Our Day by Design

The reason we went to Italy was for the wedding of our friends Helen & Nick, where I was a bridesmaid. Helen was one of my bridesmaids too and I was honoured to be able to be there for her special day, especially since it was only four months after our wedding. The preparations started with us having a meeting at the hairdressers on the Tuesday, a drink in the main square in Siena before meeting all of the other wedding guests for dinner back near the villa. We had a gorgeous Italian meal before the members of the wedding party were presented with gifts; the bridesmaids all got a gorgeous necklace and matching earrings to wear at the wedding. They were all slightly different so mine had pearls alongside the silver design. Afterwards Helen, me, the other two bridesmaids Lucy & Nic, and Helen's mum went back to her room to enjoy a glass of champagne and make the last minute arrangements for the next morning. We ended up enjoying a couple of glasses before we went back to o...

When I reached my 1st blog anniversary last year I wondered if I could keep it up for another year. Another year has passed and on my 2nd blog anniversary, I'm still here; so far so good and if you saw my drafts folder you would know there is still more to come! Next up is going to be recaps of the two weddings I was a bridesmaid at last year, some DIY which is long overdue and more of my travels. Thank you all again for following along, the lovely comments that you leave and for the wonderful friendships I have made { you   know who you are }; that was definitely not what I expected when I started writing about my wedding, but something that I now couldn't imagine being without. I cant tell you how excited I am that we are going to be able to attend a wedding very soon that would not have been possible without our little blogs. (All images by Craig & Eva Sanders )

As you may have seen {unless you are in google reader}, I have added a new page; Places I've Been . Inspired by our Travel Map , I wanted to write a list of all the places I have visited, including the years, then add photo links to them when {or if} I write about them. This will help to keep all of my travel posts in one place. I've started with a photo of Austria; Italy; Maldives; Slovakia & Sri Lanka which link to all the posts about each country and a photo from the USA which im going to write about soon. Then I have added my written list of every country. Maybe one day I will get round to writing about them all and I'll update the page as required or when I remember some of the places I have probably forgotten. Here is my list as it stands at the moment; Ill be able to add Africa after our Marrakech trip: Asia Malaysia {2006} Kuala Lumpur & Penang Maldives {2010} Bodu Hithi Singapore {1991 & 2006} Sri Lanka {2010} Habarana; Kandy; Mount Lavi...

Time for me to start filling you in on some of the destinations on our Travel Map ! Back in August last year we headed off to Italy for a week. One of my bridesmaids Helen was getting married and I was one of her 3 bridesmaids. The wedding was on the Wednesday so we went on the Saturday so we would have some time before and after the wedding. We flew from Edinburgh to Rome via Amsterdam then drove our hire car up to Siena in Tuscany. We stayed at Villa Catignano , an old Tuscan villa 8km north east of Siena, along with the rest of the wedding party and all of the other wedding guests. The villa has been split into apartments and we shared a 3 bedroom apartment with the other two bridesmaids Lucy & Nic, their partners and Lucy's daughter Emily. The villa had a pool to use as well but we only ended up going there one day; I didn't even go in for fear of the chlorine ruining my french manicure before the wedding. Since we didn’t have a lot of free time during the week, w...

I wrote a post ages ago about anniversaries and what each one is supposed to mean*. For each of our anniversaries I want to try and stick to it and get gifts for each other that would also mean something. For our 1st anniversary we decided to buy something together which incorporated paper and also one of our favourite things; seeing the world. We have been wanting to make a travel map for ages and ages so we decided this was the perfect time to make it happen! Having already visited four new countries since we got married {Sri Lanka, Maldives, Slovakia & Austria}, and our planned trip to Morocco which will make five, we hope to add to it in the coming years. Graham thinks we should aim to visit 100+ countries. I can probably count 29 at the moment so there is still a long way to go! We bought the FUTURE Map in blue, emerald, pink & yellow from The Future Mapping Company {which I first saw in Conversation Pieces Scotland on Sunday piece and knew we had to have it} as we...