LIFE: Small Things #11

They say March loves to come "in like a lion and out like a lamb" well it's pretty much living up to that saying this month in Michigan. From 60F weekends followed by snow emergencies, howling winds and back to blue skies, it's hard to keep up. In a funny comparison, recent snow showers in the old home land was being shared on Facebook of "lots of now", I think it barely measured an inch. Oh the perspective that moving to Michigan provided me when it comes to everything snow and winter. 

But that hint of something a little warmer, of those richer blue skies and the promise of bulbs popping up in the garden has got me feeling a little warm inside, and crafty, very crafty. So here's the latest small things pile of joy;

• Everything hummus related - just pure joy in a pot
• Managing three weeks of Daily Burn. Which for me is a big deal (it's an exercise work out thingy for those not in the know) because of my high laziness and stubbornness. While it's making me walk like John Wayne and ache in places I never knew I could ache, hopefully it's all doing some good. 
• Getting lots of crafting in starting with making some card (birthday and mothers card), it always fun to mess around with paper, glue and washi tape.
• Lots of new coloring books - apparently coloring book addiction is real. I'd highly recommend the Taste of Home Color magazine coloring book if you fancy something cheerful, cute and cheap (it's like $4.99 bargain!). 
• I finally got my hands on two of Theo Nicole Lorenz's coloring books - Unicorns are Jerks and Dinosaurs at Work both highly humorous and quirky. I really need to add her Mer World Problems (think first world problems for mermaids) too. 
• While many expats get food parcels, I get coloring books - yes another coloring book. This really fun book filled with vintage themed designs called Bygones. 
• Reading some great books - Judy Blume's In The Unlikely Event, Boneyards (Richard Bak) and currently Midnight in Perking (Paul French).
• Picking up a crochet hook for the first time in months and messing around with some vintage patterns.  
• Productive tidying up organizing days (aka throwing stuff in lots of pretty boxes and making everything look tidy).
• Starting a fabulously colorful new cross stitch project all about the homeland! 

So that's pretty much been my world, lots of crafting, coloring and good times.

How are things with you?

Rachael

LIFE: Photo An Hour November 2015

Oh hey everyone. I know I've been a little absent from the whole blogging thing. I don't think I've been near anything blog related in about two weeks and apparently I haven't shared anything here for the entirety of Noevember. As of right now, I'm not really sure of the future of my blog, I'm not really sure if I've reached the point of calling it a day or just drawing it right back and just writing whenever whatever. It's all a little up on the air.

But photo an hour was calling and well, it's hard to not join in. 

Saturday was actually the first proper snowfall of the winter 2015-2016 season with a predicated 8 or so inches of the white stuff, but I think we ended up getting about 5". It was also a day of trying to get on top of all our boring adult chores, think changing oil in the car, putting the window insulation up, hanging curtains and getting a start on Christmas shopping kinda day. Followed by cross stitching, hot dogs, whiskey and everything from Jessica Jones to the Mindy Project. 

EXPAT REVELATIONS: The Seasons

Weather and the seasons, that age old tradition that us Brits love, love, love to talk about. As you might have noticed, it does frequently feature on my blog. Which is why I enjoyed putting together this topic for the Expat Revelation series with Holly. I didn't consider the seasonal differences before moving here I will be honest. Maybe if I had, I would have been mentally prepared for the differences between South East Michigan and East Yorkshire. 

Michigan is both warmer (yey) and colder (boo) than Yorkshire. Average temperatures hit a high of 82F (28C) in July to a cold 17F (-8) in January. It seems in the last three plus years that America has been home, all averages have been smashed. Especially the average cold temperature, -8C would be a pretty warm seeing I've spent most of 2015 in -20C. Luckily, Michigan is a lot dryer than good old Yorkshire, not that that's at all surprising it does like to rain in Yorkshire. Less rain, more snow, I can't win. 

So let's start as we mean to go on with the season right out my window, winter:

PHOTO: NOAA via The Detroit News

Right now i'm covered under that super cold whiteness. Yes it's that cold and wintry.  

I have to admit, I have never seen as much as snow as I have until moving here. In winter you're guaranteed a good foot or four or snow throughout the season with -20C becoming the new norm this year. In fact in 2013 we hit about 100 inches in total of snow. Around here winter is measured by how much the Great Lakes freeze over. Currently that stands at nearly 85% of the Lakes being covered by ice. Which is pretty awesome when you consider the Great Lakes is home to 21% of the worlds fresh water by volume (ta wiki for that fact). Unlike the UK, Michigan doesn't grind to a halt and just gets on with it. Wearing four layers becomes the norm, -8C feels warm, and snow shoveling is a nice winter work out.

Spring brings hazy days but not until late April and May. Temperatures are much like a warm British summer day. As  far as seasons go, it's pretty uneventful but lovely all the same. 

Oh summer with your long hot days around the high 20's into the 30's (C). Still a little hot for this Brit to fully enjoy. Sometimes we get a tornado watch or warning when it's the season (late spring through early summer). Sometimes one passes through, although rarely. Long warm days lead to stormy nights. The thunder is eerily loud and threatening enough that it use to scare me the first year or so.

And what's the result of those warm spring days, lovely summers and a mild autumn with it's colder nights? A beautiful colorful colourful autumn finale. The fall colours Michigan has to offer because of it's seasons is one of the reasons I love calling the mitten home. Burnt oranges, to crisp reds and dazzling golden yellows, the Michigan landscape comes alive. By the end of October the trees are naked and Thanksgiving always rolls around with a snow shower or three.

We're lucky in Michigan that we actually get to enjoy all four seasons with their quirks and charms. According to all the seasonal information out there, Michigan is more cloudy than the norm. It's one of the affects of being surrounded by all the Great Lakes. Many leave the mitten and it's surrounding northern states for the warmer climes of the south to retire, it certainly tests what you're made of. But those fall colours, having those of your doorstep, that makes it all worth while in my book.

LIFE: Photo An Hour Feb 2015

Saturday became a Saturday without any plans. By the time Friday was upon us, Joe was sick and the forecast was suggesting another 3" of snow. But no snow came, and Joe was feeling (somewhat) better, but like January's #photoanhour, estate sales were bleak and few & far between, so we were a meh about them all. In the end our day ended up revolving around one of our shared loves - records. 

8 am // Saturday morning started like any other - snuggles and play time with teeny tiny (who actually turned four in the past week). Normally she has her butt up against the air vent in my craft room, then see's me and get's all "come and rub my tummy" but today she was all about owning a paper bag. 

9 am // After picking up a handful of cheap original 7" singles (think Johnny Cash, Michael Jackson, Motown) the week previous I decided it was high time I got around to decorating our single shelves in our record room. 

10 am // Some people read, some people poke the internet, I cross stitch to pass the time while we worked out what we were going to do, or think about doing. This Transformers piece is one I've been working on since Christmas, I have a bit of a love hate relationship with it but the end is in sight.

11 am // Because bacon and egg sarnie. Need I say more?!

12 pm // Getting out in the frozen tundra is an effort in itself with all the layers, boots, hats, and frozen snow, especially with it being -18C most of the week. Even Iceland has been warmer than Detroit. Brrrr. But I get cabin fever pretty bad so sometimes you just have to get out regardless.

1 pm // We ended up in Hamtramck. After coming across this Metro Times article about Detroit's best record stores and having not hit any for a while (plus we finally got our brand new turntable at the start of the week wup) we decided to hit Detroit Threads which is a mashed up mix of records (lots and lots of techno) mixed with vintage clothes and souvenir tees. 1 pm hit as we were making a chilly dash back to the car and this building caught my eye with it's old painted advertisement. Hamtramck is one of those places that is now firmly on my to explore list, with it's Polish heritage and now increasing Indian population, it's home to some great places to eat, or so I hear.

2 pm // By now we'd explored Solo Records (super friendly) in Royal Oak and were leaving Found Sound (super hipster) in Ferndale with a bag of records in tow. Horrid Michigan winter grey skies for added gloom.

3 pm // New records means an afternoon listening to them. Like we need an excuse.

4 pm // Finally got around to sorting out some threads and starting off those first stitches of a new cross stitch project. This'll end up as a group of daffodils i'm going to stuck upon and use for a greetings card, much like I did with the ones at Christmas. It's actually a free chart from DMC - yey.

5 pm // Weakness of living near a Taco Bell is that I can't turn down a trip, smothered burrito for tea it is then.



6 pm // Pretty much starting the evening as we intend to go on - a date with the remote for Netflix and Hulu (gotta love how our DVD player has a Netflix button, oh modern technology). Between watching South Park, anime and old X-Men cartoons it was a night of catching up with the Metro Times and blog reading.

7 pm // Oh and drinking whiskey, because that's how I roll. I tend to call it a day at this point, because I run out of ways of showing blog reading, TV watching and whiskey drinking.

I guess you could say Saturday summed me up pretty well - whiskey, records, cats, cross stitch, Detroitness and food. If that sparks your interest you can always follow my day to day going's on over on my instagram if you haven't been inflicted with it all ready!

So that was my Saturday, how was yours?

LIFE: Super Snow Days

I often feel a bit of a broken record when it comes to weather talk. Then again it is a British pastime. It's small talk, something to break the ice at a bus stop. Back in 2008 a survey concluded that the top British trait was talking about the forecast even if the weather is pretty, on the whole uneventful although it's constantly changing. It's a love that surpasses curtain twitching, watching soaps and our love of queuing. Sadly American's, maybe even the rest of the world don't share that same appreciation or obsession, call it what you will, so I let it all out on social media.

So for that reason, it would be very un-British of me to not mention the third highest snowfall experienced in Detroit at the beginning of February. It dumped the most snow since 1974. Quite impressive. Across 24 hours we reached the wintry depths of 16" of the white stuff. Drifts of snow marked their way across our street, into our garden. At the time of writing this, there stands a thigh deep drift on our deck, so much so that I can't open on of our back doors due to it's weight. 

This all coincided with a couple of inches of snow falling on my British hometown and watching it grind to a halt from afar. Oh England.

I have to admit I was quite in awe, especially as it was the most snow I've ever experienced, in one storm that is. There is something magical about snow when it's so untouched, white and sparking. You catch a glint of a twinkle while you're shoveling and it glistens like glitter. But a week on and it's a mushy brown squishy melting mess.



Nevertheless, Michigan Central Station looked super pretty in the snow if nothing else.

LIFE: Snow Days

A couple of years ago, my home town met with a thief. Someone was driving the eight or so miles from another town, filling their car with the salt straight out of the salt containers for the footpaths and driving off. Coming from a rural town where nothing much goes on, the newspapers went full stream and there was public outcry among the masses and huge debates about council provisions. 

At the time, for me it wasn't a big deal. But now wow I'm old before my time and turning into a bit of a nimby and I get annoyed when my neighbours don't shovel their snow. Back when we lived in our apartment, snow shoveling wasn't an issue, but now we own a house, we have to do it ourselves. You see, in the US most cities have some ordinance that any snow on the footpaths (yeah yeah I'm not calling them a sidewalk, I'm pretty stubborn with my English words) in front of, around your house have to be cleared within a certain time of snowfall, for our city, it's 24 hours. They threaten fines, but going by the lack of shoveling on some of hour neighbours parts, that doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent.

Ho hum.

Some people join the gym come the new year, but I'm finding snow shoveling to be a jolly good work out in itself. It takes half an hour and I have a smug smile on my face when it's all cleared. Properly cleared. As someone who skates and falls on her arse on those paths that haven't been cleared fully and then the snow melts and ices, I fully appreciate a cleared path.

Coldness and winters are relative. I remember my days waiting for the bus into York and thinking how freezing it was when it was 5C. Now 2C feels like a heatwave, a daily search on the weather websites hunting for the "high" of the week and hoping there's no snowfall and layers, it's all about the layers. Holly sums it up spot on in her ABC's of winter post, granted she's over the border in Ontario, Canada but for the most part, everything is pretty similar, what with Canada being over the river from me and all.



Those spring bulbs I planted, well they and the season they herald the arrival of, well they can't arrive soon enough I reckon.

How's your winter been?

LIFE: Things #5

January is often one of those months that seems to past me by, it's never memorable or at least nothing memorable happens enough to make it a month of note. And aside from the snow, oh so much snow it's just the average old cold (very cold) and very snowy January - sucks that we're only half way through winter. Mid way through the month I deicide I wanted to do a photo a day, not a lark for social media or for my blog, but actually for myself, to get me picking up my camera again. I managed to cobble together some photographs from earlier in the month and intend to carry the mission on for the coming year, so it'll be 365ish Photo a Day. 

Otherwise the point of these things posts are always a little bit to let off steam, so here goes;

► Actually falling out of love with The Big Bang Theory - sadly just not finding it as funny or as geeky as it use to be. Controversial I know.

► And then falling in love with Community. 

► Getting lost with the huge increase in blog chats - don't get me wrong I love the chance to mingle, met and find new blogs, but when it's the same old topics (branding, getting sponsorship, paid posts) they just become too samey.

► Said blog chats always end up with people going on about needing a DSLR camera and making me doubt my own photographs because I don't have one, and probably never will (at least not in the near future).

► Also hearing twice within a week in blog chats people not following blogs if they dislike the blogs name - petty much?!

► Not really understanding why so many British people were staying up just for the Superbowl (even I wasn't watching it in the US)

► Hearing far too much about Valentines Day (urgh)

► Being grateful for being able to receive CBET (Canandian TV channel) through our cable so I can watch the winter Olympics live rather than NBC that only want to do highlights late at night. 

► Spending the week craving a Primanti Bros., sarnie and it thus resulting in having to have a chip buttie which is nothing in comparison. 

► Feeling the joy of sticking with a book that wasn't the most appealing or gritting when starting it - The Winter of Our Discontent (John Steinbeck) I'm looking at you ...

► Thinking about snow days growing up in Yorkshire - a snow day off school was when the bus couldn't get up the hill. This interesting map shows just how much snow it takes for schools to be cancelled in the US

► Then getting landed with another 5" of snow yesterday *yawn*

I'm so over snow.

How's your world?

LIFE: Icy Lakes and Blizzards

There is something a little unworldly when you look upon what's normally a lively lake at any other time of year. Yet come winter especially this one, for all the eye can see is pure ice. Apparently ice coverage upon the lakes is at it's largest amount for the last 25 years and covers 60% of all the lakes which make up the system.

Jefferson Avenue runs at least partially for a while in the area what's collectively known locally as the Grosse Points alongside the shore of Lake St Clair. While it's tiny in comparison to many other lakes in these parts, it makes up part of the Great Lake System which eventually works it's way eastwards. We happened to be over at that side of Metro Detroit for this weekends estate sales, and while forgetting both of our cameras again, I did manage to grab a couple of bleak shots with the old phone.



Everything you see to the horizon is ice. An ice lake. 

Don't be fooled by the blue skies, temperatures have done little to get above -5C, in fact -5 feels like a heatwave when the majority of the days are below -10. Crisp, biting winds powerful enough to drive huge snow drifts across the road and rock your car take over when the snow stops. Five minutes after the lake side photographs were taken we were met with a wall of snow blizzard driving and the fun starts again!

With 31.5" of snow falling in Metro Detroit this month - yes really, it's not surprising this month has seen more than any other in Detroit's weather records (although they didn't begin until 1888).

If you're like me and get interested in this kind of thing there's some great photographs of the ice on the lakes including this drone shot video of the ice upon Lake Michigan to these stunning frozen land camera shots of Lake Erie (the next lake down from Lake St Clair) by Kaylah on her blog The Dainty Squid.

Hope it's warmer where you are!

LIFE: Things #4

Oh Christmas, you're a joyous time of love and giving but you do get me out of my blogging routine for sure. With it being over a month since my last rambley/ranty things post - it's probably about darn time I do you an update. Granted there's been less rambley ranty things to write about (odd in itself) so more of a life update and you can always share your rants to make up for mine!

Estate sale book mountain // sleeping ed on my toes // Hell // selfie // Reindeer winnings from a claw machine // concrete mixer // British logic

So for the first time in 2014 ...

♥ After last weeks snow days, +3 degrees C now feels like a heatwave - but Hell (a place in Michigan) really did freeze over

♥ Constant stress about renewing my greencard (probably a frequent contender on the things list until it gets renewed  

♥ Grumbling about ebay non payers - story of my life

♥ Trying to wade through the huge backlog of draft posts for my blog ...

♥ Seeing my bloglovin blog followers list grow and grow - thank you much!

♥ Loosing hours google mapping locations of old motels and restaurants found upon vintage postcards and finding many of them have turned into McDonalds

♥ Coupons for BOGO on Culvers concrete mixers - happy times (if you ever happen to be in the Mid West/Plain states pop to Culvers, you won't regret it

♥ Filling bags of books for $5 at an estate sale and spending the afternoon reading 1950's government literature on how to survive an atomic bomb - just a bit of light reading

♥ Speaking of reading, setting up a Goodreads challenge of 30 books for 2014 (you can add me here if we're not already bookworm friends)

♥ Ranting to myself at the increasing non lifestyle blog posts and blogs you find when trawling through the #lbloggers twitter hashtag

♥ Kitties falling asleep on your toes ... to over your arm when you're trying to work

♥ Getting Hulu Plus, binge watching Reign, Ironside and Community and our decision to get around to canceling our cable altogether

♥ I know you like your new baby but you don't need to show how you've dressed it every single day on facebook ...


Oh look I did have a couple of rants in me!

LIFE: Snow Days

You might of heard about or be experiencing this crazy times of snowmageddon 2014 that's leaving it's snowy and bitterly cold trail over the US. We got a dumping of the white stuff on Thursday but come Saturday night it snowed all the way until Monday morning. For that Joe got a snow day from work (yey).

How much snow we actually got (probably 8-10 inches) would depend on where you stuck a ruler and the snow drifts have altered the landscape after the howling winds of Sunday night. In some places snow is creeping past the basement windows, over your knees and nearly covering the fire hydrants. It's weird though, it wasn't heavy heavy snowfall, it just appeared and kept on adding up. Our car had a nice 4" winter snow jacket on by the time we had to venture out to the post office come Monday afternoon.

The -14C temperatures on Monday wasn't too constructive to be spending too long outside with my camera so it was more of a quick dash around - it's even been too cold for the kids around us to build snowmen. While the snow may been lessening off for now, instead we're now as I type this it's -24C and our apartment is struggling to keep warm.

Stay warm folks!