So that you'd leave me alone in Leeds again

On Saturday, my buddy and I tried to have a little road trip to Ilkley lido to make the most of the rare outdoor swimming pool friendly weather we've been having. Alas, we got there to find out they'd stopped letting people in at 12.30 as it was so busy (it was 12.35 when we arrived...). Instead we went for a wander and an ice cream whilst we formed a back up plan to keep us entertained for the afternoon.

So we hopped back into Betty, my awesome new car, and drove to the fruit picking farm in Horsforth (with only a slight detour thanks to the satnav thinking that the farm was down a residential street in the middle of a housing estate...).  All that was left in the fields was raspberries as the strawberry season had just finished so we set off on our merry little way to the raspberry fields. The man at the stand told us that the raspberries were becoming harder to find but that there should still be plenty for us to fill our basket with. He was right, but we did have to keep disappearing into the depths of the bushes and branches to find anything worth picking- hard work when the weather was so crazily hot! We were very proud of ourselves when our dedication finally paid off and we wandered back to the man with a basket full of yummy looking berries. There's just something far more satisfying about picking your own fruit than pulling it off a shelf at the supermarket, and they definitely taste better too!

On Sunday, I realised I had a humongous box full of raspberries sat in my fridge as we'd not managed to make a real dent in them yesterday. Worried that they were going to quickly go past their best, I sarted plotting ways I could make something exciting and raspberry based.  I decided to experiment with ice lollies as it was far too warm to be slaving over a hot oven. With no recipe in front of me I tried to turn my lovingly picked fruit into tasty lollies. And actually, they seem to have worked pretty bloomin' well! And being the kind-hearted soul that I am, I'm going to share my secret recipe so that you have an excuse to go and pick your own fruit too!

Raspberry Lemonade Lollies

Ingredients:

250g raspberries

juice of one lemon

1-2 tsp honey

1tsp caster sugar

about 100ml lemonade

To make:

Weigh out your raspberries and mash them together until it forms a liquid. 

Seive the smushed up raspberries to separate the juice from the seeds (I then added some of the seeds to the bowl to make the lollies seem a bit more 'natural' without it being totally overrun with seeds but that's just personal preference).

Squeeze the lemon juice into the bowl of raspberry juice, add the sugar and honey and mix together well.

Pour the mixture into ice lolly moulds (I got mine super cheap in Primark!) so that they're about two-thirds full then top up each mould with lemonade.

Put in the freezer until frozen then sit out in the sunshine and enjoy :)

  

If anybody has any more summery ice lolly recipes then let me know- I'd love to try out more ideas!

Fallout- Catfish and The Bottlemen

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

There's something inside you, its hard to explain

Christmas in our family is usually a fairly quiet one. We spend Christmas morning running around catching up with all of our extended family before we all separate off to our own houses for Christmas dinner; when I'm left with just my Mum and Dad for the rest of the day. I love our little family Christmas day- we play a lot of scrabble, eat far too much food and see who's first to fall asleep in front of the telly, but as soon as Christmas Day is out of the way we need a bit of something to escape the house (and keep us away from the Quality Street for a few hours). 

And so, yesterday we ended up at Chester Zoo. Its somewhere I go quite often when I'm at home as its only a few miles away, and I could never ever get bored of it. This time, the tiger cubs were the main attraction- we watched the two of them fighting over a bone and tricking each other into letting go of it... its great to see that family arguments come as standard at Christmas across the whole of the animal kingdom!

Believe it or not, this was one of the cubs... slightly bigger than your average kitten!

We had a great little time, and it was nice to get out of the house and have a bit of a wander about to clear the cobwebs before returning to our scrabble board and tins of chocolate in the evening. Tis the season and all that!

Nightcall- London Grammar

Sometimes when I look deep in your eyes, I swear I can see your soul

I escaped Leeds this weekend for a little trip to bonny Scotland, my second trip to Edinburgh this year (definite upside of having an Uncle who lives in such a beautiful city!). My Uncle likes using us visiting as an excuse for him to get out of town for a bit, so we ended up spending a lot of time skirting around the outermost fringes of the city. Although I missed having a chance to just wander up and down the Royal Mile and Princes Street, we saw plenty of the city centre from some great spots outside the hustle and bustle of the main tourist streets. 

I wanted to take a trip up Arthur's Seat on Saturday since we haven't done it in years and my Dad jumped at the rare chance to hear me willingly put a pair of walking boots on (I vowed never to touch them ever again after I did the National Three Peaks Challenge a few years ago). We ended up heading up there at the perfect time of day, my Mum and my Uncle thought we'd gone absolutely crackers as they were lagging behind and gave up when a huge cloud decided to engulf itself around them, promptly leading to them heading back to the car. We made it through the mist and had possibly the most beautiful view of the city anybody had ever seen before. We didn't get to spend much time up there as it was getting dark pretty quickly and my Mum had started sending frantic texts saying "COME DOWN NOW." but it was worth it to see my Mum and Uncle's jealous faces when we showed them how incredible it had been up there. Not that we were trying to rub it in or anything. Obviously.

Sometimes- James

And she's always gonna be there in the back of your mind

I always like to take a bit of time off right at the end of the school holidays- most of the team I work with get the whole six weeks off (lucky teachers...) but there's a select few of us who work all year round and we find it a bit torturous when everyone else comes back into work fresh from weeks of relaxation. A week off isn't quite the same but it does ease the jealousy slightly. I went home to see my parents for half of the week as my Uncle was down from Edinburgh for the Bank Holiday and so we decided to go somewhere a bit different to the usual wandering around Liverpool. And so, bright and early in the morning we got in my Dad's car and took a horrendously higgledy piggledy route (thanks for that one sat-nav) to Portmeirion in Wales. 

I'd only been to Portmeirion once before when I was a lot younger but I could still picture the beautiful brightly coloured buildings really clearly. It didn't disappoint a second time around as we escaped the grey sky and drizzle of Merseyside and ended up in what could easily have been somewhere in the Mediterranean (both in terms of the buildings and the weather!). If you're ever around North Wales I'd definitely recommend a visit; I came away from the trip feeling as though I'd had a mini summer holiday! Just what I needed to fool myself into feeling like I'd been somewhere exotic in my precious few days off work (plus it was a great way to stop my Leeds Festival envy- no mud anywhere to be seen over on this side of the country!).

shirt: Topshop, pinafore: Topshop, necklace: River Island, shoes: Vans

California Daze- Peace

You gave me magical, I gave you wonderful

There are a few places I always seem to waffle on about on my little piece of the internet. York is definitely one of those places. Its been a firm favourite as one of my top UK cities since I was a nipper, it was always somewhere we came to year after year for Christmas shopping and usually a trip to the National Railway Museum to keep Papa T happy. Last weekend, my Mum and Dad came up to Leeds for a visit and my Dad fancied yet another trip to see the trains (apparently they've got a bit of a special collection on show at the moment!). My Mum and I don't quite share my Dad's enthusiasm for locomotives, but I can spend ages looking at the old passenger carriages and posters for holiday destinations from the past- I love thinking about how people spent their holidays and went on long journeys before cars and aeroplanes started taking over!

Anyway, it was a beautiful, sunny day on Sunday so it was perfect for meandering around the town after my Dad had taken thousands of pictures of the engines so I thought it'd be rude of me not to share a few snaps! 

shirt: Forever 21, dress: Primark, shoes: Topshop

This is one of my favourite pictures of the day. Most of you will probably be drooling at the Mulberry outlet in the shot, but not me- for starters I don't really understand the fascination with uber-expensive handbags (although maybe if I had endless amounts of money I'd feel a little differently...). For me, it has always been a bit of a family tradition on our trips to York to have a good chuckle at Back Swinegate as it reminds us so much of my Nan. She was such a sweet little lady who never really moaned about anything but would always, always make a point of telling everybody who came to visit her "ooh my back's a swine today".  We took a picture of the street once when I was younger and showed her and the rest of the family- she couldn't help but find it funny with the rest of us in fits of giggles around her.

Biblical- Biffy Clyro

(this weekend I'll mostly be trying to pretend that I'm not actually riddled with jealousy about everybody watching Biffy and Co at Reading and Leeds)

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