Today is my boyfriend and my eight year anniversary! Most of that time has been in London and wherever we end up it will always be a very special place to us.

Yesterday we took a trip to Greenwich.  I had a great modern juxtaposition of taking instagram photos and using my old canon AV-1.  The instagram ones are above.  Film will be coming at some point.

p.s blaming the skew pictures on the fact that I was on a boat.  Not sure if that is the truth.

Just a few more pictures from the weekend.  Don’t those pumpkins just look amazing.  I picked one up and am planning on using it as my October flower-alternative decoration.

I made lots of yummy things with all the apples I picked over the weekend.  I started with mini apple pies.  I adjusted a recipe from Good to the Grain for the pastry (with spelt flour, butter and coconut oil) and simplified the filling by just using chopped apples, M&S caramel spread and a bit of maldon salt.  Not as photogenic as a normal white pastry but very tasty all the same.

Then some apple pound cake which I took to work and was a big hit.  The only change I made was using spelt flour.

And of course some preserves: apple butter, apple compote (apples chopped with a dash of water and cooked down until soft, perfect in my morning porridge) and a random throw in of marrow and ginger jam.

You know I love a challenge. In January I lived without sugar, in June I was vegan.  October I am not eating out and I am not buying lunch.  This is more an attempt to save some money to stock my winter wardrobe (new boots and coat are needed) than a ‘new way of eating’.

Just browsing around the blog you can see that I eat out quite a bit.  Most weekends we will eat out.  Sometimes it is unplanned and we end up going somewhere not so special which annoys me a little because if I am going to spend the money I want it to be on something delicious but also somewhere with a bit more atmosphere then your run of the mill chain.

The buying lunch at work situation has become pretty bad.  Mainly from a lack of organisation.  Scary to think that it is not too hard to spend £5 pretty easily when you grab a sandwich and snack from Pret or Eat.  Doing that even two times a week adds up.

I am allowing myself coffee dates (as it gets increasingly difficult to meet people in winter without that) and the occasional sandwich option for a meal on the weekend or evening if circumstances make it difficult to take something out.

We’ll see how it goes and maybe November will scrap coffee dates and sandwiches too.

Do you have any tips for meeting up with people that don’t involve food?

After reading about the delights of apple picking in the first issue of The Simple Things I was instantly (and desperately)  inspired to go and try it myself.  It even made it on my autumn to do list.

On Saturday I headed down to Hewitts Farm in Kent (the first time I think I’ve been) with my Mum and Friend with the express purpose of apple picking.  We got a whole lot more – they had a good variety of things, but apples were the big haul.

It did feel awfully wicked that so many apples were on the ground.

Here are some other apple related events and projects that I came across while searching for a pick your own farm:

• The London Orchard Project which is hosting the London Orchard Festival on 7 October at the Camley Sreet Natural Park in Camden
• Lathcoates Farm is holding a family orientated apple day on 20 October

[sorry about the cheesy title]

I’m a little exhausted but in a really good way.  My piled plate philosophy has definitely kept me up late and meeting up and reaching out to people.  I think blogging has played a huge part in that and I am grateful for the opportunities it is creating.  I’m really excited about life at the moment and I just don’t think there is a better way to feel.

This morning I also started finally working on my dissertation which I am (at the moment) also excited about.  Experience of studying means that I know it will get hard and I will probably question why I decided to do a masters 1000 times but I know in the end I will be grateful.

I have a couple activities and adventures planned for the weekend which hopefully all work out.  A treat for me is that my arrangement of days off this week and next mean that I have a long weekend with Friday and Monday off!  My job rocks.*

Here are some links for the weekend:

• virtual holiday needed? How about this Chanel No 5 advert staring the always beautiful Audrey Tautou
• a t-shirt that was made for me
• maybe I will make some of these this weekend (see link above)

*Sorry but not that sorry about my awesome job brag.  Seriously I think all jobs should have four day weeks by law!