A Royal Friday

 

While The Queen is spending her summer at Balmoral Castle in Scotland, Buckingham Palace is opened up for us commoners to visit. My friend, Carolyn, her sweet baby Easton and I spent the day there yesterday. If you find yourself in London during August and September while The Queen is away, Buckingham Palace is not to miss!

I do believe I took a few too many selfies but that is only because there were people everywhere. The selfie was best for not having hoards of tourists in my photos.

We were able to see The Queen's Gallery and the Royal Mews but certainly the best part was the State Rooms at Buckingham Palace. Audio tours are available for all of the areas so you can spend as little or as much time learning about everything at the palace.

The Queens Gallery was opened by The Queen as a part of her Golden Jubilee Celebrations in 2002. It hosts exhibitions from the Royal Collection and they are always changing. The exhibit there now is a look at horticultural art from the last 400 years.

 There was a lot of beautiful art and then some family fun so we had to have some!

The Royal Mews houses the royal collection of historic carriages and coaches that the Royal Family have traveled in throughout the years. It is also a working stable responsible for training and housing the horses that pull the royal carriages.

 

Each of the stalls has a name plate with the year the horse was born. The horses were beautiful and so very regal themselves. Meet Meg.

The inside of the palace was I N C R E D I B L E. Incredible. Completely more beautiful and magnificent than I imagined it to be. Sadly photos are not allowed inside the palace so you'll have to make a visit yourself.

After the tour we had a little snack at the Garden Cafe just before we headed back to pick up the kids from school. It was such a fun day!

One of the fun things the Royal Collection Trust does is when you visit one of their sites, you can get the back of your ticket stamped which gives you 12 months' complimentary re-admission to the site(s) you have visited. Excited to return next year for free.

Sadly, this is as close as I'll probably ever get to The Queen and her dogs. Although I am holding out hope to someday run into Prince George with M.

This week I've made it official and I now have a page on the Golden Drop Society website. I'm super excited to have a place to guide people to who want to get started using essential oils and/or creating a chemical-free home.

I've been feeling really excited about this next journey as I've begun to share more about how I use my oils on Instagram (@essentiallykelley). If you are interested in learning more about essential oils and the Young Living products, I'd love to help you get started! The Golden Drop Society has an incredible amount to offer anyone who joins the community. Let me know if you'd like more information below or you can email me at kelleyisinger@gmail.com.

 

We had a knock on the door last week and it was a new delivery service for flowers. Freddie's Flowers is a new company that has jumped into the delivery market as delivery is the thing to do here in London. The delivery this week was quite wild and not something I'd normally pick out but they are lovely and still thriving since delivery on Tuesday. I love fresh flowers and supporting small businesses, so I'm excited to see the different deliveries each week!

Davis and I are coming up on a big decision as we got M's first school acceptance letter yesterday. We have her on a handful of lists for pre-prep schools to begin Reception (the equivalent of Kindergarten in the states, but a year earlier) next fall when she's almost four and a half. There are really two schools that we love and the letter came from one of them. We are going for a visit tomorrow at the other school as they are having an "Open Day" for prospective families. The trouble is all of the schools send out their acceptance letters at different times, making it a bit tricky. Hoping to chat tomorrow with the admissions lady to let her know M's been accepted to one of our top schools and we have a month to decide. Hope to see if I get any clues as to whether or not we will be getting a letter from them too as they don't send theirs out for a few more months.

The trouble with the decision is that they are in completely different parts of London so committing to a school means committing to the neighborhood we'd like to move to next summer to finish our last year here in London unless we are able to stay past our official three year visa. Of course, Davis and I want to stay in London a bit longer as we are just coming up on being finished with half of our stay. It's gone too fast and we don't think we will be ready to leave when our visa is up. And we do have so much more traveling to do!

This week my friend Erin and I went to the Kensignton Mums pamper event and had our hair, nails, and makeup done while our girls were at nursery at Salon Valentino in Kensington. It was such a fun morning! At the salon they sold Jane Iredale make-up and I knew of her products from the states as her make-up is actually good for your skin and rated very well on www.ewg.org. I bought this eyebrow kit that helps give my brows just a bit more um-pf. The mascara was a free gift and I am loving it too! I'd love to grab some more Jane Iredale make-up as I run out of things as it's great stuff!

Happy weekend! We've got a busy one ahead including date night!

Brought to you by the lovely ladies behind: The Good Life, A. Liz Adventures, Carolina Charm & Hello! Happiness.

Also linking up today with The Farmer's Wife and September Farm.