2019: A Year In Review

31 Dec 2019

2019: A Year In Review

Cor blimey, this won’t be a year we will forget any time soon. There is no way that, for Gary and I, this year won’t be remembered as the-year-we-got-married-and-bought-a-house and all that came with that. It’s been a bit mad, a bit hectic, a bit sometimes-anxiety-provoking but for the most part, it’s been pretty darn special. Here’s a round up of 2019!

JANUARY 

We kicked off the year with a bang; heading to our wedding pub to see in 2019 with booze and our wedding band Katie Plus Juan. I wasn’t really feeling going out to begin with but ended up dancing and laughing until about 3am; the best kind of night. I felt all creative and excited for the year ahead – we had so much planned. We spent a lot of the month doing wedding admin, including my first dress fitting; it all suddenly felt a lot closer the other side of Dec 31st! 

We also squeezed in a trip to the Kent countryside with my family, I headed to Towcester for a weekend with my girls and we introduced my mum and step-dad to Gary’s family which, again, made the wedding feel much more real! Plus I challenged myself to take a photo every day to keep doing something creative amongst all the madness. 

Favourite moments – drunkenly dancing around the kitchen in the early hours of new years day & trying on my wedding dress for the first time.

2019: A Year In Review


FEBRUARY 

February started with snow and ended with a freak heatwave. It was weird. I celebrated my twenty seventh birthday with lunch in Sketch and finally going to see The Lion King at the theatre (oh and ate huge doughnuts), and the next day Gary and I celebrated four years together with a night out at a cheese and wine bar. I think I found myself in a weird mood come the end of the month. It was over a year since we got engaged and I was impatient for the wedding now, but my birthday made me do a minor double take, mostly because my younger self used to think 27 was a good age to have my first baby. Come again? I found myself wanting to time to hurry up and also slow down.

Favourite moments – taking photos in the Sketch toilets with Alice (if you know, you know), scoffing huge doughnuts from Doughnut Time on my birthday, drinking huge glasses of gin to celebrate our four year anniversary, going for a walk without a jacket in the bizarre sunshine at the end of the month.

2019: A Year In Review


MARCH

Luckily, the beginning of March snapped me out of that mood as I kicked off the month in Lancaster with my girls. It was exactly what I needed to set me right and I will always be grateful for friends who can do that for me.

The highlight of March was absolutely my hen do in the peak district. I had a blast. Every time I think about it, even now, I feel so darn happy. I felt so lucky and grateful for the beautiful people I call my friends, and came away from the weekend feeling so incredibly loved. I will never not feel emotional at the effort Lizzie and Becca went to organise it for me or chuckle every time I hear the song Africa.

Favourite moments – every moment of my hen do, it’s impossible to pick just one although the moment I first arrived and saw everyone waiting for me with a glass of prosecco does spring to mind.

2019: A Year In Review

2019: A Year In Review


APRIL

Shit ramped up in April. It felt like we came out of a lull wedding-wise and there was suddenly so much to do. Just to add to our fun, somewhat spontaneously and earlier than expected, we started house viewings and immediately fell for the first one we saw which complicated things!

I took Gary on a surprise weekend in Suffolk for his birthday where we stayed in a windmill. It was a lovely relaxed weekend, interspersed with phone calls to the estate agents trying to arrange a second viewing.

A week later Рon the 12th April to be exact Рwe made an offer on the house and it was accepted. I was in a caf̩ when Gary rung to tell me and I can remember wrapping my half-eaten flapjack up in a napkin and running through town like a flapping pigeon.

As a result, our Easter weekend was filled with Ikea trips and browsing kitchen catalogues!

Favourite moments – chilling out in our windmill in Suffolk, finding out the offer on our house had been accepted, sitting in the sunshine in the pub garden browsing kitchen catalogues during Easter weekend.

2019: A Year In Review


MAY

May was a lovely one. I’m sure there were moments of stress but my overwhelming memory is of feeling relaxed and excited. I went to stay with my dad for a few days, did a photography course I’d long wanted to do and had a lovely day with my girls a couple of weeks before the wedding where I got to see their bridesmaid dresses in the flesh for the first time. I also got to set my out of office for nearly a month which was uhmazing.

Favourite moments – the girls prancing around my tiny flat kitchen in their bridesmaid dresses, feeling proud at some of the photos I took on the course, finishing my last day at work for nearly a month, the day before our wedding when all our family and friends arrived and we spent the afternoon/evening jumping between pubs and restaurants to catch-up with everyone. 

JUNE

What. A. Month. 1 June 2019 was our wedding day and it really was one of the happiest days of my life – yup, I’m a cliché. Everything just felt perfect for us and we had a whale of a time. It was such a special day.

Our honeymoon was also a dream. We spent a week in New York – our favourite city - before flying out to California for a ten-day adventure, covering San Francisco, Sonoma Valley, the Redwoods and Yosemite National Park. It was once in a lifetime and a trip we will never forget.

A complete whirlwind of a month but one we will be talking about for the rest of our lives!

Favourite moments – I honestly wouldn’t even know where to begin. Watching a stunning sunset over the Manhattan skyline, seeing the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time, the first moment we arrived in the wonder that was Yosemite National Park… to name a few - there are so many! You can read all of my favourite moments from our wedding day here

2019: A Year In Review

2019: A Year In Review

2019: A Year In Review


JULY

My main memory of July is packing. The Move was upon us and we had to push through any post-wedding, post-honeymoon blues to get shit sorted. Whilst stressful, it does prevent you from brooding too much should you also be wondering what to do with yourself after a major life event/holiday. Leaving our flat carried so many emotions; we were excited to begin the next chapter but that flat and those three and a bit years in St Albans will always be so special to us. It really was bittersweet.

Favourite moments – picking up the keys to our new house, having a moment stood outside our lovely flat the night before we left, having a picnic in our new garden on moving day – the packing was over and we were in! 

AUGUST

And so the DIY began! The house has turned into way more of a project than we had really prepared ourselves for and a lot of work and love is going into it. August was the start – the paint brushes were out! The temperatures were bloody hot and the house was bloody messy but we were doing this!

Favourite moments – getting the office painted and a desk set-up – the first small step! A brief trip to Kent to visit Gary's friends and family. Heading to Towcester on the bank holiday where we were given wine, a baked Camembert, good company and a lawnmower; it was as a welcome break from painting. Thanks Claire and Bec!

2019: A Year In Review

2019: A Year In Review

SEPTEMBER

This month feels blurry. Work was hectic, we started the bedroom renovation; I felt wound up and like there was so much to do. I was genuinely surprised when we were suddenly at the end of the month – where did it go?

We spent the final few days in Devon which was well timed; we had a week doing nothing apart from eating and reading which was probably what prevented us from losing the plot slightly.

Favourite moment – the golden leaves appearing and getting the opportunity to breathe in some sea air and actually, well, breathe. 

OCTOBER

October was a weird one. Whilst I had a lovely weekend in Nice, France with my family, there were also a few events that threw me off kilter and I’ve not felt that anxious in a long time. A sad and frustrating one for the most part.

Favourite moment – walking along the Promenade des Anglaise in Nice at sunset. It was stunning and a rare moment of peace during October.

2019: A Year In Review


NOVEMBER 

A month that made me feel like me again. The girls and I had our annual weekend away to the countryside – this year to Warwickshire – and there’s nothing like some of your favourite people, autumnal countryside and a roast dinner to make you feel calmer again. The weekend after, I went on another venture to the countryside with my uni brother and sister and it was so good to catch up with them. There was also a surreal moment when we realised we were staying in a famous tv presenter's house which was very amusing.

On the back of October, I also challenged myself to National Novel Writing Month. If you’re unfamiliar, the concept is to write 50,000 words in a month, to focus on getting your novel down and worry about the editing later. I already had a busy November planned so I knew I would never get anywhere near the final word count but the year had been so hectic that I’d had very little time to write, and the challenge put a rocket up my arse. I came away from the month £15k words up and was really happy about it.

  Favourite moments – walking down a country lane lined with autumnal trees with my girls, the moment Greg, Hayley and I realised whose house we were in (cue much laughter), typing away every day, twinkling Christmas lights starting to appear everywhere. 

DECEMBER

And finally! December has been more relaxed than normal, with little desire to jump into party season and plenty of desire to just potter about with the Christmas tree twinkling in the background. It’s been a mammoth year and we were ready to stop. New Year’s Eve plans don’t go much further than good food and a few films and I’m happy about it.

Favourite moments – putting our first Christmas tree up in our new house, chilling out at my dads for a few days before Christmas, introducing Gavin & Stacey to my mum & step-dad on Christmas Day, taking a Boxing Day trip to Ikea (we can’t stop) and our master bedroom finally being ready to move into, just before the year is out!

Happy new year folks x

2019: A Year In Review

2019: A Year In Review

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