Kick starting my day

After a weekend away in Bath and relaxing a bit on the diet front its time to start again. Well not start again but get back on track and where's better to start than with a good breakfast. Here I have 30g of bran flakes with one medium banana and a sprinkle of raisins. It's quick and easy and with all that fibre it fills me up until lunch time! 

A sunny day trip to Bath

  

Today we travelled to bath to visit my little sister for her 22nd birthday. This morning it was beautiful and misty as we travelled down, turning into a glorious sunny autumn day. 

For lunch we took Elspeth to her favourite place, the whole bagel shop! I had the Spanish club in a sundried tomato and olive bread which was scrummy!! After a wander round town we ended up at the real Italian ice cream shop where I had a malteaser flavoured ice cream. 

We enjoyed the ice creams in a local park which is normally only for residents of bath. It had a great view of one of the only bridges in Europe to have houses and shops across it. 

During our wander round town we came across the shop Bloomsbury, that sells unique prints and quirky interior objects. It also sold the tiniest succulents I've ever seen! 

It's always lovely going to bath as it's such a beautiful place but always hard when it comes to saying bye to Elspeth.  

It's been a while!

So it's been a while since I've written anything, life has been up and it's been down and extremely unsettled. 

Made a move to Manchester and finally after 2 months feel like I'm settling in. I have an idea of where I'm heading with my career, started to focus more on my health and just generally get back to living my life as I feel I've been in a limbo knowing the move was coming but not knowing what I am doing. 

I can't wait to get back into to writing and you'll be hearing from me soon. 

London Town With Elspeth

This week I went into London with my sister Elspeth, who is home from university for Easter. we decided as we both had a day off work to go on an adventure. We hadn't really planned the day, just thought we would wing it. Our first stop was the Hayward Gallery to see textiles pieces by Sheila Hicks. The piece I was most interested in was where she had taken colours from a photograph of a Japanese Landscape and used these coloured threads to make 3D textiles pieces. We weren't allowed to take any pictures but i managed to sneak one of a couple of thread puffs.

After the Hayward gallery we had our packed lunch of a bulgur wheat salad on the south bank, and we found a beautiful spot where we were surrounded by flowers.

Tate Britain was our next stop to see the winning pieces by Paul Bell from the BBC show The Big Painting Challenge. Up close his painting of the harbour was beautiful, the movement of the water and the colours in the sky are amazing. 

I love going to the Tate Britain just to look at their ceiling...

and the floors.

We then went to Trafalgar Square and visited the National Gallery. We headed for the section of paintings between the 1700's and the 1900's, where we saw Turners paintings, who has to be my favourite painter ever! I just adore the emotion, light and colours within his paintings. Also anything with a sea in it i'm bound to love. 

When we left the gallery there were loads of people doing their performances in Trafalgar square but the one that caught my eye was a man sitting quietly on the floor making rings. He had a sign that said "free rings for everyone to be happy." Me and Elspeth stopped and had a rummage through the rings until we found a couple we liked. Once you had chosen the guy could make them bigger to fit your fingers, unfortunately when he saw how chubby my fingers were he decided to make me a completely new ring to fit in the same beads as the one I had picked. It was amazing watching him, and how fast he was able to make them. We dropped a couple of pounds into his tip pot and were about to leave when he insisted that he wanted to make me one as a gift and didn't want anything in return. He is one of the sweetest street performers I have seen and will definitely look out for him next time I'm in town. To finish off the day we headed to the shop for a bit of late night shopping, which is always fun.

The Cake Shed

Today my mum and I had a girly trip out to the pantiles in Tunbridge wells. It was so lovely and sunny that everyone seemed to have the same idea. We went to the cake shed, which is one of my favourite coffee/tea shops. All the outside seats were taken expect two in the shade, so we went for those, it was a little chilly but wasn't too bad as they had put a couple of blankets out as they know it can get cold. They have an amazing selection of cakes but I went for a classic carrot cake and my mum was adventurous and went for the pistachio and cardimun cake, which I was sceptical about but was actually extremely yummy as well at being one of the prettiest cakes I've ever seen. For my drink I went for a good old English breakfast tea and my mum again was more adventurous than me and went for a 'strawberries and cream' tea which she said was lovely.

Easter Ramble

Every year as a church we go for an easter ramble, we all head out for a 2 hour walk and only one guy really knows where we are going and we always just trust he knows whats right. This year it was only Me, my Dad and my sister Elspeth, so only half my family that could make it but with everyone there was quiet a large group of us. The easter ramble is always fun as you end up talking to people who you just say hi in passing to every sunday. There was a little girl called Lilly who was 5 years old and one of the cheekiest kids I know. She chatted to me and Elspeth for the whole two hours. Her favourite animal is a slug and she loves her monkey backpack. When she found out we hadn't packed a picnic she said that we would all share her cheese bagel.

She reminded me of me when I was little, this cheeky little tomboy that refuses to wear pink and loves bugs and mud. 

After the walk we heading for the duck pond in Goudhurst (in Kent) where we sat and had tea from our flasks and biscuits with flies in (not really flies more like sultanas). Whilst we were sat and the kids played I did a quick sketch but it was only quick as it started to get pretty chilly and everyone wanted to head home so didn't get to finish them but i quiet like the look of a quick/unfinished sketches.

Easter Sunday Stroll

Yesterday was such a beautiful sunny day that it was hard to resist going for a walk. So we jumped in the car and headed for the coast. We decided to go for hastings on the south coast. When we arrived we couldn't believe how sparkly the sea was!

The thing i love most about the sea is where the sky meets the sea and nothing interrupts it. I love how although it is the same image, sea meets sky, it varies so much depending on the colours and weather.

We headed along the promenade to the west of Hastings which was a new route for us as we normally head for the old town, where all the old fishing huts and boats are. Instead we came across rows and rows of beach huts that i never knew existed. My favourite one was a white beach hut that had a garden on the roof.

Heading to this part of hastings thats less popular meant we could let Ollie (my sprussell dog, a cross between a parsons jack russell and a springer spaniel) off the lead for a run. one of his favourite things is for us to throw a stone and try to find the exact stone that was thrown.