Lady of Leisure

The madre came to stay and we ended up lapping up some serious luxury...

I am VERY excited to say that a couple of weeks ago I got to stay at this beast over the weekend (good work daddy crouch with the free points... obviously I could not afford such an extravagant gift for my mums Christmas pressie!) BUT one spa day ticket for the madre later, and we've ended up with a lovely night away on the Thames.

Anyway, we had a nice day trip out on Sunday, shopping and generally mooching around Covent Garden, watching some poor street entertainer attempt to bring out a crowd in the freezing cold and then back to the hotel for a bit more spoiling.

The view from our room was amaze, we managed to wangle an upgrade, the beauty of being female....

And check out the view on that beast.

The next day it was time to treat ourselves at the spa.

I have to say I'm mega jel of the mother though... I booked her a 30 minute massage, and, when phoning to book I was asked whether a male massuse would be ok, to which I promptly replied YES... and then I found out his name is Danielle... Immediately I knew this would be a wise decision, conjouring up images of a beautiful tanned French/Itallian male, however the madre informs me that he was not a French God as we had originally hoped. Disappointing, but he did a mean massage so we'll forgive him of his British origins. I speant the morning taking advantage of all the other facillities, sauna, steam room and jacuzzi and so feeling thoroughly pampered it was time to leave.

I don't think I could do it full time, but being a part time lady of leisure would be a little bit lovely.

Strewth Mate... Aussies are back

I have noticed a running theme that seems to have returned into my life for February...

the Aussie charm.

Now most of my friends will know that I am no stranger to the odd Aussie accent and regularly dapple in Aussie slang, but this was a fair old while ago, largely inspired by those lovely peeps down at The Bat and Ball. We revelled in serving customers with Aussie accents and of course always got extra little bit of excitement when we actually got to serve real life Australians whilst rocking a bonza accent.

So when Grace introduced me to the world of Bogan Bingo of course, like any self respecting Bat and Baller I was loving it...

Aussie, 80's themed retro bingo

What a fantastic idea.

The two presenters were amazeballs... largely because they were dressed up like this...

But also because their hillarious mockery of all things Aus (they were actually Australian which makes this ok) was incredible.

Having to pic your winning prize from a board of images such as that dog out of Neighbours (no I cant remember the name), Jesus (because he has a mullet and therefore must be Australian) and Skippy pretty much sums up the tone of the evening, as does the air guitar competition that is taken VERY seriously at half time followed up with a slow mo victory walk for the winners.

Obviously after a couple of bottles of wine this makes for an amazing night out & gives you enough quotes to annoy everyone at work for days after.

Comedy Gold.

If anyone comes to Clapham, make sure its on a Thursday & I'll see you at the Underdog.

The reigniting of the Australian flame in my life has also been followed up with the decision to create our very own Harry Potter from down under. I'm sure you will be as disappointed as I was to know that the fact that you can watch Harry Potter in Australian on the DVD does not mean that it is subtitled with "G'day mate" and all the other aussieisms that we know and love. As a result of this cruel realisation we thought it would be a good idea to do Disney a favour and create our own version.... we have a wonderful character list including faves Ringo, Dingo and Shane (Ron, Hermione and HP), Steve Irwin (Dumbledoor) and Karl & Susan Kennedy (the Weasleys). And highlights to include the first BBQ at Hogwarts (The opera house), pints of fosters down in Ramsay Street (butter beer in Hogsmede) and the rise of Hugh Jackman (Lupin, the werewoolf).

Filming is to commence in the coming weeks... watch this space.

New fave advert

And unsuprisingly it's from T Mobile once again... these guys can't put a foot wrong in my books... I swear the only ads that I ever share are from them!!

Sooooo now here's the question...

What else does Britain love?

Oh what a wonderful facebook campaign I see ahead, can't wait to see what they come out with pre olympics, and fingers crossed they'll be another spoof for the Jubilee... we can hope it will be Kate & Wills eat your heart out

How to do a Soup diet

What could be better that coming home from the freeeezing cold to find a nice steamy bowl of home made soup, Hannah's very own homemade savoury muffins AND some creme fresh... what a delight.

Whilst most of the time that girl is nothing but horrible... now she has excelled herself. Charlie you picked a baaaad day to be in Bristol my friend, this soup is delish.

This is how to do a soup diet... if I had Hannah to follow me around making exciting soups all day I think I could join all those new year crazies on the famous soup diet that is sweeping our offices at the moment.

Out of pretty much the whole team that started it... one remains. And she has a holiday booked to Florida as motivation for that bikini bod.

That's an idea... maybe I should just get a holiday booked ... that would save Hannah the chef duty.

A Beautiful Ending

So I have found my latest product love.... introducing Herbal Essences Beautiful Ends range.

I am not normally one for believing in the usual rubbish about one type of shampoo being far superior to the rest. As far as I'm concerned, they all do the same job & are basically the same stuff in different packaging. My hair is always a nightmare & I thought that I just needed to accept the curse of the gene pool and move on.

Well... my opinion has changed now that I have discovered one of Herbal Essences latest triumphs.

My hair is well known for being frizzy, wild and generally unmanageable (I was nicknamed bog brush at school). And with such frizz, this comes with its fair share of split ends. Since coming back from travelling this has been a particular problem. Months of sun, sea and sand *sigh* definitely took its toll on my mane & I've not been able to do too much about it since returning to the UK. Han & I resorted to coating our hair in some Thai seaweed potion every night prior to our arrival back in the UK, but it would appear that wandering around looking like Elphaba did little to resolve the issue.

But no more!

I've started using the whole range of this product that focuses on repairing your split ends. It's amazing to find a simple shampoo and conditioner that pretty much does the trick. Whack on an intensive conditioner and leave in conditioner every now and then and Kate Middleton tresses here I come!

And its not even just the split ends that it sorts out... my hairs soft, its shiny, its smooth... Herbal where have you been all my life!?

So a beautiful ending to my years of shampoo & conditioner woes, finally the quest for the perfect product has finished and I will not be turning back!

All the Way from Norway

Last weekend as a celebration of our travelling anniversary, Han & I hopped on a plane to Norway to visit our friend Cecilie that we met with her other Norwegian cronie in Brazil & then proceeded to rendezvous at various other locations across the globe.

More info on this can we found at my other blog that I wrote while we were away...

http://www.laurasayshelloworld.blogspot.com/2012/01/travelly-anniversary.html

So I won't bother boring with repeats of these details.

I will, however share with you an extremely exciting new addition that we have to our house all the way from the land of the vikings.

How my mother is going to kill me when she sees these! Mwah ha ha ha ha

Christmas at the Tardis

Well I'm sorry to say that Christmas seems like a very long time ago now, but its taken me a while to get round to the customary Christmas blog update. My feet have barely touched the ground since Christmas so I haven't had much time for blogging at all. Oh well... new years resolution... try and do one a week!

Anyway, Christmas at the Tardis was by no means a small affair. Not only has the house been decorated since the beginning of December (with co ordinated decorations might I add, victory was mine after all) but we had games, we had dancing, we had party food, ginger bread men, mulled wine and giant crackers. Fabulous.

As we didn't have enough time or will power to complete the arduous task of the Christmas dinner, we took inspiration from the wonderful Miss Solomon and her Iceland extravaganza. What you can't get from Iceland for £1 isn't worth having. And everything is a 'mini'. Well it starts off as a mini until you've eaten so many of them that it may as well be a double a 'biggy', but all that's for January to worry about... calorie is a word that should be banned in December.

So after eating until we were sick it was time for....

THE GIANT CRACKER

DA DA DAAAAA

Oh and what an impressive beast it was. Clearly it would've been a bit sad just to sit round the 3 of us pulling 12 crackers (that is one set of mini's that Iceland doesn't produce). So instead it was decided that one enormous one would be a better idea.

That teamed up with Santa Claus (one of my all time fave Christmas films) went down pretty well. Oh and the pressies... they were pretty cool too :)