A Chatty Catch-Up | August 2018

August is probably one of my favourite months; mostly because it’s my birthday and I usually take a week off to have some down time!  Although this year I managed to get two weeks off due to my brother’s wedding being at the end of the month!

Food:

First up, J made me a birthday cake!!  It was a sponge cake with raspberry jam and cream filling, topped with buttercream icing and sprinkles, topped with chocolate, cream and salted caramel, topped with a marshmallow layer with chocolate honeycomb and caramel filled chocolates on top ❤️❤️😍😍❤️❤️😍😍

At the end of the month, I had dinner out at the Premier Inn with my mum, dad, sister any brother-in-law the night before my brother’s wedding.  It was absolutely awful; my chicken was really overcooked and greasy ☹️☹️

Luckily the meal at the wedding was much better!  We had pâté and bread to start, followed by beef with dauphinoise potatoes and veg.  For pudding, it was a chocolate brownie with fruit and ice cream 😍😍😍

Purchases:

I didn’t buy much this month, but I did pick up these cute Harry Potter socks and the Slytherin pin set in Primark!!  I really wanted the Hogwarts bag but, on closer inspection, it was just three pouches that you could pop and unpop together.

Blogging:

I went to three events this month; first up was the Yankee Candle event. It was really interesting and we got to learn more about their new Elevation collection. To read more about it, head to my blog post!

I was also invited to a fun-sounding event in Brighton that turned out to be a complete waste of time.  It was billed as a fun blogger event with a selfie booth, demonstrations and some exciting tasks to do.  Unfortunately when I got there, it was just an open evening with loads of other people who’d been invited and there didn’t seem to be anything much happening, so I left after 20 minutes 🙁

I also went along to another real blog event at UO Eco Spa in Hove.  It was such a wonderful evening and there should be a blog post going up next week about my experience 🙂

Home and garden:

I thought it would be fun to make a start on the hallway. I was wrong. So much of the old paint was flaking off that we decided the best thing to do was scrape the bits off then sand the areas down. At one point we wondered if it would be easier to buy some paint stripper and remove all the paint from the walls instead. However, what we decided to do was coat a couple of test patches with two layers of a PVA/water solution to seal the paint, then did two test coats with paint to see if you could still see the areas we’d scraped off underneath … It turns out you could 🙁

The best of the rest:

Obviously the best bit was my birthday!  J bought me an amazing photo studio for blog photos.  I already had one but it was so hard to get the lighting right, but the new one has integrated lights built-in so I can take photos when I want to, even at night!! 😀  He also got me some drinking fudge and I can’t wait to crack it open!!  He’s so thoughtful <3

My parents got me the Marauder’s Map trainers from Primark that I really wanted and I absolutely love them!

My brother’s wedding was incredible, this is the room he chose for me.  Isn’t it amazing??  This is the Dovecote room at Wasing Park near Reading!

Finally, please don’t forget to check out my wonderful advertisers for August!

First up is one of my favourite people on and off the internet; Jemma, the blogger behind Dorkface!!  Jemma says:

My name is Jemma and I’m a lifestyle, beauty and creative blogger over at http://www.dorkface.co.uk.  I also run a full-time Etsy shop, and love to paint.  My blog is a place for me to share my life and document my favourite things.  Come say hi! 🙂

Next up is Bekah over at www.bekahwrites.com!  Bekah is an American blogger who’s written some fab parenting posts, plus a post about being an adult and living with ADHD!

Kathleen is a premium skin care brand with a passion for all things natural and organic. They have an incredible range of products and I’ve reviewed the Illuminating Serum, the Sonic Facial Cleanser and their brand new shower gels and body oils on my blog 🙂

What have you been up to in August?  Let me know in the comments below 🙂 x

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