Five Things I Did In June

Why I thought a picture of my desk (i.e. where I blog from) was an appropriate picture to use for a round up of a month where I have barely blogged, I don't know, but it's at least hopefully an indicator of my best intentions to really get my blog on in July. With the wedding and honeymoon and then the downer of getting back to reality I've felt a bit 'meh' and directionless when it comes to this blog. However, I have had a pretty cracking June so here's what I did:

The Fast Girl's Guide To Slower Living

'Slow living' is all the rage now isn't it? In my opinion, the fact that it's a massive trend and seen as the 'in thing' is excellent because we always want to do the 'in thing' don't we so when said 'in thing' is something that's actually good for us that's a massive plus. Not sure whether I've ever started a blog post with a more nonsensical sentence, hellooo bad bounce rate. 

Anyway, my point is that the slow living trend is excellent and one that I think we should all get on board with. However, that's much easier said than done because if you're more of a 'fast' (seriously how many things can I put in inverted commas in one post?) person like me, you're probably not very good at it. I've mentioned before that I'm the type of person who likes to keep busy; I like always having something to do and feeling productive. I don't think that's always a bad thing, but even fast people need to live slowly sometimes otherwise I think we'd run ourselves into the ground. So, these are some of the things I'm doing to try and make my fast self live a little slower:

Figure out what slow living means for me. When I think of slow living I conjure up an idealistic image of waking up to a bit of meditation followed by some perfectly executed yoga and some sort of super healthy acai bowl breakfast and then an evening spent surrounded by candles and blankets curled up with a good book. I've tried meditation and it's just not for me, yoga just gives me acid reflux (TMI?) and I definitely don't have time for a cosy evening every single night. Slow living is different for everyone and I'm still in the process of working out what it is for me, but it can be something as simple as a morning cup of coffee enjoyed in the garden with no distractions or a chapter of a book read in bed.

Ditch the guilt. It's rare that I enjoy some down time to myself without feeling guilty for not being productive and that's something I want to change. How, I'm not quite sure, but we need to stop feeling guilty for what is essentially taking care of ourselves.

Make time. It's very easy to start the day with a long to-do list then once you're on a roll just carry on until it's time for bed. And then repeat. The thing is, I'm never going to get to the end of a day having crossed everything off my to-do list so whether I take some time out of that day to myself or not, I'll never feel productive enough. My point being, I may as well take some time out of that day to live a little slower. So, living a little slower is going on my to-do list from now on to make sure it's something I consciously make time for.

Be consistent. My worst downfall is that I make all these grand promises to myself, I deliver on them for a couple of weeks and then I fall back into bad habits. Being consistent will be difficult, but hopefully as long as I continue putting down time on my to-do list, it'll get done.

Are you any good at slow living? Throw your tips my way if you are!

Amy x

The Honeymoon Diaries | Pisa

I'll tell you what folks, getting married and going on honeymoon, if nothing else, gives you heaps of blog content. I didn't plan any content at all before hand because I didn't want to feel any pressure, I just wanted to enjoy it and taking that step back made me realise that instead of trying to think outside of the box and create some sort of spin on it, what I really want to do is just document it so I have something to look back on. If you're at all interested in how we chose our honeymoon destination, I wrote a post about it here, but we ended up doing a mini tour of Italy (Pisa, Florence and Venice) so I thought I'd simply break it up place by place, tell you where we ate, stayed and what we did. So first up...Pisa!

We Got Married!

You probably already know because I think I've mentioned it once, or yanno maybe twice, but two weeks ago yesterday I got married to my boyfriend of eight years, Nick (fun fact: we actually got married on our eight and a half year anniversary, which means we now have an anniversary to celebrate every six months exactly and there's something about the preciseness of that which makes me v. happy). While we were busy wedding-ing and then honeymoon-ing I've had a lil' blogging break, but I'm back with what is probably going to be an extremely long post detailing all the, well, details of our day. I'm sure there'll be some more specific wedding content to come, but I really just wanted to write down everything about it in one long post. So grab yourself a cuppa and settle down, it's gonna be a long one...

Hello Topshop My Old Friend

I've always had a soft spot for Topshop; growing up as a teenager I used to save up my pocket money until I had enough for a Topshop 'splurge' (usually consisting of approx two items because lol Topshop prices and pocket money don't really go well together do they?). Further down the line in sixth form I spent my midweek free periods catching the train into Hull instead of revising to hand over pretty much my entire weekend job earnings in exchange for some pretty pieces. It was a similar story with my student loan because you just try going to uni in London and not spending the majority of your time and money in Topshop on Oxford Street. The love story ended when I left uni, skint and jobless, which seemed to coincide with the prices in Topshop sky rocketing and placing me firmly in the H&M/New Look camp for many years to come. But, as with all good love stories, this one has a happy ending.   

A few weeks ago it all changed (just adding a bit of drama to this story). During my desperate search for wedding shoes when I realised that, with a month to go, the ones I'd bought were actually far too big for me and flapped off my feet with every step I took (how I failed to notice this when I first tried them on I'm not entirely sure), I found myself in Topshop. Browsing the shoes led to a quick browse around the rest of the shop and not only were there lots of nice things (I'm a bit like a magpie in Topshop), they also weren't horrendously expensive; it would seem that Topshop may have actually got a bit cheaper (I mean I still wouldn't call it cheap, but the prices didn't make me cry). I didn't buy anything or even try anything on there and then, but the seed was planted and I knew I'd end up back in there one lunch break.

Not to be melodramatic, but boy had I missed a good Topshop trip. Despite not feeling quite cool enough to be in there I came away with this dress (yep, just one thing, aren't I restrained). It's fairly simple, but ticks a lot of boxes for me; denim, buttons, nips in at the waist thanks to a tie at the back. The only thing that's missing is pockets, but I can forgive it that. I use the following phrase in pretty much every outfit post so soz; it's just so easy to throw on. My favourite kind of clothes are those voila-your-outfit-is-done types. I love this with trainers because I love pretty much everything with trainers, but I especially love dresses with trainers (do you think I like trainers?!), but on this occassion I wore it with my nude slip-ons from Next, which look comfortable, but made my feet bleed so that was fun and glam and just proved that I really should have worn it with trainers.

Dress - Topshop (here) | Shoes - Next (old) | Earrings - Tessies | Watch* - Ice-watch (here)

Are you a Topshop fan?

Amy x

Photos: Violet

*denotes a gifted item

So You're Engaged...Now What?

I've only got a couple of scheduled posts going up while we're away on honeymoon and I thought it would make sense to make this one wedding themed, seeing as (if all went to plan - if not then hopefully I thought to unschedule this) we got married on Saturday. Details of that will obviously make their way onto this blog in due course (some sneak peaks over on my Instagram), but for now I thought I'd throw it back to the very beginning, to when we first got engaged and the steps we took to set the wheels in motion for our wedding day. So this is one for those who may have just got engaged and be wondering where on earth to start because believe me, that was definitely where I was at.

TAKE SOME TIME TO ENJOY IT | Firstly, if you have just got engaged, congratulations! Now take some time to enjoy it because it actually does make you feel a bit different and you'll enter a sort of engagement honeymoon period. So before you dive headfirst into planning your wedding, spend some time celebrating with your friends and family and just appreciate that happy feeling! When we got engaged on holiday last year we made the decision not to tell anyone until we got home so we spent a few days in a happy little engagement bubble which was lovely.

DECIDE ON A TIME SCALE | Essentially, do you want a long or short engagement? I'd always thought that when I got engaged it would be because I was ready to get married so knew I wanted a short engagement, but there are obviously all manner of things that can affect your decision on timescale. When you're deciding this, I'd avoid setting a date in stone because when it comes to looking at venues and the like they might not have the date you'd set your heart on! We were very lucky in that we got in with our venue just as they were setting up as a business so we could actually have the date we wanted, but most places get booked up very far in advance!

DISCUSS THE IMPORTANT STUFF | There are some things you need to be on the same page about from the start; do you want a church wedding or a civil ceremony? Here or abroad? Big or small? It's nice to get an idea of what you're both expecting from the day so you can begin to compromise if needs be!

PIN, PIN, PIN! | As with most things, Pinterest is your best friend, both for inspiration and for helping you get excited for the big day (if you need any help that is). I used it for everything from style of dress and hair to table decorations and the cake and actually, my wedding looked a heck of a lot like my wedding Pinterest board so it obviously played a huge part.

BUY YOURSELF A WEDDING NOTEBOOK | I'm an old fashioned gal, in that I like to write everything down. Luckily my mum bought me a wedding planner from Paperchase really early on, which not only broke the planning down month by month, but included lists for everything so it certainly kept me organised. Having a dedicated planner means I'll have something special to look back on from the process too.

KEEP PERSPECTIVE | The most important thing throughout the planning process is to keep perspective. Yes, it's a special day, but it is just one day out of your whole life and although the wedding is nice, the most important thing is your marriage that follows.

If you've planned a wedding, what were your first steps?

Amy x