Congratulations to John Waite for winning this year’s Great British Bake Off. But my question is, WHAT AM I GOING TO DO ON TUESDAY EVENINGS NOW?!?
Post mortem on The Great British Bake Off
Category: Yelly Writes
My life is extraordinarily ordinary and this is celebrating and writing about my beautifully ordinary moments.
Writing Pit Stop
I think the one solution to my writing woes is to write when inspiration strikes me. I’ve got so many entries floating around in my head that I think the only way to stop these writing ideas from floating away is to just stop for a moment and type out my thoughts.
This is going to have to be quick because I need to really start working on a handover document!
NR11 came to visit my blog and I found this link to Hugo and Adele’s website. In a nutshell, Hugo and Adele sell party supplies but I was drawn to how adorable their cupcake baking cups were. I’m all about the cute stuff as, after all, I am a girly girl! If you like lovely pastel coloured party supplies, I think you may just have to wander around their site. Thank you NR11 for sharing this wonderful bit of information!
Here’s a teaser of some of the lovelies that they have. This is isn’t an advertising scheme mind! I just thought sharing this would be helpful to someone else too!
Thank you!
I thought it would be good to start October with a note of thanks.
Thanks to everyone who has come to check the blog out and a special thanks to everyone who has followed the blog. You all inspire me to write and get out of the writing slump that I am currently experiencing.
Working Sunday
I am at a train station cafe waiting for my train to arrive. Such is the joy of timed tickets. You buy a ticket for a particular train to, quite possibly, find the lowest fare that is available.
I feel slightly sorry for myself because I am, in fact, working this weekend. Whilst the rest of the country is enjoying a wonderfully sunny Sunday, I am here, at a train station, waiting for a train to take me to the venue of the conference that I’m going to be managing tomorrow. Lovely.
I’m also resigned to the fact that I won’t be sleeping much during the next few days. I don’t sleep well in a bed that isn’t familiar. It takes me about three days (MINIMUM!!!) to get used to an unfamiliar bed. I don’t necessarily have that much time to get used to the bed I’ll be sleeping in. After the conference, I’ll be flying off to the home of the deep-fried Mars bar to attend a meeting. Yet another night in an unfamiliar bed (at least I’ll have TV!).
And yet, despite my whinging, I do enjoy my job. I enjoy the challenge. I know I am more fortunate than most people because I do have a job and I do love the job that I have. I constantly tell myself off for complaining. Because I shouldn’t. Not really. I am fortunate that I have a job that I enjoy.
But sometimes, it would be nice not to have to travel on a lovely, sunny weekend.
My train’s nearly here. I should probably be gathering my things together.
It’s a struggle, isn’t it?
I remember when I was part of Post A Day 2011. How did I manage that?!
The goal (then) was to blog about something (and in my case, post a picture) every single day. I did struggle most days but I managed to put together a few sentences that may have made sense to some people. I managed. There were days when I even managed to post more than one entry a day. I tend to chatter, so I probably allowed myself to chatter online.
But these days, I find that I struggle. Not with ideas for blog entries (I have a few hundred of those, I love food and can wax lyrical about it, I think!). I struggle to find the time to sit down, gather my thoughts and write them down. The eternal excuse is that it’s all my day job’s fault (I manage scientific conferences and scientific organisations for a living) and there are days (like today) that I can be too tired to sit and tap on my laptop about my favourite subject in the world.
Now, I constantly tell myself off when I allow myself to use this as an excuse for my non-blogging. If I love food, if I love writing about food, I shouldn’t be limited by this piddly little thing called my day job. When one is absolutely passionate about something one should pull out all the stops, right?
I need to find out if there are any blogging apps that will let me blog on WordPress on the go. My experience with the WordPress app wasn’t very good (I had another blog, you see) and posting via the app messed up my margins and things. Does anyone know any good blogging apps that will allow you to connect to your WordPress blog?
All suggestions are absolutely welcome. I’m determined to blog more. I’m sure technology has a way of helping me out! Help! Anyone? Everyone?
That Friday Feeling
I am at my desk and am staring at that little clock on my computer screen’s system tray area and I’m thinking, “There are only 15 minutes left to my lunch break! Oh no!”
I am experiencing my afternoon dip early. My afternoon dip is me not really wanting to go back and do something work related. Quite possibly because it is a Friday today. There is certainly a lack of motivation in the air around me. I am exhausted mentally and physically. I feel very blecchy because I probably ate a dodgy tuna mayo sandwich yesterday from the sandwich van that comes around to the office. I’ve always said buying food off the sandwich van was a dangerous exercise, but then again, I never listen to myself. So now, I along with my stomach, am paying for it.
This is an especially special Friday because it is a bank holiday on Monday. This means I’ll have a 3-day weekend and it means I can most certainly find time to bake! I’m looking forward to being able to bake food for the gods during the longish break. I haven’t had them in quite a while!
What do you do when you get an energy dip at work? How do you cope? I’d love the tips because frankly, today, I am not in the mindset to get out of this Friday funk. I need a long holiday where I don’t do anything but not do anything!
To bake or not to bake?
This was imported from my old blog and this was published on 24 September 2010. Funnily enough, it’s that time of year again. Series 3 of the Great British Bake Off starts tomorrow night at 8PM!
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I am inspired to bake again. And it’s all the Great British Bake Off’s fault.
The final show was a few days ago and am now itching to try a new set of recipes. It probably wasn’t a good idea to watch Julie and Julia during the weekend because I am now inspired to do a Julie Powell–meaning I could try 1 recipe for every day of the year. That would be expensive and very exhausting. While I applaud Julie Powell for doing the amazing (and getting her writing kicked off after the blog), I don’t think I have the stamina and I want to remain friends with my finances.
I do have a book in mind, should I decide to do a Julie. If she (Julie Powell) has Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which I also have but have only managed to leaf through twice since I received it as a gift on Christmas), I have Delia Smith’s Complete Illustrated Cookery Course, which is a very scary, very thick book. I may just put off Delia’s book for a while. I like being able to convince myself that I have the capability to accomplish my goals and I think that setting myself to do every recipe in Delia’s book is setting myself up for a fall. It is achievable but not right now. Now isn’t a great time for me! And somehow, I feel better after admitting that!
I also aim to try all the recipes in the Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook. Realistically, I think the HBC would be a better bet since I’ve managed to try 6 out of the 60 recipes in the book (which always turn out perfectly! if you dabble in baking, this is, seriously, a book that you should have in your cookbook arsenal!).
Shall we put it to a vote? To bake or not to bake?
Catching up
I haven’t been writing anything recently. The ideas are in my head but I need to write them down!
The past several weeks have been crazy busy! The day job has been eating into the time I’ve put away to work on the dream job and I’m getting really frustrated! I really need to make time to write. I need to make sure I make the time because I really want to work on my recipes and my writing. Dear God please give me time…or at least one of those Harry Potter time turner thingmebobs that Hermione used! That would be incredibly handy!
Fingers crossed I am able to write this weekend! If I do get to do that, I will write up a storm!
Bloglovin!
Nocturnal musings
In an effort to stop myself from performing a Nigella-esque night-time raid on my fridge (which at the moment is stocked with rice, tomato and bagoong, perfect comfort food triumvirate!), I have switched on my lappy and am tiptapping on my keyboard instead of preparing a bowl of rice and tomato salad with bagoong.
Bagoong is basically fermented shrimp paste that has been sauteed.
I am tired and wide-awake at the same time. If you could see me now: I’m sitting near the edge of my bed, near the window, with legs crossed under the duvet. I don’t think I feel well. I’m not too certain that I’m ill (I don’t have a fever, low-grade or otherwise, but not having a fever has never stopped a hypochondriac from worrying). My eyes are squinting against the weird non-bright light from my laptop screen. I wonder if I should take a paracetamol or an ibuprofen tablet, just in case?
I think I might just switch the lappy off as verbal diarrhea gets worse when one gets sleepier and I think tapping away has achieved its purpose, to make me sleepy. Although I don’t think that was the plan originally. I think I wanted to write about reading Her Fearful Symmetry, which I haven’t finished yet and how the book I’m reading affects the way I write.
Maybe that’s why I haven’t written that novel which is supposed to make me a millionaire? I haven’t found a personal writing style yet. I haven’t found the voice with which to tell my story…
Right. I’m beginning to sound fanciful…time to publish this blog, do a bit of self-promotion on Twitter about this (idiotic) entry and drift off to the Land of Nod.
Nuh-night!
