This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

Before we delve into what us Micebag's have been up to this week, I just want to share a statement that will hopefully get you in the right frame of mind to get through the last and final day of the week...

Apart from being completely in love with the fact that it's Friday, this week the Mice have mostly been... 

 

Sunning it up in beautiful Cadiz, Spain. You may remember a while back we brought you this travel review which went into great detail about our out of this world amazing stay at boutique Casa La Siesta and another quaint little hotel, Escondrijo Well a few years back I entered a photography competition via Casa La Siesta's facebook page and WON! In return I was gifted a weekend's stay at the little slice of heaven and this was that stay...

 

I jetted off over the bank holiday to make the most of the extra day off! We only stayed for 4 nights but because of how instantly relaxed you feel as soon as you set foot within the hotel it felt more like a week! Let me set the scene - whispering is really the only way to communicate and at times even that's a little too loud. It's literally the quietest place on earth - you are tucked up in rolling Spanish countryside without sight of another house, road or being for miles. Complete uninterrupted bliss! 

 

 

The food is also a huge pull. Beakfast would quite happily keep me going all week - toasted granola, yogurt and the sweet honey, homemade warm bread with jams & butter, fruits, eggs with avocado on the side, freshly sqeezed orange - the list goes on... Lunch and dinner are as mindblowing - everyday the hotel staff write up the 3-course menu on a blackboard which they prop up in the courtyard. There is no choice - you have what you're given but I challenge you not to die and go to heaven after every spoon or forkful! 

 

In summary (because I could go on forever) I pretty much spent my time sunbathing and snoozing poolside (waking myself up between snores), fitting as much scrumptious food and free booze in as humanly possible, nicknaming and gossiping about the couples also staying (we all do it) and just generally having a fabulously beautiful time ... I want to do it all over again! this weekend! 

 

Drooling over Rosie Huntington-Whiteley new lingerie styles within the Rosie for Autograph range. She recently marked her one year anniversary milestone with the highstreet retailer and celebrated suitably with cake! An insider secret squirrel gave word that each team at M&S head office also received the same cake supposedly from Rosie herself - reckon she baked each and every one herself in just her silk underwear...!?!

 

 

Her new pieces are going from strength to strength boasting luxe fabrics, cutesy floral designs, elaborate lace trims and we can vouch for the perfect fit. Mini mouse is the proud owner of the French teddy and has been strutting her Rosie-esque stuff around the flat every night this week...

 

We're also tempted by these little beauties...

 

After seeing Rosie bare all, I think we all need another pick me up - what better way to do that than think of the fun and frolics we have to come this weekend whilst knowing Rosie will be sweating away in the gym to maintain her waif-like waist! I feel better now AND on that note...

This Week The Mice Have Mostly Been...

It's Frrrrrriday! 

Woo hoo, we made it! It's time to pack away our PCs and staplers for another week and get stuck into some serious Friday fun. 

One of the Mice is going to be having a little more fun than the others this weekend though. One of us will be lounging in the sun by a turquoise pool, sipping on Sangria and feasting on Paella and gazpacho. And it's not me or Mini... Yup, Middle Mouse has jetted off on yet another holiday... 

She's barely finished unpacking her bikinis after her hols in Portugal and now she's back in the Mediterranean sun for a few days of blissing out at a bit of a Mice favourite, Casa la Siesta. 

All three of us first stayed at Casa La Siesta just over two years ago and we haven't stopped raving about it since. Perched on the South-West Coast of Spain, just outside the beautiful hilltop town of Vejer, this little haven of holiday perfection was the ideal spot for some super-pampered sister time. 

So when Middle zipped off this week for round two it was with ill-disguised, green eyed jealousy that we waved her off... 

And when Mini and I haven't been madly attempting to contort ourselves into Middle Mouse's suitcase, this week the Mice have mostly been... 

Genning up on all things new season courtesy of Fash-fabulous new digital fashion and beauty magazine, Never Underdressed.

Jam-packed with the lowdown on everything from autumn's biggest trends (hello cartoon camo print) to filling your Instagram feed with beautiful people and even a list of 'won't be able to believe that you ever lived without them' beauty gems - whatever your sartorial dilemma, Never Underdressed has your back. Hop over to the site now to help draw up your weekend shopping list (got to snap up your new season essentials before they sell out...) or just to drool over the full autumn/winter Christian Louboutin Shoe Collection. Just FYI though, these babies are mine...

Squaring up to some stiff competition  as the super exciting What the Frock Blogger Style Off kicks off... A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I'd been working on a project with my go to Hong Kong label for gorgeous, girlie dresses and this week, I can finally spill all the details... 

To celebrate the launch of the revamped (and dangerously shoppable) What the Frock website, me and five other Hong Kong bloggers are going head to head in a little style off... Each of us picked out our favourite dress of the season along with some jewels from the sparkly new jewellery collection and, after adding a dash of our own style, were shot in our looks by the uber-talented photographer/model/stylista/blogger, Sabrina Sikora. 

My final look? Well here it is...

I'm wearing:

Tank Maxi
HK$1,199

Large Blue Bauble Necklace
HK$399

Large Turquoise Bauble Necklace
HK$399

If you hop over to the What the Frock Facebook Page you can view each of our photos and help decide who's crowned queen of the bloggers by voting for your favourite look. All voters who provide their email address will also be automatically entered into a lucky draw for the chance to win their favourite dress or piece of jewellery. What are you waiting for...?!

And that's your lot for another week!

All that's left to be said is...

Happy Weekend!

 

x

 

The Mice

Three Birthday Mice!

3 Sisters.

356 Days.

431 Posts.

1000s of Cocktails.

And even more Champagne....

Today is our first Blogiversary and looking back, we can't quite believe what an incredible year it's been! 

A year ago today we pressed the publish button and our very first blog post* zipped out of our drafts file and onto the big world wide interweb...! Unbelievably exciting, a little bit nervewracking and all quite strange.... None of us were pro writers or photographers and we didn't have anything particularly new or unique to blog about, but we just thought that our very own slice of the internet seemed like a great place to record and share with each other what we were doing, where we'd been travelling and which shoes were currently threatening to max out our credit cards... 

Image via: www.modaoperandi.com

Image via http://www.charlotteolympia.com/

And for the last twelve months that's pretty much what we've done. We've written about a sister holiday eating and snoozing at the heavenly Casa La Siesta. We've e-shopped til we dropped and reported back on where to buy Isabel Marant alike wedge trainers on a budget.  And (all in the name of research) we read all three installments of the Shades of Grey triology so that we could weigh in on the high-brow literary debate that's been consuming women around the world... 

We've spent a year waking up and logging straight on to the blog to check what's been written 5,995 miles away, while we've been sleeping. We've kept each other entertained on our daily commutes, made each other laugh over our drunken tales and surprised each other with secret Birthday blog posts (N) (M) (A). We've also bickered over whose turn it is to post, whined over missed nights out to catch up with our 'second job' and fallen asleep at our keyboards broken and exhausted after a hard Sunday's hungover writing marathon... To say we've loved every minute would be a blatant lie, but we've definitely loved the vast majority of the minutes! 

Highlights in our year of blogging have included meeting lots of lovely new people, from an array of awesome bloggers to the amazing people who we've interviewed for features and plenty of super nice PRs, jouranlists and fashionistas in between! The parties and launches that we've been lucky enough to be invited to have also been pretty fab - from panda sushi and stilettos at the Rob Pruitt X Jimmy Choo launch to the Isabel Marant Store Launch in Hong Kong. Last but not least, our total pinch yourself moment this year was the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards where we were awarded the Highly Commended Lifestyle Blog Award after just eight months of blogging! Too exciting for words!

To anyone who's read down this far - thank you for all your support and encouragement over the last year. We've been amazed to find that we seem to have blog buds reading what we write from various spots around the world. Please do stop by again as we start our second year of blogging and feel free to leave us comments, we love hearing what you think of all our Mouse Musings!

In honour of the several hundred thousand words we've spent several hundred hours researching, typing and editing this year, tonight we'll be raising a glass or two of Champagne in our opposite corners of the world. We hope you'll join us! Here's to a great weekend and another year full of blog adventures!

x

The Birthday Mice!

Image via: www.pinterest.com

*you may have noticed that our first post is actually dated 2nd February... while us Mice know our Louboutins from our Lanvin, unfortunately we still find the computer wizardry a little baffling... we promise we were born on 1st February, we just had a few timezone teething problems initially! We know, we know! But it's our Birthday, we can plead blondeness if we want to... !

Help the Mice Win a Weekend in Paradise!

Last year the Mice had the most amazing week away in Vejer.  We spent three nights at the beautiful Escondrijo, a 3 room hotel that feels more like a home right in the centre of the old town, tucked down a windy little white washed alley surrounded by tapas restaurants and sweet boutiques.  We then spent the next four nights at Casa la Siesta, a luxe hideaway out in the rolling Andalucian hills.  Casa la Siesta is a little corner of heaven.  The perfect place for long, languid, lazy days snoozing in the sun, swimming in the turquoise pool and eating delicious meal after delicious meal.  The second that we left we were planning our return.

Back in April we spotted a competition that Casa la Siesta were running on their Facebook page - all we had to do was post a photo that we had taken of the hotel and then get the most likes to win a weekend at the hotel.  We immediately posted a photo from our heavenly stay and then pretty much forgot all about it until this weekend when the hotel messaged us on Facebook to say that we'd reached the final!

The competition closes next Sunday 24th June, until then, our mission is to get as many likes as we can!  So little blog buds, we'd love you all forever and ever if you could help send us back to Casa la Siesta by clicking over onto Facebook and liking our photo!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

x

The Mice 

Viva Vejer

The Mice don't get to see each other all together that often (what with one living 5995 miles away from the others), so when they're reunited it's always really special.  Last summer we decided to do our annual girls' trip in Spain and promptly set about scouring all our favourite travel websites for inspiration on where to stay, what to eat and where the best beaches are.


When we were little, we spent virtually every summer in Macaret, a little fishing village in Menorca, where we'd spend all day diving for shells and sea urchins, making friendship bracelets and playing with the children who lived in the village (they couldn't speak English; we couldn't speak Spanish, but we were more than happy playing away together for hours on end).  Meals would be chorizo bocadillos, baby squid, deepfried and eaten out of newspaper on the beach and that fluorescent orange Fanta that you only ever seem to get on holiday. At night we'd beg 100 pesetas from our parents, buy sweets from the souvenir shop and then run wild around the village square with our little Spanish friends until a bedtime hours past our usual home one.


Since those days, we've hardly been back to Spain and we wanted to make sure that wherever we chose this time wouldn't sully those happy, sunny Spanish memories.  We wanted to avoid anywhere where the restaurants have menus featuring photographs of chicken kiev and frozen vegetables and are frequented by men whose sunburnt faces match their Man United football shirts drinking pints of Stella with their girlfriends in Herve Leger knock-off bandage dresses and five inch stilettos.  We wanted somewhere that actually felt like Spain and after much deliberation and a lot of research we settled on Vejer, a little hilltop town in Andalusia.

And so, on a Saturday in mid-August last year, we all landed at Seville airport and scurried to find one another.  We collected our cases (numerous and heavy), picked-up our rental car (maroon and not quite the sporty, convertible we'd have picked) and set-off for our first hotel of the week.  After an hour of driving (but mostly screaming) in circles around Seville, trying to get used to the left hand drive and only driving where other cars in front were going….(a little difficult when this doesn't follow our handwritten directions and we haven't thought that maybe a map might be helpful) we got some courage together, made some correct turns, made it out of the city and hit the road out to Vejer.  Two hours later we took some scarily steep, narrow and windy roads leading to a hilltop chock-a-block with winding whitewashed streets full of cars parked at all angles, Spanish children laughing and playing and old ladies sitting out on stools.  We'd arrived.

We found a parking spot and called the owner of our first hotel, Nigel, who dashed down to met us in the old town square and help us and our many, heavy bags up to Escondrijo, the beautiful, boutique, guest house that he runs with his wife, Nettie.  From the moment we arrived, we knew that we'd made exactly the right choice.  Every tiny detail of the hotel has been thought through, from the honesty bar downstairs in the indoor courtyard to the living room full of CDs, books and DVD's to borrow. The house is beautifully decorated, every nook and cranny is packed full of character with walls covered with framed photographs telling the story of Nigel & Nettie's family and each step of the winding, whitewashed stair case lit with candles and lanterns.

The hotel has 3 rooms - Hammock, Wood Burner and Luz. We stayed in the Hammock room, a beautiful mezzanine room with a hammock on the mezzanine floor that leads out to its own private terrace complete with perfect views for sunset gin and tonics and flicking through vogue (which was perfectly placed in our room for our arrival).  We all excitedly dashed around the room taking photographs, unpacking random bikinis and phone chargers and gabbling about how happy we were.  The room's little kitchenette was quickly rifled revealing a fridge stocked with delicious olive oil, freshly ground coffee and chilled cava.  If someone designed a hotel for the Mice, this is exactly what it would be like. 

We spent three perfect nights exploring the gorgeous town, spending hours discovering treasures and bargains in little boutiques, sunbathing on beautiful, long and generally empty beaches and eating and drinking until we could eat and drink no more.  We loved the tapas and sangria at Casa Varo - set on a sweet cobbled street just down from the village church, we sat out on streetside tables and whiled the hours away whilst plate after plate of incredible Tapas arrived - Iberian ham, tuna carpaccio, croquettas and even our Menorquian favourite, baby squid.

Nigel could not have been more helpful, recommending restaurants and beaches, drawing maps so we wouldn't get lost and offering to lend us sun umbrellas to take to the beach so that we wouldn't get burnt.  On our first night he booked one of the restaurant highlights of our trip, Quatros Gatos - where we devoured a delicious three course meal, cocktails and wine (all for around £15 each) looking out across orchards and orange groves as the sun set.    

And we couldn't finish a review of Escondrijo without mentioning the breakfasts….completely out of this world!  Each evening before dinner we filled out our breakfast slip and the following morning at our specified time, a feast would be cooked-up and delivered to our rooftop terrace by Nigel. Big pots of tea or freshly ground coffee, divine freshly squeezed orange juice, the BEST homed granola we have ever tasted layered with fresh sliced fruit, yoghurt and toasted hazelnuts, followed up by fresh bocadillo with either cheese and serrano ham or tomato and oil olive, or the most heavenly scrambled eggs on toast.  And as soon as breakfast arrived, so did the family dog, Dunas (the Spanish word for sand dune where she was found and rescued by Nettie and Nigel when they first bought Escondrijo).

With heavy hearts, on day four, we packed our cases, jumped back into our hire car and out onto the scary windy roads to set off to hotel number two, Casa La Siesta.  To our great delight, we found Casa La Siesta with minimal wrong turns in less than 10 minutes.  After our perfect stay at Escondrijo, we really couldn't imagine that our second hotel could even begin to measure up to the first, but drawing up to the big iron gates around a large sand-coloured house with rolled reed matting shutters, we wondered whether maybe we could have managed to discover two gems in one week.   

And it turned out we had.  Casa La Siesta was a total contrast to Escondrijo but was still completely heavenly.  Surrounded by miles and miles of green countryside, not a sound to be heard but crickets, with the smell of fresh flowers from the garden and of the feast being whipped up in the kitchen...seriously amazing.

We were taken to our room, one of seven in this little boutique hotel - every detail again had been thought through to make your stay completely perfect. There are big woven straw beach bags to take to the pool, an ipod loaded with music to play in your room or to take sunbathing with you down to the huge pool set in the fields behind the house.  A wet room with amazing Ren beauty products, thick white dressing gowns and candles littering every surface.  Our room had beautiful rustic touches everywhere, exposed-beamed, high ceilings, stone floors and a roll top bath at the end of the bed.  French doors lead out to a little terrace with a sweet wrought iron table and mismatched chairs, a new location for our sunset gin & tonics. Our favourite touch was that whilst eating dinner our bed was turned down, chilled water bottles were placed on the bedside tables and candles were lit all around the room - everything possible was done to make it a slice of heaven.

Over a welcome Cruzcampo from the tap at the bar in the L-shaped courtyard restaurant, Blaze, the manager explained that all soft drinks and beer from the tap were complimentary during our stay and that meals would be served using ingredients fresh from the gardens three times a day (apart from a couple of exceptions when he said there were some great places nearby that he could suggest that we tried).  Exhausted after our ten minute transfer, we decided to head down to the beautiful swimming pool to relax and soak up the sun. Within minutes, freshly squeezed orange and lemon juice was brought down to us, along with ice cold water with slices of lemon and we were instructed to relax and take it easy...we wondered whether it was possible for the holiday to get any more perfect.

But it turns out that yes, it could.....the FOOD!  As we lounged by the pool we were delivered a litte scroll tied up with rafia from the chef invinting us to a barbecue that evening. We can safely say it was the best barbecue we've ever been to.

Tables laid with starched, white tablecloths are set out in the courtyard which was lit by strings of fairy lights and candles. We were served up refreshing mojitos (which turned out to be as deadly as they were delicious) and then the food was brought out.  Plates of steak, lamb, burgers and chicken cooked in the most incredible marinades. This carnivorous feast was accompanied by a table heaving with amazing bowls of fresh homemade dips, salads, tomaotes and mozzarella, roasted vegetables, cous cous...the choice was endless and each dish was even more delicious than the last.

For the next four days we did little more that eat, snooze, sunbathe and eat a bit more.  Breakfasts were to die for (to the point where I would wake Melissa and Natalie up extra early so that we could start our day of eating) homeade granola, yoghurt and honey, fresh tomato with olive oil, creamy chunks of avocado, homemade bread, scrambled egg from the chickens on the farm next door and bowls of juicy fresh fruit.  Lunch would consist of homemade gazpacho like we'd never tasted, followed by a salad (different everyday - from fresh fig and serrano ham to feta, tomato and grilled aubergine).  One afternoon, a woman from Vejer came in to cook her family-recipe Paella (rumour has it she shouted at the hotel kitchen staff and insisted on cooking alone) which was the most scrumptious Paella we've ever had.  We literally scraped our plates clean.

Every lunchtime a blackboard would be brought out with the evening menu chalked onto it and we were asked to decide whether we wanted to reserve a table or not - for us it was ALWAYS a 'yes'!  On one of the nights that we were there, the hotel restaurant was closed (from memory I think it is closed twice a week) but the hotel recommended a restaurant that we had read great reviews about, Restaurante Patria.  The restaurant offers a free taxi service from the hotel and is around ten minutes away up in the hills.  Dinner was delicious and we were even given blankets when we got a bit cold after the sun went down.  

After one night staying in the hotel we were moved into the hotel's Casita (it was occupied for our first night but moving rooms was no bother at all, our bags were moved for us and placed in our new home all while we were soaking up the sun and drinking Cruzcampo by the pool). The Caista is a private villa attached the hotel.  It has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room and a private garden complete with a pool, dining area and verandah with big comfy sofas. Beautifully decorated with just as much attention to detail (even more if possible as this was where the family lived when they first opened the hotel) and a true hideaway for complete luxury and relaxation.

We could still enjoy all the luxuries of the hotel - those incredible meals, the free pool bar and anything that the staff could do to help was still no problem. One of our favourite afternoons was spent by our private pool, relaxing together drinking Casa La Siesta's amazing Sangria, chatting and reading stacks of magazines....Bliss!

Vejer truly is a little corner of heaven and both Escondrijo and Casa La Siesta are the perfect places to enjoy it.  It was one of the best and most special holidays that we've ever been on and we're already dreaming of going back and especially of the food...

Escondrijo

Callejón Oscuro, 3

Vejer de la Frontera
11150 - Cádiz

+34 956447438
http://www.escondrijo.com/

Casa La Siesta

Los Parralejos

Vejer de la Frontera

11150

+ 00 34 956 232 003

http://www.casalasiesta.com/en/casa.html