MissElaineous

On the Back Burner

On the Back Burner
It’s not just our house that is undergoing a makeover.  My work on the Indian River by Air website has inspired me to revisit my own, so if you head on over to the main MissElaineous landing page, you’ll see a few small tweaks as I work towards making it easier to find things. I have also started to turn my attention to future projects… View Post

A Very Expensive Holiday

A Very Expensive Holiday
This summer my husband and I made a trip back to the US to visit my parents in Florida. Through their generosity, it barely registered on our bank account. They covered the flights and we stayed at their home, ate their food, and relied on their hobbies for entertainment.  But, in the long-term, this will probably be one of the most expensive trips we’ve… View Post

A Summer Escape

A Summer Escape
There was recently a massive shake up at my office, with everyone moving desks, crossing corridors, and generally coming to grips with spending the day in a different location than usual.  I have a coveted new spot by the window, overlooking the touch of green space that is the courtyard.  It’s both a blessing and a curse: it’s great to… View Post

Instant Gratification

Instant Gratification
I admit it, I am a fan of immediate gratification. After all, it’s one of the reasons I pick up litter as part of Rubbish Walks / Off the Ground: it is incredibly rewarding to see the transformation of a litter-strewn area in the space of just a few minutes or hours. This extends to my work with MissElaineous as… View Post

Redbubble

Redbubble
Speaking of lessons learned, my time spent working on Indian River by Air has yielded a number of cross overs into MissElaineous, from the use of silhouettes for designs to my fondness for MOO business cards (not cheap, but great quality and you can use as many pictures as you want). Something else I stumbled on: Redbubble. There are a number… View Post

Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned
Or learnt.  Whichever way you prefer it, I have become a big believer in positive iterations of learning, improving, and evolving, whether it’s in web design*, my arts and crafts, or life in general. I recently read the book Black Box Thinking, which highlights how failure is actually a positive thing because it allows this learning to take place. Without… View Post

Soft and Prickly

Soft and Prickly
It’s strange when I think back about it, but it is because of a thistle that I am now living in a house I love. I loved our last house too, but it was rented, with a landlady who lived nearby and walked past it on a daily basis. It had a large garden that was a magnet for wildlife:… View Post

More Craftiness

More Craftiness
So this is the floor of our living room right now.  Piles of greeting cards, gift tags, magnets, postcards, stickers, and maybe one or two other things I am planning to sell at this week’s Craft Fayre at Neeld Hall. The past few weeks have been a flurry of activity as I’ve worked to top up inventory from June’s Crafts and Cream Teas sale,… View Post

Off to the Races

Off to the Races
When I was working on writing one piece of fiction a day, I occasionally had help from MrElaineous who would suggest a topic. This added another layer to the challenge as I tried to develop a story around an abstract concept. When possible, I also tried to experiment with different writing techniques, and what follows managed to combine both of… View Post

Chippenham

Chippenham
This has been an incredibly busy week for me. Over on Indian River by Air, we’re in the midst of preparing our marketing strategy and design for the 2017 calendar. Why so early? Deciding on the photos to use takes time, and ensuring that people know that we are selling the calendar is becoming an increasingly uphill battle as Facebook… View Post

A Touch of Fiction

A Touch of Fiction
Nearly two years ago I set myself the challenge of writing a new piece of fiction each day. I was fed up with academic writing, with its formal stiffness and convoluted style. I wanted to return to the playfulness of fiction, of creating a story out of pure imagination, of stating something and not knowing what direction it would go… View Post

A Bird of a Different Colour

A Bird of a Different Colour
I’ve written about robins. I’ve written about woodpigeons.  I’ve even written about watching birds at airports. That being said, I don’t consider myself an avid birdwatcher. Instead, one of the reasons I enjoy observing wildlife is because you never know what you’re going to see. It may be one of the aforementioned robins pouncing on an earthworm. Or a badger encountering a fox in the middle… View Post

A City Romance

A City Romance
Cambridge was my first love. And, like many love stories, this one begins as a teenage infatuation: I was 17 and I was going to the University of Cambridge’s International Shakespeare Summer School. I was excited and nervous and completely unprepared for the effect this trip would have on me. I had been away to summer camps before—two weeks in Georgia, ten days in… View Post

Pause

Pause
I have so much I want to write about at the moment: a recent trip to Cambridge (where this lovely lady comes from), a visit to Venice (Florida), and a myriad of other thoughts that help this page truly live up to its tagline. However, said trip to Cambridge has taken up more time than expected so my writing has… View Post

A Post-Holiday Dilemma

A Post-Holiday Dilemma
Holiday. Vacation. On leave. They’re all lovely words that conjure up visions of city breaks, seaside escapes, or days full of nothing but rest and relaxation. Yet if that’s the case, why do they always seem so busy?! There’s the pre-holiday preparation: making sure everything is done and that deadlines won’t be missed while away; instructing colleagues about current activities and handing over any tasks that may… View Post

Storytelling

Storytelling
This is a word I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, as ultimately it’s what I’d like to be doing in life.  If you’ve been to the main MissElaineous website, you’ll have seen a few circles that are currently greyed out, waiting for me to find the time and mental space to tackle them. One, the Language of Flowers, is a blog I’d like… View Post

Birding Abroad

Birding Abroad
This is a short blog entry as I am currently dealing with jet lag and my brain is only functioning at a fraction of its normal capacity. Apologies for any typos, missing words, or general lack of sense owing to lack of sleep … For the past two weeks I have been visiting family and friends in my hometown of… View Post

Watch this space

Watch this space
It’s been a busy week. While I have several blog entries half written (or in my head), I haven’t quite managed to get a complete post ready. Come back on Friday, at which point I should have caught up on things … or, at the very least, there will be another pretty picture to see. View Post

Beyond MissElaineous: Part 2

Beyond MissElaineous: Part 2
After running Indian River by Air for nearly two years, and while www.miss-elaineous.com lay dormant, my third web project began to take shape. The site Rubbish Walks grew out of annoyance: I was sick and tired of seeing the same litter day in, day out on my commute to and from the Chippenham train station.  Rather than continue to fume silently, I realised the best… View Post
MissElaineous Travel Blog: Escape, Explore, Discover, Enjoy