Go to the ends of the Earth for you

Life's a funny old thing isn't it? One minute you think everything is ticking along just hunky dory and then WHAM! you hit a dip on the rollercoaster and suddenly everything feels very different. My latest dip came about a week and a half ago when we found out that my Uncle Stuart had died very suddenly in his sleep. My Mum's little brother, something none of us could have ever anticipated in the slightest. You just can't prepare for a thing like that, something I sadly learnt last year when my Auntie Jackie passed away in much the same way. One day everything is fine, you think you know what the next days, weeks and months will bring, and then in the blink of an eye, your life and idea of 'normal' is turned on its head. 

In the last seven years I've lost 5 close family members and have watched my already small family shrink quite dramatically. Family photos become less crowded, fewer spaces at the dinner table are needed and things are never quite the same again. A friend of my Uncle's who I met at the funeral yesterday said to us "you always know death is going to happen in the end, but you never for a second think of it happening to the important people in your life" which I think sums up human nature perfectly. A consequence of living is always going to involve an ending but its something we, as caring human beings, don't ever want to imagine as it seems impossible to picture a world without our nearest and dearest. When the inevitable does happen, its heartbreaking as you know that things are never going to quite be the same again. With the case of my Uncle it has hit with a sudden realisation that our annual trips to Edinburgh with him as our unofficial tour guide are no more. Yes, we may still visit the city from time to time but we're never going to walk down the street with my Uncle taking photographs of anything and everything (and his confidence in striding up to a disguised, grumpy looking Eddie Izzard and charming him into posing for a photo...) taking us to ridiculously posh cocktail bars in the New Town when we were all dressed in walking gear and showing us thousands of little things we'd never in a million years have found on our own. 

Although really emotional, Stuart's funeral was inspirational. My Uncle didn't lead a particularly extraordinary life but his kindness, creativity and sense of fun clearly touched a lot of people, so much so that they had to upgrade us to the bigger chapel five minutes before the service was due to start as there'd have been about double the amount of people for the capacity of the original venue. Stuart clearly brought a smile to everyone he'd ever met and although his life was cut short long before it should have been, it was comforting to realise how happy he made people and how much they meant to him too. 

That's what I'm trying to take away from all of this, the idea of making the most of every second you do have on this Earth, making sure you make other people happy and make yourself happy too as really those are the things we have to live for. Life is there to be enjoyed and not wasted, we owe that to the ones who aren't there to share the party with us at least. 

Make You Feel My Love- Bob Dylan

(this one's for you Uncle Stuart)

I sit and pine for wasted time

Over Easter weekend I took a trip back to The Wirral to catch up with my friends and family. We had some looovely weather (some of the time at least!) which made a bit of a crazy contrast to Easter weekend last year where I had a day trip out in the snow with my Mum and Dad. English weather, you're full of surprises.

We spent a lot of Good Friday travelling around about a zillion car show rooms as I've decided that after passing my driving test six years ago its probably about time I actually invested in a pair of wheels. After a few hours, my Dad decided we needed a stop off for lunch which I'm fairly certain was really to stop him from having a minor heart attack every time a salesman uttered the words "fancy a test drive?" to me. Having not driven properly since passing my test all those years ago, my Dad was clearly having vivid nightmares about me being trusted behind the wheel of a shiny test car (can't say I blame him... I can barely remember which pedal is which!). 

Anyway, we ended up in New Brighton for our little pit stop. Back when my Mum and Dad were young, New Brighton was a thriving seaside resort complete with an outdoor pool, but for most of my life I've known it as being a bit of a depressing, run down place that had lost all of its appeal and visitors. Over the last few years, they've really put a lot of effort into redeveloping the Prom and there were just people EVERYWHERE. Normally, I get a bit fed up if somewhere is absolutely chock a block with people, but actually this was a pretty lovely sight and it was great to see that the town is regaining some of the glory and atmosphere it had lost over the years.

 (Oh look, that Primark playsuit I keep rambling on about is making another appearance on here already!)

Did you manage to make the most of the sunshine over Easter weekend?

Overdone- Bombay Bicycle Club

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

Oh, my hair smells like chocolate

Eating out isn't something I tend to talk much about on this little slice of the internet. Which is kinda strange as its something I spend a slightly unhealthy amount of my life doing, I like to try my hardest to make sure any catch up, activity or day out fits around some sort of nice meal (or cake...) wherever possible. Leeds is spoiling my food obsessed little belly these days, there are so many new restaurants popping up all over the place so my list of places to try is getting longer and longer (perfect excuse to eat out even more!).

My foodie friend Coral and I went for a slightly fancier than usual meal earlier this week at Roast and Conch, a new restaurant run by Hotel Chocolat, as we'd been intrigued by the whole chocolate-food thing since it opened a few months ago. As soon as we walked up the stairs,an incredible smell of chocolate filled the room, so as far as I was concerned the night was off to a great start! 

Most people I've mentioned the restaurant to have greeted me with a confused look of "Why would you want to eat chocolate with a meal?" but its as far away from that idea as you could possibly get! Most of the dishes are infused with roasted cocoa beans and WOW it works- the cocoa is more like a spice when its cooked like this and it gave my meal such an incredible flavour! 

We were given a butternut squash soup as a bit of an amuse bouche (I'm definitely not posh enough to be able to say that normally!) which was really yummy. I picked the burger as my main course because there'd be something seriously wrong if Kaz went to a restaurant with a burger on the menu and didn't order it. Being a massive burger obsessive, I feel I can say with confidence that this was without a doubt in my top 3 burgers ever list (yes I have a list... don't judge me!). But the real showstopper with my meal were the onion rings that came with my burger and the chips we ordered as a side on the recommendation of the girl who showed us to her table who said they were by far the best thing on the menu! They were cooked in cocoa butter and OH MY GOD they were incredible and didn't taste anything like something that you'd find on the shelves of The Body Shop!

Given that I'd wolfed down my whole meal plus the chips we definitely didn't really need (but couldn't have lived without!) in record time, I was saddened to admit that I wasn't going to have room for dessert. It seemed like a crime against chocolate given the restaurant we were in as I can imagine the desserts would have been bloomin' incredible, but Roast & Conch have clearly thought long and hard about this problem so they created a 'Tray of Temptation' filled with every flavour of chocolate you could possibly ever imagine for £1 each. Funnily enough, despite my fullness, I still had room for chocolate and decided I couldn't narrow it down to just one either. I ended up with a salted caramel chocolate (which they gave me two of because it was a bit smaller than some of the others) and a raspberry and milk chocolate cup. Its amazing how quickly I forgot about having a 'proper' dessert.

If you're in Leeds and fancy somewhere a little different and a bit special (or if you've been sent a 20% off voucher through work like Coral had!), I'd definitely recommend a trip to Roast & Conch. It was one of those meals that I'll be dreaming about for months to come!

Chocolate- The 1975

Funk my life up

You might have seen me mention a few months ago that I've been accepted onto a PGCE course for September. I'm hugely excited as I've wanted to teach (with the exception of a year or two at Uni when I was adamant that I wasn't going to follow the stereotypical view that all English students want to become English teachers...) since I was a small person and used to line up my teddies on the staircase at home and give them a damn fine education. Although, thinking about it, I also used to pretend to be a bus driver with my teddies in much the same formation so I suppose I was always open to other careers!

As excited as I am, I'm dreading the whole living off a student loan lifestyle as after three years of working full time I've become quite accustomed to being able to spend as much as I want on Topshop, burgers and cider (who says I don't lead a fulfilling life?!). To soften the blow slightly, I've been trying to prepare myself now by stocking up on bits and bobs I need for next year so that I'm not running around like a madwoman when I have my last payday trying to buy stationary and a wardrobe full of smart, teacher clothes.

Given that I really struggle with finding smart (but still fun) work clothes that I actually WANT to wear, I decided to do the sensible thing and started out with the far easier task of pimping out my stationary.

ideas notebook: Blott, exercise books: Paperchase, weekly desk pad: Paperchase

I feel like I'm 13 again, when all my pocket money used to go on stationary. Maybe I should buy some scented gel pens too. I'm guessing they still make them, right?! Don't tell me I'm that old...

Scream- Paolo Nutini

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

Every moment spent with you is a moment I treasure

You know when you find an item of clothing that you love so much that you feel the need to wash it as soon as you take it off so you're not waiting for ages to be able to wear it again? That's exactly what's happened with this t-shirt. I spotted it when I was last in Liverpool but for some reason didn't pick it up and hand over my pennies for it. I instantly regretted it when I'd got back to Leeds and knew my life would just be a little more complete if I could hang that top up in my wardrobe. Luckily, Mama T came to the rescue and popped into Pull and Bear for me the next time she went shopping. What a star that woman is. 

I think the nerdy little 15 year old inside me compelled me to buy this top. My friends and I were pretty obsessed with Armageddon back in the day (and I still love it now for that matter, I'm getting a bit choked up thinking about Harry staying on the asteroid as I write this...) and so the whole NASA thing started calling to me as soon as I spotted it in the shop. I don't own very many t-shirts, but the ones I do have seem to all come from Pull and Bear. Big thumbs up to them for keeping my casual wardrobe afloat.

t-shirt: Pull and Bear, jeans: Topshop, boots: Oasis, socks: Topshop

Don't Wanna Miss a Thing- Aerosmith

(Couldn't resist using this song, I got it in my head as soon as I started thinking about Armageddon...)