In the final part of my mini wedding series, I want to talk about my "something borrowed". After deciding on my something old, something new, and something blue, my borrowed became a little more difficult. I was thinking of borrowing a piece of jewellery, but the neckline of my dress was already fairly high, and I don't really know anyone who wears a lot of bracelets.

Photo by Maria Carrington Photography

In the end my in-laws helped me, without me even mentioning it to them. My mother-in-law carried a special piece of her new husband's family history down the aisle, and they decided to pass it on to me. This beautiful lace handkerchief was a gift to my father-in-law's mother. She married her husband in the 1940s, at the height of World War 2. As a sailor my father-in-law's father was shipped off to various parts of the world during the course of the war, and at one point he was sent to Belgium, leaving behind his now-pregnant wife.

When news came that his wife had given birth to a son, my father-in-law, the young husband decided to buy his wife a beautiful Belgian lace handkerchief from Bruges. I have no idea how he managed to keep it from getting mucky or damaged in the following weeks, but at some point he was allowed home to visit his wife and new baby son, and give her his beautiful present.

It became a treasured family heirloom, and when my mother-in-law married in to the family it was given to her to use as her "something borrowed". It's been carefully stored away ever since, taken on every house move in the following years, until our wedding led to my mother-in-law retrieving it from it's safe place. I was very touched when they asked me to carry it as my something borrowed, and had it tucked away safely in my dress when I walked down the aisle to my new husband. Although that happy couple from the 1940s weren't able to be there on our special day, a little piece of their family history was. One day I hope it'll be passed down to another bride coming in to the family.

Engagement Ring - Something Old

Following on from my recent wedding posts on my Something Blue and Something New, today I've written about my Something Old! I've mentioned before that the old rhyme "Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue" took a while to return to my head. This led to a small amount of panic on my part when I realised I'd forgotten it, but in the end my something old was the easiest choice, as I went for my beautiful engagement ring. 

Big hand, little hand, engagement ring!

Me and my now-husband had quite a time finding it. He was living in Leigh-on-Sea at the time, so during one of my weekend visits to see him we decided to book out a Saturday morning to go ring shopping. There’s two very nice jewellers in Leigh itself, and if they failed then we could get the train to Southend and continue our search there. My OH had originally considered getting a ring custom made and had researched stones for it, but in the end he was so worried about getting the “wrong” ring that he insisted he needed my help.

The shops we visited in Leigh had some very nice rings, but nothing that really jumped out at me. So we went on to Southend, and spent a good few hours wandering around. We visited the big chain shops, we popped in to little pawn shops and independent jewellers. There were plenty of nice rings, but none that I could really see as being my engagement ring.

I think we were at the point of giving up and trying again somewhere else at some other weekend when we went down a side road and found another shop. As we stood looking in the window one particular ring jumped out at me. It was labelled as an “antique”, and looked so pretty in the window that I had to go in and try it on. My main fear was that it would be too small, as I’d read online that it’s quite difficult to increase ring size, but happily it fit fine (slightly too big, as I’d later find out, but I’d rather have the size reduced than increased!)

I’ve since worked out that the ring probably dates from the 1920s as I’ve found similar ones on Etsy marked as such. When I eventually took it to a jeweller in Cambridge they asked me if it was a family heirloom as they thought it was an old ring (it also turned out that some of the stones were damaged, so I have to be careful with it!), and although I don’t know the history of it, it was lovely to have a genuinely old ring as my “something old” to wear down the aisle!

Wedding Dress- Something New

Isn't the wedding dress the main thing that people focus on when talking about weddings with the prospective bride? I'm pretty sure the two main questions I was asked in the run-up to mine were "Have you picked a date? Have you bought your dress?" in that specific order. For me I figured that my dress would be the easiest "something new" that I'd be able to think of, so it held a little extra symbolism for me as I walked down the aisle.

Photo by Maria Carrington Photography

If you've planned your wedding over the course of two years and saved up enough money for it, then spend when you want on your dress! For me though it was a case of necessity, I needed to find a dress for under £300. I didn't even bother trying to make appointments in any of the bridal shops around Cambridge and Essex, because I knew that a budget of £300 would raise eyebrows and a "Nope, can't be done" comment. Instead I looked to the high street, where some well-known names cater to those of us who have a more modest budget requirement for their bridal gown.

Sadly BHS went bankrupt while I was doing my search, I had actually identified a dress on their website that I was mentally placing as "second option" since I liked it, but wasn't sure it would suit me. At only £150 it would have been well under my planned budget and I could have put the money to something else, but it wasn't to be. (Incidentally, has anyone pointed out to M&S that they've now got a potential market to move in to, I bet they'd do some lovely simple dresses that were quite affordable!)

Photo by Maria Carrington Photography

I had a look at Debenhams, who have a whole wedding section that covers brides, grooms and bridesmaids clothing! But although there were some very nice dresses on their site, including modern styles and vintage styles, there just wasn't anything in particular that jumped out at me.

Last but not least there was Monsoon! When it comes to regular clothing they are a bit on the pricey side, but I'd been told that they did nice wedding dresses that wouldn't break the budget, so I decided to give them a look.

It ended up being quite a difficult choice as there were several that I liked! In the end I bought the gorgeous "Carlotta" bridal dress, and managed to find a 10% discount code online that meant I saved a little bit as it only just fell within the £300 budget. Because I'd bought it from a shop it looked a bit difficult to get it adjusted as I needed, in the end my mother-in-law had to rush to the rescue with needle and thread to stop me tripping over it! But I absolutely loved the dress, I got a lot of lovely compliments about it, and I really wish I had an excuse to wear it all over again!

Wedding Shoes - Something Blue

Something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue! With only a few weeks to go until my wedding these words finally popped in to my head, and I realised that I was might struggle to fill all the requirements! In the end my something old and something new were relatively easy, and will be covered in future blog posts.

But it was something borrowed and something blue that were the real problems. My future in-laws solved "something borrowed" for me, I carried a little piece of my fiance's family history down the aisle with me on my wedding day, before returning it to my mother-in-law.

Photo by Maria Carrington Photography

So that just left something blue. I'd been planning on buying blue converse for some time and using
those as my something blue. But the problem with being a woman of average height (I'm slightly over 5 foot 5) is that my wedding dress was a bit too long, and I couldn't get it altered as I didn't buy it from a proper wedding shop. That meant I had to bite the bullet, give up on my idea of being a Converse bride, and get some shoes to make me a little taller, and hopefully lift up the hem of my dress a bit.

The only problem was actually finding them. I'm not the best shopper, especially when it comes to shoes. I wear hiking boots most of the time, with my dark red converse when the boots aren't feasible, or smart black flats when I'm taking part in an event at work.

I didn't really know where to look, and with time starting to run out I took to Facebook in a call for help! A friend on there pointed me towards Irregular Choice, who do some really amazing shoes, but sadly a lot of them were out of my budget, and also looked a little impossible for me to actually walk in.

A Google browse introduced me to Ruby Shoo, and after a long browse I finally thought I'd found the ones I wanted. But when I went to buy them they only had them in one rather large size, they were last season's shoes and were no longer being sold!

eBay then came to the rescue! Not only did I manage to find the ones I wanted in my size, but I got them a bit cheaper than others listed because the seller had spelled the company as "Ruby Shoes", they weren't coming up on an eBay search but were showing via Google shopping!

Photo by Maria Carrington Photography

I'm not one for heels and these are definitely higher than I'm used to at the best of times! My work colleagues thought it was great fun to see me tottering around the office in them as I learned to walk (slowly and carefully) in high heels, and learned how to hold myself standing up so my feet would hurt less. I even wore them in the kitchen while I did the cooking.

But after a week and a half of practising I knew I wouldn't be able to manage the whole wedding in them, I just wasn't used to it, and eleven days wasn't enough for me to get used to them.I got my blue converse too, and had two something blues on my wedding day!

What was your something blue?

Why we're overpaying our mortgage

You may have noticed from some of my posts that since buying our first home back in December, me and my husband have been overpaying our mortgage. We deliberately built a £30 monthly overpayment in to our budget when we were originally planning a mortgage, and this is then topped up by cashback from Quidco, counting up money from penny jars, setting aside my expenses from work, or selling stuff we don’t use or need on eBay. My aim is to be able to double that £30 every month, and so far I’ve managed to hit that target consistently!

Telling people we’re overpaying generally leads to them going “Oh that’s a good idea!” followed by a pause and then “…but why when interest rates are so low?” It’s a good question, I certainly don’t know anyone offline that’s doing this as regularly, but it’s something we were both keen on doing for a variety of reasons.

1. We both hate debt

I still have a student loan, because like many students who graduated in 2008 I found it very difficult to get a well-paid job straight off the bat. Instead I found myself as the proud owner of two degrees and a job as a cashier in a supermarket, followed by various part-time contracts and an attempt at self-employment until I landed my first full-time role at the age of 24. But I don’t like being in debt, and neither does my husband. Having a debt of £160,000 is quite scary when you think about it, and given the uncertainty in the economy (especially with Brexit) we’d like to pay off extra while we can, before interest rates start going up!

2. Reducing the LTV

We found it difficult to get a mortgage in the first place because my current role is a contract. Admittedly at two years and with guaranteed full-time work it’s better than a zero-hours role, but it’s technically temporary nonetheless. We had a decent deposit saved up by my OH, which gave us an LTV of 85% (LTV is Loan to Value ratio, so how much you’re borrowing compared to the value of the house. We had a 15% deposit, so our LTV was 85%). This really helped us get a good mortgage rate despite my contract situation, and taught us a valuable lesson about how important a decent deposit can be. We have a 5 year fixed rate, by the time we’re due to re-mortgage I’ll probably have a stint of maternity leave which will have affected my earning potential, and given the risks to the economy we suspect that rules about mortgages will be significantly tighter. So reducing our LTV will hopefully help us in the long run, and might also make it easier to move up a step on the ladder when the time comes for us to find a bigger house.

3. It’s seriously addictive

I have a spread sheet that tracks, among other things, the daily amount of interest earned, the total amount we’ve paid per month, and the amount we owe to the bank. It’s set up for the next 5 years with our standard monthly payment, and then I can type in how much we’ve overpaid in a particular month and it will recalculate everything. I’m not going to lie, it’s really addictive. As soon as I send my expenses form in to work I make a note of the total, then when I go home I type it in to the spread sheet to see the effect. Same with filling up a bag of change, or getting a notification from Quidco that we can cashout.

The effect so far has only encouraged me to keep going. When we first got our mortgage we were earning £12.01 a day in interest. We would have hit £155,000 owed in May 2018, and would have dropped under £150,000 in September 2019. You'd think that we would need to be overpaying hundreds of pounds every month to make a difference.

So far (it’s only May after all, and we made our first overpayment in January) we’ve overpaid by £490.88. We’re now due to fall under the £155k mark in February 2018 (although my aim is to hit it by December), and will be below £150k in July 2018. Our daily interest rate is currently £11.88 (still a huge amount per day I know!), and will fall below £11.50 a day in October 2018.

It just goes to show that you don’t need thousands in the bank to pay off your mortgage, just small regular payments can make a big difference!

Mortgage Overpayment - April 2017

Yes, it's true, despite spending April getting married and then going on honeymoon, we managed to make a mortgage overpayment at the end of the month! 

Who lives in a house like this? XD

Actually we managed to hit a new record in April as we overpaid £206.26!! Quite a bit more than I was anticipating, I thought we'd be lucky to hit £100 this month as all our energy and attention was going on the wedding. I was even eyeing up my change jars early in the month as I was sure I'd need to have a count up just to be able to send off a reasonable amount.

However Quidco once again stepped in to save my metaphorical bacon. I received a payout of just over £21 for buying our buildings insurance through them back in November. You need to have buildings insurance when you exchange contracts on your house purchase, this payment had been pending for a while and it was nice to finally get it.

Then out of nowhere I received confirmation that my cashback for signing up with our broadband provider had arrived, a whole £100! I'd nearly forgotten to go through Quidco in the first place. If I'd missed out on this then I would have been quite annoyed. Normally it takes months for cashback to be paid, so getting this in around 6 weeks is extremely quick and was a very pleasant surprise!

I also had a healthy expenses payment of just over £43 from work, I had to buy some special envelopes for some bits we were posting out so that helped bump that up too.

I don't have any big payments left pending in Quidco, just smaller amounts from Argos and Currys from buying bits and pieces for the house, which are mostly due in May and June. I think my next expenses payment will be smaller too as I've been off work for a week. But my penny jar is looking very full, so May might be a good time to count it up and pay it in!

Wedding - One Week Later!

This time last week I was getting ready for my wedding! My Other Half proposed to me last May on a holiday to Rome, and my desire to get married on his next birthday (our anniversary sadly fell on a week day) meant that we had just under a year to plan and arrange everything (and save up for it).

We decided to get married at the Great Dunmow Maltings as it was a nice small venue (we only had 40 people we wanted to invite), very affordable, and they were very flexible about what we could do for catering. Plus we could have the ceremony and the reception in the same venue, which was an added bonus since we had guests with small children who wouldn't want to shuffle them in to car seats for a short drive somewhere else.

My Mum suggested that we have an afternoon tea for the reception. Me and Jon aren't big party/dance people (and I don't drink) so having a long evening dinner and dancing thing really wasn't something we wanted to go with. Plus we have quite a few family members and friends with dietary requirements (gluten free and dairy free being the two main ones), so being able to let them pick and choose what they wanted to eat was the easiest way to ensure that they felt welcome, and wouldn't feel that they had to say "no thank you" to our invitation. My Mum did an amazing job sorting out all the food, including spending weeks testing different gluten-free scone recipes (my Dad is now a bit sick of the sight of scones), and baking them and cakes in the run-up to the event. My in-laws sourced all the drinks, and did a great job as everyone managed to find something they wanted, from a nice glass of bubbly through to a selection of soft drinks for the non-drinkers.

The afternoon tea thing also gave us the opportunity to spend a lot of time sourcing vintage china. Between both families we've been through charity shops, junk shops and eBay collecting all manner of pieces. My mother-in-law even found a lovely teapot (not vintage but still gorgeous) with a lavender pattern while she and my father-in-law were on holiday in Canada! She managed to get it home in her suitcase without damaging it, and it's now sitting happily on my kitchen shelf.

We also wanted to source some handmade items where our budget allowed. In the end the four things we managed to get were our wedding rings (mine from Nikki Stark Jewellery and Jon's from Grow With The Grain), the boutonnieres from Alana Phoenix & Co, and our dried confetti flowers from Shelsley Herbs & Flowers, who was brilliant and posted them by special delivery when we bought them a bit too close to our wedding date! Being a former Etsy seller myself, it was great to be able to get a few things from small creative businesses, and every shop was lovely to deal with.

Our lovely photographer was Maria Carrington, who was great to work with as she's seen lots of weddings and was a very calming presence. I don't have the photos from her yet, so she'll get her own little post in a few weeks once we've seen the shots and picked a few to show on here!

We generally had an absolutely fantastic day. It was lovely to have so many people we loved be able to share it with us, despite some of the distances there were to travel! We'd recommend every single business that I've linked to on here, as they all helped make our special day one to remember!

Mortgage Overpayment - March 2017

Given that we're now well in to April this post is a little late. But that's not because it's bad news! Actually March was very good for overpaying, in total we managed to throw an extra £129.50 at the mortgage!

A big chunk of this was from Quidco as I got a hefty cashback payout from taking out my breakdown cover with the AA through them. Not being particularly technically minded I find it quite reassuring to know that if I lose a tyre then I just have to make one phonecall and competent help will be on the way. The money was actually meant to be confirmed in February but ended up being delayed, so it was nice to get it in March instead.

Another sizable donation was from my work expenses. My OP in April is already going to be be quite large thanks to extra expenses, but in March I had to buy a very large box of teabags as well as a lot of milk, I tend to be the first person getting through the door in the morning so I generally need milk for my tea before anyone else.

I'm already collecting together the figures for April, and let's just say that if the months continues as it started then I'll be very happy with the overpayment at the end of it!

Review: Jack's Gelato in Cambridge

Last year I made a terrible mistake. Despite my colleague telling me how good they were, I never bought anything from “6” ice cream shop on Bene’t Street in Cambridge. Then they closed down, and winter was spent passing by an empty shop, wishing I’d got round to trying it.

Lovely simple design for the cups

So it was wonderful to walk past the same building at lunch time on Tuesday and find that a new ice cream business has taken over the space! Jack’s Gelato is well-known around Cambridge, he’s normally found serving ice cream through portable freezers around the streets of the city, as well as at festivals and fairs. Now he’s got a new shop, and it’s officially opened, complete with an actual ice cream machine at the counter so in the future you can watch it being made!

Since I was passing by I decided to have a look at the sign outside. Different flavours are on offer each day (you can see a list each day on his Twitter account), and I had to stop when my eyes caught sight of the words “Mint Choc Chip”, “Burnt Sugar and Salt”, and…”Chocolate Orange Sorbet”!

The problem I normally have with chocolate ice cream is that while it’s delicious, it generally makes me feel a bit sick about halfway through the first scoop. Great for making sure you don’t overindulge, but it generally means I have to steer clear of chocolate, otherwise I feel like I’m wasting my money. On last year’s trip to Rome I stuck firmly with hazelnut ice cream and lemon sorbet, rather than risk feeling ill while I was trying to stare at tourist attractions.

However the sound of chocolate orange sorbet was just far too tempting for me to give it a miss, so I got a small pot. The guy behind the counter (who wasn’t Jack) was very chatty and friendly, and happy to answer my questions about the new shop. I was warned that the sorbet was still very soft as it had only recently been made, but sorbet is a bit softer than ice cream anyway, and it wasn’t dreadfully hot so I knew it would last.

So delicious I could eat it all day!

Chocolate orange tends to be a bit of a marmite flavour, people either love it or hate. I’ll happily eat a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, but my other half wouldn’t (he’s the same with chocolate mint though). I think it’s because it’s very easy to get the orange side of it wrong, either it doesn’t taste of orange at all, or there’s too much and it overpowers the chocolate.

In this case though the balance was perfect. The chocolate looked dark and tasted very chocolatey, but had none of the bitterness of very dark chocolate. Likewise the orange was a lovely note within the chocolate, it was noticeable but not excessive, and because the orange was adding the extra sweetness to the sorbet it wasn’t overly sugary, so I didn’t feel sick after eating it! In fact I couldn’t eat it fast enough, I overloaded my tiny spoon a few times and felt highly disappointed when I reached the end of the pot. I'd give this six stars out of five, were I operating a star rating on this blog.

If you’ve never been to the kind of live event that Jack has been catering to before now, then you MUST get down to his new shop. Take a big spoon with you, you’re going to need it!

Recipe - Chicken and Parma Ham Pasta

Following on from the success of my chicken and chorizo pasta recipe, I tried another new recipe that my Mum sent me! This time it's chicken and Parma ham pasta sauce, deliciously creamy and fantastic with tagliatelle, I instantly wanted to cook up a second batch!

The only problem with it is that, unlike the chorizo recipe, this won't really freeze well, so isn't suitable for batch cooking. However it is quite quick to put together on a weekday evening.

Ingredients

• Chicken breast - One per person, cut in to smallish pieces.
• Small pack of parma ham, it's quite salty so you won't need it all! I normally use the rest to make chicken breasts wrapped in parma ham the next day.
• Small pot double cream.
• Tarragon (dried or fresh is fine)
• A quarter of a lemon
• 1/4 to 1/2 a pint of chicken stock (1/4 is suitable for 2 people, 1/2 would be better if you're cooking for a larger group)
• Butter and olive oil

Cook cook cook

1. Melt some butter in a frying pan, and cook the chicken in it.
2. Remove from the chicken from the pan and set to one side.
3. Add a drop of olive oil to the pan, and tear the Parma ham into strips straight in to the pan (or cut it in to pieces while the chicken is cooking). Stir around until lightly crispy.
4. Add the chicken to the pan with the Parma ham, and pour in the chicken stock and a few generous pinches of tarragon (depending on your taste)
5. Simmer for 10 minutes. (I normally start cooking the pasta at this point)
6. Pour in some double cream and a squeeze of lemon juice, and stir until it's all mixed in with the stock. The sauce should be a lovely dark cream colour.
7. Taste it and add more cream or stock if you need it or need a bit more sauce, or some extra tarragon if you're not getting the flavour.
8. Serve with linguine or spaghetti, pastas which go well with nice creamy sauces.

The first time I cooked this it took me a little longer than expected. I think that second time round I'd be able to get it done in less than 30 minutes, great for a quick mid-week dinner!