Japan honeymoon highlights

Getting married is seriously fun. Massive party with all of your favourite people and ever-lasting memories? Yes please!

And the best bit is the little gem which almost gets forgotten in all the wedding planning. The honeymoon. 

Feeling kind of greedy, my husband and I opted for two. A week lounging around Switzerland, drinking champagne and riding bikes through the sun-kissed Alps, was utter bliss after the wedding madness. 

But we also wanted to go further afield, so we planned a second honeymoon for six months after our wedding. HELLO, JAPAN!

We're just back, having opted for March / April because we wanted to see this guy... cherry blossom. 

Even the birds in Japan are obsessed with the cherry blossom. 

We went to a little cherry blossom festival in Tokyo. That's how much the Japanese love it, they hold festivals to celebrate it's beauty.

No wonder... 

Super beaut. 

Wanting to see as much as possible, we moved from Tokyo to the Japan Alps (can you tell we like alps?) to Kyoto and the Kiso Valley. 

We ate some pretty weird shiz. Raw prawns, you say? Go on then. Fermented soy beans covered in goo? Yum.

Octopus with an egg in = Japanese version of a lollypop

Slighty nervous pre-raw prawn

In the countryside we stayed in Japanese inns called ryokan, where we were fed plate after plate of traditional Japanese food.

Having eaten my body weight in rice for breakfast, we moved on to Japan's old capital, Kyoto, and I fell in love with ramen.

Ramen = tasty bowl of noodles and pork. 

This beef. Mouth-wateringly good. 

As well as eating a LOT of food, we got our culture hats on and visited shrines, temples, castles and the majestic Mount Fuji.

One of my favourite sights was the red gates at Fushimi Inari Taishi shrine in Kyoto. Regard...

Red GREATS.

New bezzie: a snow monkey. 

Matsumoto Castle.

Red wine and a dip in our own hot spring bath. 

Perfectly manicured garden. 

We rounded things off back at the start, in the insanely busy but strangely serene Tokyo.

A passion fruit bellini while looking out on Tokyo Bay was our Japan swan song. (Well, my husband went for a whiskey because he's a gent.)

Husband + bright lights. 

Bay view + bellini. 

Bye bye Japan!

Japan, you absolute beauty. Take me back!

On a stationery trip

As I'm in possession of an art a-level, I decided it would be fun to make our wedding invites in the run up to W-day last year. 

I'd been collecting old copies of French Vogue since I first set eyes on my engagement ring in the magazine, so we took some of our favourite images from the old mags and cut out our initials. 

We attached these on to some card to make the first page of the invite. 

Along with all the necessary information inside, we bundled up the little scamps and tied them together with bakers twine. 

Our home made wedding invites

So while I was getting my rah on at the farmers' market recently, I was pretty excited to find a beauty of a stall selling stationery from design duo Martha and Hepsie. Here's why...

1. The girlies used bakers twine to tie up their stationery. GREAT MINDS!

2. Their designs are seriously fun little beauties. 

3. It's always very nice to own cards which aren't mass-produced by a high street stationery store.

4. Did I mention the bakers twine? 

A quick introduction later and here I am, the proud owner of my very own set of eight bird and animal designed note cards. 

Bakers twine makes Hannah feel fine

Beaut note cards and envelopes from Martha and Hepsie

Which is pretty good timing, because I'm just back from honeymoon and plan to pen lots of letters telling loved ones about just how ruddy brilliant the trip was. 

(I'll be telling you about it soon too, brace yourselves!)

Look how pretty they are! 

Martha and Hepsie don't just do note cards. I suggest you check out their website to see all the fun stuff you can get your mitts on. I'm off to put pen to paper! 

www.marthaandhepsie.com

@MarthaandHepsie

Frolics at the farmers' market

I'm a sucker for a farmers' market, so when my husband discovered that one was happening near us on Sunday, I gathered together my FM essentials...

Gilet. Posh girl hair. All the spare change.

Armed and ready, we pottered off to Nether Edge (a leafy suburb of Sheffield, obvs) and were swallowed up in a crowd of fellow gilet-wearers with kids called Tarquin and Hugo.

I gave each pretty little stall a good peruse, pretending to muse over trinkets made of gems circa 1995, but I knew I wouldn't buy.

Because the main attraction of a farmers' market is always MEAT.

For me, farmers' market = the grown up equivalent of going to the fair so you can eat candy floss and bat your eyelashes at boys.

We rounded a corner, and that's when I saw it. Buffalo burgers, being fried right there in front of us.

BINGO! That was where my money was going.

Buffalo, I've learned, is low in fat. So I added a slab of cheese and a big white bun, y'know, to make sure I'd have enough energy to get round the rest of the market.

It was pretty tasty. I batted my eyelashes at my husband.

Then we came across a vegetable stall selling a lot of kale. I'm relatively keen on kale so this was a happy discovery.

Next stop, sitting in the sunshine at the bowling club eating a peanut butter brownie.

I spent the last of my cash on some olives stuffed with whole chillis, before we rolled home.

Giddy slash still experiencing a sugar rush, we opened the most ridiculously expensive bottle of wine and whiled away the evening munching the olives.

A very sweet Sunday.

In defence of no make up selfies for charity

Spotted a friend or 10 posting a no make up selfie on your timeline recently?

Yep, me too. Everyone's going crazy for it and with good reason. Ditch your make up, tag your pic with #cancerawarenessselfie and donate some cash to a cancer charity.

It started from nothing and snowballed. A flash campaign! What's not to love?

Well, as with anything positive, some miserable types are finding fault.

One news outlet called the no make up selfie "narcissism masked as charity" and pointed out that a number of the photos weren't taken to raise cash for charity.

NO MAKE UP SELFIE 1: Post run, post shower selfie. Hello red face! 

It's true that, at the start, people were doing it without a second thought to raising money. But now it's become a cancer thing, and though not all selfie-takers are donating, there's no need to be such a bloody downer about it!

The more no make up selfies the better, in my opinion. Every one is fuelling the fire, raising awareness, getting people thinking.

Because cancer's a right bastard and the more we embrace fun new ways to get money for research, the better.

NO MAKE UP SELFIE 2: Working for myself = can't be bovved with make up

And as for the narcissism point, DUH! Welcome to our generation.

We take pictures of ourselves, our food, our nails, the breeze, a rainbow. We're a sharing bunch.

So to channel that into a positive, charity-based outlet is A GOOD THING.

Cancer Research UK have got involved, and you can help them beat cancer sooner by texting BEAT to 70099 and donating £3.

That's the price of one coffee.

So if you've taken a slap-free selfie without donating, sort it out. And if you're going to moan that we're not raising money for charity 'the right way', it's time for a major rethink.