Planes, Tubes, Trains, and Awful Taxi Rides

Once we had our luggage, we found our way to the tube (where I mistaknely spent way more on a tube ticket than I should have, but as they say hindsight is 20/20).  We rode about an hour to St. Pancras Station where we had hours to wait for our train to Brussels.  (I had allowed us extra time in case of a delayed flight, but of course since I did that everything was on time.)  I tried to buy lunch, but I was told my pounds were outdated and no good.  WTH?  Apparently, the UK updated some of their money between when I was there two years ago and now.  Thankfully, I had some current money, which was acceptable.  Good thing because I was hungry (though I guess I could have had a Cliff bar, I'd packed a bunch of those).  Anyway, I think it was before noon when we got to the train station and our train wasn't until 3 so we had plent of time to wander around, eat, and of course read my book.  But eventually 1:45 arrived and they let us go through security, sit in another waiting area, and finally board the train to Brussels.  It was a nice enough train.  And two hours later we were in Brussels.  We found a taxi right out the doors of the train station.  We were not impressed when he said it would cost 20 Euros (more on that in a later post), but we were exhausted so we paid 20 Euros for us and our luggage to drive under 2 miles to a hotel.  The driver was screaming AND texting on his phone for much of the ride and thank goodness he had good brakes!  I am not super religious, but some praying may have occured in that taxi.  Does Belgium not have a hands free rule?  It was not a good introduction to Belgium, but I promise you we enjoyed the country much more after that ride so it's true first appearances can be deceiving (or whatever that saying is).  Got to the hotel, checked in (the hotel staff was lovely!) and were told that they were overbooked because of a wedding so they only had twin beds.  They offered to put them together if we wanted to go for a walk now, but after being up for over 24 hours I think any bed would have done at that point and the hubs was in no mood to go for a walk right then.  So we checked into our hotel, got settled, hubs napped, and an hour or so later we wandered around the neighborhood a bit and ironically on our first night in Belgium had dinner at an Irish pub.  Back to the hotel for a little NCIS because yes, you can watch NCIS in Belgium and then to sleep.  Correction:  attempted sleep.  There were bars/restaurants close to our hotel and it was 70 degrees on a Saturday night in April (not normal for Brussels in April or so I'm told), which meant people were out late having a great time.     

Here we come Heathrow

Recently, the hubs (who I only ever refer to as the hubs in this blog, never in real life) and I traveled to England and Belgium.  Considering how long it takes me to blog about an entire trip, I'm figuring if I start today, I might be done by the 4th of July.  So here we go, we headed out on a Friday night.  He doesn't work too far from the airport so I met him there (I took a very full bus down).  We checked in, made it through security fairly quickly and then got some overpriced food.  What is the deal with airport food?  I've yet to find airport food that I can afford that actually tastes great.  We knew the plane was serving food (don't get me started on airplane food, actually it wasn't terrible) so we just split chicken tenders and he had a clam chowder.  I mean come on, overcooked chicken tenders?  Really people?  And the chowder wasn't so great either.  Thankfully, we were hours early for our flight since the service was slow.    Then we played on our phones, read, (found out one of our friends was proposing the next day), etc.  Soon boarded the plane and after dinner, which was okay, it was a pasta dish, salad, a roll, and some type of mousse pudding dessert thing that was surprisingly good-- I tried to watch a movie--"Downsizing," it was good, but I was so tired I eventually gave up and tried to sleep.  Tried is the key word because according to my Fitbit (and the way I felt the next day) I did not sleep.  I dozed a few times for a few minutes, but that was it.  Eventually, gave up on sleep attempts, read a bit and then we finally landed in England to find it was actually hot.  Amazing for April.  There was complimentary bottled water in the customs line! That line was an hour long!  The good thing about that is by the time you make it to luggage your luggage is actually there so you don't have to wait ages for it like at home.  And I'll leave it at that and pick up with day two next time.  Day two is a bit boring as it mostly invovled sitting in a train station and riding a train, but days 3 onward are more exciting and may even contain some fun pictures.  :-) 

Not in a Blogging Mood

So I don't know what my deal is, but I haven't been in a blogging mood lately.  I need inspiration. lol I thought about doing another decluttering post, then I thought about Easter, but I just wasn't in the mood.  So I'm taking a couple of weeks off from blogging.  So until next time, dear readers, have a good one. 

St. Pat's Party

We had our annual St. Patrick's Day party on St. Patrick's Day (imagine that).  It was a great time, but our house is small and we somehow managed to cram 31 people into it.  Do I have pictures to show for it?  Nope!  Some highlights included looking up from a conversation and seeing 5 children jumping on my husband.  Around 9 when most of the kids left it was quiet--for a minute, until someone put college basketball on and then men made more noise than the kids. :-)  And of course the usual green food, plus a few additions from friends. I also made green cake pops this year.

Kindness Rocks

Back in October, our homeowners' association social committee sponsored a pumpkin painting activity for kids and rock painting for adults.  One of my neighbors is big into rock painting so she offered that (rock painting) for the adults while the kids painted pumpkins.  I have no children, but I have been on the social committee on and off over the years so I offered to help set up for the party and bring cookies for the kids.  Since I was there anyway, I decided to check out the rock painting.  The rocks are supposed to be kindness rocks.  So basically you paint (or Sharpie) the rocks with whatever picture/design/saying you want and then you put a varnish on them.  When they're dry, you hide them somewhere and in theory someone finds it, it makes then smile, and in essence you are spreading kindness.  You can log it on a facebook page if you so desire.  (You put that info on the back of the rock.)  Once you find the rock you can keep it or rehide it for someone else to find.  My first rock was a pumpkin since it was October.

I had fun and I painted and hid some more in November, which I thought I took pictures of, but I can't find them.

Then the FB page I'm on for these rocks had a contest and I won.  I won a big bag of rocks, Sharpies, paintbrushes and varnish.  I was kind of excited about my win so I painted a bunch more the weekend I won, but I still have a bunch left to hide and another bunch to paint.  I think my husband was a little disturbed when he came home and saw much of the kitchen table covered with rocks.  (They've since been moved to a bag.)

It took a while for anyone to find any of my rocks, or at least to log the finding of any on the FB page, but I must admit I was kind of excited when they did.  It was a dance themed one and I hid it right by a studio where I dance.     


My favorite rocks keeps changing, but right now it's this one.

Off for now, I want to spread more kindness a.k.a. paint rocks.

Decluttering continues

This post would would be a lot better if I had actually taken a before and after picture instead of just an after picture. We have a good size storage closet in our living room, but it seems to collect a lot of stuff.  There isn't a ton of storage space in either of the bathrooms so things like toilet paper tissues, etc always end up there as do wrapping paper, gift bags, paper towels,  and tools.  We also store some extra chairs in there for when we have company as well as an ironing board that I hardly ever use because I hate to iron and some TV tables that we use when we have company.  You can't see it in the picture but there is some more paint back there too.  So basically it is a store everything.  Well, we went through it on our decluttering quest and you can walk in there again.  We got rid of some junk and organized what we had.  Yay!  And I am pleased to report that here it is a couple months later and it has stayed fairly organized although the walkway in there it's a little narrower because we recently bought a big pack of toilet paper and paper towel.

I might have posted this one before,  I forget, but below is some of the stuff we got rid of when we decluttered the kitchen.

And onto the filing cabinet.

I'm impresssed you're still here and not bored to tears with all of my decluttering posts.  I'll throw in some other topics soon.  And I'll keep this one shortish.  I think it was over Christmas vacation that I finally sat down and confronted my filing cabinet.  I was so proud of myself when I got my filing cabinet.  It was certain to keep my paperwork oragnized and prevent it from piling up on the coffee table.  And that worked to an extent, but it had been a while, make that a long while since I had cleaned out my filing cabinet.  Do I dare admit to you that I found papers in there from 2012 that I no longer needed? Well, I went through all of my stuff and made my husband do the same and my goodness, there is SO much room in there now.  I got rid of tons of stuff.  I couldn't even shred it all in one sitting because there was too much.  The shredder got too hot and I had to wait for it to cool down so I could shred more stuff.  It was two hours well spent (plus the time it took to shred everything). 

Quick funny story, when my husband and I were dating, he asked what I wanted for my birthday and I said a filing cabinet or a printer.  His mother asked what he was going to get me and he said a filing cabinet or a printer and she was shocked.  She told him you aren't supposed to get that for your gf for her birthday so he got me a braclet--which I do like and still wear, but that Christmas I did get my filing cabinet.  :-)