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This Easter has been a quiet one, and I've just been using this weekend to recover from work as the past couple of weeks have been busy. Last Easter, I was visiting my family in America, and it fell on the last day of March. I always prefer a later Easter because the weather is normally a little warmer. However, it has not been as warm as it was predicted to be a week ago.  

The hot cross bun is not an American tradition, but these are sold here over the spring months in time for Easter, and I enjoy toasting them and putting some butter on them. I saw some home-made ones in Greenwich in Peyton and Byrne bakery, and it was delicious. Marks and Spencer did some chocolate hot cross buns, which were tasty, and new "Dippy Eggs". These are hot cross bun with a chocolate cream egg (similar to the popular Cadbury's one) chopped inside, and I bought them but they were mouldy. 

The bakery also had some egg nest cakes and biscuits/cookies with Easter shapes.

This year, I tried three new Easter Eggs. I like Melt chocolates, and when I went to their shop, I saw two eggs that I would like to try. I love coconut, so the first was a coconut Easter Egg, textured like a coconut. It was so good. Inside was a coconut chocolate.

I also had the popular Dubai chocolate Easter Egg, a Breton-style egg which is shaped in doughnut rings. One ring was a milk chocolate with pistachio chunks, and the next layer was a pistachio-Dubai type of chocolate. They were not filled; this was solid chocolate in rings. It was also delicious.

Humble Crumble also did their Mini egg crumble nest but with a hot cross bun filling and crumble.

Tulip season is still here and in its prime for the past week, and I discovered some amazing tulip gardens in St. James's Park last week when we had some nice weather. The bright colours and floral blooms are very spring-like and remind me of how Easter should be.

Peggy Porschen Cakes always do seasonal cupcakes, and I liked the edible daisy ons, the carrots, nests, and bunny cakes.

I tried the chocolate nest one and the bunny one, which was their strawberry flavour.

The last Easter Egg that I got this year was Handmade in Chilterns, which comes to the market in Ruislip. I was not going to get another Easter egg, but their chocolates are nice, and this was a unique one. You can get different sizes and a choice of two colours, but the egg itself has a layer of caramel inside it. 

Below is the rich carmel, and it was delicious. 

Today, I went for a walk and enjoyed seeing some spring blossoms.

I walked in Ruislip Woods, and the bluebells in this woodland were in bloom.

I also went to Eastcote House Gardens to see the tulips and flowers in bloom, including more bluebells and a beautiful orange blossom.

I hope that all of my readers have had a great day no matter what you got up to. 

June is my birthday month, and I was away for it this year, but there will be a post coming up about that. I have bottomless brunch planned with my friends later this month, and I cannot wait for that. This year is flying by quickly, and I have been attempting to use up my annual leaves and make time for myself. I have done some travel to make the most of my time. Work is as busy as always, but I have been trying to keep my limits. I have spent less time in front of the laptop and more time reading books and listening to audio books.

As soon as I can, I will update you on what has been happening. I am a little slow this year on my blog updates.

At the beginning of this month, you may have noticed that my website was down. I have attempted to contact the hosting company on many occassions and have also connected with the ownr of the account, which isn't the owner of my blog, and they have been locked out too. After many attempts by both of us and a lack of response in the domain register company, I decided that I needed to change my domain name. This is the first time that I have changed my domain name since I purchased the domain back in early 2000 or 2001. Unfortunately, they were not responsive at all despite me owning the domain, and all I wanted to do was to pay the renewal fees. I had been thinking for some time about getting another domain name, but it did not happen quite the way I wanted it to. 

Welcome to Almost Afternoon. I know for some time that I wanted to rebrand my website and wanted to do more, but work has taken over most of my time, and I have not wanted to do too much on the laptop when I am not at work. For now, I have simply moved the domain name and migrated any links to the new domain. If I can regain the original domain, I will set up a redirect. There's so much to do but so little time.

AlmostAfternoon is a lifestyle website, and I will continue to update the blog as I see fit with photography, street art, travel, days out, and more. I took a few weeks to decide on the domain name as there were other names I considered, but they were already taken. AlmostAfternoon is a symbol of the work day coming to an end or people getting ready to enjoy some time to relax and unwind after a busy morning. As I said, there were many other options, but they were also taken, so I settled on this. Welcome to the new brand. 

I have always wanted to see the Northern Lights, but seeing them is never guaranteed. For them to come as far south as London is rare, but they were thre on Friday night/Saturday morning, and I happened to be up and see them. However, I could not really see them with my eye as the London sky is too bright, but I was able to see them dance across the sky through my iPhone and get several photographs. The highlight time of them was around 12:00 through to (at least 1:30 in the morning with the best show taking place around 1:00 in the morning.

The sky danced with shades of green and purple. I wish I had been somewhere where there was not light pollution in order to see them clearly. The experience was amazing.

With the exception of January, the year has so far flown by. I have still been in my busy project at work and not able to really enjoy much outside of work. I feel that it is very important to have a work-life balance and to enjoy life without being forced to work all of the time, and I need to make more time for myself. The weather has not turned great so far, but I am looking for some good times ahead. I took some photographs of some beautiful spring daffodils and tulips, which I enjoy at this time of year. Spring has only just arrived, and I am sure that it will go by just as quickly.

Happy spring and I hope you get to enjoy it.

This Thanksgiving, I spent time with friends and went to Harvester (chain restaurant) in Watford since the local Harvester restaurant in Ruislip closed. We had the festive menu and could enjoy the salad beforehand. We orderd starters, and I had the tomato soup. I also ordered a Woo Woo cocktail to start. Thanksgiving fell early this year, and this is on of the earliest dates that Thanksgiving can be. 

I had roast turkey, which came with other vegetables.

For dessert, I had my favourite - Rocky Horror sundae.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Diwali! This year, I was invited to a Diwali party by a colleague, and I made a potato and a cauliflower Indian dish. These went down really well and tasted delicious, receiving many compliments. It's also very autumnal now with the cold weather and the leaves in piles on the ground around the trees. This weekend also seemed to make the start of the festive season with the Christmas Light turn-on and street party at Ruislip Manor.

Happy Diwali!

The summer went very quickly this year, and I have not been keeping my blog as up to date as I have done in previous years due to my work situation. I have not wanted to spend more time on front of my laptop as that's what I have been doing all day. So, things that I have enjoyed in my previous life have got a bit neglected this year. Most of the summer was a wash-out and cold. We had a few days of warmer weather here and there, and we had a few glorious days in September. Below is a few things that I managed to get up to.

I ordered some garden furniture, and it took ages to arrive. It finally came in September, just in time for a few days of warm weather. I tried to sit outside as much as possible after work and in the remaining sliver of light before the sun went behind the houses. I would have an ice-cold drink. On the weekends, I would have my lunch or dinner outside. I invited friends over for drinks and dinner too.

In September, I was invited by a friend's daughter to Bingo. This was held at the Ruislip Rugby Club. I nearly got one filled out, and the remaining number I needed was 13! They called 14 instead, and someone else had that number as their last number. Bad luck. Our table did manage to win a few sweets.

Earlier in the summer, I went to Westfield shopping centre, and after looking around the shops for some new clothing (as one big thing is that I am losing weight as I put a lot on especially over the pandemic), I had lunch at Indi-go. It serves traditional Indian food. It was very filling.

I then managed to save room for a miniature pistachio ice cream from Snowflake, which was near to Indi-go.

Of course, I mentioned a lot of lunch or dinner dates with friends. We had several dinner evenings where one of my friends would cook at their house. I hosted a couple of these as well. Everyone likes pasta, and it's quick and easy to make, so these turned out to be pasta evenings.

I did try to walk every day in order to lose weight and get the exercise needed as I have spent so much time in front of computers this year. On the warm evenings after work, I managed to do the long walks that I used to get to do in the last company I worked at because I had a good work-life balance there. I would walk from Ruislip Manor to Eastcote. I did not get to venture the full walk to Pinner this year, however. I did visit Eastcote House Gardens a couple of times.

The yarn-bombed post boxes do pop up every once in a while. I managed to take a photograph of this one by the Royal Mail post office featuring the character "Postman Pat". 

Of course, with autumn coming, the sunrises look spectacular with a lot of colour. The days are getting shorter.

During my walks, I also would visit Ruislip or walk around the local fields to get my exercise. I worked all the way to and around Ruislip Lido as well.

On one of those days with the beautiful weather, I popped into an Indian restaurant or a cocktail bar to get a drink or two and enjoy the warm evening as much as possible.

There was one of the days toward the end of last month that I went to see the butterfly trail with my friends and her daughter, and I suggested Chin Chin Labs for ice cream. Due to autumn starting, they had a special candied corn ice cream treat with pumpkin ice cream. My friend's daughter got a sundae.

After walking around for a little while, we enjoyed cocktails. I ordered a bowl of this cocktail. We ended up in Leicester Square at All Bar One. The cocktail bowl was very colourful with real edible flowers and orange slices.

All year, I kept thinking that work would quiet down, but it has not done. I don't see it quieting down at all now until the end of the project, which may be in March. I am constantly feeling drained and losing motivation. I feel like I do not have much of a social or personal life at the moment.

This year is going by in a flash, and I've had a busy year and have not been updating my blog as much as I should be doing. In late June, I met up with a friend for her birthday. We went to BarItalia in Uxbridge, and we had cocktails before waiting on some other friends and having a meal. I had pasta. We had some two-for-one passionfruit cocktails followed by other cocktails. I forgot to take a photograph of my meal as we were busy talking.

Afterwards, we went to explore what was happening in Uxbridge. Surprise but it was not too much. We went to Fig Tree and had a chat, and I had one more cocktail - a spicy one. It came with a whole chili, which I also ate.

I really should start to get some glamour photographs, but we did not have too long of a night.

June is my birthday month, and it has come around really quickly this year. I did not have a large celebration, but I did go out with a couple of friends for bottomless brunch at the same venue that I went to last year. The actual day was extremely hot and one of the hottest days of the year, which does not work well with drinking bottomless Prosecco. This year has been particularly stressful for me. I have been very busy with work, and some personal situations have not been the best for me. This little celebration helped to make everything a little bearable. 

I did get a small Victoria sponge cake with fresh strawberries and raspberries to help celebrate.

My friends wanted to go to Prime Steak and Grill in Beaconsfield again. I had pancakes, which was not really enough to eat, and I had a creme brulee for dessert. Happy birthday to me.