6 Things That Made Me Smile This Week!

So this week has consisted of cold mornings standing at bus stops, burying under duvets with mugs of tea, crunching over fallen leaves and spending time with loved ones. In other words it's been a pretty good week, minus trying to get my head around the language in Othello so I could write an essay about it.

Here's what else has made me smile this week:

1. Autumn leaves

I absolutely hate the autumn weather and being forced to wear twenty different jackets and a coat on the top and still stand there shivering! It just makes you miss the beautiful summer days even more.

However, I can't help myself marveling at the leaves as they gradually turn from bright green to yellows and burnt reds. It's just one of those natural occurrences that everybody loves, especially when you're travelling down a motorway and suddenly it seems like all the cars have slowed down just to take in the site of an bright orange orchard by the side of the road.

I snapped the picture below out my bedroom window yesterday, so I hope you are well jel that I get to wake up to this view every mornig. And I can tell you it always puts a smile on my face, even if it's chucking it down with rain and I can't find my umbrella anywhere!

Wet hair is never a good look.

2. Refining my love for history

Call me what you like, but I've always loved history and learning about the past. It's just something that fascinates me and my curious nature. But that passion was slightly...no massively (!!) destroyed by GCSE history in which I found myself learning about very uninteresting things just to pass an exam. It was very rushed and confusing and left me questioning if I even liked history anymore.

This coming from a girl who as a 10 year old would draw out the family trees for all the British monarchs and almost cried when her mum took her to the Tower Of London, is pretty shocking!

But this week I watched a really lovely documentary about archaeologist Dr Kathleen Martinez who had radical new theory that could possibly lead her to the long lost tomb of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra. It made for pretty intense watching (who knew digging could be quite so dramatic!) and I would definitely recommend watching it here.

So yeah, history and me are defo back together for good!

3. Trouble for Toby

All this week I've been hearing about Hannah's new mischievous arrival and I think Toby here has taken a page or two out of Granger's book.

For one thing Toby is ruled, like most cats, by his stomach. You can never forget to feed him because he will just be on your case, meowing the house down until you give him a handful of Dreamies to crunch on. So when he didn't turn up for lunch or for dinner on Friday, over protective cat mumma alarm starts ringing!

I spent a good half an hour hunting around the house for him because for a large (uhmm fat) cat he can squeeze his body into some pretty wee places. But nope, he wasn't anywhere to be seen.

Cue panic, shaking and sobbing!

Then just as we were giving up hope of ever seeing him again, I heard the faintest little meow as I was outside watering the plants. A brief am-I-imaging-this-moment was experienced before I realized the noise was coming from the garage. With long strides that would have impressed any Olympic hurdle runner, I pulled open the door. And Toby rushed out, meowing like a manic probably asking about whether he could get double the amount of food as an apology for accidentally shutting him in the garage all day!

My bad.

4. Bakeoff final!

This is probably going to be everywhere on the blogosphere since 14.5 million of us tuned in to watch Nadiya bake her way to victory. Not only did she win my heart with her yummy wedding cake, expressive face and comment that one of the bakes was harder than 'giving birth' but she has really helped race relations in the UK. And if that can be done just from baking a lemon drizzle cake then that's pretty impressive stuff. 

Move over Dumbledore's Army, here comes Nadiya's Army! 

5. You're looking at a graduate here!

Okay I'd admit I'm not a real graduate, but on Saturday I did graduate from the government funded programme, National Citizen Service, which I took part in during the summer. It was so lovely getting to meet back up with our little group and spending a few more hours at the University Of Essex where we lived for five days during Week 2 of the programme. 

The presentation was held in the Ivor Crewe Lecture Hall, which was a pretty impressive place considering that it looked like a tin can from the outside! 

But after crying a little tear that the whole thing was over and having a sticker fight with the boys (don't ask!) we received our certificates from the Prime Minster. I'm not into politics or any of that stuff but being given it was defiantly something. 

So bye NCS, I hope you will be as kind to others as you were to me! 

6. A BIG thank you

Lastly in my lil' list I want to say thank you to you guys! The people who read, comment, retweet and like all the stupid thing I post here. In five months time this little place will turn two and that is such an amazing achievement. But of course, it's all down to you. So thank you to those nine or ten lovely people who started following me on bloglovin' this week, to those who leave a little comment on every single posts and to those who put a smile on my face during twitter chats,

I seriously love you guys!