January

I've decided enough is enough; it's definitely too late to post my 2014 round-up. Long story short- I killed myself revising for finals, graduated with a 2.1, my sister got married, I bought a (very old) car & got a job and started learning to cope with post-student life. So that's that. On to a new year!

I'm pretty glad that January is almost over. While I didn't particularly get much of a Christmas break (working as a waitress/bartender will do that to you), it's still a bit depressing when your house stops resembling Santa's grotto, the horrible snowy weather isn't accompanied by Dean Martin songs and you realise that eating nothing but cheese and chocolate for the last month may have affected your waistline a little..

A few things from this month:

• I had a hair cut. While hardly anyone else noticed, it was actually pretty big for me as I had quite a lot of length cut off- plus this is only my second hair cut in about four years. I may have had an inital 'oh my god I have short hair' moment of madness but I've gotten used to it now and I think I'm a fan!

• Hardly news-worthy, but this month I've eaten a lot of pancakes; healthy banana pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes, pancakes with bacon in... I imagine this will only continue through February as one of my favourite days rolls around- and no I absolutely do not mean Valentines Day.

• One of my favourite parts of January was visiting Birmingham for the weekend to celebrate one of my old housemates' birthdays. I love getting back together with my uni friends as we all still get on so well and it's something I'm determined to keep doing over the years. 

• Not pictured: I've also been doing a fair bit of planning this month. I've booked a trip to Lisbon for one of my best friends' birthdays, redeemed my Harry Potter studio tour gift voucher (I'll be going when the new Hogwarts Express bit has been added!) and have started figuring out a route for my South American travels. I have a feeling 2015 could be a pretty great year!

I won't make myself any promises but I'm aiming to do one of these at the end of every month so that when I inevitably forget to post a 2015 round-up, it won't really matter. How was January for you?

Places in Leeds: Cabana

Last night I met up with two of my closest friends for a new years catch-up. We'd all been really busy over the festive period so had barely seen each other leaving us with lots to discuss; perhaps the best bit of gossip I can share with you is that Gaby, one of my oldest friends, spent her New Years Eve dancing in a show in the Maldives in front of the likes of David Beckham & co. The difference between our lives amazes me sometimes.

Anyway, we wanted to try somewhere new in Leeds to host our little reunion. I suggested Cabana, a fairly new addition to the Trinity centre. Cabana is a Brazilian restaurant- I know what you're probably thinking, what exactly does that mean? Judging by the menu it means street food, meat skewers and a whole load of caipirinhas. We decided to give it a try and I'm glad we did- even if just solely for the sake of the dessert alone, but I'll get to that later..

First of all: drinks. Caipirinhas are one of my favourite cocktails and Cabana's offering were definitely up to scratch. They had the classic lime option, which I went for, as well as kiwi, strawberry, pineapple & mint (which Gaby chose) and passionfruit (Lizzie's choice). As you can see, Lizzie was a big fan of hers.

Next up: the food. We decided to bypass the starters and go straight for mains. Lizzie & I both went for the spicy malagueta chicken skewer; malagueta is Cabana's signature sauce and you can buy a bottle of it to take home with you. Gaby plumped for the lime and garlic chicken skewer, and we all decided on the feijoada fries, which are sweet potato fries with a pork, beef and black bean stew on top. When your food is ready, each person's skewer is brought to the table separately and is transferred onto your plate. This is a bit of a gimmick I suppose but it all adds to the experience that Cabana is trying to give, which overall was a pretty good one. We all really enjoyed our food; the only thing I might say is that next time I visit it might be a good idea to share some different sides for a little more variety, as essentially what you have on your plate is just your meat. This isn't a complaint as such, because the meat is pretty damn good. Just a thought!

Now for the best bit: dessert. This is a bit of a tale- we paid after mains and went off into Trinity kitchen in search of one of their monthly stands called You Doughnut. Alas, when we got to the stand nobody was there serving. Determined to get some dessert we went through our options and decided to go back to Cabana as I'd heard great things about their nutella donuts. So off we went back inside the restaurant, much to the surprise of the waiter. Lizzie & I got the doughnuts while Gaby had a peanut butter and oreo sundae. Okay. I don't even know how to describe these donuts other than to say if you live in or near Leeds, you must go try them. Tiny donuts stuffed with nutella..served with more nutella for dipping. Apparently I hadn't read the menu properly as I didn't realise they actually had nutella inside them too, so you can imagine my delight when I had my first bite. Lizzie let Gaby try a few of hers in return for a bite of sundae- I'm almost glad I have a nut allergy therefore couldn't partake in this swap as these were far too good to share. It's probably time I stopped talking about donuts now. I'll just leave you with the photo instead.

Something else that I liked about Cabana is that although it is one of a chain of restaurants, the owners wanted to keep some authenticity. For example I've read that the different baskets they put your bill in were all bought from a young boy on a beach in Rio. The seats are made from recycled jeans selected from a small charity in Sao Paulo. They give out colourful ribbons with the bill which are popular in Bahia and are known as wish ribbons. According to Brazilian tradition, you're supposed to wear them until they fall off for your wishes to come true. So I'm not holding out any hope for my fancy New York apartment dream to come true, but it's a nice little touch all the same.

All in all we had a lovely few hours in Cabana and I'd reccommend it to anyone looking for tasty food in Leeds city centre.

Have you ever been to Cabana?

Tis the season...

...to eat all the cheese and chocolate because calories don't count for the last week of the year. Except now it's the 2nd of January and my jeans are feeling a little tighter than usual. Oh well.

I apologise, dear people of the internet; I kind of forgot this blog existed for a while if I'm honest. I will be writing an update, run-down of 2014 and hello to 2015 style post soon (ie. tomorrow, not in 3 weeks I promise) but for now I thought I'd go down the materialistic route and show you what I got for Christmas this year.

Christmas was a little different for my family this year- my sister got married in summer so instead of her travelling up to us as usual, my parents & I made the journey down to her house. Sitting in a car for three hours on Christmas morning wasn't ideal but we had a lovely day once we got there (being welcomed with a 1.5 litre bottle of prosecco didn't hurt).

Here are some of my favourite things (shown above);

• Jo Malone Wood Sage & Sea Salt perfume: I fell in love with this after my friend invited me to the Leeds launch of it in September and I'm so happy that I finally own it. I don't think it particularly smells of wood, sage or sea salt but whatever it does smell like is amazing

• Collins easy learning spanish CDs: as you may know I'm planning on travelling to South America this year. I've been meaning to start learning spanish for a while- I know it isn't the only language spoken in S.A. but I think it's a good base to start with- but I've been putting it off. Now I can have these CDs in my car and learn while I'm driving to and from work. I know I won't become fluent from it but it'll certainly give me a good starting point.

• Charlotte Tilbury matte revolution lipstick in Love Liberty: I've wanted to try one of these for so long and I'm so glad to now own one. It really is the most moisturising matte lipstick I've tried and I'm very tempted to go buy more from Ms. Tilbury's collection now- though I'm sure my bank balance would prefer if I didn't

• 'Thunder only happens when it's raining' print from Lloyd Loves: I saw Kate post a few prints from this seller on instagram and loved them. I also love Fleetwood Mac so this print makes a lovely addition to my bedroom.

• South America on a shoestring: I really need to start planning my afore-mentioned travels so this should be pretty helpful. I know guidebooks can get outdated quickly but even if not for specific recommendations this book should be useful for a general insight into each country

• Origins Drink Up 10 minute mask: I don't have dry skin generally but I definitely notice my skin feeling tight and dehydrated in the winter. I'm sure we haven't experience the worst weather of this season yet so I'm hoping this can help my skin out for now

• Gift voucher for the making of Harry Potter studio tour: I am one of those people who will judge you if you're from my generation and haven't read the Harry Potter series. Seriously, if that is you, what on earth did your childhood revolve around?! Anyway, I didn't love some of the films as much as the books, but I don't think I'll be able to contain my excitement when I finally get to go on this tour. It's probably not okay to be 22 and be so giddy over Harry Potter.

• Read this if you want to take great photographs book: Despite my best intentions I still haven't really got to grips with my DSLR camera- I spend most of my life at work where I don't feel particularly inspired to take photos so I rarely practice. I really want to learn how to take better photos and this book has a lot of advice from many different types of photographer, plus easy to understand explanations of the different camera settings so I'm looking forward to reading it

• Fox head from Fiona Walker: Perhaps one of my oddest presents but I really love this felt fox head. My parents & I went into York a few weeks ago and went into a little independent shop that had these heads on the walls- there were foxes, rabbits and deer amongst others- but then I forgot about them. I rarely get surprise presents anymore but this really was one. My fox now hangs proudly in the corner of my room but I'm looking forward to when I have my own place and can display this (hopefully) above a fireplace.

Not pictured, I also was lucky enough to receive the Urban Decay Naked basics 2 palette, a lovely little globe charm from Links of London and of course a good selection of chocolates. As you can see Santa was really good to me this year and I'm very appreciative of all my presents.

What did you get for Christmas?