That Was The Week That Was #11

Happy Sunday people! I hope you’ve had a good week and an even better weekend!

It’s been a week since we picked up our new addition, Sherlock. He’s cute as a button but has a serious attitude. Lola wasn’t sure at all initially about losing her place as our only child but we seem to have turned a corner today and she’s been playing very nicely with him. They’re currently snoozing happily next to me on the sofa as I write this post. I had forgotten how hard having a puppy is though – we’ve constantly got our eye on him… Silence is NOT golden when you have a 9 week old – earlier I found him raiding his food bag!

This week we’ve finally started moving forward on our wedding plans and have bought our bridesmaid dresses – hooray!

I also was lucky enough to be asked to judge a baking competition at a local school. Free cake? Yes please!

The recipes featured below will be coming up very soon.

Have a great week!

Bullies like to hold hands

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A selection of cakes from the Bake Off competition – the Nutella cupcakes were divine!

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Healthy no-fat banana energy bites

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Smushy face Sherlock

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Healthy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup – so easy and quick

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… Not so healthy Mini Egg Brownies – you can’t see the mini eggs but they’re in there I promise!

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Bully Baby!

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I’m sure that none of you are really that interested in seeing a million pictures of our new puppy. But that’s the beauty of having your own blog – you can write and post what you want! Teehee.

So we got our new little bulldog puppy on Sunday and have named him Sherlock. He’s the cutest little thing ever (with a giant attitude). Lola is decidedly unsure about him at the moment… But I’m sure she’ll come to adore him!

So I just thought I’d share with you, for those of you who’d like to see him (I’m looking at YOU Baggy Bulldogs), a few pictures of our new little man.

Isn’t he scrummy?!

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That Was The Week That Was #9

This week has been fairly non-descript, although I have been quite busy seeing friends and working. Mike and I have enjoyed a rare weekend off together and have been out both nights. Today we took a stroll along the river with Lola and have had a naughty curry to round off the weekend!

Yesterday we went to see some bulldog puppies… No decision as of yet but hopefully soon we may have a new addition!

I hope you’ve had a great week.

The perfect afternoon spent baking… Creme Egg Brownies and a classic Vicky Sandwich

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A new sign appeared in the gorge in Bristol – I love this!

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Lola meets ‘Dude’

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Standard Payday Pizza

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Love this boy!

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OMG. I feel a little bit famous…

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Fresh flowers in the house make me happy!

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30 Day Shred? I don’t think so…

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‘Til next time!

Top Of The Blogs

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Since I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve had quite a lot of people, particularly friends and family, ask me which other blogs I would recommend. So I thought it’d be good to give you a list of my favourite blogs.

Before I started writing Eat Sleep Bake Repeat, I’d been follwing blogs for about a year. I use Bloglovin’ to keep up to date; if you don’t use it, and you follow blogs, you should. It’s an app which you can download onto your smartphone which tells you each time your favourite blogs publish a new post – you’ll never miss out on a post again, and won’t get millions of emails every time individual blogs update.

So I’d been enjoying these blogs and finally decided that it was time to get in there and start my own. These are the ones which inspired me to go for it, and which I love to read

<p>A Beautiful Mess

This is a really popular blog, written by two sisters in the USA. It’s really varied with recipes, DIY, craft projects, fashion and lifestyle. It’s got a lot of followers (they’ve even got their own app) and have some really interesting features on there.

Hannahhotcakes

Hannah is actually a friend of a friend and hers was the first ever blog I started following. It’s very down to earth and personal. I love hearing about her life and seeing the recipes she posts – I’ve made a few of them and they always turn out well. It’s nice to read a blog by someone “normal” and not one of the career bloggers who just do it for money!

Cake vs Scales

I feel like this blog is made for me a little bit – Katie is really healthy (I try to be but it doesn’t always happen) and she gives loads of motivational tips which can boost me when I can’t be bothered! Saying that, she isn’t a super health freak and does tell us about her failings, which make her easy to relate to. Keep it up Katie 🙂

Tinned Tomatoes

This is a veggie blog with some great ideas and recipes on it. Being a vegetarian myself it’s always nice to have more ideas! Jacqueline, who writes the blog, was so friendly when I set up my own and gave me some really good advice. Check this blog out for easy to follow and delicious food ideas.

Baggy Bulldogs

I just had to put this one in here. You may have seen pictures of Lola, our British Bulldog, on this blog. I completely love her. Baggy Bulldogs is a blog totally devoted to funny and cute pictures and videos of this awesome breed! One day, maybe, Lola might get her own post 😉

Sally’s Baking Addiction

OMG, the most awesome baking ideas and recipes. Sally is a creative genius when it comes to baking (how she isn’t the size of a house I’ll never understand). Plus her photography skills are MAAAAAD. I want my blog to be like hers! She even has her own cookbook coming out soon – how cool is that?!

A Thrifty Mrs

I LOVE LOVE LOVE a bargain, and this blog has plenty of them. There are freebies, money saving tips and sales alerts on this blog. I wouldn’t be without it and over the past year I’ve saved a fair amount by reading this blog.

Lily Pebbles

Again, a really popular blog which is pretty much all based around beauty and fashion. Some of her posts are a bit high-end for me, but she has some really great finds and tips and I’ve definitely learnt more about beauty since following her blog.

Miss Budget Beauty

As the name suggests, she writes a lot more about budget beauty products, which suits me down to the ground. I find her blog so useful, especially around Christmas time when she did some great posts about gifts to give in a certain price range.

Scarletscorchdroppers

I’ve only been following this blog for a couple of days but it has already made its way to my top ten. A fab baking blog filled with lots of the best looking cakes ever – you will want to make every single recipe, I’m telling you now. Read this blog at your peril, it will make you fat, and poor (from the amount you’ll spend on ingredients!).

So there we go, those are my top ten! What are your favourite blogs? What do you think of these?

That Was The Week That Was #8

It’s been a week of highs and lows this week, but overall it’s been a good one. I reached 100 followers on this blog (yay, and thank you!), had a lovely date night with the boy, and had some great news at work. We also went to see The Wolf Of Wall Street – this film is freaking awesome – if you only see one film this month, see this one.
My Sunday TWTWTW feature seems to get the most ‘likes’ of all of my posts and your comments tell me you’re enjoying it, so here are some more photos from this week.

My first attempt at meringues from the Meringue Girls cookbook – Blog post coming soon!

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Is there anything more decadent or luxurious than truffle oil?

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Can’t… Resist… Allsorts…

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Horsey kisses – love this special boy xmwahx

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Homemade healthy apple loaf cake

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Mini Oliver Bonas haul – possibly my favourite shop ever!

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Gourmet Burger Kitchen noms

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Homemade Mexican Salad. It’ll blow your socks off!

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Lola hearts sweeties

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That Was The Week That Was #5

As weeks go, this has been a pretty good one. It has involved a lot of shopping (oops), a fair amount of partying, drinking and eating (double oops), and an obscene amount of Dexter and Gossip Girl watching (no regrets). I’ve got a busy week next week so if you comment and I don’t reply straight away please don’t be offended!

Good luck to all those of you who are going back to work tomorrow!

K x

Lola is tired…

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Birthday yummies at Tampopo plus free bubbly 😀

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New Year Sparkles

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Lemon Drizzle Traybake – recipe coming soon

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Chip butty for dinner – naughty start to the New Year!

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Gorgeous flowers from my lovely man

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Sweets and his favourite girl – Mike is happy

That Was The Week That Was #4

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TWTWTW was supposed to be a Sunday post, but over the festive period I’ve sort of lost track of days and only just realised today that is Monday – Oops! I hope you’ve had a fantastic Christmas. I had a lovely Christmas Day, with lots of fab presents. We had another Christmas gathering last night with Mike’s family where we had a little buffet and snacky food, and I’m gearing up for tomorrow night when we’re having a little gathering. Plus, it’s my birthday! Celebrations all round.

Here are a few snaps from this week.

Amazing Christmas pressie!

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Lovely homemade centrepiece

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Rum Christmas cake!

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Alternative Christmas dessert – Caramel and Oreo Cheesecake, recipe coming soon!

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Christmas bulldog

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Second Christmas dinner – yum!

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…And pudding! Double chocolate Malteser Cheesecake

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The annual Cat and Kim Birthday Outing!

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That Was The Week That Was – #1

Every Sunday I will share a few snapshots with you of what I’ve been up to in the week… I hope you enjoy it!

Christmas decorations up and feeling festive

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Best ever chocolate brownie recipe – coming up soon

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New sofa!

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Christmas party fun

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Lola loves leaves!

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Apple and red onion chutney

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Sunday afternoon relaxing with homemade Oreo truffles

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I’ve been busy this weekend making lots of edible Christmas gifts – look out this week for the recipes and more information about our WI. Hope you’ve had a nice weekend!

O, Christmas Tree!

This evening I thought I’d share with you our 2013 Christmas decorations. We moved into our new cottage a few months ago and are slowly working through each room, decorating it to our style. I’m sure there will be many more posts to come about that!

One of the rooms we are almost done with is our living room and we’re just putting together the finishing touches. We have painted one wall a golden mustard colour and the rest of the walls are a pale grey.

Most years we buy a real Christmas tree. But as lovely as they are, we found that spending £50 a time for a real tree wasn’t very economical. So we did a bit of research and found the Eiger Christmas tree from B&Q. It’s 7ft 6 so you need a decent height ceiling. The tree is a very realistic colour and the branches are in proportion and look even. There are different shades of green and textures within it to make it look a little more realistic.

The Eiger tree has a nice, sturdy base and is easy peasy to put together. It’s also great to store – this is our second year of using it and it’s just as good this year as last!

Even better, it’s currently on offer with 40% off – it’s normally £70 and is reduced to only £40!! Snap it up quick, it’s a fab deal. Find it at the link below:

http://www.diy.com/nav/christmas/christmas-trees/classic_trees/7ft-6in-Eiger-Christmas-tree-12959170?skuId=13469876

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This year we have gone for a pink and silver theme. We used soft white fairy lights around the tree (we needed two packs as it’s a fair sized tree!), then used various pink, silver and clear baubles and decorations. My favourites are probably the multicoloured spotty baubles or the crystal drops (these were a bargain from Asda last year – check out their range this year too as they are really reasonable).

http://m.direct.asda.com/on/demandware.store/Sites-ASDA-Site/default/Search-Show?cgid=AD050904

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I also had to add some of the Lindt Christmas tree chocolates which Mike treated me to yesterday – these must be the best Christmas chocolates ever!!

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I love to have lots of fairy lights around, so hooked them around the picture frame. I think these look so pretty, what do you think?

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To finish it off we added our cheeky, happy, stuffed reindeer who has seen us through a few Christmases now. Lola our bulldog is desperate to eat him up!

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All that was left was to pop on our nice warm log fire and prepare to feel festive… Perfect.

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The countdown has begun!

How have you decorated your home?