LIFESTYLE: A morning of chilli and cheese

This was a last minute trip as we only found out about the event two days beforehand, but as food lovers, and particularly cheese and spicy stuff we knew we just had to go to the Chilli and Cheese Festival in Winchester a couple of weekend's ago.

Held in the Devils Hall - behind the River Park Leisure Centre and with beautiful sunshine for the day, this is a must for any food buff. Lots of local, and small business owners had stalls at the event including cheeses, chilli's, fudge, sauces, and drinks. This event particularly catered to families with children with an array of inflatable activities and mini fairground rides.

BLOGGING: #sotonmeetup - meeting the Southampton Bloggers

^^photo from Hairfinity UK^^

On Saturday I attended my very first event as a blogger - the #sotonmeetup, for Southampton Bloggers - add I've definitely caught the blogging bug and made some amazing new friends!

If you'd ask me when I started blogging, or even a year ago if I thought I would be this happy with blogging, I don't think I could have said yes. But I am, because some of the opportunities coming my way, and the overwhelming feedback, just makes me over the moon happy. And this event really did secure my fate of blogging for the foreseeable future, and that the new direction of my blog was the best thing I've done for myself!

LIFESTYLE: Re-finding my inner happiness

I have a somewhat fiery temperament generally. I've always had a flair for the dramatic, even from a young age, and for many years as a teenagers would go from one extreme to the other in personality. I haven't had the easiest, or the toughest of lives. I was always an intensely private person. Some things have been awful and some things have been great.

However, recently I've found that I really didn't like a certain side of myself, and that I wanted to be a better person, both for other people and for myself.

I'm happy to say I'm a much happier person right now. I feel more mellow and easy going. I feel more relaxed and at peace with the person I've become.
A lot of this I realised after seeing family that I haven't seen for a while, who remarked that I had changed in recent months, and seemed more open and happier in general.
And that was both slightly hard to hear, but also good to hear. I'm taking it as a positive however. I've worked hard to learn about myself and to develop myself. And it's a continual journey, but right now I'm happier.

I thought I'd share some personally things - reasons why I think I'm happier now than I've ever really been.

LIFESTYLE: A peek inside our living room

After such an amazing response and lovely comments about my kitchen renovation, I thought I'd share some of the other parts of my home as we are steadily working our way round and making our house into our home.

As you will have seen recently on the blog we moved into our newly bought home back in March, and since then we have been on a mission to overhaul it and make it our own. We actually completed our living room makeover before our kitchen - read about that here - but the change in the kitchen was so much more apparent. However, our living room is super cute and cosy and we really do love being in it so thought I would share some photos of the make-over and where some of our key items are from.

LIFESTYLE: 25 date ideas under £25

After seven and a half years with Dann we both know the trials and tribulations of a long term partnership. It's not all whirlwind romance, flowers and meals out, because let's be honest, it's hard work and expensive. Not that a long term relationship isn't hard work, you're trying to sustain the togetherness, without murdering, which can be especially tricky if they've left their socks BY the washing basket, rather than IN it for the 600th time!

But it is nice to have some special time together. With work, social commitments, pets, family, housework, budgeting and all those other 'adult' and 'grown up' things you have to do on a daily basis, it can be hard to fit in some one on one time, and make it more exciting and interesting than binge watching OITNB or SOA on Netflix (though that is good too occasionally).

So I thought I'd share 25 date ideas for your and your partner - be it a first date, one of many, or one of far too many - and they all cost less than £25, so your bank balance won't hate you. In fact some of them cost nothing at all.