Willow's Shake Shop

We had lunch out today at Abingdon's newest cafe -- Willow's Shake Shop. We've been meaning to go here for a while, but haven't had a free Saturday until now.

Anyway, it was worth the wait. This is a lovely little place -- not only is it a cafe; it also sells vintage and shabby chic furniture and ornaments.

As the name suggests, Willow's serves milkshakes (and smoothies) in a whole array of flavours. Our daughters chose the Crunchie and the Reese's peanut butter flavours, which were both delicious. We also had panini, a scone, and a toasted tea cake, all of which were very tasty and clearly homemade.

This is a very pleasant environment in which to sit. It is beautifully decorated with lots of pretty things and pieces of furniture -- the vintage items that are for sale, in fact! There were several things that caught our eye and in the end we decided to buy a little framed picture that had been made by one of the owners of the cafe.

We will definitely be back. Lovely food, a beautiful shop and very competitive pricing, too -- we would highly recommend Willow's Shake Shop!

Back to reality...

We went back to work after the Christmas break last week, but this week it is definitely back to reality, with the kids back at school, my oldest sitting her mock GCSEs, and my husband preparing for a business trip to Australia.

I've therefore been reflecting on the some of the lovely things that we did over the holidays:

• spending new year's eve watching the Creation Theatre's production of "A Christmas Carol" (great fun!) followed by dinner at our local Wildwood Restaurant (very tasty!)
• having a lovely, family evening out at the cinema seeing "Pitch Perfect 3" (just as funny as the first two!)
• meeting friends for a walk up Boar's Hill followed by afternoon tea (great company and delicious homemade Christmas cake)
• enjoying lots of family time watching films, playing Scrabble and eating German Christmas biscuits.

We've also got some lovely things to look forward to. We've just booked our family summer holiday (11 nights in Montenegro, which looks beautiful), we'll be watching our oldest daughter playing Juliet in the school production of "Romeo and Juliet", we're booked in to see the play "Blood Brothers" in February, and much more.

That should be enough to get us through this dull and cold January!