This year's for me and you

To follow on from yesterday's post rounding up the music that's been blasting out of my speakers for the last twelve months, I thought I'd do a bit of a round up of the other things that have been happening over the last year in my world. For the most part, 2013 has been very, very good to me and I've done loads of fun things that have been really fun to look back on. I'm going to try my hardest to make sure 2014 goes the same way.

January: I started the year off with a trip to Xscape near Leeds for a bit of sledging with two of my favourites and subsequently spent the next 11 months plotting to make it an annual expedition since it was so bloomin' fun. We were the only people there over the age of 7 aside from a few cold looking parents but we fitted in pretty damn well (and had an added advantage of being able to whizz down the hills a lot quicker due to the extra weight pulling our adult bodies along!).

February: Back in February I whizzed around the country a little catching up with various people. One of the most fun days out was an early birthday outing with two of my friends from home where we had afternoon tea (or lemonade in my case...) in an old fashioned Tea Room in Southport and then paid the Anthony Gormley statues on Crosby Beach a visit. It was freezing cold but my friends thought it would be a great idea to get ice creams on the beach. Its making me cold just thinking about it.

March: Always one of my favourite months as I get to drink way too much in the name of getting a little bit older. This year was a really fun one- we went to Laserquest in the daytime and then in the evening I drank rather a lot of vodka and managed to break a wine glass by sitting on it. My birthdays are always such a classy affair.

April: Remember that time when it was still snowy at Easter?! Don'tcha just love British weather sometimes. The snow always melts really easily at home as we're so near the coast so when my parents decided we should have a trip to Wales over Easter weekend we were amazed when we got out of the car and were greeted by a big haze of white. Everywhere.

May: This was one of my favourite months. There was lots of live music thanks to Live at Leeds, and lots of merry nights out (including the night before Live at Leeds which probably wasn't the most sensible decision I've made this year!). Any month with two bank holidays is always a winner with me.

June: June was my rollercoaster month. On the one hand I found a beautiful little house to move into with two lovely, lovely people and was really excited for the big move at the start of July, but then towards the end of the month my Auntie Jackie sadly passed away suddenly leaving a huge hole in my family. I'm not sure how I managed it, but the day after receiving the news I still got on a train for a weekend away in Birmingham with my faves complete with a trip to Cadbury World and Snobs (best venue ever...). In a way I'm so glad I had that weekend planned- its impossible to feel sad when you're surrounded by the most fun people in the world.

July: After unpacking all of my worldly possessions into my new house I barely had 10 seconds to sit down before the ginger and I were off to Latitude. Four trains and a shuttle bus journey later and we finally arrived in Suffolk. Seriously the best festival experience I've ever had. I loved every minute of it. Aside from the hungover journey back. Let's never speak of that again.

August: Despite having lived together for over a month by this point, we still hadn't managed to christen our house with a shindig. We had a great housey day trip to Temple Newsam in Leeds to see the farm animals and have a mammoth picnic followed by a really fun night out. That picture above is our first official house photo. N'aww.

September: We had a belated birthday night out for one of my friends back in September (we did a lot better than in 2012, when we didn't manage to celebrate it until October) and in honour of our never ending nerdy Harry Potter related jokes we decided to mark the occasion with Harry Potter themed cupcakes. Then went out and pretended to be dementors. Totally normal behaviour, I promise.

October: One of my favourite parts of October was a family trip to Edinburgh. I still can't get over how flipping beautiful the view was from above the cloud at the top of Arthur's Seat.

November: November saw another birthday outing. And yes, the fake moustaches made an appearance. It'd be rude not to show our appreciation for Movember.

December: Proudest moment of this month has still got to be winning a prize at Iron Cupcake. I'm still amazed that I didn't make a massive mess of my reindeer. On top of that, I've spent the month seeing lots of people and eating far too much having lots of fun.I wish December lasted a little longer, there's far too much fun to be had for it to be over this quickly.

So there you have it, that's a little snapshot of how my year has been. Looking back, it seems to largely consist of spending time with my buddies, being an embarrassing drunk person and eating lots of cake. I'm not sure what more I could want out of life really!

Hope 2013 has been good to you! Have a great New Year's Eve and I'll see you in 2014!

Fairytale of New York- The Pogues and Kirsty McColl

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

Yeah its overwhelming, but what else can we do?

Since turning the grand old age of 23 a few weeks ago, I've been spending even more time than usual mulling over the fact that I'm slowly becoming a real adult (supposedly at least), and my student days are getting further and further behind me. Alice at The Cup and Saucer wrote a great post recently about being 23 and the funny little limbo period that ensues for so many of us at that age which rang so true for me as I'm happily living as an independent adult living away from home, working a full time job that I actually enjoy (at least most of the time!) and generally being quite self sufficient  but on the other hand I still sulk about having to wake up in the morning, I'm in no way ready to discuss grown up things like babies, mortgages or weddings (unless the weddings are for other people, in which case I say bring on the wine and dress shopping) and I like to ring Mama and Papa T just to check I'm doing things like setting up phone contracts or putting up pictures right.

The worst thing for me about being 23 is the fact that the day in those pictures above was over 18 months ago. In my head it still feels like graduation was just days ago but in reality so much has changed since then. Not necessarily in a bad way, I'm still just as good friends with all of the delightful people I met when I moved to Uni, I'm still living in Leeds but in a slightly more sophisticated way than I was back then and I'm still just as silly as I was when I was 21. But still, things aren't the same as they were and that makes me feel huge pangs of nostalgia on an almost daily basis. 

Take last week for example. This time last Thursday I was at a 1920's night at a bar in Headingley  the student area of Leeds. I stayed out until midnight despite it being a school night, which to the current me felt like a massive act of rebellion. I found myself longing for the days the spontaneous, midweek nights out that used to happen if I took a trip to the pub for a few quiet drinks. Hell, there was one time I was sat in bed in my pyjamas about to switch my light off and go to sleep when one of my friends text me to say she was bored and about half an hour later I found myself on a dance floor with a vodka lemonade in my hand. 

And therein lies the main problem- spontaneity is rarely an option these days. 

Most of my friends are dotted about the country with only a small handful of us still left in Leeds, so any sort of gathering takes a good bit of planning, trying to organise everything to the letter and fit in around everybody else's calendars. Only having weekends to play with leaves little time for spontaneous activities. Even planning a lunch date can often take considerable thought to organise as we all want to make the most of our precious days off and so there's rarely any opportunity to drop someone a text and say 'shall we meet in half an hour for a drink and a cake?'. I miss the days of lunch dates being an almost daily occurrence, and I'm sure Opposite cafe in Leeds misses our regular custom too. Their brownie sales must have dropped considerably since my friends and I graduated. 

I'm so lucky that I get to see most of my friends pretty regularly still, largely due to the fact that I'm so insistent on making the most of my weekends as much as I can by doing the things I love (read: drinking too much vodka and dancing like a crazy person) as often as I can, and I absolutely love how fun it is when we do all meet up because it isn't a daily event any more so we really make the most of it. Its just at times when I'm bored in the middle of the week, or realise its going to be weeks or even months before I see some of my friends again, or even just when I'm sat at work wishing I could escape to Opposite and buy a brownie and a sandwich that I realise just how much I miss the good old days before becoming a (part-time) adult.

Time to Pretend- MGMT

This song seemed like a highly appropriate choice of post title, not only because it sums up a lot of what I've been waffling on about but also because its just one of those songs that as soon as I hear it transports me right back to happy little times in 2010- a time long before real life even crossed my mind.

Oh don't get up, I can't see the sunshine

The weather was pretty grim when I was at home, grey grey and more grey. But even the grey and drizzle could stop Ness Gardens (between the Wirral and Chester in case you wondered) from looking pretty. Some of my earliest memories are of visiting this place when I was a toddler, I used to be fascinated by all of the colours and exotic trees and flowers. Its changed a lot since I was a little 'un but is still just as enjoyable... although I don't think I'll ever experience the same amount of joy there as I did when I was about 6 and sledged down a MASSIVE hill in the snow and zoomed straight into a bush. That was a fun day. I'm going to have to go again in the summer to get a bit of a contrast to the wintery colours in these pictures and hopefully have less raindrops on my camera lens (a girl can dream can't she?!). 

You only live once- The Strokes

We visit a life we both left behind

Despite all that's happened in Great Britain this year to make it one that I'm sure won't be forgotten in a long time, personally 2012 has been one of those years that's just tootled along, there've been no major obstacles or momentous occasions to mark it out in my mind (I suppose the end of a big relationship technically does fall into this category but I'm not seeing that as a bad change now by any means).

2011 was a year with a lot of change in my life, finishing Uni, graduating, becoming a real life person with a real life job, moving away from Leeds, moving back to Leeds, moving into a new house. In comparison, 2012 has just been a bit stable. I make that sound like a bad thing, when in actual fact it really isn't. I took a little look back through my photos from the past year and I have to say, there have been a lot of highlights. Being my first full year of working life, the fun bits of the year have been even more savoured as time with friends has become more valuable, shifting from student life to real life means we no longer have the luxury of being able to wander into each other's rooms at all hours of the day or whiling away hours just sat at the kitchen table. Instead, it means that when we do all spend time together there's a definite air of excitement and a lot of effort goes into making it memorable. 

I've picked out a few snaps as a bit of a review of 2012 in the life of Kaz. It probably won't mean a lot to you guys reading but I had a whale of a time looking back at all my pictures of day trips, nights out and weekends away. 

1. Birthday celebrations- lots of my favourite people all in one room (and some spookily coordinated outfits) 2. A day out at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park with my Mum, Dad and new DSLR 3. Live at Leeds 2012 4. A sunburnt sunny day in Nottingham 5. Sailing round the Isle of Wight with the Ellen Macarthur Cancer Trust through work 6. City living 7&8 Olympic stuff- seeing Friendly Fires for free definitely made me warm to the occasion 9. 'rowing' in Stratford with one of my favourites 10. Monkeying around in Edinburgh 11. Leeds Festival- seeing Florence was a definite highlight of my year/life in general 12. We're a very distinguished little bunch. Especially when filled with wine.

Roll on 2013. Bring me some more good times like these please.

Reunion- The xx