This Week I……

Well, I promise you this isn’t one of those weeks where I say “Well, I didn’t really DO much” because this week I did LOTS of things.

There are probably a lot of people out there who do a lot more things in a week, hell, one of the bloggers I was on a trip with earlier this week had just flown back from Italy 2 days before, but for me this is busy. I’m a homebody at heart. I like to go out for cocktails, but I very much like to come home and put my pyjamas on and eat toast as well.

Next week I have plenty of incredibly dull toast and pyjamas planned, right after I go to a fashion show tonight (gotta have something for next weeks diary!), but this week I…..

Went on an aeroplane

I am not a frequent flyer. I can count on the fingers of both hands the flights I have taken in my life (Amsterdam, Tenerife, Malta, Aberdeen, Las Vegas, Munich, Basel). Given the choice I will go on ferries or in a car. It’s not flying that I don’t really like, it’s airports. All the security and the mysterious rules about taking laptops out of your bag and putting your toiletries in clear plastic and taking off shoes all freak me out and making flying very stressful and me very anxious.

I got searched on the way out because I forgot to put a small bottle of dry shampoo in my plastic bag. I made it through alive though, and the staff actually seemed positively cheerful, so it was a lot less stressful than I thought. Not that I now plan to fly a lot. It’s still stressful.

Got covered in Confetti

You’re going to hear a LOT more about this over the next few days so I won’t bang on about it here. Suffice to say that the reason for my aeroplane trip was to visit the carnival or Fasnacht in Basel in Switzerland. I had the BEST time. I seriously spent hours stood in the street watching the parades, grinning like a loon and covered in confetti.

When I got home on the Tuesday I had confetti in my shoes and underwear still. It’s crazy, there’s a LOT of confetti.

Learnt how REAL bloggers photograph their food

Seriously folks, I’m lacking. I’m just a lowly fashion and lifestyle blogger. I spend a lot of time on outfit shots, but when I think “Oooh, my dinner is pretty” I just grab a shot of the table. Maybe I’ll move a pepper pot out of the way, but it won’t go much further.

This week I travelled with food bloggers and I learnt that this was wrong. Food and condiments were ordered specifically to dress a photo. Placemats were removed, local newspapers were sourced and there was standing on chairs.

Breakfast as snapped by me looks like this (I stole the newspaper, it was a nice idea)

The same breakfast table as snapped on my phone by actual food bloggers looks like this.

On the way home from Gatwick on Wednesday we stopped at Ikea to buy a couple of bits.

We had meatballs, because what on earth is the point of a trip to Ikea if you don’t have meatballs?

I decided I needed to up my food flatlay photography game. I failed on the first step as there were no tables by the window. I did do some nice arranging while Mr Chick complained that his fish would get cold. I tried standing on a chair but Mr Chick told me to get down in a hissy voice as apparently I was embarrassing. Still, with a bit of editing I thought the results were ok.

Maybe I’m moving up in the food photography world?

Went out for dinner

I arrived back in Norwich at 4pm on Wednesday, and at 1pm on Thursday my Parents came for a visit. I had spent 9 of the intervening 21 hours at my desk desperately doing all the work I hadn’t done while I was away, and 10 of them asleep.

We had burgers for lunch, which I didn’t photograph, so obviously I learnt nothing while I was away. Then we went out for dinner. It was dark. I took this photo. I think my blogger license is about to be revoked.

I don’t see my parents often enough as they live in Kent. We visited for Christmas, but this is the first time we’ve seen them since, and that’s actually quite a short gap between visits!

We had a lovely evening, a few beers, and then there was singing. The restaurant staff at the hotel started to lay out breakfast things around us, so we took that as a hint and retired to the pub across the road.

We tried to persuade them to move to Norwich, as we do every time they visit. They said no thanks, they were happy where they were. Fools.

Cleared out the drinks cupboard

And to finish off the week, last night we had a couple of friends round to play silly drinking games. An excellent opportunity to clear out the drinks cupboard!

We started with sensible drinks, and by the end of the night we’d moved onto things in weird colours. Creme de menthe, clove liquer and black beer. Things we didn’t even know we had.

Black beer is actually a really nice malt liquor, we picked it up in a local shop years ago, and were sad to discover when we investigated it last night that it has since ceased production because of changes to tax regulations by HMRC.

Boo.

And that was my week. It also included a trip to the gym, and roller derby practise. Next week expect to see a lot of sleeping in my diary. I may set aside an entire day for it.

How was your week?