Secret Cinema - Back to The Future

By now you have probably heard of Secret Cinema and their amazing film showing of Back To The Future, complete with recreation of the entire town of Hill Valley!  I decided that this was something we HAD to go to, and booked tickets to surprise Chris.

If you haven't heard of Secret Cinema, they describe themselves as an 'immersive film-experience company'. Their events are pretty frequent, but you have to be on their mailing list to get an invite to their shows. The Back To The Future showing has been the biggest one they have done yet, and it was slightly different in that you could get tickets even if you weren't on their mailing list. I know that in the past they have also based events on Alien, One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest, and The Grand Budapest Hotel to name a few.

It was all very elaborate, we were sent new identities and professions as well as printable business cards with all of our details including a phone number on!  I was now Miranda Conway and I worked for the Hill Valley Stationers. Chris worked at the Sherwin-Williams Paint Company. We were also told to dress the part in 50's attire, so of course we abliged!

Before we went in we had to hand over any cameras or phones. Obviously because they want to keep the whole thing as secret as possible, they didn't want people instantly posting pictures all over Facebook and Instagram. But also, I think it was to really get people into the spirit of the 1950's, and modern technology would have ruined that somewhat. I think it was a really good idea. They did ,however, sell disposable cameras inside, and I made sure to snap one up quick before they sold out.

The other day I FINALLY got those photos back, so I thought I'd share them with you.

There were so many shops and companies that you could visit, all with different things going on inside.   There were lots of actors and actresses scattered around, some of them characters from the film. On our way to the venue we ran into Biff's friends and Chris got bullied by the guy who wears the 3D glasses. What a meanie!

There was a great fun fair, but there was just so much to do we didn't get a chance to go on any of the rides.

There was a little school advertising the Enchantment Under The Sea Dance, which you will remember from the film. In the school hall the dance was happening, and there was an amazing band playing, which we thought were so good we have now put them up on The Band Boutique here.

There was a male vocal harmony trio performing intermittently called the Texatones, they also worked for the garage, hence the outfits! They were great!

There were houses of all the main characters from the film that you could have a look in. Here I am posing outside one of them with a pram!

And here I am at George McFly's House!

The film was projected onto the front of the clock tower, and there were actors performing all the main parts of the movie alongside it.  We saw Marty catch a ride with his skateboard on a van, with Biff and the gang chasing him. We saw the Delorean emerge in a cloud of smoke, and Doc brown risking his life hanging from the clock tower in the finale! It was all very dramatic!

Really, there was too much going on to mention it all, but I did come home with a few souvenirs.  The postcards and the newspaper were free to pick up, and I bought a Town Fair flag for £1.50. I also bought myself a T-Shirt.

It really was an amazing experience. You could tell that everyone there had totally bought into it, nearly everyone was dressed up in 50's clothes. It was a blast. I would definitely recommend signing up to their mailing list, as any future events are sure to be awesome too! You can register for future events here.

Did you go? If you did what did you enjoy most?

Laura xXx

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Etsy Craft Party!

photosource design by ONR

If you have stopped by OhNoRachio's blog today you will have seen that she is organising an etsy craft party on the 20th June!

I am super excited about this! I am looking forward to hanging out with the girls I have met at previous blogger meets again, as well as meeting lots of new creative people!

I am planning on opening my own etsy shop in the near future, hopefully before the 20th June. But more on that later. 

If you live in or near Southampton and would like to come let us know! Just hop over to Rachel's blog and leave her a comment showing your interest and she will get you a proper invite.

Looking forward to meeting you!

Laura xXx

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Cambridge Blogger Meet - The Goodie bag

Today I am going to share with you the contents of the wonderful #camblogmeet goodiebag! Hurrah!

An array of wonderful companies and artists contributed to our goodie bag, so a big thank you to all those that sponsored our fantastic day!

First up we each got a hand illustrated card by Rachel from OhNoRachio!

A crafty kit from Crafty Creatives and free copies of Homemaker magazine.

Lovely smelling soaps from Lush.

We each got our very own ring from the hostess with the mostess Claireabellemakes. Mine has cute little cherries on it!

Harriet's fantastic 'cattoos" and you can just peep the corner of Emma's pretty punting postcard. See the first picture for a better look.

A delicious sample tea from Teapigs. I haven't actually had mine yet, I will look forward to trying it this weekend.

The cutest little animal stickers by Stacie Swift.

Awesome Washi tape from Washitapes.co.uk. Also thanks to The Sheep Shop, Dexterous Diva and Printed.com, who also contributed.

If you want to see a full list of bloggers that attended the event you can find it here on twitter. Go and check out their blogs, they are all awesome!

I've definitely got the blogger meet up bug now, I can't wait for the next one!

Laura xXx

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Cambridge Blogger Meet

On Saturday the long awaited Cambridge Blogger Meet (or as it became known #camblogmeet) finally happened! I travelled up with Harriet and Rachel who I met for the first time not long ago at our little Southampton bloggers meet. You can see from the above photo just how excited we were!

It was jolly lucky that we all got along so well as the journey to Cambridge took us over 3 hours! But honestly, I couldn't have found 2 nicer girls to spend 6 hours traveling with.

We spent the time very wisely, taking photographs, making sure Rachel's nails were painted, and making lots of silly Vine videos! If you follow me on twitter you may have seen some of our highly entertaining productions.

Finally, we arrived at our destination, to be greeted by the one and only Claire from Claireabellemakes. Claire had pretty much organised the whole event by herself, and what a great job she did too! The most exciting sight was on walking in, not only were we greeted by a whole team of bloggers, but also waiting for us was a lovely goodie bag each! I'll be doing a seperate post on those tomorrow showing all of the goodies inside.

After we had inspected our goodie bags thoroughly there was a draw for 2 extra prizes. One was 5 free Graze boxes, and the other was a free months subscription to Crafty Creatives. I was very lucky that Harriet pulled the name out of the hat (literally Claire's hat), because she picked my name out! Hurrah! I will now be eagerly anticipating my Crafty Creatives box to come next month!

The event was held at Ta Bouche in Cambridge, who kindly put up with us and served us some wonderful drinks and food. We started off with some delicious smoothies, I then had a superfood salad whilst everyone else seemed to have a burger (I was a bit jealous), and of course we had cocktails to finish!

There were just so many of us that sadly I didn't even manage to speak to all the bloggers there! But the ones I did speak to were lovely. Here I am below, an honorary member of the illustrators corner. I stole this photo from Claire's post about the day.

From left to right, Stacie, Emma, Rachel, Emma, Harriet and me!

After the cocktails, those of us that were left went on a mini tour of Cambridge, led by the members of the party that lived in the city. We went to a pretty shop, found a craft market, delved into a sweetie store, and saw a man playing a guitar in a dustbin!

Then we did the grown up touristy bit and had a peek at Trinity College, it was so pretty! The picture below is another one I have pilfered from Claire's post. The same motley crew as the picture earlier with the addition of Michaela on the far right.

After all of that walking we felt we had deserved a rest, so we decided to go for dessert. I had that yummy chocolatey thing above, it was delicious! And look at Rachel's eaton mess, that looked yummy too!

All in all it was a fabulous day, and I discovered that bloggers really are the friendliest people! I am so glad that this little blog has led me to a new group of friends and exciting adventures! What fun!

Tomorrow I will fill you in on what was in the goodie bag, I know you are excited to find out! 

Laura xXx

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South Blogger Meetup

Saturday was a rather exciting day for me, as it was the day of our blogger meet up! Four of us gathered from around the south, and we went for a lovely lunch at the White Star in Southampton.

Pictured above, from left to right is me, Rachel from Ohnorachio, Rosie Simons and Harriet Gray. We had a jolly old time and it felt like we had known eachother for yonks. It was so nice to meet new people (I don't get out much!) especially people that I have lots in common with!

It was also quite inspiring to be around these ladies, as they all have their own etsy shops. I have always wanted to sell something on etsy but have never been able to settle on what, but after our meet up I think I will try to decide soon!

As it was a blogger meet up I felt that we had to have some sort of DIY tutorial pictured. So if you are unsure how to make a cup of tea, please see my Tea making tutorial below!

I am super duper excited for the Cambridge blogger meet up now! I am also plotting another Southampton one on a slightly larger scale so I cant wait to make plans for that either!

I demanded that we have a silly face photo, sorry guys! 

It really was a fab day and I am so glad we did it! Yay for new friends!

Laura xXx

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Bridesmaids Day!

On sunday I had all 4 of my bridesmaids over for a lovely relaxed day with lots of food and lots of planning! Here are some snaps we took during the day.

We thought we'd start the day off in style with some Champagne, as you can see from the photo at the top, most of it went all over the table! Whoops!  We then did a little quiz which Kate had very cleverly prepared for us, it was very funny! We chatted about ideas and ate our cupcakes. Many topics were covered; dresses, hen parties, hair, colour schemes, music... the list goes on!

After that we made a massive order for Dominoes Pizza. Needless to say we could not eat it all, but we gave it a good go! Then it was time for Mojitos!  This was probably a foolish idea because then we decided to paint our nails, with which we had varying degrees of success! 

Hot chocolate was next on the list and I had a little surprise for the girls as I had made them all 'Team Bridesmaid' mugs with their names on! I just made myself one with a heart on because technically I can't be part of 'Team Bridesmaid', and 'Team Bride' just sounded a bit sad.  We finished our nails off whilst watching Don't Tell The Bride!

Of course, it was very important that we watched the film 'Bridesmaids' to get a good idea of what we should be prepared for! (Haha, I hope not!) So we got comfy on the sofa with a blanket each and watched it whilst waiting for our nails to dry.

It was a lovely day!

Laura xXx

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