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.

Fever, why won't you explain?

On Friday, I had a cheeky little day off work which turned out to be brilliant luck as it was such a sunny day! I'd been planning on meeting Mama T in Manchester for the day to do a spot of holiday shopping (14 days to go!), but when we realised that the Liverpool Giants were starting their journey around the city on the Friday I decided to travel a little bit further so we got to see something a little different. 

The Giants have been to Liverpool before a few years ago, but I was away the last time so didn't have a chance to catch them. I'm really glad I got to see them in action this year as it was simply incredible! I'd have loved to see more over the weekend if I'd been at home for longer than just the day as it would have been great to see the whole World War 1 story unfold. The Giants are big Marionette puppets controlled by lots of pulleys and complicated mechanisms that make them walk, blink and even snore- even without getting a picture of the whole story it was really fascinating to see them in action and really lovely to see such big crowds gathered to catch a glimpse of them (although the crowds weren't so lovely when there was a 40 minute queue to get back into the train station at the end of the afternoon!).

Liverpool really has made a name for itself in terms of culture and arts events these days, its bloomin' lovely to see huge events like this taking over the whole city and bringing a great atmosphere along with it.

Fever- The Black Keys

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

There's this tune I've found that makes me think of you somehow

On Thursday I felt like a kid in a sweet shop (actually scrap that... I'm usually more excited in a sweet shop than any child could ever be) after getting two films worth of photos developed in Boots. My fish eye camera has been on some great little adventures in the last few months- Liverpool, Latitude, Leeds (apparently I only like places beginning with an L) to name just a few. My little pink lomography camera even got turned into a birthday cake a few months back as you may have already seen back here. 

Anyway, here's a few snaps from the huge pile I'm currently sat around trying to shortlist for my new photo frame. As soon as I'd ripped open the envelopes after picking up my prints I raced straight to Wilko's to buy the biggest frame possible to display all of my snaps in (laughing all the way there at some of the more drunken photos amongst the lot- I decided to save you the trauma of having to see those!).

If you enjoy playing around with lomography cameras then link me up- I love being nosy at other people's snaps!

Do I wanna know- Arctic Monkeys

You know we'll float forever in the tide

This last week or so has been a rollercoaster and a half. On the one hand I had one of the best weekends I've had all year with three of my favourite people when we took a little trip to Birmingham for a change of scenery and a trip to Cadbury World. On the other I waved goodbye to my city centre flat and moved into a new little home which (despite being a complete mess of half unpacked boxes and no internet) I'm absolutely loving so far. Meanwhile, alongside all of this, I've had one of the worst weeks I could have ever imagined as my lovely Auntie Jackie died completely unexpectedly last Friday. Through all of the brilliant moments I've had this week, I keep catching myself off-guard and suddenly remembering that a huge piece of my life is missing but in a way I'm so grateful that I've had such a jam-packed week as its given me something good to focus on for the most part. Exactly what I needed to keep myself going at such a horrible time.

After everything that's happened, there was one positive in that I've been able to spend a sunny weekend at home (complete with the luxury of being able to use the internet to write this and re-enter the 21st century!). We've been making the most of having an unexpected weekend together by spending a good bit of family time wandering around Liverpool and a few different spots over on our side of the Mersey to clear out the cobwebs and take our minds off the sadness we're all feeling at the moment. 

Float Forever- Peace

Players only love you when they're playing

When I took a trip back home to The Wirral last weekend we decided to head out in the other direction to our usual wanderings around Liverpool. Back when I was a little un, Chester was always our choice of destination for weekend afternoons and usually involved some sort of farcical mayhem of me getting changed out of my gymnastics kit in the back seat of the car on the way (no idea why I didn't just get changed in the sports centre like a normal child, I think I just liked a challenge). 

Anyway, Chester is one of the prettiest cities going. I've always taken it for granted a little and tend not to look up at the gorgeous buildings or pay too much attention to what you can see from the walls around the city. We stopped coming to Chester as often when Liverpool became incredible for shopping (Mama T always liked the novelty of visiting Debenham's in Chester before Liverpool thought it would be a good idea to get one too), but really they're absolutely poles apart as far as what they have to offer outside the shops goes. Liverpool is king in elaborate buildings built upon the city's shipping wealth, a vibrant waterfront and a Beatles reference at almost every turn. Chester meanwhile is full of wonky medieval buildings, a huge Roman wall wrapped around the whole city and a sleepy little waterfront complete with pedalos and rowing boats. Both cities are packed full of charm, but couldn't be any more different from each other if they tried (although they do both have a Debenham's...).

Dreams- Fleetwood Mac