Life in the English Countryside | Exploring the Cotswolds, Autumn Recipes, Horse Riding 🍂🧺🐑

Good morning. We just got back from a walk in the countryside and it was so beautiful. It truly felt like we were just kind of walking through a painting with just all the autumn leaves just like fully like a blanket all on the floor and just the colours of the trees and the leaves and it's just so lovely. I'm sad because there are so many beautiful walks that we're not going to be able to get around to doing whilst we're here but every single walk that we've been on is just so beautiful and I just love being out in the countryside. Even this morning when I woke up listening to the birds it's just such a simple pleasure waking up and just hearing the bird song and the wind and the trees and it's so peaceful. I could definitely get used to a life like this. We have a fun day today. I'm actually doing something a little bit different in this vlog because usually I just sort of take you guys with me for one day on the weekend but I'm actually going to be bringing you guys along with me all weekend. Well Friday, Saturday is my weekend because sometimes I work on a Sunday but I'm going to be bringing you along with me for two days this weekend because I really wanted to spend today with you because we're going horse riding. That's why I'm dressed the way I am dressed. It's the only active wear that I have that I feel like is horse riding appropriate because obviously I don't have horse riding gear because this is my first horse riding lesson. I say that first horse riding lesson because it basically is. I did horse riding when I was a little girl but like a very long time ago. I think it's been about 15 years since I've done a horse riding lesson so it's like I'm basically going back to basics. I'm a little bit nervous but I'm so excited. I actually wanted to start horse riding before I left Australia but it kind of just seemed a little counterproductive to start horse riding and then just go traveling for several months. It would be more productive for me to start horse riding and then continue it because when we get back to Australia I am going to continue horse riding at a stable that I've found. So yes we're going horse riding. I'm so excited. I mentioned last week's video that starting new hobbies as an adult can be a little bit intimidating compared to as a child when you're a little bit more fearless and you're not as nervous starting something new. Like as an adult I feel like you have a much lower threshold for embarrassment for example and it can be a little bit intimidating being around people that have done this for many many years, some of them even their whole lives. But I think it's just so important that we do put ourselves out there if there's something that we're interested in or something that looks like we would enjoy it or get anything out of it. I think it's so important that we give it a go. So yeah no holding back today we are going horse riding. Jesse is actually coming with me. He has never done a horse riding lesson before. He has rode a horse I think but yeah so he's a bit nervous as well. It's going to be a lot of fun. I'm really really really excited. I'm hoping to get some content today. I don't know how much content I'm going to get. Obviously I'm not going to be on my phone during the lesson but we are doing a half an hour lesson and then we're going for a hack through the village. So I'm thinking I might be able to get some more content then. Yeah so we'll see how we go. I'm really excited. And then what else are we doing today? We are also going to a farm shop and we're going to do some baking because I think it's meant to be a bit of like a rainy cozy kind of day today and then tomorrow we're actually going exploring. So we're going to go to one of the villages and a place called Time. I've seen a lot about it on social media. We're going to head there for lunch and go for a walk and check it out. So yeah it's going to be a busy weekend. It's going to be a fun weekend. I really really get excited for the weekends. I get to hang out with you guys. I get to vlog. I get to go and explore. Yeah it's a lot of fun and I'm particularly excited for this weekend. So I'm going to pop on my gum boots because I don't have any riding boots and then we're gonna head horse riding. I also tried to tie up my hair into this sort of pathetic little braid. My hair, I look back at photos of how short my hair was a year ago. It was about to my chin length and now it's about down to here. So it's probably doubled in length but it still feels so short especially when I do want to do something as cute as like a little braid and my hair just it's not going to stay. Who am I fooling? Like my hair is going to fall out in a minute. So yeah at least we tried. Anyway let's get ready. Let's go. We just got home and I'm about to start making an early dinner and I thought I'd quickly pop on and talk about the horse riding because oh my god it was so much fun. I will admit like when we got there I did feel a little bit nervous because straight away she was like okay just hop on the horse. I'm like that is a really big horse but it was yeah it was really a lot of fun. We did some walking, we did some rising trot. I'm definitely going to be sore from that but I could just feel myself kind of like muscle memory like it did come back to me a little bit and I feel like within time I'll definitely remember a lot more and I'll feel a lot more comfortable. So I'm really excited about getting to that stage. Also really nice because we did like a half an hour riding lesson and then a half an hour hack afterwards and it was really nice doing the combination because the lesson was obviously a lot more interactive, a lot more energy went into that and then on the hack it was nice to just sort of relax and like calm down and just sort of sit on the horse and get comfortable with being on the horse and the village that we walked through was so beautiful. Yeah so we've already booked in our next lesson. We're doing it in a fortnight's time. We're just going to do them fortnightly at the moment. Not sure if anyone can relate to this but I find that when it comes to hobbies I get a bit like fixated on them. I dive in like head first. I just want to do it all the time so I'm like all right I'm ready to go horse riding again tomorrow and I just want the lesson to go longer and I just want to do it more because I just get I'm not sure if it's the activity itself or if I get kind of hooked on the progress like when I start seeing like the progress that I'm making within the hobbies that I'm doing but I'm not sure what it is but I just get really yeah a little obsessive about them. I mean I definitely could have chose a cheaper hobby but then we went to the farmer's market which was really lovely. I was kind of low-key hoping for some animals there but they didn't have any but we did manage to pick up some really nice produce so we're actually I'm going to make a salad. I'm actually going to make like an autumnal salad. Grainy pumpkin kale salad with some chickpeas and just sort of throw it all together with a bit of a dressing. That's my plan and then we're just going to chill for the night. So the weather's kind of turned. It actually rained. It started raining a bit during our ride and I think it's going to rain a little bit more tonight so I think we're in for a very cozy autumnal night at home. Pop on the candle, make a nice dinner. I'm going to watch Lazarus which is so good. I've been watching it on Amazon Prime. If you haven't watched it yet, I highly recommend it. It's a bit of like a psychological thriller, murder mystery. There's a lot of stuff going on. It's so so so good. It's also a little bit jump scary at times as well but yeah if you do like a TV show that makes you think, definitely watch Lazarus. It's so good. Jessie and I have been watching it and it's all we can kind of talk about in between you know coming up with theories on who's done it and who's done what and yeah just trying to piece together all the jigsaw puzzle pieces. It's really really really good so I think we're going to watch that tonight and then like I said I'm going to take you guys with me tomorrow because we've got a really fun day planned. I'm so excited to go and explore a little bit more. I'm absolutely loving the Cotswolds. I'm loving England. It's really funny because I hear so many people say that England's such a boring country. I've been to a fair few countries and I would say England's probably my favourite. I absolutely love it. I think it's so beautiful. I think the villages, the history, the nature, it's so so beautiful. Enough rambling, let's make some dinner. Okay so we have got some chickpeas and some pumpkin. This is like a quinoa bulgur mix. I've got some kale, lemon, tahini, maple syrup and then for seasonings we've got a bunch of seasonings over here. We've got cumin, smoked paprika, chilli flakes, garlic granules, coriander and of course some salt. Essentially what we're going to do is cut this up, add the pumpkin and the chickpeas, season them, pop them in the oven, boil up the grains and then mix it all together, pop on a dressing and that's the salad done. First things first, I think we need to light a candle. Okay we're going to cut open this pumpkin. We're actually going to scoop out these seeds, give them a rinse and then we're going to season them, pop them in the oven and make like our own roasted pumpkin seeds. Another way to use up some of the pumpkin is rather than chucking out skin, you can actually just pop this in the oven with some seasonings and some oil and make like a roasted pumpkin skin. It's really nice. We're just going to add the chickpeas and the pumpkin to a baking tray. Obviously you guys would probably use baking paper but I don't have any so we're using what we've got. Add some olive oil, salt, some cumin, a little bit of coriander, chilli flakes optional but Jessie and I love them so we like to go a little heavy on the chilli flakes. Some garlic granules and lastly a little bit of paprika, smoked paprika. So now we're just going to pop this in the oven about 25 to 30 minutes or until the chickpeas are crispy and the pumpkin is nice and soft. So here we've just got our pumpkin seeds. I've just rinsed these in a sieve to clean them. We're going to add these to a pot salted boiling water just to give them an extra clean. We're going to boil them for about five minutes then dry them out as best we can, season them and pop them in the oven until they're nice and crispy. So here we have our pumpkin seeds they've just been boiled. You would ideally let these dry out as long as possible. The drier they are the better they're going to turn out but I'm a little impatient and so I'm just going to pop them in as they are. I've gave them like a little dry down but they're still quite damp. So I'm going to pop these to this tray here where I've got the pumpkin skin laid out. I'm just going to season with some olive oil, maybe some paprika, some salt, chilli flakes. You can go in really with whatever sort of seasonings you like and then we're going to pop that in the oven as well for about 15 to 20 minutes. For the kale I'm just going to be adding some olive oil and salt and I'm just going to sort of gently massage the leaves. It helps to soften the kale a little bit, makes it a little bit more palatable and adds a really nice flavour to it as well. Something I used to do is I would actually massage avocado into the kale leaves instead of olive oil and that turns out really really yummy. Okay whilst we're waiting for everything to finish cooking we're going to make the dressing. We're going in with about a quarter cup of tahini. Just giving it a mix so I get all the oils at the top here. About a tablespoon of maple syrup, adding in some lemon juice, garlic, chilli flakes, a tiny pinch of cinnamon and mix it all together. Mmm that is really good, that's so nice. Now it's time to pop it all together. We're going to go in with our quinoa mix. This is steaming. I find the trick to cooking quinoa is to pop in a stock cube, it makes it taste so much better. Going in with the chickpeas and pumpkin. Mmm that tastes so good. And the kale. This is a massive massive salad but it's going to be for Jessie and I for two days. Drizzling over some of the dressing and our roast pumpkin seeds. Yum this looks so good. Such a really nice simple dinner. Let's dig in. Good morning. I did something a little naughty today and I added some maple syrup into my tea so let's see if it's any good. Mmm yum that's so good. That's really nice. Usually I add in a little bit of honey. I know you're not supposed to but I think a little bit of honey isn't going to kill me. I actually woke up this morning feeling so good, so rested and refreshed. You know when you wake up in the morning and you've got like a spring in your step? That was me this morning if you can't tell. I'm bouncing off the walls, I've got so much energy. I actually mentioned to you guys last week, I think it was last week, that I'd really been struggling to wake up in the morning. That I just was really tired and kept snoozing my alarm and I was sleeping in way later than I ever sleep in. I kind of put it down to the fact that it was nice and cold and cozy and snug and you know when you just want to stay in bed a little bit longer. I kind of put it down to that. In hindsight actually it also could be that I was on the back of being sick and I probably still needed a bit of rest but I'm not sure. Something sort of flipped in me and now I'm back to my early mornings and I'm loving it. I'm really loving it and I think what triggered it could be a few things but I'm kind of putting it down to the fact that the clock's changed. They went back an hour so that means that it's now getting brighter earlier. So I'm like maybe that's a reason why I'm waking up earlier. Then the other thing could be that I've actually started taking iron tablets again. I've been vegetarian for you know what the majority of my life and I've never ever ever had iron issues until about one or two years ago. Two years ago and my iron levels just went through the floor so and I actually it's really interesting because at the time my exercise increased a lot. We were training for triathlons so yeah my my exercise increased and it's like my iron went through the floor and then I ended up getting an iron transfusion and I haven't had any iron issues since. Like my iron's on the lower side and I have to take regular iron supplements which I forget. I just I'm the worst when it comes to taking anything. I just constantly forget. Anyway so I've started taking some iron tablets again and I'm not sure if that's what's contributing to my energy levels but yeah they're like I'm bouncing off the walls with energy. So maybe that's got something to do with it. So anyway that's a long way of me saying that I'm back to waking up early in the morning. Also because the clock's changed I now have to start work at four o'clock instead of five o'clock to get my work submitted on time. So the best part about the weekends and why I'm so happy this morning is my alarm did not go off at 3 30 in the morning to start work. So I've had a really nice relaxing morning. Relaxing despite the fact that I'm very full of energy and I'm not feeling calm at all. I'm feeling like ready to go ready to start the day and you know what all this sugar in the maple syrup is probably just contributing to the energy levels. I will crash later no doubt. We're going to Burford today. We have seen so much about it online as I can imagine a very busy town and being a Saturday as well I can only imagine it's going to be even busier. So the gateway to the Cotswolds. So excited to check it out and then we are going to Tyne afterwards which is nearby. I believe they've got a little gift shop, gardens, they've got a beautiful restaurant. Yeah so we're just going to wander around and check that out. That is our plan for today. I thought we would do a very quick little get ready with me because I'm keeping it really simple today actually. I desperately need to wash my hair that's why it's pinned back. I saw this hack online that if your hair needs washing but you don't have time you can use like a texture spray in your hair instead of a dry shampoo. It hasn't really worked for me like my hair still looks dirty. I just don't have time to wash it because my hair is quite thick and it just takes forever to dry and even to blow dry. So I just don't really have time this morning so I'm thinking I might even just sort of pin it back. Outfit we are keeping this really simple. We're just going with Abercrombie jeans. These are so nice, the perfect fit. They literally fit like a glove. I've just got on my cropped Cos t-shirt. Another Cos item is the brushed cashmere cardigan that I'm wearing. It's so soft and cozy. I'm sort of into minds about leaving the top button sort of buttoned up like this. I think it looks really cute. It looks better with the jacket if I have it open like this. I'll show you in a moment what I mean but I actually have a little makeup stain on my collar here and I just can't get it out so I'm like a little tempted to sort of button this up but I think it does look better unbuttoned. Anyway I'll show you what I mean in a moment. The belt that I'm wearing today is this Ralph Lauren thin belt. This is a chocolate colour. I'm just going to pop that on. I think with simple outfits they can be really simple and then you can just make them less plain just by adding in a couple of nice accessories like a really nice belt for example. Even though it's a simple outfit just adding in some accessories some nice accessories brings it to life I think. In terms of shoes I've got two options. I've got my new ballet flats from Vagabond and this ties in really nicely with the brown of the belt but it is meant to rain today and these are suede and that is not going to be a good mix. So then my other option is just my New Balance sneakers. These are a little grubby don't judge me and then I think this sort of ties in with the casualness like the laid-backness of the outfit. So I'm kind of tempted to lean towards these just because they're going to be a little bit more practical and they still suit like it still looks nice so I'm thinking these. Taking off my slippers honestly I wish I could just wear my slippers out. I feel like if I had a pair of those UGG boots that everyone wears it would just be like walking around in slippers. Can you believe even though UGGs are Australian and I'm obviously Australian I've never owned UGG boots. And then for my jacket I'm just actually going in with my Massimo Dutti jacket. I've mentioned before that this jacket and this cardigan pair so beautifully together because they're a similar color. This is what I mean by I think the cardigan looks better with the top button under because it looks better with the layers open like this and you can kind of get a little bit more dimension again to the outfit rather than having this buttoned up because now I feel like it just looks a bit closed off. I mean in all honesty if it gets too cold they'll both be buttoned up anyway. Anyway this is the outfit really nice and casual just for a day walking around the countryside. Enough chatting I think let's get on the road and let's go to Burford. These scarves are so cute. I feel like this would be really good. Look how beautiful this fabric is. Could you imagine that as like a cushion cover or even this one for autumn it's so lovely look at those colors. I had such a lovely day. Burford is so nice. It was definitely a lot bigger and busier than a few of the towns that we've been to. There's a lot more going on. It was really nice looking at all the independent shops and so many of the shops had the most beautiful homewares and gifts and just items and clothing pieces. This one place had the most beautiful gloves that I definitely would have bought if I had any use for gloves or any need for gloves back in Australia but I don't and I have already have a pair of gloves with me and we went to Thyme and that was also really lovely. It was amazing and the whole atmosphere the whole space was so beautiful. I really love that farm to table concept. That's something I'm really excited about for my future home is to have my own kitchen garden and to be able to grow my own produce and cook from my own produce. I'd actually love to be able to make my own like breads and condiments and and just kind have less reliance on buying things from the store just because like they add in yeah a lot of preservatives a lot of added extras and I think that if you have the time it's quite rewarding to be able to make it yourself and it's just something I'd like to learn in the future. I've just been at home relaxing a little bit. I've actually just been reading this. I found this on the bookshelf. I actually listen to a podcast called The Sleepy Bookshelf to help me get to sleep sometimes and the story that I listen to is The Wind in the Willows and I've never actually read the book so I saw this and Airbnb had it in their bookshelf and I thought wow I can't believe I've been here for a few weeks and I haven't read this. It's got the most gorgeous illustrations which I just think is so sweet. This is actually the last vlog that we'll have in this accommodation because we're checking out this in a week's time and then we're moving to another part of the Cotswolds. Our initial plan when we came to England was we wanted to just be in the one place for three months rather than having to move around every month but our accommodation that we were trying to organize kind of fell through so then we ended up not last minute but like a couple of months before we got here we kind of had to try and find accommodation for three months and a lot of places on Airbnb even if they were booked for the weekend it meant that we couldn't book for the whole time, the whole period that we were looking for so we ended up having to book three separate places for a month each which has its perks. I mean it's a bit like it's kind of getting a little bit tiring packing up every month and moving but it does have its perks because now we're getting to explore different parts of the area that we're in like at the moment like we're kind of in the south of the Cotswolds at the moment we're going up north next and then we're actually going to Bath which we were never planning on staying in Bath so now at least we're getting to experience other areas so it definitely has its perks and everywhere that we're going is so beautiful it just means that we can really slow down and and kind of explore the area that we're in a little bit better so that's yeah so we're checking out I'm really sad in all honesty I love it here I love this little cottage I love the area that we're in I love the fact that the river is outside my bedroom window so I wake up in the morning and I'm looking at the garden and the river it's so beautiful so quiet I love all the nature walks so yeah we're checking out but the next place that we're going to is another cottage and it's in a little village so I'm sure that is going to be equally as beautiful so actually just a little update on what we're doing over the next few months we booked an impromptu trip to Paris um we went to Paris last year we loved it we love Paris so we're actually going back and it'll be so beautiful because by when we're there they hopefully will have all the Christmas lights and and decorations and everything up so yeah gonna have a little early Christmas in Paris and then we also have booked a Christmas week a weekend in London just before Christmas as well so we'll get to explore London at Christmas which it just looks so magical I've mentioned before like I live in like a small coastal town so Christmas where I live like people don't decorate the same it doesn't feel the same because it's like hot everyone's at the beach they're swimming it's summer you know so to be here when it's cold and Christmas lights and decorations and you can get a hot choccy and there's just going to be all the markets and stuff I'm really excited to experience that so we kind of thought let's not hold back let's just go and experience Christmas now we're getting to experience Christmas in the Cotswolds Chris when I say Christmas I'm actually meaning more referring to like the Christmas decorations and the markets and things like that so we're getting to experience that in Paris the Cotswolds Bath and London we're definitely making the most of it anyway I think I'm going to end this here because I've talked so much in this week's vlog more than I usually talk so you guys might even be sick of me by now but yeah thank you so much for being here it really means the world to me it actually really every time I see your comments it just puts the biggest smile on my face I actually pinch myself sometimes I think wow like I can't believe that this community that we have here online is so lovely and it's just a beautiful corner of the internet if you haven't said hi yet please do because I love reading your comments I love replying to your comments and talking to you guys and thank you again for being here and I will see you guys next week