Life lately...

Well hello there internet, its been a while! I've still been living an internet free existence, and I've resorted to spending my time in various coffee shops around Leeds, eating cake and catching up on important internet based things (mostly New Girl and GBBO...).

Since I've been without wifi for so long, some of the posts I'd have otherwise written seem a bit redundant now so instead I thought I'd do a bit of a whistlestop tour of my summer to bring all you nosy people out there up to speed with what I've been up to over the last month or so.

Harewood House

Mama and Papa T managed to squeeze a day trip to see little Kaz in a few weeks ago (anyone else's parents have a busier social calendar than them?). Considering I've lived in Leeds for 6 years with such a huge stately home and park practically down the road, I'd never taken a visit except when I did a Color Me Rad run there a few months back (but we were too busy throwing paint around to pay too much attention to the surroundings!). The weather was bloomin' beautiful and we spent hours and hours wandering about the grounds. I love a good family day trip, especially when we end it in one of my favourite pubs for tea.

Big Reunion

Its been three whole years since graduation now (although I still have difficulty coming to terms with how old that makes me...), and somehow it had been two years since the five faces above were last in a room together. We finally managed to pin everybody down to a weekend in August to meet up and catch up on the gossip from the many, many months that had flown by. We spent ages running around Asda picking up plentiful supplies of hummus, popcorn and any other picnic food we could get our hands on before heading off on a trip to Temple Newsam to see the animals at the farm. After eating our body weights in cocktail sausages, making a few furry friends and playing running around after a frisbee we headed back home to get ready before an evening of bowling and ping pong at Roxy Lanes and Roxy Ballroom. Normal bars just aren't enough for me anymore, unless there's some sort of drunken sport I can participate in I'm just not interested! 

Corfu

The big activity of the month was a well deserved summer holiday to Sidari in Corfu. We mostly spent the week eating unimaginable quantities of saganaki, drinking crazily cheap cocktails and gazing longingly at a God-like Greek waiter at one of the restaurants. All the stereotypes of a Greek holiday right there. My personal highlight of the trip was the waterpark as I have the holiday requirements of a 10 year old, the 25m freefall slide was one of the best/scariest things I've done before... mostly scary because my bikini top came undone somewhere along the way down the slide. The people at the bottom of the slide don't know how lucky they are that I had a sunburnt back and had put a t-shirt on to cover it up...

 Back home

The week after my holiday I had a few more cheeky days off work and headed home to see my parents. I did myself proud and managed my first solo mission on the motorway to anywhere further than Ikea (which is about 5 mins down the motorway from where I live...) all the way down the M62, through the centre of Liverpool and back to my Mum and Dad's house. I mostly just enjoyed being able to sing along to my driving playlist without fear of people spotting me at traffic lights! Whilst home I had a yummy meal out at Bill's, caught up with my friend about her wedding preparations and had a look at Liverpool from the top of the Cathedral before driving back to Leeds (and missing my junction on the motorway because I was too busy singing along to Biffy Clyro).

Leeds West Indian Carnival

My Bank Holiday Monday was spent in the rain, feeling grateful for my nice warm coat and many layers of clothes whilst watching lots of people in very minimal costumes parading down the streets of Leeds. The Leeds West Indian Carnival is one of the biggest in the country, and since I wasn't at Leeds Festival this year (sob) I was around to go and have a nosy with friend. The costumes were incredible, and despite the rain there was a brilliant atmosphere (which may have been partly due to the crazy amount of people I spied swigging vodka and rum straight from the bottle as they danced down the parade route!).

Alton Towers

My buddy and I took a trip to Alton Towers last week. I hadn't been for a few years and was bouncing around like a child (see, I really am a 10 year old...) the whole way there. Considering it was still the summer holidays, we didn't have to queue all that much, except for The Smiler where we spent 90 minutes queuing under the ride watching endless carts of people whizzing past us. By the time we'd got to the front of the queue my knees were knocking together and I was starting to question why I'd ever wanted to go on a ride with 14 loops in it, but I wasn't planning on letting an hour and a half's worth of queuing go to waste. And OHEMGEE it was so worth the wait. Well done Alton Towers, you did good with that one. 

Congratulations if you made it to the end of this mammoth post! Normal service shall hopefully resume on here once my wifi has been fixed.

Now the night has fled, just like everything I said

Last weekend we paid the remaining balance of our holiday to Corfu. Hooray! To celebrate, I headed straight to Primark for a wander around their holiday collection and came out with this playsuit. I thought it'd be perfect for wandering around the beach and sipping cockails, and for £5 it would have been rude not to buy it. I didn't bother trying it on in the shop (Primark changing rooms on a Saturday are my idea of hell) so threw it on quickly before my trip to Roast and Conch to check it fit me. A quick trying on turned into a spontaneous change of outfit plans for the night as I decided Primark had done far too good a job with this playsuit for me to keep in a drawer until August. 

The dress has a really nice cut out back too which I wasn't brave enough to show in these photos- it may have got a bit warmer and sunnier this week but I'm not quite brave enough to ditch the jacket just yet. I think this is one of those pieces of clothing that I'm going to have trouble separating myself from (cue doing extra loads of washing just to get this back in my wardrobe that little bit quicker!), its long enough to wear in the daytime but I've already got plans to add it to my going out wardrobe too. So, that's me not taking this playsuit off until mid-October now...

Luna- Bombay Bicycle Club

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

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

Cos everybody says you never speak up, and never take a moment's rest

I've just reached the end of an absolutely blissful week and a bit off work. I've done a bit of a whistlestop tour visiting lots of lovely people, eating way too much food (a personal high/low was eating a massive burger from GBK and then heading to Wagamama for tea 3 hours later...) and having a few little day trips in between.

 I seemed to get massively lucky with the weather on my week off and got to experience a rare phenomenon called blue sky and sunshine, so I'm glad I got to spend plenty of time out enjoying it rather than just having to stare longingly out of my window in the office. Way back on Easter Sunday (I've been laptopless since leaving Leeds on Good Friday hence the trip down memory lane!) my parents and I took a trip into North Wales and had a wander round a snowy Errdig. We don't do big family Easter celebrations since there's only really the three of us in our immediate family so we like to actually get out and do something as otherwise we'd just drive each other to insanity with endless games of scabble (we did have a game one night over the holidays and it resulted in my extremely polite mama trying to play a series of rude word- any more games and we'd have had to wash her mouth out with soap to get her back to her usually squeaky clean self!). 

So, anyway... Errdig. My pictures looked really pretty with their dusting of snow, so much so that it made me forget my hatred of the white stuff that's been plaguing us for the last few months. Although, that's not an invitation for it to return by any means. 

SPRING, PROMISE YOU'RE HERE TO STAY NOW PLEASE!

Don't Try- Everything Everything

And the walls kept tumbling down in the city that we love

With the exception of little old me over here in Leeds, the majority of my family all still live on or very near the Wirral. Since half of the family live within 5 minute walking distance from my parent's house (we're an adventurous bunch!) it doesn't leave many exciting places to explore as we just have to nip up the road whenever we want to see them. But I do have one Uncle who doesn't live in Merseyside, he lives up in Edinburgh. Without a doubt one of the best places I could possibly have a reason to visit on a fairly regular basis. Well done Uncle, great choice of city to make your home in.

Since we haven't all been up to see my Uncle together for a year or so we decided it would be a nice thing to do for my Mum's birthday. And, although I did go up to the 'Burgh back in August with my buddies, I really don't think I could ever tire of the city. Its flipping beautiful. In just a weekend we saw so much, going up Calton Hill, driving around Arthur's Seat (it was way too wet, cold and windy to even think about walking up there...), going up to the roof of the museum to admire the view, and so much more!

 I love how diverse Edinburgh is, from the castle you can see old buildings, new buildings, water, mountains... nowhere else could you walk to the bottom of one of the main tourist streets and end up in the middle of a country park complete with hikers and crazy runners speeding up the hills.

Even on horrible grey days like last weekend, the city still looks absolutely stunning. 

EDINBURGH, I LOVE YOU.

Pompeii- Bastille