What a wonderful and magical house! It looks so much like something from a fairy tale that it’s hard to imagine that a couple with two young children actually live here. Don’t you love the grass on the roof and the tree trunks in the house? Can you imagine it only costs £3000 to build and it’s not only charming but more importantly designed for ecological living? I wish I had a hobbit house! More here.

When the cashier told me all the items I had put in my basket rung up to £75, I said, “So much? Surely that’s not right, is it?” She went to get her manager and we checked all my purchases. Apparently, it WAS right, I did bloody well spent £75 and at that point I wished I could have dug a hole to hide my big-ass embarrassed face. It was a LONG time ago since I have spent so much in a single receipt, apart from when we go food shopping.

Right after I left the Cath Kidston store, I went straight into the Jo Malone shop and blew £78 on cologne and a candle. Spending so much money evoked a lot of guilt but I decided what the hell I should treat myself at least once a year. I’d planned on getting these for myself for a long time and I experienced what I can only describe as a wonderful cathartic release from the girl who normally only ransacks the sale bins.

The sales staff who served me took care and attention in packing my purchases: getting the right-sized boxes, stuffing it with black tissue paper, wrapping the the boxes with beautiful black grosgrain ribbons so expertly they came out as perfect bows. Her level of customer service reminded me very much of Rowan Atkinson in Love Actually, except of course she was a lot better looking!

As you can see, I’ve hidden my purchases in my drawer so my husband doesn’t find them.

Don’t tell on me!

Happy 2012!

My Christmas tradition every year is to buy my husband a chocolate advent calender from Thornton’s, and we share 24 pieces of little chocolates among the two of us.

I bought this bobble hat a few weeks ago because of there was a short period where crazy arctic gales were sweeping across the country, and causing me headaches when I was out. Then I accidentally discovered that my son actually looked so much cuter in it than I do!

When my mother was in town, R and I took a day trip to Bath Spa earlier this month, just the two of us. Bath has got to be one of my favourite cities in the UK. The buildings are all constructed with the elegant honey-coloured Bath Stone. There are no large modern malls because alot of the architecture is listed and cannot be torn down. The compact city is full of little alleys packed with interesting shops and restaurants easily accessible by foot. I had never been to Bath in winter time. It was a cold crisp day when we went, very chilly indeed. There was a bustling Christmas market where we had a browse around and I queued up to get a Wild Boar & Apple sausage. We spent the rest of the day just exploring different shops to get some Christmas gifts and ended the night with dinner at Loch Fyne, a seafood restaurant we visited in 2005 while we were dating.

I learnt today that you are never too young to ‘zhng’ your car! See example by Lucien.

Organised an awards ceremony at National Museum Cardiff. It was hard work but the results were very rewarding. Here I am, standing at the bottom of the stage, waiting for the Minister to finish his speech.

I took a week’s leave immediately after the awards because I was so knackered! I spent the first day of my week off checking into The Marine Spa at St David’s Hotel & Spa with my sister-in-law. The service wasn’t great and it wasn’t the best treatment I have received but I was VERY relaxed after a nice swim and having my body scrubbed and slathered with mud. After our treatment, we went to the restaurant for a healthy buffet lunch which came with a glass of champagne! (In this photo I am holding a glass of apple juice not the bubbly.)

On Thursday, I had the rare opportunity of going on a date night with R. We spent the afternoon doing some Christmas shopping and then went for dinner at The Social at Parc Thistle Hotel. I loved that they used a lot of Welsh produce such as sewin (a type of river trout), cockles and laverbread (Welsh seaweed). Through savouring each morsel I could tell each dish was carefully and lovingly prepared to perfection. It was definitely a refreshing change from the mass-produced stodge I would normally have at the local pub and it was a rare occasion where I thoroughly enjoyed every mouthful of each dish and sighed with satisfaction at the end of the night.

We did a brave thing on Saturday going to London for the day. With just four weeks to Christmas, the shopping crowds were already pretty bad. There was a point where we were all just standing on the pavement literally like packed sardines and barely moving. Despite that we managed to pick up a few gifts and then headed to Chinatown for dinner. My favourite Chinese restaurant in London opened a branch in Chinatown and I finally had my roast duck fix after 2 years. It was still as delicious as I remembered. (Ahhh….)

I got together with my husband 10 years ago on the 8th of November. It would be impossible then to know that 10 years later, there would be a little boy ransacking my handbag and emptying its entire contents in our house while I was trying to churn out a press release for the Welsh Government. What a crazy decade it has been.

We bought a pumpkin for £1 at Asda, carved it and left it at our door. We had two groups of kids knocking at our doors in their scary ghost costumes. (One had a green face!) We gave chocolate bars to the trick-or-treating kids – they made an effort to dress up and asked for sweeties politely. Next year we will be sending Lucien out in his pumpkin outfit to solicit chocolates and candies for his parents’ consumption.