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My Reading Challenge: September 📚

I’m a bit late with my update this month, we can blame ‘back to school’ fever. It’s a busy time when you work in a school!!

What did I read in August:

All that she can see by Carrie Hope Fletcher

The Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena

Give me the child by Mel McGrath

&

Two short reads…

The beach wedding by Dorothy Koomson

Full house by Maeve Binchy

I loved Carrie’s book, I wasnt sure to begin with, I dont know why but it took m a while to pick this up off my shelf, one I had though, I couldnt put it down!

It was a very interesting concept and a very different story to one I’ve read befoe. It really made you think about you own emotions and how much control you have over them and they hav over you. I loved the making element to the story, it was very easy reading.

The Unwanted Guest was brilliant, it had a real Agatha Christie feel to it and I was gripped, trying to work out who it could be, what would happen next, how it was all linked. Very good, very well written and definatly a great book for murder mystery fans.

I enjoyed ‘Give me the Child’ and it you wanted to find out what was going to happen, however I do think that it went on for a little bit, then right near the end it all of a sudden got very dramatic and then it just ended. It was a bit too much right at the end when it had dragged on a lot before that.

I really enjoyed the short reads, especially the one by Dorothy Koomson, it may have been shorter but it was just as good as her others and it had great twists and turns.

This months books are…

Lone Wolf by Jodi Picoult

‘A compelling emotional drama of love and guilt that grips from the very first moments.’

‘Luke Warren would sleep in the dirt if it meant he could be under the stars.

He lived by the laws of nature. And would surely want to die that way.

But Luke is in a coma and his family mus make an unbearable decision

As tensions and secrets rise to the surface, the tragic accident which brougt them back together against the odds could well tear Luke’s family apart forever.

They know Luke would not want to live like this . But how can they choose to let him die?’

The big little festival by Kellie Hailes

‘Love happens when you least expect it…

Jody is panicking. Its only weeks until her little village in Devon hosts its first ever festival and everything is falling apart.

Desperate to avoid disaster, she brings in notorious party planner Christian to save the day. Although she wasn’t prepared for just how gorgeous he would be!

Men are off the cards for Jody and surely Christian is the last man she would wlever date? But with tensions risng- along with the bunting and homemade scones- shes about to find out… ‘

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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You started school today 🍎

5 years ago I was working in my first ever reception class, eagerly awaiting your arrival, proud as punch when you finally arrived and I knew from then onwards that my life was going to be brighter, more fun and full of even more love.

Now you are ready to start your own reception journey and Im just as proud today, if not more, of the little boy you’ve become! Go show them what you’re made of Noahy, be the superstar that you are. Auntie Ro Ro cant wait to hear all about it XXXX

First day at School, Tuesday 3rd September 2019

💙

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🔟 years!🎉

So, last weekend me and my Uni friends met up, but this time it wasn’t any old meet up, it was our 10 year friendaversary meet up!

Let’s take it back to the start

…

In 2009 I did my first year of university at the University of East London (UEL).

Whilst studying for my degree in Early Chiodhood studies (ECS) at the Stratford Campus I was introduced, at the beginning of a morning lecture, to Kirsty & Tarana and as they say, the rest is history!

And we’ve been friends ever since!

I only studied at UEL for a year before returning to my hometown to complete my studies, but we always stayed in contact and have met up at least every few of months, in London.

So, that’s the background, let’s see how we celebrate 10 years of friendship.

As I said, I went down to London last weekend to meet the girls and we had a fun day planned.

Meeting at Stratford, we headed to Leciester Square for lunch.

We always had a tradition of getting the pizza hut buffet after some of our lectures during the Uni year and so we thought this was the perfect tradition to start the day with.

It was really good!!

I havn’t had the buffet in ages 🍕

Once we had eaten and had a catch up we headed to the main event, Matilda The Musical!!!

We wanted to do something we had done together before, as it’s a special occasion, and we all love musicals so we chose this one as it’s a brilliant story (A children’s one, very apt for ECS graduates) and none of us have seen it before either.

The musical is AMAZING!! The actors were fantastic, really talented and very funny. How those children get up on that stage and perform like that is beyond me but it is aweosme to watch.

The music ans songs by Tim Minchin are brilliant too. You’ll be singing them for days, trust me!

If you are a fan of the book or the classic film (as I am) then I would 100% recommend this to you!! It won’t disappoint.

It was getting late once we had made it out of the theatre so we said our goodbyes and headed home.

It was a really fun day out and a great way to celebrate two of the loveliest people I know.

Even though I only went to UEL for a year I will always be glad that I did. It was a great experience in halls and I met some lovely people, including these two, so I will always be grateful for that.

I hope you are enjoying the last few weeks of the Summer holidays!

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Holiblog: The Rome Edition

For my husband Tim’s 28th birthday I bought us a trip to Rome. As you may know from previous blogs, Italy is our favourite country and Tim’s favourite Italian city that we’ve visited is Rome, it’s been 7 years since our first visit.

Read on to see what we got up to!

Day One

It was a early start for us to begin our Rome adventure, from Gatwick!

This meant we had a whole day to start exploring.

But, first lunch! And an ice cream stop at the highest rated ice cream place in Rome, it didn’t disappoint!

Trip Advisor: Best Gelato in Rome

We stumbled upon the National Museum of Rome and this was a great find. The architecture was amazing and we had a audio guide which was really interesting.

After all our exploring and walking around we had a chilled evening back at our room. We grabbed some take away pizza slices and a couple of ice cold cans of coke zero and enjoyed a them in our cosy room.

Day Two

Today we headed out early to have a look at the Colosseum. We went inside it on our last trip to Rome so this time we just went to have a look at it again from the outside, as well as the area around it.

We enjoyed a nice lunch and some ice cream before heading back for a siesta and our evening activity.

That evening we enjoyed our Italian cooking class, the first of our three planned activities for the trip.

It was originally going to be a pizza class (my husband is obsessed with pizza and this trip was planned by me for his birthday) but they changed the menu to pasta, as a summer alternative. Even so we had a great time!

We made pasta, a similar one to tagliatelle, Gnocci and then for dessert we made an amazing summer berries and white chocolate tiramisu. It was so good and it was so fun to cook proper pasta. You can really tell the difference.

Day Three

I think this was my favourite day of the holiday.

We had a nice early start to have a look round Palentine hill and the Roman Forum. We missed out on seeing these last time as we didn’t get there early enough and it is horrendous in the heat!

So, we made our way there nice and early and spent the morning having a look at the amazing Roman Ruins.

For lunch we headed over to the highest rated pizza place in Rome and it was delicious. This was my favourite meal and the man who owned the shop was so helpful and friendly. It’s a small little shop but so worth it.

Trip Advisor: Best Pizza in Rome

In the evening we headed to Piazza Campo de’ Fiori to have our second planned activity, a ‘By night walking tour of Rome’ Our guide was absolutely brilliant, born and raised in Rome so very knowledgable.

We saw so many different sights that we hadn’t seen before, such as the Pantheon and my favourite, the Trevi fountain (Which is SO beautiful) and much bigger than I expected. I’m so glad we got to see it this time.

Day Four

On day four our planned activity was an evening walking food tour, unfortunately it was cancelled so we had another think about what to do.

In the end we booked a morning trip, including a guided tour of the Vatican city. The tour included access to the Vatican museum, the Cistine Chapel & St Peter’s Basillca.

These places were all amazing and the artwork, tapestrys and architecture were amazing, as well as the history.

After a delicious lunch of Caprese salad, Pizza and the most amazing tiramisu we headed home for another afternoon siesta!

In the evening we took a stroll down to the Colosseum, after dinner, to have a look at it all lit up at night. It looked beautiful!

Day Five

On our final day we didnt fly out until the evening so, we wanted to make the most of our last day.

At breakfast we had a look on Viator to see what we could do.

As we didn’t make pizza at the previous cooking class we booked onto a pizza class for midday.

We stumbled across the Spanish Steps whilst we were looking for the cooking class location which was cool! Another landmark to tick off.

The cooking class was brilliant, with a lovely group of Americans & a Canadian lady. I really enjoyed making an authentic pizza in Rome and I loved seeing Tim make his favourite cuisine too.

They were really tasty!! A great lunch for our last day.

One of the other members of the cooking class mentioned a 5D experience that they were visiting later that day and as we had no other plans we thought we would check it out too!

We went for the full package 5D experience watching the history of Rome, the evolution of life and we looked around Roman landmarks with a VR headset on.

Once we had done all this it was a good time to slowly amble back to Termini to grab our bags and get the coach to the airport.

A great end to the holiday.

We had a brilliant time in Rome and I would 100% recommend it to anyone thinking of visiting Italy, especially if you are a first timer as there is so much to see and do.

& of course the food is amazing.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little post about our trip!

I wonder what next years Holiblogs will be about!? Time to start thinking for 2020.

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Holiblog:Disneyland Paris🌟 The Parks 🎠🎢🎡

This second edition of holiblog is all things Disney parks.

There are two parks at Disneyland Paris, accessed via Disney village.

Disney village is so magical in itself, with it’s fun and tasty treats and happy Disney tunes on loop. It is lined with Disney shops and lots of cool eateries too.

It even has a cinema.

The two parks are Disneyland & Disney Studios.

Disneyland is akin to Magic Kingdom in Florida, it houses Main Street USA and the Disney castle, although this Disney castle is Auroras, in stead of Cinderellas. I actually love this, it’s so cool that they are different ones.

Disney Studios is much like Hollywood Studios in Florida. It has all the Studio style buildings and American streets.

🌟 Disneyland 🏰

This park is the bigger of the two and is home to classic rides such as The Pirates of the Carribean, Phantom Manor, Thunder Mountain, Hyperspace Mountain, The Carousel and much more!

The Disney illuminations take place at the Disneyland park. The lights show, fireworks ans music were amazing.

🌟 Disney Studios 🎬

Disney Studios is home to classic rides such as Rocking Rollercoaster Ft Aerosmith, Tower of terror and Toy Story land. Toy Story land was awesome and had some cool and different rides to the one in Florida.

We met loads of Characters here that we needed to tick off our list, the rest of the crew, Donald Duck & Pluto.

I also got to meet Goofy again 😁 My fave!

& just look at that Disney Castle!! 🏰🥿

So pretty 💖 So magical 🌟

It really is one of the most magical places on earth!

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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My reading challenge: August 📚

August edition

So, what did I read in July…

As I was on holiday and I’ve started my volunteering for the library Summer reading challenge, I actually ended up reading three books in July.

& for August I am going to try and read more too as I also have some time off, lots of reading time!!

In July I read:

The Prison Doctor by Dr Amanda Brown

Every breath by Nicholas Sparks

&

The guilty party by Mel McGrath

The prison doctor was a really interesting read, and tbf as horrendous as you’d imagine.

I have to say that I didmt enjoy this as much as ‘This is going to hurt’ by Adam Lay, which is a similar format but from the perspective of a Junior Doctor.

As always the Nicholas Sparkes book was one that I couldnt put down, a heart warming story, definitely one for all you Sparks fans.

The guilty party was a really interesting read, not only was it a gripping story but it was also quite thought provoking too. Do you really know how you would react in a certain situation? Can we ever know until we are in that position? And how profound are the decisions we make on our own lives and on the lives of others?!?

This months books are…

Give me the child by Mel McGrath

‘Imagine your doorbell rings in the middle of the night.

You open the door to the police

With them is your husbands eleven-year-old love child. A daughter you never knew he had.

Her mother has been found dead in their South London flat.

She has nowhere else to go.

Would you take her in?

An Unwanted Guest by Shari Lapena

As the guests arrive at beautiful, remote Mitchells Inn, they’re all looking forward to a relaxing weekend deep in the forest, miles from anywhere. They watch their fellow guests with interest, from a polite distance.

With a violent storm raging, the group finds itself completely cut off from thr outside world. Nobody can get in – or out.

And then the first body is found…

And and horrifying truth comes to light. There is a killer among them – and nowhere to run.

All that she can see by Carrie Hope Fletcher

Cherry has a hidden talent. She can see things other people cant, and she decided a long time ago to use this skill to help others.

As far as the rest of the town is concerned, she’s simply the kind-hearted young women who runs thr local bakery, but in private she uses her gift to add something special to her cakes so that after just one mouthful the townspeople start to feel better about their lives. They dont know why they’re drawn to Cherrys bakery – they just know that they’re safe there and that’s how Cherry likes it.

She can help them in secret and no one will ever need to know the truth behind the gift.

And then Chase turns up and threatens to undo all the good Cherry has done. Because it turns out she’s not the only one who can see what she sees…

I can’t wait to get stuck into these 🙌🏻

As always, any recommendations are welcome 😁📚

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Chocolate Orange Brownies.

I thought I would do another recipe post and what better than brownies, Chocolate Orange ones none the less!!

Rich, gooey, indulgent and orangey.

I love baking and for any of my fellow Terry’s Choc orange lovers out there, you will LOVE this 👌🏻

My twin sister Sarah tagged me in the video for this recipe on Facebook. I will leave the details linked down below.

Chocolate Orange Brownie Recipe

❤🍊🍫😋

Ingredients

  • 150 g Dark Chocolate

    • 150

  • g Terry’s Chocolate Orange

    • 200

  • g Unsalted Butter
  • 3 large eggs (or 4 medium)

    • 275

  • g Caster Sugar
  • 90g Plain flour

    • 35

  • g Cocoa Powder

    • Zest

  • of 1 Orange (or 1tsp orange extract
  • 300g of Terry’s chocolate orange chopped

Before

After

I love the texture (& of course the taste) of the Choc orange segments that are pushed into the tops of the brownies, amazing.

These were so gooey & sticky and I am just obsessed with chocolate and cake and chocolate orange as a flavour combo so these were an absolute winner.

I took these to my Nieces 2nd birthday party and they went down a treat.

Let me know if you give these a go, and what you think of the recipe too.

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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My reading challenge: July 📚

Into the seventh month we go and with two new books to start.

Both of these are new purchases that I have made recently, I seriously cannot resist a 2 for 1 book offer (WH Smiths what are you trying to do to me!!)

These are two very different books, and one in particular is very different to what I usually read.

What I read in June

  • Poppys recipe for life by Heidi Swain ☆☆☆☆☆
  • The house across the street By Lesley Pearse ☆☆☆☆

This months reads are…

The Prison Doctor By Dr Amanda Brown

This is the book that is different to my usual but it looks so interesting.

I’ve always enjoyed real life crime and found it fascinating since I studied Jack the Ripper in GCSE History.

I really liked Adam Kay’s dairies of a Junior Doctor, so I thought this would be an intruiging crime version, along a similar theme.

‘MY TIME INSIDE BRITAINS MOST NOTORIOUS JAILS.’

&

To a completely different genre …

Every Breath By Nicholas Sparks

‘Hope Anderson is at a crossroads. At thirty-six, she’s been dating her boyfriend, an orthopedic surgeon, for six years.

With no wedding plans in sight, and her father recently diagnosed with ALS, she decides to use a week at her family’s cottage in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, to ready the house for sale and mull over some difficult decisions about her future.
Tru Walls has never visited North Carolina but is summoned to Sunset Beach by a letter from a man claiming to be his father. A safari guide, born and raised in Zimbabwe, Tru hopes to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his mother’s early life and recapture memories lost with her death.

When the two strangers cross paths, their connection is as electric as it is unfathomable . . . but in the immersive days that follow, their feelings for each other will give way to choices that pit family duty against personal happiness in devastating ways.

📚😊Happy Reading 😊📚

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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Windermere 🏞🍃☀️

I’m not going to write alot in this post, just simply share with you a beautiful place that me and my husband recently visited for out 3rd Wedding anniversary 💍 (3 years since my blog began, in preparation for the wedding!)

So, enjoy!

Windermere, The Lake District

Orrest Head (Walk) Winderemere

Claife Heights (Walk) Winderemere

Cautley Spout, Windermere

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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My May half term diary ☀️

I love doing a diary for each school holiday, it’s a great way of remembering what Ive got up to, a 21st century diary 👍🏻

Friday 24th May 2019

Me & Tim got some good use out of our Unlimited Cinema cards tonight by watching two films!

We watched ‘Detective Pikachu’ followed by ‘Rocketman’.

Both were really good. We had already seen Detective Pikachu and we just wanted to see it again, great for any Pokemon fans ✌🏻

Rocketman was also really good but not my fave of the recent biopic films.

Saturday 25th May 2019

Today I met up with my friend and her boys at the park. I took Noah & Casey with my to play with her boys.

They loved the bus ride.

We had a great time at the park, enjoying the sunshine and playing with all of the boys 💙

Me & Tim took the boys to see ‘Secret Life of Pets 2’. This was Casey’s pick as he loves cats 🐈 & he really enjoyed himself.

In the eve, once I’d dropped the boys off, me and my friends met up again and had a Chinese together at a local buffet restaurant. So good.

& a great opportunity for a catch up!

Sunday 26th May 2019

A busy weekend rounded off with a family day trip to Cambridge for some retail therapy.

Me & Tim drove down with my twin sister Sarah, Noah & Casey, whilst my older sister Charlotte drive down with her husband & Evie.

It was a lovely day and we enjoyed shopping (First stop, Primark of course!) Followed by some yummy lunch from our favourite Italian which we introduced to everyone, Aromi 👌🏻 Their veggie pesto lasagne is the one.

The kids loved the play area too.

Monday 27th May 2019

Cult Cafe for Tea, Cake & Games.

This has become our bank holiday Monday tradition and it’s great.

We usually chill on the bank holiday ans as the weekend was busy this is what we did. In the afternoon we decided to get out for a bit, Cabin fever was setting in!

This was really lovely ♡

Wednesday 29th May 2019

Today, with work, we visited a local farm.

It was a lovely day, really chilled It was fun being outside and visiting a farm I hadn’t been to before either.

Friday 31st May 2019

Today we met my friends little boy, Finley ♡

We hadn’t met him before and it was lovely to have cuddles he is adorable.

& it was a great excuse to get the girls together and have a bit of tea & cake.

Our friend was home for the weekend too which was great timing.

We went to my other friends in the evening for dinner which was great too.

Sunday 2nd June 2019

To round off the half term we decided to again take advantage of the lovely warm weather by taking a trip to Felixstowe.

‘Oh, I do like to he beside the seaside… 🏖’

We enjoyed a lovely meal of fish & chips, Mr Whippy & doughnuts on the beach. We had a lovely stroll along the prom before heading into the pier for some amusements. The perfect afternoon.

I even had a little paddle 🌊☀️ The weather was great.

I hope you enjoyed or are enjoying your half term!

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

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