Angel Jem's City Cottage

Here's a round up of all my hygge page posts from last week. Please, do, click through and say hiya. I'm finding Wordpress an interesting use, but I'm not as confident about it as I'd like to me. Any and all visitors warmly welcomed in a very hyggely way! Just click on the quotes to go through to the page! Hygge words are cracking to play with. You basically take a concept and add hygge to the front or the back of it; so enjoying shopping is hyggeshopping, time with the family is familyhygge and a list of hygge words is a hyggelist. October 4th is Cinnamon Bun Day in Sweden. I baked buns to celebrate, and this was my post the night before. My year of living hyggely officially began on October 4th, with the inaugural Recipe Tuesday as well. A recipe for... guess what?.... cinnamon buns. Contentment at the core... I love this quote. It was a look at whether Hygge is Mindfulness in a Danish wrapper. My book review of Scandinavian Kitchen'...

Oh my Gosh! It feels like I haven't posted a wind up for ages! My little City Cottage is in need of an Autumn tidy up and a clear out of ideas and attitudes. After all, this is where my friends are, not my followers. Here's my wind up; What am I reading this week? I'm reading every hygge book going; I have about 7 so far and another one on order for the end of October. The more I read, the more I like and the more convinced I am that hygge is what we do naturally; that all I need to do as a Hygge Ambassador is send people your way; all the homemaking, caring, crafting, living that you do and share on the interweb; that's hygge. Apart from a mass of Hygge books, I read This House is Haunted by John Boyne. It's a good old-fashioned ghost story in the tradition of Susan Hill's The Woman in Black or Henry James' Turn of the Screw . Eliza Caine loses her Father and takes a job on impulse at a deserted house in Norfolk. You could have told her it wasn...

Truthfully, I can watch this movie all year round. I know it's supposed to be a Christmas movie and I know I've probably written about it before on the blog, but I've never done it for Film on Friday and I needed a soft, cosy, warm, cuddling movie this week... yes, you guessed it, I was searching for movie hygge. I can't believe that The Holiday was released in 2006! That makes it 10 years old, crazy! I do watch it every year at least once, probably more often, but it wasn't until recently that I introduced my daughter to it. She had managed to always be at school somehow when I watched it before... back in the days when I could stick a film on in the middle of the day, do my housework while watching it and be finished in time for the happy ending and cookie making before the kids rolled up. Happy days, eh? The Holiday was written and directed by Nancy Meyers , who also directed The Intern, Something's Gotta Give and The Parent Trap.  It's a li...

I can't believe how far behind in Christmas shopping I feel this year! Normally by now I have lists ready and I'm well underway. I think part of the problem is that I haven't been able to get a sensible word from the Lads about what they want, and I am just not prepared to have a go at guessing myself. That, and the money flow is not the best. We are doing well, thank you, but working for oneself as a business, especially one like solicitor, means that you never know whether this month is a feast or a famine. I thought I would be giving up tutoring, but I still need to keep it up for the next year at least, if only to pay for Christmas. Having a small amount of cash every week just gives me the freedom to know that I will have x amount to spend on y day. It helps. Like Tesco says... every little helps. But this weekend I finally sat down, notebook and Evernote to hand, and planned the shopping. I still have no idea what the lads want, but they'll have to mak...

Mark Rylance and Tom Hanks are two of my favourite actors, and for almost the same reason. They're both ordinary people, and give off the feeling that if you met them in real life they'd be very nice (indeed, Tom Hanks gatecrashed a lady's wedding photos in Central Park while running; he stopped, wished the couple well, asked them their names and had lovely words to say, then posed as they had their official photograph with him before.... and this is the beautifully Him thing.... pulling out his own camera and asking, "Can I have a selfie with you folks? My wife won't believe this!") They also don't over act. They know how to do nuanced, measured performances using every part of their face. And that ability gets used and used well in Bridge of Spies . With Mark Rylance as a Russian spy, Rudolf Abel and Tom Hanks as the civilian American lawyer James B Donovan who is drafted in to act as an independent emissary to negotiate the release of Gary Powers...

Fine, thanks. I had a bit of a busy day on Saturday, racing off to collect a daughter from Badminton (the game, not the place; I'm not that rich, you know?) before going to buy some clothes (for Her) from Asda, have an argument in the doorway because she'd lost the receipt and I thought we were going to be accused of shoplifting, before taking Medium Hairy One to the barbers, where he had about half of what I would have said to cut off cut, and then off to visit Ma who was cooking us tea. I hate watching my parents cook. It's one of the most stressful experiences, especially when my Mum limps in with a hot dish in one hand and the cane she is leaning on in the other. It's just simpler, easier and a lot less stressful to have them over to ours. And Strictly!!!! The one shining moment on a busy Saturday. We watched Strictly with our mouths agog to see what Judge or Ed or Louise would come up with. Are you watching Strictly again this year? We've completely lost...