Pumpkin drool

Now although I am not an American I loooove a bit of pumpkin and adore pumpkin pie as much as any Yank! Thanksgiving or not I will eat it!

Unfortunately we don't get a lot of pumpkin flavoured food over here in England so I have to make do with what I can find which is usually pumpkin spiced lattes in Starbucks in October time and the occasional tin of pumpkin in Waitrose...because who can be bothered to cut up a whole pumpkin just to get the flesh of it! 

Anyway my point is pumpkin is awesome and here you can find lots of scrummy recipes to make it even awesomer. First on my list to try are the turtle pumpkin ice cream cake and triple chocolate pumpkin pie....told you there would be pumpkin drool! I mean how can you resist something that looks this good 

<----- turtle pumpkin ice cream cake

Everyday sexism...

I read a really interesting article today on the Guardian website about the language used to describe women and how some words are generally (though not always) used against women in a discriminatory way. I honestly had never really considered this until I read the article and realised it had been going on without me even noticing! 
Anyhoo the article can be found here on the Guardian Life & Style section and you should all go and read it!

Back to work blues...

Well, here I am back at work again after a week off. At the start of it, the time seemed so long...9 whole days off in a row, but it has soon slipped past! To be honest the holiday started a bit earlier as we had plans on the Thursday and Friday night and whole of Saturday before going away on the Sunday to London.

London was a great break if a bit (read a lot!) wet! We got pretty much soaked in the rain every time we stepped out of the hotel on Monday & Tuesday though Wednesday was better at least, no need for the umbrella! We had a lovely time none-the-less and did some spectacularly touristy things as well as more unusual ones. 

Trolled up to the National Gallery to see an excellent exhibition called Making Colour which surprisingly enough is about colour!! Was a fascinating thematic exhibition and talked about the theory and the way the different pigments were developed as well as showing the traditional uses of each colour. It's on until 7th September so if you find yourself at a loose end near Leicester Square and the National Gallery I would highly recommend it!

We also went to see a Prom (Austro-Hungarian /Viennese music) at the Royal Albert Hall which was just up the street from our hotel. Had a slight drama when I ACCIDENTALLY spilled some water on a woman in the bar where we were having our pre-prom drink (typical clutzy me!) and she went absolutely mental and we then made a swift exit. Her shrieks included the following "Ohhhh, What have you thrown on me?"  "My hair is ruined" (it wasn't, in fact you couldn't even tell she'd had it done...) and when Chris apologised again saying that we were as wet as she was, from the 20 minute walk in the rain obviously..., she just tutted at us and said "I don't think so!" I'm sure if we were older she wouldn't have kicked off as much. So barring that incident the proms were lovely, the Albert Hall was amazing and the music was beautiful. Even got to hear the Blue Danube waltz which is one of our joint favourite pieces of classical music. 

On Tuesday in the rain we went to the amazing shop that is Libertys of London. My Mum first took me in there when I was about 13 or 14 and I fell in love with the place. For those that don't know, Liberty is at heart a posh department store but is really so much more than that. It has a beautiful mock Tudor frontage and sells the most amazing fabrics and all sorts of exquisite things. I think my favourite place there is the rug room, which is just a room chock-a-block full of oriental style rugs, on the floor, in massive piles, hanging from the ceiling...heaven! Now because I am paying for a wedding and am poor I resisted all the beautiful Tana Lawn fabric and treated myself to some little scissors in the same print as I liked, the height of restraint I'm sure you will agree. 

Another highlight of our trip was a visit to a fabulous restaurant called The Big Easy, we went to the Chelsea one but there is also one in Covent Garden. Basically their specialty is Lobster but they do all sorts of other Americana type foods like ribs, burgers etc and amazing cocktails. Being brave souls Chris and I decided that we would try the 1 and a half  pound lobster as neither of us had tried it before. And dear readers, I can truly say it was delicious! I'm not a massive fan of seafood so this is a departure for me and I'm so pleased I made the brave leap. The meat (if you can call a crustacean's flesh meat!) was very sweet and not at all disgusting. Plus we had awesome fun with the implements they give you to eat it, cracking tools, long prongs etc...and took funny photos with claws. All in all a great place to go and have a good meal, great drinks and an excellent time! 

One of the best things about where we stayed was its proximity to Chelsea and the Kings Road meaning we could do a bit of celeb spotting while we were there. Not that we were that great at it...our best spots were Spencer and Andy from Made in Chelsea. Speaking of MIC if you've been watching the new series in New York you should read this blog about it on Tatler website. Very funny stuff by Sophia Money-Coutts.

You know for all me starting this post moaning about being back at work, I've actually cheered myself right up by recapping our London trip for you all. 

Can't sleep...

So it's stupid'o'clock in the morning and I can't sleep. Was having a really random dream that I can hardly remember now and I woke up to the sound of smoke alarm going off. Now I've no idea if this was just in my brain or actually real but now I'm a little bit worried to go back to sleep. I have checked out the whole flat and can't see anything that would cause the alarm to go off, smoke or otherwise, but still little bit concerned. 

Other than that it's been a pretty good day. We got back from London last night, feels a lifetime ago already, but knew we had stuff to do today so alarm went back on even though we're still on leave *sob.* At least I knew I was getting up for a good reason, to get me hair cut & coloured! It's now a gorgeous auburn colour, no change in the length since I'mgrowing it for the wedding. Please excuse the poor photo, it's in the waitrose toilets! 

We also had our pre wedding engagement photo shoot with our official wedding photographer today (well technically yesterday now!) The idea is to get you used to having a camera in your face all the time and to how they tell you to move as it's not necessarily natural. Did the "shoot" in the little village where the photographer is based so it's got nice countryside and villagey goodness in it! Hopefully the photos will come out beautifully, if they don't will be our fault and not the photographer's as he is excellent!  

Oh, alarm just went off again, guess I didn't dream it then...fiancé woke up this time and he doesn't seem bothered about it. Says it's just the batteries n will sort it out in the morning. I'm not sure I'm going to get much sleep with worrying about them beeping n if it's actually detecting something or just tripping. Eeep! 

London Baby!

Today I am in London 😄 fiancé and I are staying for a few days over the bank holiday. Normally we could just get the train down and it would take us 40 mins to get here but thanks to the amazing minds at network rail who decided to do arrange engineering works over this w/e we had to get the coach. It wasn't too bad I suppose, just hot n cramped but no traffic jams at least! And here we are in a very nice hotel in Kensington just near natural history museum. See delightful photo below, and yes...I am in bed...

This evening there will be lobster, ribs and frozen margaritas; Tomorrow there will be proms, on Tuesday there will be afternoon tea and on Wednesday there will be Libertys of London for fabric sighing over... All in all a good holiday I'm thinking. Then we don't even go back to work til the week after. Excellent use of annual leave! 

"I wanna rock!!!"

Well this evening I had a great evening out. Had double date with fiancé and one of my lovely bridesmaids plus her husband. We went out for dinner (thank you Tesco clubcard vouchers!) and then to see Rock of Ages at the theatre. I even curled my hair for the occasion ☺️ The show was very funny, a little bit naughty in parts and a great sing-a-long of 80s classics! The best thing about it was that they didn't take it too seriously, one bit they even went totally off script and corpsed totally, had the audience in stitches! The lead character was played by Noel off of Hearsay and Wales so there were plenty of sheep jokes in there. All in all a good fun night with one my bestie and my lovely man. Few pre-theatre pics are below... 

In other news I collected my first fabric parcel from the post office and have purchased a measuring tape so Operation Made by Me is ready for the next stage ( and yes that is a partially stolen code name that I just invented!) I also bought my wedding tiara which is exciting. 

And now since it is past pumpkin time I'm off to sleep, have to be up im 7 hours to go to Harrogate ..... Long story, will tell it another time 

"People gonna rate you, People gonna hate you, People gonna shove you, People gonna love you, People gonna do whatever makes them feel they own you better!"

Yesterday, dear readers, I brought you the tale of my amazing shoes of love with the gorgeous peacock feathers on. So in infinite wisdom I decided that I really could do with in my life is a matching dress...now not many places sell amazing peacock feather dresses so I, of course, decided to buy some more fabric for one of my as yet hypothetical dresses! 

So here it is in all it's beauty - the peacock fabric of love! 

Isn't it so pretty and bright and colourful :)