by Carla Louise | May 27, 2012 | Memories |
Ooh, I’m back. The last nine days have been utterly glorious – but I’m having issues with technology so there may not be as many photos as I’d like. (These issues would involve me having lost my phone charger & transfer lead. Oops.)
So last weekend, I headed up to London to meet the fabulous Hannah for a production of Swan Lake on Ice by the Imperial Ice Stars at the Royal Albert Hall.
The tubes were, as usual at weekends, completely useless, so I went up early and planned a bike ride through Hyde Park to get there instead. Here’s my first ever Boris bike.
The ride was fantastic – I can’t wait for my Pashley to arrive 🙂
Here’s me being a blogger and taking a sort-of outfit photo, before I got on the bike:
Last time I went to the Royal Albert Hall, I was performing. So it was bizarre in the extreme to be walking round the normal parts instead of sprinting round the underground connecting tunnels, half in and half out of my costume, panicking because a crystal had fallen off my hat/boot/face.
Here’s Hannah and I outside… (I’m on the right)
And Hannah and her lovely mum Sue, who also came with us:
We had Prezzo for lunch so I abandoned the diet (the dress was loose by then, woohoo) and had honeycomb smash cheesecake 😀
The performance was utterly brilliant, blending skating, ballet and trapeze seamlessly. I could happily have watched it for several more hours!
Then Sunday was a packing-for-holiday and chilling out kind of a day, punctuated by buying a ridiculous amount of snacks in Asda for the boat, and coming across (and yes, buying) this – butter with a free brownie tray. Why wouldn’t you?!
Most excitingly, I had a proper sense of achievement when I tried the dress on and found it was actually loose. So having completely stuffed myself for a week on the boat, I shall now be trying to maintain this weight for the next seven weeks until the wedding. 🙂
And I shall continue in a separate post for the pics I have of the boat trip 🙂
by Carla Louise | May 7, 2012 | Memories |
Just a really quick post this evening, I’ve spent the bank holiday weekend in Loughborough (where I went to uni between 2004 and 2008) with the girls I lived with there – we haven’t all been together for a ridiculously long time and yet we pinged magically back into our old ways and ease with each other… a mark of true friendship, I believe 🙂 We are muchly lucky to have each other!
Here is, L-R, Val, me and Mo…
And back in the doorway of the halls we met in, L-R Annie, me, Hols, Mo and Han.
I was nervous about going back to campus (although not of seeing the girls, obviously) and while it was lovely to see all our old haunts, I don’t feel any mad desire to go back. That was then, and this is now, and the future looks even more exciting 😀 However, we definitely need to all meet up more than once every few years, so we’ve now decided the May bank holiday will be our weekend to see each other every year, even if we don’t manage it in between times. Happy Carla.
Hope all your bank holidays were as successful and nostalgic and lovely!
xxx
by Carla Louise | Apr 1, 2012 | Photography |
Aren’t they gorgeous? 😀
by Carla Louise | Mar 24, 2012 | Creating, Food & Baking |
Focaccia ready for the oven and a somewhat experimental baked cheesecake just emerged 🙂 We are aware the focaccia looks more like a naan bread. Minor details!
by Carla Louise | Jan 23, 2012 | Uncategorized |
Watched: Neverwhere the play and Otto the puppy
Read: craft books
Listened to: my friends laughing
Ate: an absolutely stupid amount of chocolate, curry and twiglets
Drank: wine (but not from Atlantis, sadly)
It was completely gorgeous but almost completely photo-free… The only thing I do have is this rather lovely set of Otto.
Long dog is long...
srsly?! I was snoozing!
centre of attention during Articulate
with Auntie Sar (he belongs to her twin sister and her husband)
But lack of photos aside, it was wonderful to be back in Berkshire for a bit and to see everyone. Neverwhere was amazing and I’m muchly proud of Lou for putting so much love, talent and effort into the costumes. Kelly was fab as Lamia and I even found a previously unknown coincidence with a friend on Twitter with whom I share a hometown (and we’re both ex-librarians).
Back to the real world today… I was as unimpressed as Richard Mayhew.
by Carla Louise | Jan 11, 2012 | Food & Baking, Personal Development |
Ooops, I don’t appear to have done one of these since before Christmas! So, the run up to 2012 and the first couple of weeks of it… They have made me smile muchly…
Catching up with family over the festive break
Having a festive break – in my adult life I’ve never had more than four or five days off in a row due to work, and this year I had ten!
Getting unexpected Christmas presents
Celebrating New Year for the first time in a long time
Experimental cocktails with Rob’s new blender (notes: lime is good in SMALL quantities. Do not always follow the recipes to the letter. It is perfectly acceptable to mix two litres of lychee daiquiri, take it to a party and drink it all yourselves.)
Cooking from a Jamie cookbook. Several times. And succeeding!
Starting 2012 how I’d to continue it
Swapping socks with Holly
Seeing Anna on new years day 🙂
Enjoying the commute with my new toy
Dan not recognising me from behind because my hair’s so long
Amanda’s zombie app comment
Wearing floral trainers
Two of the girls who keep me sane at work going permanent
A label on a pack of ibuprofen tablets instructing me to remove all packaging before microwaving. Sure.
Catching up with Val via email
Making my resolutions/hopes/thoughts/dreams list for the year ahead
From the sublime to the mundane to the ridiculous and back again!
by Carla Louise | Jan 8, 2012 | Uncategorized |
Unexpected weekends are always the best ones, aren’t they? This one was meant to involve lunch in London and then home to tidy up and do useful things.
I’m not going to share a photo of why i should be tidying up :p
Anyway. I came down to Reading to meet Wendy, then went to Lou’s for dinner (VIA Waterstones which was almost very dangerous) with her, Paul, Kelly and Mike, then spent this morning in town with Sar and Dan, and then back to Lou’s for much, creativity and planning. Perfect.
Now on a train home, and hoping to get back and rustle up a roast while I do some washing, then maybe do a little bit of crafting this eve before bed! Currently struggling to keep my eyes open so we’ll see how that goes!
Hope you all have a gorgeous Sunday evening!
by Carla Louise | Dec 24, 2011 | Uncategorized |
being very silly with my lovely cousins 🙂
by Carla Louise | Dec 10, 2011 | Food & Baking, Photography |
Last weekend I traversed down to Reading (complete with Rusty’s vintage suitcase, pretty shoes and vintage-style party dresses) for a weekend with one of my best friends. She just happens to be behind Contrariety Rose (new site almost done! I’m working on the last bits!) and organised a vintage tea party for a few people while I was down there. It’s always wonderful to see Lou, but this was a specially exciting prospect after a fairly hideous week!
We went to a vintage fair at the Hexagon first (I bought a headscarf “for wearing in a sportscar”, said the lady at the stall. I couldn’t not buy it after that, could I?!) and Lou found this lovely little dress. Rachel found a beautiful 60s shift dress but I couldn’t get a photo 🙁
And here is Lou (first pic) and me (second pic) next to where we’d set out all the bits and pieces…
Tea party details:
Cucumber hearts and lollipop sandwiches from the Vintage Tea Party Book:
Cakes made by Lou’s partner’s mum – a Contrariety Rose cake and lovely little sparkly fairy cakes:
And the forks that made me think of the Mad Hatter’s tea party – there’s something wonderfully Alice-ish about them!
It was a fabulous afternoon, and so lovely to see all the girls – some of them I hadn’t seen since 2007, and a couple not properly since school. It was gorgeous! 😀
by Carla Louise | Nov 13, 2011 | Adventures, Collecting, Photography |
So, I had every intention of participating in the One Day On Earth project, until I realised that a) 11/11/11 was going to be super-busy, full of train travel and that the project wanted video and I very much work in photos not videos. So here, instead, is a selection of snapshots from my weekend…
This was actually on Tuesday, eating ice cream on the back of a Vespa at Joe Deluccios in Westfield Stratford City.
On the train. My handbag (the red and beige one) snapped on the way to the station, so I had to hastily repack, then ditch it without looking like a terrorist. Not easy when you go through London train and tube stations looking shifty!
I spend quite a lot of time doing this – sitting on the floor of a train, reading books. People think I’m mad for sitting on the floor, but I like being able to stretch my legs.
Twitter Mafia love on a Friday morning – love these ladies!
The reminder email that came round from lovely Kim just before the two minutes’ silence for Poppy Day.
Biscuits! Work has a delivery of biscuits and other groceries (tea, coffee etc) every month, and this is what the cupboard looks like just after delivery!
Impromptu trip to Moorgate to buy a new handbag. London is grey but has some striking buildings if you look up while walking.
Mid-afternoon Wispa. Is any day complete without chocolate?!
The emergency/accidental new handbag, to replace the one that snapped in the morning. I like it!
St Pancras station – took this on my way home after a fabulous weekend. It was utter carnage on the way in, and I was trying to sprint which is never a good idea!
And finally home again, with the awesome vintage suitcase we took to Romania. That case started off full of 80s porn magazines, went all the way to Romania on Rusty’s roof, and came home with Team Allegro on their roof. It has a lot more character now than it did when we bought it, but I’m in love and it improved the journey home enormously – I felt like a 40s starlet! (for the first couple of hours, anyway – six hours later I just wanted to be back home, lol). The wheelie case under it was bought for Poland and also came on the rally with us – my luggage is well travelled 🙂
by Carla Louise | Sep 29, 2011 | Adventures, Photography |
(edit: just realised I’ve forgotten the cocktail pic… will add this weekend! Bad squishy…)
Wow, it’s been a busy few weeks! Any notion I had of life calming down when I returned from the rally and ‘settled down’ to real life again has been firmly squashed, if anything it’s got even busier!
Haven’t even had time to draft a Happy Thursdays post, but instead I thought I’d post a few photos of the rally as a) they’re nowhere else on the internet yet (this is because there are 2101 of them and I have no idea where to start editing that number down to put online. They’d also cost me over £100 to print), and b) it made me the happiest I’ve ever been. Ever 🙂 I clearly have some adventure in my heart!
So… (warning, this doesn’t really even start to cover everything we did, but should give a glimpse.) Don’t forget full write up (well, of the rally – I’m still faffing with the two extra days) is at rustymclusty.wordpress.com 🙂
The P-reg Laguna we bought, after a weekend of Nitro-Mors on the bonnet. See how pretty she was… but I think we made her prettier 😛
Trusty Rusty McLusty (ok, that was terrible, but she was very trusty) in my aunt & uncle’s field:
Rusty & Allegro in Germany, camped near the Nurburgring:
The view we woke to in Switzerland (the coldest night of my entire life, I swear):
View from Rusty’s rear window in the Swiss mountains:
Some proper extreme ironing, not far from Stelvio pass:
Popping to Italy for lunch:
Trying to fix Rat Patrol’s car in Budapest:
Me on Rusty’s bonnet at the Romanian border:
A bunch of us parked at the Romanian border:
Scaring the bloke in the petrol station – I think he thought we were about to hijack him!
Some shots of us driving, just to prove we did:
Group shot in Sibiu, somewhere around 2am:
DONKEY! On the Transfaragasan Highway (as seen on Top Gear – the road, not the donkey):
Group shot at the foot of the south side of the Transfaragasan, left to right me, Andy (Rat Patrol), Graham (Rat Patrol), Rob (Rusty McLusty), Craig (Allegro), Jenny (Allegro), Pete (Allegro):
This was a single vodka and coke in Brasov, celebrating the end of the rally. I dread to think what a double looks like!
Me at the top of Brasov, breathtaking view but I did not like being that close to the edge!
Rob and I on the very last day at Peles Castle in Sinaia:
Yeah… there’s so much more I should put into this post but I don’t want to crash anyone’s computer or bore anyone out of reading my blog 😛 Will link to Flickr album when I’ve evntually got them all up there in some kind of order. But you get the idea. Best nine days of my entire life 🙂
by Carla Louise | Aug 18, 2011 | Adventures, Collecting |
Despite the rain and the dreariness of being back at work after nine days off, I have found some happy things this week…
- The rally car has a name and is beginning to take on a personality 🙂 Rusty McLusty has very nearly no paint on her bonnet, a roof full of random stuff and a shed load of stickers to be applied.
- Finding Breyers at a car boot sale for the first time EVER – I haven’t bought any model horses for a couple of years, and these were just waiting for me to take them home. I’m not sure Rob was that impressed… but the little girls I bought them from seemed pleased!
- Bristle-and-nylon hairbrushes like this one – I now own two and they’ve changed my life and my hair drastically for the better.
- Lie-ins – I went out for dinner with work people last night, and stayed at my ex-housemate’s new flat in Marylebone. Which is close enough to work that I was able to get up at HALF PAST SEVEN this morning and still be at work just about on time. (As opposed to my usual 5.30am alarm followed by staggering out of bed at 6am and running around like a headless chicken).
- Getting locked out of Julia’s flat and sitting on her stairs having the most random conversations while we waited to be rescued by her housemate
- Living on my own. I miss Jules, but it really is lovely having all this space to myself, and when I came home on Sunday night and let myself in, it really felt like home 🙂
- Jess’s skates have arrived! Which means we can go skating in Hyde Park next Tuesday… assuming the weather picks up and becomes more like actual summer.
I promise I’ll kick myself into gear and do more posts with photos soon – I have loads drafted of stuff I want to share but haven’t been able to get the photos sorted (either haven’t been able to take them in daylight, or have them but have had no time to edit them!)
Hope your weeks have been as full of happy things 🙂
Most excitingly, I had a proper sense of achievement when I tried the dress on and found it was actually loose. So having completely stuffed myself for a week on the boat, I shall now be trying to maintain this weight for the next seven weeks until the wedding. 🙂 
