She's crafty...

It's amazing how much more productive your day becomes when it starts at a decent time. This morning, instead of sleeping until like 9:45 (which has been my pseudo-schedule the past few days) I got up before Matt at 7:15! His class started at 9:30, so in order for us to go look at this bike that we learned about yesterday, we needed to get moving and start walking around 8:30. The bike hunt was very successful, and now I too have joined the ranks of Cambridge cyclists. I knew I was going to die as soon as I pulled out onto the road, but Matt gave me detailed instructions and tips for riding on the left hand side. Obviously, I made it home in one piece, thoroughly exhilarated that I had cheated death and had not been run over by a bus nor had accidentally turned into oncoming traffic. It is so much more efficient to ride than walk. It took me 10 minutes to get home as opposed to the 20ish it took to walk to the bike shop. Now Matt and I can go exploring around the city in a timely manner.

 Note the awesome gold color, mud guards, and sweet basket. Should make grocery shopping much easier while keeping my clothes shielded from flying dirt. Cost: 65GBP.

When I got back home, I decided it was time to use the hoover. Remember one of my very first posts that showed a creepy spider on the ceiling? Well those darn granddaddy long legs were everywhere around the ceilings and hiding in corners. I decided that enough was enough, and I was sick of stomping on leaves in the entryway that had blown in from outside. So, I made my way into the freezer closet room thing, and pulled out the dusty vacuum. Upon closer inspection of the vacuum, I noticed something peculiar...a face!

Henry the Hoover! hahahaha The vacuum has a name and a face! It reminded me of the Heffalumps and Woosels from Winnie the Pooh. His schnoz sucked all the spiders right up! I went on to clean the bathroom, light our awesome honey chocolate candle, and get rid of some junk papers laying around. Man, do I feel better. Cleanliness is next to godliness, right?

After cleaning, I decided it was time for a reward. While messing around on Facebook and Pinterest, I drank some green tea and ate some shortbread cookies. I guess Pinterest inspired me/made me depressed that I can't decorate our flat to its fullest potential/made me miss Hobby Lobby...anywho, I decided that crafting session #1 needed to happen. Since my crafting supplies consist of brown packing paper, pens, sharpies, scissors, and scotch tape I was limited on my options. However, I still managed to get creative. There are some hooks on the door of the creepy freezer closet room that I assume are leftover from the previous tenants' children. They are school themed. I do not like them. So, using my supplies, I came up with this:

Before...

After! I'm not claiming to be Picasso, but those are supposed to be flowers. I like hastily sketched flowers better than pencils.

Nothing fancy, but now I don't hate the hooks as much. They are more like grown-up hooks. My next project entailed turning a Nutella jar into a button container. We brought all of our buttons from home along with a mini sewing kit, just in case our coat buttons or Matt's suit buttons got ripped off. They have been in a plastic bag, but now...

Before...

After! (Sorry for the poor picture quality.) Again, not super cute, but better than a Nutella label.

All these happenings, a break for lunch, and it's barely 2:00pm. Productive day! At some point in the next 2.5 months, I'm going to attempt a tissue paper Christmas tree (via a tutorial on Pinterest.) We will see how that goes!

Speaking of Christmas, my family and Jeff (who is basically my brother, let's face it) have booked their flights to come visit at Christmas time! Yay! I'm not going to start counting down days yet, but I am really looking forward to it. We are doing Disneyland Paris, regular Paris sight-seeing, a couple days in London, and then Christmas in Cambridge. Yipee! Can't wait.

Also, a short little tidbit on one of Matthew's professors that I forgot to mention. Matt had a lecture on influenza, specifically the adaptations and mutations of the type "A" virus. Yeah, I pretty much followed the stuff he relayed to me, but I think it was as intense as it sounds. Anyway, the man who taught has a PhD in Virology and is part of the committee that picks which flu strain will be used in the worldwide vaccine. He's been published (several times) in Science, the highest level journal in which you can hope to be published. And this man, Dr. Derek Smith, taught the whole lecture in cargo shorts, a quarter zip fleece, and ROLLERBLADES. Yes, he taught rolling back and forth across the room on skates. I think that is hilarious. Just goes to show you that even brilliant people are still just people, senses of humor and all.