Showing posts with label castles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label castles. Show all posts

Monday, July 11, 2016

Travelling and doctorating etc

I have been away for a while. I genuinely didn't mean to leave it so long and I think it deserves some real talk in explanation. However I will pepper it with some lovely pictures for your entertainment.I will also share a new baking post very very soon.

Recently we travelled back to Ireland and visited some locations for our wedding next year!






I haven't written much about the engagement or the wedding planning on here and if I'm honest I think that has been a major reason for my absence. I'm not completely certain why I chose not to write about the engagement etc but I'm guessing it had something to do with the fact that it didn't belong to me alone. You see my fiancé is quite a private person and I fully respect that. You may have noticed that he never appears in this blog much. Sure, I make reference to him is various ways; bf, partner, the boy etc but I've kept it deliberately vague in order to give as little away as possible.

You will have seen snippets of him -

Isn't he handsome?!


But that could be anyone really!

So now when we decided to make our two lives into one -



Well suddenly it felt like a horse of a different colour! A shiny colour ;)

Seriously though, from the second you get engaged it feels like the wedding is ever present and it has taken up, in a good way, a lot of my thinking since then. In fact, between that and the doctorate, I don't really think about much else. Well my friends and family but you know, they will also be in the wedding so I often think of them that way too!

Showing off in their finery!


And in the mist of all of this excitement, I got a bit lost about how to blog -



I know it sounds old-fashioned, and honestly we are not being old-fashioned about this thing at all, but joining our lives together threw me for a hot minute about which parts I had a right to share and which I should keep private to respect his choices! I cannot even tell you how many times of the last few months that I have sat at the computer and stared at a blank post, with a blank mind! It all felt a little too fake and although I tend to show the happier parts of my life and my baking I am nothing if not real. As evidenced by my previous 'I screw up this recipe,' posts.



If I'm fully honest, this is a process that I am still muddling through. However I think that I have documented so much of our lives together on here (we have been together since before I started this blog) and I love blogging about life and baking. Not to mention that the biggest and best baking project (i.e. my own wedding cake) is also going to be coming up! Well I think I am going to share a little more and show you some of the colour (good and bad) and excitement of this developing experience.

A glimpse of my hubby to be and this green house!
So I hope that you will accept my apology and explanation for my absence and here's to lots more baking fun to come!!

Also in fun news - I got an instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tvancookies/

Follow me on instragram at tvancookies

Protein Cheesecake for every weeknight dessert

 I've been making this recipe for a while, think 3-4 years in various iterations and adapted it a number of times. This is my favourite,...