A Weekend Away at Home - Valentine's Day 2014

Pretty sure you can tell by now, we love living in Birmingham. Something we've really started taking advantage of is how incredibly easy and quick it is to get to so many lovely places from our home!


This past weekend was Valentine's Day, and also our 59 monthiversary. We love celebrating, or at least acknowledging, our monthiversaries, because they are a chance to take a moment out of our hectic lives to enjoy being together and to appreciate what we have together.

On V-Day, we treated each other with lovely little gifts and thoughtful words.

We had our friends Alison and Dave come up with us for the weekend, so headed up after work, stopping to stock up on cheeses and meats and delicious things to eat for dinner that night. We watched Wreck It Ralph (because we are all partial to children's movies) and all managed to fall asleep at different times during the movie. Not because it wasn't good, but because it'd been a long and hard week - oh, and because of the joy and relaxation which exudes from our house!

The next morning Alison made her famous breakfast bake, and we headed for a 20 minute drive to Droitwich, a little spa town with a pretty canal running through it. We loved the scenery there, and drove to a stunning church overlooking the town to take some lovely photos. It rained occasionally, but for the most part was a glorious afternoon.

'Nice' photos...of gravestones.

We then headed into Birmingham city centre and showed Dave and Alison our favourite discovery so far - the canals! It's our third time now walking through the city canal-side, it's so unique and pretty down there. They loved it! We wandered into a pub along the water and took advantage of Happy Hour, had the pleasure of a very excitable older gay man who thought Sarah & I were 'adorable lesbians', and chatted away the time before our dinner reservation.

We took them to Jimmy Spices, which was, as always, delicious, and a wonder of its own. SO much delicious food, from so many different places, and we always marvel at the girls there dressed up for a night out in high heels and tight dresses. Surely JS is the worst place to go before a night out - we always wear 'extreme-eating friendly' clothing options! They loved it, as we thought they would, and we all ate... well, a bit too much.

We watched another movie that evening, the Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman version of Freaky Friday - it was funny, but really over the top and had wayyy too many unnecessary penis references.

Sunday was our favourite part of the weekend. We headed to Warwick, another 20 minute drive from home (see how easy it is to get around??) and explored the castle and surroundings in bright sunshine. It was fantastic! We climbed 160 spiral steps to the top of a nearby church, and got to witness a cannon demonstration from above. We explored gardens, bought cheese, and marveled at the old historic buildings - truly wonderful, and we really recommend going there. We'll be back in the summer with picnic in hand!

One of our favourite things about our new home is how easy it is to feel like you are on a weekend away. Obviously once we live there full time, it won't feel quite that way, but it's wonderful to think that it only take a 20 minute drive to once again be on holiday.