Keeping Up With Juliette

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Recently, me, my mum, and my sister Alice have all been sitting down every Saturday night to watch the latest episodes of Strictly Come Dancing 2022. It has been a long-standing tradition of ours since me and Alice were very young, to watch a bit of Strictly and for many years it has brought us a lot of joy to watch our favourite celebrities transform themselves from complete novices to experienced dancers. However, more recently, I guess we haven't been enjoying the series as much as we used to. It feels a bit of a shame for me to say this because I know how much Strictly Come Dancing has provided a platform for Ballroom and Latin dancing to become more widely recognised by the general public and I do believe that it is actually because of the show that these dance styles have become less associated with the older generation and now highly loved by the youth. This was a subject that I actually explored in more detail in my IB...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  Last weekend I didn't quite get the chance to watch Strictly Come Dancing properly as I was busy doing my babysitting on the Saturday evening. However, on the Sunday I did get the chance to watch one very special performance on YouTube and that was Rose and Giovanni's Couple's Choice dance to Symphony by Clean Bandit and Zara Larsson. If you are unaware of who Rose Ayling-Ellis is, she is an actress who plays Frankie on the BBC soap opera, East Enders, and she just so happens to be the first deaf celebrity contestant on BBC Strictly Come Dancing too. Last Saturday, she delivered a very powerful performance, in which she brought the whole audience into her world, showing people what it was like to dance as a deaf person. I didn't quite realise just how powerful the performance she gave was until I watched the performance again with my sister and I was able to take the time to really focus in on that moment of silenc...

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, I feel like Strictly has a real Christmas atmosphere to it so I thought that I would make my reviews a part of Blogmas. Enjoy! I'm really happy that Harvey got a perfect score for his couple's choice routine last Saturday. In most circumstances, the celebrity dancers want to get a perfect score and so they kind of expect it to happen. However, this came to the surprise of Harvey and I truly think that he deserved it because he worked hard and really executed the dance well. Like Craig, I wasn't thinking too much about the dance itself because I was just enjoying watching it in the moment. I really liked the choreography that Janette did because it was a nice mixture between contemporary and street commercial and it really suited Harvey's style well. What I really liked about the dance also were the lifts. At the beginning of Strictly, Harvey was really nervous to do lifts because he felt like he wasn't going to ...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I think that there were so many amazing dances performed last Saturday on Strictly. I was really impressed by how much everyone had improved since the beginn ing and I think that we can really start to see who has advanced in their level of dance. Today, however, I'm going to be talking about Ranvir and Giovanni's first Argentine tango of the 2020 series as well as Jamie and Karen's amazing street commercial routine. I think that these two dancers have really improved from the beginning and I would love to highlight that today. I was really impressed by Ranvir's execution of the Argentine tango. It was really a superb effort. She kept her performance dramatic through her facial expressions and she really tried to remain as close to Giovanni as possible. I also really liked how still she remained in her lifts and I think that that really enhanced the execution. What I thought she could improve on for next time was k...

H ello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I have been considering over the past 2 weeks if I should continue with the Strictly reviews since I wasn't sure if Strictly was as good as it used to be this year. However, in a sudden twist of fate, I've decided to continue with the reviews because there are some really good dancers on the show this year that deserve to be recognised and I do want to acknowledge that. It's also supposed to be fun which is one thing that we've been lacking a lot this year so I didn't feel right with stopping the Strictly reviews. I thought it would be more enjoyable if I just continued it. 💜 For this week, I wanted to talk about Bill and Oti's street commercial couple's choice and Caroline and Johannes's waltz. For me, Bill and Caroline are really amazing dancers and I would like to highlight that today. Bill and Oti's street commercial routine was fun, energetic, and upbeat. I think that the music choice, Ra...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  I was overall, really impressed with the level of talent that was displayed on Strictly Come Dancing last Saturday. Obviously, some significant changes had to be made to the show so that it could be continued in the safest way possible. However, I don't think that any of the dancers lacked in energy or performance value and I think that that made it all the more enjoyable to watch. There is of course room for improvement but I was impressed by the starting level of talent that was displayed. I was particularly impressed with Maisie and Gorka's samba and Harvey and Janette's jive. Maisie and Harvey were the two celebrity dancers who really caught my eye on the opening show and they did not fail to impress me on Saturday. Let's break down how they did. You can tell that Maisie is an actress because in terms of performance value, she really brought it to the dance floor. I found myself really watching her face through...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post,  On Saturday, I watched the first episode of Strictly Come Dancing 2020. I was hoping to write a whole lot of reviews for this year about each of the celebrity dancers on the show, like I did with the dancers last year. However, with Covid-19, I wasn't even sure if the show would continue this year. When they announced that there was going to be a show, I was happy but there were clearly many changes that the producers of Strictly had to put in place. Firstly, Strictly started a little later this year. Secondly, the partners all met a few months before the opening night and have been living together as a household. Thirdly, apart from a few people, there is no live audience. Fourthly, there are fewer contestants and all the group dances have been pre-filmed to reduce the transmission of the virus. All this has been put in place to ensure that everyone can stay as safe as they possibly can but I must admit, when I saw all t...

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...

Hello everybody and welcome back to another blog post, I genuinely cannot wait for the Christmas holidays to start. When you're reading this, this time next week will be Christmas day. I've been so caught up in school and other things that I kind of forgot about that. Time seriously flies when you're not  having fun. I'm usually quite perky even until the last minute but for some reason, like a lot of my classmates, I've just been wanting to stare at the wall for the whole day. It didn't help that my dad, my mum, and my sister were all ill for the past week so I've just been trying to chug down soluble vitamins so I actually develop some sort of immunity. A lot of my friends have also been ill and have also had to take days off school so I guess something's going around. I just think it's a sign that the end is near and we're basically all completely drained. I will be doing small amounts of regular work, just to keep my memory going for the ex...