Winter Trees

I love trees in all seasons. The trees in winter especially intrigue me though. They are mysterious and beautiful. 

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❄😊

Happy Monday

Above: A winter view of the sky from about five years ago, just because I love taking photos of the sky

Happy Monday! I know that Mondays have a bad reputation, but even though they're not my favorite day, it's gotta be Monday sometime so why not today ;-) And every day that we wake up alive and well is a blessing and we get to start the week fresh. So Happy Monday! :)

It's hard to believe that a week from today it will be Christmas Day. I know I say it WAY too much, but I'm gonna say it again anyway...time flies. Only a couple of more weeks and 2017 is a wrap. But hey, lemme not get ahead of myself here. We have 13 more days left in this year so let's make them great! :)

Have a wonderful week wherever you are!

Frozen Hills

I took this photo a couple of weeks ago when we were out for a walk. 

Lemme tell you...it was COLD!!!! Despite the frigid temperatures and wind sweeping around the hills, it was a beautiful spot to enjoy nature and that's exactly why I was there. I needed to be rejuvenated and this walk did the trick. It was a sunny beautiful day, but the ground was still very frozen in the shade like in the photo above. Here's another photo from that day that I shared previously.

As I'm looking back over my photos, I'm thinking that it's time to go back out again and soak up the natural calm that I find in nature, even if it's a little chilly. I'll throw on an extra scarf ;-) 

 I'll definitely share whatever I see here :)

Have a great day!

Winter Sunshine

I thought that I'd share a bit of winter sunshine today. I took this last Friday and shared it on Instagram, but I wanted to share it here also :) It was a beautifully sunny day.

There was a haze in the distance and the ground was frozen hard, but that big beautiful sun was there, so all was well!

Nature always restores me.

Happy day to you wherever you are! :)

Warm Feet

Today will be a random post day, very reminiscent of the posts that I used to write in my early days of blogging :-) I'm trying to revisit some of the things that I used to do, in order to share more of my day to day life and experiences. Therefore, today is just a random picture that I took of my feet a few days ago.

We're in the depths of winter now so warm feet are essential. This is how I'm keeping my feet warm this winter.

Even though this is just a random picture, it tells a story about my life right now....it's cold and this is how my feet look when I'm at home. This quick post is just me sort of starting my reintroduction here at my blog. It's been a long time since I just posted something that shows a bit of myself.

Stay tuned for more posts from a more personal standpoint again :-)

Until next time...

A Preview of Spring

Hello all :-) I had a good weekend. It was pretty calm. Brit Boy and I just hung out around home. I finally finished my project that I was doing for my school work, so I was glad to complete that.

Today has turned out to be a lovely day here. It was kinda frosty this morning, but now it looks rather spring-like outside. It has been an extremely icy winter here and everywhere it seems, so I wanted to share a sneak peek of spring that I found today.

Blue skies are always good :-)



And our crocuses out back are breaking through. It’s so nice to have some color outside again.



Here's to spring coming soon. I know that we will still have more of that biting wind of winter to come, but I know that it will go away one day soon. In the meantime, I'm gonna enjoy the tail end of winter while I rejoice in the coming of spring. Stay warm everybody :-)

Some Moody Photos

On Tuesday, Brit Boy and I traveled to Salisbury once again and along the way, I took some photos as we rode along. It was a cloudy day with bits of sun here and there, so the light was very interesting. I love the way that the trees look with no leaves as they reach for the sky. I was in the mood to take some black and white photos. It sort of suited the day. Some are blurry, but I thought I'd share them anyway. I love how photographs catch a moment in time, so this is a series of photos of our time that day. It's mostly a photo essay of our path to Salisbury. I hope you enjoy it :-) This photo above is really blurry, but I thought it was interesting that the raindrops stood out.

Snow Is the Word

Well, we had snow overnight again and it is still snowing out here in Wiltshire. It’s pretty to look at, but it’s tough to get around. The main roads are fine, but out where we live, some of the roads are kind of piled up. The local authorities are running out of grit/salt so they aren’t able to treat many of the roads. So there is a scramble going on. I learned something new about this whole grit/salt business from the news the other day that I didn’t know. Apparently they put molasses in some of the grit/salt here to help it grip better. Who knew :-)

We keep getting lots of snow each night. It’s been back and forth. It revved up again overnight and we woke up to more snow this morning. Right now it’s really coming down again. It looks like little white feathers falling out of the sky.

Here’s a photo I took from the upstairs window earlier, before it started snowing hard again. I went outside to check things out. Gotta see what's going on in "the shire" ;-) I had been beaten to making tracks in the snow though. Brit Boy had beaten me to it earlier when he left for work and then I met the lady who hands out the newspaper supplement. So there was lots of traffic down our path. I am still thinking about going out to make a snow angel later. We shall see :-) I think I’ll wait for Brit Boy and we can make a matching set.




We were due to have our garbage pickup today, but I don’t think they will be making it down our street today. We have a hilly, winding, narrow street that’s getting trickier to drive down by the minute, so it’s probably best that they don’t try it today. We’ll be fine though…our wheelie bin is only about half full.

So the word for this week in wintry Wiltshire is definitely….SNOW! :-) Have a great weekend!

We Got Snow!!!

We got some snow last night and it was still snowing this morning a bit, but now it's melting. Here are a couple of photos before the melt began. It was enough to be pretty without grinding things to a halt. It was wonderful to watch it snow last night with Brit Boy right next to me at the window. Ain't life grand :-)

London Adventure End of 2008

Hey there everybody! Well, Brit Boy and I made it safely to and from London yesterday. This time there was no nail-biting coach trip…lol. We took the train this time. I love making the journey on the train. You get to see the countryside on the way, with all of the little houses that are hidden if you drive in on the highway. And also the train takes half the time so it is my favorite.

We headed out early. We got up at about 5:30am so that we would have time to get dressed, scrape the ice off the car, and get to the train station which is a few miles away. According to Brit Boy the train used to stop here in our little neck of the woods, but they by-pass us now. So we have to drive into town to catch the train. But it’s not too far :-) Anyway, we have been having some really wintery weather the last few days and yesterday was the coldest by far. So we scraped the car and headed for town in the dark. We were catching the 7:40ish train to give us enough time.

We got to town, parked the car and then walked around to the train station. We had pre-booked tickets, which cuts the price considerably. We sat in the waiting room for a few minutes with the other passengers and then our train arrived soon after. We whisked off to London as the morning light slowly grew. It was beautiful to see everything quiet and peaceful as we sped towards London in those early hours.

Our trip to London was so that I could drop by the US Embassy. I went so that I could get some advice about tax filing and stuff like that. It can all get a bit complicated, let me tell you :-) But they answered my questions and I was able to pick up some handy pamphlets before I left, so I’m all information-ed up ;-) This was my first visit to the embassy, so it was one of those things that I figure will go in my catalogue of life experiences. We figured that a visit on a semi-off week would be the best time to visit and we were right. I got in and out in less than forty minutes. I’m sure that it is a lot more hectic during non-holiday weeks, so I was so grateful that I didn’t have to stand in line and could ask loads of questions without holding up a line or anything. It was great. They were kind and very helpful to me. There were maybe eight other people there at the time and we all got our own person to speak with.

It was a very unintimidating experience and it just felt like any other government office here or back home…I’ve been to both and it is the great unifier that they are so alike :-) I had to go in alone, since only the person seeking assistance comes in, which we found out ahead of time. I didn’t have any nerves about going in on my own. I just wanted to get it over with so that we could go do other stuff. I’ve had to deal with so much stuff like this in the last few years that now it’s nearly normal to me to do my grand tour of the government buildings on both sides of the pond :-) So Brit Boy went to have coffee and hang out while I was inside the embassy.

Here’s where our comedy life comes in…there’s always a sequence like this in our lives. LOL. I wasn’t allowed to take in any electronic devices so I didn’t have my cell phone which made it hard to contact Brit Boy and tell him to come meet me on my walk back. So we decided to synchronize our watches and check back at our meeting spot every half hour. Our spot was between two telephone boxes, one black and one the customary red, on Park Lane which runs alongside Hyde Park.

So Brit Boy walked me to the embassy and then I went in and got all sorted out. When I came back out, I glanced at my watch, and I realized that it was about seven minutes until ten. So I trotted along down the sidewalk trying to get back to our meeting spot by ten. I thought, how good that would be to make our rendezvous the first time and not have to wait a whole other half hour. Let’s just say, I had a nice morning run and the air was like ice as I ran that two or three blocks with my purse bouncing. LOL. I made it back to Park Lane and kept up my little morning run. My cheeks felt like they had ice as their new skin. LOL. As I got about half way down the street I saw Brit Boy in the distance. I was too far away to yell and the traffic was so noisy he wouldn’t have heard me. Then he turned and headed back the other way. I thought, “Noooo!!!” LOL. So by the time I made it to the corner he was already down the block and headed across the street at a quick pace. It was a cold day so everyone was hustling along. Then he disappeared in the crowd. By this time I gave up my run and thought, ‘I’ll catch him on the next time around.’ And I just laughed to myself. It was like a movie or something :-)

So I headed to get a cup of coffee and to take a trip to the ladies’ room. It was so nice to thaw out my cheeks. And the warm latte went down my throat like a river of warm life replenishing me. Heaven :-) I sat at the window and looked out. I felt good at that moment. The chill had left my cheeks and I was rejoicing because I didn’t get out of breath really during the whole run and I don’t exercise nearly enough. So I figured that hey, that was pretty good. Also I felt good because since I’ve been living here, I don’t feel as independent because I’m learning my way here. But yesterday was the first time in a long time where I felt, ‘hey you’ve got this Dori’. It’s very easy to become very dependent on your spouse when you are the one away from what you know. London is a huge city and it can be kind of daunting to someone who was new to it like me. But we’ve been many times now and I’m to the point where if I ever got dropped there while blindfolded and then released, I could find my way around the city pretty much and get myself back home all the way out here to Wiltshire. So this was a turning point for me in my mind. This was when I realized that the independent person that I always was is still in there :-) What a great thing to realize as we head into a new year. Full steam ahead! :-)

I finished slurping down my coffee and then headed back to our meeting spot. Then in a few minutes, there he was :-) And I thought to myself, he came back and found me as I found myself again.

We headed off to the rest of our day. We went to have a bite to eat and went to the National Gallery. Before we went in though, we stood and watched some high school marching bands that were playing outside the museum. There were several taking turns playing. They were dressed up in their full uniforms and it brought back such fond memories for me. I was a marching band girl back in the 80s :-) They did a great job. I don’t know what was going on, but how cool is that to be a high school student who gets to go abroad and play.

Later we headed to Leicester Square and walked around. Then we ate again since we had walked the other food off hours earlier. We went to this place that specializes in fish dishes. It was really good. We both had crab cakes. It was so nice to get in from the cold.

We walked around and popped into places here and there and then headed to the tube station so that we could head to Paddington Station to catch our train home. Well, I got tested on my newfound comfort with the city. Brit Boy and I made it to the platform just as the train was about to head away and usually we jump on…no problem. Well, it was another one of our comedy moments. I was right with him, but all of a sudden a space came out of nowhere and he had hopped on and the door of the train closed :-) It was weird. So he mouthed, “I’ll wait for you”. And his little tube train sped away. I just shook my head and laughed. What an eventful day. So I hopped the next train and met him a couple of stations away. Thankfully the trains are close together.

It was cool. It just all seemed rather cinematic…two people…separated by the sliding doors of the tube…will they meet again in time….LOL. Classic Dori and Brit Boy! We reunited and headed to Paddington and waited for our train home to come. It was FREEZING!!!

Yesterday was a cold day and the night was even colder, but we huddled up with a warm drink and people watched. I love people watching at Paddington. A perfect winter evening.

When we got back to our car. It was frozen over with a thick layer of ice and it was only about 7:30pm. We scraped the ice off the outside and then scraped it from the inside of the window and it refroze. Now that’s cold!!! LOL. Then the defrost kicked in and we headed home…happy to see our little house and to know that there was a warm drink and a snack inside. It was an eventful and fun winter’s day and a great way to end the year! Happy New Year everyone! Many blessings to you all!!! :-)

Snow in the Countryside

I wanted to share some photos that I took on Thursday on the way to Salisbury. Brit Boy and I were heading down there for a meeting. As I wrote about on Wednesday, we have been having some very frosty mornings. So when we headed out on Thursday morning, it was icy again. As we drove further out into the countryside towards Salisbury, we saw that it had snowed a tiny bit. We had heard on the radio that some areas got snow, but we didn’t. So it was a wonderful sight to see the dusting of snow across the fields. I just love being out where I can see the land and enjoy the beauty of nature.

All of these photos were taken from the car, so they have a cool blurry quality. I like to see how they will come out, so I just snap away as Brit Boy drives along. I love having a chance to share some of them with you all.

The first one is of a lone black bird sitting in the middle of the snowy field. I love the contrast :-)




This next one is the view across a field. On either side of the road, there’s a wonderful panoramic view.



I love this spot. You drive down the hill and off to the left there’s a drop off into a valley.




Here’s a view of Salisbury Cathedral’s spire in the distance as we drove into Salisbury. This spire is the tallest one in the United Kingdom. It is a beautiful building and is a beautiful sanctuary.



On our way back from Salisbury, I took a couple of more photos of the surroundings. By then, the thin layer of snow had melted. We came back through Avebury. Here is a line of some of the huge stones. It is reminiscent of Stonehenge, but these at Avebury are more spread out.



This last photo is of one of the larger stones that is placed very close to the road. It almost looks as if we are headed right for it, but we weren’t. It just came out weird like that. I saw the stone coming and I turned around in my seat a bit and just kind of snapped it as we passed by. I didn't know if I would get it or not.




It was a fun ride! :-)

Winter Is Here

Winter is definitely here now, even though the official date on the calendar hasn’t arrived yet. This morning we woke up to a frosty world outside. The grass had a layer of frost over it and the trees and bushes were iced up also. Here’s a photo of a bush at the edge of our yard. The spider web was frosted over. It looks kinda cool.



Now most of the frost has melted and the sun is shining. As the frost melted off of the fence out back earlier, there was steam rising up from it, like the fence was on fire. Nature is an amazing thing.

Another by-product of winter, and a sign to me that winter has checked in, is the effect on my hands. For the last couple of years, my sensitive little Georgia skin ;-) has been trying to get used to the colder weather here and I think that the cold has been winning the battle :-) But bit by bit, I’m acclimatizing to the much colder weather, but it is taking me a while :-)

I’m gonna share a photo here that shows what my hands are looking like today. I hit a definite point last night when the skin on one of my fingers split open while I was just sitting here watching television and it bled on my shirt. Eek!!! :-) My hands are so raw and sore right now. I have got to start on an intensive hand care treatment pronto.




As you can see, my hands look parched and a bit scary. I decided to put on one of my rings to save you all from the full brunt of my prickliness. LOL. My wannabee fashionista inside decided to spruce up the photo a bit to spare you. LOL.

My hands don’t usually look this way. I usually moisturize, but now I’m gonna have to ramp it up big time. Wish me luck… :-) Hello Winter!

Another London Concert Night

Brit Boy and I had another trip into London on Wednesday for our only true addiction….going to concerts. LOL. We went to see Simply Red. They are going to disband sometime next year, after 25 years by that point, so we just had to go and see them do their thing. The lead singer Mick Hucknall, will still record as a solo artist.

We got home Thursday at about 2:30am, so I spent yesterday chilling and we got some rest and relived it in our heads. Now I can share what happened. It’s always thrilling to get a chance to go into London and going to a concert makes it even more fun.

On Wednesday, Brit Boy worked a half day and then he came home around noon. We had a bit of lunch, watched a bit of TV, and then we got all suited up to go out into the cold on the way to a hot time in the city :-) It has been very cold here lately, but then it’s winter isn’t it. Anyway, we took our faithful old coach/bus ride into London. There’s a company that runs trips to London and mostly everywhere around Britain that we usually take. You can either buy your own tickets and then just catch a ride to and from the concert with them or you can get a package deal and they get the tickets and give you the ride. We have done both things, but this time, we took the second option and got our tickets from the coach company. The perk with this is that they usually get you pretty good seats to the concerts. It’s a win win situation.

So we headed into town and parked our car and headed to our pickup point for the coach. When you get to the coach and check in, they give you an envelope with your tickets inside and you hop aboard. This time we got a seat right at the front, so we had full view of where we were headed. This was both thrilling and a bit terrifying. It was really cool to be able to see everything and to feel almost like we were being hurled through the air. The big window was all that was in front of us so it felt almost like flying and this was fun. But it also got a bit hairy at times because our coach driver had a lead foot and tailgated and switch lanes a bit wildly :-) Brit Boy and I both thought a couple of times that we might just be thrown right out of that big, lovely window in front of us and onto the motorway/freeway as the coach driver slammed on the brakes many times. Eeeek!!! Let’s just say, our hearts were in our mouths for about 60% of the trip :-) We survived and felt like kissing the ground when we stepped off the coach. LOL.

On a calmer note, when I peeled my eyes away from what was happening ahead of us, I would glance out the side window and the view was wonderful. You can see so much from that high up. I’ve traveled that road many times to London, but from this vantage point, it was like seeing parts of it for the first time. I saw streams that were hidden in the woods and beautiful country houses that I didn’t know were there.

When we were almost there, the coach stopped for a bathroom and refreshment break at a rest stop. We were given about thirty minutes. Brit Boy and I went and had a cup of coffee. I had a coffee that was chocolate cookie flavored. It was really tasty. Brit Boy had a regular cappuccino. We stopped at this same rest stop on a trip before, and had fun playing with the various carnival-esque machines there. This time we didn’t bother. The machines are right near the entrance and the freezing air was whooshing in each time the doors opened. The time before, it was summer so it was lots of fun, and there were no icicles hanging off of us :-) The time passed quickly and we were all back onto the coach to finish the journey.

About thirty minutes later, we arrived at the O2. As I’ve mentioned before, it’s a cool venue. It is on the Greenwich Peninsula and sits right on the edge of the River Thames. It was formerly known as the Millenium Dome. It sits there beautifully with the lights of Canary Wharf in the background. London is a fun spot at night. It has a groovy vibe.

Brit Boy and I walked along with a spring in our step…we were heading to our favorite thing…music!!!! :-) As we walked along the walkway to the complex, we noticed that they had a small Christmas market. Here’s a photo of the little castle they had set up.



On from that, they had a few stalls set up. We didn’t really linger for very long because it was an icy cold night and the breeze off the river was positively bone chilling. I knew that it was cold because Brit Boy, who is usually always hot, was running towards the building to get away from the cold (smile). Now that’s cold!!! So we scampered on inside.

The O2 was decked out for Christmas. One of my favorite things is the huge light fixture that hangs in the entry area. It is usually white or blue, but this time it had a colorful strobe going on. We walked around the outer ring of the arena, where all of the restaurants and clubs are…great people watching. Everything was even more sparkly than usual with all of the holiday cheer being spread around. They had a snowboarding/sledding area set up and kids from 8 to 80 were having a go at it. I would have loved to, but the line was long. Here’s a photo though with the little chalet to the side. The photo is kinda blurry, but you can get the idea. Brit Boy and I took the photos on his cell phone and it was kind of chilly still, so our hands were shaking a bit. LOL.




They also had special ornamental lights hung around the place. Here’s a pretty sparkly one.




And they were projecting snowflakes onto the roof and it created a great wintry atmosphere. Here’s a look.




Soon it was time to go in for the concert. It was AMAZING!!! I have always liked their music and I always thought that Mick Hucknall had a lovely set of pipes, but I was simply blown away…Brit Boy was too. Wow! You can definitely tell that this group has a powerful connection and a history because they know just how to put out the best performances and take you along for the ride. The musicians are true pros and the backup singers are amazing! They are all so good that it makes the performance seem effortless. But then I guess that that is what truly talented people do :-) And Mick Hucknall….he has a soulful voice that can just send absolute chills down your spine because he is so good, as many of you already know. Dang…he can REALLY SING!!! :-) The song they opened with was “It’s Only Love”…great song! I tell you, I always loved their sound and I always loved Mick’s voice, but seeing them live and hearing his truly divine voice in person is just an experience that I won’t ever forget. The recordings don’t do his voice justice. And I think that he might have had a slight cold, because he coughed once between the songs, but that was that. I guess with a voice like that, not much can shut you down :-)

They performed all of their hits and we loved it, including our favorite, “Holding Back the Years”. It brought tears to my eyes because his voice just soared to the heavens and as I’ve gone through my life, the words of that song just hit me deep. The part of the lyrics where he sings “I’ve wasted all my tears…wasted all those years”, it just means more to me as I go through my life. It makes me think that time waits for no one and sometimes you just have to let go and make room in your heart and you don’t want to look back at the end and see that all you did was mourn and regret your life away. This song helped me a lot when my mom passed away. In the beginning it made me cry of course, but as time went on, it became a salve of sorts and it made me see the greater picture of my life and the broad span of my mom’s life too and her legacy. The great restorative power of music has always been a comfort to me.

Near the middle of the show, Mick sang “You Make Me Feel Brand New” which was originally done by The Stylistics. Mick hit this one out of the park! The range of his voice is amazing and the raw emotion and passion that he puts into each note just sends you soaring with him. Here’s a video I found of him singing this song in concert. This is great, but I think he sang it even better when we saw him at the O2 :-)



The concert was great. Simply Red will be on tour into 2009, so if they come to your town or nearby, I hope you can catch this group before they disband. It’s all just true talent from top to bottom. You will find yourself singing along with every song. There was a great celebratory vibe and they are amazing! :-)

After the concert, we headed back to the coach and strapped ourselves in for the “adventurous” ride home ;-) Let’s just say, thankfully it was dark, so we couldn’t see enough to be scared. LOL. But we survived the trip thankfully and it was worth it in the end because we had a great night! The coach driver took the scenic route through Central London so we got a nice ride through the city, all decked out in its Christmas finery. What a cool night in more ways than one!