#1 Currently Coveting: ASOS

Oh ASOS, you had me at “sale”. 

But up to 50% off? Oh you do spoil us.

Here’s what I’m currently coveting:

Toile de Jouy print dress - £28 – non sale

Oasis Cutwork shoulder bag - £40 – non sale

Motel Lucille dress - £40 - £20

River Island cat print skirt – £22 – non sale

Statement necklace - £40 - £32

Seriously tempting. Particularly as I can get an extra 10% off and cashback because of work.

The Motel dress looks better in motion in the weird video thing that ASOS do. It’s my birthday in less than a month’s time and I’m thinking birthday outfit right there. The Toile de Jouy print dress is so versatile. Perfect for the winter-spring transition but also great for festivals, gigs, and balmy summer nights spent in beer gardens. And screw designer handbags, this Oasis bag is THE BAG to have. Decisions, decisions...

Have you picked up any bargains in the sales lately?

I cook with wine. Sometimes I even add it to the food.

No matter what the holiday, I always use it as the perfect excuse to spend more time in the kitchen and make more of an effort with meals. After work it’s all too easy to reach for a takeaway or grab a pizza because after being confined to a desk for most of the day, who wants to spend hours on end prepping dinner?!

I dug out a recipe I'd been dying to try for ages. A Spanish style stew - chorizo, chickpeas, spinach, red wine and tomatoes – topped with a piece of fish

Waiting for food to cook is a thirsty affair:

Instead of buying a baguette, I made my own bread from scratch. Stuffed with numerous sun-dried tomatoes and black olives, the dough barely held together. There may have been some swearing at this point...

Thankfully it didn’t fall apart in the oven, and the end result was pretty damn tasty:

Bitten by the bread bug, the next day I made bread rolls stuffed with chorizo. 

Think of them as like a pizza stuffed crust... but in miniature form

I gave slutty brownies a go

For those of you who are in the dark about slutty brownies, these are brownies AND cookie dough combined into what I can only call a MIRACLE. Best served warm for a gooey centre. You can use basic brownie and cookie recipes for this. Or you can be lazy like me and buy a mix... thanks Asda!

The chicken stuffed with parsley garlic butter and black olives was a fiddly affair. It was meant to be like a swiss roll but the chicken I bought was bordering on morbidly obese and was too fat to roll out. Even after I beat the hell of it with a rolling pin, it remained stubborn. Instead I improvised and made chicken parcels:

The end result was delicious:

And I like to think some of it looked like a swiss roll (ish)

Stay tuned for more recipes and more food based content!

You can find me on bloglovin' here 

ASOS bunny flats

Usually I’m more of a cat person, but when I spotted these bunny flats on ASOS.com I couldn’t resist. I already own a pair of Charlotte Olympia kitty flats dupes - can someone "lend" me £465 for the real deal, please? -  with similar embroidery, but I was powerless to resist adding rabbits to my collection.

They came in the most gorgeous powder blue dust bag. I’ve only ever had a dust bag for my Louis Vuitton before so this was a nice touch, making the shoes feel a lot more expensive than they really were.

Fit wise, they are a little big on me but I have noticed ASOS flat shoes to be a little off with their sizing. I figure these will be fine with tights though. Besides, look at those cheery little faces looking up at you…

… couldn’t possibly send them back. They've arrived just in time for Easter too. So I can be a walking talking cliché wearing these and gorging myself silly on MaltEaster bunnies (the dream)

Happy Easter! 

London's calling - with Millennium Hotels

I was feeling a little frazzled because of work, and having not taken any holiday in ages, decided to take a well deserved couple of days off. I’ve lived in London all my life but there’s so much to see and do, I’ve barely scratched the surface. When researching London hotels, I discovered that Millennium Hotels were having a massive sale on rooms – meaning that the nightly rate was far cheaper than that of a Holiday Inn or Travelodge. RESULT. I stayed in Kensington which is a lovely little area, even when it feels like it’s -10 degrees outside. The room was a warm and cosy haven:

...with an amazingly comfy bed:

Some sneaky mirror pics whilst checking out the bathroom:

For lunch we went to Ask and had their Mediterranean Terrina. It’s warming. It’s tasty. It goes amazingly with a carafe of Shiraz. It just ticks all the right boxes:

Kind of lost track of the time – I blame the wine – so there wasn’t a whole lot of daylight left to sight see in. Instead we kept warm and chilled at the hotel, drinking copious amounts of green tea. We braved the chill later on to go out for Brazilian food:

We ate devoured chicken, bacon and pineapple skewers, ribs and sweet potato fries, all washed down with a Brazilian twist on sangria. After a good night's sleep in the world’s most amazing bed, we went to The Riding House Café [as reviewed here] for chorizo hash browns:

Our plans to visit the Tower of London were put on hold as there was a little bit of a blizzard going on. And the Imperial War Museum is closed until July 2013 which I was really gutted about :( Instead we sought refuge in the British Museum where they have awesome exhibitions on Japan and Egypt. Later in the afternoon we went to the London Aquarium as I’d never been before and have always wanted to go:

We stayed until closing time and walked along the Southbank watching the sun set:

 Having built up a considerable appetite, we went to Maxwells in Covent Garden for burgers and milkshakes:

I hadn’t been to Maxwells since I was little and their burgers were amazing. Seriously, like Meat Liquor good. Maybe better. Maxwells do MONDAY MADNESS where there is up to 50% off meals… highly recommended. I wasn’t a fan of their shakes though so grabbed a hot chocolate on the way back to the hotel:

Hot chocolate... the perfect way to warm up. That plus a bath. I really over did it with the bubbles. Bubbles EVERYWHERE. Think housekeeping would’ve had a heart attack if they saw quite how many bubbles were in that bathroom. The next morning we ate porridge in bed...

… meaning that we could get out nice and early for the V&A museum (another first which we’d never done before). I loved the fashion section with Givenchy lace:

… lacy collars:

… statement jewellery from Dior:

But I would’ve preferred this dress without the ostrich feathers....

Everything else about the museum was a photographer’s dream:

By late afternoon, our shoulders were aching from having rucksacks slung over them all day. 

It was time for a well deserved rest:

We sat in the most beautiful surroundings:

… and ate an incredible steak and ale pie:

A pie that was so satisfying, and so coma inducing, we didn’t stay for much longer after that. Back to mine for films and – you’ve guessed it – more food. Because you can never have too much food.

The Riding House Café

Earlier this week, I headed to The Riding House Café for brunch. I’d been dying to visit ever since I first laid eyes on their breakfast menu online. That morning, snowflakes were falling from the sky and it was bitterly cold. We stepped inside - the warmth being an absolute joy - and were led to seats up at the bar. In no time at all, I had a lovely cup of hot chocolate nestled in-between my hands.

There was an astounding amount of choice and although very tempted by their buttermilk pancakes, I couldn’t resist the idea of chorizo hash browns:

What I still can't get over is how generous the portion sizes were. I expected one or two small-ish hash browns artistically arranged on the plate but as you can see, the hash brown exceeded expectations and in fact filled up most of the plate. Words cannot express just how delicious it was. Pieces of chorizo were scattered throughout the hash brown but the beauty of it was how even if you just had a forkful of potato, those lovely flavours from the chorizo still translated through.

The pairing of the chorizo hash brown with the wilted spinach, mushroom, and poached eggs made for the most incredible marriage of flavours. I’m not usually a fan of poached eggs, but piercing them and watching the yolk bleed into the hash brown? Perfection.

The one thing I loved about The Riding House was how friendly and welcoming the staff were. As it was so cold, I dressed accordingly in my Timberlands and my slouchy cosmic print jumper. I find some shops and restaurants to be quite snooty with you if you dress down a little. The Riding House Café didn’t bat an eyelid and certainly didn’t treat us any differently from any other customer there.

Inside, there is a lovely feel to the place. Usually I would never dream of going for food on my own but with The Riding House, I could easily make an exception. There was a lovely calming atmosphere so I would have no qualms about going for brunch on my own, sitting in a corner with my nose in a book or writing the next installment of my novel. Although their main meals look equally tempting.

Thanks for having me. You will be seeing me again soon.

NB: This is not a sponsored post. I simply enjoyed my experience and wanted to share the love!

A peek inside my room #1

Operation Tidy is going well but I still have a long way to go before I achieve my dream bedroom as fantasised about here. As Operation Tidy progresses, I will gradually be revealing parts of my room so you have more of an insight into how I live and where I blog from. My first room related post is also a little bit of a haul post based on two purchases I made recently. The first being this rather gorgeous circular plate:

TK Maxx - £9.99

I love nothing more than a good candle, but candle wax can be a devilish little sod. I’d been searching high and low for something to rest my candles on and TK Maxx came to the rescue. £9.99 was nothing for such a generously sized plate. Plus with all the blues, swirls and glitter, it was by far the prettiest design I’d seen. The chest at the foot of my bed is now designated as “candle area” and I’ve tried to keep things quite minimal with just this plate, the remains of my Valentine’s flowers and my leftover Yankee Candle mango tea lights:

My second mission of late was to find some new bedding as I’d become bored of purple. And what happened? I find bedding on the one day I wasn’t actively looking for it!

 Asda - £11 (no joke!)

The mocha coloured print almost looks gold when viewed in a certain light. And as and when I fancy a change, I can flip the pillow cases and peel the duvet back to reveal the reverse side:

So last weekend, as well as enjoying my born again bed with candles flickering in the background, I also made that cake I spoke of. But I improvised and used chocolate frosting instead of cream cheese:

Also, I discovered that I may need to go to Porridge Eaters Anonymous: