October recap // A Charity Ball, Delicious Donuts and Picking Pumpkins

I do like writing these recaps. Always a nice reminder of what I’ve been up to and to reflect on the past month. It also just highlights how quickly the year is flying by! Definitely find that time flies by the older you get… not that 29 is old but ya know…

Anyways… last month was a busy one and I’m enjoying my new job which is a relief – I knew it would be fine but you never know until you start! I’m enjoying the work and the people are lovely too. My stress levels are down and I’ve actually got that work/life balance I’ve been craving so I can’t complain – 100% made the right decision moving jobs.
So what have I been up too… I’m been a little slack on my posting but I wrote 3 posts one on  a September Recap, one on New Beginnings and another on Autumn – My Favourite Things. I’m not a fan of these shorter, colder and darker days compared to summer but I do like wearing chunky knits and drinking all the hot chocolate. I mean I don’t need any excuse to get into cosy pjs and my fluffy dressing gown any point in the year 😋
We started off the month with the Edward’s Trust Charity Ball. They’re a charity which Tim’s work supports and they had a table. It was a nice excuse to get dressed up but I had an absolute nightmare finding a dress! I wanted something new and ideally something long as it was meant to be black tie. I ended up buying 3 dresses and returning them all. Being short can be very annoying sometimes especially when it comes to long dresses and I’d left it too short notice to get something tailored. I ended up wearing a black sparkly off the shoulder number I got last year. Its such a pity that Coast closed – they always did great occasion dresses which is where I got this black dress from.
I definitely do look a litttttle (I mean a lot!) pasty! Can’t wait to get some winter sun in Australia and get a tan!
We didn’t really go out for many meals this month but we did go to Miller & Carter for Tim’s parents’ birthdays. My go to steak always has to be a Bistro Steak medium rare – so good!
I’ve been trying to get to the gym a few times a week but I find it can so hard especially when the mornings and evenings are so dark. I get home from work and just want to chill in my pjs, have dinner and hibernate! I’ve managed to finish week 5 couch to 5k yesterdaybut the past 2 weeks 6 runs have taken me 4 weeks… oops! I do need to keep myself more accountable so hope by sharing my runs on insta and on here I can keep it up. I’ve also got Australia coming up in 5 weeks and I want to be able to run a 5k/ run for 30 mins without stopping by then. I’d love to be able to go running along the beach so hoping I can make that a reality. I’m onto week 6 of 9 next week so need to keep it up – I’ll keep you updated!
This month we also tried Dumdum donuts which have a stand in Grand Central in Birmingham. All I can say is WOW! The ‘Yum yum’ was one of the best ever cronuts I’ve had – it had dulche de leche in it… my mouth’s watering thinking about it… The blueberry donut was also a hit and we’d have it again. We’re going to get some in a couple weeks before some family visits to share the love.
We popped down to London one weekend as Tim was playing football for his old school team at the Fulham training ground against LSE and they won which they were very happy about! Whilst he was  running around in the rain, I spent some time with an old work friend, caught up with one of my besties and then spent some time with my grandparents. I ended up helping my granddad out with my dad’s accounts – always nice being able to help and he definitely appreciated it. We came back to Birmingham with an apple pie made by my nanny – definitely one of the best apple pies out there in my opinion!
I had a couple nights away in Nottingham for work and managed to drag my bum to the gym twice! Once for a run and then for some weights. All worth it as I went to Chiquitos with someone from work and we had £1 tacos as it was a Thursday. Definitely a good deal! We then finished off dinner with loaded churros – I had raspberry ripple mmm! Raspberry ripple always reminds me of summers in Ireland when you’d buy a block of raspberry ripple ice-cream yum!
Definitely some perks to my new job as we went away from one of the sites with a couple M&S pizzas to try each – we had the new Chicago Town pepperoni and the Detroit M&S loaded chicken pizza. Love it! Save to say we polished them off that weekend!
I mentioned in my Autumn Favs blog post that I wanted to go pumpkin picking and Tim surprised me by going on the way back from his parents. We couldn’t believe how busy it was and we went 2 weekends before halloween! We went to Cattows Farm in Leicestershire and got a green pumpkin, a little creamy one and a normal orange one. It did take us a little while to find some good pumpkins as a lot of them had already gone! We did get very muddy but it was good fun. I love seeing pics of all the pumpkins on insta this time of year and nearly forgot to take a pic of ours! I was gutted to not be here for halloween this year so missed out on the trick or treaters and didn’t have time to carve our pumpkin so I’ll definitely try to make a sweet treat with it.

Finally last month we went to Malta for a long weekend for a friend’s 30th which was amazing. I’ll do a post soon on it but it was great fun and the sun was well and truly needed – we had a villa which had a pool which we loved! More coming sooooon…

I can’t believe how quickly this weekend has gone by but it has been just what was needed – cleaning the house and relaxing. We’ve got some busy weekends coming up so we definitely needed some R&R this weekend. We’re on the count down to our trip to Australia and we cannot wait! Anyone looking forward to some winter sun too?

Until next time,

Cathers xx

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