Baking, Book Club & Being Thankful | Month In Review: November 2018

I can't believe November is over already. That month went so quickly, December came out of nowhere! Anyway, here's what I got up to in the month of November...
First of all, I want to give a special mention to my book club. This is held at my local Foyles bookstore every month and we predominantly read YA fiction. I wanted to talk about my book club this month because we just met for our last one of 2018. We don't hold a meeting in December because it's a busy month for everyone, especially Foyles with people doing their Christmas shopping. We actually met twice in November because we spoke about our October read at the start of the month and we met to talk about our November pick last Thursday. We have read some really great books this year (and a couple that I didn't particularly like) but we always have great discussions and we share our recommendations. It's just lovely to meet up with people who love YA books as much as I do. A huge thank you to Holly, who runs book club every month and comes up with the questions for us to discuss, and Foyles for hosting.

Here are the books we have read in 2018 at book club:

• Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (January)
• The Sun is Also a Star by Nicola Yoon (February/March)
• The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Alire Saenz (April)
• The Bone Sparrow by Zana Fraillon (May)
• We Come Apart by Sarah Crossan and Brian Conaghan (June)
• It Only Happens in the Movies by Holly Bourne (July)
• After the Fire by Will Hill (August)
• Orphan Monster Spy by Matt Killeen (September)
• The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich (October)
• A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge (November)

My top three book club picks of 2018 were The Sun is Also a Star, We Come Apart and After the Fire.

Our book for January 2019 is It's Not Like It's a Secret by Misa Sugiura, if anyone is interested.

A couple of weeks ago I had the chance to attend a local Christmas street market and light switch on event. There were so many amazing stalls selling food and drink, clothing, wreaths and more. I wrote a whole blog post about it here, if you want to know more.

A special mention to Poppy's Coffee, who featured on my Instagram, for this incredible hot chocolate.

I did a lot of baking in November, mainly using pumpkin as a key ingredient. I started off with my snickerdoodles, then pumpkin oat cookies (pictured below), before moving on to the pumpkin spice cupcakes, which I make every year, and a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving.

Then we reached Thanksgiving on the 22nd. My mum offered to cook the dinner this year, which I was very grateful for because I had started to feel a little bit under the weather a couple of days before. I still helped out and made the pie (pictured below) and I even made an extra one to take into work so that my colleagues could try it. They got a lot of pumpkin-themed treats that week in the form of cookies, cupcakes and pie so I think I'll lay off the baking for a while!

Unfortunately, after a lovely meal with my family, I started to feel really unwell and I ended up sleeping all evening on my mum's sofa. I slept through a whole film, and woke up in the middle of a second one, before heading home to sleep some more. Not the best ending to Thanksgiving but I still had a lovely day.

I have actually been ill for the majority of November. It started off with a throat infection and continued on to be a really bad cold. I didn't have the flu, it wasn't bad enough to be the flu, so I continued to go to work and power through with a blocked nose and chesty cough.

However, that meant that I was shattered by the time I came home and just wanted to sleep. I didn't end up reading very much this month because I just didn't have the energy and I also didn't end up completing NaNoWriMo. If you don't know what NaNoWriMo is, it's National Novel Writing Month. You spend the month of November writing a 50,000 word novel, but I didn't get past the 10,000 word mark because of being ill. I have all planned out and I really want to write this one, so I will get to it at some point. Maybe I'll save it for Camp NaNoWriMo next year.

Then it was time to start packing away my autumn decorations in preparation for Christmas. I hate this part at first because autumn is obviously my favourite season, but as soon as those Christmas decorations are in sight I get over it. I love having my Christmas tree up and just the general feeling of my home in December, especially in the mornings when I get up early. It's still dark and I can put the Christmas tree lights on while I sit and eat my breakfast. It just puts me in a great mood for the day.

Finally, I have a little announcement for you all. It's Blogmas time! Most people write a blog post per day for Blogmas on the lead-up to Christmas, but I will be doing one every other day instead. I'm mainly doing this so that I can still enjoy the season and spend time with family and friends, but it is also so that it isn't overloaded and that the content is better. I would rather put out 12 blog posts that I'm proud of than 24 that are just alright for the sake of doing every day. This blog post counts as the first one of Blogmas and the next 11 will fall on the following dates:

• 4th, 6th, 8th, 10th, 12th, 14th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 22nd, 24th

These blog posts will cover a range of topics, including a Christmas home tour, my favourite Christmas books, my Christmas playlist, my top seasonal films, my favourite makeup products for Christmastime and so much more!

Here are the books I read in November:
My Mum Tracy Beaker ★★★★☆
Kingdom of Ash ★★★★★
Girl Online: Going Solo ★★★★☆
A Skinful of Shadows ★★☆☆☆

And the films I saw at the cinema:

The Grinch ★★★★☆
Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald ★★★★☆

I know I usually do film reviews for pretty much everything I see but I did a poll on my Instagram Story not too long ago, to ask which blog posts people were still enjoying, and the film reviews were the one post which got very mixed reviews. For this reason, I have decided to lay off them for a little while and maybe start including a short review for each film I see in my Month In Review posts. What do you think?

Anyway, let's enjoy the last month of 2018 and get ready for Christmas (and any other holidays that people are celebrating at this time of year) and I will see you again on the 4th December with my next Blogmas post!