An afternoon at Trentham Gardens

Trentham Gardens is one of those places we always go when  family or other visitors are up. I remember going about fifteen years ago when we were showing our dogs. It was a few old buildings next to a big statue and a lake. Now it is a huge estate comprising of the Monkey Forest, massive garden centre, shopping village and the statue and lakes which are now situated in the Italian landscaped gardens. You may have heard of the monkey forest as it is a very popular attraction in this area.

My mum, sister and I went up last week for a little browse and lunch. The garden centre is maaaasive and actually has a lot of lovely 'stuff' and a couple of cafes and restaurants. The little shopping village is cute and has lovely shops like a farm shop, a flavoured liquor shop and toiletry shops. This visit we had fun in one of the shops trying on wedding hats and facinators for my brother's wedding next year!

We ate lunch in this vintage/Cath Kidston-esque cafe. They had such awesome displays on dressers. I took a few sneaky pictures to show you.

Isn't that cafe cute?

I wore this spotted dress from DP, denim jacket and my awesome jelly shoes which my sister despises. Apparently they should remain firmly in ones childhood but I disagree. I think they are useful for the beach, are really comfortable and this clear colour I have goes with anything.

Anyone else own a pair of jelly shoes?

Hope you enjoyed looking at those pictures of our afternoon out, now if I could just ask you an unrelated question? I normally use Picmonkey but it's not working for me at the moment so I have used Image Optimizer to compress these images, however the quality has been compromised. What do you all use to make your picture size smaller?