February Half-term

  As much as I love my new job, I sure do love a week off from it too! I spent my first weekend meeting up with the girls I lived with in Uni, the three of us are scattered over the country these days so we don't get to meet up as often as we'd like. We explored the shops in Cheltenham, scoffed ourselves silly in TGI Fridays (traditional for us) and did a lot of laughing about the old days. With everything new in my life at the moment it was really nice to step back into the past and it always amazes me how we can all slot straight back in like we had never been apart.   Then I spent a few days at home, relaxing (or watching charmed from the start) and finishing off the jobs we never got around too after moving in. The state of my home has an enormous effect on the state of my mind so clearing out and organising makes me feel a million times better!   A second reason for the cleaning spree was some of my family visiting Thursday, this was the first time anyone visited us in our little flat so I wanted it to look its best, my gran, grandad and sister came over for the day and after the grand tour we took then into town and introduced them to las iguanas, which I'm really into at the moment, the lunch menu is excellent and 2 for 1 cocktails (including the alcohol free ones, which is pretty rare) we also bought some cakes from Patisserie Valerie (Ive never seen one of these in Wales) to bring back home for afters which was a real treat!   Then Friday Phil and I took a trip to Oxford, we really want to make the most of the trains through reading and visit places that are now only a short train away. Although the day was absolutely freezing (it snowed at one point!) we had a really lovely time just roaming around with no set plans, stopping for lunch in a lovely olde worlde pub, thoroughly exploring the covered market and finding a gorgeous antique jewellers on Turl Street. We also started a new tradition of buying a postcard when we take a trip and writing about our day on the back, hopefully we will keep this up as it will be a really good way of storing some memories and something to look back over in years to come.   The last thing I got up to this week was learning to crochet, I've been planning to learn for a while as I have never got the hang of knitting but love the idea of making something real and practical from a ball of wool so I trotted off to John Lewis and bought some really snugly wool and a crochet hook for less than £5 (which felt like a very grown up thing to do) the picture above was taken earlier today, when it was light, and its considerably bigger now although still not very neat and I'm dropping/picking up stitches all over the place.   So that's my half term! How would you spend a week off?   Cariad xxx