#PARENTS ON TOUR - RANDOM SNIPPETS

The rest of the time that my parents were here was filled with little day trips, a spot of shopping, lots of good food and just generally chilling out. Here are a few random snippets of the rest of their time in California. 

As you can no doubt already tell Macintosh's favourite person to sit with is my dad. He was regularly found snuggling up to him on the sofa. He's such a spoilt dog.
H

PS. Mac is no longer allowed on any furniture. That means no more sleeping on our bed or on the sofa. He is less than impressed!

MACINTOSH MONTHLY

This month's Macintosh Monthly is actually quite a sad one, albeit a little odd. Saturday evening Andrew and I decided that Macintosh was rather stinky and needed a bath. There's nothing unusual about that, it happens every so often. The actual bathing process was the same as always. There was a fair bit of cajoling and holding onto him to ensure he endured the full bath experience. As usual when he got out of the bath he shook himself off and covered us in water before proceeding to rub himself all over the lounge and do a bit of preening himself. See the photos below. 

Intermittently he would have a good old shake to remove more of the water and this is where the sad bit occurred. We didn't notice anything unusual until the Sunday morning when we realised his tail was bent. It turns out he had got 'Beagle tail'. Apparently after a bath (or swim) beagles sometimes shake themselves so violently that they give their tails whiplash! This means they can hold only the first inch or so of their tail up and the rest droops down. It usually resolves itself within a few days, but until then their poor tails are rather painful, especially when shaken. 

Those of you who see Macintosh photos regularly will note that his tail is always so straight and pronounced, its really odd to see it all droopy. Naturally I took photos to show you all, that was the responsible thing to do! 

Poor old Macintosh, hopefully his next bath time will be less eventful!
H

LATELY...

Below are some of the pins that I have added to my various Pinterest boards. They all have captured my eye for a variety of different reasons. There's no theme between them this month. Just throwing it all out there. 

My flower obsession has not diminished in the slightest. My Pinterest is still filling up at a rapid rate with pins of a variety of bouquets and floral arrangements. I think I might need to take a floristry course at some point. I think it would be insanely fun. In fact, my day dreams about owning a bookstore now involve a florists in there too. I think books and flowers go very well together actually. 

With this bouquet its something about the pale colour tones. They are so gentle and delicate. The moody backdrop colour probably helps with their beauty as it provides a good contrast. Such a shame our climate kills bouquets before they have a chance to be enjoyed. 

This house is majestic. I never thought I'd like three story houses, until my parents bought one. Now I find myself secretly wanting one. Well alongside my country cottage! I like the formal-ness of this house though. Makes me feel like it should be painted in dramatic and possibly moody colours, from the Farrow and Ball collection obviously darling!

Bears had to feature somewhere obviously. I love this piece of artwork so much. I think that's really all I need to say about that. 

My love of cycling is slowly increasing, much to the amusement and happiness of my husband. However I'm finding that I am much better at watching the sport than actually participating in it. This is rather frustrating as I have a lot of perfectionist tendencies and I can't bear not to be good at something. Andrew sent me this pin as inspiration and also a reminder to just carry on. 

That photo is from the California coast line. Its up near Big Sur. As the weather has been warming up nicely I can hear the coast calling our name. Perhaps a trip up the iconic Pacific Highway is in order. Stay tuned, you never know!

H 

CHRISTMAS DAY

Last year Christmas day was rather quiet and strange as it was our first one in California away from all the family. This time round we were somewhat prepared for the silence and the less busy day and so we actually really enjoyed our day. 

We had all the usual Christmas traditions; stockings, present opening, a HUGE Christmas dinner, a walk after lunch, some games and of course the Queen's speech. We did manage to Skype a lot of family which was great fun too. Here are a few snaps from our Christmas day!

It definitely was a good Christmas day, especially as we ate SO much! I was practically in a coma by the end of the day. Why is Christmas food just so good?! Its not fair.

H 

SAYONARA 2015

I am rather behind on our blog posts as its already January 6th and I've not even updated you on things we did over Christmas, or said goodbye to 2015. I apologise. For a start we took a trip over New Year which put us all out of sync but then we launched back into the regular rhythms of life and haven't had a chance to catch our breath. But I'm on it, I promise!

Starting with our round up post from 2015. It certainly was a busy year. I feel like we visited a lot of places, had some visitors and generally achieved a lot. It was also a pretty big year for a certain husband of mine too. 

So here's our top ten events of 2015:

1. Having Andrew's family come over to visit us. 
2. Travelling up to Seattle by train and seeing the beauty of the West coast.
3. Watching a couple of American Football games, particularly the Seattle Seahawks. 
4. Our friend Tim's visit and seeing Yosemite and other great places with him. 
5. A certain someone turning 30!
6. The amazing Alaskan cruise. 
7. Meeting Mr James Corden himself. 
8. Going home to see all the family, especially Mr Elisha after turning 1!
9. Seeing the band Muse perform, and watching Andrew's face as the drones flew round. 
10. The stay at the beautiful cabin in Lake Tahoe (more to come on that later). 


As you can see its been a pretty busy 2015 and unsurprisingly 2016 is shaping up to be just as crazy. We have a visit or two lined up with family members and then in the middle of the year we are going to be celebrating my brother getting married which means a trip back to England! Yay! There's also the scary event of me turning 30, but we won't mention that again. Ever. 

We are so grateful to God for all the things that happened in 2015, even some of the tougher things which have allowed us to grow, especially as a couple. We look forward to facing 2016. As ever, updates will be on the blog so you can feel somewhat involved. 

Happy new year everyone!
A&H xx

LATELY...

Obviously this month's lately will be Christmas themed. It has to be, its December. Plus I've been dwelling on Christmas related things for a while now. In fact probably since August when we had to do all our Christmas shopping for relatives at home. With Pinterest around I've been slowly adding to my growing number of seasonal pins! 

I love the giant snowflakes they have on the wall here. They look so delicate and I imagine they take rather a long while to create (if they aren't shop bought). Its a simple decoration through and they are set off by that giant garland hanging on the bannisters. I rather wish we had stairs here so that I could decorate them, guess I'll save that for the next house we have that has stairs. 

Another simple Christmas decorative feature are these flowers. I love the ribbon round the simple glass vase and the little berries add a wonderful accent to the crisp white flowers. Shame that flowers don't last too well here otherwise I could try it myself. 

Now this image captured my attention a while back. It is actually a gift card for a store over here in California but I just loved the fact that it was a beagle. He looks so cute and it made me want to put knitted antlers on Macintosh! Oh and a coat!

These gingerbread cookies look gorgeous and probably taste amazing too. Haven't made gingerbread in a while but I might have to bake a batch soon. I have a feeling my icing skills aren't quite up to par with the photo but I'll give it a go. 

And finally, this image grabbed my attention because it reminded me of what we are going to be doing after Christmas. Along with some friends we are heading up to Lake Tahoe, to a wonderful wooden cabin to stay in a snowy winterland. I'm already planning lots of tea drinking and reading in cosy corners whilst observing the snow. We may go out in it occasionally, you never know!

H

MACINTOSH MONTHLY

This Macintosh Monthly relates to snow. I told you a little while ago in this post that we had two trips to snow but that I was saving one of them for here. Well that was because it was a snow trip that focused entirely around Mr Macintosh. 

He loves snow. He loves to run in it and to chase snowballs in it. He always eats the snowball whenever he catches it too which is pretty hilarious. So when we took our more local snow trip he had a chance to catch and eat some snowballs. We took about a billion photos of him and here are some of the classics.

We had so many photos that we even managed to make a GIF out of him!

He's so funny this dog. He provides us with endless entertainment. 

H

LATELY...

There's been lots of things buzzing round my head of late so I'm not going to attempt to theme them I'm simply going to put them out there. 

I've been dreaming about exposed brick interiors. The houses out here are generally not built of brick so I guess I've learnt to appreciate it a little more than I did before. Plus I guess the endless amount of Pinterest inspiration surrounding it doesn't hurt. The bricks just look really amazing. As long as it doesn't make the place cold...

Obviously there's a bear somewhere in my thinking. I love this artwork. Its so beautiful. The mountains, the trees and the bear. Love it. 

Saw this film on the flight home from England. It was amazing, quite sad in places though. But I loved the wardrobe and hair in this. I was slightly Blake Lively obsessed afterwards. Made me regret chopping off my long locks. But still would recommend the film highly. 

The urge to get another beagle is getting stronger and stronger. Images like this certainly don't help in the grand scheme of things. Look at them and how happy they are to be carrying that stick together. Oh I want two beagles!

I bought this novel recently and can't wait to get started. I re-read To Kill a Mockingbird in preparation. I have high expectations of Lee's new one as she writes so well and in such a captivating manner. 

Finally, there's so much in this image that I like. There's a lot of these bits that can be purchased at one of my favourite American stores; Target! Its the best and worst place. Best because you can get everything there and its usually reasonably priced. Plus its a great place to just browse, but that's also its downfall. You never go in and come out with just what you needed. It sucks you into buying more than you needed, always! But I love the cushion in this and the hexagonal tray is fun too. 

So there's a few thoughts. Until next month...

H

EXTENDED FAMILY GATHERING

My family like to get together whenever they can to hang out, but with such a big family it can be hard to co-ordinate that. If you factor in us living on the other side of the world then its even more tricky to get everyone together. I think it's been at least two years since we were all in the same place, perhaps even more! So it was nice that for one afternoon we managed to get everyone in the same place for a bit.

We did a walk through Ashridge, which is an amazing National Trust property near us. Then we descended on my Mum's new house for a tea and cake, followed by dinner and then the dismal rugby! We didn't manage to take too many photos as we were too busy catching up, but we did take a few of us on the walk.

I love the photo of Elisha and his stick! He kept hitting my poor brother-in-law on the head. Guess that's my first bad influence as an Auntie, yup thats right I gave him the stick! 
H