Valentine's Dinner

It is with great joy that I post these pictures. Great, great, great joy. Because I am proud to declare that I am going out with Jamie Oliver. Not the Jamie Oliver admittedly, but the Whyteleafe-builder equivalent, who as far as I'm concerned is better looking and just as equally talented behind an oven. He's called my boyfriend and yes I might be biased but the pictures do not lie! I've written before on this blog about how amazing he is at cooking and if anything, he's actually got better at it over summer. We realized how handy he was with a frying pan after moving to Paris when - surprisingly seeing as my mum's been a cooking teacher since I was born - it was him that cooked dinner practically every single night (and I'll gloss over the fact he once fried frozen chicken nuggets in a wok after a night out in Montparnasse).

You know there are some people that just cook and it works, and then there are some people who fuss about over a menu and get stressed about messiness? Well, he's type 1 and I'm type 2. To the point where when he's cooking, I stress and tidy up around him and he gets annoyed at me for washing up things he hasn't even used yet.

Anyway, without further ado, here is what we had for dinner on Saturday; Mikey is obsessed with pâté at the minute so for starter we had some of that lovingly smushed into a...star (apparently Tesco didn't have a heart shaped cutter) with soda bread and caramelized onion and raisin chutney. Adiowefujbsduvshfiaf, indeed. After that we had steak cooked in the way that only Mikey knows how, with honeyed carrots that no one does better than Mikey, and potatoes à la, you guessed it, Mikey. He also gets annoyed at me when I insist on photographing things he's cooked and complains that it will get cold but I point blanc refused not to document this angelic meal.







We got a pizza the next day and I ate my body weight in chocolate, drank wine, and laughed my ass off to Jon Richardson's stand up DVD. An understated, inexpensive and absolutely perfect Valentine's weekend with my favourite person in the world.

Laura for ASOS CLR

On Friday, I shot the latest clothing for ASOS's multibrand, Little by Little. This is a shoot I normally do around once a month as they get new stock in and a lovely, relaxing way to spend a morning. This particular shoot was even better than normal because the clothes list contained so many jumpers and if there's one thing I can't resist...it's a good old reliable jumper. I live, eat, sleep and breathe in them. And they were so soft. It was positively heavenly.

Anyway, this shoot had a really fun, playful feel actually as the brand manager had brought along all these pretty pastel ribbon decoration things. Despite the fact they fell down in between practically every shot (a reminder to invest in stronger cello-tape next time!) they looked so cuuuute as the backdrop.

The lovely model is Laura who I've shot with quite a few times before: for a Little by Little shoot last October, the LookBook, and aaaaages ago in Richmond Park to name a few.  She's sick at modelling.



 

All clothing will soon be available to buy on ASOS.

Valentine Smarties Bouquet

There are a lot of things I could have decided to make Mikey this Valentines Day. But this, well this is something else. May I proudly present to you THE SMARTIES BOUQUET. If there's one thing that really screams I LOVE YOU, it's 24 tubes of smarties cello-taped to cocktail sticks  and wrapped in tissue paper. I don't think it's possible to declare love any more than this. This is the pinnacle of love declaration.

I am very, very lucky to have the most loving, generous and downright bloody great boyfriend in the world who deserves nothing other than great big gestures of chocolate-smartie-bouquet-loving. After our early Valentine's dinner last night because we just simply couldn't wait (pictures soon, prepare to salivate!), our actual Vals day might be spent under a duvet with a takeaway and the huuuuge Red Velvet cake we baked yesterday. Best Valentine's ever? Yep.