Very lazy weekend

After the craziness of Christmas, I decided to have a very lazy weekend this week and avoid London completely. Post-Christmas sales and London make for a very bad combination. Instead, I stuck with lots of reading, coffee, food and online shopping. A perfect weekend and the ideal preparation for the upcoming New Year's celebrations.

My weekend reading 

Muah,


Roo xx

Christmas fun

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas! Mine was very lovely indeed and relatively stress-free which made for a wonderful change! Our celebrations started on Christmas Eve –which is a tradition in our family – which lots of food and Christmas films.

On Christmas Day, we woke up to lots of lovely presents (I was the first to wake up which made a bit of a change – I felt like a little kid again)! After opening up all our lovely prezzies, my cousin Donatas and his girlfriend Edita came to spend the day with us. This involved even more presents, huge amounts of food, some board games and chatter. Me and Edita even ventured outside for a walk once the rain had stopped, whilst everyone else took naps or played on the Xbox. Me and mum managed to prepare quite a lot of the food the day before and some of it even in the morning, which made Christmas dinner preparations so much easier!

Anyway, we went to sleep with filled tummies and heads filled with all the films we managed to watch. Quite a successful Christmas, if you ask me. Unfortunately, I had to return to work on the 27^th but I was sent home after finishing half a day on both days which made it far more bearable!

Now once again, I was rubbish in taking pictures (I took none) but Edita took some, so as soon as she sends some, I will post them.

Hope you all enjoy your continued celebrations!

Muah,

Roo xx

Merry Christmas!

As it is officially Christmas Day in some parts of Europe (there's a little under an hour left until it is officially Christmas here in London), I thought to make and early start and wish everyone a very Merry Christmas! I hope you all have a wonderful celebration, with lots of laughter, happiness and yummy food (and some lovely  prezzies too, of course).

Anyway, I am going to keep this entry short and sweet and get into my PJs and get myself ready for Christmas Day!

I wish I found this in my Christmas stocking

And hope some of you may found this
little box under the tree

Muah,

Roo xx

Christmas Carol Fail

On Saturday St Paul’s cathedral hosted a carol singing service inside the cathedral. I have never been so convinced my mum to come with me, to see what it’s all about and in an attempt to get her away from Christmas stress and into the Christmas spirit – my brother and dad didn’t go because of the rain (and yes, they thought this to be a completely legitimate reason). When we reached St Paul’s however, the queue to get in was huge! It wound around 2/3 of the cathedral! After queuing for over half an hour, the stewards informed us that there was no chance of us getting in, so we left. I was so disappointed –the cathedral was at capacity, with everyone singing Christmas carols which would have created the most amazing atmosphere! Anyway, I learnt my lesson and next year, I will venture out with lots of time to kill – it will absolutely be a not-to-miss event next Christmas!

In spite of the disappointment, we decided to make the most of the day and toured a bit of London – taking in the Christmas atmosphere. We walked all the way down Fleet Street (past my work) which was so disserted, with everything closed. We even popped in to have a peek at the ice rink in Somerset house. I know in past years, the ice rink has been sponsored by Tiffany’s which meant a huge Christmas tree with oversized, blue Tiffany boxes. Unfortunately, this year, they have been sponsored by someone else – leaving me disappointed: the tree was nowhere near as impressive and there were no boxes either (it may be a bit of a given but I have a slight Tiffany’s obsession).

Following that, we headed up to Covent Garden. I hoped to find a nice pub to grab some lunch but my mum isn’t much of a pub-person so instead we settled on Carluccio’s for some lovely Italian comfort food. Then we headed down to Piccadilly and popped into some shops, including Aldo where I bought some lovely brown boots! I have been searching for some boots for ages and finally managed to find a pair! And finally, we walked all the way down to Hyde Park, onto Green Park – where we stopped for some Starbucks and finally called it a day, heading home. I think the timing was ideal because when I got home, I thought my feet my crumble and die!

My lovely boots

The wellies that I should have bought

Anyway, that’s an update on my shenanigans for the weekend. I hope everyone’s Christmas preparations are going well!

Muah,

Roo xx 

Friendly catch-up

Earlier this week, I took off a (legitimate and approved) day off work, to meet up with my lovely friend Bex who came down for a visit from Worcester. It was the perfect day to catch up and get into the Christmas spirit. Unfortunately, I had a blonde moment and although I took a camera, it had no batteries (I blame the Christmas-crazy and not my own stupidity for that!) which means that I had to rely on google for some pictures. Sorry!

Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park was our first stop. I haven't had the opportunity to give the place a visit for  two years, so I was very excited to venture down there. There was lots Christmas music, along with some mulled wine (yum), hot chocolate (Bex's choice) and churros. Sadly, it was still a little disappointing. There weren't a lot of people which was probably a good thing but it took a little away from the atmosphere. But, we managed to stay dry whilst we were strolling around wonderland, so we were happy.

Our next stop was Harrods. Apparently Bex has a tradition of heading down to Harrods whenever she's in London, so we of course had to keep up the tradition!  And honestly; I was so impressed with Harrods' window displays: it was Disney themed! Each window had a different Disney princess, dressed in amazing ball gowns! It was stunning! After admiring the windows, we headed inside which was filled with tourists, beautiful bags, shoes and dresses and it was lovely to walk around. I forgot how long it has been since I gave Harrods a visit!

This was by far my favourite dress!

Upon leaving Harrods, that is when all the rain started. So we spent the rest of the afternoon trying to find shelter; heading to Wagamama for lunch, down to St Paul's and New Change for some shopping - which was so nice and quiet; a complete change from the craziness of Oxford Street! We finished the day off with a trip to Bea's of Bloomsbury for some coffee and cake which was a lovely and relaxing end to the day! I had a wonderful day, catching up with a wonderful friend. I got home exhausted but filled with Christmas cheer!

Muah,


Roo xx


P.s. I hope you like the new look of the blog! Finally managed to figure out how to change it all. Took some time, but got there in the end!

Pre-Christmas Calm

I hope everyone's Christmas preparations are going well. Since my Christmas presents are all under the tree and I am too young to have to deal with the stress of organising the technicalities of food-preparation etc, I decided to have a lazy weekend this week. This involved a lot of TV watching and some catch ups with friends and family before the Christmas crazy.

On Friday, I had a lovely catch up with my friend Alex over some pub-grub (I am not much of a pub girl, but it was great to have a catch up). As for Saturday, I met up with my cousin and her two little boys, where she bought the last of her Christmas presents and then we escaped the shops and had some coffee at mine, with the kids watching lots of Tom & Jerry (which no one can ever be too old for). I spent the rest of the night watching the Big Bang Theory with some super-bad-for-you Dominos pizza (Christmas is approaching and unhealthy eating is fast coming up anyway).

As for today, I finished writing all my Christmas cards, whilst having some Christmas music in the background - the perfect Christmas combination! As for the rest of the day, I will be watching awful Christmas films (don't feel bad for me!) We have Christmas24 - Christmas films on 24 hours a day! They are the typical cheesy, really bad, low-budget Christmas films and I love them (well some of them)! So that's my incredibly relaxed, unproductive but lovely weekend!

I will be saving the good Christmas films for next week!

I have also been doing some research for New Year's Eve which has been a lot more stressful than I thought. I think I left it all too late, with a lot of the places either sold out or atrociously over-priced. I think it will be just me & Chloe for Christmas since a lot of my friends are either not in London or aren't "into" going out. But anyway, I am hopeful that we will find something and have a great New Year's Eve!

As a side-note, what happened in Connecticut is absolutely awful and really heartbreaking. With all the tragedies that have been taking place, it has been lovely to stumble across this website which helped restore my faith in humanity a little. If you haven't already, have a look here!

Have a wonderful stress-free week, everyone!


Muah,


Roo xx

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I am very excited (and relieved) to announce that I have officially bought all of my Christmas presents! Yes, I can now stop stressing out about what to buy, when to buy it and how to survive the Christmas craziness.

The Christmas feeling started on Friday, when we had a work Christmas dinner. It was nice to meet everyone properly, in a relaxed atmosphere, in the most random, un-Christmassy place ever; the Red Dog Saloon. It's an American BBQ place in Hoxton and although quite a trek (with the tube station quite far away), the food was really good. They even had "The Devastator" which was this crazy burger with lots of sides and a milkshake - which you had to eat in 10 minutes to get your meal for free. Whilst I wasn't crazy enough to try it - a few of the guys did (but sadly failed to eat it within the time limit) - I settled on an ordinary (but very nice) burger and some margaritas.

The Devastator

The rest of the weekend, I spent sleeping. I don't know what came over me, but I think that this week has been more stressful than I realised because I seemed to be unable to do anything other than sleep and had lie-ins on Saturday and Sunday (a rarity for me). However, I did venture out to the Stratford Westfield, to purchase the last Christmas presents and had a quick catch up with Edita. I also bought some lovely shoes for myself (two pairs in fact) which left me very very happy. And no, I do not have a shoe problem (but yes, I am in complete denial).

This was me: minus the cat and far less glamorous

As for Sunday, I met up with Jess for a catch-up over coffee and spent the rest of the day, putting up the Christmas tress and wrapping up all the prezzies. And now, it's time to start making plans for New Year's Eve, which I had put on the back-burner, too focused on Christmas!

Our lovely Christmas trees, with all of my presents
wrapped and ready for Christmas day

Hope everyone has a wonderful week!


Muah,


Roo xx

Defeated by shopping

Once again, I must apologise for my horrendous blogging. It has been a little insane. With my last week at my old job last week and my first week at my new job this week and Christmas fast-approaching, it has been a little overwhelming, with lots of stress, little sleep and even less time for blogging. Sorry!

To sum up the last two weeks in the life of Roo, I have been; Christmas shopping, working, Christmas shopping, working and Christmas shopping! In fact after the last couple of weeks, I have reached my limit and decided to buy the last couple of prezzies online because even though I am very comfortable with being in Oxford Street with tonnes of people, endless queuing and barging past, last week, I reached my limit and think it’s better for my sanity to steer clear of the place!

Been feeling a little like this

Having said that, no one can deny that the London streets are beautiful around this time of the year. With all the shops and streets decorated, there was even some fake snow down on Bond Street! In my optimistic Christmas spirit, I even gave St Christopher’s Place another try, when I had a catch-up with Jess and we found a very lovey Italian restaurant (the ultimate comfort food when it’s cold outside). The place was called Olivelli – the tiniest little restaurant right inside St Christopher’s place with delicious pasta! I was really rather impressed by it and it was the perfect meal after the stress of Christmas shopping! On top of that, my wonderful friend Hung had organised a little indoor shopping event in the Vibe Gallery which me and Jess gave a visit. It was in an art gallery, with a few set up stalls of really cute jewellery, clothes and some delicious-looking cakes. I think my style is a bit basic (maybe a little girl-next-door) but for anyone looking for something individual and unique: it's perfect! I will be absolutely keeping an eye out for any other events at the gallery – I think it may soon be one of Bermondsey’s little treasures!

Jess, yours truly and Hung

Anywho, it’s time for me to leave the house for a little fresh-air. I really will try to keep you better updated with my little posts!

Hope everyone has a Christmas-spirited, wonderful weekend!!!!

Muah,

Roo xx

Busy time of the year

I apologise for being so rubbish with the blogging. Along with the usual crazy that comes along with the Christmas period, there was even more craziness this week, it being my last week at my current job. I assumed this would be an easy-going week, but could not have been more wrong - I have been running around like a maniac all week and yesterday being my last day, I headed down to the pub with some of my colleagues to say a huge thank you and bye to everyone.

And now, I have a 3-day weekend coming up and will be starting my new job bright and early on Monday morning. I haven't got very far with Christmas-present shopping, merely managing to do some onlne-shopping here and there. So I intend to spend this weekend sorting out all the prezzies. I will keep everyone up to date!

I wish I had a list that. It would at least mean
I had some ideas!

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Muah,

Roo xx

Good news

So this week I received some great news. I got a new job!!!!!

I have been job searching for quite a while and Londoners will know that although the city offers more jobs, there a lot more people to match, making job searching often disheartening a lot of the time. But after months of searching, I was finally offered an office job at a Chambers - refusing to abandon the legal routes. I won't be moving too far - just down to Fleet Street, remaining in the legal hub. But, with a (slightly) new location (I will still be getting the central line to Chancery Lane every morning), hopefully new finds will come!

So next week will be my last week at my current work place - there may be some sadness in leaving some of the people there: I have met some truly lovely people, but in all honesty, I am so incredibly excited! I am hoping the new job will be slightly more challenging and a lot more interesting. Eeeeek!!!!!

The famous street

Muah,

Roo xx

Hello Worcester, hello world

This weekend I took a last minute trip to Worcester to meet my cousin Andrius' son who has turned one week today!

It was a pretty long, tedious journey which I started straight from work but I managed to see some family members who I haven't seen for quite a while and most importantly I got to meet baby Lukas: the most beautiful baby!

Father and son

Anyway, the weekend flew by with lots of catch-ups and games with wine. A pretty good weekend all in all - just slightly sleep-deprived!


Hope everyone has a great weekend!


Muah,


Roo xx

Busy week in the city

I know my blogging hasn't been great over the last week or so. It has been a crazy week with lots of last minute catch-ups, shoe breakages and plenty of stress. So, I figured I would give a little round up of the past 7 days...

Last weekend I started to get into the Christmas spirit by venturing out into Oxford Street, in the hope of getting some gift-inspiration. I failed to get the necessary inspiration. Majorly. I seemed to be unable to find anything I liked or anything that I thought others would like. However, it would have been difficult not to get into the Christmas spirit with the Christmassy Selfridges window displays, the red Christmas Starbucks cups and a lot of people walking around, clearly doing their Christmas shopping too. I also managed to give St Christopher's Palace a visit - just off Bond Street; a place which I continually walked  by, meaning to give it a visit and finally managed to. Honestly, I wasn't too impressed with it. I was expecting (perhaps unrealistically) little local boutiques and independent restaurants, but with Pret  and Kurt Geiger in the square, my expectations just weren't met. Nevertheless, I did manage to regress back to my childhood when I came across a cute little sweet shop that sold (among other things) Fizz Wiz - growing up, I thought they were the coolest thing ever and couldn't resist buying a pack for old time's sake! Later on in the evening, I ventured out into the cold and watched the beautiful firework display on the Blackheath Common.

It's Santa. In a glittery shoe!

Mid-week I was able to have a lovely catch-up with my wonderful friend Betul and since I have been craving Japanese food (but refused to go to my old-favourite Wagamama) we headed to Kimchee on High Holborn (I later realised the food was in fact Korean but I failed to notice the different and it was still so good). I was really impressed with the place: the decor was lovely, the food was great and the prices were very reasonable. They even had green tea ice cream, which I gave a try and found it to be actually quite delicious!

The week seemed to quickly roll to an end with yet another trip to Oxford Street (my work shoes broke, so I ventured into the craziness and eventually managed to find some black flats in Aldo, having almost reached my breaking point and in addition to the shoes, managing to gain a headache too).

On Saturday, I headed to Stratford to visit my cousin Aurelija, as my godson Erik turned four earlier this week. They had a little party which included lots of toys, food and cake.

Over the last of couple of weeks I have also been attempting to organise a girl's night out but this turned out to be a bit of a fail with most of the girls cancelling/being unable to make it, so on Saturday night me and Chloe headed down to Leicester Sq for some drinks and dancing.

We started off at Yates for some pre-drinking. The music was nice but the prices were extortionate for any drink that did not include coffee of cocktails (we chose cocktails). We then headed down to The Borderline which boasted of an indie night. I love indie music but have so far been limiting myself to typical indie-pop music so that at The Borderline, I did not recognise a single song that was played.  We left after an hour or so but refusing to be defeated headed back Leicester Sq and found Kink (yes, that was the name - but thankfully did not reflect the club itself) which also turned out to be a disappointment, there being no place to really dance and the music being a bit blah. So after a Subway, we decided to call it a night. All in all, ti turned out to be a slightly disappointing night out but at least we tried something knew and will know not to go there again. I hope the readers appreciate the disappointments I go through in order to give an accurate depiction of the city and its little finds!

Following the hectic week, I spent today watching a lot of tv and chilling out. And that is something you can't help but enjoy!


Hope you all enjoy the week.


Muah,


Roo xx

Busy eating cake

Firstly I would like to apologise for not having written in a while (I feel like its been forever). Life has been a bit hectic over the last week or so, although in an exciting way. So, I shall start from the beginning...

I had fully intended to spend last weekend exploring a bit more of London but that completely failed when, on  completing my working day on Friday, I fell ill with a cold. I had a cold, coupled with something else which left most of my body in pain: not a good combination and certainly not the way I pictured my weekend! On top of that, that was the weekend that my mum started renovating my brother's room from top to bottom. This included a trip to Ikea and since she needed some help, I managed to bundle up and head out with her to land of furniture. I am pretty sure that we bought half of everything Ikea owned, but that was bound to happen, really. The weekend was spent trying to assemble the many many items that were delivered -  my dad doesn't have a DIY bone in his body so all the assembling was left to me and my mum (turned out for an interesting couple of days, that's for sure). As a result, for most of the week, having finished work me and mum tried to put some kind of Swedish furniture together. All in all, it made for a very tiring week! The room is almost finished now, but with a few touches left to finish off, I will post some pictures of the room in the next post!

I looked a bit like this last weekend. Except my nose was
redder, my skin was blotchy and my hair  was frizzy!

After this crazy week, today turned out to be quite a treat - exactly what a Friday should be like, if you ask me! My mum came down to my work, having finished hers in Victoria - greeting me with a Starbucks Toffee Nut Latte (the red cups are back and that means only one thing: Christmas is absolutely on its way!) after which we headed out for some food. I have been very impressed with Chilango - the Mexican place that I mentioned in an earlier post - so we headed out there for some lovely food - the perfect food for dealing with the cold weather outside. Following that, we decided to head to a cafe for some cupcakes for dessert. I have known Bea's of Bloomsbury to be quite popular here in High Holborn and I have been dying to go, so I took my mum there and it did not disappoint! We each had a passion fruit cupcake (quite an unheard of combination) which was so good! I will absolutely head out there for some more cake-tasting :)

+= HAPPY

Speaking of cake, earlier in the week I had tried out another cake place which again I have continually walked past and wanted to give a try: Konditor & Cook. I tried a banana walnut cake for a little mid-week treat and it was delicious! They seemed to have some gorgeous-looking savoury food too, so that will be on my try-out list! So after my cake-feasting week, I promise to be healthy this weekend and will soon inform you of all the happenings in my life over the next couple of days!

Enjoy your weekend all!


Muah,


Roo xx

Lazy weekend

My parents have been away for the week, enjoying the warm weather in Spain. And in celebration of having the house to myself, I decided be boring and spend the weekend lazy-ing around at home.

On Saturday I had a couple of visits from family. I made some pasta and salad and that's pretty much as laboring as my day got. My cousin Aurelija visited with her two boys so we enjoyed the lack of rain by going to the park and walking around.

Today, I have spent the day in PJs, protecting myself from the rain and miserable weather outside. So far, I have spent the day watching tv, reading a bit and enjoying the warm house. So whilst I have no London adventures to talk about this week, I have had a very lovely weekend in the house that is for once calm, quiet and relaxing.

This is how the day look....

...As a result, I looked a bit like this

Hope you all enjoy the weekend (and stay dry)



Muah,


Roo xx

Swan Lake

I spent yet another day in Covent Garden this Saturday.  But there was a reason behind this: after months of waiting (with tickets in my drawers), the night of the Swan Lake performance at the Royal Opera House finally arrived!

I bought the tickets for my mum as a birthday present, so we decided to make an evening out of it. I made the mistake of googling ‘restaurants in Covent Garden’ – which gave me a gazillion results. I eventually picked out a French restaurant, two minutes away from the Opera house: Palm Court Brasserie. We had the three-course pre-theatre menu and the food was really good! I was so impressed!

After dinner, we made the trek to the Opera house (for a whole two mins). I had no idea what to wear for the evening and after doing some more google-research (I find it’s a good and cheap teacher), I was told that people wore everything from jeans and a t-shirt to ball gowns. I however, refused to wear jeans and a t-shirt when the opportunity to dress up was presented to me, so I went with a blue cocktail dress and so black heels (along with my winter coat - for the first time this season). The performance itself was amazing. I had never been to ballet before and wasn't quite sure what I would make of it, but I thought it was so beautiful, with amazing music and dancing! 

Safe to say, I had a great evening (as did my mum!) and I would definitely like to make another trip down there some time, as the performance created a great first impression!

Off to the O2 now, to celebrate Chloe’s (belated) birthday!

Muah,

Roo xx