June’s Little Loves ~ Summer Dresses and Dancing

If you’ve read Birds and Lilies for a while, then you will know that for years I have been joining in with ‘Little Loves’ – a little round up of the things we have been loving each week. I hadn’t had chance to join in for a while, and then last month I discovered that Morgana had changed it to a monthly thing, which I love! It means I can hopefully join in every time, and should have more to talk about!

This month has flown by, but we’ve had lots of fun days and man I’m enjoying this hot weather! I would be extremely grateful for some air-conditioning though – it’s hard when you have nowhere to cool down isn’t it! I’m a hot sweaty mess for the majority of the time. I may have stuck my bum in the freezer a couple of times.

Anyway, enough about my bum – here is June’s Little Loves!

Read

I’ve got such a massive pile of books by my bed but I’m just struggling to make myself read right now; I think it’s maybe because I’m working so much at the moment and my eyes are really tired and sore by the end of the day. I have started ‘On a Beautiful Day‘ by Lucy Diamond and it’s good so far but I haven’t read much of it yet.

I’ve been reading quite a few posts by Monica at The Travel Hack recently. She has one of those blogs that I end up clicking through from one post to the next over and over again, when I really should be doing something else. My blog has taken a bit more of a travel direction lately; it wasn’t an intentional thing but I’m quite happy about it, maybe it’s because I’ve been reading mostly travel blogs or maybe it’s because I’m desperate to travel more!

Watched

I watched Safe after Morgana recommended it in her Little Loves from May and I really enjoyed it. I must not have been paying attention because I presumed it was set in America, so I was slightly disappointed in was in good old England, just because I thought it might not be as good, but it was brilliant! And Dexter (or Michael C Hall) is so good at an english accent which is pretty unusual!

I’ve also been watching Designated Survivor which I think is great. It’s got Kiefer Sutherland in it who becomes the President after a terrorist attack, and he’s great in it. I loved him in 24 and I think this role suits him so well too. I’m getting towards the end of the first season and it’s one of those programmes that just makes me want to stay up all night and keep watching! I’d say its across between 24 and The West Wing!

I finally managed to watch Pitch Perfect 2 and I really enjoyed it! It’s not as good as the first one, but I love to have a good singalong with them, and I now need to watch the third one!

My favourite thing that I watched was Ava’s face when she went on the rapids for the first time at Alton Towers. She just kept saying ‘This is AMAZING!’ over and over and asking if we could go on it again (so we did). She still loves CBeebies Land at Alton Towers but I think most of the rides there are probably getting a bit tame for her now, so she loved the excitement of the rapids! It was so cute. However, we were in strong mutual agreement that we do not like Hex, no thank you, no siree. My body cannot take going upside down or even feeling like it is like on this!

Here is my little poser at Alton Towers. Ava had an Inset day last Friday so it was the perfect day to go. It was such a beautiful day.

Made

I made some more banana bread but a much healthier version this time, with spelt flour and honey instead of sugar. It wasn’t as nice as my normal one but it was still good; I want to experiment more with different flours and natural sweeteners to find the best version. Let me know if you have any suggestions! I also made a little healthy chocolate one for Ava!

I also made my chocolate energy ball type things (they need a better name, clearly) and they were destroyed pretty quickly! Ava loves them which is great, because they are made with all healthy ingredients like dates and raw cacao powder. I did remember to freeze some this time and I got a few out yesterday and nobody’s noticed them yet so they’re all mine, mwahahaha!

Even more excitingly I made some banana ice cream that is literally just bananas, absolutely nothing else, and it’s so flipping good! All you have to do is chop up some bananas, freeze them overnight, and then blend it the next day (with a proper blender). It’s so tasty and no-one can believe it’s only got bananas in it! I’m going to experiment with this as well to try and make a chocolate one with raw cacao powder so it’s still healthy.

Wore

Lots of summery dresses! I’ve just looked through my phone camera roll and I don’t have any pictures of me from recent days out! I must get better at taking some (I’ve said that before).

I’ve been wearing this dress from ASOS a lot; it’s great when it’s hot, but it covers me up enough so I’m comfortable in it. I also have this one that I felt really nice in on a day out recently. I like comfy, cool, pretty dresses that cover up quite a bit of my legs at the moment! I can’t bring myself to put on trousers or anything that’s remotely tight when it’s this hot!

Heard

Ava and I have a couple of songs that we love to dance around to at the moment, and we have our special little moves we do 🙂 One is ‘You don’t know me’ by Jax Jones and the other is this (the video is like a song and little movie in one!):

And lastly…

I’m excited for July! We have lots going on over the next few weeks, and my birthday is at the end of the month and I can’t wait! The weather’s supposed to be good for a while too (although I’m not counting on that) – sunshine really improves my mood so I’m feeling good this week and I hope it continues!

Hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Lou xxx