'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!
So, this day out materialised when my friend sent me a Tik Tok of a ‘Book Crawl’.
What’s a book crawl you ask? Let me tell you…
You alternate between Cafes and bookshops, in your local town, or somewhere else, and indulge in the best hobby there is!
I worked out a route and itinerary including lots of independent Cafes, Local buisnesses, a second hand bookshop, our favourite independent bookshop and a few notable favourites such as Waterstones.
So, what book did we choose?…
It was actually my friends idea to read the same book and it turned out to be a great idea – each time we stopped and read we could then dicuss afterwards. It was fun to be able to discuss the book as we went and it added another fun element to the crawl.
This book was a beautiful story with loveable characters and so many bookish elements I challenge any fellow bookworm not to find themselves among its pages at least once!
My rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 / 5
This book was a great length, 224 pages which is perfect for a book crawl day. We both got just over halfway!
Although this could get a little pricey (I really need to learn some self control when it comes to Bookshops!!) We did say that we would LOVE to do this again and that next time we could make it a bit less spenny by taking out the book buying element and just get a drink in each cafe.
We also had our local library as one of our reading spots which was perfect as its obviously a great reading environment, and it doesn’t require you to buy anything!
A couple of weeks ago, me and my husband went away for 4 days to Woburn Center Parcs.
We went Friday to Monday and we had a brilliant time.
We haven’t been to Woburn before, only Elveden, so it was cool to see what another Parc was like.
Here’s what we got up to…
Friday
On Friday we arrived after my husband had finished work. When we arrived we got checked in, had a look around our apartment and then went to our dinner reservation at Las Iguanas.
Our dinner was absolutely delicious. This was a great start to the holiday, and it probably ended up being our favourite meal of the weekend.
The Mexican platters were so nice and gave you a little taster of lots of their yummy dishes. My mocktail was also yummy.
Saturday
A lovely start to the morning and we made some adorable squirrel friends. Lovely 🤗
We picked up our bikes at 10 and had a little cycle around!
We then did some of the fun activities on offer.
The activities we did were the interactive Squash and interactive Shuffleboard. These both really fun but we particularly enjoyed the shuffle.
For lunch we had some yummy nachos and chicken empanadas.
We had dinner at the American resturant Hucks. This was yummy. I enjoyed my chicken caesar salad topped with cajun shrimp. The star of the show was the cheesey garlic bagel bread – absolutely sensational. Still thinking about it tbh.
After dinner we had a bit of chill time before playing Glow in the Dark Table Tennis, which was very fun.
Sunday
We started off Sunday morning with breakfast at The Pancake House.
Breakfast was really yummy and we thoroughly enjoyed it. They didn’t do omelette at The Pancake House last time so this was a nice new addition (unless we’ve remembered wrong anyway!) We both had a savoury omelette and then shared a sweet Dutch Blueberry pancake. All was very nice.
It was lovely and sunny when we left The Pancake House, so we sat on ‘the beach’ and read for a bit.
We also enjoyed a few activities today…
We played football pool, which was very interesting. It was fun but, much harder to aim than regular pool. You use a white football as the ‘white ball’ to kick yout three coloured balls into the net corner ‘pockets’. When you have scored all your goals you then score the final individual colour (Blue in our case) in place of the black ball. Very fun
Dinner was Italian at Amalfi resturant. Very nice. We shared some Calamari and Burrata to start, with some yummy pastas and garlic bread for main.
After dinner we had time to get in another round of interactive shuffle before our interactive darts slot. Both of these were really fun and made a great end to our third day.
Monday
Out final day 🥲
We had a bit more of a chilled morning, packing up (as wel leave our apt but can still spend the whole day at the Parc)
We had one last cycle around before giving our bikes back in.
We did the interactive gamebox as our morning activity. This was very energetic and the little mini games were fun and funny to watch each other partake in. I was knackered after this.
For lunch we decided to try out the French resturant Cafe Rouge. We haven’t been here before but we enjoyed posh toasties, French fries and crisp Diet Cokes.
We spent the rest of the afternoon in the swimming pool, having lots of fun in the Rapids (brutal) the lazy river (lovely) and the various flumes (terrifying).
For dinner we had some picky bits at the Sports Bar, before heading off home 🥲
Another brilliant weekend at Center Parcs. We had SO MUCH fun and tried out lots of new activities, relaxed, enjoyed the sunshine and had some yummy food. Plus, I didn’t fall off my bike this time 😅 yay!
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!!
Roseanne Byford 