A lovely Sunday...

We started the day with a long lie in after a fabulous night with friends, then made our way into Worcester for breakfast at our favourite little café, The Boston Tea Party, where I had a Veggie West Country Breakfast - potato cakes, mushrooms, scrambled eggs, beans and toast. It was so filling that I couldn't finish it - most unlike me! 

We came home to watch the football and a couple of episodes of Barefoot Contessa (I am seriously ADDICTED, the shame) and I then decided to go for a run. It's been over two years since I last ran outside (the Great North Run 2008 if you're interested) and I haven't even been to the gym since September 2010, so this was a strange decision. However, I ran almost 4km and it felt great! Seems like I've got the bug again - I've even made a new "running" tag... 

The rest of the evening will be spent eating jacket potatoes and baked beans, then having a long soak in the bath. Perfect!

Things I did in 2010...

I didn't have a particularly busy or exciting 2010, but it was a really lovely year all the same. Here are ten things I did...

1) Started working as a supply teacher, working in nearly 30 schools across the West Midlands.

2) Celebrated my 1st anniversary with my lovely husband.

3) Saw Vampire Weekend play in Wolverhampton. Brilliant gig, but made me really aware that I don't see enough live music anymore.

4) Met up with internet friends in Birmingham and had a fabulous time. Doing it again this year!

5) Got an iPhone 4, a new MacBook Pro and an Amazon Kindle.

6) Read LOADS of books, but didn't keep a record of them. They included two books by Scarlett Thomas, one of which I loved (PopCo) and one of which I really disliked (Our Tragic Universe). This year, I am going to make note of every book I read.

7) Went to three lovely weddings; two very sunny and warm, one very wet and cold!

8) Put our flat on the market and looked many potential houses to buy, but didn't actually sell the flat. Maybe 2011 will be a better year, flat-selling wise? We can only hope...

9) Started making plans for our month-long North America holiday in July/August 2011. Can't wait!

10) Had a major clearout of my things (clothes and shoes included, but not books) and made the resolution to buy less, save more this year.

Holga fun

Recently, I've been toying with the idea of taking a photography course. However, the courses I like the sound of cost £130 at my local college, and I don't want to pay that and end up not enjoying it. Instead, I bought a Holga 135 35mm camera on eBay last week, as I've always really liked the shots I've seen from Holga cameras. I took it on two trips at the weekend, and here are some of the photos I took;

I love them, especially the fourth photo. I achieved that effect by taking five photos of my husband without winding the film on, so a multiple exposure. I tried a few multiple exposures and some didn't come out, I think this was because it was a very bright day and I over-exposed the film. Still, I think a large part of getting better at photography involves trial and error, so I am not too bothered about the missing shots.  

I have already put another film in the camera and I plan to take it everywhere with me from now on...

Baking

I love baking cakes, and as today was the annual family barbecue I had a perfect excuse to get in the kitchen and beat the living daylights out of some cake batter. Trouble is, I decided to bake at 12pm and we had to be out of the house by 12.45pm. Cue me running to Tesco to buy eggs, then dashing back to make cake batter more quickly than I've ever done before. Cakes were in the oven by 12.15pm, out at 12.30pm, cooled by 12.40pm and iced/jammed by 12.45pm. Result! The speed explains why the cakes are a bit messy, but I got away with it by calling them "rustic"... They went down a treat, but we made sure to keep two back (each) for supper tonight. Here's a picture;

Yum.