Many things are better when they are tiny and made from Lego.

Happy Belated St Andrew's Day

Welcome. I hope you all had a happy St Andrew's Day and did something suitably Scottish. I went Scottish Country Dancing, which I do every Monday, but I'm going to count it anyway. I'm having my haggis, neeps and tatties tonight to catch up.

Happy Advent

I hope you have chocolate. If any of you have one of those advent calendars with the little perforated doors and the tiny Christmas-shaped chocolates in, I know someone who could use it for exciting things once you've eaten all of the chocolate. I have now reached the depressing stage of life where I bought my own advent chocolate, and now I feel like I have a chocolate-y daily obligation to keep up with.

This week I am going to essentially ignore those things, and show you some cool things I have found this week, mostly on the internet.

First up. Pick-Of-The-Internet Awards

Da-da-da-da-daaaa! The winner (strangely) is Durham Cathedral.

So this might just be the best thing on the internet. Durham Cathedral are building a scale model entirely out of lego. I gave them a pound and them let me put one of the bricks on (and now I feel guilty that I didn't give them more so I might just have to go back). They have a facebook page, they have a twitter hashtag #DurhamCathedralLEGOBuild, and you should go marvel at all the tiny lego-y goodness.

Pretty epic, yesno?

Outsides.  My brick is going to go somewhere near that little yellow sign.

Insides.

Tiny Lego Bishop.

So here we are left wondering if things aren't actually better when they're in miniature and made from Lego. People make some pretty funky things out of Lego. One particular internet rabbit-hole lead me to this, for which you can thank me later. I guess that the real deal might be better though.

And then I found this.

Some things might still be better not being made out of Lego, like food and cuddles.

This week I had a few days off work, and went for an adventure.

I went to see Bellowhead!

There was a conga. The support, Keston Cobblers Club, were pretty cool too, yet tons of people skipped them and showed up later. I don't get why you'd do that. Go see the support act, people!
We had tickets for a Bellowhead gig in Newcastle, so we did about ten hours of driving for about 2 hours of gig, and it was still worth it.

While we were down there we got to spend a bit of time with my parents. We took L to the only restaurant in Sunderland she's ever been to, again. We went in to Durham and did a little bit of shopping, after the Lego-based excitement, that is.

I am rather enjoying Christmas shopping this year. This year there are children on my people-to-buy-for list at most ages between 1 and 11, which is making this whole present-choosing thing so much more fun. This must be what Santa feels like. Sorry kids, you're getting toys that I really want to play with, so I really hope you (1) have similar tastes to me, and (2) don't mind sharing.
Children are great fun to shop for. The grown-ups might be more complicated.

And I will leave you with this little nugget. QI says that couples whose weddings cost less money were more likely to stay married. And couples who had lots of people at their wedding were more likely to stay married.

What I think this boils down to is this: Stephen Fry says we should have a big, cheap wedding. So there. 

Ok, so I'll actually leave you with this, because it's way cooler.