A mid-month catch up: November

Look at me go. Another month of sticking to my word and penning (read: typing) one of these relatively pointless posts that make me feel like a slightly less rubbish blogger. They also provide me with a rather lovely opportunity to realise quite how little I’ve achieved in the month since writing the previous one, so er…that’s good.

Anyway; November. How did we get to here? One moment it was summer, and then we had that bit where it was supposed to be autumn but it was actually still hot, and now somehow the John Lewis Christmas advert is out, I’m having periodic cravings for mulled wine, and my mother and sister are flinging out ‘what do you want for Christmas’ messages like nobody’s business.

Before writing this I tried to think about what I’ve been doing with November so far, but at that point I was fresh from what felt like a really intense week at work and couldn’t seem to remember anything that wasn’t being at work, so I gave up. Now, however, it’s Sunday night, and I’m able to concede that there has in fact been part of November that I wasn’t staring at a computer screen.

In fact, there’ve been a couple of moderately slow and quite lovely weekends involving ample tea, magazine reading, knitwear and email avoidance, and while being a full time worker bee and blogging on the side means the weekend is never, ever without work, they were wonderful. This weekend has also been a good one; I specifically made no plans whatsoever to allow myself a bit of time and headspace before the next month of madness begins.

Regrettably I’ve not been able to spend my no plans weekend on the sofa in my pants, but I have been able to take a few photos that I needed for Instagram campaigns I have coming up, catch up on various forms of correspondence and get the house a little more in order in a somewhat relaxed fashion. I’ve very cleverly organised to be away from home for the next three weekends in a row, you see, so there was some stuff to get ahead on to avoid panic later on.

The rest of my November is going to involve more heavy at weeks at work – my day job involves the marketing for an ice rink, so naturally this time of year is a little intense – broken up nicely with a weekend in Vilnius. It’s somewhere that has been on my radar for a while, and there’s something very exciting about the prospect of exploring somewhere that I know very little about.

Aside from that, I’m going to be spending my lunchtimes putting together advent calendars for Rob and my nan. I’ve done this for the past couple of years – I do the one for my nan as a joint thing with my sister – basically just by buying 24 little presents, wrapping them up and putting those little numbered pegs that you can buy in Tiger on them. I’m aiming not to repeat last year, which saw me not-so-surreptitiously sneak in some missing presents throughout the month, having failed to get them all by 1^st December, so if you have any ideas for either a twenty something man or an 80 year old, please help a gal out.

And before I bore you any further, I think I’ll leave this here. I’m still feeling more myself than I have for months; for the first time in who knows how long, I have a relatively up to date email inbox and not too many things that I’m behind on hanging over my head. Considering that my schedule is about to turn into a veritable shitshow, that’s certainly a good thing!

How’s your November so far?

Oh: and I should confess. I have neither sorted a new phone nor sorted my holiday photos. Shall we move those little tasks to next month? Don’t think I have a choice, so let’s go with that.

What I’m wearing

Cardigan – C/O Joanie Clothing | Skirt – ASOS | Bag – Mango | Trainers – Carvela | Coat – Primark

Photography: Robert Poor