5 happy things:: week 3

Half term has unfortunately reached its inevitable end.. It's been a good one though. Here's my five best bits.

1. I spent a lovely morning with my best friend and her little girl. We've been friends for 20 years and I miss living on each other's doorsteps.

2. Wagamamas. No more needs to be said. We haven't been in so long and our revisit this week was everything I needed.

3. Finding beautiful editions of books I read when I was younger. I'm currently retreading northanger abbey and appreciating it much more than when I first read it.

4. Finding lots of interesting recipes to try. We are home a lot this summer and I'm excited to try out making my own soups and other summery dishes.

5. Birthday plans. My birthday isn't for 3 months but I've already made plans with my family to go to the last night of the proms in the park near our flat. We went last year with friends and I'm looking forward to going with my favourite people.

I hope back to work week has as many high points.

Eats:: healthy(ish) breakfast muffins

Not too long ago, I discovered that I love peanut butter. Not only do I love peanut butter, I love peanut butter and blueberries. It might sound like an odd combo but when you get deliciously tart blueberries and a good, smooth peanut butter, it is honestly divine.

Muffins are marketed as a breakfast food all over the world, but most muffins are full of sugar and fat and are a horrible way to start the day... Now these muffins aren't the best thing in the world for you but as a brunch option or a tasty Sunday breakfast, they're a tasty alternative to a fry up or basket of pastries. 

You will need (to make around 8-10 muffins):

A preheated oven at 180 degrees c

A muffin tray

115g of self-raising flour

2 eggs

50g of soft brown sugar

125g of peanut butter (smooth and natural preferably - whole earth brand is great)

100ml semi-skimmed milk

75g blueberries 

Optional: adorable silicon muffin cases (mine are heart shaped)

There's no real method to these bar combining all the ingredients (except the blueberries) in a bowl, adding more milk if your peanut butter is particularly thick, until you get a dense batter. Then add the blueberries, reserving a few to squish into the top before you bake them. Heap the mix into the cases, the more full the better the muffins will be; squash a few berries into the top of each muffin (these tend to explode and go all oozy in the oven) and then bake them in the oven for 25 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the middle of the biggest muffin comes out clean.

Enjoy with coffee, or tea, or juice. Just enjoy knowing that there's very little sugar and not as much fat as a coffee shop muffin... They're my favourite weekday breakfast treat.

5 happy things:: week 2

It's officially half term! Teacher pals around the country rejoice. It's been a hectic and stressful week but here are my happy things.

1. It is half term. I get a whole week where my 5:30am alarm is turned off and I get to wake up naturally. I'm looking forward to a week of coffee shop hopping, lazy days and pub afternoons.

2. One of my students bought me a gift. This seems tiny and silly but I'll miss those guys and they even came to find me for a maths photo - things like that make the stress worth it.

3. Duck sung. Seriously the best starter I've ever had at one of my local restaurants.

4. Pay day. Pay day means I get to buy all the things I've been browsing for the last week without fretting that my money will run out.

5. The sunshine. Some of my colleagues, Johnny and I spent a wonderful hour sitting outside having a cheeky drink on the last day of term and the sun was out. It was a great way to wind down after an incredibly tough 7 week half term.

What made you smile this week?

My love affair with:: coffee

Any one who knows me in real life will know that coffee is possibly my main food group... Well besides cake anyway.

I fell in love with coffee when I was about 16. I'd drank it before then but never really appreciated its glory until I discovered the vending machine in the leisure centre next to my school had fantastic macchiatos - I credit this machine with the fact I survived sixth form.

I love coffee in many forms; flat white, espresso, mocha, latte, iced, shakerato, macchiato (starbucks and real), americano and cold brew. The recurring theme however is that my coffee has to be strong.

For those of you out there wanting to develop your love for coffee, I have a few (pretentious) tips:

1. Invest in a good espresso machine
Last year me and J bought a ROK espresso machine; it's completely manual and uses grounds. Since buying this my coffee game has seriously thrived - I am now a master barista in my pyjamas.

2. Use good grounds
If you're not grinding your own beans, I've found threesixty's ground coffee is excellent. My personal favourite is the ethiopia blend. Taylor's also do good ground coffee.

3. When you're out for coffee, go indie
It's a cliche but independent coffee shops or small chains tend to have better coffee, in fact, we have an excellent coffee shop local to us called 15 on the Corner which does amazing coffee. When travelling, I like to get coffee from carts or markets because they tend to be less busy but you don't sacrifice quality. As for chains: Boston Tea Party (mainly based in the South West but they are migrating north slowly) is one of my favourites; Monmouth (although not technically a chain) is lovely and the one by Borough Market is pictured at the top; and, as major chains go, Nero or Starbucks are good if you know what to order.

4. Experiment
Although I generally will order a flat white when I'm out drinking coffee, it pays to experiment a little. Adding extra shots, adding syrups, changing the milk and having it over ice are all ways of changing up your order that won't alter it enough to make it unrecognisable. If you're making coffee at home, buy some syrups, a milk frother and look at recipes online to give yourself ideas of what you'd like.

I'm off now, I have a flat white to drink.

City break/Oslo:: August 2015

way back in january, johnny and i decided that we would travel somewhere neither of us had been before - norway. we both, myself especially, adore scandinavian culture so it was a bit of a no brainer.


initially we were only going to go to bergen, norway's second city, as we like the quieter life; after looking at flights and recommended things to do in norway, we decided to spend the first couple of days in oslo.
day one:
after freshening up, we decided to have a bit of a wander around the area close to the hotel and found a beautiful little courtyard near a museum and a quaint little restaurant. we sat near the fountain for a while sipping some fresh orange juice and snacking on pastry from a tiny cafe nearby before we decided to go and find the sea.


we flew (on the tiniest plane i have ever seen) mid-morning to copenhagen then (reassuringly on a slightly bigger plane) on to oslo. we arrived mid-afternoon in a very sunny, very warm oslo. 
i had very low expectations of oslo - i don't know why, i just felt like bergen was where i'd wanted to go and this was a cost-effective way of getting there - but it exceeded all expectations. we stayed in a hotel called grims grenka which was down a quiet street in the city centre. the hotel itself was lovely, had a rooftop bar and the most amazing waterfall shower.

johnny loves the sea; any water to be honest, but the sea is his happy place. we weren't expecting to see the sea much from oslo but it turns out that there are some of the most wonderful views across the fjord that you can get as low down as we were. we walked past the fortress and found the ocean, we even found time to get a glass of wine at a harbour-side restaurant to make the most of the later afternoon sun. 

travelling is exhausting so we soon made our way back to the hotel. we'd already decided to eat there that evening - word on the street was that they had a barbecue up on the rooftop bar - best decision ever! we rounded off a very uneventful day sipping some of the tastiest cocktails (including a super tasty tiki cocktail in a really cool cup), eating burgers and watching the smörgåsbord of patrons flit in and out of the bar.

day two:
we woke up early on the sunday and hurried down to the restaurant in the hotel for breakfast (also, the most awesome hotel breakfast ever - loose leaf tea, smoothie shots, pastries, bacon, eggs). we ate whilst listening to the floor to ceiling water feature and made typical scatty plans for the day. much like the majority of europe, i'd read that most things were closed in oslo on a sunday but we hoped that meant it wouldn't be as busy. 

our first stop was the opera house, which is an understated beauty of a building that appears to be floating on the water. we walked up to the top of it and looked out across the sprawling fjord; it was an absolutely stunning day so we could see for miles and miles. also floating out there on the water is an impressive sculpture by monica bonvicini called 'she lies'. i'm a lover of art and could have sat and looked at this for hours - the weather definitely enhanced it though, i can't imagine it is as impressive on cloudy days unless the water is rough.

we love shoreditch in london and had heard that grünerløkka - an area in the north of oslo - had a similar vibe so took a leisurely stroll through the city. oslo was super sleepy on this Sunday morning but by midday there was definitely a buzz in the air. we nipped into a little sandwich place for lunch and then took a stroll back to the opera house. it was super busy and hot down by the water so we decided to go back to the little courtyard near our hotel and relax for a while. during the evening, we walked over to the aker brygge area of oslo - this was definitely my favourite part of the city that we saw; it's full of nice bars, shops and restaurants. we stopped for a beer at underbar which had so many different taps and bottles that it was difficult to choose... we then wandered round the corner to a tapas place i had heard excellent things about called delicatessen. it did not disappoint. i had possibly the best tapas of my life, and i have had a lot of tapas!

after polishing off a lot of food we went back to the hotel rooftop bar to watch the sun go down and enjoy some more cocktails. it was a very expensive evening, but so worth it; watching the sun set and the stars come out was one of the best nights of the summer.

the following morning we had a train to catch but this post is already too long... i'll talk about it later.

5 happy things:: week one

This week has been a tough one... Work has been stressful, I've been poorly and I haven't been sleeping. Bad times. However, I think writing 5 happy things will make me value the little moments that happen amongst bad ones.

1. Getting up early both today and yesterday. Getting out of the house early (even if it is just for coffee and pastries) makes me feel productive and like I'm getting the most out of my weekend... Add in good coffee, random chats about life and ever so slightly undercooked pastries (yum!) and I'm a happy girl.

2. Johnny and I went out for dinner at one of our local restaurants last night with friends and managed to wangle a birthday discount even though it was no ones birthday. Score.

3. Rediscovering Waitrose's coffee shortbread. We first had it last year when we went on a trip and it's one of the best biscuits around. It's lush.

4. Making sure we make our bed everyday. This sounds so lame but it really makes me feel less sad about getting up and going to work because when our bed is made, it looks so nice! Next bedding is my absolute favourite and I'm excited to buy some more sets come winter as our current 'christmas' set is becoming a bit tired.

5. Bagels. Poppyseed bagels with apricot conserve to be specific. These have been my staple lunch all week and they've made work days a little easier to get through.

I'm trying to do these every week. Let's see how long it'll last.

Thoughts:: a blog?

Namaste, hello, bonjour.

I'm Aurora, a somewhat stuck 20-something. In the last year, I finally finished education (and got my first job in education), I got engaged to a wonderful man named Johnny, settled properly in to our first home in the city we want to stay in forever, and grown up a little.

I've been wanting to try my hand at blogging for a while but have never really had the time nor motivation... This time of year tends to be the time where I feel a bit at a loose end so here I am, setting up a blog which will never last.

I hope you like it!