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Sunday Mini Styles #36

We've spent a lot of time at home this week. I've been feeling a bit under the weather and the UK summer is not exactly screaming at me to bask under the grey clouds. It's been a week of doing a lot of chilling and indoor activities.

Today's outfit is exactly the type of thing that Baby Girl would wear on a chill day at home. Fro out, comfies on and ready to hang with her mummy.

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A Day With: Handful Of Halfpennys

A Day With: Is a fun series I am running on the blog. I love 'day in the life' style mummy posts. They are fun to read and interesting to see the way different mums manage their days. I think all mummies are superheroes  We all have our own challenges with managing our lives and running our households, but we get through it and that should be celebrated.

If you want to have a nosey at the previous posts in this series, here they are:

Today's guest is the lovely Nat from Handful Of Halfpennys. Nat is my favourite new blog from my recent discoveries. Head on over and have a look and I'm sure you'll realise why. Nat has...... wait for it..... 4 children under 5 (!!!!) and lives in a beautiful part of the world - North Wales.

I still can't fathom how one mother can manage 4 children under 5, and reading about Nat's day has me in awe. There's so much that she squeezes into her day and she manages it brilliantly. I would have expected things to be far more chaotic. I'm totally with you on the scatterbrain moments girlfriend. Actually, I think I lost a few hundred brain cells the very day I fell pregnant!


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London Restaurants With The Best View

With all the outstanding restaurants that London has to offer, eating out in the city can already be pretty special. What better way to add a little something extra to your meal than by combining delicious dishes with the most spectacular views that the city has to offer.
Here’s a look at some London restaurants where breath-taking views come as standard with your meal:
SUSHISAMBA

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6 Ways I'm Going To Love My Body In 2016

Early this year I spoke about how I haven't set myself any specific New Years resolutions for 2016. This year it's more about planning, setting things up for success and sending positive vibes to the universe to help me on my way.


Rather than set a I want to lose X amount of weight by X time (which has featured in a lot of past resolutions) I had a long hard think about what I need to put in place to really start loving my body. I know I have weight to lose still and I am determined to do so, but I know I also need to start accepting I am a mum. I've carried a child in the body of mine for 9 months and it's time to learn to accept myself a little more and focus on being healthy and having a healthy body image.

Here's how I'm going to try and love my body more this year.

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Recipe: Making Pasta With Your KitchenAid

My KitchenAid is literally my best friend in my kitchen. It's another pair of hands. It's allowed me to expand my cooking capabilities endlessly and effortlessly. Can you tell how much I love it yet? I really do and now I could not be without it. I've previously posted a recipe on how I make pastry with my KitchenAid. I love being able to whip up shortcrust delicious pastry just like that. One of our favourite family dinners is a Roasted Mediterranean Vegetable Tart with my very own handmade pastry.

My KitchenAid is my most used kitchen accessory by a long shot. It was a Christmas gift from my husband J and when he gave it to me he also gave me some attachments for making pasta. Pasta is never something I've ever thought to make from scratch so those babies went away to the back of my cupboard with the intention to use them 'one day'.


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Sunday Mini Styles #35

Happy Sunday!

This week I am so excited to be featuring a t-shirt from Baby Brain Apparel. This amazing online store is run by my very special blogger friend Harps. All t-shirts are designed by her and inspired by her gorgeous toddler Arjun. She also has a great leggings range with super fun prints which she makes herself. You can even buy teddy sized leggings and this weekend she has announced that she is now making adult sized leggings. Got to love a bit of twinning with your mini!

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A Little Bit Of Living Room Love

I love sharing my home with you. It is in fact my very own sanctuary. One of my very favourite past times is dreaming about home decor, shopping for home decor and then putting my purchases in just the right place in our house. I've already shared with you my bathroom and Baby Girl's nursery. Next up is going to be the bedroom. I'm proud of my home and I love sharing it.

Truth be told, I just don't love my living room yet. It could be that the floor is constantly strewn with toys from one end to the other. It probably is. I just get this feeling that it's not quite finished yet. Some of the bits that I thought were perfect for the room just don't seem right any more. I feel another home decor project coming along!


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Review & Giveaway (Closed): Baker Days Letterbox Cake

Over Christmas I had a blog post go viral. Well not on a mammoth scale but certainly by my measures of my posts. I didn't expect it to be so popular, it was just a simple post about a thoughtful gift idea for a baby girl's first Christmas. Then it got me thinking. I'm really passionate about thoughtful gifts. It's the business I'm in, and it seems as though many of you are too.

When Baker Days got in touch with me telling me about their letterbox cake, I was intrigued. This is thoughtfulness at it's best. 

A celebration for any occasion 
Can be posted and will fit through the letterbox 
Can be totally personalised 
Cake ✓ 

Baker Days Letterbox cakes are a genius idea. Have an occasion and a special person you would like to send cake to, choose your flavour, and the fab thing is that you can choose what ever design you like. You can select any of their pre-made designs, get Baker Days to help you design something or even upload your very own photo. 

The standard letterbox cake is only £14.95. You can chose from vanilla sponge or chocolate chip sponge for this price. For an extra £2 you can chose fruit cake. For an extra £3 you can even have gluten or dairy free. They really do cater for everyone. 
Order with enough notice and there are many options for free delivery (you can pick a specific day) or before 2pm for delivery the next day at a cost of £3.99. You can leave a message asking your recipient to not be tempted to open it until a particular day and can also leave a personal message that will be written in a complimentary gift card. As well as the letterbox cake, Baker Days offer a range of sizes up to a large one of 55 portions.  They even do cupcakes. Amazing!
With all of this information I was super excited, but I did have some questions. How could the cake travel through the Royal Mail and remain undamaged? Would it really taste fresh? I was excited about the prospect of uploading a photo, but would the quality really be the same as my picture?


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Sunday Mini Styles #34

We are at that weird time of the year where I always make sure my house is super toasty but when venturing out on some days the air is so cold my skin just stings. It's so hard to choose outfits that's suitable for both. The solution is layers!

This weeks outfit is something that is perfect for when we are indoors and then when we head out I just throw on some tights and outer layers and we are good to go.

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4 Things To Do In Singapore: When You Are Limited With Time

When planning our recent trip to Australia, we knew that we would have to plan a stop over to break up our trip. When it was just me and my husband J we would battle through the two long flights and try and find the shortest change over possible making our journey 24 hours. With Baby Girl being just 16 months at the time that we travelled the thought of that brought tears to my eyes.

I started looking around at flights for the dates that we wanted and found some with Singapore Airlines that looked good. It was only then that I started thinking about Singapore as a potential place to visit and after a quick bit of research I was sold so we booked our flights with 3 nights in Singapore on the way to Australia and 2 nights on the way back.

The purpose of our Singapore stay was to relax, lounge by a pool, recover from the first flight and adjust to the time difference. We stayed at Shangri-La Hotel on our inbound journey and the Ritz-Carlton on our outbound journey (reviews coming soon).

In my ideal world I had so many things that I wanted to do whilst in Singapore - Universal Studios, Singapore Zoo, a day at Sentosa Island to name a few, but we just didn't have it in us to spend a full day out. I think Baby Girl would have had a melt down too. We decided that we would spend time enjoying our luxurious hotels and when we could, go exploring and experience the best of what Singapore has to offer. It got me thinking, with Singapore being a really common city to have a stop over this must be a common dilemma so I wanted to share a few of the things we did with our time restrictions.


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What We Ate In Melbourne

I couldn't go to Melbourne without sharing a post with you all about the fabulous food we consumed during our trip. I've said it before that I think Melbourne has some of the best food in the world so I was really looking forward to visiting some of my old favourites and also try out some new places.

Melbourne is the 8th largest city geographically in the world and stretches 100km from East to West. There are incredible restaurants, bars and cafes throughout. Some golden oldies true and trusted to me, lots of trendy start ups and the latest craze is amazing street food. Even a month wasn't enough time to be able to get to all the places I would have liked to but we gave it a good go and when I remembered I took a snap of my meals.

I'm a vegetarian (that does eat fish - I guess that makes me a pescetarian), so you will notice a lack of meat dishes however they are all amazingly tasty and the places we visited had great meat dishes also. I should have taken pics of my hubby J's meals too! For a bit of fun I've rated each dish. Regardless of the rating I would visit all of these places again and try a different dish if necessary.



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Sunday Mini Styles #33

During our holiday we have used some exciting locations to shoot our mini styles photos and I have possibly left the best until last. On our last leg before coming home we stayed at the Ritz-Carlton at Marina Bay in Singapore. I loved the hotel and my favourite feature by far was the grand marble/ mirrored bathroom. If I could choose my dream bathroom for my house it would be one just like this. I loved it so much I decided to do our last holiday location shoot there!

The outfit I'm featuring is actually the one that Baby Girl wore on Christmas day. I had intended to do take some photos by the tree but the day just flew by and I didn't get a chance so I pulled it out again especially for this post.

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Long Haul Travel With A Toddler (LONDON : SINGAPORE : MELBOURNE)

We've been back from our trip for four days now. I must say, we are adjusting pretty well! I have learnt through this trip that my 16 month old is extremely resilient and adaptable. Because of this a lot of my worries about taking her on such a big trip were unnecessary. As I grew up in Melbourne and live in London long haul trips are a regular part of our life. This was the first time I had brought Baby Girl back home and I will be a lot more comfortable in the lead up to the next one. I thought I would share some info on our journey and some of my tips for anyone else considering/ worried about long haul with a little one. My biggest advice, just do it! It's not as scary as you think it will be. The worry is worse than the reality and theres nothing better than creating family memories whilst exploring the world.

The Journey

We were away from home for a month. To break up our long journey to Melbourne we decided to stop over in Singapore for a few days either side of our journey. We took 4 flights in total.

London Heathrow - Shanghai Singapore (12 hours 40 mins)
Shanghai Singapore - Tullamarine Melbourne (7 hours 30 mins)
Tullamarine Melbourne - Shanghai Singapore (7 hours 40 mins)
Shanghai Singapore - London Heathrow (14 hours 10 mins)

We stopped over in Singapore for 3 nights on the way over to Australia and two nights on the way home. Singapore is not ever a country that's been on my radar to visit but I absolutely loved it. I'm going to put together a post on what we got up to in Singapore amounts some others detailing our trip.


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New Year Reflections

I am writing this post from my living room. We are home after our month long holiday to Singapore and Australia. We had such an amazing time as a family and although I am sad that it's over, we have come home at a good time. It's a new year, a fresh page and lot's of exciting things to get stuck in to.

I did think I would blog a lot more than I did whilst on holiday. I thought that being away for a month and having a line of family and friends on hand ready to look after Baby Girl that I would have more spare time on my hands. Turns out that as it always does, time went by very quickly and I wanted to use every spare minute I had to make the most of our holiday. I have loads of material so I'm sure I will make up for it now that I'm back.

The New Years countdown this year was a pretty special one and as I celebrated amongst my immediate family in my Melbourne home town, I had many things to be proud of for 2015 and equally as many things to be excited about for 2016.


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Toddler Haul: Australian Accessories & Christmas Stocking

When we decided to spend Christmas in the UK I worried about how we would be able to spoil Baby Girl. I knew we had to be careful about the gifts she would open on Christmas day and was mindful that we would have to be able to carry everything back home.

I decided that her main present would be a play kitchen from Ikea which I would get for her when we returned to the UK and that I would get her some token gifts from Australia for her to open on Christmas day.

Baby Girl is still at the stage where she is not necessarily impressed with elaborate toys. She is simply happy with a plastic bowl and spoon and this can keep her entertained for ages. Toys also take up room in the suitcase. She is also at the stage where she loves to mimic me and anything that I have so I decided that I would get her a selection of accessories from my favourite Australian kids stores. I picked up some totally adorable bits and I just had to share them with you.

Country Road  |  santa sack
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