Knilly Frickers

Shortly before Christmas, James started asking me about books  'We've never really had the book chat, have we?' 'No, I guess we haven't' I mean we've had the Harry Potter chat - FYI, I'm a Ravenclaw,  Neville Longbottom is my hero and Bellatrix Lestrange is my mortal enemy. What he was referring to is that while we each know the other has a love of reading, we've never really delved into a chat about authors and genres, although in hindsight this seems remiss of me. I bore other people, sometimes actual strangers, with my book chat daily.  He's lost me in bookstores for a good ten minutes because something has caught my eye and I've swooped towards it for a closer inspection.  When he picked 'You Do You' as one of my gifts, he did so partly because it's something I say quite often, but also because Sarah Knight featured pretty high on my list of favourite authors. For someone who called their blog The Quirky Queen, has blue ombre ...

I've been working from home over the last few days - something I'm very fortunate to be able to do, I know that lots of people have been stranded on motorways, in work, in airports etc.  Alongside working from home, all of the things I do outside of work were cancelled and I’ve been spending a lot of time indoors. Although I can be a bit of a homebody, I do actually thrive on getting out and about. I'm not really complaining, I'm very lucky to have had the warmth and comfort of my home to work in, a luxury that not everyone has had access to.  My mind does wander a little more at home though and I thought it would be funny to record and share my thought process across the last few days.  Wednesday 7.16am Confirmation received from work that the snow is too cray-cray to be venturing out in the direction of the office.   7.17am I go back to bed and enjoy the lie in afforded to me by a lack of need to travel or put on clean underwear.  8.30am  I’ve been awake ...

*Clubbercise is not suitable for those with photosensitive epilepsy * When I was a kid I used to love dancing, around the house, in the garden, in the playground, anywhere really. I took classes in Disco, Tap, Ballet and Modern, I have a few certificates under my bed from my dance exams and even have a few medals, although I pretty sure they were for participating!  When biology took over my body in my early teens I sort of gave up dancing, with the exception of the occasional shimmy  at a friend's birthday, a night out or a wedding....or in my car.  It's probably been about 14 years since I've been anywhere near a dance class, so naturally when my sister in law suggested I join her at clubbercise I was a little reluctant but after she'd been and told me how fun it was I decided to give it a go.  If you've never been to or heard of clubbercise it's easy to follow dance moves to 90s club classics with glow sticks and disco lights!  At first I felt really out of p...

I’m a big fan of alliteration, you may have gathered this about me already if you’ve read some of my other blog posts. So I decided that on Friday’s I’m going to start posting about activities or things I’m experiencing for the first time - Friday Firsts I think I shall call it. Anytime I try or go somewhere new I can channel it into something creative to share with others. I’d like to be optimistic and say I’ll do one every week but I’ll play it by ear!  This weeks Friday First involves cooking - I know, shock horror.  It also involves avocados. Just because avocados!  I'm becoming a bit obsessed with avocados, I have socks, a lunch box, earrings.....I digress.   Behold - avocado potato salad!  I can’t take credit for the recipe, I found it on Pinterest and comes from a site called Beckys Best Bites . I'd strongly recommend having a look, there are some great recipes on there. Ingredients: I didn't stick rigidly to the recipe as I had no Dill or Cilantro b...

I did say in my last blog post that there would be no  'New Year, New Me'  but I have given my blog a new name so I didn't really stick to that... You'll have gathered if you've read my blog that I like to embrace the quirky things in life, the musings and content will still come from the mind of Rachie, my name just won't be in big letters at the top.  I mentioned in my last post  I'd like to use my blog to embrace all things quirky in my life whether that's sharing my musings, talking about my adventures or sharing things I've found. I've never really had a theme for any of my personal blogs before and I'm not certain that quirky is really a theme, but it will be the thread that stitches everything together... I hope.  It's a Rachie Thing was an outlet that helped me to process my thoughts, continue to develop content when I had no other outlet for my creativity and develop my own voice. I've brought over all of my existing content,...

It's the last day of 2017 and as I often do at this time of year I'm feeling inquisitive about what the coming year will bring.  In the past I've spent the entirety of this day thinking about all my flaws and imperfections, what I'd like to change and how I'd fit those into New Years resolutions.  In the last few years, whether it's come with age or circumstance, I've learned that I'm really not about New Years resolutions.    I even posted a blog about it in January which you can read here .  I do have some challenges I'd like to take on and some achievements I'd like to unlock across the next year but I'm not going to make them a must do, more of an I'd like to do.  There will be no need for me to feel like crap come the 5th of January when I haven't achieved the first 10 on a list of 15.  I'd like to change my blog a little, not much, but a little. When I first started my blog, it was really self therapy with the occasional rev...

Today’s musings came to me while I was eating my lunch. Alongside my lunch I had five Jaffa Cakes (other biscuits are available).  When a colleague asked my how I eat them (full moon, half moon, total eclipse)  it occurred to me I don’t know!  I decided to make it my lunch time mission to eat each on in a different way.  It set me off thinking about a thing that I hear people say quite often about how you can’t do the same thing and expect different results.  In a lot of aspects of my life I do tend to favour the same approach and hope that something happens and get sad when it doesn’t. That’s partly my own fault, I’m indecisive and I like to err on the side of caution and remain in my comfort zone. Sometimes that’s a good thing, it keeps me safe and it keeps me happy, but other times it holds me back because I’ve not taken a risk. As you’ll have gathered, I don’t thrive on risks, not big ones anyway.  I’m trying to get better at that, identify ways to step...