5 Rainy Day Activities

Ok, ok…so it is sunny outside right now…but they are coming people…like day turns to night…we are going to be having some rainy days sooner or later… time to plan for them.

1: Read a book

Be it a real ‘sniff it, it smells amazing’ book or a digital number, get your face in some fiction. I honestly can’t think of a better way to while away an hour or two, caught up in the lives of someone else. Think of it as super classy Jeremy Kyle for literary types.

2: Cook/Bake

How about using your rainy day to bake a massive cake? Could there be a better way to spend it? I also use rainy days to get ahead on my cooking for the upcoming week. Anything you can prepare in advance can save you trouble during the week or on a unusually busy day.

3: Reorganise a room/cupboard

Choose a cupboard… clear it out. Make a space work better for you by rearranging it to your ease. I do this all the time and I love how streamlined I can make my life. Why make things hard for yourself? Really…there are enough people in life to do that for you.

4: Go do cultured stuff

Go visit a museum, an art gallery, a National Trust property…or bugger it, go to the aquarium. Just get off your bum, put a rain coat on and jump in the car and do something!

5: Say sod it and build a ruddy fort

Some rainy days are not worth saving….so put your jammies back on, build a blanket fort and watch musicals/wrestling/old movies/Disney ALLLL DAY…only releasing yourself from your fort for toilet breaks and fetching more armloads of food.

Thrifty Find: Beef Stew Crock Pot

Please check out this BEAUTY that I unearthed at a local charity shop. It’s not cast iron, but hey… for boiling up a stew or two…who is fussed eh?

Especially when I only paid £3 for it!

It has a nice wide bottom (like me…P has just quipped) and I love the design, the handles get a bit hot when it is bubbling away, but that is what pot holders are for!

What have you thrifted lately?

What I Wore: The Wedding like ours

P’s cousin got married recently and their wedding was wonderful, and so similar to what we are planning. I just hope ours goes off as well as theirs did. I foolishly decided to wear heels in a marquee…rookie mistake and I also forgot to get P to snap a ‘blog shot’ of my outfit.
Hope you enjoy P’s hair….I cut it the next day…. it traumed me every minute!

Headband – Primark (and worn to death)
Dress – Boohoo
Cardigan – Charity shop (and worn a million times on this blog!)
Belt – Primark
Shoes – Not seen, but nude courts from F&F

Simple Pleasures

I am enjoying the recent influx of vitamin D we are experiencing, and I am getting out in my garden to battle slugs every second I get. When I am not murdering slugs, you can find me baking, wearing flip-flops and making oodles more bunting for our wedding… le sigh…. if only I didn’t have to go to work as well….oh to be a kept woman….

What is your simple pleasure?

Thrifty Find: Succulent Succulents

I won’t lie…I was on the the hunt for a simple glass fruit bowl. This little beauty cost me a mere £2.50 from one of the more upmarket charity shops in the area…if there is such a thing as an upmarket charity shop. I personally prefer the ones that look like a house clearance…I love the challenge of a rummage. Give me a slightly musty and grubby charity shop and I will be happy for hours.

I had this beauty set aside in my mind for a special use. P’s mum had gifted me a massive tray of succulents when we moved in and they have been growing away in the greenhouse, wasted on just my peepers. I thought it was time they graduated into the house.

Don’t they look gorgeous on my kitchen windowsill?

Hell is a Wedding Seating Plan

So…if you follow me on twitter you would have seen this tweet earlier this week….

Whilst I am sure that many brides baulk at the thought of deciding who sits where… you want to make sure Aunt Agnes, who likes the odd bottle of whiskey, is sat the furthest distance from the bar, you want the ones with babies in ‘whisking out’ distance and you want your lecherous Uncle Rob to be as far away from the bridesmaids as possible….right?

I agree it is a task that is not undertaken lightly by any bride… but the bride of divorcee parents? With a groom of divorcee parents? What the hell did I sign up for?

As you may guess, we are not having a traditional top table, whilst I am sure our parents will be on their best behaviour on our big day (they all know me well enough to not want me in bridezilla mode bearing down on them in my big white frock), I didn’t want all our parents partners to be sat alone.

I had thought of every combination possible, but with 7 parents between us (and I also have divorced grandparents – fingers crossed for me you guys!), I have decided to shirk tradition and we are going to sit on our ruddy own.

A sweetheart table…genius! It also means we get a little break from the mingling and having to talk to everyone. We can focus on just us two and make sure that we eat something.

Totally having these on our cheese ‘cake’ – £10 a pair

I spent hours juggling people around the other tables…trying to find the right mix… and finally I decided to get each set of parents to ‘host’ their own table. Easy right? Why did it take me 2 hours to work it out?!

Also, just a little tip guys…use Excel and not a piece of paper… copy and pasting names is so much easier than scribbling them out for the 25th time and rewriting it somewhere else… I nearly got RSI.

Our friends tables were a little easier…all our friends are nice (hence why we like them) so they pretty much could be slapped down in any formation and it would be great.

Future brides, when you come to this task, sit down with your RSVP list (you should be marking down who is coming off your invited list – You’re not?! What kind of crazy ass system have you got going on?), a MASSIVE cup of tea, some snacks (you will be here a while) and your groom. Don’t let them get away without this sort of hell in their lives…also you may not know about the feud his dad and his sister had years ago that leaks out over dinners occasionally….

Mine is now pretty much sorted after a bride and groom heads-together-for-3- hours-plus-tea session, with those in red pen who are yet to RSVP (I am coming for you!) but with people ready to slot into the table gaps if needs be.

And if anyone complains about where they are sitting…… hell hath no fury like a bride…

5 Posts: v4

Here are my favourite 5 posts from this month… and the catch? None of them are mine of course! These are 5 posts from my blog reader that I particularly enjoyed or felt I had to share. I hope you find someone lovely to follow!

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The One with the drool-worthy thrifted decor

I am a big big fan of Lulastic and her wonderous musings about thrift, motherhood, being a loud voice against gender-stereotyping and generally being eco fabulous. I love her post about her spare room…she has made it look gorgeous from other things that people have chucked out.

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The Feel-Good One

I adore Katie & Reuben from House of Humble. They reside halfway across the world in Australia and I love these posts that they put together, which help me look for the little things that make life perfect.

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The One that proves that gardening is cool

No one can say that Katie from Skunkboy is not cool. Have you seen her?! She has been growing some bits with her kiddiewinks, which makes me feel like less of a nan.

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The One with Food Envy

I have no words…just a growling stomach and a need to abolish this with a cup of tea in hand.

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The One giving away Foxy Stuff

Fran has a giveaway! Eeeeeeeeeeep! Pop on over and enter now!

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