Winter Is Definitely Here

Photo taken from the passenger side of a moving car so that's why it's blurry 😉

We woke up to a bit of snow this morning. 

   Winter has definitely arrived❄😊

Snow Day

We had some snow over the weekend. We woke up to snow on Sunday without knowing that it was coming. It was quite a snowy weekend in many places apparently, because my family also got snow back home in the Atlanta area. I guess that winter has arrived ;-) 

The snow has melted on our street for the most part now with only a few patches in the shade. I imagine that those remnants will refreeze for a while since it's so cold.

Stay warm out there!

Have a great day wherever you are!

Happy August

It's a bit rainy today, here in my corner of Wiltshire. It feels more like early autumn right now, instead of the first day of August, but I'm okay with it. I have no choice, right? ;-) Usually by this time of the year I'm wearing a sweater and wishing that we'd have had at least a bit of warm during the earlier days of summer. Well this year has been different. We actually had some really warm...downright hot weather during July, so I'm satisfied...a bit of proper summer like my hubby would say :) So it's all good.

I took the photo above this morning. I love how the spiderwebs in the trees hold the raindrops and they're suspended in the act of dropping from the sky. I love nature's gentle, simple beauty.

Have a wonderful day wherever you are!

Happy August!

A Hot Summer Day

Today is the hottest day of the year so far here in the UK and I'm REJOICING!!!!

Listen, okay...it's causing me to sweat a lot, but I'm so HAPPY because this is such a rarity where I live here in the UK :)  I come from a place where hot summer days are a sure thing and often you're usually chasing a cool spot. Lol. It can be hot as heck back home!!! The summers are hot and yes there are cold winters there too. However, I'm a summer person so I love the warmth even when it's really hot, because my bones don't hurt so much when it's sunny and anyway that's what they make popsicles and fans for ;-)

Coming from a hot place, I must admit that I took the warmth for granted. But after over a decade on this side of the pond, I truly appreciate a hot summer day like I never thought that I would :)

So today as I sweat it out a bit, get my water intake up, and see my skin glisten, I'll be rejoicing about all of this warmth and sunshine and these beautiful blue skies!!!

Warm summer weather looks good on you UK!! :)

A Pineapple, the Weekend, and Backyards

My weekend was good. The weather got really nice and sunny yesterday, so I loved that. I've REALLY come to appreciate sunny days since I've been living here in England :)

As you can see in the photo above, we have ourselves a pineapple here at the Yellow House...maybe it's the warmer weather or maybe it's that I need to eat more fruit or it's a bit of both...I vote for a bit of both. I don't eat really lousy, but I can definitely do better, so this pineapple is my mascot for eating more fruit. I'm publishing its picture here before it gets eaten, so that whenever I need to be reminded to eat my fruit and vegetables more, I can come here and remind myself ;-)

Also, I took the photo below this morning when the sunlight was so nice. This is in our backyard. I love the sunlight coming through the trees in the morning. I took the picture with my phone so it's not sharply focused at all (my phone camera isn't great)...but I thought that I'd share it anyway just to let you see what my morning looked like.

Happy New Week!

Hello Sunshine

We are currently having some of the most beautiful weather here in Wiltshire! It's the best that we've had in a long, long time so I'm relishing every bit of it. About a week ago and before that, it was more like October ;-)

 

But this...this is what we've been waiting for!!!!! Woo Hoo!!!

 

 

I hope that it's beautiful wherever you are in the world!

 

Until next time...

Snow Pics to Come

Hello! I hope that everyone is having a good weekend! Mine is going pretty well. It snowed here yesterday and even though it's pretty to look at, I'm ready for it to go be gone :-)  Everything grinds to a halt and you can't get anywhere that you need to go. I know that some will say, that I should just see it as a chance to slow down. Well I am a rather slowed down person by nature anyway and I love vegging out...believe me ;-)  So it's not that I can't sit still and just chill. Actually it probably has a little bit to do with getting stuck in a freak snowstorm about twenty years ago. So I'm not a big fan. But hey, what can you do? It's just one of those things I guess.

Life goes on and we make snowmen  :-)

Anyway, I know that there are lots of snow lovers out there and we all like seeing the pretty side of snow as it envelopes the scenery, so I have some photos that I'll share in my next post. I'm not a total Grinch. LOL. I do love the gentle beauty of it. I haven't looked at my photos yet, but hopefully I got some decent pics...fingers crossed.

Fall and Arms

Hello there! :-) Sorry that I've been away from here, but I've been nursing a bit of arm pain so it's been hard to type. My arm is much better now. I had a Wii injury. I got a little bit overzealous and came away with a sore arm. I've learned my lesson though. When I play Wii now, I go at it with a bit less gusto, but I still have fun. LOL.

I can't believe that autumn/fall is officially only a few days away. This is definitely my favorite season by far. I mean, what's not to love with all of the different colors to enjoy and it brings sweater weather also. Yippee!! I love my cardigan sweaters and wraps! I'm not a real fan of winter, but I love the fall...just enough cool weather to pull out the sweaters, but not cold enough for me to have freezing toes ;-)

I was going to share a pic of one of our last roses around here, but something is up with the blog right now and I can't add a photo. I'll post it tomorrow. It's nice to have a few roses still showing up as we slide into a new season.

I'll be back tomorrow with another post because I'm inspired to blog again. I haven't posted here as much as I used to because I've felt that I don't have anything to say. Well I still don't know if I have anything to say ;-)  , however, blogging has been very therapeutic to me in the past so perhaps it can work that magic again. And I hope that you'll keep visiting me because I'm entering a chatty phase again.

Have a great day and I'll talk to you tomorrow! Thank you for stopping by!

~ Dori - From a Yellow House

Quick Snow

It's partly sunny here now and the snow is melting, but this morning when we woke up, this is what we saw...




It actually started snowing last night a little bit, but it was still interesting to see the effects the morning after :) It was pretty, but I'm glad that it is melting because it's kind of hard to get out of our street when it snows because it's so hilly around here. I really don't want to fall on my butt trying to walk out of here. Lol. I'm glad that we got a pretty view this morning and now the snow is doing the polite thing and melting ;-)

Just thought I'd share a couple of pics of our snowy trees! Have a great weekend everyone! :)

Sunny Days

Hello all...so, I was just in the kitchen a few minutes ago, washing some dishes and I was overjoyed with I saw outside....a blue sky!!! :)



We haven't had the greatest weather this past summer, so this little September surprise of warm weather that we're having here in southwest England is truly wonderful! We're supposed to have some splendid weather for the rest of this week so I'm extremely happy about that.

I think that I'll head out to enjoy the nice weather for a few minutes before I get back to studying. Days like this are meant to be relished!

Until next time...

Christmas Fun & Books About Princes

Hello all! :-) I just wanted to check in with a quick post. I’m doing fine and trying to stay warm. We’ve had some snowy, icy days this week and today the ice is finally melting off our street. Hurray! ;-) It’s still cold as heck, but I guess that’s to be expected. Anyway, we put our Christmas tree up the other day and it’s all Christmassy around here. I can’t believe that Christmas Eve is only a couple of weeks away.

I love this time of the year for many reasons, but one of my fun reasons is that we get the chance to pull out our Christmas characters and things. In my next post, I’m going to introduce you to some of our little friends that we have hanging out with us around here. I’ll prepare my line-up and then show them to you all in my next post ;-)

In other news, please stop by my other blog, Yellow House Views, to check out my introductory post about a new book that I've been given the opportunity to review. In light of the latest news about Prince William and Kate Middleton tying the knot next year, it’s an interesting read so far. I haven’t quite finished it though. I’ll be posting my review of it over at Yellow House Views soon. So please drop by if you have a moment and check out my intro :-)

Well, that’s all for today. I’m going to go and do a bit of photographing…Christmas style…and I’ll be back with those photos in a day or two!
Have a great weekend and I’ll talk to you later…

The Moon and Happy Feet

It’s a beautiful sunny Friday here in Wiltshire. It seems that nowadays we get all of our beautiful weather in September instead of during the summer months. Better late than never I always say :-) Although while I was gone home to Georgia in June, Brit Boy tells me that the weather here was lovely. He blogged about it here. So I'm making up for missing it then. I’m soaking up as much of that vitamin D as I can.

This is gonna be a random post…I forgot to mention that in the opening :-) Okay, so I can’t remember if I’ve written here before about how much I love the moon and can gaze at it forever. I’ve always been intrigued by it and its beauty has the power to just stop me in my tracks when I catch sight of it. I’m sure that many of us have been enticed by a full moon or two or a few hundred in our lives. There is just something about that beautiful orb up there. When I’m gazing at our beautiful moon, I often think of the longevity of it and how my parents, grandparents, and all of the people who have ever lived on this planet have seen that same moon throughout their lifetimes. It makes me instantly feel connected to humanity through the ages. And I don’t just get excited by the full moon…oh no…I love the crescent moon too :-) It’s all amazing to me!

So last night, I was fiddling around with my camera and trying to photograph the moon because it looked like I could reach out and touch it. Well I did miserable at it. LOL. To tell you the truth I wasn’t really trying. It was late and I wasn’t using a high powered camera. I was just fooling around. I’m easily amused as I’ve mentioned before and I’m a night owl, so I just let it flow ;-) The photos turned out blurry and weird, but I like the eerie way it looks. So I want to share one of them anyway, just for a Friday laugh. LOL. And no, I was not drunk. LOL.



In other news, I’ve received a couple of comments here and on Facebook about my shoes that I wore on our trip to London last Saturday. Let me tell you, I LOVE those shoes!!! :-) They are so comfortable! For all you bloggers out there, you know how sometimes you get a meme or something and it asks you to tell something about yourself? Well my choice of footwear is something I’d like to share ;-) As you will notice from the photo, these shoes don’t have laces on them and they are my absolute favorite shoes. You know why? Because I really dislike untying and tying shoe laces. LOL. I'm sure there's some psychological reason behind this, but it doesn't faze me...I guess I would just say that I like ease in life and there are other things to think about besides my shoes ;-)


I learned how to tie my shoes many moons ago like everybody else, but I have developed this thing about not bothering with tying shoe laces. Even when I wear other sneakers, I will wrench them onto my feet somehow so I won’t have to untie them. LOL. I know…I'm a quirky chick. LOL.

So when I found these shoes I was in love!! ;-) Actually, these are the second pair of this style of shoe for me. Here’s the old pair that I still wear even though they’re a bit worn out now.



Interestingly enough, I bought both pairs of these shoes on visits home to Georgia, a few years apart. I bought the beige ones at the end of 2006 and I got the black ones when I went home in June. They are Skechers brand and they make my feet happy. They look nice on the foot and the best part is that they just slip onto my feet. Now isn’t that a beautiful thing ;-)

So this is the end of my random post and I will say here, that I was not paid to say something nice about these shoes or compensated in any way whatsoever. I just felt like sharing some info about these shoes, because you never know…there may be others out there who just don’t like tying their shoes either ;-)

Have a great weekend everyone and to all the folks back home in the States, have a Happy Labor Day weekend!!!!

Photos of Wiltshire and Watching Meteors

So last night I watched the meteor shower and it was fabulous. Did any of you watch it? Usually we miss a lot of what goes on up there, because it never fails that we have a cloudy sky on the night when something is happening :-)

Earlier in the evening, they were kind of giving a 50/50 chance of the sky being clear enough. I figured that I’d just show up and see what happens, so I set up my spot to watch ;-) I was gonna go outside to watch, but then I realized that I could see just as good out of our back window. It’s a big glass window that stretches over most of the back of the house and this side of the house is away from the street light, and it would be a better view. So I turned off all of the lights and lay down right up next to the window and gazed out at that awesome sky! I was in luck and got to see several streaks of light go across the sky. It was a great show and a perfect ending to the day!

To rewind a bit, earlier in the afternoon, Brit Boy and I went for a walk. I took a few photos that I’d like to share. In these photos you can get an idea of just how windswept it can be around here sometimes. The landscape in some areas of Wiltshire is very wide open. I thought that I'd share a bit of what some of the landscape looks like around where we live. The weather was quite breezy and cool yesterday and today too. I guess that autumn is on its way here soon. It certainly felt like it. :-) Anyway here are my pics that I took along our walk out in the fields of Wiltshire.






Above: Here's a cuckoo pic that I took of my reflection in a mud puddle ;-)

Above: And a bit of green along the way...






I hope that you enjoyed seeing a tiny bit of Wiltshire. Have a great weekend!

The Volcanic Fallout

As many of you may have already heard, we’re under a big cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland currently and it’s halted air travel here. I really feel for the people who can't get where they're going, especially those unable to get to weddings, etc. But I think that it's definitely a case of better safe than sorry.

On a side note, it’s interesting to me that every since the cloud moved in somewhere up there, we have had some of the most beautiful blue skies that I’ve seen in a long time here in Wiltshire. What’s up with that? LOL. It has been absolutely beautiful and we’re loving it!



Today was the first day that we noticed a film on cars here in Wiltshire. We went out yesterday, into town and it wasn’t noticeable, but today you can really see it. It kind of looks the way your car would look if you lived along a dirt road. It’s intriguing.

Above: You can just see a slight film on the hood here

Hopefully it won’t get too much worse. Let’s hope not. In the meantime, everyone take care! Have a great weekend!

Christmas All Around

I just wanted to drop by and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!



Brit Boy and I went to London to the theatre yesterday and it was great. I'll share a full report in a few days. I'm going to be taking a mini blogging break for a few days, but I just wanted to share a few sights from Christmas around the Yellow House.

We had a bit of snow here in Wiltshire over the past few days, but now it's all gone. Here's the snow resting on the heads of our little gnome and cat in the garden.




And this is a view out front with the snow dusting everything. You can see a bit of our decorations. They are multi-colored lanterns that we have draped across the window.




Here's my latest creation in the kitchen. It's sort of a Victoria Sponge/Strawberry Shortcake/Strawberry Cheesecake hybrid that I came up with and I'll probably never be able to make it again. LOL. It's a vanilla layer cake with a bit of strawberry juice drizzled into the pores and then I globbed on the cream cheese icing and put strawberries in the center. It's reminiscent of a cake I did before, but it's one better. We had some today and it was delicious. I think I'll try this one again for Valentine's Day or something :-)




And here are a couple of photos in London of Covent Garden. It was bustling with pre-Christmas traffic. We walked from here to the theatre. It was a wonderful afternoon :-)





Have a wonderful holiday!

Learning the Law and Liking It

It’s been a good weekend around here. We’ve had nice weather and we’re just enjoying the last bits of sun for a while :-) I’ve got some great news. I got my latest assignment back from my teacher and I did very well. For those of you who may be new here, I had to do an assignment for my freelance and feature writing course and it covered the law and how it applies to journalism and writing as a whole. The assignment involved answering several essay questions about different scenarios. I’m by nature more of a creative type, so it was really good to get outside my comfort zone and work my analytical muscles :-) In the end I enjoyed it a lot. It is good information to have.

As I wrote in a previous post, it made me tap into that other side of my brain…the non-creative part. But the good news is…drum roll please….both sides work ;-) … lol.

I really loved these two lines of my teacher’s feedback. It made my day. He wrote,

“Thank you for your latest assignment, which was a challenging one! However, you were very equal to it, with some very solid research.”

I love that! (smile) It's a beautifully simple comment, and it meant so much to me.

So I’m one happy woman right about now. Next, it’s on to more article writing lessons. I’ll keep you all posted on how I’m doing with my course. I just had to share my great news! :-)

A Windy Day

It definitely feels like fall/autumn around here. Even though we didn’t have a particularly hot summer here, the air still feels like it has taken a turn. Autumn is my favorite season, with spring coming second, so I’m loving the change in the air. It always feels like a new beginning, but maybe this comes from memories of school days :-)

Yesterday I went out for a while and got caught up in a bit of a gusty wind. It was both thrilling and startling. The winds are legendary around here sometimes, such as the time when the winds blew down our fence :-) If only I had had a kite yesterday.

When I came inside, I decided to do a bit of moviemaking. So here we have my fourth entry in my mini cam moments series. I didn’t get the impressive wind gust on video...of course ;-) Isn't that always the way? However, you can still see the trees dancing around outside.



The sound on the video is the washing machine chugging along :-) And our yellow rose bush is doing its last bit of blooming. Something has gotten to the leaves in the last couple of days though. All is well though.

It’s rather calm outside today. Think I’ll go outside ;-)

Have a great weekend everyone and to all of you in the USA, Happy Labor Day Weekend!

A Sunny Afternoon and A Discovery

We had a good weekend around the yellow house. We really didn’t do anything big, but it was nice to just have a slow, easy weekend. It was a time to just soak up the brilliant sunshine that we’ve been having over the weekend. It’s still sunny today…hooray! (smile) It’s hard to keep my mind on anything because I just want to be outside all the time. Yeah, I’m crazed right now. LOL.

Anyway, on Saturday, we went into town to do an errand and then had some KFC. It was good since we don’t have it very often. It made me think of summer days back home. Brit Boy remarked that everything looks happier and more laid back when the sun shines. We are so alike. So we finished up our eats and then headed home.

We took the scenic route home back to our more rural area and then we kept going a bit. The thought of Wiltshire in the sunshine was just too good to pass up, so we drove a bit past home, further into the country. It was absolutely gorgeous! Wow! With the sun shining, everything was just so much more green and beautiful. The rolling hills with livestock dotting the scene, and little farmhouses scattered along the way, made for a postcard ready picture.

Then it was time to turn around and head back home. Brit Boy wanted to watch a big football/soccer match. But it was fine…I had enough of that natural beauty already stored away in my brain. (smile)

While Brit Boy was watching his match, I took out my laptop and started something I’ve been meaning to start working on. You see, I’m very interested in genealogy. I always have been. I’ve always loved wondering about the people who came before me. In the future, I’d love to write a full history of my family on both sides based on the family trees I’ve done in the past. So my bit of research Saturday was a step along that path. I want to fill in some cracks and pull it all together.

I thought that I’d start with my dad, who passed away when I was a child. My dad was several years older than my mom and I came late in his life. So he lived a lot of his life before I was born. Lately I’ve been very intrigued to find out more about the time he spent in the Army during World War II. I very often wish that I had been a bit older when he passed away, so that I could’ve asked him more about this time in his life. But I was a kid who was playing with her Barbie, so I didn’t think to ask very much. (smile) So now I’m going to put my love of research to good use and find out what I can on my own.

I got my first find pretty quickly. I did a search in the National Archives and found his military service during World War II listed there. It was a cool moment. I got this tingle down my spine seeing his name there with the details that let me know it was him. It was like I was reaching through history and touching my dad’s hand. What a wonderful feeling. (smile)

So now, I’m going to continue since I’ve finally started on this journey. I didn’t get to know my dad for very long, so in a way I’m reacquainting myself with him after all this time. I hope to weave together the story of him, my mom, and all those who came before me. Looking back keeps me grounded and I love it sometimes. In the meantime, I'm going to live a life in the now and hope that I have something of my own to add in the end. (smile)

Summer For As Long As We Have It

I just had to do a mini post about the weather here today. It is absolutely GORGEOUS!!!!! Summer has definitely arrived in Wiltshire and much of England this weekend (smile) The sky is so blue. It has just lifted my spirits so much. I wasn't depressed or anything, but having the sun after so many grey days recently, has just awakened all of those summer feelings. I feel like going on a picnic or having a barbeque. You know, I used to take sunny days for granted back home in Georgia...no, scratch that. I never took them for granted because I relished them then too. My mother used to say she never saw anyone get so excited by a sunny day. LOL. But I guess that now I have a renewed appreciation for the days when the sun shines on everything like this. I like grey moody days too, but the sun just makes me feel alive (smile)

Our roses have started to burst into bloom now too. Beautiful! Hello Summer for as long as we have you! :-)

Cleanup Sunday

It’s been a nice weekend. The weather has been pretty good this weekend and today it was just gorgeous. I tell you, I appreciate the sun so much now, more than I ever have before. (smile) When I lived back in Georgia, I naturally took the sunny days for granted because they were so plentiful. However, the sunny days are a bit more rationed out here, so I definitely soak them in when they come. (smile) I went outside for a bit to soak it all in and to take a look at my tulips. The red ones will probably shed off tomorrow since they’ve been open for a while, but they have been replaced by some beautiful yellow ones with red stripes that just look so sunny.

After I came inside, I decided to do some cleaning and organizing that has been getting pushed to the side for a while. Brit Boy was watching football (soccer), so I took the time for myself and I plowed through a stack of magazines that have been threatening to hit the floor. (laugh) Interspersed with the magazines were various pieces of paper. I have this habit of writing things down that I want to remember, such as quotes, or story ideas on scraps of paper instead of depositing them directly within my various notebooks. I’m usually a bit of a neat-nik, but this pile was one area that I’ve fallen down on a bit.

Today though, I have turned over a new leaf. (smile) I put a lot of my magazines in the recycling bin and I kept some of them, but now the remaining ones are stacked neatly and have their own home. And my scraps of paper are finally getting catalogued into my notebooks. I tell you, it felt like a weight lifted when I cleaned up my stuff. (smile)

So it was a good cleansing of my pile of paper stuff and I guess that it was a good cleansing of my spiritual stuff ;-) It’s been a good day.