As I said in today's Bonfire post, this is such a great time of year. Christmas is just around the corner, it's Halloween today and Bonfire night on Wednesday. Autumn is in full swing with crunchy leaves everywhere yet it's still mild and we've had some gorgeous sunshine this week. Hope you've had a Pumpkin filled week! I love decorating my kitchen seasonally and it's been filled with orange lately, most of which we've grown at the allotment. I decided not to carve scary faces this year and instead created some girly stars, hearts and drilled flowers. I'm off to a friend's halloween party tonight, we're going all out with a prize for the best dress up outfit {I've got a skeleton dress but need to do some crazy make up and hair to go with it} and a prize for the best pumpkin so today will be spent baking lots of spooky cakes to take to the party later. 

This week's photos are mainly of pumpkins, with a few autumn leaves thrown in:

Happy Halloween! {Halloween themed post coming later today} How amazing is this time of year? Halloween and Bonfire Night are within a week of each other. I love both celebrations and can't wait to bake this gingerbread tray bake this weekend ready for Bonfire Night on Wednesday. It's an annual tradition, I think this will be my fourth year making it and such a nice recipe. Then on the 5th November, wrapping up in gloves and scarves we'll go to watch the fireworks and have sparklers in front of the bonfire. The dark evenings are still a novelty at the moment to cosy up and we all know what's just around the corner.. {*whispers* Christmas!} I thought I'd do this post early in case anyone wants to do some baking this weekend before it's past Bonfire Night although to be honest this yummy gingerbread cake will be perfect right up until Christmas.

The Primrose Bakery is my favourite cupcake shop in London, I've been there for Valentine's Days, had Birthday cupcakes from there and always love their seasonal displays. This post is a bit of a throwback to a last year at Halloween when Ben and I had an autumnal afternoon wandering around Primrose Hill. Have you been? It's one of my favourite places in London with views of the city ahead of you but with a more village feel about it.

One of the things I'm so pleased I decided on for our wedding was these LOVE letter marquee lights. I'd seen them on Pinterest and various wedding blogs but never considered them for our wedding for some reason until about three weeks before the day. Everything else had been booked months, even years ahead of time but the LOVE letters were an impulse. I had to have them! I started googling companies to hire them from and emailed for some quotes. Before most companies had even had a chance to reply, Ben had been out to Wickes buying MDF and decided to make them instead.. 

I've got a lot of inspiration for our house from my Auntie Karen, her house is a country dream. Literally it could be something out of Country Living magazine and I always love going to stay with her for the weekend, she couldn't have children so always says I'm like her surrogate daughter. In her hallway upstairs she has a collection of family wedding photographs through the ages and I loved the idea when I first saw it a few years ago. Ben and I are close with both sides of our families so wanted to recreate the idea in our hallway. 

I had two hen-party's before I got married, one was your traditional bunny-eared, L plate wearing fun night out with a big group of friends. I'll spare you the photos from that, but the second was slightly more sophisticated with afternoon tea at The Grove Hotel, one of my favourite places with my two bridesmaids and my Mum. This post will be all about cake, scones and peonies. What could be better?

From the start, one of my favourite parts of wedding planning was thinking of ways to personalise our day and have a couple of display tables in the entrance hall of our venue, Notley Abbey that reflected some of our favourite things and great loves. I'm a real faffer when it comes to displaying bits and bobs as you may have noticed by now, so I got great pleasure in planning all the pretty bits, where frames would sit amongst jam jars filled with flowers and a slightly vintage take on a guest book and card box.

One of the things I get asked most on Instagram when I share photos of our house is 'is that a wall of crates? Where did you get them from?'. The answer is yes, we do have a wall filled with crates stacked up on each other and Ben made them for us after I saw a photo on Pinterest one day. It's one of my favourite features in our house and displays various books, photo frames and decorative bits. I'd love to share how he did it if you're interested. 

{oops this post got published earlier in the week by mistake sorry if you've already read it!} 

Sunny autumnal days can be so beautiful. Last Sunday, after a few days of rain and feeling under the weather I needed a morning out. I love where we live but after doing the same walks with the dog most days in the week I crave a change by the weekend. Ben and I love going to Richmond Park as the leaves start to turn for a walk and to see the deer but decided to discover somewhere new and now Bushy Park is a firm favourite.

If you ask Ben's 3 year old nephew what he remembers from our wedding day he'll say 'the balloon flew away'. I loved our heart balloon release, I think it's one of my favourite memories from the day, getting all of our guests together for something a bit different.

I love Kew Gardens and always try to go around once a year, usually in the summer. But last October, to celebrate halloween and as part of the IncrEdibles festival, Kew was filled with pumpkins. I love Autumn and all things halloween so one Saturday morning, Ben and I headed to Kew for a wander and ogle at the pumpkin displays.

Ben and I love travel and from the start of our wedding planning progress, we wanted to incorporate this as part of the theme for the day with vintage suitcases and naming our tables after places we've visited together. I'd love to share some DIY ideas of how we made our table names and plan. 

Thanks to those of you on Instagram who requested a garden post, I've gone through all my photos and dug out the before and during photos, and the after's which will be grouped seasonally. I'd love to share our progress in the garden, a project that we started on straight away when we got the keys and has developed ever since. I'm no gardening expert but I've learned a lot in the past few years and it helps that both of our families are gardening mad and have given us lots of tips. We may have also spent the odd friday night watching Gardeners World, geez how old does that make me sound. Anyway it's a bit of a long post so you might want to grab a cup of tea and a biscuit but I hope you'll get some garden inspiration and see what you can transform any kind of bare space into with a few flowers and some galvanised tubs!

*updated photos from this year here. *

They say that a Sunday well spent brings a week of content so continuing on the Sunday walk and a roast theme, one of my favourite ever Sunday's was back in January. Last Winter seemed to have a big storm every week with so much rain. I much prefer crisp days even if they're cold to wrap up and go for a walk in the sunshine. After checking the weather, we finally saw a Sunday that had sun forecast all day and it was a novelty to see blue sky and feel chilly for once. We grabbed our boots and took the dog to Hampstead Heath for a long walk followed by lunch at The Red Lion and Sun in Highgate for one of the best roast dinner's ever.