November recap

It’s less than a month until Christmas!!! YAY! When did that happen?! I saw someone on instagram recently mention that there was a Heart Christmas station which I’ve now got on in my car – if you hadn’t guessed I love Christmas 🎄🎅
I love decorating the house, playing Christmas music and buying presents for family and friends. There’s something about this time of the year that is that extra bit special and makes people nostalgic and craving time at home with family and friends. Next weekend I’ll be getting the hubby to get the Christmas boxes down from the loft so we can put up the tree and the decorations up. (Yes, I’m a wuss and don’t want to go into the loft because of spiders!)

I’m currently curled up on the sofa with a hot chocolate watching Fantastic Beasts. I can’t wait to see the new Fantastic Beasts movie. Love a bit of magic! We’re also making our way through the Harry Potter movies again at the moment. We’ve watched 1 and 2 so far. Who doesn’t love a bit of Harry Potter?!
I’m not around next weekend so wanted to do this month’s recap a little early. So… what have I been up to?
I’ve been a bit lacklustre with the gym these past few weeks. Its just so hard when its so dark in the mornings and evenings. You get back from work after a long day and the last thing you want to do is go out in the cold. I know I’d rather get into pjs and watch tv! Either way I’ve tried to go at least a couple times a week. I do need to get better at it so will be trying to go at least 3 times this week. It can feel like such an effort but it helps me keep the stress levels down. I recently heard a good quote which I need to remember for times when I start stressing – ‘Worrying means you’re suffering twice’.
At the beginning of the month some of my school friends came up for the weekend so we decided to go to Cadbury World. I haven’t been since my Uni days but we thought it’d be good fun and an excuse to eat lots of chocolate and buy some misshapes! Afterwards we headed into town and grabbed some drinks at the Alchemist before heading home and doing our own fireworks and sparklers. I’d found a recipe for mulled cider online so I gave it a go. It was delish! It had some sloe gin in it which did mean it was quite alcoholic but it was definitely warming.
This month I discovered Fearne Cotton’s podcast ‘Happy Place‘. It’s an easy listen to that I’ve been listening to it on my way to work or just having it on in the background. She’s just started a second series so there’s a few for you to listen to if you like it!
Earlier this month the hubby and myself caught up with a Uni friend and went to Purnell’s Bistro. They had a great deal on groupon so we jumped at the chance to go. Ginger’s Bar do the most amazing cocktails! At Christmas they do the tastiest cocktails – last year we had a mince pie one which was out of this world. So we had a 3 course meal and it came with a glass of prosecco all for £20 each. I started with sweet and sour pork belly followed by braised beef and finished it all off with a blackberry parfait. It was a lovely evening filled with yummy food and great company.
I’ve recently gotten back into lettering and painting and found some time to do the below this month. I stopped my calligraphy back in July as I stopped enjoying it. This month I finally decided to give it another go and I’m glad I did. I did the painting below on Remembrance Sunday and the others based on quotes I’d seen. I’m tempted to try and make them into prints and open up my Etsy shop again. I’m a little rusty but hoping that with practise it won’t take me long to get back up to scratch again!
We’ve been meaning to go to the theatre for ages so we finally booked tickets to go and see Wicked in London. When we were living in London for a couple years ago (before moving to the Midlands) we never went and it was right on our doorstop. It seems like such a waste now looking back on it! Anyway… we headed down on the Saturday morning and dropped some bits off at my grandparents before heading up to Victoria. The show was great – there were a couple songs we already knew including the infamous Defying Gravity. If anyone hasn’t seen it yet, what are you waiting for?!
On the Sunday, after a very yummy fry up breakfast and catching up with the grandparents, we made our way to St Pauls. For mine and my hubby’s birthdays, my brother got us a voucher for Sunday lunch at Madison’s near St Pauls. We finally used it and had the most delicious lunch. Madison’s has the most amazing view out over the London skyline so we weren’t short of views during lunch! Inside was already all set up for Christmas with baubles hanging everything 🎄. In regards to the food (the most important part…) I started with butternut squash and blue cheese soup (an interesting combo) and then we shared the sharing roast board between us. It had a bit of everything and was amazingly tasty. I then had poached nashi pear to finish while the hubby had sticky toffee pudding. After the meal we went out onto the terrace and watched the sunset over St. Pauls.
While we were in London we made sure to pop by Doughnut Time in Victoria. I’ve seen adverts for  it pop up on both Facebook and Instagram and the doughnuts always look amazing! Their stand was literally less than 5 mins from the Apollo so we jumped in the queue and grabbed a couple to take home. They looked divine but to be honest when we finally bit into them I was a little disappointed. To some extent it felt more style over substance. Don’t get me wrong, we ate them both but they were too cakey for our liking.
As you can guess from the above, we don’t really get up to much during the week. Honestly that’s because most of the time we spend working in the evenings (joy!). Every now and again we like to take some time away from the house and we’ll go out for dinner and see a movie. This means we won’t be tempted to turn on the laptops and work. So we’ve been to see a couple good movies these past few weeks the best being Widows and Robin Hood. We weren’t sure what Robin Hood would be like and if we’d be comparing it constantly to the 1991 Prince of Thieves film, but they did a good job to take it in a different direction and the new Sheriff of Nottingham was different to Alan Rickman’s Sheriff – they didn’t try to compete and tried something new which definitely paid off! 
One of our new favourite restaurants at Touchwood before going to the Cinema is Firejacks (which I’ve mentioned before). The steak is very yummy and the loaded fries are delish!
The rest of the past few weeks I’ve spent working with a bit of chilling between. I’ve finally gotten around to writing up my Universal recap from the Cali road trip (see here) and also our Longleat trip last month (see here). I’m trying to get better at writing up things closer to the time but in between work and life its been a bit tricky. Either way I’ll do my best to get more up on this blog. I enjoy my time writing and its a little escape for me.
A few questions for you… Is there anything in particular you’d like to see up here? Weekly recaps/ what I’ve been up to? Do you want me to go back over older trips and write those up? Show you more of my calligraphy? (My instagram for MyQuilligraphy is at here if you’d like to see what I get up to calligraphy wise!) 
I use instagram daily to show what I’m up to – you can find me at CathersBradley
Until next time,
Cathers x
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