10.02

Cider-with-Rosie-VQ-Emma-Bridgewater-vintage-radio-2

L O V E   I S   I N   T H E   A I R

There’s nothing like music for making a moment complete, is there?

I grew up in a family where music is considered to be as important and essential as food, and the songs and albums my Mum brought me up listening to have become defining markers in my childhood.

Now that I’m older, music forms the backdrop to my time spent in the kitchen, mainly. There are few things I love more than pottering around in the kitchen, assembling a cake or rubbing butter into flour to make a batch of pastry, with the radio mumbling along quietly in the background.

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After having made do with using various radio station apps downloaded to my phone for such a long time, you can’t imagine how happy I was to receive an offer of this heart-covered beauty of a radio from VQ!

It’s a special one designed by Emma Bridgewater for Valentine’s Day, and not only comes complete with auto-tuning digital radio stations, but also hooks up to your phone via Bluetooth too!

Isn’t the miniature retro shape so sweet? I’ve been completely obsessed ever since it arrived, and just love how comforting the sound of background music or the voice of a radio presenter is during the daytime.

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As part of their #MyLoveSong campaign, VQ asked me to put together a playlist featuring ten of my all-time favourite love songs for Valentine’s Day!

The task was both a pleasure and a cinch- I mean, what better way to spend an hour or so than listening through Otis Redding’s back catalogues on Spotify!?

The songs I chose all have special meaning to Jason and I. Most are favourites that we’ve played over and over whilst cooking together in the early evenings, or washing up dishes late at night, and one, of course, just had to be the song we danced to as our first dance as a married couple back in July.

We always like to keep our Valentine’s Day pretty low key- you know Jason and I, never happier than when at home! But you can bet that the cosy meal we’ll eat together will be accompanied by the music of Marvin Gaye and Luther Vandross…

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VQ are offering the chance for one lucky reader to win their own VQ Retro Mini Pink Hearts radio, and to do so all you need to do is vote for my playlist by sharing it on Twitter, and use the hashtag #MyLoveSong!

Good luck, and happy Valentine’s Day, lovebirds!

~ This post was sponsored by VQ. ~

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Posted in HOME, LOVE, Sponsored

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16.07

Cider-with-Rosie-wedding

Remember when I first shared the news of our engagement with you, and I wrote ‘I can’t quite find the words’? Well, words have left me again now. The lump that’s sitting high and heavy in my throat is making it just as difficult to express in words all the whirlwind emotions I’m feeling now, as it would be to tell you in person. So I’ll just say this…

Thank you, a hundred times over, for following along with all that I share of our lives here on Cider with Rosie. I can’t even begin to express how special and heart-warming and wonderful it’s been to share the process of planning our wedding here with you, and how much your sweet messages and emails and words of support have meant to us. You, each and every one of you, bring more happiness into our lives than I could ever express, and I’m so excited to have such a wonderful community here to share with as Jason and I step into this next, most exciting chapter of our lives.

With love and kisses from, as of around 2pm on Friday 17th July…

Rosie Abigail Chappel ! xx

p.s. We’re tagging all things wedding on Instagram and Twitter ‘#goingtotheChappel2015′ if you’d like to follow along over the next couple of days, and on the blog-front, it’ll be business as usual here whilst I’m away on honeymoon! And so, again, see you on the other side! x

40 Comments
Posted in LOVE, WEDDING

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28.05

Cider-with-Rosie-Yorkshire

After breakfast, came exploration and adventure.

And when I say adventure, I mean a gentle walk through the countryside, followed by an afternoon of eating and drinking. But we were in a new place, so that’s an adventure in itself, right? Right?

Although our tent was so snug and charming I could happily have settled in for the long haul there with my book (Girl on the Train- finally getting into it, two thirds of the way through!) and endless rounds of coffee, we were determined to see as much of Yorkshire as we could in the few short days we had there. So, after testing out the shower with, I’ll be honest, a little trepidation (we couldn’t bring ourselves to believe that a tent could *possibly* have an instant hot water supply, and were proved quite happily wrong!), Jason and I layered on enough clothes for every possible weather outcome, and headed out into the countryside.

On our agenda for the day was a visit to a village called Harome, where we’d been told we’d find a pub called ‘The Star Inn’ serving some of the best pub lunches to be had for miles around. But first, since we’d maybe eaten one too many slices of toast at breakfast, a walk to work up an appetite!

What I wore :: White T shirt  || Check shirt (past season, similar) || Jeans || Boots.

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We wandered through the village in search of a likely looking footpath to set out on, and stopped to admire a sweet gated farmyard that had the flounciest peacocks you’ve ever seen strutting around inside it. In fact, the one in this photo was doing his ‘look how snazzy my feathers are’ dance for the peahen just behind it! The owner of the farm came out and told us that he’s the oldest of all the birds she has, and that the hens mostly ignore his showing off. Clever ladies ;)

The walk we took didn’t last all that long (it felt SO strange to walk without a dog running along up ahead of us!), but we managed to catch the worst luck, and by the time we got back to the Star Inn we found out they’d stopped serving lunch only 15 minutes beforehand. ‘No matter!’ we said, and hopped back into the car and headed to the nearby village of Helmsley (singular, not plural ;) instead!

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^^ Sometimes, a little cheesy self-timer action is just totally necessary, right? ^^

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Helmsley was as chocolate-box a village as you could dream of finding, but I captured it all via video instead of photographs! You’ll have to stay tuned for the video if you want to see the giant fruit scones with jam and cream we ate for afternoon tea, and the adorable greengrocers on the corner of the village square where we purchased our dinner (so totally charming!), and all the sweet grey-stoned cottages we made heart-eyes at as we walked past…

I’ll tell you though, that scone is up there amongst the best I’ve ever eaten. Maybe it was that we’d been pottering around the countryside for a good few hours and so were ravenous by the time we sat down to eat, or maybe it was that scones are just better when served alongside a cup of good old fashioned Yorkshire tea- I don’t know. But it really was a special one.

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And so, to home. We’d picked up a handful of things to cook on the barbecue that evening, and set to work making up new potato and red pepper skewers dressed with oregano, cooking ribs, and also cracked open the bottle of champagne we’d brought with us as a Bank Holiday weekend treat!

It was pretty blissful, that evening. Sipping icey champagne from our favourite little tin mugs (brought with us from home, because we couldn’t pass up the oppurtunity to use them in their natural camping habitat ;), eating a dinner straight from the grill followed by several rounds of cheese and biscuits, and then toasting up marshmallows over the remainder of the heat from the barbecue.

In between the rush of planning our wedding (we’re ticking off the final tasks now, which is crazy exciting!), each of us getting ready to take the best part of a month out of our normal working routines, and all of the other occurrences and tasks and jobs that make life eventful and exciting and busy, I feel as though we hadn’t had chance to really connect in a while. To devote time to just talking, and to catching up with each other and where we’re both at right now, and not getting distracted by things like phones and Netflix and Twitter. It’s amazing how easy it is to become wrapped up in the bubble of ‘self’, and to forget about the importance of quality time spent with the people who matter most.

We talked about it a little whilst we were away, and decided to try and spend less time ‘rushing’, and more time concentrating. On whatever task is at hand, on work, on relaxation- on each other.

And on that note, we clinked tin mugs, and toasted to another happy evening spent in front of a roaring fire in a little tent on the edge of a forest.

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Posted in COUNTRY WALKS, COUNTRYSIDE LIFE, JASON, LOVE, TRAVEL, WEEKEND BREAK

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22.01

Sunday-Boden-Cider-with-Rosie Teddy-Cider-with-Rosie Barbour-wellies-Cider-with-Rosie Sunday-fish-and-chips-Cider-with-Rosie The-Tablespoon-Sunningdale Winter-sunset  

Last weekend, when these photos were taken, marked exactly six months until Jason and I get married. I’m not usually a countdown kind of person, but now that we’re this side of January and the wedding feels so very close, it feels right to be counting down the months until the day itself.

I’ve kept the majority of our wedding planning off this space, on the whole. I didn’t really intend to do so. When we first got engaged, I thought I’d like to document the process largely on YouTube, but also via my blog too. Series were started, playlists made, Pinterest boards set up (okay okay, I’d maybe already had a wedding board up and running long before I even got engaged…). But so far, it feels as though the most of our wedding has been planned in bursts of productivity and enthusiasm- bursts that last for one or two days, and are only long enough for us to find whatever band/hotel/suits we’re looking for, and then disappear as quickly as they arrived. They don’t last long enough for me to manage any sort of documentation here, that’s for sure! I think also, part of the reason I’ve not found myself wanting to post much about the planning process here is because really, the wedding isn’t really where our focus lies. We both are so incredibly excited about the day itself, and I get butterflies in my stomach every time I think about walking down the aisle, but the larger part of me is really just looking forward to being a wife. As great as those ‘walking down the aisle’ butterflies are, the ones I get thinking about the first moment I hear Jason say the words as ‘my wife’ are even greater.

Jason and I both grew up in families that didn’t fit the conventional 2.4 mould…though whose does, really? My family has always been small and tight-knit, Jason’s large and welcoming. Our childhood experiences are vastly different in so many ways, and yet despite their differences, they’ve given us both an identical craving for stability, and routine, and the comfort of sure-footedness. A nagging desire to put down roots, and a love for home comforts. I never stop feeling surprised by how much happiness a Sunday spent walking the dog miles and miles through the mud then stopping by our favourite local restaurant for lunch can bring me.

I have a really vivid memory of sitting in a coffee shop with my Grandma about 18 months before she died, and her telling me about how, when she was a new Mum, there weren’t so many little cafes and coffee shops that made it so easy to pop out of the house with her babies. I asked her, ‘Did you ever feel bored, or frustrated being at home?’, and she replied ‘Never. You’ve got your home, and your husband, and your beautiful children- what more could you ask for?’

I made a note of that conversation at the time, in the back of an old notebook, because I knew one day it’d really mean something to me.

And now, in this six month countdown to the rest of my life, it means absolutely everything.

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32 Comments
Posted in FAMILY, HAPPINESS, JASON, LOVE

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