Friday 29 June 2012

Amy Turns 21

A couple of weekends ago I went to the 21st birthday of a very old friend of mine, Amy. We met in Year 7 and have been bessies since so it was such a lovely occasion to meet all of her new friends from university, see all of my home friends and her lovely family, including her brothers and sisters who have very suddenly grown up!!

It was hosted at her house with lots of drinks on the patio, a hell of a lot of bunting and some truly delicious food!

Amy's sister, Verity, took lots of lovely pictures so I have borrowed her photography to show you the party. It was lovely to catch up with everyone and everyone there looked so smart and pretty! Anyway here's a few pics from the night!


{The very busy patio with a huge gazebo to save us from the weather}


{Alex went for a very Bruno Mars look!}


{Bunting!}


{Amy's Dad, I kind you not his name is Paul Weller, gave a lovely speech about his OMG baby}


{The cake with a few fireworks on top!}


{Look at this beautiful cake!}


{Checkered chocolate and vanilla sponge, delish!}


{Gorgeous fancy cupcakes}


{Amazing salads from Basil, unfortunately I can't find any pics of the lamb Paul cooked but it was incredible!}


{Fred with his teeny tiny bow tie}


{All of the girls looking beautiful}


{Very sophisticated, Amy and Emi}

It was a lovely night and so nice to see everyone again! Hope everyone has a lovely weekend, I'll be watching the Wimbledon and preparing things for my birthday party which is very soon so next week will be a week of posts about my party preparations! Spoiler alert for my friends attending!! See you Monday!

Thursday 28 June 2012

Trinity College May Ball 2012

Last Monday I went to the Cambridge University Trinity College May Ball (in June!), it is pretty much one of my favourite events, I went last year and it was an amazing night.

I was lucky enough to be invited again so we trotted off to Cambridge and got ourselves ready for the ball. I had a cute ballerina dress prepared but the night before I was told it has to be at least knee length, I don't actually own ANYTHING knee length apart from my last year's dress so I told myself 'if Kate Middleton can reuse her outfits, anyone can!'

Whilst getting ready we listened to a few tunes and I kid you not, the boys took at least half an hour to do their bow ties! Who knew boys could take longer than girls to get ready for events?!


{Geoff and Angie}


{Me and James}

As soon as we got in we grabbed a glass of champagne and a cute little cup of game sausage and amazing mash! This is where the fireworks happen later at night and the crowds of public were already flooding onto the punting river to watch the fireworks as well.


{The first of many glasses!}


{Gorgeous decorations around the champagne hall}


{Punting boats}

Then we scrambled over to the oyster tables, this was a pretty serious run for them so I didn't manage a pic but it was a huge table of fresh, delicious oysters. I accidentally put too much tabasco on one and my mouth was on fire!!

We moved onto the main area which consists of lots of themed tents with different food and drink bars. The first was a sushi bar with wines and beers, then the cocktail tent with jazz dancing. A chill out tent with tea and fairy cakes, littered with sofas for those spinning heads, and right at the end the glorious hog roast which I couldn't help but run to! A delicious bun full of pulled pork, stuffing and apple sauce, I even managed to persuade the waiter to sneak in some crackling for me!

Scattered around the tents was a fairground with Bumpers, coconut shy (which I actually won at 4am thanks to too much champagne I think!) and a candy floss stand. We ran over to the gin bar and got ourselves some G&Ts before going to the main lawn again for the fireworks.


{Blurry fireworks}

The fireworks are possibly one of the best parts of the evening, they're actually incredible and last at least 20 minutes, thats a lot of oohs and aahs! They co-ordinate the fireworks to music and, being Cambridge, a lot of it was classical. However, they did put a few minutes to LMFAO 'Sexy and I Know it', standard fireworks music.

After a few more drinks we went over to watch Pixie Lott do her set. She really is good, her voice was fab and she even did a little Motown mix too. I actually forgot how many songs I know of hers so was singing along alone standing next to everyone else!



However, once this was done it was straight over to the dance tent because I had found out the BOULLE was there! Made in Chelsea's Francis Boulle was Djing so we went for a boogie to a few of his songs.


{He had a very cute dance moves for when the song changes}


{I was near him!}

The night all went so quickly, we danced and drank a hell of a lot of champagne and cocktails!


But before the night ended we went to go and see my 90's idols the VENGABOYS! 


{They admitted themselves that they were trashy, cheesy, Britpop}

Once the Vengaboys had finished, it was amazing by the way and totally brought me back to 90's school discos, we went over to finish off the cocktail bar before we needed to leave. Last year we managed to get the barmen to make us their own cocktail with all of the alcohol left in the bar and they were named 'idiots' because you had to be an idiot to drink them!

We went over and decided to order the same when we discovered some guys ordering the exact same thing, we had found our old idiot buddies! Once we had thought we'd drunk the bar dry we went over for our survivors photo at 5am. We had a little choir to sing us through our drunkenness and then the photo was taken with everyone's arms up in the air.


{A busy lawn for the survivors photo}


{Cambridge's answer the the Dalton Warblers}


{Photographer on a crane}


{We survived!}

It was such an incredible night and I don't think I've quite done it justice from this blog. There's so much to do that you simply can't do it all, if you can ever get a ticket it's a must go.

However, my advice would be to find a place to stay after the ball, we ended up having to go back to London at 6am with our ball dresses and tuxes still on, the commuter tube was particularly embarrassing! Oh and you will feel horrendous once the hangover kicks in the next evening, Byron was our hangover restaurant of choice! Overall an unforgettable night!

Wednesday 27 June 2012

Pinterest Revisited

So I'm going to take a quick pause from the week's worth of events (mainly because I haven't managed to do them yet) to show you a few of my new Pinterest favourites. I'd recently become very bored of the website, always featuring healthy recipes, ways to stay fit and handy tips on how to make your own washing up liquid. Things that don't really interest me a hell of a lot.

However, I've been following a few blogs and other people on Pinterest which sparked my liking for the website again. If you want to follow me and see who else I'm following then I'm here!


{It must come soon!}


{A little sequin is always appropriate}


{Summer reading swing}


{Vintage Waves}


{Love your freckles}


{There's always just something about typewriters}


{A dash of sparkle}


{Travelling}


{Mini margaritas}


{Beach day with friends = perfect}


{My obsession with macarons is getting worse!}


{Gorgeous camera scarf straps}


{Cute idea for boring champagne flutes}


{I love this simple but smart outfit}


{Chanel}

Tomorrow I promise you I will tell you all about the Cambridge University May Ball, it's going to be another long one!

Hackney Weekend

I know I haven't done any posts on the exciting things I did last week so this week I shall tell you all! However I'm going to do it all in backwards order so first is BBC Radio 1's Hackney Weekend which I went to on Saturday. This is a long post so get a brew maybe and have a little snuggle down with your laptop.

My Mum managed to sit on her iPad all morning to secure the tickets, only to find out me and my sister had got different days and they were only single tickets so long story short I ended up going along with a uni friend, Charlotte.


{Big old queues to get in}


{Bunting!}


{Gorgeous flags}


{The site looked so lovely}


{Huge Hackney sign attracted a lot of attention}


{Charlotte ready for the day}


{Me posing terribly}


{Charlotte under the bridge}


The day was absolutely amazing! We organised everyone we wanted to see into a little schedule so no artist was missed and boy did we see a lot of artists! Also all of the pics were taken on my phone so I apologise for the terrible quality! Because there are so many I have even decided to number them, so here goes: 

1. Tim Westwood DJ Set - this was a great entrance to the festival, we had a little boogie to some more 1xtra music but was good to get everyone going. 



{Westwood in the HOUSE}


{Pimp my Burger right next door}

2. Deadmau5 - He was amazing, the music was really good with a lot of dancing about but probably the best bit was the visuals. His huge mouse mask had a screen on the front which played graphics of different faces. He also had screens on his platform, to the side and behind which played amazing graphics including Deadmau5 computer games with a cheeky bit of Mario.


{Huge mouse mask}


{Dance tent decor}


{Very blurry pic of the cool screens on stage}

3. Rita Ora - She was absolutely brilliant, she really got everyone going and her voice is incredible. Everyone went crazy at 'Hot Right Now' which was so much fun


{Another blurry picture of the stage}


{She has truly gorgeous hair}

4. Annie Mac - this is one of the highlights of the day for me, she is a really brilliant DJ and knew exactly what songs people wanted to listen to for longer. Despite it being 2 in the afternoon I felt like I was in a brilliant club having a good old boogie, I'd love to see her on a club night!


{Packed tent for Annie}


{She is one cool lady}

4. Rizzle Kicks - They were so much fun, they have loads of energy so really got people dancing despite the temperamental rain. Even though I didn't recognise all of their songs they were  a really good act to see, also their Mama Do the Hump dance moves with their Mum were pretty impressive!


{Rizzle Rizzle}


{This one was definitely the cutest}


{Running around the stage}

5. Delilah - I love Delilah, she is beautiful and her voice is gorgeous, end of. Honestly if you could see her now while her tickets are slightly cheaper as she's only going to get bigger!


{She had an amazing outfit of high waisted denim shorts and leopard print boob tube with a leather jacket, ahh I love her!}


{Her eyebrows were HUGE}

 6. Example - We didn't see his whole set but I wasn't massively impressed with what I did see, he didn't have much of a stage presence and even though I knew the songs I didn't feel like dancing about to it, which is rare for me!


{You could guess who it was a mile off}


{He got us to do piano fingers too}

7. Rudimental - They had a few singers on the stage for a while playing some jazz music with a little beat to it which was really interesting but as soon as the music came in for 'Feel the Love' the tent went mad, I may have shouted out the lyrics rather loudly but the atmosphere was amazing, hopefully they'll release more music like this soon!


{They had some rabbit drummers at the beginning}


{Lovely singers on a packed stage}

8. Ed Sheeran - He was an interesting one for me. I used to love Ed before his album came out but when + did come out I was horrendously disappointed with all of the radio edit changes to his cool rap style in his songs. He's incredibly talented as he simply sang with his guitar and a loop pedal but in a 45 minute set he played 4 songs. He was so concerned with audience participation that he missed so many songs which he could have done. However I think I'm just being a scrooge as everyone, including Charlotte (who's obsessed), seemed to love the performance.


{All alone on the stage}


{He is very cute!}

9. Nicki Minaj - To be fair, she really was brilliant despite not singing a lot of the songs. She did do her rap bits which was good and her stage show was really interesting. I also forgot how many songs she's done with other people so that was a nice surprise to recognise more songs than I thought I would!


{Church themed stage}


{The original Barbie}

10. Calvin Harris - we only caught a little bit of his set but Example popped on stage to sing along which was fun, I think he's a really great DJ. We enjoyed his DJ set and had a good old boogie!


{Lots of lights}


{He's surprisingly good looking}

11. FloRida - this was pretty funny, he has so many hits it's ridiculous and he came out with the typical swagger of an American rapper. Although, again, he didn't do a lot of singing or rapping in his songs, we had a good time and it really got us into the dancing mood for the evening coming.


{He had a huge bling microphone on him}

12. Swedish House Mafia - Another highlight for me, the tent was packed and the set was just incredible. The music was truly amazing and we danced the whole night away! Whenever the music went really big and bassy they had FIREWORKS! What could be better than fireworks and amazing music in a tent of dancing people, it was such a good set and well worth a look if you can get tickets to their tour!


{Three incredible DJs all in one}


{Absolutely packed tent}

13. Jay-Z (featuring Rihanna, M.I.A AND Kanye West) - this was one of the most amazing performances I think I've ever seen. He started with Rihanna coming out singing 'Run This Town' which got the whole crowd going mad! Then he sang a lot of his old classics including a countup to '99 Problems'. Suddenly M.I.A came out to sing her two hits, I'd completely forgotten she was on the RockNation label so she was a brilliant surprise. He left the stage and suddenly a huge American flag fell from the stage and a black shadow appeared in front of it. The hood was lowered to reveal Kanye West! Needless to say we went mad and they sang all of their hits from Watch the Throne. The last song they sang was Paris and they played it at least 2 times so we all danced about, jumping all around. What an incredible performance, I couldn't get over how lucky we were to experience it!

\

{Rihanna with an interesting Wheetos Scientist look}


{Jay-Z}


{Huge stage}


{M.I.A and her chain}


{American Flag backdrop for Watch the Throne}


{Kanye and Jay-Z, that shit CRAY}

The day was just amazing for a £2.50 booking fee! We also had some yummy Mexican burritos and nachos and amazing fish and chips for dinner, money well spent! Highlights were definitely Jay-Z's performance, Swedish House Mafia, Annie Mac, Delilah and Rudimental, but everything was just amazing! Thank you Radio 1 and Mummy Springett for getting me the tickets!!