September Playlist + Meet My Niece!

Hello everyone!

This past month has been pretty crazy and I’m happy to be done with it honestly.

The beginning of it was interesting though, my sister has expected contractions throughout her pregnancies, but she went to the hospital more frequent with this one, and the most recent weren’t necessarily had anything to do with my niece. She had some issues with her breathing and her feet were very swollen, and she was told to rest more and put up her feet, and she tried to do everything the doctor requested but she still had complications, so she went to the hospital to be checked out and when she came home over two weeks later, we had welcomed our newest member into the family!

💗 MEET KIMBER MAE 💗

In my baby announcement back in May, I mentioned that I wasn’t going to share her name until she was born, mainly for the suspense but I also didn’t know whether or not her parents would change it last minute.

Kimber is a preemie, like moi, but at least she didn’t weight like two pounds and have to spend roughly 70 days in the NICU! Despite this though, she actually weights one pound less than her brother Nolan. We are all in agreement that we definitely don’t remember Nolan ever being this small! Nolan was a chunky baby but she’s very petite. A big difference between she and Nolan is that Kimber loves to be swaddled whereas Nolan has never enjoyed being wrapped up. He’s even four years old and he does not sleep with a blanket on him!

Since she came so early, as she was supposed to be born in early October, we had to make some adjustments to our plans of having my nephew come to our house while Blondie was in the hospital, we assumed it would be like two days, but it turned out to be two weeks. He went to his dad’s house on certain days but for the most part he stayed at our house, and he was a very good boy. He was very helpful to us, especially my dad and I, with our issues lately. I watched a LOT of toddler based educational shows like Paw Patrol, Blippi, and Cocomelon. By the end though, I was growing to be a fan of Blippi’s videos at Children’s Museums and Zoos. And at night we switched between Bluey (another favorite of mine!) and Muffet Babies. He seemed to enjoy having a sleepover in Aunt Meg’s room.

When Blondie was officially allowed to go home, she came to our house, and I finally got to meet her after almost a week after she was born. I was thrilled as this meant that I could have her on my bed like I did when Nolan was a baby. My mom got her a bouncy seat thingy in the beginning of her pregnancy, and we got to test it out and we found out that even though she enjoyed sitting in it, she seemed even smaller! I swore she gave me a little smile that next morning too!

Now let’s move on to the sad part of this post. I was hoping to write a separate one, but I thought it would look strange since I included Kimber’s announcement in this one.

I am very sad that Her Majesty the Queen has died. She was the reason why I became obsessed with the British royals and other monarchs in Eastern Europe, as I was curious about why she had the Roman Numeral “II” behind her name and that’s when I discovered my love of the Plantagenet and Tudor dynasties.

I have watched many documentaries on the Queen’s 70 reign in the last few years. I’ve enjoyed seeing her all dressed up, doing engagements out in public in various colors and her signature smile, hat and bags. She always seemed so interested in everything! I will forever enjoy the opening of the opening ceremony of the Olympics in 2012, where she walks the walls of Buckingham Palace with James Bond and her corgies, and acts like she drops out of the helicopter into that arena, I knew it was fake but it still shocked me they would do something like that. She must’ve had her say in the way of the segment too, after all she is the Queen, she wasn’t going to do something that showed her in a negative way, and joining Daniel Craig, allows us as the audience and fans to see her playfulness and overall sense of humor!

After 70 years of her reign, we now have a King and will probably have one for quite a while as after King Charles is William, The Prince of Wales, and his son Prince George of Wales. This part is a part weird, but I’m sure I am not alone in my thinking, but I am curious on how the British royals will evolve into this new order, and still be able to be caring human beings to themselves and others around the world.

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As you can imagine, having to experience all of these new changes in a matter of two weeks, I haven’t been able to listen to music nor read my books as much as I normally do, I am finally trying to keep up with my stuff but I’m trying to take it easy as well.

This month saw a lot of good and bad things, but I still had my music to get me through it. So, I hope you enjoy my Top 20 below. If you’d like to play the entire monthly playlist on Spotify, click here

Little Lies by Fleetwood Mac
Fallin’ For You by Colbie Calliat
Sometimes A Prayer Will Do by Celtic Woman
All She Wanna Do by John Legend
Late Night Talking by Harry Styles
Brand New by Ben Rector
Love Me Anyway by P!nk featuring Chris Stapleton
Vegas by Doja Cat
Choke by The Warning featuring grandson and Zero 9:36
Shivering by Illenium featuring Spiritbox
Kickstart My Heart by Halocene featuring Shershen&Zaritskaya
Bow Down by Rain Paris
Toxic by Charlotte Wessels
Try Again by Aaliyah
Come, Little Children by Clovet Mae
Godless by BANKS
Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost by Eklipse featuring Melissa Bonny
Bom Bidi Bom by Nick Jonas featuring Nicki Minaj
Black Widow by Fame On Fire featuring Twiggy

What were listening to this month? Name your top three favorites in the comments!

Places To Visit In England

Hi 🙂

I am so happy that you guys have allowed me to talk about history and I can actually discuss some of my favorite sections on here for the past several months. Right now, it’s been about British royal history and the lone Russian Imperial Family post, but hopefully I’ll be talking about other eras that have always interested me too. I do have three more possible “versus” posts coming soon, but I wanted to do something a little different this week and explain a little bit more about why I had to change my bucket list destination from London to just England in general.

London will forever be my main destination. It currently holds the #1 spot in my heart but everybody is familiar with London and while that’s nothing to be sad about really, I actually know about different cities and villages that surround London as I’ve been able to learn more about the Plantagenet and Tudor eras and I really liked to visit them just as much.

I’ve actually been longing to create this post for the past two years. Yeah, I said TWO years! I realized after I finished this post that I didn’t go into any details on how much these castles were handicap accessible, although I know I will not be able to go up to the second floors, as there were no working elevators at the time! So this will be a rough list, because I can always figure out other places to add on, but at least you’ll get an idea of where I’d like to visit one day! Oh, I probably should say that I don’t have any plans of going there anytime soon. If I’m honest, I feel like I’d need more than one week to get my fill and visit some of my favorite places and landmarks. I’ve always wanted to stay there for two weeks to a month at a time so I don’t have to rush things and I can enjoy being in the moment.

Hampton Court Palace – located in London

If you are into the Tudor times like me, you may think that King Henry VIII was the one who created Hampton Castle/Palace, but he wasn’t. It was actually one of his most trusted advisers Cardinal Thomas Wosley. He had it built for himself but gave it to Henry. After the demise of both Wosley and the Catholic church, it was still one of his favorite places.

Hampton Court is one of my favorite Tudor palaces. It’s also the one I know the most about too. It’s very unique as it is mainly used with red brick, that’s not traditional when you think of the gothic look to buildings of that time! I also love the subtle gestures towards Anne Boleyn in different corners of the entrances. It’s kind of shocking that they were never plastered off after she was beheaded but maybe Henry had forgotten he had them put in? At least that’s what I’m thinking what happened!

Ludlow Castle – located in Shrosphire

Ludlow is one castle that I feel I still have a lot to learn about, but I know it was the place where Prince Arthur lived when he was a boy and teen. When he married Katherine of Aragon, this was where they lived for the first few months before he died. I think it was a popular place to send the heir apparents to study with their tutors and the clergymen. Elizabeth of York’s younger brothers Edward V and Richard, Duke of York was set there. When Edward was about two years old he was sent to live away from court life and his parents. King Henry VIII and Jane Seymour’s son Edward VI was also taken there as a young boy too.

Ludlow would be considered a “ruined” castle as it hasn’t been kept up to shape as several other palaces have in recent years. It no longer has the second floor and grass has grown over the walls and ground. However, it still looks imposing! These ruined castles, abbeys and houses are still fascinating to people because there is still so much history to them and that’s why people still want to visit them.

Warwick Castle – located in Warwichshire

Warwick Castle is another favorite of mine. It has always been owned by a noble family, mostly the Earls of Warwick and eventually privately to different families. The first earl to inherit the stunning castle was Henry de Beamont in 1088 and it was given to him by William the Conqueror.

I became interested in Warwick Castle after learning about “The Kingmaker” (Richard Neville, 16th Earl of Warwick) as he was the cousin to both Edward IV and Richard III. Richard’s daughters married the younger brothers of Edward, Isabel married George, Duke of Clarence and Anne married Richard, Duke of Gloucester who later after the death of Edward she became his Queen Consort. I think Warwick Castle has this interesting yellow glow to it. Everytime I see pictures of it, I see like a very plain shade of yellow within the stone.

Hever Castle – located in Kent

Hever Castle is the childhood home of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII the one responsible for Henry’s sudden change to the Protestant faith and wanting to divorce his wife Katherine of Aragon after she wasn’t able to give him a son and heir. Anne lived there with her parents Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire and Lady Elizabeth Howard and siblings Mary Boleyn (who was also a mistress to King Henry VIII) and George Boleyn, 2nd Viscount Rochford.

What is surprising is that Hever hasn’t been on my radar that long as despite the fact that I’ve always been a huge supporter of Anne Boleyn, I just figured her childhood home had been destroyed years ago either from old age or during the aftermath of World War II and the Blitz. So when I did find out that it was still standing, I was kind of happy! If you’d like to see the inside of Hever Castle, you need to look into The History Review on Facebook and take a look at Hayley Nolan’s podcast/videos, you’ll be just as amazed as I was of the inside of this place!

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I have two other cities I’d like to pop into, first there’s Bath. It is known for the Roman built baths, they thought the waters had healing powers and so they created baths all over the city. One thing that I want to say about Bath is that, despite not knowing a lot about King George III “The Mad King” and his son and the regency age that his son George IV who had command of Great Britain in the early 1800’s, I have always found the history of Bath during this time period interesting. Besides the baths themselves, there are some very cool architecture and I’ve been very fond of the townhouses, but then again I like townhouses anyway! Every country has a different design and paint them in quirky colors, but “The Royal Crescent” in Bath are my favorite. It is a giant half circular row of townhouses that were first used for the wealthy. but honestly I still feel like you need to be pretty wealthy to be able to afford one of these apartments!

One of my favorite girls and blogger Kelly recently went to Bath and wrote about her experiences about what to do and what not to do in Bath. She took photos while she was there so you can see the beautifulness of the two locations I just spoke about in the last paragraph to get a better idea of the amazing things it has to offer.

York is the second and a very historic place in many ways. There are castles and abbeys there, but there’s other things too, like a museum called the “Jorvik Viking Centre” because after the Romans, the Vikings invaded and inhabited it. York has a rich history of both invasions and are still finding artifacts from the area. I feel like my dad would love this place too since he’s so interested in the Vikings.

Fellow blogger Kelly of Let’s Go Somewhere Nice has been very helpful with telling me some of the history about York that I kind of knew about, I heard the story once on Mysteries At The Museum about Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The story is pretty interesting and every year on November 5th, I have to fight the urge to want fireworks! Look up the story and then you’ll understand what I mean. I follow a fun group on Facebook that talks about the past and present day British royals, and a follower Nic James had posted some pictures of his trip to York and Edinburgh, Scotland on the page. I’m not that familiar with a lot of the landmarks yet, so I left her a question about a beautiful gothic cathedral that she told me later is called York Minster. I recently watched a special about England’s Northeast side and I got to see the inside of the beautiful church. She left me a great quote about York that I wanted to share in this post because it sounds like my kind of place!

It’s full of folklore, ghost stories, majestic architecture, tradition; all mixed together and steeped in history.

One of my dreams is also to visit the burial sites of some of my favorite monarchs and put roses by their effigies. I’d like to visit Peterborough Cathedral as that’s where Katherine of Aragon is buried, people like to put flowers, her symbol pomegranates, and pray for her by her tomb. And then I’d like to place three white roses on the site of King Richard III at Leicester Cathedral. I’d also love to visit Westminster Abbey and Tower of London do the same thing with Elizabeth of York, Anne Boleyn, Catherine Howard and Lady Jane Grey but tie both a red and white rose together and lay them by their sites.

If you could choose any place in the world to visit for two weeks or a month, where would you go? And why are those places important to you?

References:

• The Anne Boleyn Files – The Death Of Cardinal Thomas Wosley 
• Hampton Court – King William III and Queen Mary II 
• Warwick Castle – History & Restoration 
• Tudors Dynasty – Early Tudor Palaces and Country Houses 
• All pictures were found on Wiki Commons!

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How I Got Interested | Anastasia Romanov

Back in May, I wrote about my love for Anne Boelyn on the anniversary of her execution. I’ve been a supporter of Queen Anne for so long that I felt if there was one royal that I could freely talk about on here, it would be her, but my knowledge of British royalty goes back a little bit further until reaches out to the current royal house: Windsor.

In today’s post though, I wanted to discuss another previous royal family that I have always been interested in since I was a young girl. Like most children of the nineties, we all watched the movie Anastasia and fell in love with the myth of the one Romanov family member to survive the end of the empire in the early 1900’s. Of course, it was all fictionalized of the demise of the Romanov family.

There was a real Anastasia Romanov but she was one of four daughters of Tsar Nicholas II and his British wife, who was a granddaughter of Queen Victoria. Tsarina Alexandra Fedorovna. Their children were Olga, Maria, Tatiana, Anastasia and heir apparent Alexi. Their son had the disease haemophilia, this is where the blood can’t clot properly so there’s a lot of bleeding after suffering any other damage to the body, even if it’s a simple bruise. This was a serious condition back in the 1800’s to mid 1900’s as there wasn’t any antibiotics for it that could help.

I don’t remember how I came to know the origins of the Russia’s last royal family, I think maybe a teacher had told us because it was popular among my friends, but I don’t think I was told by anybody in my family though. Not because they didn’t know about it, I just don’t think they wanted to explain the brutality of their murders so that’s how I see that piece of information wasn’t passed down to us.

I don’t know how I get started with these different families through the films I watch and why they’re always of people who were killed at the hands of somebody else. If anybody’s counting, that’s two already! I’m in the next post I figured a more happier royal, if there is such a thing.

How did you figure out that Anastasia Romanov was actually a real person and not just a made up princess for a movie?

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EP Review: “New World: Part 1” by Krewella

June 8th was a BIG day for the ladies of Krewella! They released their new EP called “New World” which had part 1 right next to it, which means we’ll probably be getting another one either sometime later this year or early 2018. They released an EP last year called “Ammunition” that I had a lot of fun reviewing considering I had no Spotify whatsoever. They put up their songs on their YouTube/Vevo account, which is what they did for the seven songs included in this sucker!

Jahan and Yasmin released one of these songs earlier this year, “Team” and the second single “Be There” went out last month, but I will go in order of the setlist and review them that way! Krewella generally does house, dubstep, techno, & drum and bass! They’re also known to be very personal in their lyrics and if you didn’t know both girls also lend their voices onto the tracks.

We begin with “Calm Down” and it was the first one I found on YouTube when I got online that evening! Jahan and Yasmin are kind of known for being very vocal and go heavy in their beats. They definitely don’t “pussy out” of their music or personalities and I love that and I feel like that this one represents that as a whole! It does have some soft moments but I actually like that, it gives the listener a break from the hard and increasing beat you hear throughout, I’ve already fallen in love with it. Second is “TH2C” which means “too high to care” if anybody wanted to know, and this has an exotic sound to it, sort of has a Japanese flare to it in the introduction. At least, that’s what I heard! It definitely has a pop sound, but it’s a fun one so I like it.

Next is “Fortune” that features Diskord, if you heard their last EP the first track “Beggars” also features Diskord on the track, so I’m liking to see that friendship go on into this EP as well! Sadly, I’ve still not heard of their music so I feel bad! This one is pretty chill, the tempo is slower but towards the end of the choruses and the girl’s voices become distorted the sound just sort of changes, but I think it could be the perfect summer anthem! “Love Outta Me” was a song that was released the week before, I hadn’t even heard it until like the day before this EP came out. This one gives me more of a house vibe, but it’s still pretty upbeat. I like it.

The next two songs were the ones that were released as promos. “Team” came out in December? I’m pretty sure around that time. All I remember that it was really cold outside when I heard it on the radio. It’s pretty catchy and almost sounds more pop-y, but I really the bass drop. I think this was our warning that something else was coming! I just didn’t think they’d release a new EP! After that is “Be There” and they just put out the music video of this track, I hadn’t heard it before I watched the video but I really enjoy it! I also loved seeing Jahan and Yasmin in those home videos and the road trips they’re family seemed to take a lot growing up. I also love that it could be a song for the two of them since they’re sisters! The last is “Parachute” and I will say when I heard this, I didn’t exactly like it as much. I was worried because it was like the second song I heard on YouTube after I realized they had released a selection of songs together. My in initial thought of it remains, it definitely has a pop-y sound to it, but it’s very soft and chill, more like a house track. It’s not bad for the second time around.

One thing I always like when Krewella release these EPs is that they’re always so experimental. Music is about evolution and the ladies stick to that motto and I love that! I think “New World” is a good title for this selection of songs since they all have a different flavor. Some have exotic sounds and pop-y vibes. I like this route and all I want now is more! I want to know what kind of sounds we can hear in part two! We’ll just wait out until they’re ready!

Have you heard of Krewella’s new extended play, “New World: Part 1”? What did you like or dislike about it!

Tune Tuesday | Greece 2016

Hey guys!

Today we’re going to talk about one artist: Xenia Ghali!

I am a big supporter of women in music; I think a lot of people see both heavy metal and electronic dance music as male produced. Over the years, I’ve tried to do my part and help promote these women in bands of guys or in this case women DJs. I don’t talk a lot about Xenia because truth be told, I don’t know a lot about her but I have seen her popularity rise since November of last year so that’s a plus! While writing this post, I was busy listening to different tracks on YouTube seeing which ones to add onto this post and I have to say, it was difficult because I was starting to like them a lot!

I need more Grecian musicians for next year’s Tune Tuesday, who should I add onto my list?