One Fabulous Weekend

Blogging has brought some lovely women into my life and for that I am truly thankful. A few of us decided we had been talking online for so long, it was about time we met up in person! We met at Blogfest back in November but with all the hustle and bustle we didn’t manage to chat properly.

On Saturday morning I set off on the train, from Hitchin to Chester. It was so nice having some time to myself, I have only ever left the girls a couple of times and have never been away on my own overnight since I have been married. I managed to finish my book, one that I started at Christmas (only managing about 20 pages on Christmas day) and thoroughly enjoyed it! I used to read all the time but now I either don’t have the time or fall asleep as soon as I have read a page or two. I also treated myself to a cheeky bag of giant buttons- be rude not to scoff the lot eh?

I arrived at Chester where Jess from Mummy of Boy Girl Twins was waiting for me. She was also picking up Katie from Mami2Five and we were all going to travel together. We had a good old natter in the car, so comfortable in each others company!

We arrived at Karen’s house (Mini Travellers) to find Sarah (Extraordinary Chaos), Katie (Life on Vista Street) and Hayley (Hayley from Home) had already arrived. We were also greeted by some wonderful goodie bags that Sarah managed to organise for us! It was a bit like a mini Britmums!

Sarah managed to snap this shot of all the bags before we had a rummage inside!

Inside were some fantastic goodies- relaxing bubble bath and cooling gel from arnicare, tanning oil from Tan Organic, bath salts, Tabasco sauce, olives from Fragata, some yummy energy bars from 9bar and of course the bags themselves were provided by Neal & Wolf with a lovely bottle of Guard- heat protection for your hair.

This is also another one of Sarah’s photos showing everything we were gifted.

Karen had gone to so much trouble, stocking up the fridge with all sorts of goodies for our evening. How cute is this Husky fridge? If my dining room was big enough I would definitely be getting one!! I stuck to vodka and lemonade all night, although being the lightweight that I am, I only had 3 drinks over the course of the whole night!

While we were waiting for Julia (Rainbeaubelle) to arrive we all sat around chatting and Karen had also arranged for us to get our nails done! How sweet is that? I chose a pale yellow colour, something I never used to like but recently I am drawn to all the pale pastels. I cannot remember the last time I had my nails done professionally so it was a real treat!

Julia arrived and it was time to sit down for dinner. Karen is a fab cook and had made a selection of dishes – my favourite was the chorizo & chickpea dish, yum yum! We sat down for dinner at around 7.30 and did not stop talking until we finally went to bed at 2am!! We have known each other less than a year, met once (or never in some cases) and yet it was like being with old friends. We didn’t just talk about blogging either- we talked about our families, our jobs and just life in general.

Julia took this lovely photo of the rest of us!

We laughed until our eyes watered- the funniest part of the evening being our time spent in Karen’s basement. Her poor husband had to put up with us all behaving like giggly school girls as he took photos of us against a white wall. He is a bit of a whizz with photoshop and here is the end result!

All of us in New York thanks to Karen’s lovely hubby!

Katie, Hayley and Julia had to go home- they don’t live too far away so didn’t need to stay over. That left Sarah, Jess, Katie and I staying the night- I felt like I was 10 years old, staying over for a sleepover with friends- so much fun! Luckily for us we didn’t have to sleep on the floor in sleeping bags- instead we had beds and the most comfortable pillows from Slumberdown, sent especially for the occasion. Best night sleep I’ve had in ages- although that could have something to do with not having the girls waking up in the night, disturbing my sleep!!

I woke on Sunday morning to find delicious bacon rolls for breakfast- perfect! We sat around in our pyjamas for an hour or so and then it was time to go home. I felt sad leaving as I knew it would be quite a while before I see them again. Although hopefully we will all be at Britmums this year- or maybe Karen will have us all back!