The Wedding of Andrew & Bryony

This weekend we were London-bound again for another celebration. This time, a wedding. Have I mentioned before how I love weddings? Well, let me say it again. I love weddings. From the entrance of the Bride, to the rejoicing before God in the hymns & prayers, and the wonderful attention to detail in decorating the reception venue. 

Here's a glimpse into the wedding of our friends Andrew ('Barkers') and Bryony...

The music played for the entrance of the Bride was simply beautiful.

                           

How brilliant is this unconvential wedding transport? The 'driver' was also one of the best men, who had done a speedy costume change after the ceremony, along with a puncture repair, before cycling off with the Bride & Groom to the reception.

There was a very summery feel to this wedding, with varying shades of yellow flowers everywhere you looked, and a few bumble bees popping up here and there. The ones on the cake suffered slightly with the heat, but the glass bumble bee nestled in the bride's bouquet did just fine. Can you spot it?

The lovely Tim & Becky - our fellow guests & hosts for the weekend - who graciously put up with my glass breaking antics (which resulted in a sliced wrist. Thankfully, my arteries are still in tact!)

My hair was a sea of twists & twirls.

There was the slightly terrifying moment, where the photographer jokingly told the groomsmen to throw the bride in the air. And they did. I am so glad she ended up back in their arms & not on the floor!

 Handpainted teapots, personalised coasters & fabric bound bread adorned each table.

And the groom well & truly got his groove on. Such fun times, I was only sad that I had to miss another friend's wedding that was happening on the very same day.

London : Comics Jam Workshop

This weekend has been lovely and long. John took the day off work on Friday so that we could drive to London on Thursday evening to have a full three days of fun. And oh, what fun we had. Our days were filled with family - both mine & his - food, and much chatting.

One of the highlights of the weekend was an illustration workshop we attended yesterday afternoon. Set in a cosy cafe called House in Camberwell, we spent an afternoon learning how to create our own character & comic strip, listening to the silence fall as everyone put pencil to paper & concentrated oh so hard in their creating. 

The workshop was run by the brilliant Sarah McIntyre, who istunningly illustrates children's books. This lady has talent. One of her recent creations is Morris the Mankiest Monstor:

Sarah showed us how simple it could be to create a character, starting with a basic shape, adding features creatively, and allowing your character to take on their own persona. 

Drawing is something that I have never found strength in, but there was something wonderful about Sarah's calm manner & confident teaching style that made the commitment of marks to paper surprisingly straightforward.

We created comic strips, sharing the process by starting our own using the character we had created, then passing it along to the next person to continue the story. Sharing the process of bringing our characters to life was quite liberating; there was no room for disappointment because there was only time to start a story of our own.  In my mind, I did not have the time to construct a complete story for my character, so he was free to develop in any which way the next artist chose. 

We folded paper and created mini books, inspired by some of Sarah's own wonderful creations. 

I wrote a story about a dandelion seed called The one that flew away. It's a very simple story and might not look particularly exciting, but I had a lot of fun making it.

 

I relished the opportunity to sit and listen and draw without restraint, learning from a truly brilliant artist who was so kind to share her skills & creations with us. It made me feel the need to make time to create more often.

people watching

This weekend saw us roadtripping to London to celebrate John's birthday.

As we sat on a Big Red Bus in the late hours of Saturday evening, returning home from a night full of food&film (or food&sleeping, as was the case with me), a man came onto the bus who inspired this blog post.

There was nothing particularly special or surprising about this man. But I couldn't help but notice how he smiled as he read a text on his phone, oblivious to the swarms of people around him and the motion of the swaying bus. I wondered at the words he was reading, maybe a friend telling a funny story, maybe a piece of wonderful news, maybe hearing from a loved one. Whatever it said, it was making this man look full of joy.

My eyes wandered around the bus, noticing little pockets of people's lives, scattered around for all to see:

An unlikely looking couple, the lady wore a white hat that had a little bug crawling over it, unbeknownst to her, the man had incredibly long hair. The South American couple in front of us, clearly talking with love in their voices. The friends beside me, some losing their consciousness to sleep, some engrossed in conversation.

Every person with a story to tell. I wondered at how, just by John uttering those few words to me two weeks ago has given me a brand new story to tell.

I love how each experience we have gives us a story to tell, and how some stories have people utterly captivated and caught up in the emotion with you, while others make people want to fall asleep. Regardless of the response of others, our lives are made up of stories and it's a wonderful thing to be surrounded by people who share the stories of their lives with you.

London Love

Here are two little things which you might not know about me.

1:: I like to be creative and make things.

2:: I have a tendency to start one thing then start something else and not get the first thing done because I've got distracted. Some days I feel like I leave unfinished business in my wake, a stream of things behind me waiting to reach completion.

Some time ago, about a year ago in fact, I saw this idea of making a string of paper hearts. Beautifully simple & aesthetically pleasing.

Determined to recreate this idea, I went into a charity shop in search of a map that I could cut up and make into hearts. I asked the kind lady whether they had any in stock and she said, 'No'. Then remembered with slight embarrassment that she had thrown a very old copy of a London A-Z away just a few minutes before I arrived. Sheepishly, the kind lady removed the said map from the bin and said, 'it's yours if you want it.' It was perfect. As it had been classified as rubbish, I was offered the map free of charge, but I felt that would be a little bit like stealing from charity, so I paid the princely sum of 20p and walked away with a big smile on my face.

Fast forward 365 days, give or take, and I find myself at home with an unexpected day to myself, due to snow. Ah the endless possibilities of things to do! I attempted making a cushion which went slightly wrong. Not horrendously so, but not quite how I envisaged it. Being the slightly impatient person that I am, I didn't undo all the stitching and start over, I moved along to the next thing that needed to be done, leaving the poor cushion in my wake.

Fifteen minutes later, I had a string of stitched paper hearts hanging on my wall.

365 days ago, I had not met a man who goes by the name of John King, but I had found a little treasure of a map. A London A-Z, showing me roads and parks and churches in black&white print, of a city I hardly knew.

Little did I know that 365 days after I started cutting hearts out from this map, I would have been to London more times in the space of 7 months than I had over the course of my lifetime, all because I came to love John King, a boy from London, living in Bristol, who likes to go back to his home city.

Birthday Cake

Last weekend was my 25th birthday. It was wonderful for the celebrations to be spread over the whole weekend, spanning from Friday night to Sunday. Every day featured cake of some kind. Lots of different kinds, in fact, so here's a little rundown of the cake-friends that attended my birthday celebrations:

some of my very own :: vanilla & orange combo

seriously thickly coated vanilla with chocolate orange

mini meringues with pistachios & white chocolate

crafted by Mr Dave Evens :: chocolate lake

courtesy of the Hummingbird Bakery :: chocolate brownie with raspberry cheese cake

black bottomed cupcakes

Thankyou hummingbird bakery for enticing me with your spectacular cakes, comfy stools and bright, classy pink decor. You were brilliant.

And last but not least on the cake list, lemon drizzle cake, made by John's Mum. Thanks, Sarah! This one managed to get consumed before I was able to take a photo so you'll just have to use your imaginations...

Needless to say, I was a bit sugared out by Sunday, yet somehow I have managed to gently graze my way through the leftovers this week.

London Baby

Last Saturday saw a wonderful day trip to London. Despite having lived in close proximity to London for my whole life, I saw more of London in one day than I have ever seen before. We had fun.

[From left to right, top to bottom: Somerset house : Embankment : John : Sunset over Kent : St James' Park : Somerset House : Embankment : View from the London Eye]