Our Day by Design

All of the Escape Water Residences are situated on their own away from the rest of the island and the other water villa's. The cluster of 24 villa's are connected to the island by a walkway above the lagoon. L-R: Aerial View; Escape Water Residences (Images from here & here ) We stayed in residence no. 614, located at the middle of the left side above. Each residence is 184m² which is bigger than our flat at home, and everything about it was fabulous! Inside the villa, the entrance hall led straight into the lounge area, complete with TV, mini-bar and views out to the ocean & our mini infinity pool. The hall also led into the bedroom which had a huge bed and also looked out to the infinity pool. The adjoining dressing area led to the massive bathroom, complete with a double bathtub, indoor & outdoor showers. Outside, the private terrace had the infinity pool which was probably my favourite bit of the residence. There were also loungers for sunbathing and ch...

We were up early for breakfast and our pick up to go to the airport, along with another family who were leaving at the same time. Once we had piled into the mini bus, all of the women were presented with fresh flowers as a gift for from our tour operators Kuoni. Our first week in Sri Lanka had gone so quick and I had loved every second of it, I'm not sure I could choose a favourite bit! After such a busy week we were definitely ready to relax and do nothing! The mini bus was a bit quicker at getting to the airport where we were then able to check in for our flight. Graham asked for seats as close to the front of the plane as possible as we had noticed on the way that they had a lot more legroom. After some time in the airport to look around the few shops, we were able to wait beside the gate for our flight to board. The flight we were getting was the one which carried on to London Heathrow after the stop in Male , which is the capital of the Maldives . The flight was fairly quiet a...

Last year I was given two blog awards from two lovely ladies but I'm only getting round to passing them on now; so thank you Hannah & Lisa-Marie and I'm sorry it has taken me so long to post about them! The first is the 'A Blog With Substance' Award from Hannah at Gator Tales . For this award you are supposed to sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation, and experience in 5 words.... Sharing; Exciting; Inspiration; Support; Friendship Then pass it on to 10 other blogs with substance: 1. Gator Tales 2. Bicoastal Bride 3. The Handcrafted Life 4. Conversation Pieces 5. Daydreams in Lace 6. My Spare Thoughts 7. Adventures of a Dizzy Girl 8. Rosalilium 9. This Girl Is... 10. A Chocolate Lover's Confessions The second award is the 'One Lovely Blog' award from L isa-Marie at This Girl Is... . The "rules" for this award are: 1.Grab the award. Post it on your blog with the name of the person who has granted the award and his or her blog link. 2.Pay...

10 months already; this first year is going so fast! We have enjoyed the first few weeks of 2011 with nothing much planned, and actually having time to sort things out, like tidying the living room and other exciting things like that! I am continuing my honeymoon recaps as I am determined to finish them all soon, I just have the Maldives to do! As our anniversary is fast approaching we decided to go on a city break to celebrate, as we do love our holidays and really any excuse! After ruling out a return trip to NYC, our criteria for the location was Europe and a country or city that neither of us had been to before. This turned out harder that we thought, especially because we wanted somewhere you could fly direct from Edinburgh. After going through the full list of Easyjet & Ryanair destinations, we chose Slovakia and Austria. We are going to spend 2 nights in Bratislava then 3 in Vienna and I cant wait to go, in just 8 weeks! This month I'm looking forward to meeting the blog...

I recently bought 2 ornaments from SarEi , a shop which sells personalised Christmas ornaments for all occasions on Etsy . Sarah sells loads of different designs and was so easy to work with and great at replying quickly to my questions & requests. Cobalt and Garnet - Hand Painted Wedding / Anniversary Ornament (Image from here ) One of the ornaments was for us as I wanted something on our tree to celebrate our wedding and the second for my baby nephew to give my sister & brother-in-law at their wedding , rather than the traditional horseshoe, since the wedding was so close to Christmas. I chose the wedding / anniversary design shown above and then chose the colours and text for each. Ours was of course deep purple, with a grey / silver design & text. It has our first names & wedding date on the front. For my sister, I got a navy one with a silver / white design & text. The front had their first names & wedding date on it. I then got the seller to put a messag...

We had a fabulous Christmas and New Year, and despite having a week and a half off work, I was so not ready to go back to work on the 5th of January. Before I carry on with my Maldives honeymoon recaps {which I WILL finish before our 1st anniversary} and better late than never, here's a recap of Christmas 2010! I will start with our tree & decorations. Although we didn't have a lot of time this year to get our decorations up, we managed to get most of them out on the 20th of December. I only took them all down at the weekend as I wanted to get a little longer to enjoy them. Our Christmas tree is an artificial one we got from Dobbies garden centre a couple of years ago; its quite large so the rest of the year it lives at my parents house! I love all of the decorations on our tree, many of which have been individual ones bought while on holiday, rather than sets of decorations. Since we have so many decorations, this year I added a separate ornament tree, from John Lewis, on ...