Off Beet

Tags

birthday, eating out, lunch, Vegan, Vegan food, Wickham

Any one who knows me know that Southsea Coffee Co and their innovative approach to raw & vegan food has me hooked. For a while now I have seen ‘rival’ food posts on a similar theme on instagram from ‘Offbeet’. Cue a little snooping and I was intrigued by what I saw. Turns out they’re not rivals at all but two unique establishments both doing their bit for creating raw/gluten free/vegan food that everyone can enjoy, smashing down stereotypes surrounding this kind of food!

As a birthday treat from my bestie Anna, we headed over to Wickham one Sunny weekday and sat outside enjoying the sunshine and a bloomin good meal!

Off Beet is located on the side of the Chesapeake Mill, a huge vintage and shabby chic emporium. Check out the Offbeet website for more info/menu/staff details etc

The menu was great, lots to choose from and lots we wanted. In the end we both opted for the Burger (so we didn’t get food envy obviously) See the menu listing above for details but let me tell you this… It was scrumptious!

Looks good huh?? After the burger we had a mooch round the shop and then returned a little later for a slice of cake (because it’s a birthday treat and it’d be rude not to)

Over all I was super impressed and I’m keen to go back again and try something different! Hat’s off to Offbeet and keep doing what you’re doing!

 

A Vegan London Do for Adele

Tags

Ethos Foods., Hackney City Farm, hen do, London, London Fields, Twigs, Vegan, Vegan Hen Do, Zigfried Von Underbelly

This year, without a doubt, is the year of weddings…. and with weddings come hen dos… I have been on 2 amazing Do’s this month and have mine to look forward to next month! eeekkkk

The first Do of the year belonged to my lovely friend Adele who is getting married to Chris in May on Spitbank Fort in the Solent…. I can’t wait!! It’s going to be a fab day and if the Do was anything to go by we’re all going to have a great time and eat very well.

The Do was organised by my Bestie Anna and the other bridesmaids and for the weekend shenanigans we headed to London. Anna and I headed up early so we could decorate the Air BnB and get everything ready for the arrival of the Bride-To-Be.

Anna had made sure that there was lots of chilled fun and vegan food and I must admit it was one of the tastiest Do’s I’ve ever been on!!!

After an exciting Drive through London (over Tower Bridge I might point out) we arrived at our converted Vicarage and set to making the place fit for the weekend. It was a gorgeous find which was 2 conjoined flats, the master suite a mezzanine floor over the central living space so it was ideal for decorating!

Anna and the girls had organised some super cute touches like a personalised set of Pjs for Mrs B to be, vegan sweeties on everyone pillows and photos from throughout Adele’s life!

On arrival after the grand tour, we all got changed into our Pjs and settled in around the huge kitchen table and had an amazing vegan feast of curry followed by a raw berry cheesecake!!! (I told you we ate well!!) After some impressive dance moves and quite a few drinks we all retired to our rooms and called it a night.

The next morning, the sun pouring in through the vicarage windows we woke and had another amazing meal prepared by Anna, homemade Banana Bread, cashew mascarpone cream, berries and honey…..

Once dressed and fed, we headed out into the London Sunshine and checked out Broadway Market which was bustling and bursting at the seams with delicious food and wares….

Once we’d had a stroll about and ohh’d and ahhh’d over the the many cute dogs and puppies which stopped us in our tracks every few minutes we returned to base camp, got set and headed into central London. The destination was Ethos Food, an amazing vegan and vegetarian restaurant where you pay by weight eliminating waste and meaning each person can have just what they want. The food, the staff and the general atmosphere was amazing and I can’t wait to take Maxwell back here at a later date! The food was amazing and the girls had also made everyone a little goody bag full of treats and treasures!! Adele was also gifted a fab handmade veil and sash! ❤

Once we were all fed and Adele had seen her book and enjoyed a tear jerker of a letter from her hubby to be it was time to move on again and off we headed to Escape.

This was such fun. we weren’t allowed phones or cameras inside but the aim of the game was to steal the crown jewels and break out of a vault in an hour! Divided up into groups of 4-6 it was a great was of bonding and team building and was such fun! I’d never done one before but totally would again!!

After that it was back to the Vicarage and we started getting ready for the evening out. I left my camera at home for the evening as it’s not the easiest to transport. We headed to Zigfrid Von Underbelly in Hoxton Square for dinner and cocktails then headed onto a club later to dance the night away.

The next morning we were up early to pack up the house and our cases and sore heads in tow we headed back to Broadway Market to have an amazing breakfast and cafe come plant shop Twigs! Anna had booked us the big table and we all enjoyed an insanely good asian inspired breakfast of rice waffles with a selection of toppings; I opted for bacon, egg with a  miso / peanut dressing which was delicious! So much so I came home and tried to recreate it the following week!

Over breakfast we also played Hen Do favourite ‘Mr & Mrs’, once the plates were cleared we headed back out into the sunshine (seriously we had the best weather) and headed to Columbia Road Flower Market. Anna who used to live around that area was great and showed us all the cute side roads and best spots…. Most of the group opted out of the hustle and bustle of the crowed main street but I headed in, camera in tow and enjoyed the crowds and gorgeous blooms! Out I came the other side with a beautiful selection of flowers and joined the girls in an ice cream cone!

The last port of call for our weekend was Hackney City Farm which is as it suggests, a quirky inner city farm. We conveniently timed our trip to enjoy some new farmyard babies including a couple of teeny lambs and the cutest little goats!!!

And there you have it…. From there we all headed home and what a brilliant weekend!! A huge well done to my girl Anna and the bridesmaids for organising such a fun and hen orientated weekend! I know I had an amazing time and I’m pretty sure Mrs B to B did too!!! ❤

 

Wedding Series #16

Tags

Boho Wedding, Bride to be, Bridesmaids, DIY Wedding, Ginger and Peach, mini maids, Vegan, Wedding Blog, Wedding catering, wedding decor, Wedding planning

Another month, another update from this boho bride-to-be… It’s been an eventful month over here, one that’s tested and tried us but as we bid farewell to February, and say hello to March, I’m happy to report we are all good and we are smiling, which is all that matters right?!

The month took an unexpected turn at beginning when our lovely housemate told us he’d be moving out the following week as he’d found the perfect little studio flat. Obviously this was a bit of a shock, both personally and financially, but we understood why he was moving on and we needed to adjust and figure out what to do. We discussed our options as financially having a housemate was helping us out hugely with saving for the wedding but on the flip side, did we want to bring a stranger into our home and have them put up with all our wedding junk everywhere….? The answer was no… Bringing in someone for just the next 6months seemed pointless and honestly we were ready to just have our own home, so we did just that. We briefly looked into mortgages, but have decided for our sanity, that we would instead stay put for the next 6 months and the readdress the situation once we’re husband and wife.

So yeah… a bit weird and it’s been tough, but it’s also been wonderful….We’ve started being even more frugal with our spending and equally are trying to make even more money any way we can; be it through selling artwork / old clothes / working 24/7 to make up for the £2000 which we’ll be down come July. Obviously this also means that paying out for wedding things has become a bit more tricky but our parents have all been wonderful and are continuing to help us where possible. It really does make you realise how lucky are doesn’t it, when you’re in a tight spot, and people are there checking in and helping where they can.

Everyone knows weddings are expensive, but life in general is too, chatting to friends recently and it seems everyone can relate! It’s definitely one of those years where everyone is getting married and everyone has multiple weddings to attend! Fun yes, but expensive too!

We’re continuing to keep costs inline though by doing as much ourselves as possible. Also, I’m just going to put it out there, having our own home is amazing. I feel like I can truly relax 100% in my own home, which after renting with various people over the last 8 years, is an amazing feeling. We have for the first time got a home just us two and we’re loving it. And I’m excited for the next year or so where hopefully we can really start building our own home together!

In the mean time we have wisely transformed our spare room (how grown up does that sound) into ‘wedding HQ’ and as I write I’m sat in front of the window, light flooding in, surrounded by all our wedding treasures and creations! It’s pretty lovely!

So moving on. What else have we been up to? I mentioned last month that I’d created the biggest to-do list you’d ever seen, we’ll we’re still working through that. I also mentioned and promised to share with you some photos of our evening invites so here goes…

Sorry the pics aren’t as nice as my first lot, I just snapped them quickly for this blog post, but hopefully you can see kind of what we did, we created another roll fold to keep all the bits in the middle but put all the top tips in the inside. I’m really proud of them and think the whole invitation design thing was super fun!! Also feedback was lovely! Yay!

So… what else have been up to? I finished all the napkins finally (am so happy with them) they are also all folded, pressed and I have tied these up with place settings and favours…yay! Maxwell wants me to keep the end result a surprise for our guests, so for now I will just show you a sofa full of pressed napkins in all their prettiness!

We (amazing Mumma and I) have also been continuing work on my dress (whoo hoo) and those of the mini maids! For the last year (at least) I have been collecting a hoard of vintage lace and crochet trims, vintage and second hand garments. The mini’s, all 8 of them are all have mismatched cream/white/ivory dresses with a very vintage / boho look. Mumma and I got out all my treasures and matched things up coming up with a design for each little lady. Mumma has been amazing, washing everything and starting to compile all the dresses, we even did our first fitting on my niece the other day and if that’s anything to go by these little ladies are going to be melting everyones hearts!!!

I’ll wait till next month to give you a sneak peek of the dresses as I’ll also scan in my designs!

One more fun thing we did this month was have a tasting for our vegan friends. The wedding is pretty much all vegetarian but as we have quite a few vegans coming we wanted to make sure that no one felt left out when the food came out, especially in relation to the evening buffet which is basically cheese and crackers! haha! So with that in mind we reached out to our dear friends and raw food specialists Ginger and Peach. Tara, the amazing food guru prepared us 3 nut cheeses to sample and they were amazing…

Tara made us a herbed pine nut and cashew log, an aged macadamia nut cheeze and a cashew cheddar cream cheeze. These were amazing and I’m so excited to be able to offer our vegan friends something so unique! We have also decided to ask Tara to make us one of her stunning raw cakes to liven up our evening cake buffet! Yum! So exciting that things are all coming together and I’m loving that we’re involving one of our fave local business!

The last thing I want to tell you about is make up! I’ve been umming and ahhing for ages about what to do… do I DIY, do I have a professional lesson then still DIY or do I bring in someone who knows what they’re doing? Well a couple of weeks back I was staying with my bestie Becca and she had he make up trail when I was there and I was mega impressed… you know sometimes things just align and work out? Karma I like to think of it as, well I started chatting to a MUA friend who I’ve worked with previously and she mentioned she was coming down and with a rare monday off, our diaries clicked and we’re booking in a trial, which is exciting! With that in mind I’ve been pinning Make up ideas and I’m super excited!

I’ll share some pics next month! ekkkk!!

So, I think I’ve rambled on enough for one post (maybe it’s time to start doing 2 a month?!!)

Till next time… x