Bringing Some Cheerz to Our New Home

Doesn’t time fly? Tomorrow will mark eight weeks since we moved into our new house and it is already four weeks since I started at the new company. Life is good but it feels that I can do nothing to slow down time. Buying our own home has been as exciting as we expected but not without its challenges.

We bought off-plan and are still working through a significant snagging list. I’ve been chatting to our new neighbours and they are all as happy as can be! It seems it was only us that had to replace half their kitchen because the builders drilled through the electrical supply when installing the cupboards. Nobody else had to replace half the kitchen ceiling because the shower flooded from the first floor and nobody else is still dressed and presentable by 7am each morning to let a stream of builders into their home.

As you can imagine, I needed an extra dose of cheer in my life and was thrilled when the lovely people from Cheerz contacted me to ask if I would like to try out their service. It was serendipitous – I’d already seen a post about Cheerz on a fellow blogger’s site and was very pleased to be contacted.

After expressing my excitement and enthusiasm, we agreed that I would try out a Big Square and a Little Square.

Registration and User Experience

Registering on Cheerz is easy and can be done using Facebook or your email address. Once on the site, you choose your product and then upload a series of photos to the interface. At this point you click on the photos you’d like to add and then move to a preview screen. From here, you can move the photos around and you can also edit how they are cropped. You can even add a couple of filters.

Cheerz is designed with Instagram in mind but I used my original photography as taken with my Canon 1000D. I find that iPhone photography can be great on digital but often suffers in print.

The Cheerz Big Square

For the Big Square, I chose a series of photos from our trip to Italy in 2013. I really liked how well the photos came out and how striking the colours are. The dark frame looks great and the size allows just enough detail to be eye catching.

We decided to hang the Big Square in our main bedroom and it looks lovely.

The Big Square retails at £40 plus postage, is 40cm x 40cm and can take between 4 and 16 photos. I was pleased with our choice of 9 photos.

The Cheerz Little Square

For the Little Square, I chose four photos from our trip to France last year. As you can see from the photo above, the photos I chose should have definitely been bolder and more colourful. If you choose a Little Square, do keep that in mind. I chose to hang the Little Square outside my study so that I can see it and think of France every time I trudge in for more studying.

If I could make one recommendation, it would be to offer the Little Square in the same dark frame as the Big Square so that they match and because I think it looks nicer.

The Little Square is £20 plus postage, is 20cm x 20cm and takes 1 or 4 photos.

The Customer Service

The customer service at Cheerz was superb. One of my orders was held up by the courier and when I emailed to trace the order, they immediately sent a replacement order. I didn’t want to make a fuss but was assured that this is the standard service that they provide to all customers.

Verdict

Would I use Cheerz again? Yes. I love how the Big Square turned out and love the idea of hanging my own photos on my walls.

Cheerz Discount Code

I hope I’ve convinced you to give Cheerz a try. If so, you can click here or use the code MANM9Y when checking out for a £4 discount off your first order. In full disclosure, I will tell you that by using this code, I will also be rewarded with credits towards my next order.

That’s all for now. I leave you with one final photo of masks that we bought in Venice and a lamentation that I wish my home-photography skills were a little bit better! I definitely think I need a tripod and a lot of practice because the photos I have taken have been pretty dire.

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Featured Photo: Reflection

When we visited the Mayor's Thames Festival two weekends ago, I spotted this reflection as we rounded the corner to Gabriel’s Wharf.  I knew immediately that it would make a fabulous featured photo and so I stopped dead and hauled out my camera to capture it. 

It might be worth noting, for beginner photographers, that stopping dead in extremely crowded situations will not only make the crowds around you pretty irate, but it will also cause your husband to wander off and pretend he doesn't know you.

Still, I think it is worth it.  Somehow, I captured a mood, the last gasp of optimism and joy as we celebrated a fantastic British summer and welcomed in the autumn. 

Can you believe that I used to dislike autumn?  I don’t anymore.  I’m looking forward to wearing scarves and elegant tights, cardigans and bright autumn colours.  What I missed most this summer was darkness and lights and I’m looking forward to the endless night too. 

I’m also determined to get back indoors after a summer outside, which sounds crazy, I know, but I resolve to frequent more museums, art galleries and events this autumn. 

I’m especially looking forward to seeing people.  I’m looking forward to hearty meals and hot drinks with friends, long walks and cosying up in coffee shops afterwards.

I’m feeling truly blessed as I have two visitors from South Africa visiting this weekend and then a week later.  I love having visitors from home (and especially love it when they bring me Peppermint Crisps).  We also have a lovely group of expat and bloggers that get together from time to time.  Winter has become so much less daunting since we all became friends.  It would be impossible to underestimate the impact of friendships on the expat experience, that is for sure!

And then in 90 days I arrive in South Africa.  Is it too soon to start counting down?

What are your plans for the autumn?

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Snow! At Last!

So, the long anticipated English winter finally arrived this week. On Tuesday, we experienced our first sub-zero temperatures and although we had some stunning blue skies this week, it was really cold!  Despite the cold, I was absolutely, 100% convinced that it was not going to snow.  Call it denial but I honestly thought that the snow wouldn’t fall in my little corner of south east England.

I was wrong.  It began snowing at about 9pm last night and must have snowed through the night because we woke up to a winter wonderland this morning.

Actually, that is not strictly true.  I woke up to the sounds of my neighbour shovelling snow from his driveway.  Now I have never heard that in my life before!  The snow isn’t usually bad enough for that in England but I expect that his wife had struggled to leave for work this morning. Anyway, it was weird.  

The next thing I heard was Stephen having an earnest conversation with our cat.  “No really, you don’t want to go outside… I told you you didn’t want to go outside!”

Later on in the morning my neighbours came out to play on their snowboards.  It was so cute as all I could hear was “Squeal! Giggle, giggle, giggle”.

I have no doubt that the snow is going to be less of a novelty or source of amusement tomorrow when I don my cow-print wellies and walk to the rail station in the snow, but it was pretty cool today.

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What Falling Snow Looks Like

A lot of my South African friends and family have never seen snow falling before (in fact, many have never seen snow) so I thought I’d take a short video.  Snow usually floats down softly and quietly so this was quite a downpour!!  What I love most about snow (apart from not actually having to be in it) it how silent it always is when it falls.

This was taken at 3.34pm, to give you an idea of how early it gets dark.  It is post-Winter solstice now and in fact, it is staying light just a little longer.

I tried so hard to take photos of the snow flakes as some of them were up to an inch in diameter!

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Let it snow!

It’s not often that I’m happy to see snow but I am over the moon tonight!  I’ve been praying all afternoon for the snow to come because for once in my life, I actually have work that I can do from home tomorrow.  It is our financial year end and so I have loads of cross checking that I can do and I emailed all the spreadsheets to myself before I left work today.

Southeastern Railways were being their usual useless selves and had already told us early this afternoon that trains would only be running every half hour tomorrow.  Of course, they neglected to say whereabouts in the hour their ‘half hour’ would start and as trains are generally oversubscribed as it is, I didn’t rate my chances of actually getting on any trains tomorrow.  With the predicted “extreme weather” having arrived, it is doubtful whether they will run at all. 

Wonderful news then… it is a snow day tomorrow!

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Where I Work: Autumn arrives

If I had to pick out my absolute worst habit, I would have to say that it is neglecting to take lunch breaks.  I get into work around 9am and work straight through until 5pm before running off to catch the train.  I’m terrible!  The last time I took a lunch break was in August and before that I think it was May when I had lunch at Joes!   

One of the biggest differences between England and South Africa is that we have four seasons here.  In Johannesburg, we had 9 months of scorching hot summer and 12 long weeks of ice cold nights and dry, hot days (that is winter!)  All Jo’burgers complain bitterly about the winter and we take for granted the fact that there are more dry, warm, sunny days then the whole of the English summer!

So, combining my rare lunch break and noticing the seasonal changes, I thought I’d post some of the photos I’ve taken on my Nokia N70 over the past 6 months.  All of these photos are taken in the recently renamed St George’s Churchyard Gardens in SE1.  You can read a bit more about the history of the gardens here.

Spring / early summer

This was taken on the 1st of May this year.  Spring was in full bloom and all the beautiful shades of green were starting to emerge.  I love that heady, balmy early summer feeling in England.  We didn’t get that in Jo’burg – it was freezing one day and then summer arrived the next. 

Late Summer

This was my third straight summer in England and in my opinion, it has been the warmest, nicest summer so far.  The first summer in 2007 was alternatively freezing and boiling (as in freezing all the time except when I was on crowded trains) and last year was pretty miserable.

This photo was taken on the 18th of August.  I’d managed to tear myself away from the office and made it about twenty minutes before running back inside!  (I’m shaking my head ruefully right now).

My building is the ivy covered building in the background.  A year after I first posted about the gardens, we are still waiting for Southwark Council to cut back the ivy!!!

Autumn

Taken today.  The leaves are turning orange, red and brown and falling to the ground and autumn is definitely here!  Despite the fact that it is nearly the end of October, I was sitting there today with a sleeveless shirt and a lightweight mac on! 

I managed to sit for a whole half an hour in the gardens today.  I’m reading a really good book (Marked) and I simply had to read as much as I could!

Winter

It has been a long and glorious summer and hopefully I’ll have enough sunny memories to last me through the winter.  I got really bad winter blues the past two years (last year it was exacerbated by having flu for two months) so I am coming out fighting this year!!  Every time I feel blue I can look back on these pictures and start planning my trip to Europe next summer. 

Next Summer

We were planning a road trip around Italy but now I am toying with driving from Dartford (in England), taking a ferry to France and then driving to Portugal.  Sheila from A Postcard a Day posted some gorgeous postcards from Portugal lately and I follow an awesome Portuguese photo blog Photo PT.  Going to Italy is still one of my biggest dreams but going to Portugal next year might just work better.  And the biggest reason for going to Portugal?  I could get to meet one of my best blogging friends Blue Kermit.

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At home: The Return of the Prodigal Cat

I interrupt my normal programming to tell you a story about my beloved boy cat Seth. Some of you may have met Seth earlier this year as he was the star of our Snow Day and provided endless laughs and entertainment.

Seth has been spending more and more time away from home lately because my neighbours keep feeding him pilchards and it has been making me quite sad. By Friday night, we hadn’t seen him for two weeks although my one friendly neighbour said he had seen him. I have to admit to being on the verge of tears on Friday and was planning a door to door canvas on Saturday morning.

Thankfully, Stephen came and woke me up on Saturday morning with a bundle of black and white fluff in his arms.

Seth's Jedi mind tricks made his eyes glow

I expected cuddles and purring and all sorts but as you can see, he headed straight for the bedroom door and used Jedi mind tricks to try will it to open and let him out. Well, he lost that particular fight. We took him to the vet for a complete check up and make sure he got his booster inoculations plus his worms and flea treatments. I also put a collar on him with a bell, to try irritate my neighbours and of course, stop him catching any birds. We’ve kept him locked inside the whole weekend with us which has been incredibly stuffy but we’re just trying to wean him off my neighbours and his wild, wandering ways. I’m fully aware that we may not succeed.

We had a nice long afternoon nap together yesterday and he also spent the whole day with me today.

The vet had joked that the cat had gone feral and as you can see, he does have black paws which I have always believed to be the sign of a feral cat. The thing that concerns me most is the grazing you can see on his back, right leg there.

The moral of the story? Don’t feed other people’s pets please. It’s not cute or endearing. Pets should be encouraged to return to their own homes every night and you can bet that I would have tended to Seth’s graze at the time if he had come home. The neighbours might be charmed by my friendly little cat but we’re the ones who love him and eagerly accept the responsibility of paying for vets bills when necessary.

I’ve sent away for a tag to go on his collar. It will say his name and my number on the one side and “pls do not feed me” on the other. [insert mental image of me looking determined here]

Read more about Seth and Summer by clicking here.

Normal posts on my trip to New York will resume this week. I also have a couple of summery London posts to share.

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Where I work: Sunning by our head office

After a gruelling set of health and safety and facilities meetings that lasted over three hours and left me slightly dazed, I left our head office at 12pm earlier today to head back to my own office.  I will take this opportunity to mention, as I always do, that JM Barrie wrote Peter Pan in a room on the fourth floor of our head offices.  I posted a picture of our building here and one day I promise I will remember to take my camera along when I visit the fourth floor meeting room so that you can see the room itself.

I walked into the park around the corner from our offices and was greeted with a scene of mild pandemonium.

It’s not every day you see an emergency helicopter parked perfectly on a narrow strip of paving in the Victoria Embankment Gardens.  I ascertained from some spectators that something had happened and after finding out which direction the paramedics had run off to, I turned around and went the opposite direction.  (I’m the type of person that will faint at the sight of an accident, I am sure, and I have a long-existing blood phobia).

I looked with envy at the people basking in the sun and glanced to my right and saw the Wasabi sushi store and quickly made up my mind.

There is always time to smell the flowers and notice beautiful structures.  Will I ever tire of spotting the London Eye?  I doubt it – I amused/annoyed a couple of my fellow passengers on the plane when I let out a little squeal when I spotted the London Eye from above.

I haven’t eaten sushi since I got to the UK because whenever I see it in shops, it always has salmon in and I am allergic to salmon.  So I was thrilled to go into this store and order an assortment of tuna, chicken teriyaki and crabstick portions.

I went back to the deck chairs and found a nice spot in the sun.

Don’t be misled by the seemingly small portion – I had one hand roll but two portions of every thing else.  I just couldn’t balance he whole lot on my lap for the photo!

Once I finished my lunch, I lay back on the chair, listened to Parov Stelar on my iPod and admired the blue sky.  Give Parov Stelar’s song Kisskiss a listen on Last.fm.

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At Work: Working Late

I am just SO good at keeping promises to myself.  Not.

Quite apart from keeping my promise to leave the offices during lunch on Wednesdays and go have coffee somewhere or take a walk, I landed up working until 7pm last night!  Granted, I only have to work overtime once a month and that is the day when I submit the management reports on the previous month's finances but still, it left me feeling pretty tired and not that keen on coming to work this morning.

Anyway, I got to the station with 10 minutes to spare last night and quickly went into Caffe Ritazza on platform 1 at London Bridge for a hot chocolate.  I used my Bite card so I got a 20% discount which meant that a large hot chocolate cost only £2 (the first South African to remind me that this is the equivalent of R30 will get a black eye). 

I'm reading Franz Kafka's The Trial at the moment.  I'd read parts of the book for a course in post-modern literature back in 1993.  I felt like a bit of post-modernism but I chose this book in error.  The book I was looking for was actually Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre and I might read that next.  The original title for this book was Der Process and that actually makes more sense to me.  Not only is it quite a process trying to read this book (I'm half kidding), it also seems more of a process that the poor protagonist of the book undergoes.  I hope to finish this book tonight or tomorrow.

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At Home: Carding

At lunch on Wednesday, we were talking about Blogger's Block and how difficult it is to find something to blog about sometimes.

After careful consideration, I would say that my problem was actually Carder's Block as I have just had an interesting evening trying to make a simple 'Thank You' card.

I haven't made cards in two years since I made scores of Valentine's cards in 2007. It wasn't easy to climb back on the bike, I tell you, and I'm certainly not ready to ride without hands yet!

This is one of the ones I made back in 2007. I couldn't sell it because Summer walked all over it with dirty paws!

This was tonight's card. I definitely need to start making cards more frequently again as I just couldn't seem to get my creative juices flowing!!

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At home: Sara, Donovan and Keira come to stay

I think the biggest thing you lose when someone moves overseas is a sense of their everyday life.  How do they live, what does it look like, what do they do on the weekends.  With my friends scattered across the globe in New York, Australia and Dubai, my biggest curiosity is often just to see what their houses look like, their neighbourhoods and the local shops.  One of my friends in South Africa has moved to a new house and I am just dying to see what it looks like and how she has decorated it.

The one thing I will struggle to explain to my friends back in South Africa is how big London is and how difficult it is to get around to see everyone.  In Johannesburg, we had the most awesome motorway that ran in a circle around the city and no matter if my friends lived in the north, east, south or west of Johannesburg, it was still possible to reach someone's house in about 45 minutes or an hour at the most. 

In London, Sara and I are really close together but Sara stays in Surrey and I stay in Kent.  The shortest time it ever takes to get to one another is 1 hour and 15 minutes but the roads are often backed up and you land up driving down little higgledy-piggledy country lanes which really aren't wide enough for cars sometimes!  It once took Stephen and I three hours to get to Harpenden, north of London, because the road we would have taken to cross the Thames was closed.

For this reason, I find more and more of us try to arrange a sleep over rather than trying to travel two to four hours just to spend an afternoon together.  This weekend we invited Sara and Donovan and Keira over and Stephen lured them with promises of a roast on Saturday and a full English breakfast this morning.  Yum!

The first thing I have noticed with Keira lately is that she has the concentration span of a goldfish!!  We played with fuzzy felt, play doh, my swiss ball, Summer and watched CBeebies on iPlayer all before dinner!!

Then we watched Bolt which I reviewed here.  I was very proud of Keira because she concentrated throughout the whole film and certainly enjoyed it!  Well, all the the adults and the almost three-year-old toddler were exhausted by 9pm and everyone went to bed!

Keira certainly woke up with a lot of energy this morning!  Here is a picture of her reading to Summer.  I thought it was the cutest thing.  Keira thinks Summer is her friend and she was so excited to be coming to visit "Teev" and "Summa" this weekend!  Summer just loves the attention.

Keira doesn't know Seth as well because he is aloof and snooty and usually very scarce when Keira is around.  He let her touch his paw though after I convinced her he wouldn't scratch her.

We decided to go to the park after breakfast as it was a lovely sunny day.

I couldn't help taking a picture of the blue sky as England is just so beautiful when the sun shines and the sky is blue.  It is so strange to think that I was a coffin-kid for most of my teens to mid-twenties and absolutely loved the clouds and the pouring rain. 

Keira and I had some fun on the swings.

The one thing play areas have in the UK is a spongy, soft ground so that if children fall over, they don't hurt themselves.  Makes a difference to concrete I guess but in South Africa we mostly had sand and grass. 

Keira really is the happiest little girl ever and it is so nice to see.  Sara and Donovan are doing a fantastic job despite all the difficulties that come with living a million miles from home.  My neighbour asked us today why we came over to England (because it certainly isn't the weather, she said!)  We explained that it was a combination of crime and career opportunities.  I have spoken to a lot of my South African friends in London in recent months and we all get really lonely.  A word of advice - if you are thinking of moving overseas and you are lucky enough to have friends in the city you are moving to, make sure you move near to them.  You cannot underestimate the power and comfort of just being five minutes away from your friends and family and just being able to pop over at any time.

It was a fabulous weekend and I definitely feel energised for the week to come now!

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Snow Day!

We had our first snow day today.  This picture shows the field behind my house with all the children playing on sleighs and building snow men.  I had to stay home for the day because all of the trains were cancelled.  Luckily, Ste and my brother work outside of London and their colleagues picked them up and took them to Orpington and Dartford respectively.  I was a bit disappointed after sitting around in my work clothes for three hours to learn that apart from there being no trains or buses, our offices were closing at 1pm and those of us that hadn't made it in would have to take a day's annual leave.  I tend to sleep in late and lounge about in pyjamas on my days off - not get up earlier than usual to make a special effort to get in and sit around waiting in my suit and jacket.  Grumpiness aside, once I realised it really was a day off, I made some Milo and watched Demons and Being Human from the weekend.  I also experimented with changing the layout for this blog, as I am a bit tired of this layout, but that didn't go very well.

The most amusing part of the day was observing my pets' differing reactions to the snow.

Cats
Early this morning, Seth was being an incorrigible pain in the neck bold and was meowing and asking to be let out.  So I opened the window thinking he would feel the snow on the window sill and realise that it was to wet and cold to go outside.  He put a tentative paw on the window sill and quickly shook it; but instead of coming back inside, he launched himself out of the window and promptly disappeared!  All I saw then was him shaking his back paws as cats do when their paws get wet and forging a way ahead in the snow.  Before I could do anything he sped off and was gone.  Oh dear.  I had to leave a window open for him then as I went to bath but soon he was back announcing at the top of his lungs something that sounded remarkably like, "Mum! I'm home! And wet! And cold! Close the windows quick!"

Well, his wet and cold experience didn't really leave an impression because a few hours later I was confronted with these friendly faces as I walked into the sitting room:

I promise you! He was giving me a right mouthful!  Summer supports him but won't actually go outside herself.

   

Well, as you can see, he got kind of insistent after a while so I hauled on my wellies and went outside the front door with him.  He immediately ran to the shelter of the bay window, complaining about the cold all the way!  Then he ran under the car and sat forlornly under the engine as if he were the most hard-done-by cat on the planet.  Unable to coax him from under the car, I returned inside and he came shooting in at the sound of the door.  Thankfully, that was that and he seems to have accepted that it is too cold and wet to go outside.

Dogs
Considering how terrified our dogs were of our swimming pool in South Africa, I never imagined that they would like snow so much!  I had opened up the back door to see if the dogs needed to pee and they just stood there watching it snow. 

That wasn't so much fun for me so I went inside to make some tea.  Suddenly, I noticed the pair of them prancing about in the snow like two little puppies, and they were even playing about with a rubber toy between them which is something they never do (share, I mean.  They are very possessive over their toys).  It was so funny to watch!

 

 

In the end, it was a pretty fun and exciting snow day!  Now to cook some dinner!

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