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Monday 29 July 2013

Laaaaazy day

As Mr O and I rarely get a day alone together just us two, we decided to make full use of a rare opportunity on Sunday. We can't remember the last time we had a free day only for   ourselves.

So, we had a lazy start with Mr O being woken up by Jerry (see picture below). We kind of had semi planned out our day with where we wanted to go but we said we would let the rest of the day fold out naturally.

So, we went on our planned trip to Westerham, where we went into lots of lovely little shops. Westerham is a lovely little town made famous thanks to Churchill. It's in Kent is only a 10 minute drive away from us. Mr O even helped by taking a photo of the Churchill statue / monument!



I could have bough everything in the shops! Just a shame that some of the things were very expensive. I also had kind of made a pact with myself as I will end up filling up our abode with stuff we dont need, that I am only on a hunt for a candle pillar / lantern for the living room for the larger candles that i have got. Check out the very cute little shoes that were paper weights that I found in a shop.


I tried to do a bit of a selfie and one in one of the shops in a lovely mirror. 



The last one was trying to show you ,y make up for the day but the lighting in the shop wasn't showing it off to its full potential. My eyeshaddow was looking particularly good, even if I say so myself! 

One of my finds was this hand pump. You put in normal hand soap and then when you press the pump it dispenses as a foam. Rather cool, hey? Plus it was red to match our kitchen. But then I saw the price and it was £12.99. Which I thought was a silly price so I will google it and do some research and see if I can get it cheaper elsewhere although I do like to buy from 'the locals' and small shops to help keep them in business. Have any of you used or got one of these? 


We then went onto a charity shop to find a book case, which wasn't successful and then on to a lovely yummy Chinese buffet. We drive past this Chinese buffet place everyday and keep saying that we mean to go there but we've not had the chance until now. 

As I mentioned in my last post, lots of our friends are at a music school that is run by the Salvation Army this week and Mr O must have been missing our music school times as he thought it would be funny to get me fully dressed and dunk me in a bath and get me with the shower head. How mature he is, hey?! He ot only managed to soak me but also managed to get the walls in the bathroom wet too! It's fun times like these that I thank God for my hubby and how well matched we are and that we have so much fun together. 

Mr O then thought that now that we had relaxed after watching Harry Potter (how is it that every time I watch one of the films I find out more things?!) that now was a sensible time to go to the gym.... I was not impressed but once we got going at the gym I was secretly really enjoying it. I even found out that on the bike I could attach my phone and it saved the workout to my phone. Oh and I could also play games on the screen of the machine while I was working out. Made me feel like I was being lazy but I was really working out. Good job machine! 

To finish the evening I decided to take a relaxing bath before I sat down to watch The White Queen. I took a quick photo of my bath to show all the things i dragged around the bath to aid my lovely bath time. I rarely take baths as I'm a shower girl but when I do have one I have to max out the whole experience. 


I shall blog in the week what I have around the bath and what they are used for etc

Monday I saw a lazy start to the day watching silly morning time tv and then I ventured to a new Sainsburys which was rather easy to get to and rather near. When I got back home and had lunch I quickly got bored so I decided to go into Bromley to get some more sample paints. We still haven't decided on a colour for the living room! 

Monday was a really lazy day and so not much happened. But I finished the day off trying pheasant for tea for the first time cooked by Mr O. 

So, have any of you tried the Cuisipro? If so, what are your thoughts and feelings?....

Chow for now, 

Lots of love, Mrs O x



Saturday 27 July 2013

And the winner was....

Shellac!

I know I know, not one of the choices but after speaking to the lovely ladies at the nail place we decided that because I've had acrylic for such a long time, I need to let me nails get stronger gradually. So, the shellacs will enable my nails breath underneath the polish so will help them get stronger at the same time. 

One of my main reasons to get rid of the acrylics is to make my nails look more natural and not so long! 

As always, they have been done beautifully. I swear by the ladies at the shop. Not only do they do amazing nail stuff they are also really friendly, remember your name (which I think is really important) and they also remember where you are in life and what you were last talking about. You can find them here: 

Gel Nails by EmmaB x (OfficialNails) on Twitter

https://twitter.com/OfficialNails
The latest from Gel Nails by EmmaB x (@OfficialNails). Specialises in Gellux Gel Nails ... Lasts 2-3 weeks, dries in 30 ... Colours available x. Orpington, Kent.

Anyway, here is a picture of what I went for:



Do any of you get your nails done? What do you love getting done on them?....

Off to spend an evening watching some funny films! 

Love, Mrs O x

Crissy Crossy Crosstitching

If you all didn't know by now, I love to cross stitch! It is one of my many hobbies and was introduced to me by one of my dear friends, Louisa. When she introduced it to me, she had only recently been introduced it herself by her grandmother. So, we kind of stepped on our Cross stitching adventure together although I was a few paces behind her to start with. We both share the love for all things crafty and are always updating each other on our new little creative tasks. We have also to have been known to sit down together, completely blanking our hubbies, while we are crafting and chatting away!
 
Last Christmas I made an advent calendar for Mr O as a 'Our First Christmas' present and each day it had different surprises in each pocket. It took me ages but it was so worth the time and effort - I was even bringing them into work to do on my lunch break! In the end I was sewing right up to the last minute of the last day of November! It looked a bit like this:
 
The great thing is, is that it can be used time and time again and will hopefully be able to be kept in our little family for years.


 
Back in February I decided to set myself a new creative Cross Stitch task - create a picture for the kitchen to go with the red theme. So, in that month's issue of CrossStitcher magazine (a magazine that I am subscribed to)I took one of their templates and used it in my own way. Their idea was for it to be used on valentines day cards, but I decided to do them in my own colours (different shades of reds) to then be put in a frame. So that day I went to Hobby Craft and bought some threads and some aida (the material that is used for cross stitching) and I set off on my new task.
 
As time went on I managed to get less and less of these done till it had to halt as I had run out of thread. However, I was still determined to get these done so I bought some frames, from good old Wilkos that were in the sale and only cost me a couple of squids, and I also bought some more thread the when I went to Hobby Craft the other week. So, they are now complete!! Well one is as I need to go back to Hobby Craft and buy some more thread that is actually of the same code as the one I had already used!
 
Here is the first one and hopefully by Monday night the other one will be finished too. My plan for Monday is to go Charity Shop hunting along with going to Hobby Craft (both could be a big spell for disaster!)


 
Have any of you ventured into the world of Cross Stitching?....
 
Have you anything that you would like me to try and make/craft?...
 
Happy stitching!
Love, Mrs O x
 

Throw back Thursday

My first attempt at a Throw Back Thursday....

So for this week's Throw Back Thursday I am looking back to a year ago today...
 
This time last year I had just got back from an amazing Tour with the ISS (International Staff Songsters of The Salvation Army) to South America & Boston / Old Orchard Beach.
 
Here are some of the photos from the tour.
 
 
 
Here is a video of one of our songs which is a little like our 'anthem' song. To me it's our theme tune with the words that we sing. Our personal testimony but in song. See if you can spot me!
 
 
When I came back from the tour, the following day I returned to work, but at a new centre and in a new job role. So here's also to a happy 1 year of working in Sevenoaks!
 
Lots of Love,
Mrs O x

IMPORTANT QUESTION!!

Please reply as a comment below or in a message box at the side....

 

I am getting my nails done tonight and do I keep the acrylics or get them taken off so I can paint my own and or do my own gel nails......

 

Appointment is tonight at 5pm......

Fun day Friday

Hello! Happy weekend people!
 
So yesterday was another of my 'working days off'. And at the moment I have decided to fill them with new things that I haven't been to or done etc. Last week I went to some new shops, bought some new items and decorated a cake for the first time. This week I decided to visit a new farm shop.
 
I had heard all about this farm shop form some people at work so, being a Mrs Owen (seems to be a thing that Mrs Os like farm shops...) I decided to check it out. It turned out to be only round the corner from my home. As you can see below the produce were massive!! I spent less than what I would do from my local supermarket on the items and the produce was lovely and fresh - I cooked with it that night - and the boys loved the carrots! For example, I paid 20p for each garlic - how very cheap - and 70p for the avocados. How very cheap indeed!!


However whilst cooking, my usual problem that I have when chopping onions occurred. Take a look at the before and after....


 
And one last picture to leave you all with:
 
This is my mad obsession about vaccum packing items! This below is our winter duvet. I finally got round to buying a new bag as I couldn't find the one I took it out of (which I then found when I went to put this one away). Isn't it amazing to think that this is a kingsized duvet inside of here?!!


Do any of you find that your local farm shops are cheaper?
 
Do any of you have any cures when chopping onions to stop any crying?!....
 
Good luck to all my TMS friends - hope you all have a lovely week.
 
Lots of Love, Mrs O xxx

Friday 26 July 2013

Yummy yummy in my tummy!

Well this week got better and better for me. I received this lovely comment from a patient on Wednesday night at work. I don't do my job for the lovely comments to get but they make me feel like I am doing my job properly and that all my care and effort is worth it. 



And then last night Mr O decided to treat me to a meal out on our way home from work last night. I think it was also a way to try and get me to eat something. All this hot weather plus the 5:2 diet and the doctor putting me on Metformin has made me not want to eat much and feel quite ill. 

The restaurant is called 7 Hotel Diner. It's like stepping back in time and being in Grease! The meals were about £1/ £2 too pricey we felt but Oh my word, they make an amazing milkshake! The meat was a proper chunk of meat on your plate. We were so full that I couldn't eat a dessert which is really unlike me. If I go out for a meal I would normally plan what I was going to have for dessert first then choose my main meal which I totally failed at here!

This was my meal and unfortunately Jeremy wouldn't allow me to take a photo of his. Looser! And also a photo of the side of the outside of the building. 



If you would like to see the website for this restaurant - and hotel please click on the link below. 

http://www.7hoteldiner.co.uk/

Speak later where I will let you know what I've been getting upto today! You will laugh!!!

Lots of love,
Mrs O xxx

Wednesday 24 July 2013

Boys are back in town!

When I got home from work last night I was greeted by Mr O with my 2 baby boys back at home. Massive :) 

Of course, in no time they were upto their usual tricks of nosing around everywhere and sniffing down plastic then attempting to eat it!

Here's the lovely Jerry having cuddles with Mummy. 


Isn't nice to have more than one surprise on a Tuesday evening?....

Not only did the boys coming home surprise me but I also had a lovely delivery of my monthly magazine that my Aunt subscribed for me at Christmas. As you all know I love to do anything crafty and cross stitching is one of them. So to get my lovely magazine in the post was brilliant. I love looking through it for ideas and I sometimes use their designs to add my own tweaks to it. I will post up another time about the magazine. 

And my final surprise was when I opened up the freezer - after being on a fast day all day - to find another one of my loves: ice cream. 

So of course I had to have some! 



Smiles all around. Oh and I've finally got a tan for the first time this year! Whoooopppiieeeeee!

Have a lovely day

Love, Mrs O xxx

Tuesday 23 July 2013

New sparkly things

Hello there everyone

Just thought I would introduce to you my new layout and design!

Down the right handside of the page you can now contact me.
Maybe message me with ideas? Or things you would like to see on here? If you have any questions or have any suggestions on what you would like me to blog about - be it a review, a tutorial or what ever you would like to know (within reason of course!)

At the top I have added some new tabs - Home & About me

And then of course is the new design of the background.

Enjoy and don't forget to message me!!

Love to you all

Mrs O x

A not-so-secret secret!

Good evening all!

After lots of shhh-ing and secrecy we finally had the not-so-secret Ruby Wedding Anniversary party on Sunday for my in-laws. Happy Anniversary!

We spent lots of time re-calling stories that they couldn't remember from the day, looking at pictures and finding out that Owen weddings all seem to have something happen to the cakes! At my Mother & Father-in-laws' wedding they had forgotten all about the cake, well so the best man said, at my brother and sister-in-laws' wedding they forgot to give the cake out and then at our's it got chucked away by the venue!

You should all have hopefully have seen by now the post I put up at midnight last night all about the cake. So it just seems fit that I had a fiasco about the cake just like all our weddings did!!

We had great fun catching up with friends and family on the Owen side as well as having lots of cuddles with my niece and nephew!

The bling bling nails lasted quite well on my hands but not my toes....



As the weather was so nice - before that horrible storm that some of the UK got last night - Mr O decided to put the roof down on his car. It was only until I got home that I realised I had got burnt all down my back thanks to the sun! Here are a few images from the journey home....



How did you spend the weekend? Did you get woken up by the storm?...

Let me know and remember to send me a message with any questions or ideas or things that you would like to see on this blog.

Love to you all

Mrs O xxx

Saturday 20 July 2013

SURPRISE!!!

As some of you may well of read, I have been keeping a few things secret from you all, basically just so my Mother-in law (and maybe my Father-in-law too, don't know if he reads this blog or not?) couldn't see this!

My Mr Owen and his brother and sister have been organising a surprise Ruby Wedding Anniversary for their parents for the last few months and yesterday was 'The Big Day'. However, they finally decided that due to many reasons such as us all turning up along with huge amounts of food, bevereges, glasses and a .... CAKE.... they decided to tell them the weekend before. It was a shame we didn't Skype them to tell them all about it as we would have loved to have seen their faces but apparently they were really touched by all our efforts. The only thing they didn't tell them was that I was making (well, attempting) to make them a cake. It didn't turn out too badly I don't think, especially as when we were doing the icing (Anthony and I) we were dancing around in the kitchen to 'Itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini' looking a bit like this:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/s/?view=att&th=13ffb34036dd6911&attid=0.1&disp=attd&safe=1&zw

Sorry if that doesn't work. However, if anyone knows how to add it in properly, please let me know. 

However, here is the story of 'The Cake'  .....

It all started Last Thursday 12th where I made a trial run cake, minus the icing, and I took it into work for all to try and check that it was ok. This one I added red colouring to the sponge, but it didn't work out too well so I decided to get rid of that for 'The real one'. I just added butter icing to the top and in the middle. I also didn't cook as much of the cake as the it was only a sample so it was a skinnier cake.

 
 
So the real fun started on Thursday just been (18th) where I stayed up late baking two cakes - Mr Owen had much fun cleaning out the bowl and spoon, reminded us both of when we were little. When I baked cakes with my sisters we had to do it when whoever was baking with us weren't looking and before they took it away to clean it up!
 
 
As you can tell, lots of eggs were needed to make the cake. I only had 5 left over from this pack of 18....

 
Then on the Friday one of my 'besties' came over and we had lots of fun decorating them!

 
As you can see from below HE made farrrrr too much of a mess! This picture documents the fact that he poured out too much icing sugar. I think he was singing his Ding Dongs at that time! I did feel sorry for him though because when it came to putting the dots on the cake, I became a bit of a cakezilla, a bit like a bridezilla but with cakes instead!



I had spent LOTS of time researching and finding out what was the best way to ice and tier cakes. And then I narrowed down the essentials to use, which included a smooth-down tool, stick things, to put the cakes on top of each other and then the little cutters to make the perfect circles. The icing didn't come out too bad in the end and any blips we covered with dots - hence my trip to Hobby Craft! In some areas there were an obsessive amount of dots - we just crossed our fingers and hoped that no one would notice.....


 
And as per usual, in my cheeky but sweet way, I turned around to Mr Owen and said, I'm done, the cleaning and washing up is all yours!! But, I didn't actually leave it to him. Mr Ding Dong and myself did it all as we are nice people.
 

 
And then this is the final product:
 
 
 
I used the recipe for a red velvet cake found here:
 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/three-tier_red_velvet_17795

I tweaked it to suit what I felt tasted better.
 
And, as you may all be able to see, I had a little problem with the red dots thanks to the British summer and them getting stuck to the containers!

Have a good week,
 
Love, Mrs O xxx

Bling bling nails!

As some of you know, I bought some new nail varnish and accessories. As always I'm like a big kid and I had to get straight to trying it out. So, at silly o'clock I painted my nails and toenails. I used the new Barry M nail colour that I bought  as well as the Barry M base & top coat which I had before and I loved it to bits, so much so that I had practically ran out. And, as well as using these paints, I also bought something completely new to me; MUA Nail Constellation in Gemini (£3). These were all 3 for 2 in Superdrug.

I did see their nail flock stuff but I thought that would just annoy me as I would just constantly think that I had some cotton wool on my nails! But it might work well if you used a stamp then use that as your paint for the flock to stick to. It could look quite pretty but it might be hard to do on yourself. 

Anyway, all you have to do is paint your nails as usual - I always put a base coat (Barry M Base & Top Coat) and then if I am going to wear a colour I put a natural base coat on, add my nail colour (I always put 2 coats on with whatever colour I wear)

Next, you choose your nail that you want the 'bling' (I'm calling it bling as that's what it looks like!) to go on, paint another coat of colour (on my fingernails i just used a top coat) and then sprinkle the bling on just like you would when you were little with sprinkle glitter on top of glue. 

Lastly, once they have set in place, I added the top coat on top just to secure it. 

And voila! Blingy nails! 
 
 

As i don't have work this weekend and i wont be attending church due to going to a party, i decided to add it to one of my finger nails too. Excuse my chubby feet!
 

 
I wonder how it will cope when I put socks on? ... Only time will tell. 

Bye for now and have a lovely Saturday
 
Mrs O xxx

Friday 19 July 2013

Ahh! A Friday off

Firstly, I want to say a huge congratulations to my little sister who graduated today with a 1st. Proud big sis alert!

Just so you know, if you wanted to, this is what I looked like and dressed like for the day ahead of me:



So today I have had my first Friday off with our new rota at work. So as usual I decide to spend it sorting stuff out and going shopping in Bromley for the first time in aaaaagessss!

The shops I went to weren't exactly that exciting. I decided to go with a list otherwise I over spend! My tasks were to go to Superdrug, Poundland and a shoe shop!

Of course I over bought and spent! 

After being inspired by watching some youtube tutorials on UK makeup I decided to venture out of my beloved Bare Minerals make up and go for some different brands that are much cheaper. But I thought it would be good to use them as 'everyday' make up. So after watching a few tutorials by Zoella, Sprinkle of Glitter and Fleur de Force, I summed down their 'essentials' which I thought I could use. This is what I bought, which infact was only the MUA eyeshaddow pallet and The Collection concealer. I will post a blog up about them at some point I am sure. 


I also spent my £1 and 99ps well at Poundland and the 99p shop on things I felt were essential, although I am sure that Mr Owen won't agree!

There has been a new shop open up in our little town called The Original Factory Store which I have been meaning to pop into for the last few weeks and today I finally managed to pop in there as I needed to go to the pharmacy to pick up my new medication. I found these lovely little items:



Which I think fit in quite well at our Little abode of The Owen Penthouse Apartment (see below). I also timed how long it took Jeremy to notice them!


One of my best friends popped in and spent the rest of the day with me. We had fun sitting out in the garden with nibbles and giggles.



 Before you ask, i was wearing clothes just a strapless dress! We spend some of the time talking about his latest performance which was on Big Brother yesterday. If you didn't see it, he looked like this:


And I've just found a link which you can watch it on:

http://www.bbspy.co.uk/bb14/news/0717/big-brother-2013-remote-control-shopping-task-barbershop-quartet-fake-song

We then spent the rest of the time having our usual us time which usually involves dancing to music (we have made a video and we will try to load it up somehow), laughing, talking, giggling some more, so much so that we can't talk or do anything, and then making a complete and utter mess. I shall post a proper blog which links between this and my latest hobby craft shop on Monday as it still can't be revealed. However, as a hint, we looked like this:


Anyway goodnight my friends, I am now off to pack for a weekend up in my hubby's home town of Worcester. Remember, think of some questions!!!

Love to you all, Mrs O xxx