Outside World

My final piece of Kreativity!

Much as I love many indoor things (reading, blogging, cooking, sleeping) sometimes it's good just to get outside. Whether it's a stroll down the road to Tescos, a walk in the park, or just lying in the sun, being outside has such a big impact on me.

I like the varied weather we have here in England - a few months ago it was snowy, five days ago it poured with rain, and today I see glorious sunshine out of my window.

I like taking indoor things outside - having a picnic or eating fish and chips on the beach gives a meal time a completely different feel. Being outside is more romantic, carefree and relaxed.

Today we're hoping to go geocaching. T has some minor corrections to make to his thesis before he makes the final submission, and he's been up since about 7:15am working on it. We also plan to go and buy some "gardening supplies" - pots and soil. As we don't actually have a garden, our green-fingeredness is going into pot plants at the moment. A strawberry plant we were given at Easter is sending out runners so I want to give them something to grow into.

The sunshine is streaming through the leaves of the trees outside. Can't wait to get out there. Have a good weekend everyone!

Board Games

Some people like board games, some people hate them. In our house we have a whole cupboard dedicated to board games so we pretty much fall into the first set of people. Now, that said, I don't like all games. One of my particular dislikes is Scrabble - I'm not very patient and like a game to keep moving, while in Scrabble people often take a really long time to make their move.

But this is really about games I do like. In no particular order, here are some of my current favourites and why...
1. Puerto Rico - This is a five player game. It is reasonably fast paced, every game is different and there are a lot of different strategies to winning. It also looks nice which always helps.
2. San Juan - This is a slightly simpler version of Puerto Rico using just cards instead of lots of fiddly pieces. It is a bit more dependent on luck - you might pick up a great combination of cards, or you might keep missing one that would really help you. It's also really good for couples - it makes a good game even with just two of you.
3. Settlers of Catan - This game is really nice looking in all the forms I've seen and is pretty simple to pick up. You have towns and cities - they bring in resources, you spend resources on upgrades to earn more victory points. It's not too luck based, although there is some dice rolling. I would say you probably need at least three players for a good game.
4. Carcassonne - You build up the region of Carcassonne by laying tiles. You score points for roads, cities, farming and monastries. It's a bit complicated at first - the farming really floors some people but after a couple of games you get used to it. There are lots of expansions which keep the game fresh - my favourites are Inns and Cathedrals and Traders and Builders. For a wedding present Lulu gave us the fantastic Hunters and Gatherers version which is really good with two players and a bit simpler on the "farming" aspect.

In the spirit of linking this with kreativ-ity, one of the best things about board games is that although they come with rules you should never be afraid to adapt them or invent new ones. Or even whole new games - our latest one (an adaption and improvement on the game "Hey, That's My Fish!") has proved very popular with our friends and relatives. And look, we even got to make these cute penguins to play with. (This is them mid-creation. They're still missing white tummies and eyes.)

So what's your favourite game?

Books

I realised yesterday that I completely forgot to finish my Kreativ blogging thing. It kind of got lost in other things. Oh and my smart little sister told me a few weeks ago that "kreativ" is just German for creative. That didn't take a huge leap of imagination but somehow I hadn't figured that one out. Well done Bronnie.

So - Books.
I love reading. It's actually the main reason I picked English Lit as my degree subject. I actually looked forward to working on my third year dissertation, as we got to choose what we read and the topic. Mine was on "The Role of the Gentleman in Nineteenth Century Literature" and I wrote about some fantastic books*. Since I was a little kid I've been perfectly happy reading for hours on end, often I'd be sent to tidy my bedroom and two hours later my parents would look in to find my room in the same state and me on my bed with a book.

My main problem these days is that I'm a pretty fast reader and so I can easily finish a book in a day. Which means I run out of new books to read quite quickly. Luckily there are some books I just love to read over and over, and that I'm quite happy to go back to. My favourite book is one most readers have probably heard of and read already (If not, please go find a copy and read it. When you've finished reading this.) - The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. It's a beautiful love story with a twist (in that one of the couple is a time traveller), and it follows Clare and Henry's relationship from their first meetings through to the end of their lives. If the time traveling thing sounds too sci-fi for you try to ignore it, it doesn't feel like a sci-fi novel at all.

I've just finished reading Carole Sheilds' Unless, about a woman writer (Rita) whose daughter drops out of college to sit at the side of a road with a sign reading "Goodness". I love the mundane detail of the family's lives, even as they are trying to work out why Norah is behaving like this. Rita wonders about women's roles in the world - are they, even in 2004, taken seriously as equal citizens? - and about goodness as a quality. It's quite different to most of my reading but I'd definitely recommend it, even just for its difference to a lot of modern writing about women. It's very introspective but also considers the place of women in family life, society and the world.


* All the Jane Austen novels, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde were my favourites.

Friends

So we all know that our friends are great. Some we're closer to than others, they belong in different groups, to different parts of our lives but overall they're just great.

This story on the BBC news website claims that the average number of friends a person has is 150. You may be thinking of your Facebook friends counter and disputing that it could be so low but here they are defining "friend" to mean:

"the number of people that you know as persons and you know how they fit into your social world and they know how you fit into theirs. They are a group of people to which you have an obligation of friendship."

The writer goes on: "They usually consist of an inner circle of five "core" people and an additional layer of 10. That makes 15 people - some will probably be family members - who are your central group and then outside that, there's another 35 in the next circle and another 100 on the outside. And that's one person's social world."

So thinking about my "social world" - I can immediately think of about nine people I am really close to. People I would pick up the phone and call anytime of the day or night and who I know would be happy to drop everything and listen. So that sounds about right - I can definitely add more to work out my "central group". The next circle - 35 sounds about right for that and then 100 sounds pretty reasonable to complete my social world. And then there are probably others who come and go depending on where your life is. One important thing that I've learned is that friendships are for seasons in your life. Some will be lifelong and I'd like to think I can pick out the people in my social world who will still be in it in 10 or 20 years. But others will come and go as people change jobs, move away or just grow apart. And that is ok.

But this does remind me that so many people are really isolated - for some reason or another their lives have been hard and they have lost those connections to others. So when you're walking down the street - smile at people. Because you may be the only person that day who does acknowledge them. How lucky are we to have those people in our lives who do pick up the phone, give us a hug and jump up and down with excitement when they see us...

T

T and I met at the CU freshers' barbecue after I'd been at university about four days. He was a second year post-grad student and we ended up going to the same church. We got to know each other more in the run up to a mission trip to Brazil which happened at the end of my first year.

Entirely ignoring the "rules" of the mission trip we got together after the first week and by the end of the trip Brazilians who didn't speak any English were using sign language to ask how long we'd been a couple. We were together a year before we got engaged, engaged for about another year and then married in August 2008.

Being married to my best friend is the best thing that could have come out of going to university. He always listens, makes me laugh, even when I'm feeling grumpy, is kind and thoughtful, eats everything I cook, and many more good things! We're both very lucky that we have such supportive families as well - they were really happy when we got engaged (and married) and their support and advice is so valuable. As are the dinners we get taken out for. Awesome.

I'm not a big music person but this song was our first dance at our wedding and I love it. You're going to have to click on the link because I don't know how to embed videos in my posts yet! We weren't going to have a first dance but this song was perfect for us so here it is: Feels Like Home.

Cooking

It's so satisfying when it works and food makes almost everyone happy. What more could you want from a hobby? Dinner parties, cakes, tea, cooked breakfasts, old favourites, experiments, cookies, roast dinners, pies, pasta...I really love cooking. (Yes, I put tea in there. Ok, so it doesn't take much "cooking" but it is good. Same for hot chocolate. Yum.)

I recently found a new collection of recipes on the Lakeland website. They do really good quality cooking products if you haven't heard of them before. For Christmas I got T some chocolate moulds from Lakeland and we've been making "homemade" chocolates in the last few months which has been fun. When we next make some I'll put up some photos - for some reason I can't find any right now.

God

"For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38-39

If you've been paying attention you'll have figured out by now that I'm a Christian and God is a big part of my life. I grew up in a Christian home, went to church every week and was taught about God. Between the ages of three and nine I lived in Nepal where my parents were missionaries, and for me coming back to England was harder than going to Nepal. I wasn't too keen on church while I was a teenager, and while I would still have called myself Christian, I wasn't particularly active in it. When I was about 16 or 17 I started thinking about it more and got baptised. Then I went to university. At this point I made the decision to go to church myself. Up until this point I'd mostly been because (see last post!) I like my parents and knew they wanted me to go.

Going to university is a pretty big change and going to church really helped me settle in to life there. God gave me everything I needed - good friends (some of whom became good housemates), encouragement and inspiration (I ended up my first year by going on a mission trip to Brazil). Throughout the last three years I've come to know God more and more and he's always taken care of me - given me strength, joy, peace, love and so much more.

My Family

This is a bit of an obvious one in the "something I love" category. This week we're lucky to be able to see both sides of our extended family - T's last weekend and mine this coming weekend. Usually visiting (either side of) our family involves lots of lovely food, playing a few games, going for a walk and gallons of tea. This weekend we're partly going to visit to celebrate my Dad's birthday which is on Monday. Happy Birthday Daddy!

Kreativ Blogging

The Beautiful Intellectual has passed this award onto me, which was lovely of her. I've never had a blogging award before so I am (of course) going to break the rules which are...

"List seven things that you love and then pass the award on to seven bloggers that you love! Be sure to tag them and let them know they have won. You can copy the picture of the award and paste it on your sideboard letting the whole world know...you are Kreativ!"

I got a bit stuck trying to do this post. Which is silly because really it's just a list of things I love. But the things I love are the things I want to talk about most. Obviously. And I got so torn between trying to make my post interesting and detailed but concise enough not to bore the pants off you all that I have decided to start over. I'm going to give you my list now and then over then next week (or three) I'll post about each one separately - and I'll tag them all with "Kreativ Blogger".

Also, because I'm breaking the rules and if you're going to do that you should really do it properly - I'm not going to tag anyone else. If you're reading this, consider yourself Kreativ (whatever that means) - post this on your blog if you want, if not just let me know what your thoughts are in the comments sections! Deal? Good. Thank you.

So - seven things I love...

• Books
• T
• My Family
• Cooking
• God
• Board Games
• Friends

And to break another rule I'll do a surprise eighth post - prizes if you can guess what it will be about...