YO! Sushi and Cocktails - Classy Girls!

Something that the three of us in our house absolutely love is sushi. So to get our sushi fix we head out to YO! Sushi in Notts. Unfortunately Sophie couldn't join us, she was learning how to salsa, but Hannah and I were so game for Blue Mondays. It's a great discount day where many of the plates on the menu are put to the cheapest price, which are the dishes which come on blue plates priced at £2.50 each. They also offer a 25% student discount for other days of the week, but we haven't tried that. I mean, what better way to cheer up a Monday with a conveyor belt of sushi?

YO! Sushi

Katie's Actual Birthday at Hudson's, Putney

So on Katie's actual birthday we got up and had cake for breakfast. Yum yum yum. I told you there was a lot of cake! Mum, Dad and Nanna met us at Katie's flat and she eventually made up her mind as to where she wanted to go for lunch, and decided on somewhere she said she runs past a lot (marathon in training, again!) in Putney, called Hudson's.

Clearly it was popular as when we got there 'sans réservation' they told us to come back in half an hour, so we had a drink (alcoholic and not) at the pub down the road. We went back to Hudson's and basked in all its Halloween decorated glory. Our favourite decoration had to be the bat attached to the fan on the ceiling. Hello bat flying around the ceiling in circles!

Fly little bat!!

Katie's Birthday in Clapham

So, last weekend my big sister added another year to her age (but she's not that old ... yet!) so I headed home for the weekend. (And I took my laptop, which is now fixed, yay, so expect some more blogs if I'm not too busy planning my life for when I graduate!). I managed to find a sneaky fast train home, so was back half an hour faster than normal and enjoyed a lovely evening with my family. Even if it did involve me claiming that Katie's birthday present was the lift I gave her at 2am so she didn't have to drive.

On Saturday, we spent some time in Berkhamsted in the morning, I went to see my friends at the computer shop - "Oh yes, it's you with the pink computer!" - and we stopped at the King's Arms for a warming drink, and some cake. Hot chocolates, coffees, carrot cake and coffee and walnut cake.

Lots of cake, coffe and chocolate

Heat Up With Hot Chocolate

As the weather gets colder and I want to warm myself up, I have been indulging in hot chocolate a little too often... To try and cut the habit of trips to the on-campus Starbucks and Costa which are just there to tempt me, even when I do take the cheap option that costs £1 from the university cafés, the best thing for me to do is bring my own. I use my pink Contigo travel mug which keeps my drink hot all day long (though it definitely doesn't last the duration of the day... Who can drink hot chocolate that slowly?!).

The only issue is, instant hot chocolate is no way near as exciting as all those syrups that you can add in the coffee shops, but I have found some ways to mix it up a bit and have some fun. My weapon of choice is Galaxy hot chocolate, though I won't say no to Cadbury's either.

Handbags and Gladrags!

I always have my eye on handbags, but once I get a new one I will stick with it for a while and rarely swap around the bag I use - I can never be bothered to swap everything across from one to another, and if I have that bag, it's because I like it and want to use it.

But I can't be stopped from eyeing up what's on offer... Even if the ones I like do seem to follow a set trend in size... shape... and colour!

A Weekly Catch Up

I had a feeling that when uni came back around I might find myself struggling with keeping up the blog - I like to make time for it within all the work but I'm afraid my life at uni as a fourth and final year just isn't quite as exciting as it once was!

I'm back in lectures and classes at full force now, with plenty of work to keep me occupied - last Saturday's tapas night seems like a distant memory... So along with work, work, work, I had a grammar test for French; luckily it was just diagnostic, so I decided to wing it sans-revision to see exactly where I'm at after a year... translating set sentences is harder than just saying what you want to in French.

Working Hard

Saddle Up and Heels Down in Riding Boots

I spend most of my time wearing boots. I swap directly between summer and flip flops, to winter and boots. I don't really do in between unless I want to smarten up, and even then manage to get blisters after spending half a year looking to replace my flats which inevitably fall apart and leave me struggling to find a pair that my feet look good in!

Unfortunately, too much boot wearing has killed my boots. I still live in Uggs, both pairs have lasted me for ages, but my other boots aren't so lucky, so now I want to replace my riding style boots - I say 'style' because to me riding boots me Dublin and Ariat and go hand in hand with mucking out.

I really like these choices, though should maybe also pay attention to some of the price tags. A student can dream surely..?

Tasty Tapas - Our Spanish Saturday Night In

Partying clearly doesn't really happen in our house! We had a sociable Saturday night in with girls from our course, and as three out of the five of us (not me) study Spanish, what better way than a tapas night? We decided we would put together a dish per person, so we each had something to make/bring.

We checked out Hannah's 'Little Tapas Book' for some ideas, and decided on patatas bravas (potatoes) and a tortilla (Spanish omelette) with aioli/allioli/garlic mayonnaise/whatever you fancy calling it. We also had garlic prawns, chorizo, queso manchego and some lovely bread. We didn't need anything else!

Warm Winter Coats

So I realised I have had the same two winter coats since lower 6th form, when I was 17.... I think it's time to refresh them up a bit! The reason I have had them so long though is because I can just never find one that is quite right, there's always something wrong with them.

I like to have choices in coats as well, I have my smart coat which buttons up and ties at the front with a big collar, and I have a quilted jacket which I think is actually a riding jacket (I got it before they were all over the high street) and it seems to have lost its padding and is now too big for me, but this is my more casual coat. Paired with my Hunters and a golfing umbrella I look very country at the side of a rugby pitch!

I have been out scouring the web for some choices, and think I may have to go and start trying on before it gets too cold and I give up trying to replace my coat for another year running.

That Friday Feeling

So I've now been back in Nottingham for two weeks, and it has been exhausting. There has been so much to get my head around and people to see, things to do and classes to attend, and now I have a long list of work to get done (hence last week I made the most of not having any work to do!).

Everybody I spoke to seemed to be heading out to Ocean to dance the night away, the queue at the SU office to collect tickets was pretty long, so I think most of the uni must have been headed for. But we didn't want that in our house... after two long weeks getting ourselves back in to the flow of things, plus I had a surprise 'diagnostic' translation from French thrown at me in my last class of the day, all the three of us wanted to do was have a nice evening in. (But who knew a trip to Sainsbury's could take so long? Hannah and I were in there for way more than an hour... oops.)

My view during dinner

New York - Being Tourists at Last!

Whoopsy daisy, my blog hasn't had much love in the past week. What with being back at university, lectures properly starting this week, people to see and getting back on the trampolining bandwagon, I haven't really had the time to talk about what else happened in New York after Shake Shack.

We spent our Sunday getting all the touristy things done - so that we had Monday left for some last minute eating and shopping before jetting back to Heathrow from JFK. (Where I must add, we were greeted by a freezing Tuesday morning.)

Caramel Apple Spice Starbucks