2011 in Photos

I saw Lisa's year in photos and thought it was a brilliant idea so decided to copy it a little! I've searched through my facebook to bring to you at least one photo from every month in 2011 - as my week in photos posts seem quite popular I thought this would be a nice post to do.

January

Who : Me, my sister and Stacey.
What : A meal in Cardiff Bay followed by a few drinks for Emma's birthday.

February

Who : Work colleagues
What : It was Lisa's 40th birthday and Lisa loves Pirates. We all dressed up as Pirates, Lisa had the lovely surprise of wearing a big parrot suit! We went on a speed boat around Cardiff Bay, followed by a treasure hunt (aka beer hunt) around Cardiff and a buffet in O'Neills.

March

Who : Sarah and me
What : This is one of many all dayers for the Six Nations. I do stupid poses with shots when I'm drunk, so cool :-/

April

Who : Spencer and me
What : My birthday :) This isn't the best photo of us two but its the only one of us both. Spencer took me out for lunch followed by a visit to White Castle, it was a really lovely day.

Who : Emma and me
What : A colleagues hen weekend in Swansea. We had a brilliant time and gave her a good send off!

Who : Matt Cardle
What : My sister and I bought our mam tickets for the X Factor tour for her birthday. We went to the CIA to watch it and had really good seats. It was a fun evening and my mam thoroughly enjoyed herself.

Who : The Gang (too many to name)
What : Mine and Spencer's first barbecue of 2011.

Who : ????
What : The girls arranged a lovely garden party for my birthday. It was amazing. There was bunting all along my garden, amazing food, Pimms, birthday cake. I was spoilt.

Who : ???
What : The Royal Wedding. They had a street party in my area so I went up, it was really good. A hog roast, DJ and bouncy castles for the kids.

May

Who : Far too many people to name, me and the girls
What : May sees my sister's birthday and the traditional May Day bank holiday all dayer to celebrate Gemma's birthday. We had (very early) pre-drinks at my sister's house and then went onto Cardiff.

Who : Spencer and me
What : We took a little caravan break to the Isle of White in June. Awful photo, but once again the only one I have of us both!

June

Who : ????
What : Spencer and me took a trip to London to see Glee at the O2. We had a brilliant time and the concert was amazing.

July

Who : Kirsty, Gemma (my sister), me, Sarah & Sadie
What : We went to Ponty's Big Weekend for a cheap day out. The Wanted were headling. Its mainly for kids but we had a great laugh.

August

Who : Bee, Lyzi, Stephanie, Gina, Sian, me, Kate, Sammy, Kim, Lily, Gemma, Laura and Rosie
What : The SW Blogger Meet. My first ever blogger meet and the first time that I met all these lovely ladies, most of whom I got to see again this Friday just gone :)  I hope to get to see all of these again soon.

Who : Laura, Faye, Aisling, Zoe, me, Kirsti and Scarlett
What : The London meet, I had a brilliant day in London with these guys and can't believe that it was so long ago! August was ages ago, I need to see them again!

September

Who : Charli, Leanne-Marie, Catherine, me and Sadie
What : This was the Cardiff Ethical Fashion Show. This again meant meeting some lovely ladies. I need to see them all again soon.

October

Who : The South Wales Blogging ladies
What : The South Wales Blogger Meet. St David's held a lovely event for us featuring some of their fantastic stores. We then went over to O'Neills for a buffet, yum. Again, I made some lovely friends and caught up with some familiar faces.

Who : Kirsty, me and Becki
What : A trip to Swansea with my ladies :) We don't look the best here but we were pretty drunk by this point!

Who : me
What : Spencer and I took a trip to Cadburys world in Birmingham. We visited The Bullring when we were there. We stayed over night and had a fantastic weekend celebrating our 1 year engagement anniversary.

Who : Sally, me & Kam
What : A trip to Cardiff to watch the live screening of Wales v Australia and I met Kam and Sally off the radio! If you aren't from South Wales you may have no idea who they are, but if you live around here I'm sure you will have heard of them.

November

Who : Lucy, me, Claire, Carla, Natalie & Kirsty
What : Pre-drinks at mine before heading into Caerleon for Jodie's hen night. The first time I'd done fancy dress in quite a while, felt like a bit of a prat at first but as the drink kicked in I loved it!

December

photo from My Street Chic's facebook

Who : Vicky, Gina, me & Sammy
What : The My Street Chic Bristol event that took place on Friday. Amazing girls again, amazing cocktails, amazing night. I really loved this and am still buzzing from an amazing weekend. I want to do it all again, now.

I really enjoyed looking back over my year and I hope you did too. I've had some amazing times with some amazing people and this has really made me realise just how lucky I am. If 2012 is anywhere near as good as this it will be good. Hopefully it will be better because it involves my Wedding!

Week in Photos #41

This week has been...

NOM

My first red cup of the year :) Praline Mocha 

Today's shopping trip to Cardiff involved claiming my free box of Krispy Kremes from the Cardiff meet

 I also bought cinamon & vanilla glazed cashews from the Christmas market in Cardiff

 Standard hangover food

 Not the most appetising looking photo but this was amazing. Green beans in Philadelphia, Birds Eye Baked to Perfection Salmon and stuffed potato skins 

BUBBLY

I decided to use my LUSH Gingerbread house today. It doesn't mix well with jacuzzi baths. The photo on the left shows how nice it is, lovely orange water and loads of bubbles. The top right is what I opened my eyes to after chilling for a while with the jacuzzi jets going. The bottom right is after I'd emptied the water! My bathroom is covered in bubbles! I currently have towels all over the flower trying to soak up the damage.

FESTIVE

My festive nails are still intact :) I blogged about them here

Today's Cardiff trip also involved Santa's Grotto :) My two year old niece was with us, my sister, mam and me were actually more excited about this than her! It was amazing though, we sat in Santa's living room with Santa and his helper and Gracie had her photo taken and got to choose a present. She was stunned bless her, just went quiet and shy.

GLITZY

My shoe choices for the Bristol meet. I eventually decided on sensible over 'wow'.

Other non-photographed goings on include:

The Bristol meet, I didn't take one photo! I really am rubbish at taking photos lately, I need to get into gear and start snapping otherwise this is going to turn into a rather boring week in words. The meet was amazing, I loved seeing some familiar faces and meeting some new people. It was lovely meeting people that I have been speaking to on Twitter forever! 

Steph, Gemma and Bee have blogged about the event.

I loved the fact that we all had a good drink, I was a lot more relaxed than on previous meets. I really hope we do it again soon, I think a Saturday night in Cardiff should be arranged, anyone keen?

Again, another photo fail. I went to a Wedding party on Saturday which was brilliant. The bride looked amazing! Congratulations Mr & Mrs Groves and thanks for having us if you happen to stumble upon this!

Week in Photos #40

This week has been...

FRIENDLY

 Before making my Herman friendship cake I had to split it into four, add other ingredients to one and bake it and then give the other three out with a set of instructions so that other people can start their own Herman.

CWTCHY

A trip up my parents always involves cwtches with Alfie, bless him. They've had him for years, Smudge, who sadly passed away earlier this year, gave birth to him so we had him from birth. He is a massive cat. I call him the BFG (big friendly giant).

NOM

 Steak and Ale Pie, Sprouts & Chestnuts and Red Cabbage & Apple - veg courtesy of Iceland, they have some gorgeous frozen veg in over the festive period.

 Drunken midnight feast. Garlic & herb chicken, ash brown and philladelphia in a ciabatta roll.

I made turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce rolls for lunch today - my fave.

FIT

JLS and One Direction on stage, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven!

HUNGOVER

Today I've been mostly hungover! These Weight Watchers ice creams are amazing for the hangover thirst, and low in calories too! I've had a PJ day today :)

FESTIVE

Flick is always hitting these off to get on her box. I keep putting them back.

Spencer finally got around to putting the lights on our arch.

SWAPPED

I made my first Beauty Box Swap this week. I received my two Dainty Doll eyeliners and Lucy kindly added some eye cream sachets too. I swapped with Lucy who is the page creator, it all went very smoothly and we both received our goods on the same day.

CHILLED

I used the bath bomb that I bought at a local craft fair. It smelt lovely and my skin felt soft afterwards. I wasn't keen on all the bits of plant though. I was too scared to turn the jacuzzi on in my bath as I thought it may clog it up.

Other non-photographed goings on...

I can't believe that there have been 40 of these posts! I've impressed myself with how well I'm managing to stick to posting these. They seem to be quite popular posts and I enjoy doing them which is why its been easy to stick with.

I went out for a meal with two friends on Friday. We went to Frankie & Bennys which I always enjoy. I had the Pesto Salmon and it was amazing! No photos though I'm afraid. It was full in there with Christmas parties so the atmosphere was really good and the music was pumping. 

I went out with the girls last night. Only a few local drinks but I ended up quite drunk. I had a lovely time though and I think that is probably my last night out with the girls before Christmas. Busy, busy!
I loved the X Factor final, I was expecting the duets with the judges to be lame, but I actually loved everyone of them! I really hope that Little Mix win tonight.

I'm getting super excited for the Bristol meet next Friday, I watched the video earlier and am very impressed with the venue - it looks amazing! There are still tickets available if you want to come along.

Week in Photos #39

This week has been...

PAMPERED

I decided to have a pampering day on Sunday. I started with the Vinies Luminous face mask that I received in this month's Boudoir Prive. Thankfully I didn't have the bad reaction that a lot of people did. On me it worked well, my skin felt really nice and plump afterwards.
I then decided to take my Christmas Cupcake Yankee Candle into the bathroom and have a relaxing jacuzzi bath with the Dead Sea Magik Bath salts that I received in this month's GlossyBox. The bath salts are lovely and seemed to help reduce the redness from my spots which are awful at the moment.
I always used my Rahua shampoo and conditioner samples from Boudoir Prive which left my hair feeling lovely.
So yeah, I had a good beauty box day which left my skin feeling lovely and me feeling relaxed!

COSY

I dug out these slipper socks that I had for Christmas last year. I completely forgot that I had them! Am loving wearing them again.
I've also been living in my fleecy Primark PJs.

and loving my new Glade candle in Chocolate & Honey

GREEDY

Tesco had these on offer for £1 so I had to buy them. And eat them all.

TASTY

 Baked potato with tuna, salt, pepper, vinegar and leeks. Spencer thought I was odd putting raw leeks with this, until he tried it, then he agreed that it tasted just like tuna and spring onion.

 I recently received some Iceland vouchers which included one to get one of their £1 pizzas for free! We choose the chicken fajita and it was lovely.

The vouchers also included money off Birdseye's new baked to perfection range. This is the Haddock with mashed potato. It was gorgeous. So lemony and just full of taste.

 Spencer was off work on strike on Wednesday. I told him to make tea as I was working all day. He bought an Indian instead, I wasn't complaining!

Leek & Potato soup with cheese on toast soldiers. NOM.

 I had a random craving for eggy bread yesterday. Its not something I have very often but I really fancied it. I decided to put two pieces of bacon in between two pieces of eggy bread. It was lovely.

I finally made my Herman cake :) I put loads of chocolate in him and he really is delicious!

BROKEN

The Primark shoes I showed you in this haul post, this is them now. Buying Primark shoes to wear everyday for work probably wasn't one of my best ideas! I had lovely wet feet from these on Tuesday, they are now in the bin!

INVITED

I'm guessing that there is a Christmas theme for this wedding - exciting!

FESTIVE

I put my Christmas tree up on Friday. I love Christmas and putting the tree up gets me so excited!

Other non-photographed goings on...

I was relieved to see Janet leave the X Factor last Sunday. I loved her when she first auditioned and I do still love her voice. She has just seemed as though she doesn't want to be there any more though and I think that there are other people more worthy to be in the final than her. I hope that Mischa B goes tonight. My favourites by a mile are Little Mix. I would love to see them win!

I have increased my hours in work, from 9-5 to 8:30 - 5:30. I'm coping surprisingly well with it! I have difficult getting up in the mornings usually so am shocked at how well I've adapted to this change.

Spencer and I went shopping after work on Monday. In my lunchtime I picked up a Glade Chocolate & Honey candle from Wilkinsons. When I met him in Tesco he'd already been around a few aisles and had also picked up the same candle! Match made in heaven! (They were on offer in both shops which is why we were drawn to them, but, out of all the flavours we both picked the same!)

Spencer almost had his car door ripped off on Monday when we got home from shopping! We live in a narrow road that has parking on both sides of the street. I sat in the car as an ambulance went past followed by a car. I then opened the door to get out. As I was about to close the door the car that had passed started to reverse back into the door! I didn't have time to close the door so tried to yell at him, it was too late. The door went back a lot further than it should have. Thankfully no major damage was done. It turned out the ambulance started reversing on the guy in the car, so he quickly reversed out of the way and into the door. I was really quite shaken up and so was the driver.

I've been considering following blogs via Bloglovin' instead of GFC for a while now. I've recently heard that GFC is ending in March, so this has kick started me into action! I'm starting to follow blogs via Bloglovin' where I can and unfollow via GFC so that I don't miss anyone (hopefully!). If I un-follow you that is why, I'm still there, just through a different platform!

I went to a local craft fair today, there were some lovely items there. We were quite annoyed that we'd already bought our Christmas presents as there were some lovely gifts there. I bought myself a honey and lemon bath bomb which smells amazing! Can't wait to use it!

What have you been up to this week? Who would you like to see leave X Factor tonight and who is your favourite to win the whole thing?