The way is long but you can make it easy on me

I have a real habit of waffling on about pretty homeware that I've bought for my room on a pretty regular basis. I have a serious addiction to fitting as much of my personality into my room as possible. Somebody send me to interioraholics anonymous, pronto. As much as the idea of becoming a real-life proper grown up with my own scares me, there's a little part of me that's a bit too excited to one day have an entire house that I can decorate and put my own stamp on. But for now, fitting as much pretty stuff into my bedroom as humanly possible is enough to satisfy my cravings for cushions, frames and decorations.

My absolute favourite part of my room is my big display of photo frames. I'm so glad I'm not moving out of my house this year as filling all of the holes in the wall and reassembling everything on a new wall is no easy task. I've done it once before, not sure I'm quite ready to have to do it again anytime soon! Especially not after this weekend when I got my DIY on and knocked a few more nails into the walls for my new frames.

My old Uni buddies bought me this Leeds University print for my birthday. Its absolutely perfect as I've got plenty of Liverpool related pictures, but nothing to celebrate the other city I love. Who wouldn't want to wake up and be reminded of their Uni days every morning? Plus, it fits right in with the colour scheme I've got going on. My friends are awesome.

I got another beauty to put on my wall this week too, this time a little treat from Dotcomgiftshop who kindly offered to feed my homeware addiction and send me something from their beautiful collection. This couldn't have arrived at a better time as I'd taken advantage of a free prints offer from Boots and printed a bumper bundle of (largely drunken) photos of my more recent adventures but was struggling to find somewhere to display them.

I'm really going to try and call it a day with this big collection for now as I'm fast running out of wall space, but I can already feel a little part of me itching to buy some more little frames to fill the spaces in. SOMEBODY SEND HELP!

The Mother We Share- Chvrches

Every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure

You know when you find an item of clothing that you love so much that you feel the need to wash it as soon as you take it off so you're not waiting for ages to be able to wear it again? That's exactly what's happened with this t-shirt. I spotted it when I was last in Liverpool but for some reason didn't pick it up and hand over my pennies for it. I instantly regretted it when I'd got back to Leeds and knew my life would just be a little more complete if I could hang that top up in my wardrobe. Luckily, Mama T came to the rescue and popped into Pull and Bear for me the next time she went shopping. What a star that woman is. 

I think the nerdy little 15 year old inside me compelled me to buy this top. My friends and I were pretty obsessed with Armageddon back in the day (and I still love it now for that matter, I'm getting a bit choked up thinking about Harry staying on the asteroid as I write this...) and so the whole NASA thing started calling to me as soon as I spotted it in the shop. I don't own very many t-shirts, but the ones I do have seem to all come from Pull and Bear. Big thumbs up to them for keeping my casual wardrobe afloat.

t-shirt: Pull and Bear, jeans: Topshop, boots: Oasis, socks: Topshop

Don't Wanna Miss a Thing- Aerosmith

(Couldn't resist using this song, I got it in my head as soon as I started thinking about Armageddon...)

And if I recover, will you be my comfort?

During that brief, unexpected period of sunshine we had last week, I had a sudden burst of motivation to start looking at summer clothes online. Sadly, the sun disappeared before I'd had a chance to actually buy anything but even so I've carried on having a nosy at the holiday collections in the shops as for once I can actually guarantee that I'll see at least a little blue sky and sunshine this year when I go to Corfu with two of my friends. I haven't been on a proper non-festival based holiday (festivals definitely don't count as a 'holiday' anyway as I always feel like I need a week to fully recover afterwards!) in a few years now so I'm extra excited for this one. I've never been to Corfu before, so if anyone has any recommendations on things to see or do there then hit me up! So far, my only requirement for the trip is to go to a water park because I appear to have similar interests to a 12 year old when it comes to keeping me entertained.

Since I've not been on a proper holiday for a while, I'm fairly certain it means I'm entitled to some new summer clothes. When I'm just staying in England I never really see the point in actually splashing out on real holiday clothes as there's such a brief window where you can wear them, especially when that window inevitably seems to happen when I'm stuck at work, melting at my desk. As much as I want to fill my suitcase with pretty new clothes, I don't want to spend much money as by the time August rolls around I'll be on the cusp of becoming a poor PGCE student living off my student loan (gahhh, those two words make me feel a bit ill whenever they creep up on me). Luckily, Primark and New Look are looking as though they'll save me as there's loads of cheap and cheerful gems in their holiday collections. Perfect. 

Here's a little selection of some of the stuff I've got my eyes on for all you nosy people out there.

1. playsuit 2. crop top 3. giraffe print bikini 4. sunglasses 5. floral dress 6. tan sandals 7. chino shorts 8. black and white playsuit 9. polka dot bikini 10. black sandals

Recover- Chvrches

Wisdom's a gift but you'd trade it for youth

Mama and Papa T came to Leeds for a little visit this weekend in honour of my new found oldness. As per, we didn't actually spend much time in Leeds at all, instead using their trip as an excuse to get out and explore the beautiful places in Yorkshire that I don't normally get to visit due to my lack of a four wheeled vehicle to call my own.

This time, we took a trip over to the other side of West Yorkshire to Haworth. I've been to Haworth once before and thought it'd be the perfect parent friendly sort of place to visit. Lots of steam trains to keep my Dad amused, a lovely, quaint village feel to keep my Mum happy, and an abundance of cafes to keep us all happy (we do have a tendency to pick our days out based upon whether we'll be able to get a good slice of cake out of it...). 

Haworth gets a lot of visitors for two main reasons, firstly its where the Bronte sisters lived so there's lots of literary heritage to geek out on, and secondly the railway line has a lot of Railway Children links as the film was based around Haworth and Oakworth stations. My Dad tried to get me to recreate that scene from the film where the eldest daughter sees her father appear through the steam on the platform and shouts "MY DADDY" when a train arrived on the platform at Oakworth. Funnily enough I decided against it given that there were three carriages full of train enthusiasts sat poised with their cameras facing the platform we were stood on. 

Other than that little trip out of the city, I've mostly spent this weekend watching Breaking Bad. I signed up to Netflix the other day but must have missed the warning that I was signing my life away in the process. Its a good job my parents came over or else I probably wouldn't have moved away from my laptop screen all weekend!

Step- Vampire Weekend

One thing's for sure, we're all getting older

Yesterday, I had the slightly unfortunate job of turning 24. I'm still struggling to comprehend why I'm not 17 anymore, but managed to stop myself from dwelling on this too much by spending a weekend with lots of my most favourite people, eating lots of food, drinking lots of wine and dancing like a loony (there really is no better way to spend a birthday weekend as far as I'm concerned!). 

On Saturday, we went to The Pit in Leeds for food- its one of my failsafe options in town for food, especially as it has a great atmosphere (and Rekorderlig cider on tap). Part of the reason we went there was so we could have a cheeky game of ping pong too. Sadly that didn't actually happen... it was definitely something we should have considered doing before ordering a table full of burgers, pulled pork and onion rings as we could barely drag ourselves out of our chairs; we might have been a tad optimistic thinking we'd be able to run around after a ping pong ball afterwards.

In the evening, my friends came over to my house and my lovely friend Charlie had put on an absolutely incredible spread of afternoon tea style cakes for the party. What a star! I'm really gutted I didn't manage to get a picture of it all, I was just too excited to start eating it all! Plus, my housemate Kathryn made a really yummy cocktail in a teapot to accompany it all! That may have been partially to blame for the hilarious dancing that ensued later in the night!

My actual birthday was a far quieter affair (there may have been a few hangovers in the building...) but it involved lots of food, eating lots of cake at Iron Cupcake (conveniently held on my birthday!) and admiring my looovely birthday presents. My friends are such a lovely bunch and gave me some lovely treats, they all know how much I love decorating my bedroom and so I was really excited to open lots of homey gifts (as well as some other awesome presents which will no doubt feature in future posts!). Here's a little selection to satisfy all of you nosy people out there :)

Pelican: The Maccabees

Whenever you want it, wherever you want it

Well, that was a fun weekend. Its been pretty non-stop but not being the sort of person who likes to sit in one place for too long, it suited me just fine! 

I had a jolly little time drinking cocktails on Friday night and then fell asleep on the sofa watching 500 Days of Summer (even though I've seen it about 782000 times, I'm still gutted that I slept through the end!). 

On Saturday I went into town with one of my buddies to book a holiday for us and one of our other friends... I think the travel agent was almost at breaking point when she asked us where we wanted to go and what we wanted to get out of our holiday as our answer was "Ummm.... the sun?". Eventually though, she did manage to establish that we didn't want to go anywhere that would likely feature on Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents and so we've booked to go to Corfu in August. Its my first proper holiday in a few years so I'm massively excited already. 

Saturday night was spent celebrating my housemate's birthday with lots of lovely people, then Sunday was largely built around a lazy day and a ginormous plate of cheesy chips and beans before I headed out again to see Bombay Bicycle Club play at the O2 Academy in Leeds. I've seen Bombay Bicycle Club a few times over the years (one particularly memorable show was at Leeds Festival in 2012, when Bombay somehow inadvertently became the band that had the most topless girls on people's shoulders in the crowd... surreal doesn't even cover it) and they're one of my absolute faves to see live. They manage to move seamlessly between super-chilled out songs and crazy guitars in others and bloomin' hell it works. The new stuff sounds great and the old favourites were still as awesome to hear as ever. Some bands I'll just never tire of watching, and Bombay Bicycle Club are definitely one of those. Absolute perfect way to round off the weekend. 

Roll on next weekend, its my birthday on the 9th so I've got plenty of birthday activities planned... hopefully it'll be even better than this weekend was! 

Hope you've all had a good one :)

Whenever, Wherever- Bombay Bicycle Club