First cast member: My husband Samuel

If I'm going to tell the story of my life and loves I thought it would be most fitting to introduce you to the starring cast of my life. Firstly, my husband Samuel. Samuel and I got together in 2005 and true to my new blogger style we met online. I wasn't a teenager who had decided to already give up on love and resort to online dating but rather a mutual friend of ours whom I met at uni decided to add Samuel's hotmail address to my MSN, and so our techy chats began.

I fell for Samuel straight away; he wasn't very cool about things, was honest about his feelings (I loved this about him straight away) and told pretty bad jokes, but I liked him anyway. He was actually interested in what I had to say and explained how he loved romance. We came to realise later that both of us would go online every night to see if the other was on. However, I was so convinced that someone so lovely, empathetic, kind and single had to have something wrong with him. And he lived in Yorkshire. Lucky for me there wasn't and he was and is gorgeous!

We carried on chatting for a few weeks, when he informed me that along with our mutual friend and one other, he would be coming down to London for a weekend. I don't know why but I just felt like offering them a place to stay. I felt I knew Samuel pretty well at this point and of course I already knew our mutual friend. They arrived on the Friday night and we got ready and headed for a night out together. Samuel and I danced together all night and I was trying to give him some signals but he just didn't seem to register them. Either that or he didn't like me! Anyway, we returned home to our flat in the early hours of Saturday morning and went to bed. Samuel slept on the living room floor and when I came in to check on them, I noticed a nice pile of drool collecting on my new cushion. I woke him up and told him he couldn't continue to drool on my cushion as it would be ruined. Some women might have found this an immediate turn off but I still found myself falling for Samuel. To cut a long story short, Samuel and I shared our first kiss that weekend and he asked if he could come down and visit me the following weekend. As I mentioned earlier, Samuel didn't really play it cool, but this is what I loved about him and so I jumped at the chance to spend another weekend with him. From there on in Samuel came down from Leeds every Friday for 2 years before he moved in 2007, the rest is history. We were married on July 25, 2009 after 4 years together. This truly was the most amazing day of my life but more about this later.

Samuel is so many things but here are a few random facts about him:

1. In the very early stages of our relationship, I had a very sensitive stomach and a few food intolerances which, lets just say led to some windy issues. On many occasions we would be fast asleep when I would suddenly have a very loud and windy outburst which would be so powerful that it would wake us from our slumber. Now as you can imagine I was mortified. We had not yet reached the 'farting in front of each other stage' in our relationship (although this did arrive shortly after and persists mercilessly to this day). These incidents continued to happen so often that I contemplated sleeping in the living room. But Samuel being the lovely gentleman he is pretended he never heard it and never mentioned it.....for a while and luckily he continued to fancy me. I knew then I had a keeper.

2. Samuel has known for a long time how much I love photography and how much I want to become a photographer, but neither of us could afford a camera. I never thought in a million years that he would be able to buy me an SLR but he did. He skinted himself for months just so he could give me my dream present this past Christmas. Samuel's hobby is triathlon and I know there are plenty of things he wanted to buy for himself, but instead he fulfilled my dream. It meant so much to me and he has given me a chance to start my hobby.

Here is my new baby, the Nikon D90.

3. Samuel LOVES my cooking, he thinks I'm his own personal Nigella Lawson and he can't get enough of my food. I may not be a super chef but as long as he loves my cooking I'm happy and that's why I labour in the kitchen (with is help) every night. Samuel and I love food and we love cooking so every night we cook a meal together from scratch and it's my favourite part of the day. We plan our meal the night before and Samuel will pick things up on the way home from work. After every meal Samuel always kisses me and says "that was delicious my love" in his broad Yorkshire accent and I feel lucky.

As this blog is also about photography here is Samuel, my gorgeous husband. This is one of the first pictures I took with my new SLR during our xmas holidays (the blog seems to have reduced the quality).

I could go on forever about Samuel as he is my life but I'll save that for later. In keeping with our love of food here is a delightful recipe for homemade Toffee sauce courtesy of Rachel Allen. I use this for so many things as it's so versatile. If you aren't particulary skillful at desserts or can't be bothered then just boil this up and pour it hot it over some shop bought ice cream. The best part about making it is the fact that you don't have to do anything and can just hover over the saucepan dunking and then licking a plastic spatula; I just pretend that because it's not solid it has no calories. Here is the link to the recipe:

Yummy Toffee Sauce

http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/607366

Thanks for reading more to come soon. Feel free to post any comments.

xxx