Becca Jane St Clair

Ah, it’s November again and NaBloPoMo is upon us (along with NaNoWriMo). While I won’t promise to write a post every single day, I will do my best to keep up my blog. Or at least, start to keep up my blog, since I’ve gone for months on end without posting anything interesting.

But we’ll see.

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The Good
• We had a great time in Edinburgh
• I passed my Life in the UK test
• We visited Tim’s best mate in Shoreham-by-Sea
• I spent 2 days with my friend Jessy in Winchester

The Bad
• I got shoved into a wet paint pole at the railway station and got paint all down the arm of a new cardigan
• The car broke down on the way home from Shoreham-by-Sea

The Ugly
• After waiting outside in the cold for 5 hours with the car, I no longer have a voice and have a bad cold.
• Car repairs totalled £450

As a result, I’ve had to drop NaBloPoMo…I missed too many days in there and forgot to schedule things. *sigh*. But then again, with the move over to BlogHer, I somehow missed getting myself on the official rollcall list for it anyway. Oh well. I’ll try to post each day until the end of the month, but with skipping five days, I don’t think I can consider myself a participant any more.

One more good – White Spirit took the paint off my cardigan. It still reeks after a trip through the washing machine, but I’ve got it hanging outside to air it out.

I’ll write about the car in another entry. It’s an interesting story.

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

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It’s that time of year again. Fortunately, I did a lot of our Christmas shopping in October and Tim and I are just buying each other Kindles, but we were totally stumped on something to give his mum this year.

I ordered our Christmas cards (super early) from VistaPrint and inside the box with the order was an offer for a FREE wall calendar…our problems were solved, as his mum has been really concentrating on decorating her house with family photos.

If you’d like your free calendar, just go to http://www.vistaprint.biz/special2011. VistaPrint has tons of other inexpensive and free deals, such as 10 free Christmas cards, 250 free business cards, and even free photo mugs and mousemats.

Order early though. If you want to opt for the inexpensive shipping, it can take up to 21 working days for your items to get to you, but when I ordered my stuff, it only took about 2 weeks.

[I am not being compensated by VistaPrint for this post.]

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

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I married my best friend.

Happy Anniversary Tim!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

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Yesterday I did something I never would have done living in America. Tim and I were out on an exploration. Armed with Ordinance Survey maps of the county that Tim had drawn blue and red lines on, we were off in search of our fictitious railway. We had a good time. I’ll write more about the search for our railway in another entry and post some of the photos later.

We were stopped somewhere along a narrow, winding back country road between farmer’s fields. We were stopped to take pictures of where a level crossing would have been and I was walking back towards the car when I spotted something round a red growing on one of the trees alongside the road. I paused and discovered that I had found a wild apple tree. Curious, I picked an apple and bit into it. It was the tastiest apple I have ever tried! The apples were redish pink at the top fading down to a yellow shade of green. We don’t know what kind of apples they were, but we sure didn’t waste any time in picking as many as we could fit into a bag!

Now all I have to do is figure out how to store them…these are too good to cut up and freeze!

We often go foraging for blackberries – brambles, as they get referred to here. Brambles seem to grow everywhere in this country. We find them growing alongside the many public footpaths we frequent, branches dipping into canals, and we even find them growing alongside railway tracks. This year, we ate most of the blackberries right away, but last year I had a bagful in my freezer that lasted through the winter.

I love free food. I won’t go dumpster diving or anything crazy like that, but if mother nature wants to give it to us, we’ll take it!

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

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It’s that time of the year again, time for NaBloPoMo! This year, NaBoPoMo has moved over to the Blog Her network. I have no idea what that means. I don’t know if I should be posting my blogs over there or what’s going on, but it doesn’t matter since I’m not in this for any kind of competition, I’m just in it for myself! 30 days straight of blogging — can I do it?

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The contents of this post, including images are © Rebecca J Lockley and Tim Lockley unless otherwise stated and should not be reproduced without permission. If you are not reading this on http://blog.beccajanestclair.com, my facebook page, or the RSS feed(s), please notify me.

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Here’s a full list of my posts for November:

Nov 1 – It’s NaBloPoMo
Nov 2 – A Day on the Welshpool and Llanfair
Nov 3 – A Call to NHS Direct
Nov 4 – Last Day in Wales: Ffestiniog Railway
Nov 5 – Happy Anniversary
Nov 6 – A trio of Vlogs
Nov 7 – Lincolnshire Life
Nov 8 – London Transport and War
Nov 9 – A Visit to the Seaside
Nov 10 –York, not to be Confused with New York or York PA
Nov 11 – Safety First
Nov 12 – Building a Railway
Nov 13 – Swagbucks Update
Nov 14 – Why Are You Here?
Nov 15 – Halfway!
Nov 16 – Wildlife in our House
Nov 17 – When Filters Go Bad
Nov 18 – Lincolnshire Sausage Festival
Nov 19 – Bonfire Night!
Nov 20 – Harry Potter and the Chorus Concert
Nov 21 – Wii Socialization
Nov 22 – Filler Post
Nov 23 – I am an Immigrant
Nov 24 – Tattershall Castle
Nov 25 – Abbey in the Backyard, Part 2
Nov 26 – Recipe: Potato Scramble
Nov 27 – Save your Feet
Nov 28 – Thanksgiving
Nov 29 – Warning
Nov 30 – Still Infected

It was fun. I had to put up a filler post on one day because I was sick and didn’t want to skip out on my commitment, and the last two days of the month were not what I had intended to post at all, thanks to a hacker (I had planned on doing this post on November 30), but I think I did good.

I still have to blog about Austria, and I will do my best to get those done before my mom arrives on December 16th! I will be most likely taking off from the 15th to 31st so I can spend time with my mom, and then start my new goals in the new year!

And I promise, this is my last blog post for today!

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I don’t want to shirk on my NaBloPoMo commitment, but today I’m not feeling very well. So, this will have to do for a post. If I’m feeling better later, I will post a regular entry. But right now? I just want to curl up on the sofa with my snuggie and a book.

We’re halfway through the month for NaBloPoMo, and so far I’m actually reaching my goal of one post/day, and I still have plenty to blog about!

After the month is up, I will probably scale back my posting, but in the new year, I’m hoping for a few goals regarding my blog:

1. Blogging at least three times/week. It could mean M-W-F, it could mean F-Sa-Su, but I want to blog at least three times each week. Four, five, six, or seven times will be a bonus! I’ll also try not to post twice in one day like I sometimes have to spread out the posts. I can’t always guarantee brilliant posts, but I will try!

2. More vlogs, even if it’s of mundane things. You guys seem to really like the vlogs (especially if Tim talks!), so I want to give you what you want! I still don’t feel comfortable in front of the camera, so I’ll still be talking from behind the scenes most likely. Also, a house tour at some point in 2011.

3. Regular recipe posts. I want to try to post recipes once every fortnight (that’s 14 days/two weeks). I’d go for more often, but I don’t want my blog to turn into a recipe blog….even if my friend Lynne thinks I should write a cookbook. (I wouldn’t know where to start)

4. On time posts! No more “I was here back in March”. I am going to try to get blog posts up the same month the event happens. Preferably within a week of it happening, but I will give myself a goal of within the month. Maybe a better goal is “within four weeks”, so if I do something on the 29th of the month I’m not left scrambling to get an entry up before the end of the month!

I’m really enjoying writing daily, and even though some of the things I’m blogging about are past events, I’m still having a great time doing it. If I don’t get all caught up on previous events, I will get them all finished by the end of 2010. Save for anything I do while my mom is visiting, because I probably will want to spend time with her and not blog!

At the end of NabloPoMo, I will revisit my list of things I wanted to blog about, and I will make another list and make sure I get them all done.

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It’s November 1, and in addition to it being All Saint’s Day and my friend John’s birthday, it’s also the start of NaNoWriMo, a month long writing project for people all over the world….but it’s also NaBloPoMo. NaBloPoMo is for those of us who don’t want to be committed (or can’t!) to writing a full-length novel in a month, but still want to participate. All you have to do is commit to writing one blog post per day for the entire month of November. If you succeed, you are even eligible for prizes at the end of the month.

I’ve signed up. I have so many things to backlog, I figure a month of solid posting will be good for me. Hopefully, I’ll have time and remember.

Oh, and BTW, this is Post #1, as today is still 1 November….for an hour and 45 minutes here, anyway.

If you’re a fellow NaBloPoMo, you can get to my profile page here.

I can’t guarantee brilliant posts every single day, but I can hopefully promise at least one post per day with something in it.

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