Wednesday 31 December 2014

Day 31: Farewell to 2014

What a year. Seriously, what a bloomin' year! If I was to focus entirely on the negative I would tell you it's been tough, long, taken on the form of some kind of endurance test, kicked our butts, and generally worn us down. But! I make it my aim in life to always find the silver lining. So here they are, the silver linings that provided the laughs, the loves, and the warm snugglies. 

Category: houses. We sold, we moved out, we now live in rented, we're still waiting for a date to move in. Let's take a moment to remember the garden and get excited for our new one:


Category: stuff what we did. We were very fortunate to get to see some arty farty type things this year. That makes me very happy and reminds me of days from yonder when I lived in fair London town and would go to an art exhibition every week.




Category: trippy trips. Compared to some very fortunate years in the past we didn't go on many jolly holi-bobs this year, but compared to those less fortunate than us we did pretty well really. More please for next year though, cos we love holidays. 





Category: Christmas. Long story cut extremely short: we didn't get to move into our house for Christmas. But we most certainly made the best of it and we had a really rather fabulous day in the tiny flat. And we only broke the front off a drawer. This friends, is called success! 

Category: free stuff. Yet again my Pops came through with a ticket to his annual vintage car shindig. We had a crackin' day watching all the racing, eating all the donuts, and generally tromping around a racetrack. 


Category: our peeps. Last but definitely not least, and yes, let's just take a moment to be sloppy, I genuinely don't think we would have made it through this year without each other and all our very lovely peeps. I know that I am a very lucky girl indeed to be surrounded by such amazing people. Some of them are camera shy but here's a couple of photos of me and Tizz who came home for AGES at Christmas which was just the best. 


Category: 2015. Lots of things to do, places to go, people to see. I am very much looking forward to 2015. Happy New Year to you all too! Kisses! 

Sunday 28 December 2014

Christmas lessons

Just like the 12 days of Christmas, the 'tiny flat does Christmas' has revealed 12 Christmas lessons:
  1.  It was confirmed once again that drinking copius amounts of wine and letting 3 rather merry people loose with a bunch of coloured icing will result in a fabulous Christmas cake that may yet make it to 'legend' status
  2. Delia really is your only guide at Christmas. All those others - total waste of space...
  3. Washing turkey giblets in your bare hands is a sure fire way to make you feel rather nauseous (or was it the copius amounts of wine?)
  4.  Instructions should be read VERY carefully. Turns out the 2 tablespoons were for the flour and not all those valuable turkey juices - gravy fail
  5. Snowmen noses will not stick to the top of cupcakes by just pressing them in. Icing glue is required. You're welcome
  6. Attending two parties in one day is totally do-able, even when one of them requires a cross-country drive of 2.5 hours each way
  7. Red wine actually goes really well with turkey - pah to wine experts who say it must be white or nothing! 
  8. All those people chuntering about what we pay our television licence fee for are totally right - festive telly fail
  9. Thank god for Netflix (refer to lesson 8)
  10. The She and Him Christmas album is the best. I'm accepting no arguments. Frooooooosty window paaaaane...
  11. If you wait to go food shopping til 3 days before Christmas, the supermarket will have reduced all their gift tags and baubles to 30p. WHAT? That is like 3p per tag - crazy days people, crazy days
  12. Free range bronze turkeys might cost an effin fortune, but all those tasty 'erbs that they munched on throughout the year certainly made for a delicious feast! 
It's a bit late to say, but Merry Christmas once again. Hope you had a good'un! 

Wednesday 24 December 2014

Day ... oh whatever, we lost count!

Merry Merry Christmas friends! 

We have spent about 2 quality hours decorating the cake of glory ready for the big day tomorrow. As usual it's a spectacular masterpiece that you just wouldn't get if you went to a professional cake decorator...it's a skill, truly it is.

Cheers friends! From all at DizznFizznTizz we send you happy holiday wishes and salutations! x

Saturday 20 December 2014

Day 20: I spy... version 2

This one is quite tricky. I'm not really sure you'll be able to see Rudolph...

 

Friday 19 December 2014

Day 19: I spy...

Where's Wally Rudolph...


Thursday 18 December 2014

Day 18: wrap wrap wrap wrap

Today I will mainly be wrapping presents. I'm not sure if any of them will be as big as this one though...

 

Wednesday 17 December 2014

Days 14-17: oops

I think that is what is known as a daily blogging fail. I'm not even going to make up any excuses. First we had a family emergency, and then frankly, all kinds of other shit happened and blogging was the last thing on my mind. Now who doesn't appreciate a bit of frank honesty?! 

But quick, let us lighten the mood somewhat with a list of Christmas-sy questions that have been running through my head the last few days. 

1. Egg-nog. Is it actually made with eggs? I've never much fancied trying it, mainly because in my head I think it will taste like a melted down egg custard tart. Is this true? Can anyone tell me what it really tastes like?

2. Bruce Springsteen does a Christmas song? I heard it on the radio this morning for absolutely the first time in my life ever. Why has this never appeared on any Christmas albums?

3. Why haven't Radio 1 played Fairytale of New York yet? This is when it truly feels like Christmas to me. All together now, 'you scumbag you maggot...'

4. Will the turkey we've ordered fit in the fridge?

5. Repeat of above, except replace fridge with oven. 

6. Should we start cooking the sprouts now to ensure they are sufficiently done for our older dinner companions...? (cheeky...) 

7. Are all the You Tubers who are doing Vlogmas sponsored by Starbucks? They all seem to go there all the time and they always seem to order the egg-nog latte - refer to question 1. If I was doing Vlogmas and could afford to buy coffee everyday I would go to Espresso 10 in Middlesbrough as it is absolutely positively the best coffee in this area. And I've tried a lot. I do not darken the doors of Starbucks. Peh peh peh!

8. Will the 'Penguins' film I am going to see tomorrow make me chortle? I do hope so. 

9. Will I ever get all the presents wrapped...?

10. And finally, should WE try and do a Vlogmas for Christmas Eve? And by we I mean me and Tizz and Wavey, as Fizz is going over the borders to her homeland and will be trying not to freeze her tatties off. Will anyone be able to understand our North-East England accents? 

Fun times will surely be to follow. Stay tuned...

Saturday 13 December 2014

Day 13: writing the cards

Always an endless task, writing the cards has been so much easier with my Christmas songs and fake fire that lives in the telly:

(I'm hoping the video works but if not please excuse me. My laptop is throwing funny messages at me almost on a daily basis: you are not using genuine Windows, your intel thingy is about to explode...I think it's the universe trying to tell me to buy a new one...)

Friday 12 December 2014

Day 12: Wear your Christmas jumper to work day

Ok so I am at home, but I am also at work, so today I am wearing my Christmas jumper to work to support Save the Children. If you're wearing one too, or would just like to make a donation you can text WOOLLY to 70050. Share the love! 

 

Thursday 11 December 2014

Day 11: tall

Yes that tree really is tall as the lamp-post. 

Yes it is in the garden of a house and not in a town centre square. 

No there can never be enough sparkley lights. 

In other news; IT'S SNOWING!!!!!!! 

Wednesday 10 December 2014

Day 10: my favourite things

It's not at all festive, but one of my most favourite things is a huge pot of soup simmering away...

 

Tuesday 9 December 2014

Day 9: Grow our own/the good life

So this is happening. The packaging claims that it takes 3 weeks to grow a 4" high Christmas tree. I'll keep you posted. 

 

Monday 8 December 2014

Day 8: Planning ahead

I'm not sure we have ever been this organised. We've almost finished all the Christmas shopping and have even made a shopping/beg-steal-borrow cos we don't have it in the tiny flat list! Excuse my appalling handwriting...

 

Sunday 7 December 2014

Day 7 - (not my) christmas tree

In response to dizz and wavers lovely decs, here is a madly lit Christmas tree from my LED obsessed friends!


It's a 90s thing

The whole 90s thing started on Monday. D came over for 'dinner and a movie' (the classic second date). We ate leftover 3 bean and 2 going off peppers chilli (based on a 5 bean recipe but I was short by 2 beans) and scrolled through Netflix deciding what to watch. We landed on Empire Records. It's a classic... Besides which we really wanted to watch something with Renee Zellwegger to compare her original face with the new version that has been splashed all over the social medias. Let's just stop for a moment to say wow, and more pressingly, why? But that's a debate for a whole other blog post. 

Back to the 90s then. Empire Records, such a fine movie. The music, the clothes, the boots, the curtains in the hair, ah heady days. Takes me back to art college where me and D first met all those many moons ago. And we totally knew someone who had exactly the same curtains in their hair! Good times, both the 90s and Monday night dinner and a movie date. 

Fast forward to today and I chose yet another 90s movie for doing the ironing to. Step up Clueless. LOVE IT! Netflix is full of awesome 90s films, I've already added The Craft and will probably be heading off there any minute to see what else I can add to my list. I really want to watch Mystic Pizza again but that's not available, sad times. Me and my sis watched that obsessively over about 2 months, SO GOOD! Long may the 90s revival continue. 

Speaking of 90s revivals, my hair is taking a trip back down to that very time in history. I'm having major issues with my scalp so have basically stopped using any products on it to try to make it better. Oh boy, it's big and wild and kind of looks like when I used to brush it everyday. I haven't brushed my hair since about 1997 so it's not a look I'm enjoying. Maybe I need me a hat like from Blossom to cover it...it's almost time for a new fashion season, I'm making it my mission to bring back the 90s! Who's with me?

Saturday 6 December 2014

Day 6: it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

Yep we totally decorated the tiny flat. Sparkles ahoy! 


 

Friday 5 December 2014

Day 5 - the giant tree!

Our town has a really HUGE tree this year. Honestly, it stretches waaaaay up into the sky! And it's slightly lopsided. But it's HUGE!


Thursday 4 December 2014

Day 4

Christmas latte at work


Day 4 - The Toy Soldier

Frankly, that smile is a bit freaky and I'm still trying to figure out if the black bit underneath the eep-y smile is his beard or part of his uniform. But he's here to keep an eye on Day 4. 

 

Wednesday 3 December 2014

Day 3 - good day, bad day

Bad day:

Evil mock exam.

Good day:

Tacky Christmas jumper!


Day 3 - The Nutcracker

Would it be very cheeky to say 'sticking with the ball theme' ... 

It's The Nutcracker! Inside a tiny alpine hut. 


 

Tuesday 2 December 2014

Day 2

'Tis the season to wear Christmas socks!

Day 2 - balls #2

Because who doesn't enjoy a sparkley ball or two...

 

Monday 1 December 2014

Advent!

Happy 1st December!

Day 1 - balls

It's here! Advent 2014 has arrived! I know you've all been dying for it to happen so let's just get right in there by introducing day 1 - balls. Happy advent everyone, may you enjoy our many joyous offerings to come.

 

Thursday 27 November 2014

Make do and host

It's time for my annual 'oh my god where has this year gone can you believe it's nearly Christmas doesn't time fly when you're older' blog post opener. It's a spiffy opener. Truly. (I watched this programme about posh people who work for Tatler magazine the other day and have found myself using 'one' and 'yah' and other posh words like 'spiffy' on more than one occasion this week...).

Christmas is indeed nearly upon us. We hoped that we would be in our new house by Christmas and not in the tiny flat. Sadly as the time creeps nearer this is looking increasingly unlikely. We considered throwing ourselves down on the floor and wailing like a 3 year old until someone there-there'd us and told us it would all be okay, but one soon realises that this will get one absolutely nowhere at all and one must move swiftly on. You see, the tricky thing is, it's our turn to host. In the tiny flat we have two of everything and one large pan, as the kitchen is teeny tiny so we deliberately downsized. This 2 of everything causes a small problem when you are hosting for 5...

Never to be beaten (we made Christmas happen when our oven exploded, we rock at rallying round!) we've decided that we will go ahead and do this thing, tiny flat be damned. Yes the oven only has one shelf, but we have 4 hobs! Yes we only have 2 pasta bowls, but we have brand new crockery that we had been saving but can break out specially for the festive event! Yes we might have to put out an appeal to borrow some knives and forks...

Last night we bought Christmas crackers and Christmas napkins. And this little guy who doesn't really photograph that well but trust me, he is cuuuuute in his little stripey scarf:


We will adorn the tiny flat in sparkley lights and tinsel and make it look super cosy, I knew that dimmer switch in the living room would come in handy for something other than just watching spooky television programmes. We will go to the lock-up and rebuild our table and bring all the chairs back to the flat and figure out a way to make it all fit in. Hopefully at the same time we'll find the other pans or we'll be stir-frying sprouts in the frying pan. We will make do and host! 

We will also maintain another annual tradition of Tizz coming round to drink wine and create glorious and ridiculous decorations made from icing to decorate the cake on Christmas Eve. We will also, and I say we as Tizz (and hopefully Fizz) said she might join in too, do the annual photo advent in the month of December for your delight and reading pleasure. We might not have the house, but we have our loved ones and this, my friends, is what Christmas means to us. 

Just one thing. If you do plan on popping round throughout the festive season can you bring your own plate and cutlery... 

Sunday 23 November 2014

Sunday Strolling

Oops, I've been away again. But honestly for the last two weeks all I've done is cough and work, which is not interesting to anyone, so no blogging. Sorry. Absence duly noted. 

Tizz is home! Yee-hah! It's always blummin' brilliant when Tizz comes home because even if it's only for like 5 minutes we still manage to squeeze in some fun times. This weekend we squeezed in watching an awful film (Superbad), eating some awesome snacks (chocolate covered pretzels), a cinema visit (for Tizz and Fizz, I stayed home to be with Wavey cos he's been away all week), and some Sunday strolling. 

I'm totally loving getting my walk on at the weekends. It's only been a regular thing for like this weekend and last weekend but that's enough for me to say that it's my new favourite thing to do. It was a bit muddy today, but we were suitably suited and booted so squelching wasn't going to stop us. 7km later and we returned home for a well deserved chocolate and banana muffin and a cuppa tea. Here's some jolly photos for you to enjoy, you really wouldn't think it was Winter - look at that blue sky!






Whose coming next week?

Rather brilliantly, Tizz is home again in approximately 2 weeks time and will be home for AGES and be here for Christmas! I can hardly contain myself with excitement, mega-fun times will follow. WOOO-HOOOO! 

Friday 14 November 2014

Step away from the phone

I'm going to warn you in advance as this post has a (kind-of) serious tone to it, which I know is quite unusual around these parts, but it's always good to go for variety in life I reckon. Let's talk technology, specifically, communication technology. Phones, tablets, laptops - these are three things that I would consider essential to my life now. I need my phone to stay in touch with people, and it's been particularly useful to have whilst I've been driving along pitch black moor roads with fog rolling in from all sides to provide a security blanket in case my car decided to just stop working. I need my tablet as I have all kinds of apps on there that I genuinely enjoy on a daily basis, and I need my laptop for work. Three things. How did we ever survive without them? Did we ever? 

The answer to that is yes, of course. It always makes me chuckle when I hear of kids getting mobile phones so that their parents can keep track of them. Ha! When we were kids, LONG before mobile phones (hell our first phone in the house was one of those circular dials that took forever to roll back around again), we would disappear for hours on end. No-one knew where we were, no-one could call us to tell us to come home. We had our bikes, a snack and a drink, and we knew we had to be home in time for tea or you would be in big trouble. I call those days the glory days. I really feel sorry for kids now as they will never know that complete and utter freedom we enjoyed. No-one documented our every move, photos were taken on holidays and saved to slides (!), and our first bath was definitely not put on the internet for all the world to see. I am beyond glad that all my awkward gawky moments and hideous huge hair cuts/perms were kept to a small handful of photos that emerge occasionally to make me cringe. Don't even get me started on how grateful I am that the internet was only just emerging when I was at university cos just the horror! 

Where was I? Oh yes. The communication technology. Now that I am working in this very biz-ness I am pretty much always switched on. There's an expectation that a reply will appear almost immediately or you might start tut-ting and taking your business elsewhere cos how SLOW are these people? Sheesh. Frequently over the past 6 weeks or so that I've been doing this, I've found myself in random conversations at way past my beddy-bob hours hoping that whoever is on the other end will get bored soon and stop asking me questions. I read a lot of blogs that talk about this problem too, cos when it's your job where do you draw the line? I'd love to be able to switch off at 5 and walk away from it all but quite simply, it don't work like that. This is a 24/7 world and if someone is looking at something you put out at a time convenient to them, they want their answer at that exact same time too. 

Please don't get me wrong. I am in no way moaning about this at all. I just find it a really interesting life issue. How do you draw the line between work-life balance when your business is this crazy communicating world? In the last couple of days I've seen a video and read at least 2 articles where people have talked about Technology-Free-Saturday. For that day, they hide their phones away buried in 6 jumpers so they can't hear it, or something like that I would imagine, and spend time with their loved ones. Do any of you do this? I'd love to know. On the one hand I think it would be a really interesting challenge but I don't know how well I would do. Because I love it. Truly I do. It's how I do the majority of my communicating, definitely for making plans and arrangements. It's how Wavey and I stay in touch when he is away on business. My ma texts me almost constantly as she is a text demon! I think everyone is guilty of it in some form or another. 

I am so intrigued by the idea of a technology free day. I might actually give it a try and report back. But don't be surprised if I crumble and start flinging jumpers around to find my phone...

Saturday 8 November 2014

Restoring our flagging souls

I don't think we entirely realised until we took a few days off as holiday that we were indeed flagged. Knackered, worn out, battered, well, you get the idea. We needed a break! The holiday week started when we went to see Miss Tizz in London (which was utterly fab and the first time in a LONG time that I completely and utterly didn't think about work of any kind whatsoever), and then continued when we headed to the Yorkshire Dales for a few days of respite. 

We stayed in Lawson's Studio, a teeny tiny house in a teeny tiny village called Castle Bolton. The studio was utterly delightful:



We were really very lucky with the weather and spent most of the days wandering outside in the beautiful countryside - we even got sunburned on the Tuesday!




We ate chips, biscuits, and cakes. We drank lots of yummy locally brewed ale, I made it my mission to have Wensleydale cheese in some form or another every single day, we read books, we watched rubbish teevee, we napped, we did daft silly stuff that only we find funny - all in all, we had a really rather fabulous time. 


Consider us restored. Shame we have to go back to work next week and ruin it all...