October Round Up!

Oh, I did that thing again. I didn't blog for a month. It's been a very busy work month for all kinds of boring reasons and I'm still not very good at chasing myself and finding time for blogging. I thought I'd do a bit of an October round up / things I've been loving in my absence!

Invites!

We posted our wedding invites!! October signified the 6 month mark until our wedding, when I look back at something from 6 months ago it feels like no time at all so I know it will come in so quickly now. I designed/mocked up our invites myself around a week after we got engaged to check with myself whether I could do it. I could! (there were a few design changes after that original 5 minute mock up!). We used printed.com to get them well, printed and I would highly recommend them. For some reason the files corrupted the first few times they were uploaded, causing a bright green border on the RSVPs! Instead of just carrying on and printing them which would have been a nightmare they called me and checked with me whether it was right as they didn't think it matched the rest of the designs. It just felt really personal that someone was checking through everything. We've received a few RSVPs back and it's so exciting building our playlist from people's requests!

Blogsocks. 
Charlotte has made this brilliant blog to help people find their new favourite blogs, it's so great because I find it so hard to find blogs with a smaller following. I usually prefer these blogs because they're just a bit less polished and more personal. I've linked the round up above and this is the interview that I did, I felt like a bit of an idiot for being the only person to actually include recipes in mine but i hope if you try them you enjoy them!!

A big old change of a haircut.

A lot of people tried to talk me out of this haircut with it only being 6 months to the wedding, however, I have always been someone that has a fringe. It's only in this last year that I've managed to successfully grow out a fringe and keep it grown out for any length of time! I'm so happy with this change though and I'm sure I can figure a way to style it for the wedding. Ive basically given up on my eyebrows since having it cut and wearing not a stitch of make up day to day. It's kind of great.

Family visits. 

We had some family visits this month from Sam's fam and my future in laws and it was so lovely! We had a really nice day out in keswick, walking around, looking at the beautiful scenery and eating so much food. I had a vegetarian queasadila that I almost sent back because I was sure it had meat in it. It was very delicious but I'm not sure I enjoyed the uncertainty!!

We chose a great day for our visit, even though it was cold it was so bright and lovely. How lucky are we to live less than an hour from these views!

Absolute silliness. 

I don't know why but I feel like we have just had so many laughs this month. The top picture started off as me trying to get a nice selfie but I think these turned out so much better.
The bottom picture is proof that my personal training is paying off, we were kind of just messing around getting ready to go to the gym after work and I wondered (no idea why) if i could pick Sam up!! I honestly crack up laughing every time I look at this picture, Sam's face is hysterical, he looks so pleased. I'm also creasing up with laughter in the photo, if I hadn't been laughing so much maybe id have been able to squat while holding him up ;) I think this is a move that will have to happen on our wedding day ;)

I say this every time but I'm really going to try and keep up with blogging again now! I need to get back into practicing photography!!
Most of these pictures come from my Instagram which you can find here.
I'm also over on Twitter ranting out general life and talking about how much I love pizza.

Back soon!

Little Loves #4.

Oh dear, I did it again! I keep forgetting/ feeling too busy for this little blog of mine. So I thought i'd come back with a bit of a favourites of late, I always find it quite easy to write these Little Loves posts since it's like speaking to a friend about what I've enjoyed recently!

Our trip to Newquay. 

If I had been on my blogging game this would have been a post all of it's own. Our trip to Newquay was just amazing. We went Monday to Friday in a random week off we had together but I wish it had been 2 weeks! We stayed in a glorious AirBnB, our first time doing so, and it was lovely! I would definitely use the site again to book somewhere. We stayed in a little campervan in someone's garden, they had 2 beautiful dogs and they really made us feel welcome. So many things were great but the main highlight for me was seeing Newton Faulkner at Lusty Glaze cove. It's a beautiful venue for music, on the beach! It rained none stop as you can see from the soggy second picture but I loved it. If you're a fan of Newton Faulkner I would highly recommend seeing him live, I think this was my 5th time and each one has been a new experience. 

PokemonGO. 

Are we fed up of this yet? Sam totally made me jump on the bandwagon, I kind of missed Pokemon the first time round which is odd because i was a *prime* candidate for the card obsession with my age etc. I think maybe we couldn't afford the cards and my mum worked her wizardry to make me realise I didn't want them. She's clever like that ;) Anyway, the game! I'm not majorly obsessed like some people *cough*Sam*cough* but i like the VR aspect of the game where you see the pokemon in your actual environment! Also, it gets you out the house and that so yeah, all good! 

Flavour by Ruby Tandoh. 

Is this the messiest picture I've ever posted on my blog? Maybe. I was so annoyed that I left the bloody butter there in the picture, the rest for me is justifiable mess when showing off a cookbook, but the butter? It can bob off. Aaaaanyway, Flavour, Ruby Tandoh, my new love. If you don't follow Ruby on twitter please do, then buy this book! She tweets a lot about the wellness trend which relates to this cookbook, basically in the term of eating what you love and not feeling guilty about it! She is far better at explaining than I, just know that this first recipe I tried from the list was 1) so bloody easy 2) easy to change up (I don't like egg so added falafel) and 3) so so tasty!! If you are so inclined I think Ruby estimated that around 70% of the book is veggie with a lot being vegan/ easy to make vegan too! 

Wedding stuff and bonus, snapchat! 

 

Wedding planning is becoming so so real now! It's just under 9 months until the big day and pretty much everything is booked! We bought my wedding ring the other day which Sam has subsequently hidden to stop me from trying it on, thanks bae. Time is already flying so I know the next 9 months isn't going to be any different. We wanted to get as much done as possible to have a while off from wedding planning over Christmas and it looks like we're going to succeed in our plan to do that, fingers crossed! This is why I need to update my blog more, I will be looking back in a year and wondering what I did with this time before the wedding, I just know it!

I think I'll stop now, I could keep rambling, I've been looking through my social media platforms for inspiration of things I've been loving and all it made me realise is that I need to bloody well blog more. How many times have I said bloody in this blog post? Who am I? Ron bloody Weasley. 

Okay, bye!

Little Loves #3.

I've been a bit lax on the blogging front recently, I'm not sure why, last weekend I had a whole 2 days off while Sam was working 13 hour days and yet I couldn't just sit down and write something. I started a new job the first week of January so I suppose that's taking up a lot of my brain space! I'm enjoying the job so much, learning loads and being more independent in my work. I suppose that can be a first little love on this post but i'll get back into the things I'm sure people will enjoy reading about!

This view.

Last weekend I watched the snow fall, wondering if it would stick and then watching as it did, thankful for the fact I didn't have to go out driving in it! When I can step back and watch the snow without panicking about having to drive in it it can be something I really enjoy. I love those cliche things about how it blankets the world and makes everything look fresh and clean at least for a little while before it turns dirty and grim again! 

The online community and support. 

Junior Doctor, 28, uses THREE bags for life for one week of shopping. Excessive. #smearthedocs #moetmedics pic.twitter.com/ZH2L2i3B7g

— Jacquina (@jacquina) January 10, 2016

A few weeks ago The S*n posted an article online about the Junior Doctors leading the strike action smearing them for their 'lavish lifestyles' dubbing them Moet Medics. They had done some super top notch investigative journalism in the form of going on these doctors Facebook pages and saving their holiday pictures in order to decide for themselves what kind of lifestyles they lead. Any normal, good person of course knows this is ridiculous and I think The S*n forgot who they were dealing with when they decided to #smearthedocs. Very soon a couple of hashtags were born and the online Junior Doctor community hit back in the way intelligent, funny people do: by thoroughly taking the piss. I myself, along with my junior doctor boyfriend (pictured above) joined in with our picture, showing our weekly shop at Aldi, and before I knew what hit me, my tweet was somewhat viral (compared to most of my tweets!) ending up with over 60,000 views and enough likes and retweets that I had to turn my notifications off for a few days and a feature on Buzzfeed, BT and a few other online articles! I'm only including the figures here to show the comparative support. Out of all those views, all those retweets and the articles, I only had 3 negative tweets back about this picture. Everyone else was joining in with the campaign, being completely hilarious and satirical, just how we should be in the face of ridiculousness. I was so happy then, even as a nurse, to be part of that community. You can't bring people like that down, they work too hard and do too much to let idiots (it took 4 people to write the so-called article!) bring them down. Well done Junior Doctors, you're awesome. 

Book Exchange.

How great is it to receive a proper parcel in this time where even your bank statement doesn't drop onto your doormat anymore? Last week my friend Bekki and I decided to exchange some books we had both been loving, wonderful idea, you get a new book for the cost of postage! Bekki completely blew me away with this package she sent me, everything in it was so thoughtful, I can't wait to get started on the book and to do this again in the future! One of the reasons is so I get another go at my parcel! I was so excited I quickly rushed out before the post office closed to buy an envelope and post my book onto her that I didn't think to add extras in. 

Sex and the City. 

I was too young for this show the first time around but I got the box set for Christmas and I'm loving it so far! It is dated of course, I'm only on season 2 so I believe we're still stuck in the early 2000s but I'm still enjoying binging this while my boyfriend plays football manager on his computer in the other room. I swear we don't conform to gender norms as much as this in all aspects of our lives! One thing I can't help but draw parallels from is the fact that Carrie seems to write one column a week and live an amazing life in Manhattan, reminds me of what people these days seem to (incorrectly!) think of full time bloggers. Work one day a week, earn exponential amounts of money and always have time to drink with your friends. I wonder how this affected the people watching it the first time it aired in the 90s, but thats just me, mostly I try to zone out and enjoy the dirty jokes. 

I'm hoping to be back into my blogging groove after this, I have a week off at the moment for my birthday and we're going away for the night as my gift, can't wait! A seaside getaway is perfect at any time of the year as long as theres a fish and chip shop open! 

My 5 Favourite Books of 2015.

New Year's Day 2015 found me downloading the Goodreads app and setting myself a reading challenge of 25 books through the year, I also wanted to read more books written by women and more non-fiction books. I managed 26 books in the year (although one was only 80 pages I still counted it) and I think I managed the other 2 as well.
Here are my 5 favourite books I read this year, not necessarily published this year and in no particular order. I noticed after I photographed them that I didn't actually include any non-fiction books that I read so I'll do a little mention of those at the end.

1:: Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel. 

I read this at the very beginning of the year so I'm searching my memory for the reasons I enjoyed this, I must start writing reviews on Goodreads instead of just rating! Station Eleven is set after a virus wipes out a lot of the world's population, it follows various survivors living their lives in what would have been the USA all of them connected by one actor who died the night the 'plague' broke out. It's a real page turner, jumping back and forth between the past and present constantly finding more and more links between the characters and showing that survival in this world isn't enough, living has to happen as well. I found it so interesting because of how this world works post apocalyptic event, something I've spent too much time thinking about! 

2:: The Hourglass Factor by Lucy Ribchester. 

Another one I read earlier on in the year, I picked this up purely because of the beautiful artwork on the cover, so glad I did! This book is set in the early 1900s surrounding the Suffragette movement and a girl trying to make her way in the newspaper industry. I found this book so wonderful to read because it is completely immersive, sometimes overly descriptive writing makes it hard for me to focus on the story (Hello George RR Martin!) but this book did that without me losing track of the story that was going on within the lovely descriptions. It feels well researched and although obviously some artistic licence has been used it's so interesting to read of an England in this time. 

3:: Extraordinary Means by Robyn Scheider. 

This is the second of Robyn's books that I've read and I find her writing so easy to read that I consumed this book within a day, something i haven't really done since I finished uni. It's about teenagers with life-limiting and potentially terminal illness living together in a modern version of the once common sanatoriums. Unlike some other books about sickly teenagers who speak like adults and are about as deep as the pacific ocean this feels believable, teenagers who sneak off to get drunk and try figure out how to have sexual encounters without setting off the health monitors that track every anomaly in their vital signs. I really loved this book, and yes, it did make me cry. 

4:: The Bees by Laline Paull. 

A surprising favourite for me, this was probably the strangest book I read this year. It's a book, as the title suggests, about bees! It seems to me (a Sociology A level student who peaked at a C) to be a narrative on society based around a beehive. It's so interesting to see how beehives work as it really seems to have been researched fully into the workings of honey bees with some added sentiency and emotion thrown in there. Another page turner for me, I became so involved in the main characters life that i couldn't wait to see what would happen to her as she challenges the norms of the beehive and faces some great enemies in the form of wasps and weather. I would really recommend this book however definitely go in there with an open mind, its a weird one! 

5:: I'll Give You The Sun by Jandy Nelson. 

If I had to pick I would probably say this was my favourite book of the year. This book hits all the spots for me: it's funny, sad at times, compelling and beautifully written. The structure of the book follows twins Noah and Jude however in different times in their lives, so at any given time you're only seeing one character through the others' eyes. So much has changed in the years between the 2 stories that it only makes it more necessary to just keep reading, just one more chapter before you sleep in order to find out how these changes came to be and whether any of the issues or conflict could ever be resolved. The imagery used in this book is so unique and every metaphor used seems just completely purposeful and perfect. Brilliant. 

Special mention non-fiction favourites of the year. 

Yes Please by Amy Poehler. 

Grace's Guide by Grace Helbig. 

I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai. 

A Teatime Conversation.

Sometimes all I need for homesickness is a 20 minute phone conversation with Grandparents.

Here are the highlights:
My Grandad mistook my phone message for one of his bowling friends despite my saying 'Love you' at the end of the message.

My Nanna told me all about my Grandad's latest baking experiment, that she had bemoaned on our last trip home: beetroot chocolate cakes which she begrudgingly admitted tasted beautiful.

I feel so lucky having these amazing Grandparents, they (I'm sure my mum would agree) have been my second parent figure in my life as I've grown up. They have always been the people I would play off against my Mum where some people would do it with their parents, they've been the owners of the house I've threatened to run away to as a moody teenager and they housed me over this summer when I found out Sam and I would be moving across the country and I had to hand my notice in on my flat.

When i'm feeling down or just missing the familiarities of home I always know I can ring them and the most mundane of conversations about their friends new home adaptations of what we're respectively eating for dinner will pick me back up again. They're the holders of wisdom, the feeders (Ringtons ginger biscuits) in my life and the people I've probably cried in front of the most, after my Mum.

I just felt the need to show some appreciation for them as I was on the phone to my Nanna yesterday evening asking for favours even though she's 200 miles away and chatting about tennis even though I've never sat through a match in my life. I don't know where i'd be without them.

And for my Nanna because I'm sure she reads here, this is a more grown up version (I hope) of the poem I wrote you when I was about 6 that I know you have kept. Yes you're still 'as clever as a typewriter.'

Little Loves #2: London Edition.

Sam and I recently had a week off together, we used the time to spend some time at home visiting our families and having a quick 3 day midweek trip to London. We like to be tourist-y every now and then and we had booked a show before going but ended up seeing 2 while we were there. We had a list as long as our arm of places we wanted to eat, shops we wanted to visit and places we wanted to see. We actually managed the whole 3 days without seeing Big Ben which looking back seems strange but I didn't really need another picture of it!
Getting on with the post, these are a few of my favourite things about our trip to London, they're all phone photos because I'm the kind of person who's paranoid of making locals angry by being an annoying tourist heaving a big DSLR about (there actually won't be any proper pictures for about a month because we ended up leaving the DSLR 200 miles away at my Grandparent's house, gahhh!)  or taking a suitcase on the tube, so we did neither of these things!


The 2 shows we saw. 

We saw Les Mis for the first time and it was amazing, when we saw it there were about 6 stand ins but it really didn't take away from how amazing the show was. I was expecting to get emotional as loads of people said they cried all the way through the second half but I didn't. It was amazing though, the stage work is so good, I wasn't sure how they'd do the barricade and everything but it did not disappoint. On our second night there we decided to try for another show and ended up getting amazing seats for Wicked, we had seen it before last year but it's a show I really feel I could see again and again, I was like a little kid watching it, grabbing Sam's arm at all my favourite bits. My favourite of the 2 was Wicked, Sam's was Les Mis.

The Natural History Museum. 

Last time we were in London it was a weekend and the queue for the museum was absolutely crazy, we put it on our must do list this time because Sam had never been and the last time I went I must have been around 7 or 8. I just loved going here, even the architecture of the building makes it worth a visit, everything is so beautiful and I could have taken a million pictures.

The Breakfast Club. 

As I said before, a lot of what we wanted to do while in London involved eating and we had to have a trip to The Breakfast Club. We went to the one in Soho as it was closest to where we were most of the time, the food here is amazing, and the waitress brought us a whole jug of maple syrup without us having to ask, an all round great experience. I think this was tied with Wahaca for my favourite places we ate, I didn't take a picture of my food from Wahaca though because I was full on hangry when we ate there.

H&M beauty. 

I know this isn't a London exclusive but honestly the selection of beauty products in other stores I've been in has been either non-existent or a tiny range. The H&M on Oxford street was a beauty haven! I can't believe I managed to walk away with only one thing, this green eyeliner/eyeshadow pen. I have become obsessed with this, all I did for this look was basically drew it all over my eyelid, blending it out and blended a darker colour into the crease. In my opinion I think it looks like a lot more effort has gone into it and the green makes it a bit more interesting than a normal smokey eye.

❤

I wasn't sure how to caption this without it being super cringe but really it was just amazing to spend some free time with Sam. We've lived together for a few months now but with shift work and rare days off together it was a complete luxury to spend 3 solid days together just in each others company. We had so many laughs, walked about 15 miles a day, enabled each other to spend far too much and just had a great time. I love this dude.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed a little look into what I enjoyed the most during our trip to London! It's not a good tourist guide because we just swanned around doing a lot of shopping and looking at nice buildings. We always know we're going to go back so we don't feel the need to rush everything and do it all in the space of 48 hours. I really feel like we made the most of all of our time there and enjoyed it to the full though.

Just a quick added note, I'm not really sure how blogging will continue for the next month while the DSLR is 200 miles away (sob) because the reason I wanted to write this blog was to enjoy photography and writing again. That means half of the hobby is missing for me! I'm going to try and do some bits and pieces but otherwise things will be back to normal within a month after we've visited home again.

Little Loves.

My little loves of the moment, no particular theme or order, just as they come to mind! Hope you enjoy.

This guy!

Since moving in together in July I often look over at this lovely bearded face with a mushy look of appreciation that my past self would hate. He makes me laugh every day even when I'm a big ball of anxiety and I feel like there's a cloud looming that will never go away. Plus that beard is pretty magnificent. I know, I know, mushy mushy but we've just moved 200 miles across the country together, its a big deal y'know?

Lucy Rose. 



I had heard Lucy's song Like An Arrow on Radio 1 a while ago and really enjoyed it but once I'd arrived at wherever I was going forgot about it completely, I was then looking for local listings for who was coming to the Brickyard in Carlisle and saw her name on it. Unfortunately Sam and I are both at work when she's playing here but since discovering her again through that website I've been playing her songs non-stop on both youtube and spotify. I don't know enough about music to describe why I like her music so much but it's just my cup of tea.

Jillian Michael's Burn Fat, Boost Metabolism. 

Let's pretend when writing this section that I didn't spell it motabolism and wonder why spellcheck was being such an idiot trying to correct me, it didn't happen.
I have always had a thing for Jillian Michaels, something about her telling me 'not to phone it in' and 'you don't get to where you want to be by just taking the stairs every now and then' really manages to get me to try harder. I kind of hate her, but I love her so much. I've been on a 'weight loss journey' (yuk, I know, I don't know how else to phrase it, I sound like a dick all the ways i've tried!) since the beginning of the year, I've lost 3 stone (not looking for praise) and I've only been to the gym twice, I like to workout at home and I really feel like Jillian's videos make for the most effective workout I've tried but without making me feel like i'm going to collapse. I track calorie burn using a polar watch and I always get a bitchin' burn that makes me feel like a superhero and I only sometimes counteract it by ordering pizza. Like 30% of the time probably. You can find most of Jillian's workouts on youtube, this one is my fave because of the kickboxing aspect of it, makes me feel bad ass, even if I don't look like one ;)

Goodreads.

I've always been an avid reader but last year I really felt I hadn't made enough time to read as much as I usually did, it was my first full year of proper employment and Sam and I lived 100 miles apart nearly so there was a lot happening all year! I had seen friends and Sanna from books and quills doing 'reading challenges' before on Goodreads. I decided to download the app and set myself a reading challenge, it started off as 30 books but when I realised how behind I was getting I cheated a bit and reduced it to 25, I don't like failure okay?! It's really helped me keep track of what I've read and i've found some amazing recommendations on there. My favourite book of the summer was 'I'll give you the sun.' and I saw it on their homepage one day. My goal is to spend a day scanning all of my books so I have a list of all the books I actually own, it would take me such a long time though, so maybe it's a task for a week off, done shelf by shelf a day at a time! You can follow/add me on Goodreads here.


There you have it, pictures from my phone on this post, some from instagram, follow me here :)