Warming Chicken, Leek & Sweet Potato Pie

In honour of British Pie Week, we teamed up with Jus-Rol™ to create a dinner perfect for these cold evenings (Spring, where are you??). It is delicious, straightforward, and with the help of Jus-Rol™ (all of the yummy pie crust with none of the hassle of creating it yourself!) it's ready on the table in less than an hour including baking time!

 Also if you have a dog, she will be very envious!

Sarah had a long day in London, so I thought I'd treat her to one of her favourite dishes - my girl loves a pie. We have been obsessed with sweet potato lately, so I had to include that, and I knew she'd love it even more if it had chicken in it, as we are eating vegan during the week at the moment, it was a real treat for her!

Yummmm

I made sure to decorate with pie crust hearts - the way to the heart is through the belly!

It smelled amazing, so she was excited from when she walked in the door - and it was so good that she tried to tempt me into giving her the second portion - I resisted so she could enjoy it again today!

Something tells me I'll be making this again soon, and maybe experimenting with other pie fillings, always with Jus-Rol™ of course!

Click the receipe to enlarge!

Please let us know if you give this recipe a go - I'd love to hear how it turns out!

*Disclaimer - Jus-Rol sent us a voucher to enjoy some of their products, however as a loyal product user I requested them, and all opinions in this post are completely my own.

The Perfect Gay Proposal - Statistically speaking!

A few weeks ago we received an email from MyVoucherCodes who surveyed 1000's of Gays and Lesbians to discover what you should and shouldn't do to pull of the perfect gay proposal!

Turns out that true to the stats we got engaged on holiday, our engagements were private affairs and like most girls we went for a something fancy for a ring - well we do wear it everyday!

Our proposals were low key and didn't break the bank but we didn't make it a total surprise - unlike most - we had discussed a time-frame - although we were both taken by surprise on the day(s).

I did ask Laura's parents permission but didn't involve social media although I did get Alison (an old school friend of L's) and her parents involved and it worked out perfectly!

And as for getting down on one knee - well we felt it had to be done :)

Check out our proposals here: Sarah and Laura get engaged!

**New Post** Our Wedding Feature on Wedding Chicks!!

OMG OMG OMG you guys, our beautiful wedding photos are up on one of our very favourite resources for all things bridal, Wedding Chicks!!

Go take a look, even if you've seen our wedding photos - because the write up our wedding planner, Brandi at Weddings by Soiree did, is just lovely.

See it HERE!!

Oh, and have you checked out our wedding videos yet? We are so grateful for all the memories we have from our big day!

Happy times, happy times. Have the best Tuesday!

New Year, New Changes

2014 has been amazing. Incredible. Once-in-a-lifetime.

We pronounced it 'Our year' in January, to remind us that it was time to focus on US and put us first in this very exciting time in our lives. And we did that - we have made so many memories together, through two weddings, exploring our new home city, time with loved ones, and endless commutes. We have indulged, and spent energy just being happy, and being us - our relationship is better because of it, and we are individually happier.

So now it's time to look ahead.

In the six months since our wedding, we've spent too much time in the car, on the train, stressing about being late in our 4-5 hours per day journeys to and from work. We've had little time for cooking, date nights, blogging, thinking - anything, really (thank goodness Sarah's mum let us revert to teenager-dom while we were staying with her and cooked, cleaned and helped us keep everything straight!). It seems we have replaced all the activities we used to enjoy with two - cuddling and junk food.

And we love it. But having no energy for anything else has meant we feel like we aren't our best - we have put on the post-wedding-fifteen (is that a thing?), our under-eye circles are dark as night, we feel sluggish and stressed. I think we've aged five years in the last year of commuting - and we want to get it all back.

So 2015 is going to be the year of our health.

Mental health. Emotional health. Physical health.

Laura has put in her notice at her job in London. She LOVES Threshold, which is really the whole reason we did this commuting business for so long, but with the new puppy coming and the plan to move up to Birmingham permanently (coupled with the realisation that taking the train daily from there would end up costing £1000 per month on travel!!! (!!!)), we knew it wasn't feasible to continue.

This is a HUGE change in our lives - as of the end of January, we are finally getting to live in the city we love so much! As she works out her notice she will be looking for a new role in Brum, and we are looking forward to not getting up at 5:30am every morning. To getting home in time for Laura to make a healthy, delicious dinner. To after supper walks with our little Bee. To gaining back interests, hobbies, everything we didn't have time for when getting home at 8:00pm each evening.

The job change will allow us to take time, and have energy, to be US again. This means time together that isn't trying to keep Sarah awake on a drive, which will improve our emotional health. A work/life balance which will improve our mental health.

And finally, the time for cooking and exercise, which will improve our physical health. Motivated by Julia who got Laura into it and has seen success for a full year, Laura is picking keto up again in January. Sarah will be cutting down and eating healthier. The new puppy will make us get outside anyway, but on top of that we plan on finding activities that will be FUN for us and get our blood pumping. We hear there's a recreational softball league in Birmingham...

2014 would be a tough year to beat, but with 2015 being our first as a family of three and with all these positive changes, we bet it'll be pretty great.

What are your plans for next year?

Get Off The Internet!

Social Media! This post may be ironic in some ways, written in a form of Social Media, publicised via Social Media and using video as Social Media to make the point and yet here it is.

Since starting this blog we have long debated the power of Social Media - it's positives and negatives. The positives being that it has given us access to a big wide world, it has connected us to people we would never have known and provided insight and information that we would have never come across otherwise. In some ways it filters down the vast amount of information that is available and lets us access it in a way that makes us laugh, think or feel like others understand the world the way we do.

The negatives include the fact that it is so easy to believe that it's real life. It's tempting to shut out whats going on outside of the internet world, and to instead put too much stock in the relationships you make online, and forget that those bonds aren't always real. In the real world things are much less centred around you - in work, in social groups, in family!

However, if you don't put in the effort in real life, you will not have any new experiences to talk about in your virtual one!

We have to get up, go to work, sleep and repeat. There are days when the traffic is bad and we only have time to eat and shower, there are days when work is awful and working out who to pay back first becomes a nightmare, but the blog isn't the place for sharing that. We don't want to remember that stuff. The stories we tell are the highlight reel, of really good (and occasionally the really bad) things in our lives.

So this video came up at just the right time, it acts as a reminder that life really is what you make it when you go out and live it. It isn't about how many views or FB friends or followers or likes we have. We record and share our thoughts, pictures and posts for those who are interested not intentionally to create an all-good highlight reel. The moment that happens we will stop- or hopefully someone will point it out :)

For those of us joining our journey, who have sent well wishes or commented about how we give them hope, we really are grateful. It's important for us, and for everyone, to remember that it's the good and the bad that make up a life, without the bad the good wouldn't seem as good - so make sure and embrace all opportunities - Social Media should be a place to record those memories!

Anyways rant over enjoy the video:

Welcome to 2014 with Sarah + Laura!

Happy new year everyone! We hope it is going fabulously.

Along the theme of simplification, a major goal in 2014 for us, we've changed our blog name.

Sprezzatura has served us very well over the last few years, and though it is still the principle we live our life by (making the most of the little things), we found for people it was difficult to spell, to say, and so we've gone with something more simple - Sarah + Laura!

This means our URL has changed, so please update in your blog reader, your bookmark, however you visit us - it's now www.sarahpluslaura.blogspot.co.uk.

Thanks for bearing with us while we switch everything over, if you click on something which goes to the old site please let us know by commenting or email, so we don't forget anything!

We've loved having you share our journey over the last few years, and look forward to continuing that in 2014!

Hello September!

Hello, we hope your September has started well!

Today we were meant to be at Brighton Pride, having attended last year we had booked in a stay with one of our friends who lives down there for this year. It was in the diary at the start of the year and we had really been looking forward to it. Unfortunately on confirming details last week our friend found himself double booked and we were bumped :(

Laura doesn't handle being let down very well so we knew we couldn't just sit at home doing nothing. We debated heading down and hoping we could find where to park for the day but knowing how much of a challenge that had proved to be in previous years we decided against it.

Brighton Pride 2011!

Plan B was to see if Laura's Nan was free - thank goodness she was! So we opted for a trip to Windsor and lunch at Toby's Carvey - perfect! Laura's Nan is AMAZING, at 87 years old she loves to tell us stories about how she grew up and we can't leave before she's confirmed that 'every day I wake up and look to the sky to say THANK YOU that I'm alive!' - hearing that makes us smile inside and out.

The Toby's Carvey staff recognised us and we love the fact that we can sit for hours catching up. With notebook loaded with pictures of Egypt and Thailand we spent over 2 hours eating, chatting and watching our photo slideshow, we treasure the time we get with her. And there is nothing more rewarding than hearing 'great food, great company and great conversation' as her summary for the afternoon. Toby's never lets us down and while it is more of a meat eaters place, the fact that you can pick you own mix and amount of veg means you get the perfect meal!

We also LOVE the fact that she lives just outside Windsor, driving up and seeing the castle appear is also a highlight and on a day like today we couldn't resist taking a stroll up the long walk to make the most of the sunny evening. Hanging out with Laura is always my favourite way to spend the day and being able to enjoying each others company today was lovely.

The time together today also meant we could put our September diary in order. In summary, we have something going on every weekend until November! With a certain someone's birthday coming up I am busy booking up surprises galore in October but we have September to look forward to first!

So here is our September Summary:
September 2nd: Chilling in bed & swapping the summer to winter wardrope
September 3rd - 6th: Dinners with friends / Skype call with potential wedding planner
September 7th: Paralympic Athletics at Olympic Stadium
September 8th: Lady Gaga at Twickenham (please don't let it be raining)
September 9th: Depending on weather heading in to see the Thames Festival
September: 10th - 14th: Somewhere that week having a skype call with potential wedding photographer
September 15th: Attending a wedding fair at a potential engagement party venue
                          Meeting friends Lesley & Linsey
September 16th: Our 3 and a half year anniversary!!
September 17th - 21st: Laura's school friend Alison arrives to stay with us for a few days!
                                    Hopefully meeting Carley from A Summer Full of Peaches &
                                    Georgia & Kaylee from Georgia trying something new 
September 22nd: Seeing Jersey Boys with my Mum and Sister (argh family meeting, L&I are both nervous!)
September 26th: Sarah & Lauren from 2 brides to 2 Mummies will be in London town so we'll track them down & kidnap them!
End of September: Wegan's Civil Partnership from What Wegan Did Next 

Bloggers united at my Birthday Party

Phew....

So it's fair to say that since we have been blogging we have met a few wonderful new people and September  will be a month to meet a few more! With Summer being a non-starter weather-wise we are ready to get our Autumn warmers on and start looking forward to winter (argh only 114 days left to Christmas day!). With a busy few weeks coming up we will have plenty to update the blog with so check back soon....

If you have seen anything happening around London that you think we should check out let us know!!!

Love

Sarah (& Laura)

xoxox