Girlie Shopping + lots of coffee & cake

Coffee and cake counts as a meal right?! I had two of those kinds of meals yesterday!!

First though, coffee in bed…this mug is so true!

Followed by a 9am spin class…I’d set my alarm for 8am, not expecting to really need it, but the children let us sleep in for once! So it was a bit of a rush to drink my coffee and get ready, but I made it! I’ve only just started going to Saturday morning classes so this instructor was newish to me – such a tough class! One of her regulars is off to Australia for 3 months and apparently someone else had joked that you couldn’t spin to classical music (this other regular’s favourite type I guess?)…well the instructor proved them wrong – lots of fast and high resistance, ouch!!

After spinning, my sisters took Izzy swimming while I showered etc, and then I went into town with my Mum and sisters for coffee & cake “breakfast”…

Caramel iced coffee

and carrot cake

This carrot cake was so good! When it arrived, Mum liked the look of it so much that she ordered herself a slice too! All of the cakes in this cafe were gluten free, but you couldn’t tell at all – delicious!

By the time I got home, Liam and the children had eaten lunch so we headed into Exeter. Liam needed to go to B&Q so he took Toby, and dropped me and Izzy off in town. It was so nice to spend some time with just Izzy – I spend lots of time with Toby alone when Izzy’s at school, but I hardly ever get alone time with her. First stop…Starbucks!

I had a pumpkin spice latte (!!) and an apple fritter doughnut for my "lunch"…

To be honest, I wasn’t overly thrilled with either of these the doughnut had no apple in it, and the pumpkin spice latte was only ok – it was perfectly nice, but didn’t live up to my (admittedly high) expectations – not much flavour except a bit of cinnamon. I’m going into Exeter again this week so I might try it iced and see if it improves things, I’ve seen people on Instagram having it as a frappe.
Izzy couldn’t decide between all the cakes, so instead of making a decision, opted for two chocolate coins instead (!!)

After Starbucks, I decided to take Izzy clothes shopping as she wanted some new clothes that made her look “pretty and cool”, haha, we headed to H&M – so busy, it was a little chaotic!!

Izzy insisted that she was too old to just try the clothes on in a corner (really??!) so after a long queue for the changing rooms, it was time to try lots of clothes on…

She had such fun twirling in front of the mirror, so I guess it was worth the wait!

I liked this first (wool?) dress, but Izzy wasn’t keen…

She loved the Hello Kitty top though!

And when we got to the grey party dress she started “posing”, haha, worrying!!

And there was also a pink spotty combo (the top was actually a two-pack with a plain green one too, but she’s wearing it with the skirt again today!)…

There were also several dresses that were deemed “no” by one or the other of us, and we finally narrowed it down to 6 items (because she’s 6??!) and went to queue for the second time in the same shop, yawn!

Clothes shopping done, we headed to Boots, where I resisted buying nail polish (the Essie stand was half empty!!) and then Topshop where it got the better of me…I did have a gift card though so only paid £2 for these!

I also loved this cake stand from Next, but didn’t buy it…Christmas present please Liam or Mum??  

When we got home, I took photos of the clothes Izzy had bought, and realised that the only thing I hadn’t got photos of her trying on was a jumper we picked up on the way to the till. So I asked her to quickly try it on for me, and then this happened…The first three photos are my daughter looking “normal”, if slightly hyper (!), but I have no idea where all the other poses have come from, aaargh, my 6 year old is growing up too fast!!!






So, food. You’d think that after coffee & cake for both breakfast and lunch, I might have something healthy for dinner? Nope, not really! I ended up eating 4 slices of pizza when the children had tea (roast veg…does that count as kind of nutritious?!) and then, as Liam was out for the evening, I had lots of treats lined up for last night…

Chips and dips (my favourite!):

Followed by chocolates and ice cream...this is my favourite chocolate mint ice cream - lots of different textures - I love the crystals of mint sugar in it!

And a magazine to fuel my Autumn obsession…good times!!

Have you tried, or are you planning to try, the Starbucks pumpkin spice latte? What did you think? After seeing it raved about so much by American bloggers, I had high expectations for it so am a bit disappointed. Although, thinking about it, I can’t really pinpoint what exactly pumpkin tastes like – it is usually accompanied by other strong spices/flavours. I’m tempted to either buy or make my own pumpkin syrup though to see what I like – Maria found a syrup to buy (which I've just noticed is out of stock - it wasn't a couple of days ago, lots of other people obviously have the same idea! The site normally gets stock back in quite quickly though, fingers crossed!), or there is a recipe that I remember being popular last year…so I’m not giving up on pumpkin lattes just yet!!

Liam's Graduation Day

Congratulations Liam! :)

As you can probably guess, today was Liam's graduation ceremony! We had to be in Taunton by 9am, so we left home nice and early, and then had breakfast in Starbucks when we got into the town. Praline mocha (one of the new seasonal drinks)...

and a mushroom and cheese croissant for me.

After Liam had picked up his graduation gown, we decided to take photos ourselves at a nearby park, rather than pay for the really expensive professional photos. We were really lucky as during and after the ceremony it rained a lot, but beforehand it stayed dry.

The graduate himself...

With his lovely wife (!)...

I wish Liam was looking at the camera in this one!

With his parents...

And one of all four of us - thanks to a random passerby!

The actual ceremony was held in one of the churches in town. Afterwards there was meant to be a procession through town with a stop for "hat throwing" outside another church. However, as it was raining they changed the plans to do the hat throwing inside immediately after the ceremony. It was so dark in there, this was the best photo I could manage - Liam is pretty much central to the photo, at the far end of the row...

After the ceremony, we all quickly walked in the rain to the cricket grounds (where the first photo in this post was taken) to get our free glass of fizz, and then Liam, his parents and I went out for lunch at Pitcher & Piano. We all chose to have the meal deal (£6 for main course + soft drink/£7.50 for main course + beer/wine) but the portion sizes were a bit disappointingly small. I had a falafel wrap which wasn't too bad, but my in-laws' lamb hotpots were teeny tiny!

Tasty, but we were all still hungry after we'd eaten! We made up for the slightly disappointing lunch by making a second trip to Starbucks on the way back to the car (well, except for my father-in-law who went to a hot dog stand instead!!) - they had buy one get one free on the Christmas drinks from 2-5pm, bargain! I was very excited by the "red cup", and the gingerbread latte inside was delicious too!

Mmm, a good end to a great day! It was really fun to see Liam graduate, I'm so proud of him achieving his degree despite having to change universities, the birth of Toby during his second year etc, he's done so well. Today also brought back memories of my graduation day three years ago, although that day ended with us having lots of cocktails instead of coffee, fun times!!

Have you ever been to a graduation ceremony or similar? I remember my own graduation ceremony, which was held at Winchester Cathedral, was quite a formal event, and after the ceremony was finished there was nothing else planned so I didn't really get to catch up with many people. We had a lovely lunch with my parents before, and Liam and I enjoyed dinner & cocktails afterwards, but it would have been nice to have seen a few more people. That was what was nice with Liam's ceremony today - despite having to walk in the rain, it was nice for him to chat to all his uni friends for quite a while at the cricket grounds. Have you got many plans for the weekend? Bonfire night? I think we will just try to see some fireworks from our window as all the events around here start quite late so it would be difficult to keep Toby awake. Hopefully in a few years time we will be able to go - I have some fun memories of bonfire nights when I was a child!