This week's happiness

Happy Halloween Friday!!

Things that have made me happy this week...

Jessica Mary
On Sunday I was reunited with one of my best friends, Jess. I went to school with this gorgeous girl, we've been friends for yonks. But somehow we hadn't seen each other in nearly a year!! There wasn't an excuse for it really, just that work and other plans kept getting in the way and before we knew it, months and months had passed. Anyway, she came down to Greenwich on Sunday to spend the day at ours. It was so good to see her again! We wandered around bustling Greenwich looking for somewhere to go for coffee (hot chocolate) but Greenwich is always packed with tourists at the weekends so everywhere was choc a bloc! But we managed to find a little table in the corner of Costa and enjoyed a good old natter over hot chocolates. Then we headed home and snuggled on the sofa for the afternoon, watching films and chatting whilst Rob cooked us all a roast dinner. Distance definitely does make the heart grow fonder but I don't think we should leave it so long next time! 
Love you, Jessica xxx

Pumpkin Carving!

Yep, it's that time of year again... No Halloween would be complete without a pumpkin carving session! I'll be the first to admit I'm a big kid at heart when it comes to this kind of stuff, I love going all out and getting creative. I missed out last year as I was working, so this year I was extra excited to pop on some music and carve our pumpkins ready for Halloween tomorrow. We live in a big block of flats, so we never get trick-or-treaters knocking at the door but the pumpkins look great in the windows none the less.

We've been pretty inventive with our pumpkin designs in previous years... here's what we created in 2012!

(That ghost literally took me hours...)

Halloween Baking: Jack Skellington cupcakes

I love October and the festivities it brings: Halloween, pumpkin carving, pumpkin flavoured everything infact! To well and truly get in the Halloween spirit, I decided to bake some Halloween themed cupcakes! I got the inspiration for these Jack Skellington (Nightmare Before Christmas) cupcakes from good old Pinterest.

I used one of Nigella's simple fairy cake recipes from her How To Be A Domestic Goddess book - you can find it here. I baked them for about 17 minutes and they turned out perfectly! Once cooled I slice the 'peaks' off the top of my cakes to make them flat, I find this makes spreading the icing much easier and means the cakes are neat and even. To make the buttercream icing I literally just whisked together 100g unsalted butter and 150g sieved icing sugar - it's quite rich in taste and undoubtedly very naughty but yummy all the same. I then used a dark chocolate 'writing icing' tube (bought from tesco, found here) to draw on Jack Skellington's notoriously cheeky face. Some of them are a little messier than others but I'm rather pleased with them, I think they look suitably spooky!

Positivity: Loving where we live ♥

After my last post moaning about the struggles of house-hunting, I've been thinking a fair bit. It is so easy to become wrapped up in this negative state of mind where you feel totally stuck and unsure of how things are going to pan out. Stuck in total limbo. Impatience has got to be one of my worst traits -  I am very impatient so the whole waiting thing in the house-buying process is my idea of hell. I just want to know whether we've been successful or not, so we can either get excited or move on! In this situation it can sometimes feel like your whole world has been put on hold. I really want to start booking some holidays for next year but then I start thinking "what if we get the house? We need to stop spending and have some money put aside". But how long could we be waiting?! I want a holiday! Arrghhh!!

In an attempt to be a little more positive Rob and I have both made a pact to make the most of where we live now. We may only be here another 6 months, we may be here another 3 years. Who knows. But we are so lucky to live in such a charming part of London. It's important that we don't let the frustrations of house-hunting take over. I don't want to depreciate where we live now! I've said it once and I could say it over and over: I love Greenwich! We live in the most beautiful, modern, light and airy flat with a lovely little balcony, we have the River Thames on our doorstep and an UNESCO world heritage site down the road. What could be better?! (Well, a cute little house with a pretty garden and a driveway, that would be better... but ssssh!). This may be our final Christmas in London and very few places do the run up to Christmas better than London. So we're going to make the most of every moment from now, enjoying all that this city has to offer.