Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Tomorrow, from when you're reading this, me and my family will be going away to Yorkshire to spend Christmas. We will be staying in a cottage near Robin Hood's Bay between the 23rd and the 27th of December, spending Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day in Yorkshire, which should be a lot of fun. As someone who is a fan of James Herriot, I'm very much looking forward to seeing Yorkshire for the first time. Recently, I've been watching the second series of James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small on the TV and seeing the rolling hills of the Yorkshire Dales, as well as the picturesque countryside has really sold the Yorkshire landscape to me. I've been to the North of England before when I went on the year 10 dance trip to Manchester but Yorkshire is a place that I have always wanted to visit but never had the chance to, so I'm very much excited to go. I heard that the area we are staying in ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I hope you too had a very merry Christmas because I know that despite the current situation here in the UK, that's exactly what I had. I know that with the presence of the new variant of the Coronavirus, everyone's spirits were suddenly dimmed as we were all bumped up a tier, with most of us entering another complete lockdown in tier 4. I know also that with most other countries afraid of obtaining this new form of the virus, many who were expecting to go home this Christmas to finally see their family, were left stranded, spending a Christmas in a country that wasn't their home land. However, Christmas is what you make of it and there's always time to have some fun, even if we're not in our usual social situation. It felt strange seeing the empty sofas that would usually be filled by chattering friends on Christmas Eve but it was still nice to spend some quality time with the family where we would otherwise be ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, Last Saturday was an amazing night. The Strictly Come Dancing 2020 final was filled with amazing dances, I was absolutely blown away! Congratulations on Bill and Oti for winning this year's series. I'm so happy that Oti got yet another win and I'm happy that a slightly more elderly man with fantastic dance talent, was able to win that trophy. Truly, well done to them! However, I was also just as impressed with the effort that everybody else in the final put in on that night. The competition was so close this year, I wasn't sure who was going to win because everyone had so much talent. Consequently, I would like to showcase each of the couple's dances that I loved from the night, today! I think it's only fair to start off with Bill and Oti's performance since they did win. I loved their showdance that they did to the song The Show Must Go On by Queen. Not only was the song very meaningful and an excellent...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  In order to spread the Christmas cheer on this year's slightly different Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I've decided to come up with a 2020 Christmas song playlist to get yourself into the spirit of celebration! There are lots of different songs in this playlist to suit different tastes in music but I do hope that you enjoy listening to all of them because they are all really amazing! We've got some classics like Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé, and Frank Sinatra if you're into traditional artists who make music that really makes you feel Christmassy. We've also got some more contemporary covers from Pentatonix, Samantha Harvey, Madilyn Bailey, Connie Talbot, Cimorelli, Kurt Hugo Schneider, and even a violin piece from the amazing Lindsey Stirling. I hope you enjoy listening to about 30 minutes worth of great tunes! I know me and my family love listening to these songs at Christmas so I do hope that you like list...

  Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Unfortunately, there's been a new virus outbreak. Not the one currently happening in London and Kent, although that is awful too, but the outbreak of the Avian flu amongst all birds. I don't exactly know when the Avian flu was first brought to government attention but I do know that around the 11th of December, people started to talk about the possibility of having to quarantine their poultry in order to prevent the risk of further infection. If you don't know what the Avian flu is, it's a virus that transcends down from aquatic birds worldwide and it has the ability to infect domestic birds, poultry, and potentially other animals like humans, although it's not really a high risk. Symptoms of the Avian flu in birds can be lack of co-ordination, purple discoloration of the legs, nasal discharge, lack of energy or appetite, diarrhoea, and swelling of the eyes or the head. Other more serious symptoms include dea...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I know that this series of Strictly Come Dancing has been a bit shorter than other series but I still can't believe that today is the final! If you need a reminder of who remains on the competition then you should know that there are only 4 couples left. There's Bill and Oti, Jamie and Karen, Harvey and Janette, and Maisie and Gorka. I'm so happy that these are the couples remaining because they all deserve to be there. They all danced amazingly well last week and I can't wait to talk about a couple of them today. Bill and Oti's tango to Metallica was probably one of the most creative tangos that I think I've ever seen in my life. When Bill said that he was going to do a dance to heavy metal music, I wasn't really sure what it was going to look like at first. I mean, I know that the tango is quite staccato and fierce but I thought that the dance was going to get overshadowed by the music. However, it was...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, *Future me here* This post was supposed to be published on Wednesday but I was a bit busy writing that history essay so I didn't have the time to post it. However, it is Blogmas and I don't want to miss a day so here's Wednesday's writing post anyway. Enjoy! :) I feel so done with school right now. I'm so tired and I can't function properly! 😂😴 I honestly can't wait for the Christmas holidays and to have a well-earned break. I'm not great at taking breaks because I can't stand the thought of doing nothing but it's not good to burn yourself out either so I think it's nearing the time when I just need a little bit of a holiday. Currently, I'm finishing up my last history essay for this year and there's a bit of choreography that I have to teach to my friends at dance as you're reading this. However, once that's all over, I can finally relax a bit and forget about what an a...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, On Wednesday, I had my secondary school awards ceremony online because these are the times that we live in! If you don't know what a secondary school awards ceremony is, it's basically a massive assembly where all the year 12s are expected to return to their schools in order to see if they got an award for any good work that they did during year 11. I was expecting to physically go this year but that had to be cancelled, unfortunately, because of Covid-19. However, what I thought was really quite nice was that the teachers still put together an hour long video in order to still have the awards ceremony. When I was going into college on Wednesday, most of my old friends had already watched the video and one of my friends from secondary, who goes to the same sixth form as me, said I won an award. Consequently, when I got home, I checked the video to see what award I won. It turns out I won the award for business, my least fav...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I can't believe that the end of Strictly Come Dancing 2020 is so close right now. It's the semi-final today and I'm excited to see who will make it to the final! However, last week it was musicals week on Strictly Come Dancing and there were a lot of amazing dances. I especially liked Maisie and Gorka's jive to Little Shop of Horrors as I thought that that was really fun. I also liked Ranvir and Giovanni's Viennese Waltz to She Used to Be Mine as I thought that she told the story really well. Let's talk about these two couples today! I really liked Maisie and Gorka's jive because I think that they really brought out the element of fun in the dance. I thought that the music suited the jive well and I thought that Maisie's acting was on point throughout the whole of the dance. It was a really fast-paced and difficult routine for a celebrity to do but I think that Maisie handled it just fine because she...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Sunday, I went to the Milton Maize Maze to get the Christmas tree. It turns out, over the 2 weeks that I was staying at home, I actually had to self-isolate because I was a close contact with someone who had Covid-19. Good thing I didn't step out of the house earlier then! I think me and my mum were a bit confused with all the information because my school sent way too many emails to us that just all contradicted each other. Like, was I supposed to stay at home or was I allowed to go out like everyone else? It turns out that the week before, I was still technically isolating so I thought it would just be best to remain at home for the remaining few days until I could go out. I stayed at home and didn't develop any symptoms so I was able to go and get the Christmas tree with my mum and my sister. Hooray! It's always so funny when we get the Christmas tree because ever since we got our extension done back in 2017, we ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, It's Blogmas day 1, I'm very happy to announce. I'm going to make this a regular thing but I'm also going to do a couple normal posts in case you're not as into Christmas as everyone else. I do hope you enjoy this post anyway! Everytime my mum gets me and my sister an advent calendar she always has to mention this story because it is seriously funny. When I was younger, about 7 or 8 years old, my mum got me and my sister advent calendars like she usually did. I was never opposed to getting an advent calendar because who doesn't want to have chocolate, right? However, I don't think I fully reached an understanding yet about when an advent calendar was given out so when my mum gave me a Pepper Pig purple advent calendar one 1st of December those years ago, I think that I honestly just saw it as a purple janky thing with no purpose whatsoever. Plus, I was 8 years old and growing out of this Pepper Pig nonse...

  Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Today I'm going to be talking all about ZooNation and Kate Prince, in continuation with this series. Now, I've actually done a lot of research on Kate Prince's life and the ZooNation dance company when I was completing part of my coursework for BTEC dance. As I found out more about Kate and her company, I felt inspired to tell you guys about her since she isn't very well known and through what she's done, she has changed the way we look at dance and therefore deserves to be talked about today. I hope you enjoy reading about her story and the life of ZooNation! It's really interesting. Kate Prince was born in 1974 in Southampton. She is the founder and artistic director of ZooNation: The Kate Prince Company, an urban, contemporary, and hip hop specialised dance company, based in London. Kate has choreographed many pieces in her own musicals and has a real eye for creative, new, and raw talent. One of her p...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, This year, Christmas was great. On Christmas Eve, we were having some friends over so I made sausage rolls whilst my sister was decorating the Christmas cake with fondant icing. Everyone always says that my sausage rolls are the best. I think that's because I add sweet chilli sauce to my sausage mix, along with herbs and tomato puree. This really makes them taste a whole lot better. I managed to finish making the sausage rolls early so I then went over to the table to help my sister finish decorating the cake. We cut out stars, leaves, and Christmas trees using the different fondant cutters and we then dusted them with different coloured luster dust. My sister also dusted the whole cake with a chrome luster dust and the finish product looked amazing. After all this, we got ourselves ready as friends were coming around. My sister really went all out with the Christmas make-up and outfit but I just wore some leggings wi...