The Language of Love

As Brits, many of us tend to keep our true feelings under wraps, but French fashion label La Redoute has created a beautiful campaign in which they ask viewers to really think about the language of love, encouraging us to be a little more French and speak from the heart. Although I probably tell Rich I love him a little too much, I find it a lot more difficult to be open with my family. With a little prompting from La Redoute, I've decided to open up and share how I really feel.

Grandma

Dear Grandma, Thank you for inspiring me in every aspect of my life: Career, relationships and, of course, style. Thank you for trusting in me and believing in everything I've done. Thank you for supporting me and taking me in when I was in times of need, even if you didn't fully understand my reasons. Thank you for giving me a model of life and family to aspire to. Thank you for instilling your passions in me from a young age- It's because of you that I read, learn and teach. Thank you for providing us with a stable home growing up. Thank you for always being there and always thinking of me. I love you with all my heart. 

Mummy

Dear Mummy, (Yes, I'm 26 years old and I call my mum "Mummy"!) Thank you for doing everything in your power for me & Jamie growing up. Thank you for putting up with me even when I was an angsty teen. Thank you for all the sacrifices you made for us and I'm sorry I didn't appreciate them at the time. Thank you for never judging me and for letting me live my own life and make my own mistakes. Thank you for always making me laugh with the silly things you get up to. And thank you for passing on your genes to me- I hope I look as young as you do in the future! 

Jamie & Myles

Dear Jamie, Thank you for always being there for me growing up (apart from the 15 months before you were born, of course!). Thank you for putting up with me getting bored and hanging up on you all the time. Thank you for telling me questionable, inappropriate jokes and telling me whenever something macabre is in the papers. Thank you for understanding my love for Alan Rickman and for buying me Snape's wand that time. 
Dear Myles, Thank you for making me laugh more than anybody else can. Thank you for going to see girly films with me even when you really don't want to. Thank you for still saying sweet things even though you're a too-cool-for-school teenager now. Thank you for being the little brother I always wanted (I'm joking, Jamie!). 

I truly love all of you, even if I don't say it enough. Thank you for being my family. 

iPod photo binge

I'm one of those people who takes photos of everything, all the time. It drives people absolutely nuts but I can't help it. If I see something, and I like it, I have to snap a photo. The upside of this is that I have loads of great, fun images but, of course, nobody ever sees them. It seems a shame to keep them stored up on my devices for only my eyes, so I'm starting a new monthly series where I will share my favourite photos from the past month that haven't had a place elsewhere.

Since this is the first one, my photos are from the past 6 months or so, and I'm starting with my iPod. 

This sums up our daily life pretty well// I wish I'd bought this Primark visor. I kind of dig it.
Eating healthily with Marie and Leona// Roar! I'm a lion! 

Travelodge mirror shot// Queuing at Alton Towers
Marie aka Moreen// With my brother and sister

Myles' attempt at using chopsticks// Fish face train selfie
Look at all the arcade tickets Myles and I won!// Playing with wigs at 2000 Trees

England Wedding

On the morning of our English wedding, my beautiful bridesmaids (Marie, Leona and Laura) came to get ready with me, along with Chelsea and Marie's mum Grace, who had very sweetly made a whole load of cupcakes for the reception. 

As always, time seemed to be slipping away from me but, somehow, we managed to get ready perfectly on time and meet our guests at the pub where we had our meal. The food- a calamari starter followed by chicken roast dinner- went down really well and, after we'd all eaten, we headed down Winchester High Street to the Guildhall.

While I was getting ready, Rich and Matt had decorated the venue completely by themselves and they did such a good job. They'd hung bunting flags between the arches, sprinkled confetti on the tables and created adorable centrepieces. I could not have been prouder of them! Unfortunately, in all the hubbub, I didn't get a photo of the room before everybody came along, but this phone photo gives you a little idea of what it looked like. I had a minor meltdown over the chairs, which were supposed to be white, but once everyone was sitting down, we didn't even notice. 

While everyone arrived, Rich, Matt and Laura disappeared into a side room with my brother Jamie, who has a food and catering background, to make up our mini pavlova wedding cake. It was delicious! 

After a little while, we headed to the cathedral to take some more formal photos. 

This is one of my favourite photos because of the photobombers behind us. 

After taking the photos, we headed back to the venue for our first dance to The Beatles' When I'm Sixty Four.

Most people stayed sitting down and chatting. My family are pretty spread out so they don't often see each other and I think they appreciated the opportunity to catch up, rather than burning up the dance floor. It was ok though- My girls more than filled the floor with their funky moves!

It was really difficult talking to everybody. I have a huge, complicated family so I was whizzing around trying to speak to everyone, which I didn't quite manage.

There was a very posh, snooty wedding reception taking place in the huge hall upstairs. For a while I'd been wondering whether I would one day regret not having a full-on, traditional wedding. With the guests from upstairs walking past our room and looking down their noses while we blared Baby Got Back, I was hit with the realisation that our wedding was absolutely perfect. It may be tacky to talk about money, but our wedding reception cost under £2000, including room hire, catering for 40 and decorations. When we were packing up, I realised that, had I spent £30,000, the day would have been the same length of time and I would still end up going back home with my husband the next day. I can't imagine how anti-climactic it would have felt the next day if I had spent my entire life savings. 

Everybody seemed to enjoy themselves. At least, they were too polite to tell us if they didn't! Afterwards, Laura and Matt stayed behind to help us clear up and we headed to our hotels. We met up the next morning, as well as Jamie and his girlfriend Lauren, to hang out in Winchester before heading home in the evening. It was so amazing to celebrate our wedding with all our family and friends in one place.

100 Happy Days: July

Day 47: Blogging in bed// Day 48: NARS event// Day 50: Making Lush face masks
Day 55: Photo pit at 2000Trees// Day 56: Beautiful view of London// Day 57: Last day of work!
Day 58: Hyper Japan with Marie// Day 59: Relaxing at Four Seasons spa// Day 60: Chilling with Myles

Chilling with my brother

One of the benefits of having a 26-year-old sister in full time employment must be having her take you out for all-expenses paid evenings. Myles is a very lucky kid! I hadn't seen him for a while, so decided to treat him to a meal and a trip to the cinema. He was adamant that we'd see 22 Jump Street, but I wanted to see The Fault in our Stars. Being a teenage boy, he was having none of that!

We decided to be a little different and visit Wagamama. I'd only been once, about 4 years ago and it was a total disaster. I couldn't use chopsticks, I ordered chicken noodle soup and let's just say, the soup went everywhere. It was pretty embarrassing and put me off for a while. 

Myles is clearly a master in the use of chopsticks.

That's quite some technique he's got going on! 

We started with a side order of chilli squid. Myles is a notoriously fussy eater (he pretty much ate nothing but plain pasta and chicken nuggets for a good 5 years), so it was amazing that he not only tried the squid, but enjoyed it too. 

We both had the chicken yaki soba. It was delicious, if a little heavy on the ginger. The plates were huge too, so we both had to leave a sizeable chunk uneaten. Delicious though! 

Shirt: Sik Silks
Jeans: Topman
Trainers: Nike

Myles is a very fashion-conscious kid. I'm not sure if I totally get his style, but I love that he has the confidence to express himself in such bold prints. Style icon in the making! 

He's so tall now and it's freaking me out. Nobody here is crouching down or standing on a box: He's 14 and rapidly approaching 6ft! (This photo was only taken 9 months ago! What? How?) 

 He was clearly very taken with the idea of seeing The Fault in our Stars. 

Unfortunately for Myles, Big Sister perks include getting the final say in everything, so we went to go and see it. Yes, I cried. It was better than I thought it would be, actually and stayed very true to the novel. In fact, the things that annoyed me when I reviewed the book, such as the verbose nature of these teenagers, were played down in the film. 

We had a bit of spare time before the film started, so we headed down to the arcade and played a couple of games, including this Speed of Light reaction game. 

 We may have cheated and both joined in to press as many of the buttons as possible. 

Ok, cheating is bad, but look at all the tickets we won! Look how happy I was! That makes it worth it, right?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

This year, rather than buying Myles some age-innapropriate DVD for Christmas, I decided to take him to a London show (and then I got a little treat too!). He chose Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and we decided to make a day of it. 

First, I got my hair cut so it was free to run wild in all its natural fluffiness! 

What Myles Wore: Hat- Fresh Ego Kid. Parka- Matalan. Bag- River Island. Jeans- Topshop. Trainers- Nike. 
I asked Myles if he had any comments to make about his outfit. His reply was: "Hipster... but spelt, like, hip$t3r". Oh dear! 

It was pretty windy!

He was very excited about going to London as, supposedly, he'd never been to central London before, although I don't believe that he could be 14 without visiting London. 

We had a little bit of spare time and Myles wanted to do a bit of shopping so I took him to Camden. Perfect place for a teenage hipster! 

He was desperate for a Casio-esque watch and, after looking all over Camden Stables, we finally found one. It turns out he's a great haggler and managed to get it for half the asking price. 

I knew he'd love Cyberdog and I was absolutely right. "It's like a shop but a disco!" 

I really love the whole atmosphere of Camden and the mix of old and new.

We stumbled across this crazy antique shop which was filled to the brim with taxidermy. 

Camden is so pretty in the evening!  

After a spot of shopping (and lots of Myles whinging about tourists, ironically!), we headed to Charing Cross for dinner. 

Nando's! Myles was a walrus.

I've been eating in the Charing Cross Nando's for 5 years, and had no idea that it was just one street away from Covent Garden! After filling up on chicken, we strolled over to Theatre Royal on Drury Lane. Presumably the one of Muffin Man fame. 

The theatre is a beautiful Napoleonic theatre with a  fascinating history, built in 1812 on a site that has housed theatres since the mid 1600s.

The interior architecture is just stunning. 

I'd bought seats in one of the boxes at a discounted price because of a slight overhang. I wasn't sure what I was expecting from the box, but it wasn't this! It was supposed to seat 4 people, but they didn't put anybody else in with us.  

The box had its own door and coat hooks. It was very private as it wasn't overlooked at all, so we could freely dance around without annoying anyone or looking crazy! We felt very posh and fancy!

This was our view. You can see the overhang but it didn't affect the view of the show at all. Occasionally there would be a detail on the backdrop that we had to crouch down to see, but we didn't miss any of the action. 
The show was great! The first half was a bit slow, with lots of ballads and not much action, but it picked up in the second half, on entry to the chocolate factory. Charlie Bucket was played by Troy Tipple who, due to his Yorkshire accent, seemed very authentic: None of this horrible stageshow kid stuff! However, I think the star of the show was really 11-year-old Matilda Belton, whose Veruca Salt was both sickeningly saccharine and ear-piercingly shrill when she wasn't getting her way. 

The squirrels were my favourite part of the show (for anyone who's confused about this, the geese in the 1970s film were actually squirrels in the book), so I couldn't resist buying a cute little fluffy squirrel from the merchandise stall! Rather embarrassingly, I caught myself squealing "I want a squirrel" in the foyer. Turns out I'm quite the Veruca Salt myself! 

Then it was time to head back home. We had a great time and have already decided to go to another show next year. We're going to have to get another box too- I've got a taste for the good life now!