Wonderful Wednesday #100!!

{Little joys:: Dry days and prettily printed dresses adorned with teeny tiny pom-poms!}
HAPPY NEW YEAR lovely ladies and gents!  Pardon me for being a little bit belated on that front but it's only polite to wish you all it, since i havent popped by since last Wednesday.  Hands up who's so so ready for that clean page, fresh start and blank 'anything is possible' canvas-type feeling?!?!  Me, me ME!!!

I'm particularly impatient for Spring this year - largely because our Winter so far as been unseasonably mild, wet and blah.  I took down our decorations on Monday as i was off.  I delighted in a jolly good clean, dust and hoover {it's a miracle there were actually any needles left on that little tree of ours since so many were swooshed up into our hoover!  I spent the afternoon catching up on laundry and delighting in having the large floor to ceiling windows in our livingroom WIDE open.  I was frozen!  But i wrapped up in layers and sat munching my late lunch with a big blanket wrapped around my shoulders - it was bliss.  

How have you been spending your first few days of 2016?  I sort of like the ring '2016' has to it…don't you think?!  The inner control freak/borderline neat-freak in me is also delighting in the fact that my first Wonderful Wednesday of 2016 is number 100!  We best hop to it!

1.  New blooms.  As soon as the decs are down and the grey and   l-o-n-g  month of january looms ahead i yearn to fill our little somewhere with colour.  Well, you know more colour than is already in it!  I picked up a couple of tubs of potted purple and pink hyacinth and some baby daffodils to dot about our kitchen and livingroom and treated us {read: me!} to a new Rhubarb scented candle to burn come early evening.  

2.  Transitional treats.  I love  the start of a new season and whilst it will be a fair few months before actual Spring is here, you can always count on retail to be months ahead of the game!  It's been lovely seeing our transitional pieces trickle in at Monsoon Towers and i've got my eye on a beautiful soft pink Breton from the lovely folk at Boden.  Mostly i just love to wander about the shops and take in all the lighter, brighter pieces.  Usually in my Winter coat, scarf and bobble hat!

3.  Taylors of Harrogate Rose Lemonade Tea.  Our current before bed beverage of choice. Not nearly as rose-y as it would have you think. It's sort of a fresher vimto-esque and lemon-ey treat that is just delicious.  

4.  More sale bargains! I've been so bad!  SO BAD! *puts head in hands* but it made me feel marginally better when i realised that the handful of things i've bought in the sales i've got for the price i would have paid full price for just ONE of them.  That's pretty impressive don't you think?!  Last Spring i lusted over a pair of the softest leather pale pink brogues from M&S.  They sold out everywhere!  I spotted one pair, in my size this week for over half their original price.  They're Spring in a shoe!!!!  

5.  Spinach.  I've really been craving this stuff lately {i'm blaming the grey skies and not the mince pie consumption!} and i've been loving eating it alongside sliced avocado and scrambled eggs.  It's best at it's very simplest:  gently wilted on a low heat with just a dot of coconut oil.   And then sprinkled with sea salt. Heaven!!!

6.  Left over potatoes smooshed a little and fried in garlicky butter and torn rosemary and eaten warm, dunked in hummus alongside the biggest salad when neither of us had the brain power to be particularly creative in our dinner making.  It was one of the best dinners we've eaten in a while we both agreed.  Don't you find that they often come out of nowhere??!? 

7. Grated courgette.  Why have i never grated a courgette before?!?  I've been adding it to anything and everything:  Sprinkled on top of pizza, flicked through seedy salads and even in veggie fajita wraps.  I simply grate, add a glug of olive oil and a squeeze of fresh lemon and it keeps in a little tupperware in the fridge of a couple of days.  I'm excited to use it as a base for a feta frittata later on in the week instead of my usual new potatoes.  Mmmm!

8.  That really perfect in every way kind of cup of tea that only really occurs…..hmm once in a hundred?!  I don't mean to toot my own horn and all of that but i'm kind of great at tea making, it's my thing.  But often i wonder if because i drink so much of the stuff that i grow…complacent{?!} at times.  All it takes to bring me back down to earth {and to verify that little tea making crown i have imaginarily perched atop my little head} is a really long and busy day and a bloody good cup of tea.  The kind you sigh loudly in contentment from the very first sip and imagine already craving another all but two sips in, was it not for the fact that everybody knows you can't get two great cups in a row.  I can't imagine life without tea, i actually just can't.  

9.  When you wake up half an hour before your alarm clock is due to go off and get momentarily annoyed, only to realise that in fact it's your day off and actually you could sleep all the live long day if you wanted to.  Even if there is a Leaning Tower of Pisa-shaped collection of laundry lingering in the spare room and a thousand things to tick off your list of things to do.  But mmmmm BED!

10.  Fleeting if not mere seconds of extra daylight on the end of each day lately.  Scratch that, even if the difference is barely noticeable, just knowing that we're moving in the right direction gets Wonderful Wednesday points galore!

11.  Messy waves.  For being my lifesaver for that 'wah my hair needs cut ever so badly but January is SUCH a   l-o-n-g   month' sort of feelings.  I'm hoping i can disguise said fluffy hair until at least the last week of the month.  Waves and hats.  Two things that are saving my bacon barnet lately.

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Righty-HO it's up and over to you lovely lot!  Dazzle me with your fresh-start wonderful-ness and week-so-far-shaped greatness!  What has had you grinning from ear to ear on possibly the hardest 'back to work' week of the whole year..?  Remember to drop a sweet comment below orrr come and find me on Twitter and Instagram and say hullo!  I'm @sallytangle on both.  Don't forget to tag me in your #wonderfulwednesday antics:  Great cups of tea, good hair days or simply just to wave the flag.  I'm forever grateful to you all!

Much love,