friday five

from dazeychic

Thank God it's Friday! How are you, friends? What has been rocking your world this week?

I've been enjoying:

Healthy breakfasts
I've been having fresh full-of-fruit smoothies most mornings, or overnight oats. Making overnight oats is very simple - I put some ordinary porridge oats in an old jam jar, pour in enough milk to cover and leave in the fridge overnight. Add fresh fruit and yoghurt the next morning - so delicious! Haven't had much chance to experiment with different flavours yet so stay tuned. I also love going out for breakfast. We've had friends from Australia staying this week, so have shown them all our favourite local breakfast spots! The photo above is yoghurt and muesli at La Fromagerie in Marylebone (recommended by Mandy!).

photo from Nick Gilmartin

The London marathon
I feel like I did when I was a kid waiting for Christmas when I think about the London marathon. I watched it on Sunday afternoon, right by Big Ben (as above) so the runners only had less than a kilometre to go. It was amazing to watch. After waking up from a very late night feeling grumpy and sick, watching the marathon was the best cure for the doldrums ever!! I was in tears watching some of them. It was just amazing watching these determined, incredible people giving it everything they had for the final hurdle. Some of them were in big heavy costumes for charity too - and one guy even had a fridge on his back! The crowd support was really amazing too - they were cheering everyone on and I felt so pleased to be there. I ended up staying for nearly three hours - I hadn't looked at the time once, it went so quick! I clapped until my hands were stinging. I walked home afterwards, thinking to myself, maybe I could do this...... I am eagerly waiting for May 4th, the day the ballot opens! I'll put in for it and we'll see :D

Walking to work every day
The sun is out, the sky is blue, there's not a cloud to spoil the view.....I love walking to and from work at the moment. It really gears me up for the day, and lets me debrief after my day. It takes me about 45 minutes, really pushing hard and walking as fast as I can without breaking into a run. Sometimes the walk home is a pain, especially walking through crowded areas where I'm lucky I don't dislocate my knee with all the dodging I have to do (!), but I'm always glad I make the effort. In the mornings I can ring my family in Australia, or listen to my favourite podcast, and in the evenings I tend to just walk and take in all the surrounds of the city - the smells, the noise, the sun shining on the buildings.

Cheese on toast
This is my ultimate comfort food, I've decided. Forget mashed potato, forget rice pudding - it's cheese on toast all the way. I make it in the oven too - takes about 5 minutes and you don't have any dramas with the griller that way! It tastes best, I find, when you use the best bread you can get your hands on - I use either my homemade bread or the sourdough I sometimes buy from the grocer down the road - and really nice cheese. Our friends who were staying with us visited Cardiff on Monday and came back with a bag of goodies for me. Tom said my face was priceless when I realised it was full of Welsh cheese!! One of the cheeses they brought back for me was Y Fenni, which is a cheddar that has wholegrain mustard and Welsh ale mixed in. This was so delicious melted on my homemade bread! Next week, when Tom is out for the evening, I might just make cheese on toast for dinner.

Dresses
Seeing the wedding is not far away I need to get my act together and buy a dress!! I'm not going for a "wedding dress" though - I want to buy a dress I can wear again, and I also want it to be green. A couturier near my house had a dress in their window which I fell in love with three months ago. My sister, when she was visiting, and I went in and it was every bit as beautiful and silky and elegant as it looked - but the £3,300 price tag meant I left the shop with a heavy heart, wondering how utterly desperate it would look for me to maybe offer to clean their toilets for the next twenty years if they'd let me have the dress for say....£500?! :P

Then I found this one:


Still a bit ex-y (Alexander McQueen) but a bit more doable! And I loved the colour. Only problem was it was with The Outnet and they only had a size 6 and an 8 left. Sigh. If I put in a lot of effort over the next few months, maybe the 8 would be a possibility, but to be honest I don't think I can be bothered. Of course I want to look my best on the day, but I have a really healthy lifestyle already. I'm not dieting to fit into a dress. No way. Been there, done that. Note to brides: if you can't fit into your wedding dress a month before the wedding, take it as a sign :P

However, a kind friend at work came to the rescue and recommended a designer who will modify one of her designs for me - it's an emerald green maxi dress with cutaway shoulders - and it looks really lovely, so who knows. Or I might take that picture above to a dressmaker and see what they can do. Either way, this is the weekend I make a serious start on dress shopping :D

What about you? What's been your top five this week?

Enjoy your weekend peeps! :D

PS: Can you believe this time three years ago I was in San Francisco?! (not with flowers in my hair). Good times, good times.