Fred Astaire's the man for you

On Monday, I took my first trip to what could well be my new favourite place in the world ever. The Belgrave Music Hall opened its doors in Leeds earlier in the month and I'd been itching to take a visit to Leeds' newest gig venue ever since. Luckily for me, San Cisco were playing so I had the perfect excuse to pay the venue a little visit.

San Cisco were pretty decent and their set offered me lots of opportunities to boogie around to a bit of indie pop (something I'm not sure I'd ever be able to resist) and their summery vibes helped me forget the horrible wintery weather I'd left behind outside. Although it was a lot of fun, at times it was hard to forget that I was again experiencing the sinking feeling that I'd inadvertently landed at an under 18's disco. Getting old is tough sometimes and its only when you're surrounded by cool kids who would have only been about 10 when you were there age that you truly realise it. 

That said, I'm glad I'm that little bit older than all the posy kids we were surrounded by. It meant we could fully take advantage of the Belgrave's facilities, they've got a huge bar downstairs playing some awesome songs, complete with a canteen style fish and chips shop and pizza stall (I was eyeing up the pizza all evening... definitely going back for a slice soon) and possibly the best roof terrace known to man, even in the rain it was a great place to sit and take shelter in a cosy wooden shed. 

Leeds, you're doing brilliantly at the moment. I love this city and the ever increasing amount of brilliant places to visit.

Fred Astaire- San Cisco

Maybe I'm wasting my young years

As usual, I've had a very cake filled Sunday with another Iron Cupcake competition- Death by Chocolate was the theme this month and even though I only managed to sneak a few little slithers of cake after the judges had passed their verdict (it was a very busy one this month!) I still felt like I was going to end up in a sugar coma. I'll probably do a post about it soon as if you happened to see my instagram feed earlier then you'll know there were some awesome designs amongst the entries!

Other than that, this weekend I had a pretty lazy one after a night out on Friday with some of my favourites. I wore my new favourite dress which made for lots of fun swishy dancing- great entertainment to liven things up since what has been my favourite club night for years was sadly lacking in any sort of atmosphere. I think I need to find a new favourite indie venue to satisfy my Dad-dancing needs. As well as buying myself a new dress, I'm having a bit of a jewellery buying phase (yes, I have added another moustache to my ever expanding collection... considering founding a moustacheaholics anonymous group if anyone cares to join me). I'd been hunting for a K watch for ages after seeing almost every other letter in Topshop. After months of trying I decided getting a T was the next best option, teamed with my scrabble ring it spells out my initials quite nicely.

dress: Topshop, shirt: Forever 21, shoes: Primark, scrabble ring: Vintage fair, watch: Topshop, bracelet: c/o Haus of Deck, moustache ring: c/o Haus of Deck

Hope you've all had a good weekend!

Wasting My Young Years: London Grammar

Love wasn't what I thought it once was

Monday was quite an occasion this week. After waiting and waiting for about 10 months to be able to sink my teeth into HAIM's debut album, the day finally came (and involved a fair bit of dancing around the living room). I was scared that it might not live up to all the hype after I'd spent most of 2013 getting steadily more impatient for the album. Turns out I had nothing to worry about. Those girls did good. Very, very good in fact.

 I've spent about 80% of my time at work this week trying to decide what my favourite track on the album is (a week well spent, I'm sure you'll agree). I've come to the annoying (but also rather impressive) conclusion that ITS IMPOSSIBLE TO PICK A FAVOURITE. I'll listen to one song and think, YES, this is it. Then the next track will come on and completely change my mind. Over and over again until I've exhausted every track and ended up none the wiser than when I started. Albums tend to fall into two camps with me, there's the ones I listen to all the way through a few times but then end up falling back on the singles from the album since they've clearly put a lot more effort into those songs than the others, and then there's the ones that I turn into the soundtrack of my life for weeks and weeks whilst completely neglecting the thousands of other songs on my iPod and still fondly listen to track by track months later. Days Are Gone is without a doubt one of those albums as far as I'm concerned. Plus its given me a bit of variation for my walks to work so I can stop strutting down the street to the Arctic Monkey's new album every day. 

shirt: New Look, pinafore: River Island, t-shirt: Pull and Bear, shoes: Converse

Can someone let me be the long-lost fourth Haim sister now please? Its a dream I'm not planning on giving up on any time soon.

Honey and I- HAIM

I'm so cold, let me in at your window

My bestests and I have a bit of a long standing thing about Harry Potter. I think it all began around my 21st birthday when two of my friends were running around Liverpool on a night out acting like dementors (don't ask me how or why, but if you knew me and my friends you'd understand that explanations for matters like this are entirely unnecessary- we're as mad as a box of chocolate frogs). To celebrate one of the dementor's birthdays last weekend, Charlie and I made some Harry Potter inspired cupcakes for us all. Just to clarify, when I say Charlie and I, I mostly mean Charlie... she runs IronCupcake:Leeds so really I thought I'd best leave things up to the expert! That said, I did manage to lend a hand with a lot of the decorations so thought it'd be rude not to share our handiwork with you all since they turned out so well.

The cupcakes were 'butterbeer' flavour (that's butterscotch to all of you muggles out there!) and since my housemate enlisted Charlie to assist with making the same flavour cakes again a few days ago for a hen do I can share the secret recipe with you all! 

Butterbeer flavour Harry Potter Cupcakes

Ingredients

For the sponge:
6oz butter
6oz soft brown sugar
3 eggs
6oz flour

For the buttercream:
200g butter
400g icing sugar
1tbsp golden syrup

White ready-roll icing plus other colours for the decorations

First, preheat your oven to 180C.

Cream together the butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs and mix well.

Gradually sift in the flour and mix together until everything is fully combined.

Add the mixture to cupcake cases (you should get somewhere between 12-15 cakes out of the mixture depending on how big your cases are!) and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until springy to touch.

For the icing

Add the butter and icing sugar to a bowl and mix well. 

Add the golden syrup and mix together until the mixture is smooth and creamy.

Pipe onto the cakes once the cakes have fully cooled.

Cut circles of white icing to fit the top of each cake. Decorate with the Pottiest of decorations and then add the circles to the tops of your cakes.

Applaud yourself for making something so yummy that would satisfy even Dumbledore's sweet tooth.

Wuthering Heights- Kate Bush

(this song became a bit of a highlight on Saturday night... we spent a lot of time flailing our arms about to this song)

But I fumbled and when I came down to the wire

Image: Pinterest

Earlier this week I spent half of my afternoon chatting to one of the kids at work. I know you're not meant to have favourites but its impossible not to sometimes when there are some brilliant characters amongst them. When this girl first came into the hospital I was told she was really quiet and sensible but the first time I met her I had more trouble getting her to stop talking! She comes out with some brilliant stories and comments, and this week's took the biscuit. Out of nowhere, she came out with the comment "When I'm an adult I want to be like you... I mean you're a grown up but you're not at all grown up". 

At first I wasn't quite sure how to take that one but actually I realised she'd summed me up in a nutshell and it definitely wasn't a bad thing. Yes, I can be an 'adult'... I can do my own washing, pay bills and have a job with a fair bit of responsibility, but on the other hand I love nothing more than having the sense of humour of a 10 year old boy, dancing like I'm at a school disco and pulling faces at my friend from work when we're in meetings. Growing up and being a grown up are two totally separate things. And actually, I think I'm pretty proud that this girl decided that I made a good role model- I think I've got the best of both worlds as far as adult life goes, being able to live independently but also knowing not to take life too seriously. I want to look back on my life and think about how much I enjoyed myself and all of the fun memories I had, not how great it was to be a full time grown up person who didn't take the time to enjoy herself or let her hair down every once in a while at every possible opportunity.

The Wire- Haim

Louder than sirens, louder than bells

It occurred to me when all of the new baby freshers started appearing in Leeds (I can tell they're all appearing as their trolleys full of supernoodles and frying pans getting in my way in the aisles of Morrisons when I'm trying to buy excessive amounts of chocolate and biscuits...) that 5 years have passed since I was squished between six thousand boxes and bags in the back of my Dad's car and driven across the pennines to my new home in Leeds. At that point I had no idea whatsoever what the next few days were going to be like, let alone have any inkling that I'd still be here with no intentions of leaving five years on.

Looking at all these new little people in my city (and silently judging the horrific quantity of baseball caps that the youth of today seem to possess) made me think back to my own 18 year old self finding my way through this strange new city I was going to be calling home for the next three years of my life. All through sixth form I'd been massively excited for my big move to Leeds but a few weeks before I was due to leave I suddenly got really scared of the big unknown world I was going to be jumping into. So much so that I managed to pull some strings to get a place on a course at Liverpool University instead and was all set to change my mind about where I was going. Until the admissions tutor at Liverpool told me I needed to officially give up my place at Leeds before they'd accept me. I did everything I could not to have to do this and buried my head in the sand for a few days but eventually put two and two together and realised my reluctance to give up my place at Leeds was probably to do with the fact that deep down I knew I was doing the right thing moving there. 

At this time of year, I always end up thinking about how different my life could have been if I'd accepted that place at Liverpool back in 2008. In the end, I made the complete right decision- I've grown up so much in the last few years (in some ways at least... there's still a big part of me that thinks I'm only about 15!) and most of that is to do with making Leeds my home, making roots in a new place and meeting some of the best people in the world in the process. 

Drumming Song- Florence and The Machine

When the zeros line up on the 24 hour clock

I realised a few days ago that there's something I've not been doing on my blog for absolutely ages- my old smiles of the week posts. I like looking back at the little things that have made the week special, and thought this would be the perfect sort of week for doing that as it started off as one of those weeks where I was pretty bloomin' grumpy for no real reason and needed to give myself a bit of a kick up the bum to bring myself back to my usual jolly self. And actually, I proved my Monday morning self wrong and I've had a pretty jam-packed week with lots of highlights. So, just in case grumpy Kaz makes another appearance when Monday rolls around again, I've put this together as a little reminder that the week always gets better once that first wake-up of the week is out of the way. 

Being invited to a weekend away organised for the kids I work with. Its a huge event that's organised by the Teenage Cancer Trust and I'm so excited to be part of it.

Going along to the University open day to ask a few questions about PGCE courses. I had a really reassuring chat with somebody in the department and came away feeling a lot happier that I'm making the right choices.

Having a catch up with one of my friends and getting overly involved in watching GBBO together. Plus its reassuring to discover that the unnecessary hatred my house is harbouring against Ruby is felt by other people too!

Peeking at all of the new season stock at Joy in Leeds with my friends (and getting a cheeky free goody bag and glass of champagne too!).

Watching The Perks Of Being A Wallflower at long last. I read the book ages and ages ago, missed seeing the film at the cinema and then bought the DVD about a month ago but didn't quite get around to watching it for ages. A few of us had a DVD night on Friday to watch it, and I was so impressed! I thought it could be quite difficult to translate the book into a decent film, but it was done so well (aside from Emma Watson's questionable accent). 

Taking a trip to Manchester last night for a barbecue and a night out. Sprinting onto the dancefloor when our signature song, Babies by Pulp, was played was a definite highlight. 

Managing to have a fairly productive and hangover free day today despite having accidentally drunk a whole bottle of wine before 8pm last night. 

Plotting next weekend's shenanigans with one of my besties tonight (even more reason to be excited and not grumpy about the week ahead!). 

The new Arctic Monkeys album. Need I say any more?!

Knee Socks- Arctic Monkeys