It's Halloween tomorrow {!!} and it's suddenly just crept up on me. If you know anything at all about me, I'm sure you know what a huge pumpkin lover I am. In fact, just a huge halloween lover in general. Spooky houses, fun costumes, pumpkins and pumpkin spice everything please. I'm slow in blog writing this October {have probably spent too much time on Instagram instead...} so please forgive me, but I wanted to get these photos up before this month of the pumpkin ends.

Last week, Claire Graham {you might remember her coming to shoot our house this summer for her lifestyle blog Coco Lane? Which you can see here}, followed Ben & I around some of our favourite North London spots for a sunny morning, and snapped away. The idea was that she'd create a little lifestyle feature for Coco Lane and we'd have some photos of us doing what we do best, wandering around our favourite city in our favourite season. It was a really fun day with her and I'd love to share the photos below, if you'd like to see? 

I adore Claire's photographic style, her eye for detail, her camera and editing work, her natural vibe that made us forget at times she had a camera. We joked that it felt like an engagement shoot all over again! We started at Panzer's deli, which makes us feel like we've gone to New York for a couple of hours and is full of pumpkins at this time of year then walked through St John's Wood across to Primrose Hill. This area of London will always feel special to us, as we spent a few years living in Maida Vale so these areas are our old haunts and somewhere we constantly return to throughout the seasons for a weekend wander. Like a selection of villages in the big city, with views out from Primrose Hill. I really love the way that she's captured us, we haven't had any photos together for ages, and the small things like our feet in the leaves, or me taking a photo for Instagram. I can't recommend Claire Graham more if you're looking for a photographer. <3

My parents got a pizza oven this summer {although I should note that it's not just any old pizza oven, it's a Morso Forno Danish designed pizza oven!} and we've been having some fun, family pizza nights ever since. I posted a photo of this on Instagram the other night, and so many of you were interested in finding out how easy it is to use and what we think of it. I also wanted to share notes on our favourite pizza recipes for us to look back on after a few weeks of trial & error... 

We took a trip to Amsterdam a couple of weeks back and L O V E D it. Have you been before? I can't believe how close it is, in fact it's closer to London than Paris, and just forty minutes after take off, we had arrived in the Netherlands. Truth be told, I'd never really paid much attention to Amsterdam. Friends & family have been, and come back raving about it but sometimes for the wrong reasons - namely those coffee shops. There's definitely a bit of a seedy vibe {which I'd always pictured anyway} through their extreme liberalisation with aspects like the red light district. So I didn't ever think to plan a visit there. That was until Soho House opened up there this summer, and I thought 'maybe we should look into Amsterdam'. And that, we did. And it's now up there as one of our very favourite cities. So much so that we actually booked flights to return there in April before we'd even left! It was just beautiful, full of canals, admirable architecture and bikes beyond bikes. Such a cool city, that almost had a West Village feel that reminded us of NYC {always a good thing!} and small enough that you can comfortably visit for just two nights which made it the perfect short break. There's a list of all of the recommend places at the bottom if you haven't got time to read through our travelogue.

I've been keeping a little secret since last Christmas! A whole year where I've been dying to tell you about this exciting collaboration. But I had to keep my lips sealed until now. 

A few weeks back, I was sitting waiting for an appointment - checking my emails as you do to pass the time. There were the usual press releases, sale announcements trying to encourage me to shop, annoying newsletters that I must remember to unsubscribe to, and then one with the subject line 'We want to send you to Jamaica, in the next 6 weeks'! This caught my attention, hook, line & sinker. Over the years I've been extremely lucky to be invited on various press trips, yet this one was a little different. Instead of shooting to promote a destination on my own blog & instagram, this would be shooting exclusively for TUI and their channels. I didn't even have to share that I was there if I didn't want to. I was ridiculously excited, as my husband could come too. But then I started to question whether it could work or not. The shoot was to celebrate the Sensatori Resort's 10th Birthday, at the end of the September, so our trip would have to be taken before then. We were just about to fly to Italy for a long planned trip until the middle of September! Could we really justify going away again so quickly? Shouldn't we spend some time at home to regroup, to sort our lives out and not just holiday every few days?! Quickly, I came to my senses. How could we say no to a trip to Jamaica. And boy, am I glad we did. It was such an incredible trip and a place that I'm so grateful to have discovered and know for returning to whenever we're in need of some tropical sunshine again. 

Do you remember back in July when we visited Belmond's Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons in Oxfordshire {which just got named The Sunday Times Best Hotel in the World {!!}} for a day at gardening school? We'd always wanted to come and eat dinner, and stay, at the two michelin starred restaurant {a restaurant high on our bucket lists!} but that day back in the summer confirmed it even more for us. Seeing that connection between the two acre kitchen gardens, the passion of the head gardeners who work so closely with the chefs, and of course it's all overseen with such fervor by Raymond Blanc. The way that everything is organically grown and for pure flavour and taste, the way that the menus are designed around what will be ready & at it's very best that day, let alone week. So on Sunday, it really was such a special treat to be able to go and stay at Le Manoir for the night with luxury & service like no other and have an unforgettable dinner in the restaurant which will be very hard to beat from now on. I'd love to share some snaps from our stay below, if you'd like to see.

I've always been a big lover of plantation shutters. The look that they give to a property, both inside and out, the privacy, the options to have just some of them open or to close out the world completely. Plus, that old Snow Patrol song 'crack the shutters open wide' is one that my husband & I always reference {it was a favourite of ours years back!} and so most mornings, whoever is the first one awake will shout 'crack the shutters open wide' before we even had shutters in our bedroom haha. One of those silly private jokes from years back that's become part of our daily life. We fitted shutters in our old house, a Victorian terrace which seemed made for them. But in this new house, other than our bathroom at the back of the house with a small, square window, we weren't sure if the shutters would work with the windows. The bedroom windows are such a big feature of the house that let in crazy amounts of light, would we be covering them up too much by fitting shutters? We decided that blinds were fine until we moved into this new bedroom this summer. In our old bedroom, I could get dressed without anybody seeing in, yet in our new bedroom, the floor level is that bit higher so you can't really get dressed {unless you had the blinds shut} without worrying that somebody from the street could see in...  Which is why I was thrilled when California Shutters got in touch to see if we'd like to work with them to fit shutters. YES PLEASE!