Tag: weekends

Yelly Writes

Starbucks, schmarbucks!

Yelly

So ages ago, I had a Starbucks account. I need to create one again.

But is it straightforward? Of course not? Apparently, I’ve tried to create an account several times already.

And have I?

Nope. First time today!

That being said, I had a lovely mocha from a local cafe this morning whilst I was running errands. It was made from Perky Blenders beans! Perky Blenders are an East London coffee roasting company. Now it makes sense that there are so many local cafes and stores that carry their grounds and beans!

It’s quite the slow Saturday. I’m allowing myself time to recover from all the goings on during the week. I’m taking today and tomorrow as recharge days. Next week will be busy again.

Yelly Eats

Food tripping in Colchester

Yelly

Food tripping in Colchester today.

We went to try a relatively new Taiwanese food street place named Honey Bear (cutesy, I know! But you’ve gotta love a bit of kitsch, eh?). I had I had a taro milk tea with black pearls (black sago) and egg pudding. Alan had the fresh milk oolong tea, which was okay, but it was certainly very milky.

For lunch I had a I had a traditional Taiwanese breaded and deep fried fillet of chicken beaten until it’s thin and about twice its size. It comes as a “bento” – and I use the quotation marks because, strictly speaking, a bento meal is Japanese. My deep fried chicken was served with fragrant rice, curry sauce, spring rolls, pickled veg and a fried egg. Alan chose a dish from the chef’s recommendations board which was beef brisket served with steamed rice and a lot of carrots!

There was a lot of food and I must admit it was better value than I expected. I couldn’t finish the rice! I did love the pickled vegetables and wished there was more than what was served in the bento.

The taro milk bubble tea was okay, if a little too milky, but the egg custard pudding in my taro milk tea tasted the way I remembered it from bubble tea drinks in the Philippines. I could probably eat a whole glass of just the pudding completely on its own quite happily!

Whilst it’s good to know that there is a “specialist” bubble tea place accessible in Colchester, to be quite honest, I might be happier waiting for my next trip to Chinatown in London to get my bubble tea fix! 🤭🤔

Yelly Reads

Writing weekend

Yelly

This weekend I’m going to do a lot of writing…and tackling a huge amount of ironing!

I posted a question on my Instagram stories a few days ago because I’ve been building a list of books I’m aiming to read this year. What are your book list must-haves?

Right. Enough prevaricating. Those clothes aren’t going to iron themselves!

Yelly Writes

Weekend blur!

Yelly

It was a busy 48 hours for me and Alan.

We went to London to visit friends and to see friends and catch some of the light installations that make up the Canary Wharf Winter Lights.

As always, all great plans can go by the wayside. Even though we planned to see light installations. Notice the “s”? Yep, denoting that we intended to see more than one light installations. We only saw Submergence by Squidsoup though. I’m not complaining though. It was great evening filled with laughter and lovely company and I even got to meet some people I follow on Instagram in real life!

If you’re in London and can get to Canary Wharf, the lights get switched on at 5PM and get switched off at 10PM. Winter Lights is running until this Saturday, 26 January.


We got home really late last night…or early this morning if you want to be specific. So I’m feeling a bit lazy this evening. I’ve got to get ready for work tomorrow so I guess I need to do a few things…aka housework! It’s been a really quick weekend and I’m having to play catch up! But hopefully this week will be kinder than I think it’s going to be!

I hope everyone has a good start the the week!

Yelly Writes

Quiet evenings

Yelly

This week has been quite the busy week, with the days whooshing past.

Because I work at an accountants, I do want to ask this question: have you filed your taxes already? The deadline for the Self Assessment 2018 tax return is on 31 January 2019. For everyone salaried, we don’t necessarily have to worry about this, but if you do self assessment, I would suggest filing sooner than later. The HMRC website has known to crash on the deadline date because a lot of people leave it until the last possible moment. For more information, you can go to the HMRC website.

Public service announcement done.

In other news, I’ve almost finished The Silent Companions! Pretty good going eh, since I’m aiming to read at least 24 books this year! What are you reading?

Since Christmas I’ve been battling a flu-ey thing. The minute I think I’ve kicked it, it rears its ugly head. So for a little while it’ll have to be quiet evenings at home, on the couch, reading, browsing on the internet, binge watching and staring mindlessly at the telly. This is probably the human version of hibernation: head down, nose relatively snotty and travel only done when absolutely required (in my case it’s home to work to home!).

Even though I’ve been sleeping in (and apparently, there is scientific evidence that sleeping in to catch up on sleep may be a good thing), I’m still feeling very blecchy. Are you ready for the work week? Are we all ever ready anyway?

If you’ve got any tips for easing myself out of this schlumpy mood, am all ears!

Yelly Writes

Life was made for lazy Saturdays

Yelly

The trains are buggered today.  Well, they’re not exactly buggered.  Train services are suspended because Network Rail are “improving” current rail infrastructure.  They have suspended train services between Manningtree and Shenfield, so basically, I’m stuck in Harwich.  My question: why couldn’t they let the trains get to Colchester, at least?  But c’est la vie!  It’s cold anyway.

So I shall be couch potato, pretend I’m a Nigella-esque and cook delicious food (baked chicken with gravy and rice for lunch today, roast pork shoulder and roast vegetables for supper tonight, corned beef hash for lunch tomorrow and leftovers for supper) this weekend, read a book (probably that new Julia Quinn book, if I can be bothered to download it) and bake (I have chocolate cake in mind…mmmmm fudge!).

Oh and I’ve got to iron.

Yelly Writes

So many posts…

Yelly

I’ve had quite the active weekend and I’ve got about a gazillion blog post ideas as a result (mostly food related, but hey!)!!!

I need to make time to write these posts!  I need to make time…or find time…or something!  Can someone find me a real-life working time turner?  Like the one that Hermione Granger in Prisoner of Azkaban had pretty please?

While I can always download the app for WordPress my experience with it hasn’t been very positive.  When I used it, the posts don’t necessarily come out with the same margin settings and I seem to have these horribly LOOOOOOOOONG settings that stretch on forever — making me look like I don’t know how to make paragraphs!  I’m sure there’s a simple explanation and there are probably basic app-related settings which I may have missed, but I’m not necessarily encouraged to use it again!

Here’s to hoping that I can somehow find a magic spell to allow me to “make” time!

Fingers and toesies crossed!

Yelly Writes

Rethink, regroup maybe?

Yelly

The weekend’s been a bit of a washout.  It rained.  Really hard.  As I was coming out of the hairdressers’ it was, as the Met Office predicted, showery.  Very showery.  No make that heavy on the showery.  But because I was a girl scout (I was, really!  I wore the green Girl Scouts of the Philippines uniform for 6 years!) I brought with me an umbrella.  Said rain would have, most probably, put a damper on the proceedings at the Colchester Food and Drink Festival.  Lower Castle Park can get squelchy when it rains.  I was looking forward to going to the food festival today.  So the rain wasn’t welcome!  Except that I managed to get 2 important things done: my hair AND get dim sum from my favourite Chinese supermarket.  I got beef and pork (and shrimp) siu mai, bean curd rolls and dumplings for frying!

I was, however, lamenting my choice of footwear.  I have allowed my lovely ballet flats (my favourite pair!) to be soaked in rain water.  Not a good thing, I don’t think!  I may have to replace them.  It’s a good thing they’re a Clark’s shoes standard and, thank goodness, there is a sale on!  Mind you, that particularly design may not be on sale, but we shall see!

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On to other things, I am a tiny bit disappointed that my giveaway hasn’t worked.  Mind you, I haven’t really done anything to promote the giveaway so that may be the first thing I should address.  I will wait until the last day, 6 July and see if there is any interest.  If not, I shall go back to the drawing board and have a rethink!  Maybe attempt Rafflecopter again?

I thought if I did too much to prepare, I would be overthinking the whole blog giveaway thing.  But I think this time, overthinking may be the best thing.  I want to run a really good blog giveaway and I want it to be exciting!  So after 1AM on 6 July, if I have no takers, I’m going to try to give the iPhone case again.  I just shake my head at the seemingly sloppy way I’ve prepped for this giveaway!  In the words of Mr Knightley (Jane Austen’s Emma), “Badly done!”

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On another note, I am quite surprised at how much I love my hair.  It was cut by someone else and I wasn’t quite sure I liked how they handled my hair.  Thankfully, it wasn’t something I was unhappy about.  What a relief!  The lady that cut my hair no longer worked at the salon that I went to.  It took me almost 2 years to find someone to do my hair in a way that I was comfortable with.  And now she’s moved!  I was given her number and I’ve sent her a text message.  I hope she sends me a text message back so that I can go where she works!  Unless, of course, she doesn’t text back!  Scary thought!

Yelly Eats

Chilling on a Saturday

Yelly

I’ve told myself that I need to write more.  And I am.

My idea of chilling on a Saturday is working in the kitchen — at the pace that I set for myself.  I’ve managed to clear the dishes from the meals of the past few days (yes, I can be quite the slob when I have my über slow days!) bake a batch of chocolate cherry cheesecake brownies and bake a small cheesecake (leftover batter from the brownies!).  The next item on the list of things to do today is make lamb kofta kebabs for dinner.

I had a lovely lunch though.  No cooking involved at all.  Just opening packets.  Packets of delicious goodness!  My lunch was a cheese plate lunch.  It was filled with all my favourite things: pâté, chutney, Stilton cheese, Red Leicester cheese, a mature Cheddar cheese, Milano salami and cream crackers and oat biscuits!  It was yummy and relatively lighter than any lunch I’ve had the past few weeks leading up to Christmas and the bonus bit was this was all under £10 (plus I have enough leftovers to feed at least 5 more people – you gotta love post-Christmas food sales!)!

It is now after 5PM and I need to start on my kebab mix!

I hope everyone’s had a brilliant Saturday!

Cheese plate