A day trip to ... London

We thought that as we have been to a fair few cities across the country and the globe over the years, it might be great to share with you some places and things we love to do while travelling around and you may even have been to them all, never been there or think, now why would I go there!  Now, not all of these will be quick one day stops, there may be 24 hour versions, a quick hop over the water versions and of course home grown, things to do with your day off in your nearest city versions.  But isn't that the beauty of adventures, they can be as long or short and as near or far as you like.

Live it: H's Hong Kong Adventure

Well hello there!  It's been a couple of weeks since I mentioned my creative crisis and mentioned I was going on holiday.  For those who know me in real life, I have been away for a couple of weeks to Hong Kong!  You know, just the average destination! ha ha.

Live it: Workshop Adventures

We are mad about learning new skills and brushing up on those that may have got a little rusty over the years too. We have been lucky enough to attend more than our fair share of workshops and classes over the last few years, and they are always so much fun. We thought we would take a quick walk down memory lane with you today and remind ourselves what we have learnt and let you know about some fun places too and brush up your skills as well.

Paperchase for National Stationery Week

If you LOVE stationery, like we do, you will no doubt have noticed that this week gave us all an excuse to let our inner (and often outer) notebook geek loose as we celebrated National Stationery Week. It was way back in 1997 that H and I made our first ever trip to visit the promised land that is Paperchase Tottenham Court Road flagship store for college supplies and we have been regular worshippers ever since. So when they asked us to come along and hang out for an evening and play with a bunch of stationery goodies you can imagine what our answer was.

If you have never been to any of the larger Paperchase stores they really are worth a visit, they go all out with they merchandising and displays. We started the evening by taking a walk around the store and taking in all the beautiful new ranges and making mental shopping lists of what we were going to be purchasing before we went home!

The super chic Get Organised collection always looks amazing, now with even more added copper accents and Monochrome mixes so well with it.

The newest American Beauty range includes some of my favourite pieces from Ban.do, Kate Spade and American Crafts. Not to mention a Pinterest worthy collection of pastel storage and inspirational foiled notebooks.

Being the planner geek that I am I spent a longer than healthy time at the planner wall, serious planner girl goals right there! Summer vibes were in full force around the store with palm print, flamingos and pineapples all making us wishing the sunshine would hurry up and come to stay!

One of the many reasons I love to come to the TCR store is their selection of handmade papers, they are just amazing and the selection is huge.

Some of our favourite brands are also here including The Makery and MT washi tapes.  How gorgeous is this washi wall!

After a wander it was down to business, the business of flatlay-ing our little hearts out!! The workshop was lead by the the lovely Louise from The What Now Blog and we were given a basket full of gorgeous Paperchase stationery and got to create some amazing flatlay images.

It was honestly so much fun, you know we love a good flatlay photo so it was fun to experiment and work with the other bloggers too! We worked with the gorgeous Carol from Muff and Teacake and met up with our current YouTube girl crush Natasha Nuttal from Graphic Fantastique, and fellow bloggers Jaye Rockett and Emma Jane Palin. Here are just some of our favourite images from the evening.

Thanks so much to the team at Paperchase for having us along to the event and meeting up with other bloggers is always fun! We had such a lovely evening, and yes I ended up making some purchases before we went for dinner, it would have been wrong not too.

What have you been doing to celebrate National Stationery Week?? Link up your Instagrams, twitters and blog posts below so we can head over and take a look!

Have a lovely long weekend
Sammy and H


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Check this out: Alice's Adventures Underground

For this month's Check this out, we go deep underground to find Alice!  Alice's Adventures Underground is based in the underground vaults beneath Waterloo station and is immersive theatre by the guys at Les Enfants Terribles.  You, the viewer get to have the adventure, not Alice!

I really want to go to this, so I thought if I put it as one of my posts, I might actually get around to it.  I have friends who have been and said it's pretty cool and of course they don't want to tell me too much, plus everyone has a slightly different adventure as you go through the experience.

I love the description on their website "Journey down the rabbit hole to gorge on cakes that will have you bumping your head on the ceiling, smoke a pipe with the Caterpillar as he tells you his psychedelic tale and take tea with the maddest of Hatters; all whilst trying to avoid losing your head at the hands of the fearsome Queen of Hearts."

Sounds fun, right!
H

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Barcelona 'Must Visit' List

As you may have seen H mention we are off to Barcelona in just over a week and we could not be more excited. It has been a whopping 14 years since we were there last on the college trip that made us both fall in love with the city. We are looking forward to visiting all the places we remember so fondly and discovering a load of new favourites too.

Love it: Craftacular Haul

Yesterday was Bust Magazine's Craftacular day and what a lovely day for going to spend the afternoon looking at more pretty things!  Of course we went to see some of our friendly faces and met some lovely new designers too, which is always good, although maybe not for the bank balance!  I am now on a spending ban before our holiday next month.

Live it: Knitting and Stitching Show Spring 2015

Last Friday we went to the Knitting & Stitching show in London, it's a bit of a pilgrimage for us and usually a good excuse for some lunch and some other shopping - well, when you are in the big smoke, it would be rude not to!

The show is on twice a year and this time of year it is Kensington Olympia's time and so an easy jaunt for both of us.

The show showcases lots of different shops, magazines and crafters in rows and rows of stands.  From Fabrics Galore and Abakhan Fabrics to Mr X Stitch and the very famous knitted farm.

We found some new products too from Crossstitch City Cushion covers from Hannah Bass to Maud's Fabric Finds and Floss & Mischief's bug crossstitches - some amazing new products.

Mr X Stitch had his usual delights of embroidery artists work, the Parrot above had embroidery around paperclips to make the feathers - ingenius, and the stitched chocolate bars were a real treat.

We saw some other familiar faces with By Hand London, with their new Sophia Dress pattern just about to launch.  Talking of dresses, there was the usual fashion awards they have every year and I noticed this purple number looked familiar, it was part of the Woking College show last year at The Lightbox, well done Hannah.

The lovely people at TOFT had made a knitted jungle where you could go and sit and knit.  We just loved the look of this jungle, how cool to be knitting in it?!

We came away full of new ideas for the blog and some extra fabrics of course - who can resist a fat quarter or 5!

Did you go to the show, what did you think?  Have you been to shows like this before?  Let us know in the comments.

H


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Live it: Paperchase SS15 Event

H and I have worshipped at the doors of Paperchase Tottenham Court Road for more than 15 years. Four floors of stationary, pens, paper and gifts who would not want to be a paper chaser? You can imagine our delight when an invite hit our inbox to head over to TCR and view their Spring/Summer 2015 line and have some Christmas crafting fun, we literally squealed.

Last Tuesday evening we made our way up to the crafting area at the top of the store and were met by the PR and some of the design team. after a welcome drink we headed over to have fun with glitter with the lovely Martine Arty. They have a bunch of workshops going on in the lead up to Christmas at the flagship store, head over to the #imadethis page on their website for more details.

We got to make Christmas decorations, basically we got to play with amazing paper, glue and glitter for an hour, it was awesome! 

Then they let us loose on the new collections. The lovely Puja took us around and talked us through some of the pieces. We are so excited to get our hands on some of these goodies. We don't want to spoil the surprise as we will be doing a post all about the collections when they are released so we have just given you a little teaser below...

Cockatoo tankard and it takes two to Mango! Yes!

A trip to the store would not be complete without a little shopping spree, so we headed down to check out the Christmas goodies and picked up more than a few supplies to keep us going until the next time we come and visit.

We would just like to say a massive THANK YOU to the guys at Paperchase for having us along, and for the awesome goodie bag!

Are you a Paperchase fan? What is your favourite piece of paperchasery? Or piece of stationary that you last bought?

Let us know, as usual in the comments below or on twitter @livelovemake

H and Sammy xxx


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Live it: H's Berlin Adventure

Back to reality with a bump today! This time last week I was checking out what Berlin has to offer! So, what better way to combat the back to reality blues than a round-up of what we got up to. Now this will be a whistle stop tour as we did so so much in our 5 days.

Live it: Sammy's Las Vegas Adventure

Last week, as you may know if you follow me on Instagram, I was away for a hen weekend ( bachelorette ) for a friend of ours in Las Vegas. It kind of goes without saying that we all had an amazing time, I thought I would share some of my highlights with you.

Hotels / Casinos / Hotels

We stayed at The Signature at the MGM Grand. Three golden sky scrapers in the grounds of the epic MGM Grand Resort. We were just off the Vegas strip with an air con walkway between us and the MGM casino. In the UK we would maybe pop to a hotel restaurant to have dinner but in Las Vegas visiting the other hotels and casinos is encouraged, many of them have top restaurants, shopping malls and attractions that are designed to draw you in to spend time and money inside. 

Many of the hotels in Vegas have such amazing themes with epic attention to detail. The Hotel opposite ours was New York, New York. The frontage of which is a replica of the Manhattan skyline including a roller-coaster. 

Every hotel had its own casino, an epic floor layout of slot machines, craps tables and roulette wheels spinning 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

The Strip by day is spectacular, but by night it takes on a neon life of its own.

Food Glorious Food

If you are not a foodie person, you are going to be disappointed in Las Vegas. There is every taste catered for from sweet to savoury, sometimes both in one go. From high flying 5 star cuisine to your colour choice of M&M, you can eat anything at pretty much any hour of the day here. 

Drinks are just as crazy, Slushy ice drinks come with a shot of rum or tequila if you prefer? A small is a large and a large is a bucket!

As well as breakfast for breakfast you can have lunch, dinner and dessert for breakfast at all you can eat buffets.  Key-lime pie at 9am anyone?

My favourite meal has to be our last mornings breakfast at Serendipity 3. The restaurant is cute and quirky with a menu to match. My chocolate peanut butter milkshake and saints and sinners French toast were to die for, Amazing!

Shop 'Till You Drop
The phrase 'Money can't buy everything' does not ring true here. You can literally buy anything if you have enough money, it is a place where tacky and opulent go hand in hand.

From spiral escalators to make-up vending machines, Vegas is a place where the bazaar and unimaginable are in full practice. A place where a shop selling bacon plasters is opposite an Art gallery next door to Gucci!

As you can imagine I was loving it and have spent the past six months saving hard to be able to afford to pick up some special bits and bobs to bring home from the states. Including items from Kate Spade, Rebecca Minkoff, Michael Kors, Tarte, Victoria Secret, BKR, EOS, GlamGlow, Diptyque and Bath and Bodyworks. 

Sights and Sounds

Shopping is not just about buying in Vegas, it is an experience like no other. The malls in the hotels are like movie sets. Both Caesars Palace and The Venetian have sky painted ceilings and an amazing array of designer stores.

The Chandelier bar at the swanky Cosmopolitan hotel was just so beautiful. Our pre dinner cocktails were made all that more amazing by sitting inside this giant crystal curtain and the view from the Top of the World restaurant at the top of the Stratosphere tower was one of the most epic sites I have ever seen, The food was pretty spectacular too! 

We were lucky enough to get to see a couple of shows whilst we were there too, The Circ du Soleil show LOVE (set to the music of The Beatles) was astounding and we got a chance to spend our Saturday night dressed as Britney Spears whilst watching Britney Spears!

If nights out or shopping are not your thing try a Pool Party, we visited Rehab at the Hard Rock Hotel and had a crazy, crazy day.

Las Vegas continues to be one of my favourite places on earth, it is a crazy, excessive, extravagant, opulent, epic place. I am starting to save now to head back there some day, I am already excited at the thought of being there again.

I hope you enjoyed that little peek into my long weekend adventure in Las Vegas. Have you ever been? Do you want to take a trip there? What's on your Vegas to-do list? Let me know in the comments below.

I'm still recovering from the holiday blues...

Sammy xxx

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