“Are you ready for a biscuit & book hunt I asked?!!

“YESSSSSSSSSSS!!!!! They squealed & the little bunnies hopped off with their Easter baskets for an alternative egg hunt courtesy of Biscuiteers & Puffin Books

Here’s our day!

You can order your very own STUNNING tin of Beatrix Potter handmade biscuits from Biscuiteers right Here & hop **hehe!!! over to their Instagram page right here

You can also order your very own Peter Rabbit Spring Suprise here which so far is our FAVE story of the new Peter Rabbit collection!!! Also have a peep at the Beatrix Potter Instagram page here

Thank you as always Penguin Books for having us, we thoroughly enjoyed our Spring Suprise Biscuit & Book Hunt!!!

Those late Winter evenings when the Snowdrops are waving in the wind but the daylight is still being rationed by Mother Nature… you know the ones I mean?

We prolong our bedtime routines at the moment because there’s something extra nourishing about preparing yourself for an entire night of utterly wonderful rest.

We’re happily spending the evening with Little Aurelia & using their BioOrganic luxury little ones skincare range before bed followed by their beautiful first edition ‘Sleep time tale’ collection of ‘Nan night poems.’

“Inside this magic little book,

Turn the page & take a look!

A special world of Woodland Friends,

With ducks & rabbits, owls & hens.

Join these creatures on their trails,

As we begin our Sleep Time Tales…

“It was bedtime in the wood,

& everyone was being good,

Teeth were brushed & stories read

& all were climbing into bed.

Bump, swoosh, what’s that noise?

Is it someone with their toys?

Whoosh, flap, what was that?

Is that the sound of Cecil the Cat?

Flutter, hoot, who’s not in bed?

Is it Henry, Rose or Ted?

Hector Mole wanted to see,

What an earth this noise could be!

He took his lamp to start his search

& came across a silver birch.

Looking up, what did he see?

The owls were waking up, all three!!!”

Thank you so so much for having us Little Aurelia, it’s been an absolute pleasure & our ‘ bath, book, bed’ routine is now perfectly partnered with you indefinitely!

You can find the Little Aurelia bedtime range here or have a peep at their prettiest Instagram page here.

Nan night Sunday Snoozers! Zzz.

Presuming you all know the unfortunate tale of what happened to my ENTIRE roll of photos when we visited the Lake District last month I’ve been really battling wether I’d be able to post a blog that would do our stay there justice. I’m hoping the very few pics I have left will do the trick but if you’d you’d like to see more, Another Place Hotel has a BEAUTIFUL Instagram page & is also featured in this months Wildling Magazine

When you go on your holidays, you usually hope for good weather, but there’s something about that long drive North that makes you feel ‘the worse the weather, the better the adventure!!!’ I don’t think we had a single dry hour for the entire time we were visiting but we really didn’t notice a single drop of rain. Our shelter for the few days was Another Place Hotel which greets you with rows of wellie boots to borrow & smiling staff with homely accents.

It’s almost unfortunate that the hotel is so beautifully lovely as I knew we weren’t going to be spending the time inside it demanded. On the very shore of Ullswater which is the second largest lake in England, the hotel has the clearest views of the Lake over its quarter mile private lake frontage & it’s hugging hills dominate the windows from every direction. The original Georgian part of the hotel is sensitively twinned with a modern extension which mostly houses suits. This is where we thawed, Dylan read, (their Library is constantly updated by Penguin & holds 500 perfectly picked books.) & Flora & I bathed. Sometimes twice a day because…

Mostly moss coloured walls & enamel wear it really is ‘luxuriously rustic’ if there is such a thing?? We ate 3 meals a day each day in the hotel because the food was so so good & refreshingly varied for us. As we sat through an early breakfast each morning the sun rose over the hills while we drank fresh coffee out of stone wear mugs & enamel teapots. We ate vegan overnight oats with fruit, coconuts yogurts & all the trimmings & Flora had d.i.y waffles the size of a dinner plate! Wonderful fuel to get her up those (mountains as she called them!) hills in hailstorms without a peep!

The hotel has 2 restaurant options, a more relaxed menu in The Living Space or a formal 3 course dinner option in their Ramsbeck restaurant. Both were beautifully tentative to us & Flora & we ate like Kings as they say!!! We were invited to use & made the most of the Swim club each day & I may have sneaked in a wonderful massage while Dylan & Flora packed the car!

I have NEVER seen a more beautiful pool in my entire life.

During our stay at Another Place my Stories engagement had THE highest statistics in my entire instagram career so despite loosing the rest of my photos, I’m quite confident you enjoyed the trip with us & hopeful the hotel would be top of your list to stay should you visit Ullswater. I’ve checked this morning & there’s some super ‘last min’ deals & availability coming up so please pop over for a peep. Again, you can visit their Instagram here or their website here. Thank you so much Another Place for being SUPERB hosts to our very first proper family trip. (**sobs regarding lost photos of Flora & Dylan 😭😭😭)

In wonderful timing before our trip to Costa Rica next month we’ve been giving our wellbeing an extra little cuddle with some YUMMO nourishment thanks to The Honestly Good Smoothie Company

Here are a few of our faves from this week!

The Fitness Fuel one.

Organic tofu, banana, cannelloni beans, apple, roasted peanuts, dates, hulled hemp seeds & lucuma.

The Mai Chai.

Organic Cauliflower, banana sweet potato, medjool dates, stem ginger, cashews, sunflower seeds, hemp seeds, cacao nibs & chai space.

Their website makes it super simple to choose a selection of flavours/ingredients that your body needs & they arrive I’m responsible packaging portioned, sliced & frozen. Please pop to their Instagram for a peep at their other ingredients!

Wishing you all a Happy Healthy Sunday!!!

Now, when a wonderful tale turns partly into a very unfortunate event, it’s difficult to remember it with the fondness it deserves…

HOWEVER, Dylan, Flora & I had a lovely lovely time visiting the Lake District last month on our Beatrix Potter Adventure I’m going to blog about it anyway, THEN I’ll tell you what happened when we got home.

The drive up to the Lakes was made much kinder thanks to some audio books, eye spy & weather watching as the rain got harder & harder the further North we got! We were kindly given the new Beatrix Potter Bookful App to try out which in a mind boggling augmented reality brings the first 3 tales of Peter rabbit to life! It’s absolutely stunning & such a juxtaposition of Victorian illustrations & virtual reality!!!

I packed the prettiest surprise nighty sent for Flora from Children Salon & a knitted Flopsy Bunny!

On our second day if you were following on my Stories you would’ve seen the GLORIOUS World of Beatrix Potter we actually spent most of the day there, each one of us getting something wonderful from it, Dylan brushed up on some history, I was inspired by the craft & of every single exhibit & Flora beamed from ear to ear at every corner she turned! (Yes she wore her nighty as a dress that day because she loved it so much!!!!)

That evening I finished reading The Story of Beatrix Potter by The National Trust. She really was more remarkable that you think. Did you know she wrote original papers for Kew Gardens about her findings on Mushrooms but they were published under a mans name?? Those, (next to her guinea pig sketches) are my all time fave drawings of hers.

Heading home Flora talked about all the books we had collected since she was born & we got them out to play Libraries! We have a couple missing along with one or two special ones!

Today in 1901 was the day Beatrix first self-published her Tale of Peter Rabbit & it has stayed ‘in print’ EVER SINCE!!!

Now, you may be thinking my blog was missing something or you could tell that I was writing with a part broken heart…

After upgrading my phone the day after we got home I lost EVERY.SINGLE.PHOTO from our trip. Some specifically for Puffin books of their brand new Further Tales of Rabbit, some for the beautiful beautiful hotel we stayed in Another Place & most importantly, all my pictures of our first proper adventure together including Flora hiking up to the very top to see Aira Force waterfall in an exhausting hail storm!!! Ugh. For someone else it wouldn’t have been a bother, but for me, I cherish photos more than most & OUCH it really got me!!!

Anyway, hopefully this still does it’s job & prompts you to dig out your dusty Beatrix Potters, order some new ones, visit the Lakes OR back up your camera!!! If any of these are done then I’m happy!!!

You can find the NEW Peter Rabbit books here. Happy Sunday!!! 🐰🐰🐰

You might have noticed a few times on my Stories this week we’ve been making lots of decorations for Flora’s Christmas tree ( deffo recommend getting them one for their bedroom if you have ‘decoration OCD’ like myself!) Anyway, we’ve made Angels, reindeers, gingerbreads, baubles AND a Nativity which Flora has absolutely adored!!! I think homemade Christmas’ are just charming & getting the same bits out again & again is like seeing man old relative! 💗💗💗

So, here are pics of our lovely week, I’ve enjoyed it as much as Flora & if you’d like to recreate, Baker Ross have super kindly given me a 20% off discount code to share with you which is MASSIVE as they’re such good value as it is!!! You can click here to shop direct with them!

You might have spotted Flora’s tree this eve with all her ‘creations’ on it! I’ll make sure I take a better pic tomo in the daylight for you as it’s SO chaotic it’s actually wonderful!!!! Thank you so much Baker Ross for having us!!!! xxx

We’ve spent this week mostly reading about Winston, the teeny little Mouse who delivered Christmas! Yay Chriiiiiiiistmaaaas!!! 🐭🎄🐭

It’s written & beautifully illustrated by Alex Smith, who posted it & a little hamper of sparkly goodies for us to create some crafts this week!

The stunning Hardback feels like a non-disposable advent calendar & is meant to be read a chapter (there’s 24 & a half of them) an evening the weeks before the big day. *However, if you have a 4.5year old & are anything like myself-this is absolutely not going to happen. 2 hours straight, most of the crafts, letters, stories completed & now we prefer a certain little vermin over a rotund hairy man! *We WILL be using it properly over the next 40 days but we just couldn’t put it down & wait!!!

Anyway, here’s a few more pics to lure you over to Amazon to buy Alex’ book. It really is one that will be bought out year after year & enjoyed just as much each time.

Winston really does promote kindness & courage, generosity & bravery but not just at Christmas & not just to our friends or family.

You can order your very own ‘How Winston Delivered Christmas’ here

Today must have been the most beautiful October the tenth in the entire history of October the tenths right??? *So so beautiful I must have made about 20 of my Instagram stories!!!

Anyway, amongst some other potterings, we painted our pumpkins pastel. Here’s a lot of pretty proof…

I’m not sure how many photos of pastel pumpkins one can take but I could keep going & going!!! (And *Yes the out of focus one is meant to be there, Weirdly I’m mesmerised by it!😆💕) X

Gosh it’s been a while since I posted a blog so I hope this one is worthy!?!! Some questionable heavy filtering but such sweet memories of a super wedding day.

It marked the last of 6 weeks of renovations & living in a tent at Rose Cottage as it had been empty for 8 years before we finally moved in, the very night before our wedding here!

Flora loves the story so much, we recreated it for her on our anniversary on Friday! Dylan’s suit from The British Tweed Company still fits like a glove & is always his choice for any occasions we go to.

***My dress isn’t such a perfect fit anymore!!!(OK so he’s just admitted that he can’t do his waistcoat up anymore so that’s good news, kind of!!!)The Church is just at the end of our village so we walked over after supper & let her do her ‘Here comes the Bride thing!’ 💗💗💗Everyone should re-create their Wedding for their daughter !!! She absolutely ADORED it! 😆😆😆Floras’s dress is aged 7-8!!! 😆 But is so perfect for ‘dressing up!’ & is from Monstrous Vintage Kids who I found on Instagram last year. (Waistcoat open! ☝🏻🧐)

Maybe the old filters aren’t so bad after all??!! Hah…just kidding. They’re terrible.

I still have a voucher code you can use to order a suit like Dylan’s, It’s for 10% off made to measure tweed by using ‘Florafairweather’ Pop over to The British Tweed Company to make best use of it!!! ***Heads there now to Check waistcoat prices!!! ❤️❤️❤️ Happy Sunday Love Birds! xx

So firstly, before I forget, I have some inside news… Tracy Beaker has a DAUGHTER… did you know that??? I mean, GAH* I’ve missed out on a LOT of Jaqueline Wilson over the last few years which I have been really looking forward to catching up on as Flora grew older but as she’s just made me feel like a great great granny I might give dear Jaqueline a miss now!!!!! 😆😆😆🤦🏼‍♀️ Come to think about it, I was mostly invited to the Puffin Books Sleepover to celebrate the 40th anniversary of a timeless hero, Each Peach Pear Plum. Now, 40 years is a LONG time so technically Baby Bunting could actually be a Dad, OR Grandad or Mum actually, was it a boy or girl?? 🤔👶🏼

Anyway, I digress.

I travelled to London with Sir Dylan by train but ditched him in our beeeeautiful room at The Principal London (his knowledge of Children’s books is terrible & I didn’t want him dragging me down in the Quiz I’d heard Puffin were hosting for us!!!) ***My table came second, but first place would’ve been ours if my copy of The Jolly Postman wasn’t very torn up by an overenthusiastic new mum trusting her one year old Flora with an already falling to bits copy!!! Anyway, digressing again!!!

We had an amazing three course, tailored vegan meal & bottomless wine while chatting to the illustrators, authors & Penguin gurus dotted amongst each table.

AMAZINGLY their books were piled on tables around us to browse & take home, or in my case, grill poor Michael Whaite about his book 100 Dogs & how he actually managed to create his book… I was honestly hoping he owned them ALL, all 100. (But actually, turns out his brother has a boarding kennels so tadaaaah his content came from there!!!) I knew Flora would ADORE it so he signed it for her & I slyly put Hairy McClairy to the back of her shelf!!!!

Next we had a drawalong with the illustrators. NOW, even if you’ve followed me for a while you probably didn’t know that I did Children’s illustration at Uni, however, I’m terribly UN-competitive, I HATE competition or attention, however, like the quiz, we really could’ve won BUT this time I was just mesmerised by Lauren O’Hara drawing on the table next to me!!!! You may remember the name from my Hortense & the Shadow giveaway last winter. Both the O’Hara sisters were there & just as I imagined they were perfect replicas of their superbly stunning book!!! (I have a piece of illustration by Natalia & Lauren in my giveaway! 💗)

After more chit chat I collected each of the books in my Each Peach book bag (Also in the giveaway!)

I then scurried upstairs to find Sir Dylan snoozing sweetly on a pile of a bed as soft as cloud! Zzz.

Now, the story was meant to go as far as the New Covent Garden Flower Market at the sound of my early morning wake up call. I’ve never been before & as it was my first time in London in about 10 years I REALLY wanted to go, however, no one told the tourist that it wasn’t ACTUALLY in Covent Garden & would take around an hour to get there & I had to be back in plenty of time for our Each Peach Pear Plum breakfast. The flower market was knocked on the head & I showered leisurely & got to breakfast in plenty of time! I sat with Hollie De Cruz @theyesyesmum & Sammi Jo @mother_freckle & had the most relaxing conversation about birth, life & pigs!!! (Usually how most of my conversations end up!)

The details added to breakfast were just beautiful, little picnic baskets of peach sweets & pear drops, Special Anniversary edition Each Peach books with a beautiful letter inside from Alan Alberg himself (sorry sorry, I can’t bare to give this one away!!!!!) another goodie bag with Beatrix Potter coins from The Royal Mint, Roald Dahl goodies, The Hungry Caterpillar book & toy (Kim & bump, this is put aside for you!!!🐛)

I didn’t take many pictures of the breakfast as I was totally swept up with the loveliness of everything but Lucy, the Puffin Mama let me sneak some of the decorations into my bag so I could re-create the entire thing the next morning for Flora Bee! <now, if you were following my Stories that day you’d have seen me making my way back through London carrying at least half a stones worth of pastel Delphiniums!!!!!! They were the table decorations for the event & because of my flower market sob story I was allowed to bring them home! As Sammi Jo put it so so beautifully, yes, I was living my best life. ☺️> Thank you Penguin & Puffin for making it so so precious!!!

The next few pictures were taken back at home reliving a beautiful 24 hours now with Baby girl…

And HERE is everything in my giveaway!!!! You MUST follow every author & illustrator that I tag on my page to enter AND you must tag a friend because WHO on earth doesn’t adore books are need to be reminded how fabulous they are in our little ones lives???!!!