'Happiness can be found in the darkest of places if one remembers to turn on the light'
Author: Roseanne's Blog
I'm Roseanne :) 33. Married to Tim 💗 I'm a Harry Potter fanatic ⚡ and a Bookworm 📚 I started this blog to document our wedding planning and its grown from there!
I popped into town and bought myself a few books from my favourite independent bookshop, plus a little extra book themed item, so I thought I would share with you what I picked up!
Let’s take a look!
I love these covers. I have read the first three books in the ‘Dream Harbour’ series, and I am currently reading number four! ‘The Daisy Chain Flower Shop’ is book six, which brings me onto my next purchase…
This is just a picture of the cover because I ordered this one as they didn’t have any more of these in stock, so that will be arriving at the weekend! Woohoo!!
This book comes highly recommended in my local indie bookshop and if you have followed my blog, or know me, you’ll know that me and my husband love Italy! So I love that it is set in Rome.
I won’t lie, the cover attracted me first because I like pink and green and sushi 🤣 then I read the blurb and it sounded intriguing and then I realised it was written by the comedian Mark Watson, who is very funny, sold!
Any book that has bookshop in the title piques my interest and this sounded so cute! And its a nice short one. I’ve read a couple of translated fiction books in the last couple of years and always find them quite different to my usual read but also really interesting so I’m looking forward to this.
I got this one to read to the children when I go back to work in September. This book is all about celebrating the magic of reading, and I’m all about that ✨️
I also, FINALLY, picked up the ‘Book Club’ hat from Primark! I love it and it was only £4.50 🧢
Would it too much to actually wear it to Book Club?!?! Haha 😄
This year I wanted to set some reading intentions for 2026. I find Reading Challenges, although fun, quite tricky to stick to, especially set titles as I think my book choice (unless it’s for Book Club) is quite driven by my mood and what I fancy at the time, as well as releases in certain months.
Lets see how its going so far…
Try to read at least 4 books a month.
January: 5
February: 6
March: 6
April: 3
May: 4
June: 5
Try and read at least 2 different genres each month.
It all started because I wanted to document our Wedding planning and all the fun leading up to, and including, the big day!
… 10 years later and me and my husband have just celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary with a party at the weekend, with family and friends 🥳 🎉 We had a great night! We also went out for a yummy meal and to the cinema (on the night of our actual anniversay)
I blog about books, travel & hobbies these days (mainly books if I’m honest) but thats how it all started!
So happy anniversary to us & my little blog page!
Here is how we celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary 💗
As I said, we decided to celebrate with a party 🥳 an idea I’ve toyed with for a while now.
Our theme was a very similar vibe to our wedding – Pink and Green and Italy 🇮🇹
We went for Pink and Green decorations, we used our original glass bottle table decorations (some still had the green and pink candles in!!) with similar fresh flowers, including my favourite pink Gerberas.
I also used the origianl mini Venitian mask decoration on top of the cake, that we had on our original wedding cake.
I also bought two more, one pink, one green to decorate the food table, when we went to Venice in May Half Term.
We had pink number 10 balloons and lots of pink and green balloons too!
For the food, we went an Italian theme of course! I always wanted pink Macarons as wedding favours but I couldn’t make them 🤣 but my sister is now an assistant in a kitchen so she made them for us, woohoo!
We also had an assortment of Italian themed snacks and then lots of pizza, of course.
The star of the show was the Venitian Cicchetti. From salami, mozzarella, pesto, basil, mortadella, balsamic, tomatoes and much more- these were a big hit and I was chuffed with how these came out.
I made a 4 layer, naked Victoria Sponge to round off the food 😋
One thing I always wished we could have had at our wedding was a professional photobooth, so this time we decided to hire one! This was ALOT of fun.
It was great to chat to everyone who came, enjoy some drinks, dance and take silly photos. We even got a little ‘first dance’ in, to our original first dance song ‘Stand by Me’ 💗 and rounded off the night with ‘Never Forget’ in a circle of dancing, just like our actual wedding – perfect.
We had a brilliant evening and it was so much fun! We didn’t want it to end. The perfect way to celebrate 10 happy years together.
On our actual anniversary I decorated the flat and cooked us a yummy little cooked breakfast. We exchanged cards and gifts before work. My husband sent me some flowers to my work too which was very sweet 💐
In the evening, we went out for a yummy meal at a local Turkish resturant that we enjoy. Followed by a trip to the cinema to see ‘Disclosure Day’. We both really enjoyed the film. A lovely day.
Pretty chuffed I’ve kept my blog up over the years and enjoy keeping it as a sort of diary/record of memories, holidays, trips, books and hobbies that I have enjoyed over the last 10 years.
In May Half Term myself, my Mum and my two sisters took a trip to Venice, Italy. We went to celebrate my Mums upcoming 70th Birthday!
Shes always wanted to go to Venice, so thats where we went. If you’ve followed the blog for a while (or you know me) you’ll know that Italy is mine and my husbands favourite country to visit, and Venice is my all time favourite place to visit EVER.
We had an awesome time and I really enjoyed showing them around, and taking them to different spots that me and my husband have discovered on our own trips to Venice. I felt like a Venitian tour guide haha.
Here’s what we got up to!
We stayed in a lovely air b n b apartment… a great location only 30 mins from St Marks Square.
It was perfect for our short stay, very comfortable, clean and cosy. It was right by a canal so it was great to watch all the various boats go by at different times of the day.
My Mum had a list of things that she wanted to do/see… (in no particular order)
1 Rialto Bridge
2. Visit the Islands, Murano, Burano, Torcello
3. Gelato! 🍨 Pasta 🍝 Pizza 🍕 Campari 🥃
…all the good stuff.
4. The Bridge of Sighs
5. St Marks Square inc the Basilica & the Bell tower
We also visited some lovely early gardens.
6. Exploring the little canals and streets.
7. A gondola ride
8. Enjoy the Venice Vibes ✌🏼
We all had a great time, and most importantly Mum did!
Venice is such a beautiful and unique city, it is like nowhere you will ever visit and I love it. I can’t wait to go back already!!
This weekend we stayed at an air bnb in Hollingbourne, Kent with my husband, mother in law, my husbands Grandad, Auntie and cousin.
We drove down on Friday after work in order to make the most of the weekend.
It was a good drive and we had a few hours to look around our accommodation and relax together.
We spent Saturday visiting a few places nearby, including a little railway and the town of Maidstone. We had a look around, went to the local museum and had a delicious lunch at the Muggleton Inn (love the name!)
We spent the afternoon relaxing, reading (ofc) and then we had a lovely dinner outside in the beautiful warm evening. The weather has been amazing.
We rounded off the first day with some snacks and games after dinner ☺️
On Sunday, Me, Tim, Tim’s Auntie and Cousin visited a nearby, local Goat Sanctuary (the first completely dedicated Goat sanctuary!!)
It was a very lovely, calm and relaxing place. We had a lovely time. The goats were lovely. I went in to one of the smaller pens but I didn’t go into the main one haha – I left that to the others.
I decided to use my birthday money to adopt a one of the goats, Blaze ☺️🐐
He’s a lovely tan and white colour and was very calm and friendly. I fed him a bag of goat food and Tim fed him too.
Such a lovely chap 🙂
Such a cool place! Id love to come back and take a goat for a walk!! (And visit Blaze ofc)
We all met up for a delicious roast dinner, for lunch. The pub was lovely and the food was really yummy.
We enjoyed looking around a little nearby village, called Lenham, before we headed back to chill out before we packed and headed home. We have been so lucky with the weather this weekend.
Another lovely Biannual Byford/Bailey May Half Term Holiday, together.
Roseanne Byford 