As you may have noticed by now, I have a bit of a thing for galvanised tubs to plant everything and anything in my garden. I love their vintage look but also they're built to last and will long outlive terracotta pots that smash or crack easily through the seasons. A few people have asked me about preparing tubs for planting so I thought I'd put together a little guide -

Happy Weekend! It's an extra special one for me as it's my Birthday tomorrow so the weekend starts today. My parents and Ben are taking me to Petersham Nurseries for lunch today, somewhere I've wanted to eat at for ages. And then tomorrow I'm excited for a big white chocolate and raspberry cake with family and then an afternoon tea with the girls next week - dragging out the celebrations for as long as possible. Love Birthday's so much and I've felt excited all week for it. Birthdays are overrated don't you think, it should be all about the birthweek! On Sunday we're planning to go to Wisley as I have an event for SYGM just around the corner. Hope you have a good one, how was your week? Friday photos, which scream Springtime, here..

Ben and I never normally plan holidays for the end of July or August as prices are stupidly high with the school holidays and you'd land up surrounded by annoying children. Instead we plan a couple of summer day trips within the UK and a super sunny day in Dorset has been one of our favourites. It was 28 degrees that day without a cloud in the sky! We felt like we'd been away in Europe for the day without any of the hassle. England can be so so beautiful.

I'm reposting the #sygmdoescali series that I wrote for So You're Getting Married on here over the next couple of days if you fancy a read of what we got up to in beautiful San Diego a couple of weeks ago. This is part one - 

Why had I never considered going to San Diego before now?? The traditional Californian road trip/fly drive has always been to start in San Francisco {as we did back in 2012 that I blogged about here and here}, possibly incorporate Las Vegas and then finish in Los Angeles. But if you go just a tiny bit further down the coast, around a two hour drive from LA and just before you get to the Mexican border, you'll reach San Diego. And wow, how worthwhile those extra two hours would be. We actually flew direct from Heathrow to and from San Diego, BA run a flight daily there. We had eight days, four of those were hosted by the San Diego Tourist Board to showcase La Jolla as a wedding destination but we figured it was a long way to fly for just four days {well that was our excuse anyway, really we just wanted as much time possible in the gorgeous Californian sunshine} so we booked four nights independently to explore a bit more.

Happy Weekend! It's solar eclipse Friday too which I think starts about now but the sky is far too cloudy to see any sunshine out there at the moment {probably a good thing as I don't have the special glasses and would probably burn my eyes trying to see it haha}. This week has flown by, again. I could do with another day in every week to get more done at the moment! After last week's promise of Spring it's felt like more like Winter again with chilly grey days but I had a lovely time at The Country Living Spring Fair on Wednesday filled with all things pretty and springlike, lambs et al! And once again the house has been filled with spring bulbs, they're the best aren't they?! Weekend plans and this week's photos after the jump...

If you saw these cookies you'd think that they look like normal cookie dough right? They're actually made from chickpeas and have no flour, oil or refined sugar! And as a bonus they're loaded with folic acid, fibre, iron, zinc, copper, maganese and protein compared to your standard white flour/butter/sugar cookies. They're soft and gooey too, my favourite type of cookies. And crucially they're ridiculously easy to make and you can't taste the chickpeas. Guilt free! 

You may have noticed that I have a thing about flowers so I was always going to love Chelsea Flower Show - the greatest celebration of flowers in the world. It's the equivalent of Paris fashion week for flowers hosted by the Royal Horticultural Society. Even the Queen attends! It's held in Chelsea, an area of London that I love, for five days every May and makes for a lovely day or evening out full of prettiness.

After I finished my A-levels in 2011 and before I started my law degree, Ben and I wanted to do some travelling. Something a bit more adventurous than just a laze around beach kind of holiday. Well, let me rephrase that - Ben wanted to go travelling in the typical sense of the word with backpacks, hostels et al I wanted to see some more of the world but with just a little more luxury than your typical backpacking trip. We decided on South East Asia, starting in Bangkok, going through Laos, down Vietnam and back through Cambodia to fly home from Bangkok again. Ben would have gone for months as he had done in the past but while I wanted to see as much as South East Asia as we could, three weeks was more doable for me. So we compromised and set about planning an amazing trip to see and do as much as possible but staying in fairly nice hotels along the way. All, in all it was an incredible experience and real adventure that we really loved.

Yay it's Springtime and seed planting season again, a whole summer of pretty cut flowers is just around the corner. I've grown a few types of flowers from seed over the past few years {sweet peas and cosmos mainly} but this year I've decided to go even further and make a small cutting flower patch on the allotment. It's amazing just how many flowers you'll get even from just a couple of packets of seeds and little bit of time invested now. Last year, after shoving some sweet pea seeds into some soil at this time I had huge bunches of flowers, every other day for over eight weeks! You have to keep cutting them, filling your kitchen with prettiness and their amazing scent. When I wrote our garden post last year a few of you asked for a guide of when to plant things. So this is the time to plant most seeds, go buy some compost, have a read of this mini guide and get planting!

Happy Friday! This has really felt like the first week of Spring, good timing after getting back from California last week. It's so lovely to not have to think about a coat or a thick scarf before you go out the door. I've loved having the doors wide open in the day and spending some time in the garden. We've started our first lot of seeds off too, that's when you know that Spring has really sprung. I'll do a blog post about seeds next week, I'm planning more of a cutting garden this year at the allotment. How was your week? I've mainly been playing catch up whilst nipping out for nice walks, catching up with friends and eating lunch in the garden. Also can you sense a theme with these weeks photos? - nearly all of them involve flowers this week! 

Yum, it's rhubarb season! One of my favourites. I love the it's pinky green hue and how delicious it is with vanilla. We're hoping that we'll have a big supply from our allotment this year but Ben's mum always has an abundance to give away with leaves bigger than our heads. What are your best ways to use it? Here are a few of mine..

I'm back! Hope you had a good weekend? Sorry there was no Friday post last week as we were flying home. Regular posting will resume as soon as I've caught up with everything. Anyway, for today a photography post! 

As I've mentioned, I'm officially in love with my new camera {this one} and a few of you have asked if I'd recommend it. But I also wanted to update the photos of our kitchen on here. When I put up our kitchen makeover post it was Halloween so the house was filled with pumpkins and it looked really autumnal, instead these photos are filled with spring... 

Hello March and the official start of Spring, I really love this time of year with the evenings getting lighter, daffodils, tulips and magnolia blossom all in bloom, little lambs jumping around and warmer weather. It's also my Birthday month which is always rather lovely. We're currently in California, get back later this week so a little hiatus in activity on here for a few days I'm afraid. Back to normal posting next week though. And in the meantime, some of my favourite Spring photos from the past couple of years if you'd like to see...