Feb Recap // Safari Parks, Surprise Weekends Away and Getting Those Steps In!

Evening everyone! Hope you’ve all had a lovely weekend 🙂 Have you kept indoors or are you doing normal bits and pieces with all the uncertainty around Corona? It’s a bit of an uncertain time with updates everywhere you look. So I’m here to give you a little break and give you an update on what I got up to in Feb!

Blog posts from Feb:

On Instagram, Zanna Van Dijk does a morning coffee thoughts which I love! Well… I don’t like the coffee bit but here’s my thoughts for the day… (Check out Zanna on insta or her blog! I’m loving her posts on New Zealand atm – a nice break from the current media coverage)

  • I’m glad to be back home after a week away and seeing our 2 new hamsters Bubble & Squeak (I’m taking full credit for their names :p )
  • I’m getting a bit anxious about Corona and am worried for all the ‘high risk’ people I know 
  • I’m loving these longer days and hoping that the warmer weather follows soon

It feels like Feb was fairly jam packed but went by super quickly! We’ve had our fair share of chilling – hello candles, champers and cheese at home – but then also got out and about and kept busy!

We started the beginning of the month off with a visit to the West Midlands Safari Park which is always a nice day out. We originally went the back end of last year and got freebie tickets so decided to use them before they expired. We love our animals and having a safari drive through is always super fun. Tim always jokes that if he could be anything (and if we didn’t need money to get by!) he’d be a zoo keeper. Not me… I like to admire from far… behind a car window :p

Got my cooking on again! Soooo… I’ve previously said how I’m not the best at cooking, well last weekend a friend asked if I remembered when I cooked for her and our old Southampton house mates… I tried a Jamie Oliver prawn pasta recipe but used the wrong chilli’s – the shop didn’t have normal red chilli’s (the recipe said to use 3) so I ended up using 3 of those small bird’s eye ones… oops! Safe to say it was way too spicy for everyone :p – I’d completely forgotten about that mishap until my friend mentioned it but something to laugh over now!

I’m getting a little better although I had a little mishap and cut my finger while making a cod and chorizo dish the other week… oops!

We did make a chicken pie and a delish apple crumble which turned out great! We used this recipe from Preppy Kitchen but didn’t add cream into it so it was a crumble rather than a cobbler. We also made another pie which we put in halloumi (my fav!), chicken and some veggies – we folded the pasty the whole way round and it turned out really good!

Chicken pie deliciousness
Halloumi and chicken pie yumminess
Sometimes apple crumble and ice cream is just the best!

I also finally got my hair cut! I wasn’t sure whether it cut it short or keep it long – so for the moment I’ve kept it longish and had layers put in. I think next time I’ll have it lightened – definitely prefer my hair in the summer when it goes blonde in the sun!

Of course I had a couple tasty meals out! I caught up with a friend from my old work at The Alchemist and of course we had to have a cocktail. The Alchemist do some pretty cool cocktails but they are a little pricey… I tried something a little different – a pot of gold – the jelly was a little weird so don’t think I’ll be trying that again. Will stick with my fav. the solero!

Early in the month we popped over to Ireland for a long weekend for a friend’s wedding. (See here for post on our trip) The weather was atrocious while we were there and I lost my charger and my AirPods (sad times) which I’m gutted about… Although Tim just reminded me I had lots of Barclaycard points which I hadn’t used so brought myself some Amazon vouchers and I have a new pair coming tomorrow! It’s been weird going back to normal headphones after a year and a half of AirPods and I’ll be glad to get back to normal :p

The beautiful Dun Laoghaire

Both myself and Tim have worked away the past couple months so while Tim was away I started watching the Harry Potter movies in the evenings. I looove Harry Potter <3 a guilty pleasure of mine! I think they get much better from 3 onwards – I feel like no. 2 (chamber of secrets) is overplayed on TV… don’t really understand why it’s played so much compared to Prisoner of Azkaban,  Goblet of Fire or Order of the Pheonix! 

I’ve been getting back onto the porridge band wagon and even been trying out overnight oats. I’ve tried overnight oats in the past and haven’t like them. So I found a recipe which included Greek yogurt and I actually liked it! (See here for the recipe) I usually have frozen raspberries instead of blueberries so that’s what I’ve been using and it’s been delish. It’s so quick and easy to make and something you can throw together just before going to bed. A winner for me!

Just before we had all the Coronavirus news over here I had the most horrific cold – I literally felt like death and had the worst weeks sleep in ages because I would just wake up coughing 🙁 I got over it and then there’s been all the news about Corona which isn’t ideal. I won’t lie, it is all quite scary but we’ve just to remember to keep washing our hands properly (like we should be doing anyway!) and being sensible if we’re feeling any symptoms. I will say that I’ve found it hasn’t helped my anxiety and I feel like I need to keep washing my hands… bit of a nightmare! In the UK we’re still meant to carry on as normal unless we have cold symptoms and then we should be self-isolating for differing amounts of time. We’ll see what happens in the coming days and weeks as it keeps changing. At work we’re meant to be working from home where we can and we’re not allowed to go out to sites for next 2 weeks. We’ll see what happens in the coming months but it’s scary to think it is likely to get worse before it gets better. We’re keeping an eye on grandparents and high risk family members. This weekend we didn’t go to see the in-laws because of Tim’s mum’s lung problems as we’re getting over dregs of colds and didn’t want to put her at risk. So we ended up chilling on the sofa and catching up on TV! We’ve started watching Line of Duty and binged the 1stseries – we can’t believe we didn’t watch it first time around. Have you watched it yet? If not you need to get on it!

For valentine’s Tim surprised me with a weekend away down at Langford Fivehead. It was an amazing treat! At points we were worried we would get stuck down there because of the floods and Storm Dennis but we were lucky. It was just an amazing weekend and we also visited Cheddar Gorge. I’ll have to do its own post to share everything we got up to and the most delish meal we had 🙂

I don’t know about you, but I’m so bad at getting that recommended 10,000 steps a day! Back on hols in December in Australia we definitely got our steps in and were so active. But being back home, we both have desk jobs and stare at a computer all day – don’t you love being an accountant! In an aim to be get better (and also be realistic) I’m trying to get in about 5,000 steps a day. I’m walking to the station and then trying to get out for a little walk at lunch (and away from that screen) and then a walk back from the station home. It’s better than nothing 🙂

So that was my Feb – it’s posted a little later than I had hoped but I’ve been trying to get that motivation back. I think I’ve got my mojo back so you’ll be hearing more than me especially if we’re all going to have to self-isolate!

Watch this space :p 

Let me know if there’s anything else you want me to cover! How’re you keeping busy and what are you up to over these next couple uncertain months?

Until next time,

Cathers xx

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1 Comment

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