Author: Deborah

The Ciabatta Man halloumi, chorizo, olives, pesto mayo, roasted peppers and onion salad.

The Ciabatta Man on Winchester Market grilling the meat and cheese

The Ciabatta Man on Winchester Market men

I LOVE the Ciabatta Man stall on the market in Winchester. He’s there a couple of times a week so we pop over on a Saturday whenever we can to get a ciabatta for lunch. We then walk to the Abbey Gardens, Cathedral Close or just on the grass in front of the Cathedral to eat it.

I always go for the chicken, chorizo and mozzeralla as I love all those ingredients. I’m also still quite fussy so I have it plain so the flavours don’t get ruined. My other half goes all out and usually gets one with halloumi, chorizo, olives, pesto mayo, roasted peppers and onion salad, and then asks for extra jalapeños – and he wonders why it’s always overflowing with fillings!

I really want a halloumi one so maybe next time I’ll ask if I can create my own. What would you go for? I’m thinking halloumi, chorizo and pesto mayo. He has all the ingredients in pots behind him, so you can see him cooking it all in front of you. There’s often a huge queue, especially when there’s lots of tourists about, but it’s definitely worth the wait. And it’s really reasonably priced.

He does do tinned drinks, but I tend to pop to M&S behind and get a juice and then go for our mini picnic. Or pop to Rawberry Juice Bar for fresh amazingly tasty juices and smoothies.

The Ciabatta Man halloumi and chorizo for him and chicken, chorizo and mozzarella for me

Author: Deborah

The Body Shop skincare and makeup products haul

The Body Shop often have offers online like 30-40% off, so whenever they do I jump at the chance to stock up on some favourites and try something new.

Recently I’ve been getting a lot of headaches behind my eyes so I’ve been trying out this eye mask that you can pop in the fridge or in warm water depending on what you want. I’ve also been using it in the fridge when my hayfever is acting up and so instead of scratching my eyes out I put this on. It definitely helps! I haven’t tried it in warm water yet so that’s my next thing to try when having a relaxing night in.

Hands

I love their hand creams and I’m gutted to have just run out of the Christmas scents. I picked up the strawberry hand cream and the satsuma hand cream, which I guess are more spring and summery anyway. I’ve had them before and I love them! I also wanted to try the Hemp hand protector as my knuckles have been really dry and it’s really helped them so far.

I swear by the satsuma hand cleanse gel, or any scent really. I HATE the smell of normal ones so this is a must for me. I always keep one in my handbag, especially if I’m going to London for the day as y’know, all the germs!

Skincare

For skincare I bought the mini Aloe soothing day cream and Aloe soothing night cream earlier on in the year and I think they’ve been helping my skin. I wanted to give it more time so I’ve bought a bigger one of the day cream but they were out of stock of the large night *sad face*. The last tiny pots do last awhile so it’s not too bad. Although, because of this I thought I’d try the Vitamin E overnight serum-in-oil as I’ve heard such good things about it. I use it a couple of nights a week and definitely find my cheeks feel better in the morning. I have combination skin so tend to just put this on my dry areas like my cheeks.

Makeup

The final thing I wanted to try was the all-in-one BB cream which I’d read good things about. I’m not sure at the moment. I’m quite pale and I’d been in to a store for a colour match and she matched me as 00. When I put it on in the shop I could see the white cream change to a colour on my hand, but with this one I can’t see it change and I feel like I’m not getting any coverage. It felt like I was just putting on a moisturiser. Maybe that’s the point but I have much better BB creams in my makeup drawer.

What are your go to Body Shop products that you always stock up on? Have you tried anything new recently?

Author: Deborah

I have too many cookbooks and hardly use them now there’s Pinterest and the internet, so I’m digging them out and putting their recipes to the test. Is anyone else finding this? Or am I the only one that has been neglecting my bookshelf. I love Lorraine Pascale, she makes things really simple and her bakes are wonderful. I’ve grabbed her Fast, Fresh and Easy Food off the shelf, which has a hundred recipes each with a tantalising image.

chicken tikka masala

Saturday night for me is curry night, it always has been since I was a young girl and didn’t like curry. My mum would get me naan bread and popodoms to eat while they tucked in to their favourite curries while watching Saturday night television. I gradually moved on to a chicken tikka starter before trying my first chicken korma – I was a very fussy child!

Chicken tikka masala

The chicken tikka masala recipe was so easy to follow but it came out like a thick paste and I added quite a lot of water to thin it out. I wasn’t too keen thinking it lacked some flavour but my other half really liked it. I feel bad that I still prefer a jar of Pataks sauce, especially as it’s so much easier too. Lorraine’s recipe called for mustard powder that I couldn’t get hold of, so I’ve included my adapted recipe below. I chose to serve this with naan rather than rice as I love both but I’m trying to be a bit healthier by having either or!

Chicken tikka masala

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Author: Deborah

Thirty before 30 list

I wrote a thirty before 30 list two years ago and I’m starting to panic that I only have about 18 months left until I’m 30. Is that true? Am I adding it up right? That’s really not very far away! Where has the time gone?

I felt like it was time to revisit the list and see what I had done and what is really going to be a challenge. In two years I’ve crossed off two things! That’s not very good as I actually want to do all these things listed.

We started doing the 50 Hampshire walks last year and we did one where we ended up knee deep in a water meadow and I think that put us off. We did another one while we were on holiday in the New Forest but there is still a long way to go.

I’ve split my thirty before 30 list into four categories to find things in all aspects of my life that I’d like to accomplish.

LIFESTYLE

  1. Finish a crochet granny square blanket
  2. Learn to parallel park
  3. Join a club or class
  4. Start learning another language
  5. Create yearly photo books/albums
  6. Get engaged
  7. Keep up my blog
  8. Keep reading
  9. Find a friendship group

HOME

  1. Create photo boxes of holidays
  2. Grow vegetables or herbs and keep them alive
  3. Learn to bake my own bread
  4. Buy a house and make it homely
  5. Make my own pizza
  6. Put together my favourite recipes
  7. Host a dinner party

BODY

  1. Run a 5km race
  2. Learn to swim front crawl
  3. Find an exercise style I like and stick to
  4. Meatless Mondays

EXPERIENCE

  1. 5 zoos or aquariums – 1/5
  2. Cycle around the New Forest
  3. Go on a spontaneous trip
  4. Try horse riding
  5. Visit New York
  6. See a Broadway musical
  7. Shoot a gun
  8. Do something out of my comfort zone
  9. Have a spa day
  10. Walk all the 50 Hants and IOW walks – 3/50

Number 8 is to keep writing my blog. At the time I wrote this list I had another blog which was about food when I lived in London. Moving back to Hampshire and starting a whole new chapter of my life I decided to leave that blog behind and start this one.

I have also started running the couch 2 5km program with some ladies that live nearby, so maybe I could crack the 5km race (number 18) this summer?

I’m also making some headway with number 16. I have a box FULL of recipes so now I just need to find my favourites.

One thing I have learnt since I created this list is that things can’t be rushed. Nor should I feel that time is running out in any way or that I have to have a “perfect” life by the time I’m 30. I’m aware I’m getting older and that maybe I’m starting to creak a little, but I’m not setting myself a deadline for anything. If these things aren’t ticked off, WHO CARES? It’s just a bit of fun.

Do you have a list of things you want to do before you reach a certain age? If you do, pop the link below and I’ll take a look. I love seeing other peoples!

Author: Deborah

Green soup, much like green smoothies, make me feel like I’m being really healthy. So when I’m feeling in a bit of a health slump this is what I turn to.

Kale and vegetable spring soup

Spring spinach and vegetable soup

These soups are based on a BBC Good Food versatile veg soup recipe. Which basically means potato and other veg is thrown into a pan with some stock and once cooked it’s blended. It is so ridiculously easy and you can adapt it to whatever ingredients you have at the time.

Here I’ve made one with kale (top) and another with Spinach (bottom). In both soups I used 300g potato and then made up 150g (ish) of celery, onion, carrot and garlic. I added more or less in for each soup. I then used about 100g of kale or spinach. I went over the 200g that was in the original recipe because I couldn’t help but add lots of greens in.

I fried everything up (except the greens) for a couple of minutes in some olive oil before adding 700ml vegetable stock. I left this for 10 minutes and then added the kale or spinach for a further 5 minutes. Then it was time to blend!

This is supposed to serve two and maybe it’s because I added more vegetables, but with some bread we’ve had two meals each out of it.

Kale and vegetable spring soup

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There are so many things you could try. Broccoli stalk (instead of binning it), parsnips, more carrot, leeks, squash, sweet potato, chilli, swede, bacon and even orzo.

What’s your go to soup recipe? Do you have any spring favourites?

Author: Deborah

DIY Wedding invitations to print

DIY Wedding invitations to print

I decided pretty early on that I would create our own wedding invitations rather than spend goodness knows how much money on ordering something. I want the invitations to be special, but to me that means something handmade and full of our personalities. When I first started thinking about invitations I didn’t have a clue where to start. I was hunting around for a glue gun and different card stock with no idea what we (I) wanted. So weeks of research began! Here are some of the tips I learnt along the way.

DIY Wedding Invitations on Pinterest

I am addicted to Pinterest anyway, so it was only right that this was my first point of call. A simple search of wedding invitations brought up a ridiculous amount of variety. I found a few I liked and used their keywords to narrow down my search. I found myself pulled in by words like ‘kraft’ and ‘rustic’. Take a look at my wedding invitation Pinterest board for some inspiration.

Wedding Fairs

I’ve been to a good few wedding fairs over the last six months and I’ve seen some very pretty stalls offering invitations. They seemed to be more ribbon and lace for my taste, but it’s good inspiration if that’s what you’re looking for.

Stationery Samples

I felt a little guilty ordering samples from websites as I knew I’d probably ended up making my own wedding invitations. Apart from one horrible weekend when I was despairing at my creativity and wanting to just buy the invitations – I had fallen in love with a design that I just can’t reproduce. What I found helpful about having something tangible in my hands was that they gave me ideas about sizes and the different card stock available. I was also able to lay them all out in front of me and friends and discuss the different design elements and the wording used. Why is invitation wording so difficult?! It’s barely even a paragraph and I’m really struggling with it.

Invitation wording

Speaking of words, I really struggled to find the right thing to say. First you have to think about how the invitation is coming from – is it from you as a couple, the bride’s parents, both sets of parents? Although our parent’s are helping out a little, I want the invitations to be from us. I quite like the phrase “together with their families”, which encompasses family without being too formal. However, if your invitations are more formal, here’s a handy link to some traditional invitation wording.

What I noticed throughout my research is that the brides name always comes first. I’ve no idea why, but once you’re married you become Mr and Mrs so this is your chance to be first.

Free Printables

There are lots of free printables out there for wedding invitations if you have a google and I found a great list of 72 free wedding invitations on Popsugar. My favourite website for invitation printables is wedding chicks which has a variety of designs and all you need to do is enter your details and voila! There are also a lot of free fonts on website like dafont which you can download to spruce up your designs. I especially love bergamot ornaments, which has arty designs perfect for wedding stationery.

I’m still in the drafting stage of my invites. I’ve mocked up two designs at the moment and I think I want to combine them. So far designing invites has cost us a few pence in printing these drafts and by the end of it (excluding pesky postage which I often neglect to include in budgeting) they will cost about £30. If I don’t buy bridal magazines between now and the wedding then the invites are paid for.. although magazines are quite tempting.

Author: Deborah

April Monthly Favourites 2015 banner

April favourites already? Where has the month gone?!

Moment – Finally picking my wedding dress! I’ve tried on about 60 and here you can read about my struggle of finding a wedding dress. I’d narrowed it down to three dresses and my future mother in law wiped out one by calling it a prom dress (sob!) so I had two to choose from. I tried them both on and I just knew which I wanted. It felt magical and I am so happy (and relieved) to have found a dress.

April monthly favourites M&S stationery

Stationery – We went down to a huge M&S near Southampton last weekend and I ended up with this notebook and a ruler. I’m always hunting for a ruler so it was about time we got one. I hoard notebooks but I haven’t had one in ages that has brown paper inside. I can’t wait to start using this as a journal when I finish my current one (although there is another notebook waiting in the wings). Must write more or stop stockpiling books… I know which I prefer!

Instagram – I have been totally stalking Girl in Florence this month on Instagram. Her photos are making me fall in love with Italy even more.

Music – I’ve been trying to relax a lot recently and I’m addicted to this savasana playlist on Spotify by Yoga Girl (Rachel Brathen). I like having it on while in the bath or just while I’m wondering around the house. I haven’t tried it during yoga yet but it’s up there on my list of things to do.

Shloer sparkling iced green tea

Tea – It’s been really hot the last few weeks (until this week) so I’ve been switching up my teas. I really enjoyed a T2 tea called Sencha which is a green tea. I added it to my sparkling iced green tea and it was delicious. Work has been a little stressful recently so just a normal cuppa has also been my favourite. There’s something about drinking a cup of tea that seems to calm me down.

What have been your favourites this month?

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About me

Hi there, I’m Deborah. I live in Hampshire with my husband and spend my time baking, making and getting out in the fresh air. Find out more or get in touch.

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