Goodbye September, Hello October; The Zoo, Treasure Hunts & FriendsFest

Aw, I’ll miss you September. You were a little manic but only because you were filled with awesomeness. As always seems to be the case, I’m currently away on an adventure, this time to Berlin, so make sure to come by next month for some city-break posts.

One of my favourite month’s of the year, September played host to three fantastic weekends which I will try to summarise and not overkill on the pictures.

1 – The Birthday Sleepover

Living away from my little sister Elsie is tough, so when her birthday comes around I like to make a big fuss. This year she came to London for a girly weekend, filled with birthday surprises and a girly sleepover at my flat.

We went to London Zoo on the Saturday and it really reminded me how much I love being a big kid! We had so many giggles gawking at the bugs, laughing at penguins and trying to find Dory.

Later that evening we headed back to my flat where we transformed the living room into a cosy camp for pizza, movies and mocktails. Elsie was very impressed with my fizzy candyfloss cocktails – my tip of the month is to impress your little ones by pouring lemonade over candyfloss to create sweet pink drinks!

2 – The Surprise Treasure Hunt

Back in January, Allyn celebrated his 30th birthday however my plans for a surprise treasure hunt were postponed when he suddenly ended up in hospital. Now back on his feet (and getting more and more annoyingly suspicious about this belated surprise) I decided to finally organise my plan.

After locking him out of the living room for over 24 hours, I finally sneaked out the flat on a Saturday morning and left him to find an ‘escape the room’ set up to be solved. I have hours of hilarious footage to edit of Allyn looking around bewildered trying to solve my evidently impossible clues!

The rest of the afternoon then took him around London to some of his favourite spots where he picked up a puzzle piece that would then lead him to a final destination.

Meeting at Hyde Park, we walked over to Belgrave Square where I surprised him with tickets to an outdoor screening of Labyrinth, his favourite film. The open air cinema was run by Where is the Nomad, a fantastic pop-up organisation that donate all of their profits to The Sustainability Institute. They run a huge range of screenings across London with upcoming screenings of The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Blair Witch Project in October.

Despite an earlier downpour, the clouds cleared and made for a cosy evening with complimentary hot drinks, a bottle of fizz and hot gourmet burger. 

A big thank you to Where is the Nomad – you guys helped make the perfect end to a wonderful day!

3 – FRIENDSFEST

If you haven’t heard of FriendsFest then where have you been? Last year Comedy Central made those who managed to get ticket’s dreams come true as they brought the sets of Friends to the UK for a limited roadshow. So earlier this year when I saw that it would be returning, I did everything I could to get my hands on some tickets (which included getting off a bus two stops early and sitting outside a random person’s house frantically refreshing my phone).

Allyn and I headed up to Sheffield to stay at his sister’s for a Friends themed weekend before making our way to Harewood House near Leeds. A small area of the grounds had been set up like a mini festival, with everything from Joey’s apartment to Pheobe’s cab.

Sets from various scenes were recreated including an 80s silent disco that played host to ‘The Routine’ that we learnt and practised well into the early hours of Sunday morning (a Christmas dance off is planned).

Never just ‘lay’ a wedding dress over yourself – you will look like a beast and forever be haunted by the picture. Hence why we settled for a generic sign snap haha!

Even the food and drinks stalls were themed including Monica’s diner with over the top energetic dancers, a Duck and Chick cocktail bar (serving cocktails such as The Smelly Cat and PIVOT) and ‘Mockolate’.

MAN IT WAS AWESOME. 

Next month will see the end of my Berlin trip and then its London Cocktail Week, so I’m preparing for some incredible drinks and horrific hangovers. I hope you all had an equally great month, do let me know what you got up to!