Monthly Archives: July 2010

Do you wear heels?

July 30, 2010 8 comments

Being born with the ability to grow boobs and other humans, I theoretically should be able to wear heels… right? It should be instinctual! I’d really like that theory to pan out one day, and on that day I would gracefully enter a room in some ridiculous-inch-high shoes that’d allow me to view the tops of heads. I’d be able to walk in them without a wobble, my legs would be lengthened & my stride defined.

Yeah, I don’t really see that day happening any time soon. It is indeed a fact that I’ve made it to my 25th year of life without stepping out with more than around 1.5inches of extra oomph on my feet. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love my nikes & converse – for all their comforted colourfulness – but sometimes a girl just want something a little more elegant. Luckily my height isn’t an issue, I measure in at around 5ft8 so I don’t really need that extra couple of inches, but it would still be handy seeing as Adam is a 6ft3 giant.

Apparently it’s all about practice, but my god, where the hell do you find the time to practice wearing shoes?! Surely there are other things more worthy of practice?! Maybe it’s time I did get myself some trainer-heels, are they even a thing? they should be. A shoe that you can slowly add extra heel to whilst you teeter around the house. But again, is it worth the time?

Ho-hum, look at the pretty. Part of me looks at these shoes and my ankles cringe at impending breakage, but another part considers that leg length, height boost and overall outfit completeness. Of course there are a myriad of wonderful pumps & ballet style shoes available, and I do own several pairs of girlies albeit flat footware, part of me could even learn to forget heels ever exsisted.

…but damn, a heel would be nice.

Study Material

Wikihow: How to walk in High Heels is a good step-by-step article on how to go from flats (where I am now) to high-heels. Definitely worthy of a read.

Whilst I wish I had a closet that size (and a daddy to buy my shoes), she does give some good examples & tips on how to walk in heels, starting from a low heel and going up to a high stilleto.

Please tell me I’m not the only one with this problem?! I’ll be starting my heel-wearing journey over the next couple of weeks, I’ll document any broken bones and sore feet just for you :)

A day in York

July 28, 2010 2 comments

Yesterday was my family’s annual pub crawling trip to York. I say pub crawl, but it’s more of a grown up affair where we saunter between real-ale pubs and pop into shops like Cath Kidston on the way. Nice. We start our day with breakfast & a pint before embarking on the short walk to the next pub, and so on. In all we visited 8 pubs yesterday where I enjoyed a few pints and a few halves. And fish & chips.

So I decided to download the Vignette app for the android to take some silly photos of the day, I rarely use my android camera but I’m impressed with the results of this app so might start taking more. I’m currently just using the demo, the full version costs £2.99, but I think I’ll be buying that when the demo runs out. The photos feature my mum & dad, adam’s mum & dad & brother & brother’s girlfriend. I opted to stay behind the phone-camera, naturally.

1280229611865 e1280302966316 A day in York

Comfort Books

July 26, 2010 9 comments

Sometimes when I’m feeling down, angry, or have a need for familiarity, I turn to one of my comfort books. These books are ones that I can read over and over and still enjoy, they’re like family members. Generally mine fall into the category of fantasy fiction, with alternate worlds, differing dimensions, secrets & make-believe. I know I’m not the only one with books like this, we all have special books that we turn to in times of torment – or even just because they’re so damn good that they need reading again – but here is my list of comfort books.

Without a doubt the Harry Potter series has to rank pretty high. The shorter ones are especially good for rainy weekend days, best read curled up in a chair with a coffee and a sleeping kitty. Above you can see a combined effort of all the Harry Potter books that exist in this house. I started reading Harry Potter books when I was young, and I’ve re-read the series several times. The final book came out on the day I graduated from University, I was more excited about that than graduating – in fact I was gutted that I had to waste a day going up on stage in a stupid outfit when I could have been curled up at home reading Harry Potter – I finished reading it just in time to get on a plane to America, I finished it in the car on the way to the airport.

This book. I love this book. I first read this book in Florida on a family holiday, being in a car-crash of American consumerism was a great setting to read it, since then I’ve re-read it time & time again. Without a doubt Neil Gaiman is in my top 3 favourite authors, and American Gods is a masterpiece. If you’ve never read this, please, PLEASE go and take a copy out at the library. Adam first leant me his copy that came from Canada (it’s okay, they mainly spell the right way), it’s now signed by the author (we took it to a Graveyard Book signing in Manchester). I bought another copy (with the cover as above) because I have other Neil Gaiman books in the same cover artwork style. I have a thing for book covers, thus the duplication of several books on our shelves.

his dark materials 438x700 Comfort Books

I only recently (within the last few years, before the film) started reading His Dark Materials, but they placed themselves into my comfort book category almost instantly. They’re enchanting, fantastical, and an amazing escape. The mingling of scientific theory with outlandish fiction makes these books rank high for me. The lead characters are vulnerable & human, and not everything turns out with a happy ending… oh I was heartbroken. Take these books as you will, either as a set of great fiction, a commentary on religion or an envisioning of unproven theories, I’m sure you’ll still get something from them. I received some amazing hard back copies of the books for Christmas last year so I’m reading them again, and loving them again, and feeling at home again.

I’d love to know what your comfort books are, please leave a comment if you have some :)

Office

July 25, 2010 5 comments

I got a new desk for my office, the old one was WAY too big and took up so much space. I still need to put up a tonne of shelves in here, get a small set of draws so I can put my printer on them and actually have my sewing machine out, and sort out the bookcase situation (being that it’s COMPLETELY rammed with stuff).

My pin boards feature some lovely things, there’s an envelope there that my good friend Magasin/Sarah sent. It has a kitten being attacked by Godzilla on it. Also some finestimaginary designs, lady luck rules ok’s little black book, lots of lovely business cards and a wooden fox necklace prototype.

I know you love my kitten calendar & original furby.

Westminster

July 19, 2010 1 comment

Just a couple of photos from our Sunday morning in London, a lovely Spanish lady even took a photo of us. It was nice and relatively quite, apart from spectators of a 10km run (which I’ll be blogging about tomorrow). It was a windy day, though, thus my hair in the final image and my wincing face as it whipped around into my eyes.

And us, where I look small and Adam looks tall. And has a quiff.

Wahaca

July 17, 2010 4 comments

When we were organising our schedule for London, I said to Adam that I really wanted some good mexican food before we headed to see Wicked. (Huddersfield has a severe lack of Mexican food, the only Mexican eatery being over priced and cliché, they have things like duck in hoi sin sauce on their specials menu… whut?!)

Adam was straight on the case looking for a decent, reasonably priced mexican restaurant for us, preferably one where we didn’t have to book (‘cos we didn’t really know what time we’d be eating). The boy came up good when he sent me a link to the Wahaca website, http://www.wahaca.co.uk/, I’d heard about the mexican market eatery before as Katie had posted a few photos from one of her visits there, but it’d slipped my mind until Adam found it again.

Wahaca currently has two locations in the centre of London, one in Covent Garden (where we went) and one in Canary Wharf. They also have one in the Westfield Shopping Centre. We perused the online menu (a nice downloadable PDF version of the real menu, why don’t more restaurant websites have this?) and pretty much decided on the ‘Wahaca Selection’.. seemed like a great chance to sample a variety of the goodies and discover what we might want to have the next time we go.

It all worked out quite well, we ended up getting their about 4.30pmish as we wanted to have time to walk up the Mall and take a look at the Palace before heading to the show at 7.30pm. We got a table right away and both ordered margaritas, Adam went for the traditional and I got a hibiscus flavour which tasted a bit like berries. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos from Wahaca because we were travelling light before going to the show. We ordered some nachos with salsa (nice, chunky salsa fresca which came with a small bucket of nachos) and our Wahaca selection which consisted of:

3 pork pibil tacos – these are soft tacos and quite small, about 3/4 bites each. The filling is a shredded spicy pork, akin to my favourite pulled pork.
2 broad bean quesadillas – very interesting, Wahaca have a thing about using seasonal local produce in their food, and with this quesadilla I think they’ve discovered a great recipe! If you’re not familiar with Mexican food a quesadilla is a sort of sandwich made from a tortilla filled with cheese and other ingredients and then grilled or griddled until it goes all melty.
3 chicken mole tacos - soft tacos again this time filled with a mole (thick, spicy sauce) and chicken. Quite messy but very tastey!
2 black bean tostadas - have to confess I only tried half of this, I was so stuffed. A crisp tortilla topped with lovely fresh ingredients, nice, nice.
2 new potato taquitos – Another great use of a typically british ingredient, these are wrapped up tortillas filled with different things and then deep fried and topped with sour cream. I liked these, plus they weren’t too big so all the stodgy carbs weren’t too bad.
Green rice & black beans – exactly what it says on the tin, the black beans were realllllly good though!

Overall I was really impressed with the food – for the price, quickness of service & use of ingredients – I’ve seen a few not-so-good reviews floating around the net, Time Out weren’t incredibly generous with their star-rating, but then again they still gave them a decent enough review. Some of the reviews are complaining that they once bought a huge taco filled with amazing things in Mexico for about $2 but then came to Wahaca and got small ones and had to pay almost £5… c’mon, get some perspective. This is a central London Mexican restaurant where you can get a table almost instantly, have great food served quickly made from fresh, locally sourced ingredients, wash it down with a super tastey margarita & then not have a heart attack when the bill arrives. Perfect place for people visiting the city like we were, and I’m sure it’s great as a regular haunt for Londoners too.

The founder of Wahaca, Thomasina Miers, recently released a great Mexican cookbook too, Mexican Food Made Simple – my copy is on its way as we speak – which is full of basic Mexican recipes that’ll help you through out the old el paso kits. Yep.

Oh! oh! And, you get a neat little packet or chili seeds with your receipt :)

Tower Bridge

July 16, 2010 1 comment

Just a couple of photos from last Saturday when we were in London. Our hotel was a couple of minutes walk from Tower bridge & the Tower of London, I really suck at outdoor super sunny photography, really need to figure out how to do that.. hum.

These were the last photos from that day as we headed out towards our show after checking in at the hotel, but I will be writing a little about the meal we had that evening at Wahaca (amazingly nice, cheap & relaxed Mexican food).

BUST Summer Craftacular 2010

July 13, 2010 Leave a comment

Whilst in London we visited the BUST craftacular, originally I’d applied to be a vendor but didn’t get a spot, but there were lots of lovely makers that I wanted to see and people that I wanted to meet. We got their early, about 11.15, and the queues were already growing so we decided to hang-out and wait.. it meant we’d be one of the first 100 so we’d get a free goody bag each, too. It was blazing heat, though, so it was a bit shitty being stood outside for ages.

The craftacular was great though, a lovely busy vibe.. I took some photos of the crowds (er, probably should’ve taken other photos but was a bit warm/flustered so kinda forgot). We wandered around for a while and chatted with people that I’ve known online for ages but never met in real life before, so that was nice. Also had an iced tea from Leona’s Iced Tea stall (Leona is the lady behind ladyluckrulesok) which helped cool us down!

I’ll do some separate posts later this week featuring my favourite vendors from the fair, I have a few old faves and some new ones to boot.

craftacular crowds 2 700x466 BUST Summer Craftacular 2010

craftacular crowds 3 700x466 BUST Summer Craftacular 2010

craftacular crowds 4 700x466 BUST Summer Craftacular 2010

craftacular crowds 5 700x466 BUST Summer Craftacular 2010

craftacular crowds 1 700x466 BUST Summer Craftacular 2010

221b Baker Street

July 12, 2010 Leave a comment

PHEWWWW. What a whirlwind weekend we had London, barely had time to pause. I’m going to be doing a few posts on the things we did/saw, hope you don’t mind. Don’t really care if you do ‘cos it’s my blog anyway…!

First stop!

baker street 1 700x466 221b Baker Street

We arrived in London at 9.45am on Saturday (after waking up at 5.45am, walking to the train station and tripping down on a fast leaning train) and our first stop was 221b Baker Street. Unfortunately the circle line was closed all weekend, so we had to kinda get our bearings and find another tube station, we ended up walking to Tottenham Court Rd and got the tube from their to Baker Street.

baker street 2 700x466 221b Baker Street

We had a specific location in mind, and that was the living quarters of that fabulous fictional detective, Sherlock Holmes. On our walk there we also past a former residence of H. G. Wells, this was turning into quite the literary excursion!

baker street 3 438x700 221b Baker Street

We didn’t have an incredible amount of time to spend there, so we didn’t bother going into the museum part of 221b Baker Street, instead we just browsed around the shop part. The shop was full of trinkets, curios and general over-priced tourist knick-knacks. You can see them all on the website. Quite a lot of great inspiration for some projects that I’m working on at the moment, too!

baker street 4 700x466 221b Baker Street

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I also really loved Baker Street tube station, here are the tiles that adorn the walls. Amazing, I want these in my library (er.. when I build one) next to my giant fireplace (again with the ‘when’).

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This weekend…

July 9, 2010 4 comments

… We’re heading to London. We set off at 6.45am (woah.. early) tomorrow morning and plan to do some super touristy things. It’s weird, we travel the world, yet hardly ever go to our own capital city. The reason for our visit revolves around the BUST craftacular, as some fo you know, I applied to be a vendor this year but didn’t get a spot. That was kinda gutting, but we’ve planned a really nice weekend anyway, so I’m not too bothered anymore.

Saturday

After arriving we’re heading straight towards 221b Baker Street, from they’re we’ll travel across to Bethnal Green to the BUST craftacular. I know quite a few of the vendors that are going to be there so it’ll be good to meet a few of them! There’s also some FinestImaginary items for sale at the All Things Original stall. After we’ve had chance to look around the fair we’re going to head to our hotel. We booked a ‘secret hotel’ through lastminute.com which turned out to be Apex City of London (which looks super posh, even though we’ll hardly be there..!). It’s right by the Tower of London so after checking in the plan is to go and take a look there, and Tower Bridge. Then we’ll be heading back to the hotel to get ready for our late afternoon/evening shenanigans. We’re planning on eating at Wahaca before walking over to Victoria – hopefully via Buckingham palace et. al. – where we’ll be going to the Apollo Victoria to see Wicked.. omg!

Sunday

Hoping for a relatively early start! First stops will be sight-seeing places around Westminster, which I’m hoping will be quietish on a Sunday morning? Then we’ll be heading up to Regents Street & Oxford Circus for some heaving window shopping. Definitely wanting to hit Anthropologie, Liberty and the flagship Topshop. As we’ll be near two, we thought we’d try LEON for a late lunch. Has anyone been? So our train back is at 5.45pm, if we have time we might head over to Camden for a stroll.

Fun times! It’s meant to be an epic heat wave this weekend.. gah! I’m taking my 400d with a 50mm lens on (the perfect light-weight travel lens, I find). Expect some photo posts next week.