la coco noire.

Today, in true mother-daughter-day-off style, me and the mothership baked a colossal chocolate cake. And I mean colossal. We doubled the ingredients for double the pleasure and this thing should last weeks (I say with a hopeful heart). The recipe is one of mum's own concoctions that doesn't really have exact measurements, just 'some-of-this-and-a-little-bit-of-that' with some extra milk to make it super moooooist.















Then, after it had spent some time doing its thang in the oven, we whipped up some chocolate butter icing and slathered that all over the top (...or what was left of it after my sneaking fingers had finished - I am a big old sucker for butter icing, aaaah).







Oh yeah, and then we melted some more chocolate and dolloped that on top until it was basically the most moist and glorious chocolate cake ever made.









Domestic heaven. And now just to sit back and see how much chocolate cake I can physically stuff in my face before heading back to university next week. A competition of which I am an over zealous participant.

Yesterday, Mikey and I went for a looooong walk with the dogs...to the pub. Where we sat for about four hours. Which then ended in an impromptu night out and a slightly sore head this morning. I love weekends at home.

This morning me and my favourite woman in the world (aka my mum) went and did what we do best: went for a wander, grabbed a coffee and nibbled on something naughty. It has been a long standing tradition of ours that whenever we have a free morning together we become diva's who dine, and by dine I mean drink tea and ponder life's latest events. In fact, let's call it a 'wander & ponder', because that's essentially what it is.

I just realized that with the whole going-back-to-uni-now-you're-in-fourth-year-thing, I never actually got round to sharing some photos from Fay and Rick's picturesque wedding last September. I managed to upload photos of the beautiful book they had made, while seemingly hop, skipping and jumping past the actual official day. But boy, oh boy do I feel like they need sharing now though! It's absolutely freezing cold in my house and I'm huddled under a blanket with a cup of tea, but a quick browse through these photos from a warm day in late summer is bringing the feeling back to my toes!

I often wonder if I'm the only person who feels cheated by the weather in January (what's the point in frost/snow after Christmas, duh?!) and I always wish that mother nature would get her damn act together and combine the two. However my 'start each day with a grateful heart' manifesto (17 days and still going strong on this one - a personal record, hoorah!!) tells me it must be one little way to lessen January's whats-the-point-in-life-feeling. Adding some natural sparkle to the world makes you forget about the glorious boxing day food coma, wipe away the mince pies and motivate you to start work on those accidental, Quality-street-triangle shaped thighs. If they came together at the same time in December, January would be full of people eating stale Christmas pudding and crying because just what would be the point in January!? Can you tell how bursting with grateful love for the world I am?! Long may my love-filled-bursting last!

Last month, Mikey and I decided to treat ourselves to a little Christmas weekend away. I've never been away around Christmas time before, in fact the most romantic-y Christmas-y thing I've done is wander around Winter Wonderland at Hyde Park...which doesn't really count considering it's a) in England and b) ruined because you have to stand around on a sweaty tube with about a million other Wonderlanders' the whole sorry way home. So, we decided to go to Bruges; mainly because Mikey loves Colin Farrell in a less than healthy manner but also because it's supposed to be a pretty sweet little city.

It actually turned out to be a sweet and unbelievably seriously ridiculously little city - you can walk from one end to the other without even working up a sweat, although - we almost sacked off touristy stuff completely after discovering the hotel dressing gowns and slippers. But, with the sweet promise of churros dipped in chocolate for me and a foot-long HotDog for Mikey (I'm serious - it was longer than my arm), we popped our coats on and wandered.

We spent most of our time rambling around actually, a large portion of time eating food and about 15 minutes climbing all 366 steps to the top of 'zee tower'. For the first time in my life we ordered room service which came up on a silver platter (!!!) and was delivered right to the foot of our bed by the waiter -  to say I was giddy with glee was an understatement. Mikey got to send a 'zee-tower-is-closed-today'-with-the-actual-tower snapchat, and I got to eat chocolate to my hearts content and drink bubbly in a dressing gown. It was quite simply magical.

It really is a ridiculously beautiful city, all cobbled streets and chocolate shops. Although there's not heaps and heaps to do here other than eat, wander and wish you were Belgian, it was the most perfect, relaxing three days away right before a busy Christmas. As I sit here engaging in displacement activities to put off writing my dissertation, there is nowhere I would rather be than in our natty hotel room, slippers on, truffles in one hand and Cava in the other.

These pictures are actually causing my poor, work-riddled heart to ache.