Thank You Notes #1 - the Wedding Edition

Anyone else absolutely in love with this month and all the sunshine it's brought with it? Cos I know I am besotted!

So I love a blog series, and one of my absolute favourites is the Little Letters by Love Taza. I love little lists of things (my never ending to-do list is an example of this) so I thought I'd start my own!
I've always been big on Thank You notes, an instilled habit from my mother, and I wanted to create something cute and happy. So the Thank You Notes blog series has come to life.

So here goes... my April Thank You Notes - the Wedding Edition!

Pizza, Pizza, Pizza and Pasta

I'm a carbs kind of girl. There's no way around that. It's just a fact. Mashed potato is my go-to comfort food. Pasta is my go-to quick and simple dinner dish. Pizza is my favourite take-away! So yeah, carbs are definitely my friends (though my waistline probably - definitely - disagrees)

Amongst the plethora (oh damn that's a good word) of new restaurants to join us in Southampton is L'Osteria*, which is the home of pizza and pasta.
It's the second one of it's kind for the UK, with the first in Bristol, and we Sotonites (is that a word?) are very happy to welcome them to our sunny city!

Living Room Tour

One of the things I love most about being a home owner is the fact you have free-reign to do whatever you please with your home at any time. 

We're very lucky that we own our three bed house, and we have a lot of space to work with, which is particularly handy with a rampant 10 month old crawling all over the house. 

Lambing Season

So today's post is basically just a bunch of photos from Easter weekend back up in Bucks with Dann's parents, just because I really loved the photos, and I like sharing, especially when it is super super cute - like baby lambs!! 

One of our favourite things to do when we're back in Hambleden is to go along for the dog walk in the afternoons. Henry is obsessed with the dogs, and loves to go out in the carrier. He sits and laughs and chats away happily, plus we get some exercise too.

Being the end of April, the field that we walk through is filled with sheep, and they're on their second set of babies, so there are lambs galore! The morning these were taken, Henry, Dann and his mum had seen a very newborn lamb, so I decided to take along the camera for the afternoon wander.

And thus lamb spam has commenced!

Prepping for travel with littles

After 10 months we're finally getting used to this travel with kids lark.

With family and friends dotted all over the country we often find ourselves away from home over the weekends and bank holidays. 

So we've spent the last few months fine-tuning our travelling, and most importantly our travel prep.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Some of you may know, though many won't, that our wedding was loosely themed around Alice in Wonderland and her tea party. The story has held a place in my heart for years, so when I was invited to see Wonderland* at the Mayflower Theatre for it's UK and European premiere production.

Being the Easter half term it was an incredibly timely addition to the cities cultural entertainment, which by the way is getting better and better at the moment.

The story combines Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass in this enchanting musical adaptation. They have changed up the story so the essence of Alice in Wonderland is there, and all the characters, but you have a modern day adult Alice with her daughter Ellie down the rabbit hole.

We went to a wedding

Are you guys ready for probably the biggest collection of photos I've ever posted in one blog post? Because you must know me and my photographic love affair means I had real difficulty whittling these down!! (I managed to save some for my upcoming Thank You Notes series)

So Easter Sunday was my little sister's wedding. After seven years together and a year and a half of planning, she tied the knot at Taplow House Hotel, and honestly we had the best day! 

Tattoo healing with coconut oil

I'm often asked how I go about healing my tattoos, and the simple answer is that I keep it clean and moisturised.
Recently I've seen the rise of coconut oil in the beauty and skincare world, and seen a number of people recommend it as a natural moisturiser for healing tattoos too. Having been given a pot of coconut oil from a friend I decided it was the perfect time to try it out and add it to my tattoo experimentation list.

Previously I've been a cocoa butter fan for healing my tattoos having moved away from the usual Bepanthen some years ago. I changed my healing routine from the recommendation of a tattooist, and this time again, my tattooist said it was a good idea too.

Henry's 10 month update

This last month has really hit home that my little boy is barely a baby anymore. It feels like so much has changed and he's grown up and become this little person more so than ever before.
I know he's still technically a baby, and he's not a toddler yet, but he seems so big now. Of course this has been amplified about 100x by his Godmother's announcement that she is having her own little bundle of joy, but it's been such a rollercoaster of a month that I think I'd have felt this way no matter what.

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving this age so so much, and it just seems to keep getting better and better (nine month update here) and although I do wish I'd relished those quiet newborn baby days a little more, I am adoring this fun, giggly, cuddly and energetic little minx that I get to spend my everyday with.

So why has this month made such a change?

Easter Homemade Rocky Road

One of the best things about Easter has to be the food - to be fair, the best bit of most holidays is the food.

Yes it is not in the least bit healthy, hello chocolate eggs and hot cross buns, but it is truly yummy. 

I've never really done much baking or cooking for a holiday but I thought I'd start changing that up and making an effort around the holidays, because Henry is growing up so fast so I best get my act together. 

To start things off I thought I'd update my Chocolate Biscuit Cake and make an Easter inspired Rocky Road.

6 things that every tattooed girl knows to be true

Did you know that as soon as you get a big visible tattoo life kinda changes a bit! 

Now I've been extensively tattooed for some time now, like 5 years (I started my right sleeve at 22) so I guess I know a thing or two about living with tattoos now!

As I'm working on bringing more tattooey (is that a word? Yeah sure, let's stick with it!) content to the blog here's xx things that every tattooed girl goes through.

The Reading List - Quarter 1

Can you believe we're already a quarter of the way through the year??
Nope me either!

So this year, I've been putting more and more effort into making time to read.
I've always thought of reading as incredibly important, and it can easily be developed in to a habit which is the perfect form of self-education.
I also find reading really helpful to un-winding before bed, and helps to clear my mind of any anxieties of the day! It's like my own kind of therapy. And with so much of my focus spent on the internet and social media, I think it's so important to have something that is away from all that.

So I've been reading more, and checking out loads of great book instagram accounts, and buying copious amounts of books. So that I can really validate all of my book purchases, I'm going to write quarterly updates on everything I've read in the last three months because I love reading book reviews, so I'm going to try my hand! Plus I'm such an over-sharer.

On a search for blossoms

It's official, I have become that blogger! Yep spring has sprung (sorry for the cliche) and I am fully obsessed with finding the prettiest blossoms I possibly can, whilst they're around. Of course this has not been helped by my change in Instagram theme, and the colour change from my orange theme on this blog to the pink that it is now rocking! (even if I do say so myself!)

So on Saturday we decided to take an impromptu walk to get some fresh air as we had some sunshine for the afternoon that we were not expecting at all.
Of course I grabbed my camera on my way out the door to get some pretty blossoms!

Rockabye Baby : Why I rock my baby

I rock Henry to sleep. Every day. For every nap time.
I rock him when he wakes in the night, and I rock him when he's struggling to sleep before bed.

I rock my baby to sleep, and I'm perfectly OK with it.

Many will say that I'm making life difficult for myself by rocking him to sleep, and not working hard to break him out of the habit. But as with pretty much all aspects of parenting, there isn't exactly a perfect formula for every child.