February at a glance

Slowly but surely I'm dipping my toes back into blogging and social media after a much needed self imposed break. 

So I decided what better way of easing myself back into blogging than an instragram roundup, so without future ado here's how I spent some of my Feburary.

I kickstarted my February by continuing with my January get fit goal by increasing the length of my daily walks, needless to say I needed plenty of coffees to warm me up afterwards. I also promised myself I make more time for just me-time starting with making good use of the Ciate Geltox set Mr H and the girls bought me for Christmas. I also received my first LookFantastic and YouBeauty Boxes since resubbing.

My 5 favourite things about Autumn

Well, it's only 9 days until Christmas Day, so I guess it's officially Winter but it's so cold and dull outside today I thought I'd cheer myself up and maybe a few of you too by sharing what I loved most about Autumn. 

1. Conker hunting with my girls is one of my favourite Autumn activities, we do it every year without fail. We have bowls and vases full thoroughout our house in the hopes that the old wife's tale that 'spiders hate them' rings true.

2. Forest walks are another favourite. No matter how old my girls get they still love watching the leaves turn red and gold, to quote Miss T 'it just makes everything feel so magical'. 

Apologises

I hope your all good and excitedly preparing for Christmas I can't believe it's 1st December already. We're all super excited here and we can't wait to get the decorations up, I'm resisting though at least for another week at least and then this house is getting Christmased (I think that's a word, if not it should be).

You might of noticed the blogs been in timeout the past few months to cut a long story short at the beginning of summer I had alittle family drama which left me feeling atad run down. So I decided to take a few weeks break which mutated taking on a life of its own due to a chaotic summer and an even busier Sept/Oct as the girls went back to school and I started my first Level 2 OU module. Recently though things have eased up and I've found myself with free time again so I'm back and hopefully you guys will be happy about it as I've missed chatting away. 

x B x 

Cherry Crumble Cake

At the weekend I collected my first harvest of cherries, I managed to get about 1lb of them off my 'Stella' cherry tree, which is tons more than then small handful I got last year thanks to the hungry blackbirds babies we had nesting in next doors ivy bush.

Anyway having so many inspired me to grab my cookbooks and hunt through them for a tasty cherry bake, otherwise I'd just end up jaring them and making brandied cherries. As always my trusty Rachel Allen 'bake' book offered up the tastiest idea, Cherry Crumble Cake and I got cracking. 

Recipe

(Cake Base)

350g cherries (pitted weight)

150g self-raising flour

Pinch of ground cinnamon

50g caster sugar 

1 egg 

30ml milk

100ml melted butter

(Crumble Topping) 

25g plain flour 

25g caster sugar 

25g butter 

Pinch of ground cinnamon

Method

• Preheat your oven to 180oC, butter and line you cake tin (I used a 7" tin with a ready-made cake liner). 
• Remove the cherry stalks and stones (I used a cherry pitter to keep mine whole).
• Next sift the flour and cinnamon into a bowl, add the sugar and mix together.
• Whisk the egg, milk and melted butter together, then add to the dry ingredients and combine (I used my Kitchenaid as it's quicker). 
• Once it's smooth pour the thick mixture into your tin, spread evenly and then scatter the cherries on top and gently press them in.
• Next make the topping. Add all the ingredients into a bowl and rub together until crumb-like (again I used my Kitchenaid with the flat beater to do this, it took seconds). Then scatter the crumble topping over the cherries. 
• You then just bake it in the oven for 30/40 minutes, when done it should be golden brown and if you insert a skewer it should come out clean. 
• If like me though you decide to double the crumble mixture (Mr H loves extra crumble) it'll need to be baked for roughly 60/70 minutes but keep an eye on it to make sure it doesn't burn. If your worried it's going to burn you can cover it with a loose sheet of baking paper which should protect the surface. 

Have to say I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, and even more pleased that both the girls and Mr H loved it. I can't wait to be able to pick the next batch of cherries, wonder what I'll make next. 

Any suggestions?

x B x 

6 days and counting!

Wow I can't believe it's been nearly a month since my last post, I've been swamped the last couple of weeks with my final pieces of fiction sorry coursework and a few personal matters stressing me out to the max but please bare with me because in 6 days yep just 6 days this module finishes and I start my 4 month long summer holiday before my next module starts in October. I have so many plans for this extra long and hopefully peaceful break and I can't wait to share them with you all. 

I've also been on a health kick the past month and I'm finally starting to see some benefits, I'm slowly losing lbs and inches and I'm starting to feel super pleased with myself. My current goal is to lose 1stone by August 1st and right now I'm on target to reach it early. For the first time in years I'm actually feeling as confident and as happy as I make myself out to be.

Right for now though it's time to hit the books and get my last essay finished so come Thursday I can celebrate and start to wind down. 

x B x 

Wales Comic Con Memorabilia

The other weekend Mr H and myself enjoyed a child free weekend, after dropping Miss K and Miss T off at Nanny's and Granddad. We enjoyed a lovely romantic Saturday night out at Miller & Carter Steakhouse followed by an ice-cream and DVD night at home.

This quiet night together was just the prequel to the main event and the whole reason for our kiddie free weekend was we managed to get early bird tickets to Wales Comic Con 2015 Part 1.

We arrived at 8.30 to find the queue already forming ready for the 10am opening of the doors (general entry was at 11am) thankfully it was sunny and warmer than usual so the hr and half wait felt much shorter than last Novembers wait. 

I was also under orders from Miss K it get her an Autograph from Jack Donnelly (Jason from Altantis), she thinks he's cute, so the first thing I did was make a beeline for him and collect the much wanted signed photo, all while Mr H looked on shaking his head in disgust. Needless to say the first thing out her month when she saw us was did you manage to get it followed by lots of fangirling as I showed her, my mum said her reaction was on par with mine when my uncle T got me Jason Donovans for Christmas one year. 

As with every comic con there's an amazing amount of celebrities, artist and stalls selling tons of memorabilia to geek out over for hours and below is just a few of the goodies we picked up to decorate the very plain sad walls in our house, they have been bare for too long now and I've been dying to put up some artwork and photo frames for ages. All I need now are some poster frames and to force Mr H to do some simply DIY. Most of the artwork cost between £3 and £15 pound.

This A3 My Little Pony print by Liam Shalldo is for the girls bedroom its a mash up of a few of their favourite heroes/villains with the cuteness of girly ponies and a pinch of mommas favourite deadpool. It's going to look awesome on their wall. 

OMG this A3 Gambit print by Mike Collin is one of my favourites purchases from the day. I was actually looking at a A5 gambit print when the artist mentioned he had a few limited edition A3 prints left over from the London Super Comic Convention. I'm not ashamed to admit I nearly bit his hand off to see it and once I did I was in love. Gambit was my favourite Xmen as a kid, who doesn't love bad boy gone good. 

Neither of us could resist the lure of these 2 Mass Effect A4 prints, Tali'Zorah is still one of my favourite characters from the games, I love her sarcastic, tough and direct personality she's just pure Girl Power. While Mr H grabbed the Garrus print and as he's pretty badass in my opinion I didn't complain.

Yep it's Wonder Woman and she's looking flipping awesome in this print, I love the metallic effect and can't wait to get this beauty in a frame and on the wall.

Miss T loves all things Disney so I couldn't resist picking up this Maleficent A4 print as she loved the film this is going to look great in their room. As soon as she saw it she couldn't help squealing in excitement, she's a total villain fangirl.

The Mass Effect, Wonder Woman and Maleficent prints were all by the same artist who was inside the gaming tent, he had some amazing pieces and I was hoping to be able to find him on Twitter or Facebook to maybe buy some more as the tent was heaving with people and I really needed a little breathing space as spending an age in there looking around but I'm gutted as I didn't manage to catch his name and neither did Mr H, fingers crossed he back in November for Part 2. 

Miss K is a huge She-Ra fangirl just like I was as a little girl, she was a princess and kicked ass, she's just plain awesome in my eyes and Miss K's so I couldn't resisted getting her this print, it's a little smaller than A4 but was a total bargain it was just £3 if my memory serves me correctly. Needless to say she loves it.  

I also managed to grab my happy little hands on 2 new Funko POPs, Avengers AOU Hawkeye, I love this guy and could rant for England over how underused he's been since they first cameoed his character in Thor, I could also complain very vocally how annoying it is that there is a lack of Hawkeye merchandise available, poor guy just seems to get forgotten about so as soon as I saw him I wanted him so he's now sitting all proudly on the bookcase in my living room til I can find a new home for him. Next  to him of course is my other new POP Star Sapphire Wonder Woman which is a fugitivetoys Exclusive, she cost £15 and I love her. 

One of my favourite stalls last year was the badge stall as just like last year it was one of the most crowded around, but this year I was determine to buy some and I did. The 3 large badges are for little Miss T and were 3for £5 while the 5 small ones are for me and were 4 for £3 if I remember correctly.

I also couldn't resist adding to our fridge magnet collection with 2 awesome Xmen magnets, one each for the girls, I think these were £2.50 each. 

All in all we have a fab day out and now can't wait for the Wales Comic Con Part 2 in November. 

x B x

Lots of spring growth on the fruit trees and bushes.

Finally, after days of rain and high winds we finally had a break in the weather and had a few days of sunshine just in time for Easter and as those lovely few days seem to be coming to an end for at least a few days at least I thought I'd share a few snaps of all the Spring growth on my fruit trees and bushes in the hopes of getting that sunshine feeling alive. 

My 'Red Devil' Apple tree was new last year and didn't really do anything last year so I'm super excited to see loads of new growth, I doubt I'll get any apples this year but fingers crossed for next year. 

This current bush was a bargain find last year in my local pound shop and to be honest I thought it was dead until I saw it's covered in tiny little buds of new growth.