CAU - Buenos Heroes menu - review by Bex

We were invited along to try out the new menu at CAU in Tunbridge Wells while they're running their #BuenosHeroes promotion which offers diners the chance to win the trip of a lifetime to Buenos Aires.  (See below for more details about the promotion.)

England's Medieval Festival Ticket Giveaway - competition by Bex

I am thrilled to be attending England's Medieval Festival in August this year!  Following the success of taking the twins to Elderflower Fields Festival, we're super excited to be camping at the Medieval Festival over the bank holiday weekend at the end of August.  It's sure to be amazing since it's also the festival's 25th anniversary!  And I'm even more excited to be able to give away a family day ticket to one of my lovely readers!  Keep reading to find out how to enter...

Foodies Festival Edinburgh - Ticket Giveaway

by Bex

As promised, here is our giveaway to win tickets, kindly offered by Foodies Festivals for the Edinburgh event at Inverleith Park on 7th, 8th and 9th August.  The winner will receive a pair of adult tickets for the day of their choice.

You can read about my experience at the Brighton festival here and you can enter below to win tickets to attend the Edinburgh event.

This year, it's even bigger to celebrate 10 years of the festival.  Chefs confirmed for the Edinburgh Foodies Festival include:

Michelin-star Marcello Tully - Kinloch Lodge
Jamie Scott - MasterChef: The Professionals 2014 winner
Adam Handling - Adam Handling at Caxton voted Scotland’s Chef of the Year
Fraser Allan - The Pompadour by Galvin
Mark Greenaway – Restaurant Mark Greenaway and Bistro Moderne
Tony Singh - TV Chef & food Author 
Paul Wedgwood – Wedgwoods
Neil Forbes – Cafe St Honore
Jian Wang - Chop Chop
Graeme Pallister – 63 Tay Street
Colin Findlay - Melville Castle
Kim Atcharahorn Kaewkraikhot - Chaophraya 
Ian McAndrew - Blackaddie 

(The Cake & Bake Theatre sounds ideal for my old Glasgow Baking Club buddies: A haven for passionate bakers with Scotland's top cake makers and patissiers sharing their tips for baking delicious summer cakes. Visitors can also enjoy 3D cake modelling, Chocolate Making and Sugar-Craft masterclasses and a complementing Chocolate, Cake and Bake Village sells bakes, jams, and the latest baking gadgets.)

Tickets are on sale now at www.foodiesfestival.com or by calling 0844 995 1111

Friday adult day ticket £10.00 (£8.00 concession)
Saturday or Sunday adult day ticket £13.00 (£11.00 concession)
3-day adult ticket £20.00 (£16.00 concession)
Friday VIP ticket £35.00
Saturday or Sunday VIP ticket £38.00
VIP tickets include a welcome glass of bubbly, access to the VIP tent with private bar and refreshments throughout the day, priority entry to food and drink masterclasses, a goody bag and a showguide.

All children aged 12 and under go free to all Foodies Festivals when accompanied by an adult.

Open times:
Friday 7th August: 11am – 7pm
Saturday 8th August: 10am – 8pm
Sunday 9th August: 10am – 7pm

Here's how to win a free pair of tickets:

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Simply comment below about why you want to attend, as per the instructions on the Rafflecopter.  Additional entries are possible by tweeting about the giveaway.

Good luck!

Vote for 10 Mewn Bws (10 in a bus)

by Bex

My lovely friend, Gwen, is currently a finalist in a competition to win a National Lottery Award!  You may remember Gwen from my wedding report about our music as she was our talented harpist!

As part of 10 Mewn Bws, she helps to raise awareness of Welsh traditional music, the musicians involved and create a new legacy (yes, I totally copied that from the website!).  I know she would be delighted if you could take a few moments to vote for them to win!  You can see more info in the video below and you can vote here!

Voting closes on the 23rd July so be quick!  :)

Amazon Giveaway!

The fabulous peeps at Appliances Online have been in touch to offer one of our readers a wonderful prize!  A whopping £40 of Amazon vouchers to spend on whatever you like.  Just because they like people to be happy.  Isn't that lovely!

We do like those guys and gals over there and already know about them because of their blog, edited by the fabulous Kimberly of Swoon Worthy fame.  Not only are they giving you guys a £40 voucher but we each get £20 vouchers too!  Here's what we're planning on spending them on...

Roz
As you know I love my music, so I'm going to treat myself to a few albums that I've wanted since the spending ban commenced!  I quite fancy the Calvin Harris album and the Great Gatsby soundtrack (even though I've yet to see the film!).  I am going to have a good think before I spend it as treats like music have been rare lately, so thanks Appliances Online you have definitely made me smile!! :)

Bex 
I'm going to spend my voucher on some new books for my kindle.  There are plenty on my wish list, I've had so many good recommendations on Goodreads recently, my To Read list is getting so full!  Thanks so much Appliances Online - you've definitely made us happy :)

All you have to do to enter is comment below telling us what you'll spend your voucher on if you win.  You can also tweet about the giveaway, follow us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook to be in with extra chances of winning!  Just follow the instructions in the Rafflecopter widget.  Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Come back this afternoon to see what Bex got up to with Anna when she was in town a couple of weeks ago!

Home Love at Fashion for Home

I learned about a fab contest at Fashion For Home via the lovely Kimberly at Swoon Worthy so this is my entry.  The idea is to submit a picture of your favourite spot in your home and you could win £500 to spend on your home and it's open to all UK bloggers!  Easy I thought, but then I couldn't actually choose.  I love my home so much!  It was down to the kitchen where we probably spend most of our time as it's lovely and spacious (and you all know I love food) or the study. 

The study won.  It's the one room we designed and executed entirely ourselves.  The kitchen was decorated by Sarah when she lived here and although we've made changes, it wasn't decorated from scratch like the study which went from a horrendously messy magnolia junk room with piles of wedding stuff to the most simple, fresh space we both love to hang out in.

The brief says your spot can be a vignette, a corner or a whole room and to be honest, this fits with all of that.  My favourite corner in the house is definitely the one above!  I LOVE our Hemnes day bed, it's so comfortable, either as a snug corner for me to snuggle up and read on or as a double bed for guests.  It also has GREAT storage in the huge drawers - all of my sewing stuff is in the far end, the middle has beach towels, my tripod and waders and this end contains all of Nik's shoes!  But the thing I love most about this corner and the whole room is the gallery wall of my safari pictures taken on honeymoon.  I love how some of them turned out in black & white but had to include some colour so mixed them up a bit.

I love being able to put my own art on the wall and hubby did a great job of getting them all straight since the hooks on each frame were in different places!  Lots of measuring and maths was required!

I call it the Africa room as we have all our African honeymoon souvenirs in there - the Masai beaded necklace, the malachite elephant and our little African men among other things.

It's really the travel room now as we're still adding to it and we love adding our white dots to our travel map every time we visit somewhere new.

It's the room which also represents us best, Nik loves the minimal, clean lines, grey and white and I love the splashes of colour and little trinkets reminding us of our travels.  It's the perfect compromise and we both love the result.

I was only supposed to choose one picture so I'll send in the 2nd one as it's my favourite, showing my beloved daybed and photographs.

Giveaway winner announced!

Our competition to give-away a package of hand-crafted items and one of my bexphoto.com photographs is now over.  Thank you to everyone who entered and especially for all the lovely comments about my photographs!  We are very happy to announce the winner (chosen at random by the widget) is...

Katy W!

Congratulations!  If you could please email me within two weeks with your choice of bracelet colours (up to 4) and vest/felt colour & shape options and vest size along with your postal address, I will get working on your prize asap!

500th post! (Give-away)

So as I said last night, this is the 500th post on The Olive Dragonfly Blog and to celebrate and help spread the word of our little corner of Blogland, we're running a give-away   It's been just over 2 years since I started this wee blog to document my wedding ideas and planning to my lovely readers - (Mum and bridesmaids!) and since then have been writing about all kinds of things that interest me and Roz joined in in January too!  Luckily it seems you're interested in what we write about too since over the last year more of you seem to be reading.  We've had 3761 unique visitors since the start of this year so I know it's not just Mum coming back time and again!

I've been even more excited about the blog this year and since starting Pin It Do It challenges and Craft Club, it's been even more fun having more interaction with people sending in submissions and craft ideas.

We hope you'll like the prize up for grabs and help us spread the word even further about what we get up to over here.  Although we love blogging, it makes it all the more exciting writing posts knowing so many people are reading them!!  So to celebrate hitting the big 500, I've decided to run another give-away.  In the last year, the blog readership has shot up and page views have gone from 10,000 in the first year to around 15,000 a month so I'm hoping there might be a few more entries this time round.  :)

This time I am offering a little parcel of some of the things I love to make.  It will include a card and friendship bracelet made by me, a version of the vest I made for heart swap (or a needle felted one with either a dragonfly, a heart or a star on it) and one of my photographs, ready to frame.  I was also going to include a batch of home-made Oaties but since I'm not sure where that would leave us regarding food laws, labelling, allergies, etc. it's probably best not to - I will include a nice print out of the recipe though!

All you have to do to enter is use the form below and help us spread the word even further about The Olive Dragonfly Blog - and my photo website in to the bargain - and you could win the package!  :)

There are lots of ways to enter using the Rafflecopter widget so get spreading the word and we will announce the winner next week!


a Rafflecopter giveaway

I will let you choose the colours for your bracelet and you can choose from any of these colours of vest or these ones (subject to what's available in my local H&M so send more than one choice!) and the following colours of felt: turquoise mix, pink mix, green mix or leopard print and for needle felting: teal, purple or green.  As a result the prizes may take a little while to arrive as I will make them after the winner's announced.  Please contact me to claim your prize within two weeks.

Etsy Competition

To celebrate my new shop on Etsy, I am running a twitter give-away competition.  Just follow me on twitter and RT one of my special competition links and you will be entered into the prize draw (on Thursday 1st December) to win a 10 pack of my Photo Art Cards (see below) :)

I've put the tweets in my favourites so you can find it or just search for #BexPhotoComp!