Happy Birthday Nan!

Today is my Nan's 70th birthday.

We celebrated yesterday by going out for a meal with family and friends and then back to my parents house for a surprise party!

We had arranged for more family and friends to surprise my Nan once we got back from the restaurant.  She was definitely surprised!

It was lovely to see my Nan catch up with everyone.

Seeing as it was St George's day on Friday and how my Nan is very patriotic we had a red, white and blue theme for the party.  All the party food and even the cake, which was made by Sarah at Blue Door Bakery  was in keeping with the theme.

The cake was gorgeous, everyone loved it!  Thank you Sarah!

Together with all my beautiful bridesmaids

We borrowed an idea from the girls at "Rock my Wedding" and printed off a few signs we could use during photos.  Dressed in fancy dress and looking the fool everyone posed for pictures.  It was such good fun!

My Nan had a wonderful night and said today she can't remember smiling so much!

Happy 70th Birthday Nan.  Love you always x

Some Things for the Weekend

Happy St George's Day!

Does anyone still celebrate today?  It always reminds me of my Grandad.  He always used to say he had two birthdays.  His official birthday and today.  You see his name was George... not quite a saint though!

Busy weekend planned.  My Nan turns 70 on Sunday so we are going out for a meal tomorrow to celebrate her birthday.  Sunday is a very important day if you like football and live in the Midlands.  It's the Aston Villa, Birmingham City Derby.  A date in my diary I always dread!  Has is a Blues supporter and my family support Villa.  I'm sure there's going to be plenty of healthy banter on Saturday!

source

~ Alice in Wonderland themed invitations

~ Vintage Wedding, the bride is wearing an absolutely gorgeous headband

~ Vanilla Ice Cream Sandwiches - I'm craving ice cream sooo bad right now!

~ Danni from Oh Hello Friend shares her beautiful engagement photos

~ I'm loving these coordinate posters - especially the New York one

~ Good advice on being the best wedding guest

~ Stunning backyard wedding... and it's purple!

~ Jessi's Rainbow Party

~ Modern wedding in  New York

~ Sarah at Blue Door Bakery got a mention on Rock my Wedding

~ Spectacular headbands and fascinators from Lo Boheme

~ A super cute desert engagement shoot

~ A really pretty cake.  I can't believe the work that goes in to it!

~ I ♥ this picture

Enjoy the sunshine and have a fabulous weekend!! x

Seattle

It's funny because Seattle only became an option when we had planned to go to Alaska.  It was one of the only places we could get a direct to or from within the mainland USA.  During the early stages of planning we looked in to the city just enough to decide whether or not it would suit us.  Has mentioned to me this morning he didn't really know what we were going to do once we were there.

We are both aware of the cities musical background as some of our favourite bands came straight out of Seattle.  We'd love to do a grunge tour and see the venues that had bands such as Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains play.  I could be wrong but I don't think there is an organised tour, we would have to put in a lot of research and create our own, which could be a lot of fun!  Notable places would probably include The Crocodile and The Central Saloon.  We could also visit the Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum which is dedicated to the history of both music and science fiction.

We couldn't travel all that way without visiting the Space Needle, 184 metres high the Space Needle is probably Seattle's most famous landmark.  At the top sits the Sky Cafe, which rotates 360 degrees as you eat!  The menu is a little on the pricey side but hey you're only on honeymoon once!

source

Pike Place Market is home to the first ever Starbucks Cafe.  If you know me and Has you'll know that Starbucks (however cheesy) played rather a large part in our relationship.  It seems fitting to visit this store on our honeymoon.  As well as the famous coffee chain Pike Place also has plenty of restaurants, stalls, shops and bars to keep us busy.  If we're peckish I've heard good things about the Three Girls Bakery, mmmmm cake!

Source

 (Mine's a tall hot chocolate with whipped cream, Has' is a grande cappuccino!)

Seattle has a secret world right underneath the streets! After the Great Seattle Fire in 1889, city leaders decided that they would rebuild the city 2 stories above the previous level. In 1965, Bill Speidel established Bill Speidel's Underground Tour  You can now take tours underneath the city and learn about Seattle's history.  It gets mixed reviews on Trip Advisor but it may be a fun way to spend a few hours.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what Seattle has to offer.  We'll be arriving into the city on the red eye from Oahu, where we'll obviously have been taking things very easy, so I think it's a great way for us to get back into the swing before moving on to New York.

NFL fixtures - What games will we see?

The NFL fixtures came out last night.  We were hoping that Has' team the Oakland Raiders would play at home when we were in San Francisco.  Unfortunately the Sunday we are there is their "day off" (typical!) However the San Francisco 49ers will be playing the St Louis Rams.  The cool thing about seeing the 49ers play at home is a week before our wedding we will be going to Wembley to watch them play the Denver Broncos.

Also my team the New York Giants are playing at home on Sunday 28th November.  The day we leave to come home.  Our flight isn't until late so we'll try and get tickets to see the Giants play the Jacksonville Jaguars.  Providing we get tickets I'll be able to cross off number 16 on my 30 before 30 list

In other Honeymoon news - it looks like we'll be making a decision and booking our New York hotel by the end of the week!  Eek!

source

Macron Mania

Friday night Suzie and tried our hand at making macarons.  We followed a recipe we found on Bakerella

90 grams of aged egg whites.  (We used 4 eggs and had some left over)

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

110 grams of ground almonds
200 grams powdered sugar

Whip the egg whites until foamy then gradually add the granulated sugar until it looks like a glossy meringue.  Be careful not to over beat

Place the almonds and powdered sugar into a bowl.  Add the whipped egg white mixture and gently fold.  If you want to add colouring now is the time.  All the recipes I've seen say powdered colouring but seeing as we didn't have any we added a tiny splash of red liquid colouring.

The recipes say not to over fold and because we'd never made these before we were very cautious.  We could probably have folding the colouring in a little better, but hey these were only a test run!

Pipe the mixture on to greaseproof paper and leave to harden.  We left ours for about an hour whilst we had dinner.  Most recipes say between half and hour to an hour.

The bake for 18 to 20 minutes at 140º or gas mark 1-2.

Then leave to cool

We filled ours with a white chocolate ganache.

We melted 100g of white chocolate and then stirred in 150ml of double cream.  We left for a few minutes until the mixture became thick then spooned on to one half of the macaron then sandwiched another on top to complete the look.

Having never tried a macaron before we have NO idea whether they turned out right or not!  They are weirdly addictive.  When I asked Has to try one, he couldn't decide whether he liked them or not, calling them weird.  Our friends gave the same verdict.  Weird but nice.  They soon polished them off though!

They have a strange texture, almost like meringue.  Ours were quite sweet but we think that had to do with the filling.  I'm currently on the hunt for powdered food colouring to have another go, maybe this time with a different filling.

T-minus 200 days!

Wow, that's come round fast!

More Bridesmaid dress shopping.

Good Morning!  Good weekends?

I dragged my poor bridesmaids around shopping again on Saturday.  We visited Bridal Gowns of Droitwich.  They have a really good offer on at the moment which would mean we'd get a dress free.

We found one dress by Hillary Morgan that impressed everyone.  It's a little different to the styles the girls have tried on before and I have to be honest that I wasn't particularly enamoured with it when I saw it on the hanger.  Once the girls had it on it looked completely different.

The pictures I've found of it don't really do it any justice.  It's so difficult trying to envisage how a dress will look when it fits or when it's been made in the right colour.

The original picture of the dress can be found here.  I've made very crude mock ups of the dresses in the similar colours we would have just to get you're opinions.

Similar colours to what the older two bridesmaids would wear

Similar colours to what the younger two bridesmaids would wear.

They do offer a younger style dress with straps for my youngest cousin Sophie to wear.  She did look very sweet, swooshing around in her dress.

So what do you think to these?  Yay or Nay?  Love it or hate it?  Not sure?  Either way I'd love to know!

Some Things for the Weekend

Yay, Friday's here!  The week after a bank holiday always seems harder, I've been spoilt with only working for 4 day for 2 weeks and it just seems very unfair to ask me to go back to working 5 days! *Strop*

BUT the weekend is here!  Doing anything nice?  Mine will consist of baking, bridesmaid dress shopping (again),  catching up with Lost, seeing friends and sleeping in.  Perfect!

~ I'm pretty much in love with this cute bedside table

~ A fun engagement shoot

~ The DIY do's and don'ts

~ Five kinds of Love

~ DIY gift candles - I really want to have a go at these!

~ Cupcakes + Purple = Happy

~ I adore the bunting in this cake from this ranch wedding via Green Wedding Shoes.  P.S Check out the bride's shoes!! A.mazing!

~ All UK flights have been grounded - this is why

~ Mouth-wateringly good Individual chocolate cakes

~ We may be approaching summer but this Christmas wedding is stunning

~ Save the date map envelope liners

~ Surprise - We got married!

Happy Weekend xxx

Macarons

Suzie and I are going to attempt to make Macarons tomorrow evening.

Wish us luck!  We're going to be following this recipe from Bakerella.  I hear they are difficult to get right so any handy tips and advice would be appreciated!