I'M ENGAGED!!!

Not such a subtle title but one that I am very excited about writing!

On Wednesday 24th June 2015, exactly five years after Leigh and I met he only went and proposed!

As you can imagine this post will be filled with lots of exclamation marks....

We arrived at Glastonbury (I will be doing a proper run down post soon) and that evening we all went up towards the flag field, where you have a brilliant view over the whole of Glastonbury.

After we had sat for a bit we moved right up to the very top of the field, where he turned to me, told me how much he loved me and asked me to stand before getting down on one knee and asking me to be his wife. Of course my reaction was elegant and smooth.......

I basically screamed, cried, shook and then proceeded to shout from the very top of the hill 'I'm engaged!' to which several people looked round and clapped and cheered. One man even came over and said how happy he was to be a witness to it all and would be off to tell his friends about it.

Not only do I love Leigh very much but he's got a smart head on him too, thinking to propose with a fake ring that looked just like my real one so if it got lost at Glastonbury it really wouldn't matter. As such I didn't get the real sparkler until Monday which required a whole five days of waiting in which time I actually got quite attached to the fake one!

Fake Ring

Real Ring

I am so very happy at the thought of marrying him and I may have already started a major planning mission, which I'm sure I will document on here as well.

Without this becoming a completely soppy post I just wanted to say that I really do love you, and I can't wait to be your wife for the rest of our lives ...

C x

Glastonbury 2015

If you have come to my blog via Facebook then you will probably know that I was one of the lucky 15,000 to snag myself some tickets to next year's Glastonbury Festival on Wednesday when the Coach + Ticket went on sale! (The main sale will be on Sunday at 9am where 120,000 more tickets will be available).

Having missed out on a chance to go last year after failing to secure a ticket I thought "Oh it doesn't matter!" Which was fine....until the run up to Glastonbury and my Facebook was filled with other people going and it was everywhere and I suddenly realised I did bloody care.

Imagine my horror when I found out I had a work event on Wednesday and I wouldn't be able to get online to buy some! I enlisted the help of a few friends and set the seetickets page open from 3.45pm just in case I could get back to my desk. Luckily my boss is amazing and she let me slope off to try my hand at getting some tickets. I sat hunched over my desk with a glass of wine and a slice (two slices) of pizza and I patiently waited for 7pm to roll round.

With nervousness creeping in I screamed when I managed to get through at 7.04 (The tickets sold out at 7.14!), my hands shaking as I frantically typed in the registration codes for four of us. Clicking through with the speed of light I managed, in all the excitement, to book us on the 6am coach leaving from London - which is all well and good as we will get to Glastonbury relatively early - however the Underground doesn't start running until 5.30am....which means we will miss the coach. It appears we will have to get a taxi!

But as I sat back shaking with all the adrenaline I realised that none of that especially matters because I AM GOING TO GLASTONBURY! This will be my 5th time and its also quite special because Leigh and I met there in 2010 so it will be our 5th anniversary or meet-aversary as I like to call it. I am chuffed that we will be able to spend it in the fields that bought us together.

If you are going to try to get a ticket  on Sunday then Good Luck! If you aren't going to try - well you just really should because you need to experience Glastonbury at least once!

C x

IKEA Home Haul

So I was a little bit naughty and spent a little bit too much money but IKEA have just got their new catalogue in and you know I can't resist spending money on 'stuff'!

I thought I would share my spoils with you (Click the yellow text to be linked through and don't blame me if you end up spending money):

First up is this gorgeous big yellow bowl, the yellow will go beautifully in my kitchen and it's just perfect for salad giant bowls of cereal...

  Serving Bowl - £5

He has two little friends in the same range, great for dips and nuts and general cluttering of my house.

Snack Bowls - £3 for 2 pack

I decided that what we needed most in the world were two more trays for us to have. I really want one with little legs on so I can eat breakfast in bed but in the meantime these will do!

Tray - £4.50

So I don't really have anywhere for these to go but I just cannot get enough of the grey/yellow colour palette at the moment so I snapped two of these up.

Cushion cover - £9 and I got these cushions to cover!

Next up - gravy jug/milk jug/wine jug? Regardless of what I will use it for it's a pretty good jug at that with a big fat bottom.

Gravy Jug - £6

I am loving putting all of my food stuffs into jars at the moment. I think it looks much nicer that way rather than sitting in my cupboard. What else could I do then but buy more of them to try and find space for on my worktops! He's a good 'un for spaghetti!

Kilner Jar - £3

So next up I got these 4 amazing geometric glasses. For some reason they aren't available on the website but there were definitely loads in store so maybe they just haven't got round to putting them on, or perhaps they are end of line. I'm waffling. They are awesome. Enough said.

Drinking glass - £1.80

Another item to not make it on to the website are these egg cup holders. Again tying in with the yellow kitchen theme they look like mini drinking goblets!

Egg Cup - £1.50

What is a trip to IKEA without buying a candle!? A not just any candle...a grey one....

Candle - 95p

I wish I'd bought more of these to be honest but for now I just have a Cara plate and a Leigh plate. The colour and pattern of them is just gorgeous, they are slightly more grey in real life, this picture doesn't do them justice.

Plates - £3

I got the deep bowls from the same range as well. I should have bought more! Not that I needed to spend any more money.

Bowls - £3

So there you have it boys and girls, I spent too much money, I have no idea where I'm going to put everything and Leigh hates me because I'm making him go halves on the bill. But I have lots of shiny new IKEA stuff so everything is ok!

C xxx

The Final Day

With a frowny face I awoke on our final day, desperate to try and top up my tan as much as possible before I left.

Our flight wasn't until 9.35 that evening so we had a little bit of time to sit in the sun and take pictures in the grass.

We stopped posing to have some lunch, which was yummy Chicken Lasagne served by my very lovely Grandad.

After saying our goodbyes we headed to the airport to fly home, which was very sad indeed. The mood was not improved when we got to the airport and were told that our plane was delayed for 40 minutes so we wouldn't be flying until 10.15pm. In the end we got back to my parents house at 1.45am so it was a very long day indeed.

It's been such a lovely holiday and I hope you have enjoyed reading about it, I've enjoyed doing these so much - although daily blogging is quite hard! I hope it has been entertaining :)

C xxx

The Perfect World

Do you ever get that feeling that everyone’s is having a bigger, brighter, more fantastic life that you are?

As a blogger and an avid blog reader I have read about so many other people’s lives and it’s sometimes hard to remember that what they are showing you and the image that they are portraying is one of perfection of their own making. Now don’t get me wrong – some of the blogs that I read, I really do think that their life is like that. Especially the lucky ones that are able to blog full time and are endorsed and sponsored to travel to far off places and go to amazing social events but the majority (I like to think deep down) are just a normal people.

I sometimes wonder what the image of me is. I like to think that I come off as a cool fun adult who lives in London, who hangs out with her close group of friends and goes to fun events, whilst maintaining my full time job and gaining a degree, all the while cooking and balancing a mixing bowl on one hip and sipping a drink with the other hand. Or maybe people just think I’m really boring, pretentious and they wish I would stop posting my blog columns on facebook and clogging up their newsfeed.

The thing is, the reason that I really keep the blog, is because it is a way to keep a diary of everything. Having failed spectacularly at keeping a handwritten one past my 22^nd birthday I now find that this is the best way to remember everything that I have done. I’m not going to lie, this is the whole point to this post – I do sometimes sit there and count my followers and wish that I had thousands of followers who hung on to my every word but I know that at least 40 people read my columns when I post them and that makes me happy (One of my posts reached 100 views the other day which made me smile lots!).     

It’s just so easy to portray a lifestyle that you want people to see on the internet. The amount of times that I have posted about something, and told a little white lie just to make it sound like I know what I’m talking about, before my friends – the ones who were there with me – call me out on it. Sometimes I’m not even aware I’m doing it! Photographs are the other easy thing to fake. The right light, angle and background can make the double chin disappear and the face seem radiant.  It is the same with pictures around the house. Look at my perfect tidy house, it is always this way with no mess at all…

Oh no wait……
 

We live in a world and a culture where everyone is always trying to keep this façade of perfect up. I want to know how all these other bloggers find people to take pictures of them as they walk down the street. I know that my friends wouldn't follow me around with a camera, waiting while I posed!  I say this not because I plan on changing it but because I am trying to make my own self aware that this happens so when I see someone else blog about that holiday with the pictures of perfect bliss:

Or the beautifully lit food shots that make your mouth water, I just have to try and remember that they have probably spent an hour trying to get that one shot and they burnt the first batch:

What do you think? Would you prefer to see the messy side of things, rather than the perfect? Would you prefer to hear about the slightly rotund girl who is forgetful, a bit of a bitch, loves a gossip and can’t go a day without eating cheese (hence the rotund-ness). The girl who spends 20 minutes taking pictures of food before she will eat it, and won’t let her boyfriend eat either. The one who much prefers to sit on the sofa watching TV than actually exploring the amazing city she lives in and who tried to cram a year’s worth of revision into 4 days because instead of revising she was baking lemon cakes and getting pissed with her friends.     

I just needed to have a bit of a chat today actually, and this is the most diary like post I’ve done in a long time. Sometimes I just need to sit down and talk. Not that it’s changed anything though – I’m still a bloody jealous person who wishes I could be paid to write a blog and travel the world but I guess sometimes it’s much more preferable to sit at home with the boy and the cat and eat an entire melted camembert with a four pack of cider.

C xxx

My Birthday!

As usual I like it best when my birthday is spread out over as many days as possible and this year has been no acception to that. Normally in the 6 months up to my birthday it is all I can go on about but this year I have been strangley quiet about the whole affair. This might have something to do with the fact that I have no entered in to the slow and steady 30's hill and the only way is down. No more can I say I am in my early or even mid twenties. I am 26. Oh the horror!

Now that I've added just a hint of melodrama to the post I can continue. This year I decided to join forces with another friend of mine who is also on the slippery slope and we chose the Monopoly Pub Crawl as the best place to begin. As my birthday was on a Monday and his on a Tuesday we decided to do it the Saturday before, inviting about 80 people and knowing that only 10 where going to turn up at best.

If you havent ever done the Monopoly Pub Crawl it really is great fun. This was the second time that I have attempted it, making your way round 26 pubs from 10.30am - midnight and drinking 13 pints (you have half pints at each pub) this is not a challenge for the faint hearted. Its almost impossible to keep to the time limits and last time we made it round 20 of the 26, feeling satisfied with out attempt. This year we wanted to try and beat our previous record however.

You can download the route here (we went for the quickest way, not the in-order of the board way). It's such a good experience but you do have to be prepared to move quickly, you can't really sit around or you wont make it round. Rather than bore you with the repetition of - we went to a pub, we had a half pint, we moved on - here are some fun pictures of the day!

We made it round 21 pubs in the end and went and got a chinese at 12.30am to celebrate!

***

On my actual birthday I woke up relatively early and opened all my presents :) My parent's got me a digital photo frame and some kitchen ceramics. My wonderful boyfriend bought me this gorgeous necklace which creates little rainbows if it catches in the sun and its just perfect.

I took the day off work as I think its the one day that I shouldn't have to work but as luck would have it the rain decided that it was a good time to show up and so my previous plan of a picnic went out of the window. Instead we spent a couple of hours uploading pictures on to the new photo frame before moving on to the very important baking of the birthday cupcakes. If you are a avid reader of my blog you will know how much I love to bake but I decided it was my birthday and I was going to be lazy so they were made courtsey of our good friend Betty Crocker.

Once they were iced and had cooled we packed some up and headed into town and Oxford Street so I could do a little bit of shopping before Leigh took me out for dinner at a yummy pizza place called Pizza Pilgrims. They serve wine in big carafes and I had a black pepper salmi pizza and Leigh had spicy sausage.

After that we went to go and meet my close friends for a few drinks, blowing out of a tealight (nobody had candles!) and general merrymaking. It was quite lovely.

Thank you to everyone who celebrated with me one way or another, and to the woman at the pub who ID'd me on my birthday so I got to hand it over with a "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY" cry. Also thank you for thinking I look young enough to get ID'd, you made my night.

xxx

Happy Christmas!

As you may have guessed I love Christmas. 

Every year Leigh and I alternate spending time with my family and Leigh's and this year it was my turn for Christmas Day and Leigh's for Boxing Day. I am pleased about this because my brother is moving to Australia in January and we don't know how long he will stay so it was nice to have all the family together.

It's so special spending time with family and although it's hectic it's so much fun. I'm so sad its over for another year  because I really do wish it could be Christmas everyday!

I hope you all had a very lovely Christmas :)

xxx