All the ‘P’s

Early on in the lives of the little bears, i.e. when we first got together way back in October 2009, stuck for ideas as to what to have for dinner (and not feeling very motivated) we happened upon a dinner creation that only included ingredients beginning with the letter ‘p’! Well, blow me down if we didn’t, serendipitously, create the same thing last night (almost) without realising it!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you our ‘p’ dinner: pasta, pesto, peas, parmesan, pine nuts and pepper!

Before…

My apologies for the poor quality photo of the finished result – we started eating and then realised that we hadn’t taken a photo, and we were watching the finale of Castle so double distraction!

…After!

Hair today, gone tomorrow!

I found this hair tutorial on Friday over here, and thought, I’d love my hair to look like that! Uh huh. Here is what happened!

Hair Tutorial Messy Bun

My attempt!

Possible wedding up do?

Rosemary Foccacia – Hairy Bikers’ Bakeation

Good morning and good Sunday!

We woke up early this morning and decided we would make the most of it and do some baking, and I am so glad we did. After watching an episode of the Hairy Bikers’ Bakeation earlier this week where they visit Italy, we decided to have a go at baking this foccacia.

Yesterday was a bit of a write-off weather-wise (as is today) so it’s been a lazy weekend for these little bears, other than a trip to the supermarket and some baking, and chutney-making, we’ve been deliciously slovenly.  I hope you’re having a good weekend and I hope you like the look of our foccacia – it’s super tasty hot from the oven.

Before

After

Wedding Muffins!

I have just (Martha Stewart style) whipped up a batch of these muffins, domestic goddess that I be. They are amazing! So healthy and super tasty. Here is the recipe that I used which is slightly adapted from the original, and I have translated it to grams from cups. They were super easy to make and so tasty and very calorie conscious for any soon-(or not-so-soon)-to-be-brides!

Ingredients

3 medium-sized carrots
1 banana
150g of a cup of plain flour
90g of oats
150g cup of raspberries and strawberries
100g of brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon of baking powder
1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
120ml of skimmed milk
3 tbsp of olive oil

1.       Put flour, sugar, oats, baking powder, baking soda and nutmeg into a large mixing bowl

2.       Grate the carrots

3.       Mash the banana

4.       Then the raspberries, banana, carrot and olive oil as needed

5.       Gently mix all the ingredients together adding the milk

6.       Add the mixture to muffin cups….

7.       And bake in the oven for 25 mins at 200º C

Here are my low-fat carrot and summer berry muffins:

Honeymoon: where to go?

Well, y’all know how much we like to travel, especially to America (!) so I suppose working out which continent to choose is the easy bit! We have decided to go on another road trip (see here and here for our previous ones) but this time… to the deep South! This is our idea for our route so far:

Orlando – Jacksonville (via) Daytona Beach – Tallahassee – Panama City – Mobile, AL via Pensacola – New Orleans via Biloxi – Lafayette – Lake Charles – Houston/Dallas.

We plan to take it as much of the Gulf Coast and the National Parks and the southern culture as possible. We just love discovering things you don’t expect – like the colony of elephant seals at Piedras Blancas in California – it was amazing and a complete surprise to us! If anyone has visited any of these places, we’d love to hear your suggestions for things to do!

Weekend: 14-15 April

Hey there y’all (really getting into the southern drawl)!

I hope you had a good weekend! It’s been a little while since I did a weekend update (I think the last one was here) so I thought in the spirit of starting how I mean to go on I shall give you a rundown of our weekend.

Saturday: this started off pretty lazily (well, apart from the 10.5 miles on the exercise bike that I did; although this was more or less cancelled out by the TWO bowls of Curiously Cinnamon I ate – oops!) as we didn’t get dressed until about 1pm. After that we watched some Hairy Bikers’ Bakeation (totally loving that show) and then meandered into Oxford to try to find me a jacket, dressing gown and colourful tights and my little bear a new phone – we were 75% successful in our mission as we got everything bar a new phone. The high point of the trip? When I found a gorgeous faux leather jacket from Zara. I have been wanting a light jacket for about a year and wanting a leather jacket for even longer and I am completely enamoured with the one I found!

As our new Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall cookery book arrived on Saturday morning, after we got back from shopping in town, we cooked his delicious polenta and mushroom ragout for dinner – I wholeheartedly recommend both the book and that particular recipe. It was really easy and super tasty (see below).

Sunday: we really were LITTLEBEARSINLONDON! We returned to our former home town to meet up with some friends for lunch at Busaba Eathai on Bird St, a wander around the British Museum, afternoon tea at nude and then a coach journey back to Oxford before having another HF-W feast, also involving polenta! It was a really lovely day and so good to catch up with our friends in London.

Pixlr-o-matic

My little bear recently recommended to me some cool camera apps for my phone (HTC Wildfire) since I can’t get Instagram (sad face). Pixlr-o-matic was one of those recommended and it is great and so simple to use. So, I tried it out while sat at my desk at work and I went from this:

To this:

Awesome, right?!

350 DAYS TO GO!

Pretty much what the title suggests…

only 350 days until we are Mr and Mrs Little Bear!

Hooray!

To continue the international theme: Wedding blogs everywhere

Oh my gosh, since we decided to get married I have become a little obsessed with wedding blogs. And not just UK ones! America, Australia, France, South Africa – congratulate yourselves because you have some A-MAZING wedding bloggers! Here is a list of some of my favourites (in no particular order):

• Ruffled
• Style Me Pretty – check out their sister sites around the world
• Rock My Wedding
• 100 Layer Cake
• Grey Likes Weddings
• Green Wedding Shoes
• Offbeat Bride – perfect for those looking for a more down-to-earth approach! You gotta love their “wedding porn“!
• Magnolia Rouge
• Before The Big Day
• Bridal Musings

Oh, and I could not live without Etsy! They are all amazing for inspiration but do make me a little green with envy! I am so excited to plan this wedding with my little bear.

Have an amazing weekend everyone!

International Blog – A list of countries who like little bears!

Country	Views
United Kingdom	42
United States	26
Thailand	10
Malaysia	7
Ukraine	6
France	5
Germany	4
Australia	3
Pakistan	3
New Zealand	3
Brazil	2
Colombia	2
Spain	2
South Africa	2
Denmark	2
Uganda	2
Sweden	2
Bulgaria	1
Nepal	1
Netherlands	1
Canada	1
Slovakia	1
Ecuador	1
Indonesia	1
Republic of Korea	1
Romania	1
Ghana	1
Philippines	1