Weekly Rundown: Alphabet, Books & Charity

For the last few months I’ve been considering the A to Z Challenge and trying to convince myself that I wouldn’t do it. There was no point, I told myself, after all, I’ve got other blog posts planned for April. I’m writing roughly eleven blog posts a week at the moment and I’d not want to drop out any of those posts during April, that would mean writing another six posts per week for a month. That’s a lot of blogging.

Besides, what would I write about? I did an infertility theme for my first one and went with the easier option and did favourite songs last year. Whenever I considered it I took the fact I couldn’t come up with a theme as a sign that I shouldn’t join in this year. Perhaps I should sit this one out?

Until my blogging buddies started talking about signing up for the A to Z Challenge. Well that changed things a little. I’m kind of competitive and if other people are doing something challenging I like to prove that I can do it too. So I signed up.

I’m not entirely without a plan. I’ve added an extra month to my blog planning spreadsheet (well, technically I overwrote the month of April and had to go back and rewrite the whole month because I’m a dork) and I’ve started coming up with some ideas for what I’ll write about each day of the month. That’s right, I’ve got a theme.

I’m not telling you what it is yet though. The blog reveal isn’t until the 23rd of March. I’ve got it on my calendar. I’m hoping that by then I’ll have ironed out some of the kinks and gotten some of my posts written ready for the month ahead. Plus that gives me nearly a whole month to change my mind about my theme and go with something simpler (you’ll never know)!

Other than making big blogging decisions, this week has seen me getting a haircut. Woo hoo! slightly shorter than last time. My cousin is actually getting her hair shaved off for Red Nose Day on Friday the 13th (something which I’ve wanted to do myself for years). I can’t wait to see how she looks afterwards (since she’s able to rock pretty much every hairstyle she’s ever gone for) and it’s watching her hair getting shorter and shorter that prompted me to get mine short.

If you're feeling particularly flush right now, why not hop over to my cousin Claire's fundraising page and donate whatever you're able to for Red Nose Day. It's a great cause and I'd love to see her raise plenty of pennies.

I also got a treat in the form of more reading material, courtesy of my husband who treated me to eleven new books.

And it didn’t break the bank since these eleven books were from the 80th Anniversary Penguin Classics set, so they were just 80p each. I would love to get the whole set but for now I’ve just picked eleven of the ones which stood out to me (mainly authors I’ve read and liked before but also a couple which link into my Reading Challenge, hello book with a colour in the title and single word title).

They’re lovely cute little pocket-sized books which I should be able to read fairly quickly (hello book I can finish in a day!) and I can’t wait to start them, though at the moment I’m still working on my ‘book by a female author’ and it’s a bit of a drag. I probably won’t get to crack open one of these until at least this time next week.

As always I picked these up from my local bookshop, Print Point, which wasn’t open by the time I needed to head to work so I gave Mr Click a list and he got all of them. I told him that if they didn’t have any on the list he could pick for me which obviously wasn’t necessary but if they keep a stock of them for a while I might just nip in and spend the odd two or three pounds on some randomly selected books just to dip into in the future.

I'll close this post by returning to the topic of the A to Z Challenge, since that's what's floating around at the back of my mind right now. Are you joining in on the A to Z Challenge this year? Have you chosen a theme or will you be winging it?