We can’t believe it’s already been 3 months since our last life update! There’s been a lot of exciting changes around here, the main one being that we got engaged!! We’re planning on getting married later this year, so we’re full steam ahead with all the preparations. It’s very exciting! Apart from that, we’ve just been getting used to life in Bristol. We’re feeling properly settled now which is such a nice feeling. We’ve stopped missing our old flat and are really starting to feel like we’re making a life here in Bristol.
This year we got to host Christmas for the first time. As it was our first year doing Christmas at our home, it was quite a big deal for both of us. We absolutely loved having family stay, but we’d be lying if we didn’t say hosting Christmas creates its unique stresses and worries, we simply wanted everyone to be as comfortable as possible while also creating the Christmas magic that we’ve always relied on them for. We had a lot of fun decorating the flat festively; amongst it all, we made a wreath for over the fireplace and festooned the tree with the jumble of decorations we’ve been collecting over the years. We also made a full vegan Christmas dinner for the first time! We’d made large Sunday roasts in the past but never a full Christmas feast, so there was slight apprehension going into it. It turned out to be a lot of fun, not nearly as bothersome as we expected. Whether we host again next year or visit others, I think making the Christmas dinner will be a new tradition of ours.
It wasn’t all plain sailing in December though, I’m sure a lot of you are aware of the amount you can end up spending around Christmas! Any freelancers reading this will also know January is a notoriously slow month for work. This year we both felt the strain on our wallets which meant Jan was a frugal month. Things are looking up now though, we’re both making new contacts here in Bristol and picking up new work. We’re still taking trips back up to London for occasional jobs but it’s becoming less and less frequent. We’re finding our groove here in Bristol, and that’s definitely helping it feel like home.
One of the most exciting changes in our lives at the moment has to be that we got engaged! We are both over the moon about it. It’s going to be so much fun celebrating with all the people we love. We are particularly looking forward to putting on a huge delicious vegan feast for everyone. We’re aware of the consequences that a party of this size can have environmentally, so we’re aiming to keep its impact as low as possible. It’s really important to us that we make the whole wedding vegan and as eco friendly as possible. We’re looking forward to the challenge. At the moment the initial planning is taking up lots of our spare time. Since we’re getting married this summer, there’s a lot to organise in a fairly short amount of time!
One side effect of the extra planning and work is that it’s harder to find the time to create the content we love sharing here on the blog. Being honest, it’s a difficult act balancing life, work and the blog simultaneously. Once we drop the ball it becomes difficult to pick it back up, and that leads to situations such as it being a full week without posting on Instagram. This is something we’re trying to avoid since we have aspirations to make this our full-time jobs. We’d love nothing more than to spend our days showcasing all the amazing parts of veganism; creating recipes, reviewing restaurants, and checking out new lines of vegan products for you all. We have a long way to go until that becomes a reality, so for now, Lovely Jubley is something that we love filling our spare time with and our creative outlet. Particularly, we are working on becoming more personal with you guys, we started the blog with the vision of sharing our passion for veganism. We also aim to share with you not only ourselves but also the ins and outs of our new home city of Bristol.
Part of what makes Bristol our favourite city is the number of vegan places available for eating out. It doesn’t matter if you’re looking for a quick bite or a romantic meal, Bristol’s got it all! Here are some of our personal favourites:
- Koocha Mezze Bar – 100% vegan Persian cuisine with a relaxed atmosphere.
- East Village – 100% vegan cafe and gift shop in Clifton Village, serving the best vegan pastries
- Cafe Kino – 100% vegan. The best breakfast you can find anywhere in Bristol!
- Purezza – 100% vegan pizzaria, the best choice of original vegan toppings you’ll find in Bristol.
- Vx Bristol – fully vegan junk food in all its glory.
- Krishnas Inn – vegan-friendly. The most authentic south Indian food, all the same aromas and flavours from our trip through Kerala!
- Bravas – vegan-friendly. Our go-to date night spot. You need to try the Fried Aubergine with Molasses!
This is only a small section of what’s available. It seems like each time I turn the corner there’s a new place opening! Almost too much choice, it can be hard to decide where to go at times. We’ll do our best to get around them in time and share our reviews with you all.
We’ve got a lot of new ideas for the blog itself too. When we first started Lovely Jubley we chose a web platform that was comfortable for both of us. That’s why we chose Wix, however, we are now feeling a lot of the limitations it has. It’s not the best experience in terms of blogging. In the coming months, we are going to be transitioning the blog over to Wordpress, this will be a lot of work however it will allow us much more freedom! We’re going to be able to use cool new features such as rich snippets to make our recipes easier to read and use. Hopefully, you won’t see much of a difference in terms of how the blog looks, it will just have a few improvements to help things run more quickly and smoothly.
We’ll both be happy to see the back of winter in a few weeks. Now it seems like spring is only just around the corner, the first blossoms have started shooting on the trees outside our window. We’re looking forward to what the next few months bring. We have a lot of aspirations and are excited to develop and grow the little vegan space we’ve created here as well as getting everything underway for our wedding later this year. If you’d like to keep up to date with what we get up to in the next few months, make sure you’re following us here and on our Instagram.
We’d love to know if you enjoyed this post and what kind of things you’d like to see on our blog going forward. Let us know in the comments below, or on any of our social media channels!