Category Archives: Brighton

Street Art in Brighton, England

streetart_brighton-england

One of my most favourite things about being in Brighton, England was being able to finally say I had seen a Banksy street art piece in person. There are a few in Brighton and the city boasts many interesting pieces that will continue to change through out the year.  Here are some of my favourites from Brighton as captured by my iPhone with the Hipstamatic app.    Continue reading

Travel: Brighton, England

The sun has been out more this year then the whole summer last year in England. Regardless to say we are all feeling a bit spoiled and I make any excuse to go outside.  I had the opportunity to take a stroll around the town of Bath today near the Royal Crescent.   It really is so beautiful and I enjoyed playing tourist for a bit.  Experiencing this part of Bath for the first time reminded me about when we first moved to Brighton from the USA.  We were caught between being tourists and starting the expat life.  Everything was new and we enjoyed photographing all the local landmarks, like the Royal Pavilion  and details of beauty.  Here are some of my favourites from our first couple weeks in Brighton, England. There is the abandoned pier, the Royal Pavilion and its gardens. Also a lovely cat that I found in the neigbhourhood who was kind enough to let me photograph him for posterity   

I want to go to Brighton!” – Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
This month I am reading Sense and Sensibility for the #JaneAustenBookClub
Search the hash tag on twitter for more information! 

Q: Have you been to Brighton, England yet? What were your favourite places to see or go to for food?

Pancake Day 2013

Pancake Day.  Could there be another day sweeter? Valentines Day is in two days time, but for now lets focus on the circular sweet goodness on my plate this morning.  Did I mention it was shaped like hearts?

Homemade Beet Pancakes are a perfect (all natural) colour option for Valentines Day. 
Traditional English Pancake with butter, sugar, and lemon served at Ella’s Yummy Delights in Brighton, England.
Homemade zucchini pancakes are a huge hit with my boys.  Here they are embellished with Nutella and fresh strawberries.
Heart shaped pancakes I made this morning with a sprinkling of a stevia & cinnamon mixture.

 Pancake Recipe:
140g flour
200ml whole milk
2 eggs
Unsalted butter for greasing

Directions:
1. Start by sifting the flour into a medium sized bowl with a pinch of salt. Make a well in the center.  
2. In a separate bowl beat together two eggs, add the milk, and mix again.
3. Slowly pour the liquid into the well you created as you mix in the flour.  Do not over mix, just stir it all until all combined.
4. Melt the butter in a pan on medium heat. Once you hear the butter sizzling you can add the pancake mixture.  To make the hearts below use a spoon to pour the mixture slowly into a heart outline.  Then spoon some more pancake batter into the middle of the outline to fill in your heart.
5. Air bubbles will form when the pancake is ready to be flipped. If you have your heat on too high you will notice that when you flip your pancake it will be over cooked. Flip the pancake over with a spatula.  Once cooked on both sides place on the plate and repeat.

Extras:  If you would like to try out some of our veggie pancakes above (or just want to sneak in some extra nutrients for your family) you can add ingredients to the batter before you pour it on the pan.  For our Beets and Zucchini pancakes the vegetables are washed and then graded finely with a cheese grader or mandolin. We used two cups of beets to make pancakes for a family of four.  A little butter sometimes is all we need to top the veggie pancakes because they are so tasty!
http://www.ellasyummydelights.co.uk/
51 Queens RoadBrightonEngland.

If you are in the Brighton area, I highly suggest stopping at Ella’s Yummy Delights. We enjoyed having our Pancake Day there last year and the service was lovely.  With their location near the Brighton rail station, it is a perfect first or last stop while you are in town. Thank you Ella’s for the delicious food!


*Photographs property of Bonnie Rose Photography © 2013
** Photograph of Ella’s Yummy Delights borrowed from their facebook page.

Travel Thursday: Moving Abroad

Travel Thursday.  I love to travel.  I also love to move. By ‘move’, I do not mean down the street or across town.  I love moving to another country and better yet another continent.  It is the norm for me and this nomadic lifestyle has been a major part of my life since I was born in England to my American parents.  With the weekend right around the corner, I find Thursdays are the perfect day to start talking ‘travel’. I hope to share to you all my love and passion for being a Wanderlust Third Culture Kid.

“Honestly I feel more at home in an airport and on airplane.” – Bonnie Rose

My Childhood. I grew up on military bases up and down Europe until I was seventeen years old. Unfortunately that meant I would spend my senior year graduating in the USA as well as adopting to the (new to me) USA culture.  Every cloud has a silver lining and for me it was getting to spend the summer after graduation in Italy to see my classmates get their diplomas.  For the next decade I would spend my life living through out the mainland USA and on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.  My  nomadic needs were catered to with time spent in Australia, Thailand, and Cambodia between the years of 2002 and 2011.  Though I carry an American passport and have an American accent, my goal had always been to use my UK passport and return ‘home’ to Europe.

My friends and I at the Naples American high school graduation – 2011 in Naples, Italy

Moving Abroad.  Since Ryan and and I started dating 11 years ago, he has been aware that I would want to live in Europe.  Straight out of University we went ahead to achieve that goal through following a path to be missionaries.  When that door closed the door to the USAF opened and through it the next six years.  While my husband worked as a linguist our dream of being stationed in Europe was not in the military’s goals for us.  I will say that the 3ish years in Hawaii living an island wife was not half bad. 😉  In the Summer of 2011 with my husband fresh out of the military, we took the leap and moved to England.

If you have a goal to move to another country, make it a goal and do it! Take your dreams and your wishes and pair it with action.  I have talked to a lot of people since the summer of 2011 about why we made such a big move.  In response back I have heard frequently the statements of ‘oh I wish I could do that’ or ‘wow, I couldn’t imagine just moving to another country like that’.   I will be straight with you. Moving abroad will not be easy, but if you want to do it then figure out a way so it does not become a future regret. I love the mantra that ‘Life is Short, Live every Moment’.

This was our last photograph taken with our sons before we left.  They would join us once we were settled.
This was the last photograph taken of us together before our plane left for England. 

How We Did It. Moving abroad is not an easy feat. While I thought we were both prepared for our move we did learn a lot along the way.  We chose to move to England without either of us having a job lined up, nor a place to stay.  That is not the whole story, so please do not go by that strategy to move abroad.  You definitely need to do your research and figure out how you can get a visa.  A simple tourist visa will not allow you to live and work inside a country and every place has its own rules.  Know the restrictions and what you will need before you hop on a plane.  The easiest way to move to another country would be with a job that you already have, that will send you to work there.  While we tried that with the military, this way did not pan out for us.

Another way to get a visa to live and work is to look at getting a student Visa and attending school.  My husband decided to use his GI Bill from the USAF and get his masters in England.  We moved abroad with my husband accepted to University of Sussex in Brighton, England and I was traveling under my British passport.  OOPS! That is right, we made mistakes along the way. So in a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ fashion, I will repeat that you know the guidelines for acquiring the correct Visa.  You will want to confirm with several sources or you will end up like we did.  Though we read online that Ryan could apply for his student visa in the country, that ended up being a misprint of bad information on the website.  My husband had to leave the country, apply for his visa in the USA, pay to have it expedited  and then return to join me.  The paperwork and dealing with people can end up in costly mistakes if you are not careful.

At Heathrow airport my husband looks for wifi as we wait for our train.


Navigating our way to Victoria Station with the Underground.

First Arriving into England
Though we did not have any personal contacts in Brighton, we did plan out our journey down to Brighton and reserve a place at a hostel.  We did not know at this point how long it would take to find jobs, so living in a hotel would be far out of our means.  Hostels however are perfect if you are traveling sans kids and was one of the reasons we chose to leave our kids with family while we figure everything out. Staying in a hostel for us was smart. However traveling with the amount of luggage we brought proved to be a bit challenging and did result in a little heart ache.  Anything I knew we needed needed to be in our suitcases I packed.  On vacations we pack like pros, but moving to another country changes the game plan a bit.  If you do come to Europe, know that there may not be lifts (elevators) like there are back in the USA.  We had to take several trips many times up and down different flights of stairs across the train stations all the way to Brighton.  Which was not as terrible, as it was that I broke my camera lens trying to shuffle bags.

Another tip of advice.  There will be plenty of time for photos.  When maneuvering your luggage, keep your camera where it will be safe. 😉 

I was so excited to be home in Europe after so many years.
Everyone we met was so polite and helpful and we were smiling the whole way to Brighton. 

Outside the Brighton rail station on the coast of England.  

Ryan eventually got his marriage visa, went to school, and worked part time. I began work for the next year at a salon and our kids joined us in September to start the school year in England.  After all was said and done I am so glad that we decided to just do it.  Our family has only come closer together living here and being married to my expat in England is everything for which I had hoped.  We have since moved to Bath, as of the end of December 2012 and we currently have no further plans of moving.

Where would you move to if you could go anywhere in the world?  Have you or do you currently live abroad from your ‘home’ country?  I love to meet other expats and future expats! 



* Photographs belong to Bonnie Rose and cannot be used without written consent.

Food Shopping in the UK made Simple

I would like to take you back a few years to when I was living in Hawaii, USA courtesy of the United States Air Force.  When it came to eating and food Ryan and I found ourselves in the melting pot of asian cruisine from the Phillipines, Vietnam, Thailand, and China (to name a few). Our eldest was 2 and our youngest was born in Hawaii and they grew up there asking to eat sushi, pho, fish, and shrimp for meals.  It was not the typical food from mainland USA but it became the norm for my family.  If we were not eating out we were buying our groceries from the commissary on base.  Usually twice a month we would go and fill up our shopping cart till it could hold no more just like the other military families.   If you were not careful shopping at the commissary could be like a mother on her own shopping at Target.  You leave with a cart full of items and many of which were not on your original shopping list.

Let us fast forward to my husband and I moving to England.

After we had graduated from living in a hostel and eating homemade sandwiches, we found a room to rent and could start buying groceries to cook real meals.  However we walk or take public transport everywhere. The ‘american style’  of shopping is not going to work here. The nearest grocery store was far off and we would have to be smart about which items we chose because they would have to be carried all the way back home.

When we moved out of Brighton to the town of Haywards Heath we were now a short five minute walk from our town’s grocery store.  It now became normal to go to the store every day or every other day for one or two items.  It was on the way home from work and accessible.  We do not have a car to take home bags and bags of groceries.  We get what we really need and we carry it home.

I look back on shopping in the USA now and I cannot imagine doing that here in England.  Our fridge contains what we need for the week and we possibly fill up one small cabinet space with items such as teas, oils, spices, baking items, rice and porridge oats. The pantry we have has items like sweet potatoes and onions, extra toilet paper roll and unused kitchen appliances like a microwave we now never use.  Its about simplicity. There must be a need and an immediate use.

 So we do not have a pantry full of unused boxed and canned items full of sugar, salt, and preservatives   We may have to get creative if a zombie apocalypse happens. 😉

Luckily for us there are no zombies. However we did get creative and resourceful.  This week was our second time of having groceries delivered to the door.  Ryan spends a few minutes on his phone ticking off items we need while seeing what specials are on offer.  Then the items come at a scheduled time in colour coordinated bags to tell me where they need to be put away.

I feel spoiled.

To think of walking with the kids to the bus station, to wait for a bus, to get to the store where I have to find what I need while being swarmed by many other shoppers, only to have to wait in line and then carry everything home is just exhausting having to type in this blog. Plus have I mentioned we got our organic veg box?  I am in heaven.

* Photographs belong to Bonnie Rose and cannot be used without written consent.

Friends and Fun in Brighton


‘Best friend’ @evanofthemount
#masseffect #maycreative #photoadaychallenge
 http://instagr.am/p/KtaP8UokzO/

Sign in the loft at the Vodka Revolution club. http://instagr.am/p/KvnnfrIk3L/ 
At the NSC Summer Ball in Brighton http://instagr.am/p/KvPpq_ok7h

‘Snack': a shot glass of seeds, nuts, and dried berries. #photoadaymay #photoadaychallenge http://instagr.am/p/KwgZ-Jok0F/

Feels like Cinderella. Must get back before midnight or my boys turn into gremlins…wait wrong film reference.

The white wine smells like ferrets.
  • Listening to IR students debate while I eat dessert and drink wine. Feel more at home with all these Europeans than I have with the Brits.
Ran in the rain in my heels to catch train to Brighton. Shout out to ‘my friends’ at the car wash for your sentiments on my appearance. 😉

The Sun comes out and we flock to the Beach.

The Sun came out today and so everyone flocked to the beach at Brighton.  After picking up the boys from school we decided to meet up with Ryan’s friends. But by the time we got to Brighton the sun hid behind the clouds and the temperature dropped again.  Ryan’s friends had become reclusive to their apartment and we had the beach to ourselves.  As the light started to go down we decided to seek warmth at the pub for dinner.  But not before we got some new family photos on the shores of Brighton Beach.

“Stelllllllllllaaaaaa!” The pebbles at Brighton beach make great can holders. 
Posing with my partner Ryan on the rocks at Brighton Beach. 
Seagulls flying around the coast. 
My little family. 

Kisses at the beach.  
Found a heart at Brighton Beach. 
DIY Bottle candle holder at the pub. 
My little Mr. Fashionista 

‎”Why is Mummy laughing?” asked my eldest son. “That’s her nervous laugh. She does that when I make fun of her,” my husband replied.