Another amazing weekend in London behind me! Meeting up with my closest friends is always such a joy, I've known these people for so long that I know that I can just be myself without being judged or mocked. It's a safe feeling, you know?

It's safe to say that my Juice Plus plan was pretty much out the window for 90% of the time. :D I figured that I'll allow myself to just enjoy the weekend, have whatever I wanted and just get back on track once I got home. There's so little point depriving myself of all the goodies when something like this happens, it's just easier to let go a little bit and have fun.

Our Friday evening meet-up point was the wonderful Green Man Inn / Juicy Bastard Burger Kitchen at Edgware Road. It's been my favourite place to eat for years now, their burgers are just way too delicious to skip! You have no idea how nice it was to tuck into one of their delicious burgers after not eating much all day and running around in London for ages right after work!


Saturday is always our traditional double BBQ day. We all head out to Tesco to buy food and drink, help our wonderful BBQ master with all the prep and just chill in the sun! We always seem to get the incredible weather for these weekends, it's been really miserable for a good month now so a bit of sunshine was so welcome. I actually tanned a little bit!

One of my friends made this amazing bowl of salad for the meal, I think I actually inhaled a good half of the bowl just by myself... :D It had cucumber, red onion, tomatoes, feta, pine nuts, oregano, olive oil and salt & pepper in it. It'll probably be my go-to salad at home from now on, really simple to make and just tastes so delicious!

And I was actually quite sensible with the BBQ food! I had some chilli-mango chicken, new potatoes and loads of the salad.


And just because sitting still all day in the sun can get very exhausting, we booked a booth at a local karaoke bar to split the day up a bit. ;) We did karaoke a few years ago for my birthday and we all enjoyed it so much that we rebooked at the same place and it was just as brilliant as I remembered! It was so much fun, we picked some really cheesy songs and then personal favourites, it's actually our tradition to listen to Blame It on the Boogie every single meetup and now it's on our karaoke list as well! :D Five year tradition going strong, hah!

Our second round of BBQ was just as glorious as the first, only difference being that it was getting so dark outside that we had to improvise with our lighting.. :D We all just turned on the torches on our phones and put empty beer bottles on top, the result was actually really pretty! A potential DIY project for when I have a place with a garden.



Sunday is always Oxo Tower day. Very pricy cocktails, amazing view of London and the best company in the world is the perfect way to end a weekend. :) At £13 per cocktail I really should've stuck to one, but the curiosity in me took over and actually had three... :D Good old mojito, a Mad Hatter and a Singapore Sling. The last one was actually really yummy, couldn't really taste the alcohol in it so I kinda drank it waaay too quickly!




Since coming home I've actually been trying to recover from tendonitis in my ankles. Again. Thankfully it hasn't gotten as bad as it was last year, where I actually had to take a week off work and load myself with strong painkillers. Luckily I can sit down at work when I feel like it now so I'm not even giving it a chance to get too bad.

This is such a horrible timing, though. I ordered myself a six week PT plan a week ago but not been able to start it now because of my ankles. Hopefully by the weekend I'll be recovered enough to start, the folder just keeps staring at me on the desk every day!

Well this has been one busy week! My brother left about 40 minutes ago, and I've got a bit of time to go over the week before I have to crack on with my course work (final deadline on Thursday, eek!). :)

The amount of little gifts my brother brought with him was so adorable, made me a bit homesick for a brief moment there! Two Moomin mugs, some wooden utensils, sweets and chocolate and a very cute brush to wash veg!


It's been so nice to have family around for an entire week. I really don't get to see my close family a lot as the distance (and price tag) is just too much for regular visits, so I make the most out of it when I get to see the people I love and care about.

I wanted to let my brother decide on a lot of the stuff we did, so we did some shopping (or tried to, the high street shops sell awful clothes.. :p), saw Edge of Tomorrow and went to London! Our London day was filled with Natural History and Science museum + food! I didn't have to think long when trying to pick a place to eat, The Green Man is the pub to go to whenever I'm in London! Instead of going for a beef burger, both me and my brother picked the vegetarian version this time. The patty was made of mashed sweet potato and red chilli, that and the blend of spices made the burger one of the best I've ever eaten! With incredible flavour and affordable prices, The Green Man is very hard to top. :)


Usually on a holiday I tend to eat absolutely crap, but with my brother being quite into staying fit (he runs) and eating healthy, I felt far more motivated to pick the healthier options all week. It's all about the support of loved ones when losing weight, eh? :) We also did TONS of walking and my step count averaged around 13k all week, with Friday topping it with 24k!

Friday really was the absolute highlight of the entire week! I've never been to a festival before and I was so excited about it! It was quite a long trip to Donington Park, and arriving to East Midlands Parkway station was quite a bizarre experience. As we pulled up to the platform all we could see were these MASSIVE power plant cooling towers! Not exactly something you see right next to train stations now is it? :D



Coming from a small town, seeing so many people in one place was a very odd experience at first! Just trying to find our way through the crowds between stages was a task and a half, and we didn't even try to get close to the stage when we were listening to the bands. We quite happily just stayed behind the masses of people, also saved our ears that way. ;)

Out of all the bands we got the chance to listen, Powerman 5000 and The Offspring were by far my favourites. I've been a massive fan of PM5K since I was about 14, and I've been just as fond of Offspring from around that age too. Just seeing two incredible bands live on the same day made me so happy and grateful, it's not something I get to do a lot! Download had an incredible lineup this year, just a shame all the bands I love were scattered on different days. Maybe I'll go for the entire weekend next year if the lineup is just as amazing!





And it's not a good festival unless you get a shirt to remind you about it! Unfortunately the girl's tee was absolutely awful so went for the smallest guys shirt they had - and it's not bad! Quite a loose fit but oh well, at least I've got a shirt!



I bought a cute widget for my phone called Snap Remote (or Selfie Remote) as well this week, and I finally got the chance to test it out! It's a really handy little thing and I actually went a bit mad with it, my camera's pic gallery was full of silly snaps of me fooling around (as you can see in the bottom two pictures haha!). I will cover this cute little remote in a separate post when I have time for it - time to be productive and actually do some course work!

I officially started my Christmas holiday on Friday (from uni, I'm working all the way through the holidays). And what a way to start it as well! I met up with a very dear friend in London and it was such a brilliant day. The first thing we did was head out for lunch, and I took him to the Juicy Bastard Burger Kitchen run by The Green Man Inn (I went there in October). And I'm pretty happy to say that it was just as delicious as I remembered. It was really busy this time, the pub was filled with workmen and footie parties and at times I could barely hear my friend talking!

There was one thing I noticed though. I actually struggled to finish my burger this time! I've reduced my portion sizes a lot since October so my stomach must've shrunk a bit, but I really didn't want to leave this deliciousness on the plate.


We headed over to Westfields after lunch and oh my god how busy it was! I mean yeah it's the week before Christmas so people are getting their shopping out of the way, but it still amazes me how people just seem to leave it to the last minute every single year.

After wandering around for a while we actually found a shop called The Christmas Cracker Shop. It literally sold what it says on the tin! It was just incredible, we actually found some crackers that cost £100 (and the majority were well over £30). We really wondered who on earth buys that stuff, if I bought crackers worth that much I wouldn't even want to open them!!

The shop was full of fun little knick knacks and accessories too, such as these funky sunglasses! :D Not quite my style, but they were so sparkly and glittery and cute haha! They had some very cool masquerade style masks as well, I was quite tempted to buy one but it was covered in glitter so decided to pass. I've got nothing but bad experiences with glittery clothes and accessories, people can tell where you've been that day because the glitter just rubs off on everything.


Westfield had one amazing thing though - their Christmas lights! They made the supporting beams look like trees and oh my god it was stunning! I can only imagine what it looks like when it's dark. And you can also see an ice rink down there, I really wanted to go skating but my friend wussied out. ;p


Since Friday the weather has truely been quite nasty - strong winds and heavy rain has made it not so pleasant to be outdoors! I dislike rain as I'm rarely fully prepared for it, but it doesn't stop me from going places if I need to. I must say that walking to work in nothing but pumps was rather interesting on Saturday, as my feet got completely soaking wet! I spent my lunch break sitting by a radiator, trying to dry up and keep warm so I don't get ill.

It's getting quite hectic at work now because of Christmas and I find myself running up and down the shop most of the day. It definitely counts as exercise in my books haha! I do enjoy it a lot, it's nice to be the friendly and happy face at the shop and help people make their shopping a bit easier. And as a result I am completely exhausted in the evenings when I get home, I haven't had the energy to do anything in the evenings! I've just curled up with my book lately and have early nights all weekend. 




I decided to defy the elements this morning before work and went for a run. Thankfully the rain wasn't too bad in the morning so I didn't get too wet this time! It did definitely make me go a bit quicker though, I didn't want to get caught by the rain like I did last time I ventured out for a walk in iffy weather.

I'm really looking forward to the day when I can run the entire distance without having to slow down to rest my muscles and catch my breath. I think I can manage about a third to half of the way now, I split the distance into little chunks of running (walk for one song, run for one and so on) so I don't absolutely kill myself. I want to be careful with the amount of stress I put on my body right now, as I'm still only a beginner with running and too much could hurt my back or ankles.

Slowly but surely as they say. :)

I was meant to post yesterday but eh, too lazy!

You may also have noticed that I never posted my weigh in either. I did it on Friday morning for obvious reasons, it was a 100g gain but not overly worried about something like that. :p Having a weigh in a few days early is always a bit iffy, but I rather do it before a weekend away than after.. :D I haven't even checked the damage from the weekend, but I think I'm just going to focus on burning it all off.


We stayed in Harrow pretty much the entire weekend (apart from a bit of shopping in London on Sunday). We all arrived quite late so the first thing we all wanted to do was eat something. A few of us gathered up at a pub and the first thing I was given was a double vodka lemonade, which wasn't the best idea seeing I hadn't eaten a thing since 11am that morning. :D Should've bought a snack before I got on the train, but oh well.

We were going to go for curry / Chinese food, but then bumped into this amazing Mediterranean restaurant called Lazeza. They had a huge range of different dishes; salads, steak, mixed grills, pasta, pizza... I'm so obsessed with pesto lately that I went for a yummy chicken pesto pasta, very delicious and proud of myself for not going for the burger (on my friend's plate on the right in the pic!) straight away.


We had some time to kill on Saturday morning as we were waiting for some people to arrive. We had the option of either going to London to do all sorts of touristy stuff there or stay in Harrow to have a look at the old town bit on Harrow's hill. And well, staying away from the huge masses of people sounded like a brilliant idea so we went for the old town. We were warned about a hill but oh my god, that was one hell of a hill! Took us a good 10 minutes just to walk all the way up, but it was definitely worth the climb. The place was absolutely stunning and couldn't ask for a better view of the city! We did trespass on private property for a bit to get a good picture of London but oh well, I was more than happy to get told off to get this picture. :D

My friend was really into the thought of walking through the old graveyard as we started going down the hill again. It was really pretty in all fairness, my photographer instincts started ticking away and I could've pretty happily spent hours in there, just looking for things to photograph. Old gravestones, moss, vines... You could get some really cool material in there.


In a way the lives of me and my friend revolve around coffee. We had a little gap between us coming down from the hill and my other half arriving to London so our instant thought seemed to be "Costa!" .. :D It was such a warm day that I was kinda leaning towards something cold this time instead of a hot cup of coffee, so decided to try this mango & passionfruit cooler they have. It was like.. blitzed fruit in a cup. Very sweet, really yummy and gave me a brain freeze..


As Lazeza was such an amazing place, we didn't need to think long about where to have lunch on Saturday. I struggled a bit this time as I didn't want to have pasta again and nothing really shouted out to me as such, in the end I went for a simple chicken pizza. Not the healthiest thing I could've had but oh well. And I got pressured into having cake as well, hah! I mean sure it was my birthday weekend and I was going to have some kind of cake, but why oh why do they always have chocolate fudge cake on the menus?! Chocolate is my doom, seriously. The cake was incredible but I just kept thinking "oh god this must have over 800 calories...". Sometimes it would be nice to be able to switch off from the losing weight mentality so I could really enjoy good food.


Saturday night was the 'big party night', and time for us girls to dress up! I've got to admit, I felt really self conscious all night. I've just never worn a skin tight dress, I was stressing out over it at our hotel but as I didn't exactly have a backup plan I just had to suck it up and go for it. A few drinks later I did just stop caring though!

It was an evening full of karaoke, food, drinks and generally spending time with some of my dearest friends. It really was just nice to get away from my usual life, just stop worrying about uni and work for a change and just relax!


Oh and I must recommend a pub in London, it's called The Green Man inn @ Edgware Road. Their Juicy Bastard Burger Kitchen makes by far the best burger I have ever eaten! I definitely want to go there again, the portion was perfect and didn't make me feel like I was in a food coma afterwards. Everyone else around the table agreed about it, I have a feeling we will be going there again!


As much as I do love London and spending time with my friends, I was really glad to be heading home on Sunday night. I was just so shattered, this kind of stuff just drains you. It was definitely a good weekend though, thank you all for coming. <3 Can't wait to see these guys again.