JANUARY IS A funny time: on the one hand, we're drawn to all-white and minimalistic interiors for the clean slate that they represent, and on the other, it's such a dreary month that anything colourful instantly lifts our mood and brightens these long dark winter days.
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These days feel like they are moving in slow motion for some reason and today, had thought that it was Friday, but it is only Wednesday. I am not sure what it is we are waiting for—perhaps the vaccines are creating a hope that things might get back to normal soon, even as the news here in Britain warns that we are approaching our worst and most dangerous time ever in this pandemic ...
AT THE TIME of writing, Lockdown 3.0 has been announced in England for the foreseeable future, signalling an abrupt end to the holiday season that lasted a little longer than past years, simply because the new year fell on a Friday morning. We decided that we might as well begin work again today rather than on the first of January as other years ...
IN THE PAST WEEK, we ate a little too much, drank a little too much, and watched a lot of holiday films. I did something that was very strange to my being, a thing very foreign to me, a thing normal people refer to as relaxing. For the first time in a very long time, I did not work for five days straight. It was wonderful, actually.
Not certain why it took me so long to finally catch up on Pride and Prejudice, the 1995 TV series starring Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. It was just added to Netflix this past July, so perhaps that is the reason. I've been watching an episode a day during cardio sessions on the exercise bike and had no idea it was so charming and can now see why the world has been swooning over Colin Firth ever since ...
WE HAVE BEEN eating Christmas chocolates for the past couple of weeks already, and may have popped the cork on a bottle of cava or two, well ahead of holiday festivities. The news has been all Brexit and vaccines and an alarming rise in the number of cases (even in our area, which has been lucky so far) and to say that it's been a difficult year would be an understatement ...
LAST WEEK, IT RAINED all day on Thursday and Friday, and by Saturday, cabin fever. So we walked in the sun, which finally came out, and joined a festive food stall set up outside the pub down the street where flatbreads, mulled wine, mince pies and caramel shortbread were on the menu. On Saturday night we watched the film ...
IT TOOK THREE separate home deliveries of puffy winter coats to finally find the right one and it was of course, the warmest one I could find, for it looks like it might be a very long cold winter. The final selection, was not, however, a quilted one, as the quilted one I really liked was forever out of stock ...
AT THE SAME time that I was contemplating wearing sequins over the holidays even if everything ends up small and socially distanced and low-key, a package arrived at the door containing an extra-fancy pair of sweatpants. Now that I (and everyone in the world, it seems) have been spending our lockdown days in sweatshirts and hoodies, it seems foreign to being wearing silk skirts and strappy heels, or button-up blouses and midi dresses.
THIS WEEKEND we put up the Christmas lights and watched The Holiday with wine and popcorn. Yes, it might be a little soon, but this year needed cheering up, so we're beginning early. We're also wrapped up in the holiday mayhem that comes with tracking down missing packages and making sure everyone receives everything on time and are in the midst of beginning a brand new ...
WE ARE MAKING GOOD progress with fixing our archives and 2018 is nearly complete. It's a long, tiresome process, but as we're in Lockdown 2.0, we have nothing but time. In fact, the past two weeks have been a flurry of activity, perhaps due to the lockdown, or perhaps because the days have been so grey and overcast and nearly all of the leaves have fallen off the trees ...
I’ve been obsessing over marble tables for a while now. While apartment hunting, I fantasize about how I will decorate my new space and have been dreaming about either a dining table, side table, or coffee table in marble, or all of them ...
SOMEHOW ENDED UP in the book A Thousand Splendid Suns, the 2007 novel by Afghan-American author Khaled Hosseini. Have you read it? It has the alarming combination of being unbearably depressing, sweet in parts, and insanely anger-inducing all at once, and last night I couldn't sleep because I was so incensed by the plot line ...
I ORDERED an exercise bike online last Thursday, even before the announcement on Saturday night of a second nationwide lockdown here in England. A few months into the last lockdown, we ended up ordering enough gym equipment to turn the spare room upstairs into a fitness studio. But after all the delicious bread and pasta and wine of the last lockdown ...
RECENTLY ON INSTAGRAM, we posted an English countryside cottage (above) that captured the imaginations of thousands. Many of you asked if it was the cottage from the 2006 Nancy Meyers film, The Holiday. It is not (although there are similarities), as Rosehill Cottage from The Holiday sadly doesn't exist, its exterior built from scratch in an empty field on a hillside overlooking the town of Shere.