Meet Me In St David's

Since I was a baby, there has been one place we have been returning to year after year for family holidays, St David's in Wales.
It's a beautiful city (technically speaking because it has a cathedral, but in reality it's just a tiny town) on the coast of Pembrokeshire that is full of charm and adventure, the kind of place that I look forward to taking my own children to someday in the future.
I haven't been able to make the last couple of trips there because of work and gigs so it felt wonderful to be going back and to be able to bring Arjan this time, he's such a water baby, I knew he would love being so close to the sea (the caravan park we stay at is literally on the cliff above Caerfai Bay, a gorgeous little beach).

It was so nice to be back now that all us siblings are 'adults' because there were so many more things we could do together, plus my brothers love Arjan to pieces and they could go do boy stuff with him. We were luckier with the weather than other years and although we had a couple of stormy days it was mostly lovely and warm. We spent early mornings fishing, went for walks, did a bird watching boat trip and ate lots of ice cream!
I have so many pictures (including some my dad took) that I may have to split these over a couple of posts to let you see the good ones. Maybe I'll save the hundreds of pictures I took of coastal flora for a separate post.

Now now, Davey, it has to be cooked first.

beautiful shimmer

Our little home for the week

This dog did not want to follow his owners in...

....so he just waited.

Beautiful anemones  

some welsh

always got to stop to stroke a sun-bathing kitty

Bishop's Palace

mmmmmmm

Our friend's scruffy dog, Hamish

Caerfai Bay

The resemblance is uncanny 

Codlings

Ponies are used to graze down the grass.

We were watching harbour porpoise (which were impossible to photograph) and this guy popped up! 

Gannets were fishing with the porpoise

Boat trip time!

It was a brilliant trip and I hope it's not too long until the next time we can visit. Sorry for the photo dump, but this place is pretty special and I wanted to share it with you. 

Birthday

Another year has come and gone and on the 10th of July I celebrated my 23rd birthday.

Normally, in our house birthdays are kicked off with presents and breakfast, but not this time. It was up early and in to the car for a trip to Alton Towers! For those of you outside the UK, it's one of the country's biggest and best theme parks, built around a beautiful estate with a castle and acres of stunning gardens.
Our family has been numerous times over the years, but it never gets old and we wanted to introduce Arjan to it as he is just a big kid!
We were originally hoping that because we were going during school term time that it would be pretty quiet. How wrong we were.
One of the many school related unions decided it was the perfect day for a strike, so loads of schools across the country were closed. Then all the rest of the schools seemed to have decided that that was the best day for end of year trips too!
It was not as busy as we've seen it before, but it was by no means quiet, even though we got in at opening time, the bigger rides already had 1hour + waiting times when we got to them.

It was amazing weather, we got to do everything we wanted to and by the end of it we were all exhausted. Then we got home and managed to wake up enough to have a slice of birthday cookie (mmmm Millie's) and open presents.

My ever-beautiful little sister (in the back) with her lovely girlfriend

Oblivion, terrifying ride with a vertical drop!

Some Oblivion riders

Arjan couldn't contain his excitement

Arjan and my brother, Calum have a special relationship...

The estate gardens are beautiful and huge

This little girl had the unicorn from Despicable Me and just look at the adorable hat!

The park's newest ride, Smiler, we waited for over an hour but I thought it was disappointing.

Mama and Papa Mac 

*drool*

I can't begin to explain the oddness of my sister, but this was the lovely picture she gave me...

I could only bring back so many of my presents due to hand luggage restrictions etc, but I may do a haul post later, I got some pretty cool stuff!

It was a great birthday, but as always it feels like it went by so quickly and I can't believe it's already August.

Summer Loving

I feel so horrendously out of touch, I haven't posted here in over a month and in that time I haven't even read any other blogs or checked my twitter and I've only given Facebook a glance in the past few days. I suppose, in a way, it's a good thing, I've been busy with family and friends, holidays and home, so I haven't felt too guilty about neglecting this blog for a little while as it's with good reason. But now I have a quiet few weeks ahead (and a list of potential posts as long as my arm!) so, dear readers, prepare yourselves for a blogging binge.
To kick off the post parade I'm going to transport you back to June 29th....

Bright and early, Arjan and I caught a train to Utrecht for a day of wedding prep-work with our friends, the betrothed Nikki and Pablo.
It was a hectic day to say the least, upon arrival we instantly went into productive mode and spent hour after hour sorting, baking, transporting, decorating, arranging, organizing and cooking, until we were all finally able to breathe a sigh of relief at about 12am.

The next morning it all kicked off again, the guys got showered and dressed and then were promptly exiled from the house so that the bride could be readied.
Like the happy couple, the wedding was a little non-traditional, and rather than getting their first glimpse of each other as Nikki walked down the aisle, they had a beautiful and touching moment outside of their canal-side home, whilst us girls watched on from above on the street and the photographer surreptitiously circled and snapped the whole thing.
We then made our way to the venue, a beautiful countryside barn in nearby Soest, as the couple went off to do photographs at a separate location.

The ceremony was very sweet, mostly comprising of touching and funny speeches from the best man, brother of the groom and friend of the bride. After the rings were exchanged and the bride was kissed (which earned a shout of "shall we leave the room for a bit" from a rogue uncle) it was party time!

There was cake, conversations, dinner, champagne, dancing to the most incredible and energetic band, and I crashed pretty hard by the end of the night.

As a wedding gift, Arjan and I offered to cater the evening do, making 4 different canapes for the 90 guests. We made mini courgette quiches, crostini with pea and mint mash, bruschetta with tomato and basil and the hit of the night, corn fritters with salsa (our friend Julia came to me at one point "Shonagh, these are amazing, I don't even like corn!"). Sadly, my camera batteries died shortly after the ceremony and I forgot to charge my spares, so I have no pictures of the food or the rest of the day.
Here's a few that I did get:

Literally translated this means "eat tasty" but it's just like saying "enjoy"

One dapper gentleman

It was a beautiful wedding and I'm so glad to have been a part of it!

The next day, Pablo and Nikki left for their honeymoon in Spain and we got to house/kitty sit for them! We had a great time in Utrecht but I didn't crack out the camera at all. Most days we walked around handing CVs out as we're hoping to move there in the next month, I got an email back from a wine bar that is about to open and had an interview with the owners last week. I feel like it went really well and I'm so nervous to hear back, so keep your fingers crossed for me!

Outfit: Sneak Peek

On Monday, our good friends Pablo and Nikki are getting married in Utrecht and we are so excited! This is only the second wedding I've been to and at the last one I was a tiny flower girl! So I've been having fun putting together outfits for both me and Arjan. Ebay has been my saviour with this, not having much money for suits or dresses doesn't mean that you can't get something really great if you know where to look.
I just bought the last finishing touches today and now that I've got it all together I'm even more excited for the big day.    
What's even better about this wedding though, is that we're doing some catering for the evening party! It's our wedding present to the happy couple, a selection of homemade savoury snacks to keep people dancing throughout the night. Of course I will do a post about this at a later date, but the fun doesn't stop there, the day after the wedding Pablo and Nikki go on a mini-moon (their proper honeymoon will come next year) and we get to housesit their beautiful, canal-side Utrecht apartment for a whole 5 days! I can barely contain my eagerness for this little holiday, it can't come soon enough.
Until then, here is a sneak peak of both mine and Arjan's wedding outfits…

Mint, gold and who doesn't love shoes with parrots on?!

Guess who is going to be one dapper gent 

Garden: Oma's Garden

Arjan and I have been spending a lot of time with his Oma (dutch for Grandma) recently and we've been helping in and out of the house.
I love spending time in the garden and, with the weather as nice as it's been, everything is bursting with life.
A couple of months ago we did some major planting, lots of seeds and bulbs went into the ground, I wish I had some before pictures so you could see the difference, but it slipped my mind at the time.

One of my favourite additions to Oma's garden is these beautiful violas, she bought a big tray of tiny wilting plants with barely one flower each, but I planted them out, watered them and rigorously deadheaded every few days and in no time they became this riotous explosion of greenery and petals.

Another half-dead, garden store purchase was these lobelia, I just crammed most of them into a couple of pots hoping that at least one or two plants might survive but yet again, they surprised me and have flourished!

This messy green patch may look like a patch of weeds, but it is actually the result of a packet of wild-flower seed mix. Arjan got to pick a patch of dirt to sprinkle them over and just chucked the whole lot onto this little corner. A few tiny flowers have begun to peak through the foliage and there was a beautiful poppy standing off to one side, but its petals have already fallen off, so I'll have to try catch the next one that blooms. I'm excited to see what else erupts from this patch of unkempt wilderness.

One of Oma's regular garden features has yet again made its appearance this year. We planted several dahlia tubers around the garden and after laying dormant for quite some time, they have become fairly sturdy little plants, one even has two tiny flower buds poking out. It'll be nice to see what assortment of colours we get.

And finally, this is a little row of forget-me-nots, a childhood favourite of mine. I planted them from seeds along with some royal mallows, but when I planted out the little seedlings the mallows were mysteriously eradicated by mice/mini landslide/Oma's disapproval at their placement, we will never know. These forget-me-nots are bulking up beautifully though and I think they'll blossom quite nicely.

In other news, I'm currently testing out a rather pungent garlic and onion aphid repellent on my sweet peas, so far I've seen far fewer but I'll just have to keep spraying and pray that the smell doesn't linger…