FOOD: Friday Night Homemade Chicken Laksa Curry and Coconut Buns

In my house, we love love love Thai, Japanese and Chinese food, particularly if it is home cooked or from Wagamamas. Whilst diving through our Jamie's 15 minute meals book (see previous recipe here) we found a Thai Chicken Laksa that we just had to try. For once we actually stuck to the recipe very closely, and had a lot of the spices already in the house. Towards the end of this post you'll also see Coconut Buns too. By the way,  this post is VERY picture heavy - we actually took almost 60 photos doing this!

BABY: Pregnancy update - January - Weeks 15 to 18

I thought I'd do a monthly review of my pregnancy for you lovely readers. Although I totally love seeing weekly posts on other blogs, I have so many other posts to write which I also think you'll love, so I'll do a round up for you all.

This post covers week 15 to this week of 18, and what an eventful few weeks it has been.

BEAUTY: Sol Tattoos - Tattoo Transfers

We all remember tattoo transfers from our childhood right? They were cartoons of fairies or pirates, or tribal arm bands, usually covered in glitter.  I think that's where my love affair with tattoos started, though I do admit to hating scrubbing the things off. A good pack left you raw from trying to get it off in time for the start of school.

Nowadays I stick to the real thing, but of course have seen the trend for transfers, albeit this time, they're glammed up and grown up. 

Recently I was contacted by Sol Tattoos* who specialise in beautiful tattoo transfers, inspired by real tattoo designs. And I have to say, they are beautiful.

FOOD: Unboxing December's Degustabox - Healthy New Year

It's that time again, another new box of treats, snacks and dinner ideas all delivered direct to your door by Degustabox.
The December Degustabox, delivered in early January is all about the New Year and treating yourself right. So without further ado... here's the unboxing, with a little help from Dante of course!

BLOGGING: Meet my January advertisers

All too soon it appears we have moved into another month, and boy has January flown by!

But with it comes brand new advertisers to Illustrated Teacup. 

So without further ado...

The gorgeous Gill from Eyeliner Flicks graces my sidebar as the winner of my 26th birthday competition back in November. 

Her blog is the perfect collection of beauty, lifestyle and the alternative. Basically she's my kinda girl! Plus this girl knows a good eyeliner flick... Girl got skills! 

You can follow Gill on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

FOOD: Snack happy with Graze.com

January is always about healthy eating, and always find snacks the hardest bit of healthy eating. Being pregnant means I'm paying more attention to what I eat as its so important for the baby. Meal times are simple, especially breakfast and dinner. I chuck in some fruit for breakfast with yoghurt, and load up on veg in the evenings for dinner. But snacks! It's just so easy to grab a pack of crisps or a chocolate bar or cake when the hunger pangs strike.

But Graze might just be the answer to my snacking prayers.
I'm not new to Graze, I've bought the boxes on and off for the last few years, usually delivered weekly to the office. In fact I've gotten quite a few people into these snack boxes over the years.

The boxes are a cute subscription sent weekly, fortnightly or monthly depending on your preferences, and filled with yummy but healthy snacks, again based on your particular likes and dislikes. You can rate the items your sent too.
And what a inside? Well take my first box; I received Lemon and Rosemary Olives, Honeycomb Flapjack, Japanese Miso Soup and Belgian Speculoos and Cinnamon Pretzel Sticks. They're naughty but nice, and each week is different so you aren't going to get bored and lapse back to that cake!

Want to try your own Graze Box for free?
Use my code MGN65KDCB to get your first, 5th and 10th boxes for free.

And yes Graze is cat approved!

BLOGGING: Two year blogversary

I can't quite believe it, but this here blog has officially been on the proverbial map for two years!!
I'm actually super proud of what I've managed to achieve in these two years, most importantly that I've actually kept the thing running for the whole two years, with only a few small breaks. That's kind of a big deal to me, as I'm notorious for dropping projects when life gets busy. So I'm giving myself a lil pat on the back.

I guess for this post I just want to say THANK YOU.

FOOD: Sunday Comfort Food - Mustard Lamb & Irish Mash

We love a good Sunday roast in our house, and we love winter comfort food. And we absolutely adore trying new recipes and experimenting with food.

So when we found this Mustard Lamb and Irish Mash recipe in Jamie's 15 minute meals book, we knew we had to try it! (FYI I bought this as a Christmas present for Dann as we adore the show on Food Network) You can also see the original recipe with no amendments here. 

I'll start off by saying that these recipes absolutely never take 15 minutes. As you'll have seen in this test post, Jamie has to be a food magician to get it all done in 15 minutes. But they are perfectly doable in half an hour. And that is just fine by me.

ADVICE: How to survive redundancy

You may have recently seen that I was made redundant.
It was a huge shock to be completely honest but I hold no ill feelings. Some things just happen. It's a mantra I've gotten used to in the last couple of years and one I try to live by to keep me more positive.

But I thought maybe my experience could be used by others to help, alleviate the pressure a little and help with the inevitable stress.

So first things first - don't panic. It's not going to help. Have a cry, scream, shout or whatever you need to, in the privacy of your own home. Have a cup of tea (because we all know that's going to help). Sit and evaluate. You're going to be ok.

LIFESTYLE: The importance of family memories

The new year always gets me thinking and reflecting on the past year and working on resolutions for the year ahead. However, I'm not really making any resolutions this year, apart from no meals on the sofa - which lets be honest you guys probably don't care about. But I do love a good reflection.

In fact whilst tidying our spare room (yes I'm nesting early, and apparently continuously!) I found my old baby diary. It's a 70 year life diary that was gifted to my mother when I was born. The first 10 years or so of my life are documented in monthly reviews, including all my baby and child milestones. It's actually really sweet to read through.

FOOD: t+ wellness tea - getting a natural boost this winter

New year, new you? Good for you!
Personally, I'm terrible at resolutions so have decided not to bother. But being pregnant, I am paying more attention to what I am putting into my body.
I'm in the second trimester which means I'm starting to feel more like myself again (yay no more nausea!!) and that means I can get back to my normal routines and eating habits, with a little improvement. But pregnancy does have some health downsides to be considered including reduced immunity (hence the need for a flu jab - check) and fatigue (um where is that energy boost I'm supposed to get that all the books describe?).

So when t+ wellness tea* contacted me about their teas I knew they would be perfect for a January pick-me-up and get me well on the road of looking after myself in 2016.

BABY: The highs and lows of the first trimester

As you guys and gals will hopefully know I'm expecting my first little one (you can read the announcement here) and I'm truly over the moon and excited.

Like many women I kept the news pretty quiet for the first 13 weeks which I'm not going to lie was hard, especially when you want to shout from the rooftops. Some of my closer friends knew from about 8 weeks or so, mostly due to some of the rather irritating downsides to the first trimester.

So I thought I'd share some of my highs and lows of those secret 12 weeks.

LIFESTYLE: Life Lately - December

Can you believe it is already January?? And it's 2016 people!!!
Anyway, it's about time I did a little look back at December.

As you can probably imagine it was a busy one. Even more so as we had our baby news to announce to family and friends!! And OMG the scan - that was definitely the highlight of December, if not the entire YEAR!!

LIFESTYLE: Christmas in the Bradford household 2015

Apologies that I'm a little on the late side with this post, but everyone loves Christmas right?
Well I thought I'd share a few of our Christmas photos, as told by my Christmas Day snapchat for you.

We had a really quiet one this year with just Dann and myself (and the cats of course) in the house, but it was kind of perfect, and so chilled.
We decided to go untraditional and have pork with our roast, meaning we could make pulled pork with the other half of the joint - and it was LUSH!!

So here's my Christmas Day snapcat story! Add me on snapchat @Rachelanne_bee