Croatia has a lot of steps & so does Montenegro!

Croatia has a lot of steps!! I'm sure that I had read this but I didn't really pay much attention, but we walked up a ridiculous amount of stairs in Croatia...and in Montenegro too!!

So as usual, I had too much holiday to be used before the end of the year, and just about managed to squeeze in booking a week off between finishing shooting Spring 2013 and starting shooting Summer. Me and my boyfriend had been talking about Croatia all summer so thought why not, and booked some flights. Much to the horror of my colleagues, we only took hand luggage (it was going to be sunny and you can fit a lot of dresses in one hand luggage bag) and also didn't book anywhere to stay! They thought we were mad!

The benefits of going to Croatia in October is that there are far less tourists (meaning old people wandering off their cruise ships) but it is still warm and sunny, and plenty warm enough to swim in the sea and go snorkelling. The downsides are that everything switches to 'Winter' from the 1st October and so lots of shops and restaurants close down, and the ferries switch to their Winter schedules which involves not running/running much less.

I definitely think it was worth it, as the slight annoyance of things being closed was way better than being overrun by annoying old tourists!! We spent a day and a bit wandering up and down all over Dubrovnik, and swimming in a little cove with some locals, then headed to the Island of Korcula which was equally stunning, and had the added bonus of also growing lots of grapes! We passed a very happy few days in Korcula drinking local wine, swimming in small coves, and eating pastries! Heaven!

From here we headed back to Dubrovnik, and then onto Montenegro, which had an equally ridiculous number of steps! We spent the night in Kotor,  a beautiful walled city completely surrounded by mountains, and walked up an old fort pretty much to the top of the mountain which had incredible views.

Sadly on our return to Dubrovnik, the sea was incredibly churned up and so although we headed back to our little cove to swim, we were scared of death and so didn't get in the water. Still, an amazing holiday!

All Things Green and Beautiful

I've been having a bit of a love affair recently with spinach. As a child I refused to eat spinach if it was called spinach as I declared it to be slime. However, my clever Granny used to call it holly and I would happily eat up my holly if it was put on my plate as I thought it was really hardcore and cool to be able to eat something so prickly!

I was given a soup cook book for my birthday by my house mates and one of my favourite and most cooked recipe from the book is a spinach and coconut soup - absolutely delicious!

I have made it many times, sometimes with chilli to give it a Thai style soup edge, sometimes with potatoes to make it really thick and creamy, but mostly just as it is as it is scrumptious.

When I haven't got any coconut milk in the house, I have been making a few variations on green soup, with spinach still as the main ingredient. I find spinach just makes you feel better at just the thought of eating it, it exudes goodness, and especially after an exciting weekend with a fair amount of drinking, I feel spinach is absolutely the best thing to be eating to make myself better and keep going for a weeks work.

To make it an ultra healthy soup, I quite often go for a green theme and put in anything I have in the house that is green. As one of my colleagues said today...'ugh - what are you eating' ...it may look like slime, but it tastes fabulous and very, very healthy!

The latest green concoction contains a red onion and vegetable stock cube, as the base soup ingredients, and then also contains spinach, peas, broccoli and celery! Yum!

Some Cushions, Hairbands and a Superhero Cape

So I thought I'd got most of the sewing out of the way for the Autumn shoot season but no...of course there is always more!

So today, as I was leaving work, I was given fabric to make 4 cushion covers for the Baby shoot, some lovely cobalt checked fabric to make a superhero cape and sleep mask, and then some soft silky fabric to make some head scarf ties.

Luckily I had no real plans for this evening other than recovering from a very exciting weekend so I had plenty of time to get on with all of this and sew.

One of the first things I do when starting sewing is to set the ironing board and iron up in my room and get ready to press as everything looks so much better once it's had a gentle press. I also love the smell that the iron gives of and especially the smell of warm cotton and I find the little clicks which the iron gives off very comforting!

Once again, better pictures to follow when the catalogue comes out next year!