“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home.”
– Edith Sitwell
And as such, most of this week has been spent indoors, devouring pages of a book I’m about to finish, studying Spanish, talking about our upcoming wedding and visitors, working on two guest posts for other blogs, thinking of ideas for a submission to a Women’s travel writing series and sneaking downstairs to Bumpkin for a mid-January treat.
My favourite little things from the past week? The orange reflection of the setting sun in puddles below an office window; a letter from my grandma; the first instalment of a birthday present of monthly random independent magazines from two great friends; a bright blue sky last Saturday and an hour browsing through my favourite bookshop, Daunt.
Here are a few links for your weekend:
- An interesting article about a guy who bought a house in detroit for $500 with the intention of fixing it up without taking out any loans. “It was just a clapboard shell filled with trash on a crumbling foundation. I’m talking chest-high piles of clothing, yard waste, empty tin cans, toys, diapers, those white Styrofoam trays that raw meat comes in, used auto parts, construction debris, liquor store plastic bags and bottles, rolls of old carpeting, broken furniture and glass, literal piles of human shit, uncapped needles.”
- I finally managed to find the time to put all of the canvas prints from my exhibition up on my Etsy shop!
- 5 places I’d love to stay: this private villa in Singapore; Aria Hotel in Prague, Czech Republic; L’Apogee Courchevel in France; The Witchery in Edinburgh, Scotland; and The Alma Hotel in Tel Aviv, Israel.
- The documentary series, Benefits Street, on Channel 4 here in the UK has been drumming up quite a bit of controversy. It’s a story of one of the most benefits-dependant streets in the country – in Birmingham. Have you watched it? What are your thoughts? Demonised or humane?
- A little celebration of London bus drivers through photography by Joel Devlin.
- Check out all of these indoor gardens. We sort of have a small one here with about 25 plants including a palm tree in our small flat…
- 5 recipes to try: Buttermilk-Blueberry Breakfast Cake; Shitake Bok Choy Dumplings; Chicken Pot Pie Soup; papas arrugadas con mojo from the Canary Islands; and, my childhood favourite – Dirt!
- The Telegraph has a slideshow of some impressive hotel lobbies around the world and on CNN, 10 abandoned hotels.
- I’d like to read more this year, like I used to! Here are 5 books I recently added to my bookshelf and plan to enjoy over the next few weeks: How to Be A Heroine; Five Star Billionaire; Village of Stone; Cuba: The Land of Miracles; and Spain in Mind: An Anthology.
- And, a video of a Minnesota-based artist who creates street art made from yarn, under the name HoTTea:
[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1K5qn7eJkfo#t=71″]
Have a fun weekend!
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