My birthday celebrations: the 2019 edition

As you'll have guessed from the title of this post, it was my birthday last week. My birthday was on a Tuesday which is arguably the worst day of the working week, so I booked the Monday and Tuesday off work so that I could celebrate for four days.


Saturday 

We made the most of Saturday's beautiful weather and took Jessie for a long walk to Penarth. Our local Coffee #1 branch has got a dog friendly area, so we stopped there for half an hour to have cheesecake and a hot chocolate (and water for Jessie, of course).

On Saturday evening, we went to Miller & Carter in Cardiff Bay for birthday meal number one. I hadn't had the opportunity to dress up for a while, and I took great pleasure in wearing a pretty new dress and highly uncomfortable shoes. 

Although my meal was nice, the service was terrible. They got every part of Neil's order wrong, even his very simple soft drink. It's sadly put us off going back to that particular restaurant for a while, but it'll make a good anecdote at least! 

Sunday 

On the Sunday, we had a lazy morning before doing some shopping and taking Jessie for a walk. I'd arranged to go to stay with my parents for a couple of days, so I packed a few things and headed west at around 4pm. I stopped off at Sarah's house first and was greeted with a little strawberry and white chocolate cake and candles. She'd also prepared fresh strawberries and a Highlights hot chocolate... she knows me so well.

After eating and talking with Sarah for an hour or so, I drove to my parents' house and caught up with them for a few hours before going to bed. I haven't seen them for a few months so it was lovely to catch up properly and to exchange some funny stories. 

Monday 

On the Monday, I'd arranged a spa day in Machynys Pensinsula Golf Club and Premier Spa with Nicola. We got there early and went to the gym for half an hour, then we had our back, neck and shoulder massages before lunch. We went to the hydro spa after lunch and had the whole place to ourselves. We spent loads of time relaxing in the jacuzzi and also made use of the sauna, aromatherapy room, steam room and heated stone chairs. It was such a relaxing day and it definitely encouraged me to make time for spa days more often.

After I got home from the spa day, I went to the Harvester with my parents for birthday meal number two. The three of us ordered the classic burger and it was SO GOOD. You absolutely can't go wrong with the Harvester in our opinion, and the service was impeccable as always. I had a voucher for a free sundae, so we shared two of their giant monstrosities between the three of us. I'm glad we didn't have one each as I couldn't even manage half of mine!

Tuesday 

On Tuesday, it was finally my birthday. I woke up and opened my cards and presents from my parents, then we went to Costa for a celebratory hot chocolate. The weather was absolutely hideous, but I didn't have any outdoor plans so I didn't particularly mind. 

After having some cake with my parents for lunch, I drove back to Penarth in torrential rain to spend the rest of my birthday with Neil and Jessie. I opened my presents from Neil and all my cards from family and friends, then we took Jessie for a walk as the weather had vastly improved. We then went to Tony's in Penarth town centre for birthday meal number three. It's one of our favourite restaurants, and the food and service was amazing as per usual. 

The presents! 

I know most of you probably clicked on this purely to see my birthday haul, so I had to include a little section on my gifts. I had lots of lovely presents, most of which are photographed below. 

The Minnie Mouse cupcakes were from Nicola and were a very tasty surprise. I had lots of bath and shower products and plenty of Disney themed gifts, along with an amazing phone case from clever Jessie which featured her own face. In addition to the gifts below, I also had a New Look gift card from my parents in law, a Lush gift box from my sister in law and an afternoon tea voucher from Sarah. As always, I'm really grateful to everyone for my gifts and I've already made use of quite a few of them!

After four days of celebrating with lots of my favourite people, it was very hard to get up to go to work on Wednesday. However, I felt as if I'd had a nice long break and it was the best birthday I've had since my 30th birthday three years ago. 

Now that my birthday is over for another year, I'm counting down to Christmas... 198 days to go! 

A weekend in Milton Keynes

A couple of weekends ago, we travelled to Milton Keynes to visit one of my best friends from university and her husband. They've recently bought their own flat so we were excited about visiting and having a grand tour, as well as making the most of the opportunity for an overdue catch up.

We drove up to Milton Keynes on the Saturday morning and arrived at midday, just in time for lunch! We all walked around the corner to a little independent cafe and passed some very instagrammable architecture on our way there. Fee and Dave's block of flats is next to a canal and the old railway works which means it has some really unique and unconventional surroundings.

When we got to the cafe, everyone else opted for sensible sandwiches but I decided I wanted a sausage, bacon and egg bap because I couldn't stop thinking about it once I'd read it on the menu. It was really really really good... I'd like to think that everyone else secretly had food envy.

After eating our lunch, we went for a wander around the local neighbourhood which included walking alongside the canal and stumbling across lots of tranquil scenery. The weather was surprisingly mild and it was a walk full of picturesque views, certainly very different to the 'concrete' Milton Keynes everyone talks about! 

After walking for half an hour or so, we stopped at the local pub for a drink. We sat outside with our beers and our wines which was a nice change for February, but we were pretty cold by the time we'd finished our drinks as the sun decided to disappear behind a cloud halfway through!

After getting back to Fee and Dave's flat, we settled down and said hello to Fee's hamsters. They're so little and cute and I have no idea why I didn't take a photo of them! In the meantime, Dave was busy cooking in the kitchen and his creation smelt divine...

This was such good food! It consisted of lots of tasty gammon with a homemade onion and mustard sauce, along with all the trimmings. I was ridiculously full after this and even had to turn down dessert. It's rare for me to turn down dessert, believe me. 

After finishing our food, we played Exploding Kittens for an hour or so... don't panic, this isn't as barbaric as it sounds. It's just a very amusing card game which has weird parallels with the much-loved Uno. With all of us being over 30, we started falling asleep at around 12:30am so went off to bed at a fairly decent hour. 

The following morning, we went to the Harvester for breakfast which was lovely as always, although does anyone else get really confused by their breakfast menu options? I can never work out which option gives me the most value for money along with the most food)!

After getting back to the flat, Neil and I said our goodbyes (to the hamsters as well as to Fee and Dave!) and started our long drive back to Cardiff. The roads were quiet so we made it back in just over three hours, and I was in my pyjamas by 5pm. Standard Sunday evening. 

I always love visiting my uni friends, or having them over to visit us, as we don't see each other very often any more due to living in various different areas across the UK. Our weekend in Milton Keynes was no exception, and I definitely need to schedule in some more visits over the next few months.

Have you ever been to Milton Keynes? What did you think of it? 

An Instagram summary of the last month...

I've had a crazy few weeks which has resulted in no blog posts whatsoever. Most of my recent blog posts seem to start with a similar apologetic sentence, so I really want to get back into blogging regularly.

I thought I'd kick off my return to the blogging world by summarising the last month using my Instagram photos. It turns out that I've managed to fit in quite a lot! On that note, you'll ALWAYS know what I've been up to if you follow me on Instagram as I insist on updating it daily.

So here goes... feast your eyes on these photographs!


1. Four weekends ago, we walked to Cardiff Bay on a sunny day and had a lovely meal and cocktail in Signor Valentino. I love living so close to such pretty places!

2. I got promoted... I'm now a Communications Manager! It was a stressful few weeks leading up to the interview and official confirmation but I'm so excited about this opportunity. As you can see, Stitch was VERY excited for me.

3. I went for a work night out and had some tasty cocktails in Las Iguanas on a sunny Friday evening. Perfect end to a busy week.

4. I went to see my parents to celebrate my father's 70th birthday. I had a tour of his beautiful garden then we went to one of his all time favourite places... the Harvester!

5. We had a lovely evening at our friends' new house with lots of food and drinks. Sophie made me an amazing (and very aesthetically pleasing) glass of Pimm's!

6. We ventured into Cardiff city centre a few times during the last month. It's looking so beautiful at the moment with lots of pretty flowers and trees in full bloom.

7. We've done lots of work on the house over the last few weeks which has taken up a fair amount of time. Two of my very important contributions were buying this stunning orchid for the living room and re-arranging our bedroom.

8. I went to Southampton to celebrate my youngest nephew's first birthday. Both my nephews are so handsome!

9. I bought the most beautiful new Fiorelli bag... yes, that is important news in my world and definitely warrants an Instagram post (or two).

10. I went to the Smoke Haus and ate (most of) this beauty. Messiest burger I've ever eaten. I had to eat the entire thing with a knife and fork!

11. I enjoyed a relaxing sunny evening in the garden with a cocktail, some light refreshments and my Kindle.

12. I had my first ever personal training session at the gym! It left me ever so slightly exhausted but I'll definitely be continuing the programme over the next six weeks. Operation 'tone up for Florida' is ON.

13. We went to see Inside Out at the cinema (and bought a new Yankee Candle for the living room). Amazing film! You all just have to see it.

These photos pretty much sum up everything exciting I've been up to over the last few weeks. Posts like this make me realise how lucky I am to have so many things to enjoy and to look back on with fond memories. I might start writing a similar post every month as a reminder of what I've got up to... watch this space! 

300 posts!

Happy new year! I've somehow timed my latest blogging milestone to coincide with the new year... what a convenient coincidence.

I thought I'd continue with my milestone tradition by discovering which posts have been most popular since I started my blog. I changed my blog name and URL in the first half of 2014 which had a detrimental effect on my blog views, so a lot of the posts below also featured in my '200 posts' entry. However, there are a few newbies in there (specifically the restaurant reviews!) and I'm hoping there'll be a few more new posts in my '400 posts' entry, whenever that milestone comes around.

So without further waffle (I do love a good waffle), here are my ten most popular posts...

1. Hollister Addison... best perfume ever?
2. Film review: The Great Gatsby
3. Frantic about Florida #2
4. Duffy the Disney Bear
5. Costa, Nero or Starbucks?
6. Cineworld Unlimited card
7. There's no surprise quite like a McFly surprise 
8. New York #4 - Rockefeller Center
9. Restaurant review: Harvester
10. Restaurant review: Cedar Tree Farm 

The ten posts above are clearly a very eclectic mix... from beauty to film reviews to Disney to holidays to restaurant reviews! This proves that all kinds of unique people with different interests read my blog, and also that people seem to enjoy reading a wide variety of posts from contrasing categories on a lifestyle blog. I've never liked to pigeonhole myself into a particular category in any aspect of my life, and this philosophy applies to my blog too.

Have you read any of the posts featured above? What posts would you like to see more of in 2015? Let me know!

My Harvester addiction...

I seem to be slightly addicted to eating at the Harvester. I wrote a restaurant review on the Harvester back in June 2013, and I must have been about twenty times since then. That is not an exaggeration.

We had yet another busy weekend last weekend... I hope our lives are a bit calmer after we get married! We had lots of wedding matters to sort out and were also busy with the new house, so we thought we'd reward ourselves on Saturday afternoon with a meal at the Harvester. After staring at the menu for much longer than was necessary, we both decided to choose items from their £9.99 meal deal. Unlimited salad, main meal (with sauce and side), refillable drink and dessert. Who on earth would say no to that?

I filled my salad bowl with pasta, pineapple, onions, crispy onion and bacon bits, potato salad, coleslaw, carrots, thousand island dressing, a white bread roll... don't judge me, I hadn't eaten for six hours!

I chose the gourmet bacon and cheese burger for my main course, with chips and chilli, ginger and spring onion sauce. I have never ever had a bad burger in the Harvester and I was absolutely ravenous, so I thought it was an apt choice. Chilli, ginger and spring onion sauce might seem like a strange choice to accompany a burger, but it's just so good. It's also a good sauce to dip your chips into... please take my word for it, you won't regret it.

It's safe to say that I was very full after polishing off my massive burger and chips, but I still had to fit in my dessert. I say that as if it was a chore... it definitely wasn't. You can have a Sundae Best with the £9.99 meal deal, or you can pay £1 extra for one of the gigantic sundaes. I decided to be greedy and go for the Chocolate Supreme Sundae with Munchies. I'd already blown my calorie allowance for the day so I thought I might as well go all out! It's not as if I need to stay slim for a wedding dress or anything... ahem. 

This massive sundae was made up of whipped cream, ice cream, warm chocolate fudge brownie, Munchies, crushed Munchie pieces, Belgian chocolate sauce, fudge pieces and a wafer. The chocolate fudge brownie was very rich so I couldn't quite finish it off, but that wasn't for want of trying! Possibly the best sundae I've ever had at the Harvester, closely followed by the Lemon Blizzard. 

Needless to say, I didn't eat another thing for the rest of the day. Yet another successful visit to the Harvester!

Have you been to the Harvester lately? What's your favourite meal there?

Fake Christmas with Neil

It's Christmas Eve! I've already celebrated Christmas once this year with Neil, but this hasn't dampened my enthusiasm for celebrating actual Christmas tomorrow. You can never celebrate Christmas too many times.

Neil and I celebrated our own little Christmas over the weekend as we won't be seeing each other on Christmas Day. We had a Fake Christmas Eve on Friday, then a Fake Christmas Day on... yes you guessed it, Saturday. This Christmas was quite significant as it's our last Christmas before becoming husband and wife next August!

My little tree and Neil's bag of presents

Some treats!

On Fake Christmas Eve, we ordered Domino's pizzas and watched Nightmare Before Christmas. Some would argue that this is a Halloween film, but it always makes me feel very Christmassy. 'What's this? What's this? There's colour everywhere!' We haven't eaten Domino's pizza since our last Fake Christmas so it was a nice indulgent treat. I'd also optimistically bought some Pringles and Cookies and Cream Lindt chocolates. We were too full to even touch those! I'm keeping them for New Year's Eve... I like a bit of forward thinking. 

My delicious Veg-a-Roma pizza

I was genuinely too excited to sleep on Friday night because I was so excited about opening presents in the morning. Consequently, I had an awful night's sleep but was still up at 8am as planned. All the presents were assembled together ready for the grand opening... Neil brought his parents' and sister's gifts for me as well as his own, so I had a very large haul!

There's a mirror in the background... there weren't two large sacks

I had a Welsh rugby shirt, two Disney teddies, a selection box, mug and a big tube of Smarties from Neil's parents, so I was very spoilt. I also had a really pretty Sleeping Beauty mug from Siân and a Guess perfume set. I've been on the look out for Guess perfume for ages so that was well timed. If their perfume is half as good as their bags, it'll be brilliant!

After opening the presents from Neil's family, we moved on to opening the presents from each other. 

As you can see, I was spoilt rotten by Neil as usual! Highlights included Winnie the Pooh pyjamas, Mike Wazowski, a beautiful Disney bag from Florida, Body Shop products, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse in Pluto pyjamas (also from Florida), gloves, nail varnish, earrings and an Italian phrasebook ready for our honeymoon. All very exciting!

However, the icing on the metaphorical Christmas cake came when I opened the very last present. Donald Duck popped cheekily out of the wrapping, and he was holding something in his hand...

McBusted tickets!

This nearly sent me over the excitement edge. I hadn't been able to afford to get the tickets myself and was getting fed up of hearing about people all over the country getting their tickets, so this was a very welcome surprise. I would pretend that I need to swot up on Busted's songs before the big event, but I still listen to them all the time so I won't need to do anything of the sort. 'Everybody bought our seventh album, it had outsold Michael Jackson...'

After all the excitement of opening the presents (and the even bigger excitement of eating cold pizza for breakfast), we drove over to Costa for a lovely hot beverage. 

I had a Black Forest hot chocolate with cream... 

it is Christmas, after all!

We then headed over to Neil's parents' house for a few hours as I wouldn't be seeing them again until after Christmas. They conveniently live near a Harvester, so we popped in there for some food before going into town. After my usual salad bowl full of the most unhealthy bits of the available selection, I had the bacon, pineapple and BBQ burger. I was too excited to take a photo before I started eating, so had to take one when I was half way through. That is one loaded burger!

I did feel disgustingly full after finishing my burger and decided we definitely wouldn't be needing any cinema snacks. After managing to roll ourselves out of the Harvester, we drove into town for the 7:30 showing of Anchorman 2. I must admit that I didn't really get the first film (don't be too shocked), but the second one was pretty good. However, it just got far too random towards the end... they just HAD to take it too far. In spite of the unnecessary randomness, it was a nice way to pass the evening and was very funny in parts. Brick is by far my favourite character!

So a lovely Fake Christmas was had by all... well, by the two of us. Does anyone else celebrate Christmas several times? Surely it's the best way to do it? Let me know!