Friday already?! Wow that week went fast!! I mean, it may have something to do with the fact we spent two dreamy dreamy days of it at Soho Farmhouse {and had two of the funnest days ever, can't wait to blog the photos soon}, but yay for the weekend rolling around again. I'm sat here on the sofa warm from the last of the September sunshine. We've been so lucky with this Autumn weather so far. I'm loving the sunlit days and cosy dark candlelit evenings. I think it may just be my favourite time of the year.

Yay finally a room finished enough to write a full makeover post on! When I look around at the house and see so much that's unfinished, I forget just how much we have changed and done so far. Looking back at these photos reminds me of the transformation week by week. I've forgotten about the weeks of hard work and occasionally tears because I'm just so thrilled with how it looks and feels now. We had an idea from the start of the kind of look we were going for, light and fresh with a lot of white and some bare wood. In the end it's probably less white than we first envisaged it would be after sanding the floorboards back and keeping them natural. It seemed such a shame to paint over them! But it works and I love love love waking up in here every morning. It still feels such a treat. 

Hello Friday! It's been forever since I wrote one of these weekend/week round up posts. But this weekend deserves to be celebrated because after a week of feeling really quite under the weather {the first cold of the season has really knocked me for six}, I'm starting to feel much better and I'm so excited for a chilled out weekend with my love. We have nowhere in particular to be so can just see what we feel like doing. I'm hoping to sleep in after a few nights of broken sleep and a busy week. And also HELLO AUTUMN. After what felt like an endless summer with hot sunny days, I'm really loving the darker cosier nights with new jumpers to wear, new throws to snuggle up under and all the apples and pumpkins that this season brings. The light has been amazing this week as the sun gets lower and the trees start to almost glow.

Do you remember when we rented the most gorgeous villa in Corfu last year? {posts here and here} Well we loved the week so much that we came home and booked the exact same week again this year! I tried to find somewhere similar in style but in a different location yet had to admit defeat. You see, I just don't think anything else would compare. Especially as a villa for 2. Trust me it is so so hard to find villas for just two people. I've always been one for saying that there are too many gorgeous places in the world to go back to the same place twice, yet on this occasion I've had to eat my words.. The thing as, I feel that as I get older and life gets busier, you want to go away somewhere that you know you will love. We knew just how gorgeous this villa was and we knew where our favourite beaches were to visit and restaurants to eat at. It was easy. We didn't have to think and that's exactly what I wanted. It was a week of pure relaxation, I switched off properly for the first time in months, I read 5 books {!} and loved spending time with Ben. We pretty much ate, sunbathed, oohed at the crystal clear water, sunbathed some more, ate some more, slept and just lazed about for the whole week. The best kind of holiday. Whilst we've said that we won't go back next year, I don't think this visit will be our last. Greece is just too beautiful. Photos from our week below, and I'm also working on my first video which will be released as soon as I've found some time to edit it! {Forgive me by the way if all these photos look similar to last year!}. Plus a video!

After getting the keys to our house back in March, spending a few months renovating and then setting a date to finally move in, we couldn't wait to throw a housewarming party. We love to entertain and would regularly have summer BBQs or wintery dinner parties at our old house so when we were living at my parents for the best part of 6 months, it felt weird not being able to host! We decided that a house doesn't need to be completely finished to have a housewarming party and also if we didn't have one in the summer {when we could keep it outside}, we'd probably never get round to having one. Rather than our usual small gatherings, it would be a chance to have everyone all at once, an excuse for a bigg party! So we went all out. Settling into your dream forever home deserves to be celebrated, and celebrate we did. 

We set a date for this Saturday just gone, hoping that summer would hold on long enough for us all to be outside. Luckily, even though we just missed the heatwave and it was a little chilly, the rain stayed away. We invited 60 people and I don't think I'd have coped if it had been pouring with rain! We hired a gorgeous vintage wood-fired pizza van that saved us from having to worry about catering {and doing a huge food shop and storing all the food, cooking it etc} and based the party around that. All we had to worry about was some booze {although we told everyone to bring a bottle too to keep the cost down a bit}, decorations and puds. I made a huge batch of brownies and then just bought meringues, strawberries, cream, watermelon and a couple of big puddings from Costco. Originally I'd wanted it all to be in the back garden but then I realised that the van wouldn't get past the garage so in the end it was mostly a party on our driveway! But it actually worked really well and we opened up the front door and a back door in the hallway that goes out into the garden and put the pizzas and drinks out the front and puddings out the back. 

The pizza van was the star of the show and a great focal point. We also filled up a rolltop bath with ice for drinks which everybody loved. I'd planned to fill some wheelbarrows up for drinks but last weekend Ben had bought the bath for just £20 from eBay to use in our garden so it seemed like a waste to leave it sitting in the garage when it could be filled with ice! I made a playlist on Spotify and connected it to two Sonos speakers, one out the front and one in the back and we used disposable everything which made the cleaning up super easy {even glasses! Thank god for Costco}. Other than that, I just added a few decorative bits like a chalkboard, a pair of step ladders to tie balloons onto, a couple of big storm lanterns, deck chairs and put a few paper pom-poms in the back garden. It's amazing how easily a few jars of flowers and some candles can pretty up a party. We borrowed and lit the fire pit from my Parents at the last minute as we realised just how chilly it felt that night. It made us all stink like bonfires for the next day but kept us warm and looked really nice as it got dark. Such a fun evening and so great to get everybody together, our gorgeous friends, families and neighbours. All the photos below! 

Pizza by the incredible Ruffwood Pizza

Balloons from Northstar Balloons

Pom Pom decorations from Homesense. 

P.S. we got ice delivered from All About Ice and it lasted until the next morning! They make it more solid compared to buying it from a supermarket or making yourself, a tip I got from my Mumma. And we left bottle openers and cups by the bath and got everyone to help themselves to drinks all night which meant we didn't have to worry about topping people up. 

Happy Friday all! I'm back from Corfu and have had a fun week so I thought I'd check in here quickly before the weekend. What I love most about being a blogger is how every day is so varied. From photo shoots to black tie dinners at Royal Palaces this week has been all kinds of fun. 

I'm long overdue an allotment post and er, this is a pretty long one.. {remember this one from last summer and the original post here}. It's something that I don't often post about on Instagram or the blog but it really does play such a big part in our day to day life. It's become a ritual to walk there before or after dinner and at the moment it's overflowing with fresh pickings. This is our third year, and summer, with it and considering that we've been rather busy with the house renovations this year {and probably put the least amount of effort in so far} it's amazing just how well everything has done. It's the fullest it's ever been, I think we could do with an extension already! Crazy considering we were so overwhelmed with the size of it when we began.