10 chickflicks you definitely need in your life

As we barrel towards Christmas proper, and the social calendar starts to clear a little, my mind always turns to relaxing a little, getting cosy and curling up. One of my favourite ways to unwind is with a good film, and nothing is quite so relaxing and fulfilling to me as a good old-fashioned chickflick.

Don't get me wrong, I can thoroughly enjoy a good action romp, a subtitled critic's darling or a highbrow drama, but when it comes to pure indulgence, I'm all about curling up under a cosy, fleecy blanket, pouring a glass of red (or making a tea or a hot chocolate), and watching an old favourite.

Here are the 10 chickflicks I think you definitely need in your life...some are pure chickflicks, others are comedy, drama, or teen films that also straddle the chickflick genre. Be sure to let me know any of your favourites in the comments too!

1. Mystic Pizza

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Happy Gilmore Girls Day!

In these current times, rife with unrest, uncertainty and the most odious of political machinations (the UK parliament is like a soap opera at the moment. If it was a soap opera it would be gripping; as a government it's kind of terrifying), I find myself looking for rainbows amongst the storms and clouds. This has long been my nature - I love to find the reasons to celebrate, the uplifting asides, the moments of joy - and by doing so these propel me through the tougher times.

When I read earlier this week that Netflix was adding all seven seasons of Gilmore Girls to their platform in all territories from today (except in China, it turns out), I was delighted. I'm a longtime fan of Lorelai, Rory, Luke, Lane, Richard, Sookie and Emily (life goals), as well as the rest of the characters, and my little boxset of all seven series has been watched and rewatched several times. I'm so glad that Netflix has added all the existing episodes to their roster, and cannot wait for the new special episodes when they arrive. With that in mind, here are my 7 reasons why Gilmore Girls is a series to treasure....through the medium of gifs. 

1. Bookworms are represented beautifully.

Rory Gilmore is right up there on the list of bookworms of brilliance with Hermione Granger and Jo March for me. Her voracious reading and the obsession with books are good for the soul!

2. The Gilmore ladies love their coffee. Excellent stuff.

3. The Friday realness. A lot of shows for this demographic show endless partying and a vast array of solo cups. I know the Friday nights of my teenage years were more about pizza and movies!

4. The supporting cast is fantastic. Whether it's Sookie being all warm and ditsy, Luke being the kind curmudgeon, or Paris being....Paris, I love how the writers create a real and vivid world filled with so many unique and interesting characters.

5. The family feels are exquisite. The central realtionship between Rory and Lorelai, and the relationship beween Richard and Emily and the 'girls' is so well handled and rich - some shows have a tendency to make familial realtionships very black and white; with Gilmore Girls we get to see the shades of grey.

6. Lost-ness. I love the capacity that Gilmore Girls has to let their characters fail, and then to flail a bit while they find a new route, idea or challenge. This is often how life is, and I love that the show allows its characters the growth that failure or being a little lost can bring.

7. The relationships- in much the same way that the show creates a real family, the friendships and realtionships in the show are very real too. People fall out, make up, disagree, grow, break up...but in a way that feels so relatable.

There are so many other things I could mention - the fashion, the pop culture, the quotes, the theme song, the movies....but ultimately (as is so often the case) the show itself says it best:

Have you watched Gilmore Girls before? Will you be watching it on Netflix? If you have watched it, like me are you considering watching it all over again?

Happy Friday! Or rather, Happy Gilmore Girls Day!

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Fun times round at Little Nan's!

Sometimes, you just need a good night out. Silliness and music and drinks and friends. 

Sometimes as a blogger, you get invited to try out different evenings out around the city, and if you're really lucky you find yourself with a posse of awesome fellow-bloggers with whom you get to do so.

Pretty rad, right?

So it was that last Thursday I found myself journeying over to Dalston, for a night of fun at Little Nan's Bar, along with the lovely Erica, Ashleigh, Emma and Milly. Little Nan's is a pop-up (I love it, East London repping) housed in the Rio Cinema a hop, skip and jump away from Dalston Kingsland. It's a spin-off from the South london Little Nan's, and is in residence until the 14th August.

The whole place is festooned with what some would call tat, but it makes for a great atmosphere - colourful, kitschy and playful. The whole space is full of film posters, knicknacks and fun talking pieces. It made for excellent posing opps, as Milly demonstrates below!

 We were the first to arrive, so we spent a good ten minutes oohing, aahing and taking pictures, before grabbing a handful of popcorn and some pick and mix (yay, PICK AND MIX!) and settling down for a nice, refreshing cup of....cocktail.

Side note: I *loved* how much seating there was. I can dance and drink just as much as I did half a lifetime ago, but man I need a seat afterwards. #sadbuttrue

The cocktail list was hilarious, featuring such names as the 'Bet Lynch' and the 'Sexy Frank Butcher'. We selected a few and they were brought to us in teapots!

A teapot full of cocktail (odd phrase to write, that) is £20...but for £39 there's an all-you-can-drink option (within reason, natch), which covers two hours of drinking. Not bad at all by London standards - the cocktails we tried were well made and interesting, and it turns out a teapot is a pretty generous serving!

Drinks acquired, we were able to sit and chat and thoroughly enjoy the soundtrack of brilliant 90s tunes. Destiny's Child! Coolio! Bryan Adams!

 As demure as this picture looks, trust and believe there was a LOT of singing and silliness. Whenever Erica and I go out and there's music, we end up serenading each other. I kind of love that that's our thing!

Just as we were getting ready to leave, we discovered the other room - a room full of disco lights, a giant fan you can use as a wind machine (oh yes, we did) and props aplenty. So we delayed our exit by a good twenty minutes and had a good old boogie.

We then repaired to Voodoo Ray's, a couple of doors down, for pizza, diet coke and chats (thank you Erica for letting me knab this photo!).

And then it was time to head home...

Thank you so much to the team at Little Nan's for hosting us so beautifully and making us feel so welcome. If you're looking for a fun, quirky night out with lashings of 90s hits, you really must head over to Little Nan's - I'm so glad I did!

The bar is open Tuesday – Thursday from 5pm ’til midnight, and until 2am Friday and Saturday. Booking is advised but if there’s space, walk-ins are welcome too

Little Nan’s @ Rio Cinema
107 Kingsland High St, 
London 
E8 2PB









Disclaimer: As the above would suggest, I was kindly invited to visit Little Nan's and they gave me cocktails and sweeties while I was there. Opinions, however? All my own.

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A most unusual Friday night with #clueQuest (+ a giveaway!)

There are many ways to spend a Friday night in London.

There’s the tried and tested - dinner and a movie, pints in the pub, takeaway and telly – and there’s the new and exciting. One of the delights of our fair city is the endless scope for new, fun, innovative ways to spend your time.

Which for me, a couple of Fridays ago, involved getting trapped in a room with four other lovely bloggers and striving to save humanity as we know it before the evil Professor BlackSheep unleashed his dastardly plans on the human race.

No biggie.

Gulp.

I’d heard about escape rooms before, and had read with glee Katy and Jasiminne’s accounts of their recent visits to clueQuest. So when clueQuest and Nuffnang kindly invited me to take part in the ‘Revenge of The Sheep’ challenge I was delighted.  I love puzzles, problem solving and logic challenges of all kinds (check the ex-teacher) so I was excited to take part in an escape room and to see if those skills worked in a practical situation!

My gorgeous companions for the evening! (L-R Erica, me, Jasmin, Milli and Milly)

My awesome team was made up of Erica, Milly, Jasmin and Milli, all of whom are bloggers I’m fond of, and once it was booked in the diary I found myself looking forward to the experience more and more. I was intrigued to see how we’d work together and if we’d manage to achieve our mission!
There are three live escapes at the clueQuest location, so you can visit three times and have a truly unique experience on each occasion. You can work through all three over separate visits, or just enjoy one – we attempted the third challenge but slipped into the story and proceedings straight away; I think this works equally well as a standalone challenge or as part of a series.

V  V V mysterious

As it’s all a bit secretive and under wraps, I don’t want to give away too much of the detail in the room, but allow me to set the scene. Professor BlackSheep (evil baddie guy par excellence) has a mission to turn all humanity into…..sheep. You might think that’s a baa-rking premise (*pun alarm activated*), but in the excitement of the challenge I found myself utterly swept up in the narrative and determined to save the day.  I loved having to solve the many puzzles and challenges along the way and there were plenty of thrilling moments, as well as points where we were well and truly stumped! Luckily the team at clueQuest are observing via a series of cameras in the room, and they have various methods of communicating with the team – some direct, and some rather more cryptic!

These cameras also meant that the lovely Natasha, our hostess from Nuffnang, could watch everything unfold in the control room, and man, did we give her a show. I can’t tell you much about what happened or how we solved the challenge….but I can tell you we did so with five seconds to spare.

FIVE. SECONDS.

I swear, those last couple of minutes aged me about five years!

We were so relieved to have solved the challenge - not least Natasha who'd been watching from the control room! 

I thoroughly enjoyed the Revenge of The Sheep challenge – it was fun, really made me think, and we had to work as a team to ensure we completed the challenge.  I think this would be fantastic for friends on a night out or colleagues doing some teambuilding, and also think it would be great for families of older primary or secondary school aged children – my former pupils would have LOVED this.

Have I piqued your interest? I certainly hope so, because the generous folks at clueQuest have given us bloggers the chance to give away a visit to their location near Kings Cross for a team of three to five people! If you’re up for the challenge, please enter using the Rafflecopter below.  Please note that this giveaway is open to UK residents only, and will run until Tuesday 31st May.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you so much to clueQuest for having me to play, and to

my awesome team for a fun, and funny, evening!

You can find out more about clueQuest here, and find them on social media at twitter and facebook.




Disclaimer, because I like to be honest: this post has been sponsored by clueQuest. Down with Professor BlackSheep!

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I's back! A Poppet post.

Oh helloes hoomans!

It is I, Poppet cat.  I thoughted that as I hadn't writted to you all in a while I would try to sneak into Clur's study to write you all a little note - becus she is epic buzy movin all the boxes to and fro and throwing out lots of stuf she won't notice I've bin heer!

All is well here at kittun HQ.  We ave been here nearlee four years now and have the hoomans very well trained.  Since last summerbobs we've even trained Clur to stay home and write and blog most days, meanin we get even more attention!  We are epic clever katzen.

Leela and Fry are all growned up now, but are still itzener than me.  I am still boss and run the house beautifully, of course.  I've even set up an instagram account for us cats - we are @thebadgerkits over there.  I only thinked it was  fair, as we are so booful.

My favourite things to do are curl up in the hammock, sing for chicken, have chinfusses from Maffoo and chill with my buddy Simba, the ginger cat who lives next door.  He likes to come in and hang out wiv us Roper kittuns all the time, but is a little bit scared of the hoomans.  Silly Simba-cat.

Fry is a very sweet and gentlemanly cat (except when he's trying to start fights with me or Leela-paws) who adores his hoomans. He likes to curl up in the hammock with me, stretch out in sunbeams to tan his belleh, and miaowing for Clur and Maffoo when they go upstairs to sleep, so he gets bonus cuddles.

Leela is a looooong cat - she is skinny-malinky but long and strong.  She is very, very fast and likes to gallop - up and down the stairs, in the garden, in the hallway, sometimes even into inanimate objects!  She's a very loving kittun and likes to have chats with her family.  She has an enormous purr which goes all high pitched when she is happeh!

So that's our newses.  How are oo all?  I will check back again soon (Clur's new desk is the perfect height for sneaky kittuns!), but for now heer are some pictures of our trio.

Bye!

Poppet-Cat

PS Clur's mummeh and daddeh are coming for a visit at the weekend!  I are very excited because they are big kitteh fans and are also tall enough to get into the fridge for chikun!  

This was when I was very clever and losted my collar again.  I'm now on my seventh collar, heehee.  Clur and Maffoo get me safe ones which click off if they get caught...that also means they are easy to ditch....

Kitteh committeh meeting.

Fry knows he is not meant to be up there!

When Clur took this she and I were havin chats.  This are my concentratey face!

 Leela loves the camera....

...I love sneaking onto the hoomans bed!

We all love our boxes!

Fry is the shyest when it comes to pick-churs, but he likes Clur's noo camera, which helps.

Doing my rounds!

Leela hiding from Clur tidying. Noiseh hoomans!

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On the ball at Cabana Brixton!

I am getting utterly spoiled with foodie ops and nights out at the moment.

I'm actually super glad that my other food based project is healthy, fresh food based, or I think I'd treble in size.  That's what it's all about though, isn't it - a nice meal here, a salad there; a cocktail now, a workout later.....

I'm very lucky in that I'm getting to try a huge and delicious range of foods though, and often in the nicest company.  I wrote about my visit to Cabana Islington for wine tasting last week, and now I'm going to review Cabana Brixton, where I shared a lovely meal with Milly, Katy, Erica & Ashleigh.

The amount of delicious spherical foods on offer was astounding.  The main drink of the evening was a refreshing caipirinha (£6.95), but we also requested some of the delicious Miolo wine we had enjoyed during our previous visit to the brand.

How lucky am I to get to spend so much time with such lovelies?

Over wine, cocktails, and delicious guacamole (£3.95 for guacamole and bottomless chips? Perfection) we had a lovely catch up on all our goings on.

Once we had chatted for a wee while, Ashleigh and Katy popped over the road to take a few fashion shots for an upcoming post.  As is always the way with photos, this took a little while and the food arrived to our table before they returned.  Like the good food bloggers we are we didn't eat any before we'd all had a chance to take pictures! We did harrass them via snapchat while we waited, of course...

We were utterly spoiled, getting to try lots of different starters. I loved the cheesy baked dough balls (£3.95) and the piping-hot, scrumptious spicy malagueta chicken doughnuts (£5.45), but I think my favourite of all was the crispy Lula squid (£5.95) - the fish was cooked perfectly and the spicy mayo on the side made for a perfect dipping sauce!

The cocktails flowed as the evening eased into night.

And many a flatlay snap was taken!

 The mains were various grilled meats, served up on skewers which are then presented on a platter. All of the meat was well done, but the spicy malagueta chicken (£12.95) was in a league of its own - succellent and tender.  I'd enjoyed it at our Islington foray and it did not disappoint on a second try!

We had various yummy sides with our main; my favourites were the sweet potato fries (£3.95), because I love them, and the wonderful quinoa, avocado and squash salad (£5.45), fresh and tasty with a lovely citrusy tang in the dressing!

To close we took it easy on the puddings, but we did manage a few of the chocolate raindrop doughnuts (£5.95).

All in all it was a lovely visit. The restaurant in Brixton is big and roomy and everyone seemed to be having a lovely time - especially one family who were on fire, comedy wise.  At one point we almost requested to join their table, they were having such fun! I'd really recommend Cabana for a fun meal, full of tasty food and Brazilian flair.  I'm looking forward to heading back soon!






Disclaimer, because I love them: I was invited to go along to Cabana to review the new menus and to visit the Brixton branch. All opinions, ridiculous tweets and love of spherical foodstuffs are my own.

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