expensive Italian leather boots and all the cookies i want to eat (let's be honest though, Christmas around my house has always been pretty good :-). this year was no exception and santa was kind enough to bring me an...iPad!

yes, that's right. this late adopting, pay-as-you-go-Zack-Morris-phone toting gal has one of these new-fangled devices that does everything save flying me to the moon. sweet. however, i've quickly found that you can lead a technologically backward 31-year old to water but she doesn't completely know how to drink.

i'm catching on. slowly. remember people, i don't have an iPhone so i've missed the boat on things like urban spoon, iFart, etc. sadly i spent the first few weeks using iPad for things like:

- playing Paper Toss (amazing waste of time that i can't seem to stop letting consume me)
- playing hangman
- using the iPad as a digital cookbook. the cover i bought has two heights i can choose from to stand iPad up. handy!
- looking for the video functionality (really? how does this thing not have a camera in it!)

however, things like "app of the week" and corporate lunch n' learns are helping me to see the light, so i'm making my way into more interesting apps beyond those that provide mindless amusement. last week's app was penultimate, which was on sale for £.59p and very exciting to me, because it made me think "maybe i could use this bad boy at work for, gasp, productivity!"

visions danced through my head of combining my various to-do lists, client notebooks, etc. into one beautiful application that organised it all AND allowed me to email everything to myself. imagine the trees i'd save, the impressed looks i'd get from clients when i whipped out iPad in meetings. "isn't she savvy!" they'd think as i scribbled effortlessly, digitally, all the fruits of our labour into the wonder that is iPad.

eager to make these visions a reality, i dashed off to curry's last weekend to pick up a stylus. of course you need a special stylus for such magic, and of course apple don't make one. luckily, proporta saw a gap in the market (ok, so the stylus is actually for the iPhone but nevermind) and it only set me back £9.99. such a small amount for such an incredible investment! i couldn't wait to get the four-inch, rubber-tipped stylus out of its clamshell packaging and onto the touch screen.

in all the excitement, it seems i forgot that nothing is ever as easy as it looks and that like anything else, it would take time to perfect my ability to make a piece of rubber and a small computer produce something that looked remotely close to jen writing. i spent the first night desperately hoping to achieve greatness but alas. not so much. what i DID achieve were a lot of scribbles, mess ups, and generally illegible characters. after twenty minutes or so, i managed to produce this (never mind what it says):



twenty four hours, many failed attempts, and one very sore hand later i was able to produce something that actually looked like my handwriting (again, not the work of shakespeare but merely an attempt to write basically ANYTHING):



it's all in the angle, is basically what i discovered. i had the system down to a t when i realised that to achieve such perfection, i had to be curled up on the couch with the iPad resting on a raised knee. maybe not the best for client meetings?

needless to say, i am still practicing how to write on this thing when i am in a respectable position e.g. in a chair at a table. i did, however, discover that it is more fun to draw with the stylus than with my finger:



back to the mindless entertainment again, it seems, but i haven't given up and have been using iPad all week at work. it's for internal meetings only at this point, until i can get my skills to the next level OR until i can remember to turn off the eraser tool when i'm through editing. we'll see which comes first. in the meantime, i'm working on some serious calluses for my thumb and middle finger. ;-)