October in Photos

OCTOBER 

This is my October in photo form. Wanna know more? Then here ya go... 

THE STORIES 

1. I bought my mum tickets to see Miss Saigon for her birthday! It was an incredible show, I highly recommend you all go see it. 

2. Also the theatre we were at had a bar with a balcony, so we spent an hour before the show sitting out there looking at the street below. 

3. I went to Bath City Farm with my bestie Amber. This guy was there too. 

4. Amber, featuring something that was definitely a fairy portal. 

5. Games evening with my housemate. We played Bananagrams (excellent game) and I managed to spell beer, pub and sip, all in the space of about 30 seconds... 

6. Breakfast at a London pub for my dad's birthday. This table is my aesthetic. 

7. A bit later on that day we went up the Shard! The view from up there is incredible <3

8. Also to celebrate my Dad's 50th, we took him to 5 different fine dining restaurants. I've not put a photo from all the places we went because that would take up all the space. This was at The Waterside though and oh my god look at this soufflé. 

9. This is another dinner for his birthday, this time at The Dorchester. This dessert was insanely delicious. 

10. Did you know that under the breakfast club restaurant in shoreditch there is a secret bar? Yeah. It's called The Mayor of Scardey Cat Town and it's hella cool. These were some cocktails we had there.
11. The sign pointing down to the bar! You go through the fridge to get to it and come out through the toilets. Amazing.
12. Looking fly before dinner the other day.
13. Blackwells <3 oh my god. This bookshop. It's so rad.
14. Travelling again.
15. Switzerland has pumpkins that are bIGGER THAN ME.
16. This was my view as I woke up on the first day in Switzerland. Could be worse.
17. Autumn overload.
18. Me by Lake Geneva, Montreax. Switzerland you're so pretty <3

TO NOVEMBER
I love November, it's my birthday month, it's cold, it's dark and it has Bonfire Night too, so I am very much enjoying this month so far and since today is my birthday (turning 20 yo!) it can only can better.

How was your October? Let me know in the comments!

HAPPY NOVEMBER!

Love Chloe x

September in Photos

THE PHOTOS

THEIR STORIES

1. I bought a new bookshelf and that meant I had to entirely rearrange my room. IT IS BEAUTIFUL NOW. 
2. My mum's birthday presents! 
3. We went out for dinner for my mum's birthday and this was my starter - prawn cocktail served in a jar. Yes yes yes.
4. FOO FIGHTERS. AH YES. MY BOYS. MY FAVOURITE PEOPLE IN THE ENTIRE WORLD. I SAW THEM LIVE FOR THE SECOND TIME AND IT WAS INCREDIBLE. 
5. The baes <3
6. Cute coffee and cake with my mum. 
7. Stage one of moving into my room for my second year of university.
8. And stage 2...
9. And stage 3... Complete!
10. The drive to Bath to actual move into my new uni house. Got all the important things, obvs. 
11. Afternoon tea at the Jane Austen centre. It was delicious at it looks. 
12. Scone close up. 
13. I went for a little explore around my new town, and discovered a beautiful view. Is it just me or does this look a little bit like The Shire? (Probs doesn't but I like to believe I live in Middle Earth okay.)
14. I could have taken photos of this abandoned building forever. 
15. Found a cute little path that was lined by trees and it let to this stream! V. cute. 
16. I also found a church and had a look at all the gravestones. They had some insanely old ones in there and it was just really interesting to look around.
17. Cows all stood in a weird line. Um guys what you doing? 
18. This is genuinely the view from my bus stop. And no, it hasn't got old yet.

FIN

And that's it for now! I just want to apologise for the month long break in between blog posts... There area couple of reasons for this; partly that I moved into this new house and had no internet for a few weeks. And also that I just have no motivation to write blog posts. I'm just not feeling inspired to write and I have no good ideas so posts might be few and far between until I get back into the groove (which lets all pray will happen soon). 

Alright, good. Byeeeeeee x

A Week of Happys

LOOKING BACK
It's officially a new week and so what better time to talk about what made me happy last week? Here are six things that made me smile over the course of the last week...

1. CAKE
Cake always makes me happy, but Wagamama puddings bring a smile to my face slightly more (Wagamama in general makes me happy actually).

2. AVENGERS
I went to see The Avengers: Age of Ultron last week and I loved it. I love the humour within The Avengers movies, and this one was full of moments that made me laugh. I'm a big fan of Quicksilver in the X-Men Days of Future Past film and so when I saw that character was going to be in this new Avengers film I was a little bit excited (plus Aaron Taylor-Johnson playing him <3), and his character was just as great as I had hoped!

The cinema was so packed I couldn't even get a seat next to Jade...

3. MAC RETRO
I did a whole blog post dedicated to finding this lipstick after it being lost for a few weeks, so you can probably gather that it made me very happy. MAC Retro is definitely my favourite lipstick and not only did finding this make me smile but it made my lips looks rad as heck at the same time.

4. COFFEE
Like cake, a good cup of coffee always brings me joy, but I had a lovely few hours at the Farnham Maltings (it's a venue for plays, gigs, and a lot of other things too) Café last week, just sipping coffee and nibbling scones while I waited for my sister to finish work.

5. EUROVISION
Eurovison was on last week and that programme is guaranteed to bring a smile to your face. It's so weird and I love it. My family all picked countries out of a hat and then scored the other countries performances out of ten. Whoever had the highest scoring country won the sweepstake! I had the worst countries who all had terrible songs, hella uncool guys. BUT, Sweden were my favourite so I was glad they won. But I was digging Australia and Belgium too.

My Eurovision countries

6. HILLTOP HOODS
I never used to be a fan of hip hop, but when my sister came home from studying abroad in Australia she introduced me to some Australian hip hop artists and since then I've been hooked. And so when Hilltop Hoods announced they were touring Europe I was hella excited. Tickets went on sale on Friday and I quickly snagged two tickets for me and Jade (the sister) to see them play in Camden in August. I've never been to a concert that isn't a rock concert before so this is going to be a completely new experience for me, but still HILLTOP HOODS. Also they're bringing Thundamentals who I've started listening to and they're pretty damn great.

ONTO THIS WEEK
That's it for now, in the comments below tell me what made you happy last week!

Thanks for reading, make sure to follow me for new posts every week.

Hope you're having a rad day.

Love Chloe x

Coffee Cups With Chloe // University

HEY

So guess what.... It's been another busy week. And that's why yet again you're getting a coffee cups with Chloe post. I guess this one is a bit different though because I'm drinking coffee on a train station rather than in my bedroom. Changing it up, getting crazy with the coffee themed posts. (I'm waiting for a train... I'm not just sitting on a platform especially so this post can be different!)

MY WEEK

So my week is been hella busy. And that is thanks to deadlines at university. It sounds crazy to say, but this is pretty much my last week as a first year uni student. I'm going back on the 28th for an exam and then that's it, I'll be packing up my little room and moving back home for the summer. I have no idea where this year went, it feels like only yesterday that I nervously started university! 

I study creative writing at uni, and luckily I love writing. Handy, since I do so much of it. This week has been spent in lectures and writing up portfolios of work to hand in this week and the start of next week. And if you don't believe me that I was busy then I'll tell you about my day yesterday to prove it: 

I started working at 11 (okay so I don't sound busy now but I gotta maintain that student lifestyle yo) on my poetry portfolio. This meant typing up the poems that were handwritten, editing others and reading through them all until it was perfect. Once that was done I moved onto my other portfolio which I can put any kind of writing in. For that I wrote about my travels in Australia and then a short poem about a family friend. This portfolio was pretty much done but I just needed to do the final touches. AND THEN, I had to pack a bag for coming home today. I stopped working at 6 o clock. During that time I only had an hour break to have lunch and watch an episode of Beverely Hills 90210 to relax my brain a bit. So that's 7 HOURS of work. Jesus. 

TV 

It's not all work though, I have had some free time, haha. I've been watching My Kitchen Rules a lot this week, as I missed it all last week because of my adventures around bath and Bristol. I love that programme. It's just relaxing to sit down and watch it after working all day and I don't know what I'm going to watch instead when this season ends! 

I've also just got into Desperate Housewives. I've watched a few episodes here and there and always enjoyed them, but I wanted to watch it properly because there was so much I didn't know that was making it less exciting to watch. Like what were the secrets they were all keeping? So I bought season 1 and I'm loving it. It's an excellent mix of humour, romance, drama and mystery. 

ALSO I SMELL GREAT

Yeah, you heard me. I smell great. When I was shopping last week I saw some Library of Fragrance perfumes in the clearance section of Boots. I'd heard  about these perfumes before because of the book scented one they do (still need to get my hands on that because I strive to smell like books). I sniffed all the different scents and decided to buy 3 - peach, marshmallow and moonbeam - as they were just £1.65 (!!!). They only had the testers for marshmallow and moonbeam but there was only a very little bit gone from them so I decided it was better than nothing. Then when I went to pay the lady gave me the testers got free! 

TL;DR - I got three amazing smelling perfumes for £1.65. Best bargain ever. 

I'm wearing the Moonbeam one right now and it smells like heaven. I keep getting whiffs of it and remembering how delicious I smell. 

FIN

I think that's probably enough for now, my book (White Cat by Holly Black) is calling me so I going to read that for the rest of my train journey (oh yeah, the train came while I was typing this, so this post has been brought to you via two different locations). 

Thanks for reading. Remember to follow me for new posts every week, and sometimes more :) 

Hope you're having a rad day! 

Love Chloe x

March in Photos

1. Me trying to take a selfie and my dad refusing to smile for it too. 

2. The amazing chocolate fudge cake I had whilst out for dinner for Mother's Day.

3. Getting all my cruelty free make up together for a blog post! 

4. Early morning coffee and cake at the farm shop with a friend. 

5. I know I post quite a lot of food photos on here, but this is a vegetable curry I made and it was too delicious to not share. 

6. Weird photo, I know. I was at a poetry reading and I didn't want to take a proper photo because it was dark and I didn't know anyone and anxiety and ugh. So this the best I could do. You can't even see the poets... 

7. Solar eclipse! 

8. I met MARY BERRY. ahhhhhhhh

9. Foo fighters tickets arrived. Even more ahhhhhhhhhhhh

10. It was a friends 30th birthday and this was the afternoon tea his parents made. It was so lovely and felt a little bit posh because they had fancy china out! 

11. A very colourful garden centre! We went there for lunch and a cheeky slice of cake after testing out the bus route for our new house next year! 

12. This little cutie had a bit of a detour and ended up outside my uni halls instead of by the lake. 

13. Honeycomb cheesecake at prezzo. A few friends and I were there to celebrate it being the end of term! 

14. My sister and I a little bit later on. 

15. I made caramelised onion and courgette tarts and they were deliciousssss! 

16. Cooking and watering my plant, Jean Reno.

17. Coffee and cake with my mum. 

18. My sister made poached eggs and I ended up with a lovely lunch that made me feel like I was back in Melbourne again! 

*** 

Tell me about your March in the comments, I'd love to hear! 

Thanks for reading. Don't forget to follow me for weekly posts about all kinds of things :) 

Have a lovely rest of your day, and if you're reading this at the time I posted it, then have a rad Easter weekend! 

Love Chloe x

Coffee Cups With Chloe: Updates

HELLO

I've just sat down with my cup of coffee (in the cutest little hedgehog mug) and a breakfast bar (it's 4 o clock in the afternoon but breakfast bars are delicious at all times of the day, okay?) and I've decided to do a little blog writing. My goal for 2015 was to write more on here because I love writing and this blog was just sitting here sad and unused so I thought I'd give it some love. But this week I haven't been inspired to write about anything, blog wise anyway; I've actually done a ton of writing for other things, I'm on a creative writing course so that's not really shocking, but I'm also in the process of writing a book too. I've been writing it for two years but in February I realised just how close I am to finishing it, so I've been pushing myself to write a little bit everyday to try and get it done. Anyway, back to the point... I haven't been inspired to write anything for this blog this week. So I thought I'd just write. We've done this as a writing exercise at uni a few times and it's often produced some pretty great stuff, so here we go. Sorry in advance if this gets rambly!

MUSIC

I have a bad habit of listening to the same music on repeat until I get bored of it, and at the moment my repeated jams have been anything by Chet Faker. I listen to the Australian radio station triple j nearly every night (which is when their breakfast show is on) and so I've ended up listening to quite a lot of Australian artists. But Chet Faker is hands down my favourite discovery. I play his album Thinking In Textures on repeat and then there are loads of individual songs of his that are very likely to be on repeat too. I have really thin walls at university so I'm sure my next door neighbours really enjoy having the same hipster songs blasted every day! His music is kind of indie, crossed with a electronic, dance vibe. I'm really bad at describing music genres but hopefully you kind of get what I mean. It's the kind of music that you could expect to hear quietly playing in a coffee shop full of bearded men with man buns and girls in oversized jumpers and messy hair. It's super hipster and I adore it.

FOOD

I've been trying to eat healthier and snack less this week, and I think I've done pretty well! I actually planned out each dinner for the week and so when I went food shopping I brought what I needed and was less tempted to buy lots of bad food. Now I admit I have been snacking, I can't get through the day without eating something at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon. But I made sure to stock up on fruit so that when I do get peckish in the afternoon I reach for the fruit bowl instead of the crisps (I don't even have crisps to reach for, as I said I planned out exactly what I wanted to buy). I can't say I've noticed any difference in my health yet, but it's only been a week. However, my meals have been much tastier and I'm staying fuller for longer so that's rad.

FASHION

This week I've also been trying to wear the clothes in my wardrobe that I haven't worn in a long time. I'm really bad at buying clothes, wearing them a couple of times and then never again, or constantly wearing the same outfits because they're easy and I like how they look (which would be fine if I didn't have so many other clothes going unworn). So this week I've been trying to wear some different pieces. If I was a professional blogger I'd put some photos in of my outfits this week but I haven't actually taken any... But I might do a post about these style of outfits at some point, so look out for that!

BOOKS

At the moment I'm reading City of Thieves by David Benioff, which the local bookshop Mr B's sent me. I'm really enjoying it so far, and I've only got a little bundle of chapters left to read. It's about two young men from Leningrad during the second world war, and they are arrested and then given the job of finding a dozen eggs for the colonel's daughter to use in her birthday cake. But of course, that's not as easy as it sounds when you're in rationed, war time Russia. I was shocked to find out from the opening chapter that this is actually a true story, based on the life of the authors granddad! This book ties in really well with the last book I was reading, which was A Storm of Swords Part 1 by George R.R Martin. As I'm sure you know this series of books has been turned into the massive TV show Game of Thrones, and David Benioff is actually the co-creator of the show! It was a very odd coincidence when Emma from Mr B's informed me of this! :')

GOODBYE

I think that's probably enough of my life updates. I hope this was vaguely interesting to read, and if you only take one thing from this, then let be that you go and repeat Chet Faker songs for days. Thanks for reading. I hope you have a rad day.
Love Chloe x