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

Come now sing with me, Proper Crimbo!

My housemates and I had our Christmas dinner together at the end of last week. We decided to be incredibly lazy and go out for food rather than make it ourselves as there wasn't a time during a weekend when we'd all be here together during December and quite frankly I'm not sure who can be bothered to cook a roast with all the trimmings after a long day at work! Instead, we ended up in Wetherspoons, and considering I only spent just over a tenner I managed to stuff myself full with two courses plus a big glass of wine! The perfect arrangement really! 

We decided that house Christmas would be the perfect opportunity to swap our Secret Santa presents (although if you've ever managed to keep Secret Santa a secret when there's only three people involved you clearly haven't thought hard enough about the logic behind it!). Our limit was only £5, and I had loads of ideas for presents, but very few ideas that wouldn't break the budget. I ended up having a crafty brainwave and nipped to Leeds Markets for some pretty fabric to set me on my way with making some pictures for my friend's wall. I thought I'd share my idea with you as its incredibly simple and a great way to give somebody a pretty little personalised present without too much trouble! 

To make some similar wall art then all you need to do is follow these few instructions and you'll have a present sorted in no time!

You will need:
Two patterns of fabric (I bought 1/2 a metre of each but you actually only need about 1/4m really!)
Two canvases (I used these mega cheap canvases from Wilkinson's because I knew I could cover up the picture!)
Pinking Shears
Scissors,
Wall staple gun (working in education means I have pretty easy access to these, if you're not as lucky, super glue would do the trick too!)
Super Glue
Letter templates

Instructions:
Measure your fabric out around the canvases you are covering, making sure you have enough to cover the sides properly.

Staple/glue the fabric to the canvas.

Print off a template of the letters you'd like to use on the canvas- I made mine to fill an A4 Word Document.

Pin the template to the fabric and cut out the letters using the pinking shears.

Glue the letters onto the canvas.

Seriously, its that simple! What are you waiting for?

Let me know if you give it a try yourself!

Propa Crimbo- Bo Selecta

(Not the most traditional of festive songs but its a great guilty pleasure!)

I won't ask for much this Christmas, I won't even wish for snow

Secret Santa is one of those activities I love and hate in almost equal measure. I work in a really small team which makes keeping Secret Santa an actual secret is near on impossible (although not quite as impossible as its proven to be in my house of three where it took approximately 3 seconds after drawing a name out to work out who everybody else was buying...). Being the person who organised it this year I tried to really implement a no cheating under any circumstances rule as last year the fun was spoilt by one of my co-workers who asked the person next to them what they'd want from their Secret Santa and after hearing that it was a nice and easy bottle of red wine ended up sat with the bag of names until she pulled out the wine drinker- sneaky! Funnily enough, I've ended up with that person pulling out my name this year. I'm really trying not to cheat and give any clues to try and make her work a bit harder this time (I know, I'm cruel!). In my eyes, Secret Santa isn't about buying the person what they think they want, the real fun is in giving them something unexpected that'll put a smile on their face, hence why I like the surprise element!

In case any of you have ended up with a name from Secret Santa who is equally as annoying as me and isn't giving any clues about what they might like (although if my Secret Santa was at all internet savvy she could probably gain a fair idea about what I might like from this post!), I thought I'd put together a few ideas of cheap gifts that you could go looking for to save the inevitable panic buying that usually happens to me with Secret Santa presents!

1. The Doodle Notebook, 2. Fairisle Nail Wrap, 3. Christmas Socks, 4. Snowman Bath Bomb, 5. Fridge Magnet Scrabble, 6. Emergency Moustaches, 7. Dress-up Fridge Magnets, 8. Hey Girl notebook, 9. Woodland List Pad 

What ideas have you got in mind for your Secret Santa this year?

All I Want For Christmas Is You- Mariah Carey
(If this doesn't get you in the Christmas spirit, I don't know what will)