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!

Our engagement shoot in Scarborough.

All photo credit to Henry Lowther. 

I had seen the idea of an engagement or couple's shoot floating around mostly Pinterest for a while now but it had never been something I considered. However, when we booked our wedding photographer he offered us one and we decided to take the opportunity to do it.

This is just a post for me to share some pictures from it, I think they're so beautiful and they've made me so happy that we chose our photographer. For me, the photography of our wedding has been at the  forefront of my mind when planning. It's probably the most important thing for me other than the fact that we are going to be married of course! I read somewhere that the only 2 tangible things you really keep from your wedding day are the rings and the photographs so pay attention to these.

 We chose Scarborough as the location for our shoot as it's the place where we first got engaged, we love it there even though it's got some of that seaside tackiness that all the best British seaside towns have, there are some beautiful areas and it will always hold a place in our hearts for sure!

 It's always a bonus when you get to munch on ice cream as you walk around, I think I was swiping some ice cream out of Sam's beard here #beardproblems.

 I think what was fascinating for me was seeing how a talented photographer really works, I mentioned to Sam the evening after the shoot that I was worried we wouldn't find all that many locations for the photos but it amazed me seeing how a true photographer worked and how Henry saw opportunities for photos that the untrained (untalented!) eye wouldn't.

We lucked out so much with the weather, for our whole week off work anyway not just the day of the shoot, we had the shoot in the evening and the golden light especially in this photo is just to die for.

 I'm wearing Benefit roller lash on my lashes just in case you wondered ;)

 My dress and cardigan are both from Fat Face and they're honestly some of the comfiest clothes I own, we both wanted to just look like ourselves and for the photos to be a real representation of us as a couple, albeit a slightly polished version! That's why I've got my wellies on! We were at the beach!

I think I managed to whittle that down to only 10 (maybe 11) of the photos Henry sent us! I absolutely loved them all and we're frantically trying to decide which ones we should get printed to hang in the house and find the balance between a few lovely pictures of us and being the most narcissistic couple ever.
If you're recently engaged and have the chance to do a shoot I would highly recommend it! I think as much as it means you've got some beautiful pictures of you as a couple pre-wedding which could be used for thank you cards after the wedding etc, you get to know your photographer and how they work and they get to know you and how to get the best picture out of you!
I was so nervous before this shoot because despite how many selfies you take you're probably not used to having a professional point a camera at you in public but I'd do it again 100x over! How do I get every part of my life documented beautifully by a talented photographer? Become a Kardashian?

Henry's links:

Instagram. 

Facebook. 

Website. 

Blog.

An accidental month off. April summarised...

I don't quite know what happened but I seem to have gone over a month without blogging quite accidentally, I just never had that urge to sit and write about anything, I'm really not sure why. I also felt the longer I left it the less I knew how to come back and what to write. So, I'm sat here at my laptop with no real plan hoping that I can summarise what I've been up to while I've been  away from the blog! I got the idea from Charlotte to do a Someday Summary from blogging days of old, but I felt I needed to update people reading (and my future self that I see reading to remember like a diary!!) about the month I was absent for!

Okay so this was actually at the end of march over Easter weekend, we finally had all of our family together for an engagement meal/party, a difficult task when Sam's siblings are based all around the country, with us also at the opposite end! It all started well with a lovely Italian meal booked and a few bottles of champagne paid for. It ended with me hugging my Sister in Law and bridesmaid to be after I fell asleep on the stairs and hugging the toilet not long after. I discovered after not being much of a drinker since my college days that I actually quite like champagne. Especially it seems when it's being used to toast my future ;)

These are probably 2 of my favourite pictures from the month of April. The top one is where I pulled over on the side of the road on my way to the place where I was going to learn to take blood (yeah!) and I realised how lucky we are to live in such a beautiful part of the country. The bottom picture was of our first day off together in the month of April, around the 20th, where we packed ourselves off to Keswick and got the boat round to do the fairly introductory walk called 'catbells'. I'd highly recommend it to anyone in the Lake District to walk, we're not hardcore walkers and this is very little work for great rewards of amazing views! It definitely felt better than slobbing around and tidying the house! We also went for a particularly lovely meal and ice cream in Keswick afterwards.

I can barely make it through a conversation without mentioning wedding planning these days so I could hardly leave it out of this! The month of April is our wedding month to be and this sweet little countdown is something I got for Sam (and myself, I mean, we live together) for our pre-wedding anniversary. It's also reversible with something for after the wedding so I feel like it was worth the investment ;) I honestly can't believe we're under a year to the wedding already. this whole year is going so quickly. We got engaged in January!!
The picture to the left is the best response we got to someone receiving our magnetic save the dates, Sam and I really do not face swap well. I had never really considered save the dates but we're having a weekday wedding and so wanted to give people more notice than just the invites. I just did a simple design and got them printed through printed.com as recommended by Rosie. We're doing the same with our invites (although they won't be magnetic and face swappable!) and hopefully, if I can manage it, our stationery too!


Hope you've enjoyed my little disjointed summary of April and a bit of March, I'm hoping I won't leave it quite so long next time!! I always post over on instagram if you're ever really looking out for what i'm up to ;)
I'm so excited at the moment because we had our engagement photoshoot this week with our wedding photographer and he's slowly releasing a few sneak peeks of our pics as he edits them, so exciting! I'll do a whole post on them once we get them all i'm sure!

Sunday through my iPhone.

This is going to be one of those posts that I'm not sure anyone except my future self looking back and reminiscing will find interesting, I was going to do another photo an hour post like I've done before but if I'm being completely honest I forgot for the first few hours so instead this is like a Sunday highlights reel, a fairly mundane Sunday but a good one.

07:32

I woke up naturally today at half past 7, it's easy to see why when you can see the sunlight already streaming through the windows, honestly though it's not something that bothers me. I find my health and energy levels feel much better if I try to stick to some kind of sleep routine, plus we had planned to be up and at the gym for 8am (haha). 

10:30

We did eventually make it to the gym! This was when I accidentally opened the camera trying to swipe up to change the song, spotted my reflection and remembered I had planned to take photos today. Unfortunately I didn't take a better one than this because I was far too scared of being caught taking selfies at the gym! 

13:04

Today was the perfect first day of Spring here in Cumbria and being garden-less we decided to try make the most of it with a walk around Talkin Tarn. We took some strawberries, smoothies and iced fingers and just did a circuit of the tarn. If it weren't for the really quite cold breeze I could be fooled into thinking this was a picture from midsummer, the sky was blue, the water was blue and people were eating ice cream at every part of the walk! Some with gloved hands but I think it counts. 

14:19

The much more mundane part of Sunday came next, an hour long blitz of the house, Sam tackled upstairs, me downstairs and then we joined forces with the laundry. I love our little (deceptively large) terrace so much and although we're never short of space it really doesn't take long to get it all cleaned up nicely. 

15:16

Always the reward for some Sunday cleaning - a bath. For me there's nothing more indulgent than a bath during the day, before I changed jobs I had far more midweek days off and I used to luxuriate in the fact I was soaking in the bath while everyone else was at work. Amazing. I used half of a Lush Milky Bath, I've mentioned this so much it's my absolute favourite bubble bar and this amazing Golden Egg which putting in the bath made me feel like a Triwizard Tournament contestant. (Come seek us where our voices sound, we cannot sing above the ground...) I hadn't tried this bath bomb/melt hybrid from Lush before and it's so lovely, it has the Honey I washed the kids scent and it left my skin feels so so soft. 

16:58

What else is there to do after a bath other than put on lovely fresh pyjamas? I did get dressed again later on but that's besides the point. Here I'm holding my new favourite not bad for you snack, mozzarella and pesto Kettlebites, and an apple. The apple was meh but oh boy, those kettlebites. They're so good. 

Right:18:29 Left:18:49

Oh baby. These were worth getting dressed for. This pizza van comes to Carlisle and the surrounding areas each weekend, we had never tried it before but wow, this will not be the last time. There's something about a wood fired pizza, the dough is so perfectly crisp around the outside and just cooked to perfection in the middle. There was barely a drop of grease on the boxes after we'd finished these pizzas and although they're indulgent I really don't feel sluggish or heavy after eating them. I feel like I have to go back and try all the flavours. If you're in the Carlisle area and haven't tried these guys you're seriously missing out.

20:18

The last picture of the day because I am a true granny and all I'm planning on doing now is deciding whether to watch Louis Theroux on Netflix or Derren Brown on All 4 or whatever they call 4od these days! Got our delicious new candle burning from TK Maxx (they don't ship the UK yet but if you're lucky like we were and theres a vanilla bean in your local TK, get it!) and I might make a peppermint and liquorice tea soon, wild! 

Hope you've enjoyed this utterly mundane Sunday run through, it really has been a great, if uneventful, first day of spring for us here. 

Booking the wedding!

I can't believe I'm typing this but we have actually BOOKED OUR WEDDING! Sorry, I just can't believe it, we're both so excited and keep reminding each other that each event that happens this year will be our last before we are husband and wife. Last Christmas, last New Year, agh! I couldn't be more excited, well I could, If i won the money to pay for it all right now, then I'd be super excited, but I'll stick at just being excited that we are really doing it and I have to pick up a few Sunday shifts here and there because no one has won the lottery yet ;)
We looked around a venue on Monday that I had been to for afternoon tea last year and fallen in love with but that Sam had never stepped foot in. I secretly knew this was the place for us and just hoped that Sam felt the same way, he did! We went for a very classy post 'could this be the place?!' lunch (see below) and looked over our (my! very Monica) planning notebook and got super excited.

We actually saw another place after that but cancelled the 3 more we had booked in because we just knew! Now we get to do the exciting stuff since so much is already taken care of in the wedding package we've chosen, it really feels like so much of the work has been done for us without us losing any of the personality and mood that we're going for, yay!
Now I'm designing Save the Dates and pinning endless amounts of bridesmaids dresses and decor ideas (wedding dresses being pinned to a secret board because, well, it's a secret!) and just wishing I could make this wedding thing my full time job.
We have a meeting with a wedding photographer who's work we've both fallen in love with around easter and then it'll feel like a lot of the big things are taken care of and we've just got the lovely bits left to do, that and the final legal bit which can't be done until its within a year of the wedding but I'm ignoring that for now! I can't believe that next year we will officially be married!

Another thing that made everything feel so amazing was finally being able to give my 2 bridesmaids their cards illustrated wonderfully by Emily who blogs over at Jammy&Jelly. She did my illustrated new years resolutions back in January :) I love the cards so much and the girls loved them too.

I'm not sure what Emily thought of my request when I emailed her to start with, I'm sure it sounded like quite an odd question to be asking but I wanted something humorous and personalised which I think is exactly what these are, I love them!

I'm not sure if I'm going to include much wedding content on here because I wasn't sure if I had anything much to offer about planning a wedding but since I suppose at the moment it's all a big part of my life it'll be mentioned here and there, I hope thats okay! Sorry I've been a bit AWOL recently but along with all this happening I've also started back at uni this week and been ill with what I think was 2 very serious illnesses and Sam believes was a stomach virus. We have agreed to disagree on that one, I don't do being ill very well!