November Life Lately

This is going to be a short post this month, as most of what I did in November is going to be in my upcoming post all about our trip to Australia, but I didn't want to break tradition (and I always love to talk about whatever I've read, watched and sewn each month!)

My One Second Every Day for the month is here (spoilers for my Australia post!) and below is the stuff I got up to which wasn't in Australia...

What I Made

I'm not even going to bother making this "What I did" because most of what I did was "go to Australia" (did I mention I went to Australia?) so I'm going to call this "what I made"! 

I only made one thing in November, which was a panic-sew I decided I needed about 3 days before going away. It's another Tilly and the Buttons Dominique skirt (the same pattern as the first thing I ever sewed myself!) in a cotton chambray. I made it to wear with light tshirts and trainers on holiday... then didn't end up wearing it at all!

As always I learned a lot making it, but it's not my favourite make. It's all practice though!

What I Read

Five books read in November:

• The Winners by Fredrik Backman
• The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallet
• Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
• Carrie Soto is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Milk Teeth by Jessica Andrews

Despite downloading 6 books for holiday, plus having at least 10 Netgalley ARCs to review, I didn't actually read as much as I thought I would on holiday.

The best book I read in November was Jessica Andrews' Milk Teeth which will undoubtedly end up on my books of the year list. I also enjoyed Carrie Soto is Back which I read nearly all of on my journey home.

What I Watched

Me and my best friends had a girls night where we watched The Lost City which was great fun.

Comfort rewatches on the plane of some of my favourite films - In the Heights, The Social Network and Palm Springs.

One cinema trip when we got home to catch the week-long cinema release of Glass Onion which we absolutely loved, and I'm so glad we caught it in the cinema.

We also finished Mike Flanagan's Midnight Club on Netflix.

What I loved

We had many, many hours in the car as part of our Australia road trip, and as well as my usual favourite podcasts (Evolution of Horror, Celebrity Memoir Bookclub), we also discovered 60 Songs which Explain the 90s and listened to some great episodes of that on the trip.

Lukas Volger's Start Simple is one of my favourite recipe books (my review is here!) so I just bought his latest book Snacks for Dinner and it's been perfect for us for simple snacky dinners after coming back from holiday.

What I read online

I read some great pieces in The Atlantic last month - Dwight Shrute was a Warning, The Quiet Cruelty of When Harry met Sally (WHMS is one of my favourite films but this was spot on) and my favourite one of the month Why Did We All Have the Same Childhood? which talks about how no matter where and when you grew up we all did the "cool S" and peeled PVA glue off our hands.

As someone who tracked a walk on my Peloton app on holiday so I didn't lose my 100+ week Peloton streak, I loved Anne Helen Petersen on why we're so obsessed with streaks

The Guardian reporting on Manchester being named the top place to visit by Lonely Planet. Even after living here for pretty much all my life, I still get a buzz going in Manchester. This makes me so happy.

I also loved this long read from The Guardian on the nostalgic memes which explain Britain today with the excellent and hilarious example of "who remembers proper bin men"

And finally a fantastic piece from Haley Nahman on the destigmatisation of cosmetic procedures

Catch up soon!

Charlotte x