A Christmas in Pictures

A Christmas in Pictures

I thought this would be a nice way to document a bunch of the things I did in Christmas 2013 for myself without having to write a post on each (like I had originally planned *grrr* damn you coursework).  It’ll be lovely to look back and remember all the things I did!  *Warning future Gina* This is a picture heavy post ;)

Christmas started, for me, with the flat Christmas party (which I already have a post up on) but I had a brilliant time with all my flatmate and some pretty awesome food as well!

Revision begun as all my flat mates went home and my lectures finally finished!  A little quote I found in the revision guide was this:

Who slipped Narnia in there!? Law was supposed to be boring!

 As people left, gifts started arriving and I had no problem filching them on discovery!

A great moment was when I found out that the boy who had left Uni had left his room unlocked and I could go and nosy around and laugh at what he had left behind!

When I finally got home, my boyfriend and I went out to the markets shopping (I remember a certain amount of kicking and screaming on his part until he saw the food and promptly shut up!).  Didn’t get any photos but we spent a whole bunch of money in the food section trying all the different things that they had to offer!  Afterwards, (as if we weren't pumpkin shaped enough as it was) we ended up in a cute Chinese desert house.  I have NEVER been in such a place before and boy was it a discovery.  We ordered 2 desserts, I only got a picture of 1 to show my mum, and they were the most delicious things I have ever tasted in my whole entire life.  One of them was a sort of ice cream fruit platter, that was HUGE and the other - waffles with chocolate ice cream and cream.  Only downside was that (yet again) I was sitting in a room and was the only one speaking English (along with my boyfriend of course)!  Everyone looked massively bemused when we started playing rock, paper, scissors for the bill (I lost grrr!).

Tell me you're not jealous?!

Since I've only just gotten my new phone, and my old was too slow to have any kinds of apps downloaded on  it, this was the Christmas of the SnapChat.  What a discovery.  I now have multiple images of my face on different days looking ridiculous on all!

Assumed use of Snapchat:

Actual use:

I attempted to wash in wash out dye my hair the same colour it already is.  Why?!  I have no idea.

Although no pictures were taken of most of our KFC food, I can guarantee we spent a considerable amount of our time in there.  Some would say too much time.  I would disagree.  Either way this was the only picture I took inside the premises itself of the most disappointing thing from the menu - cream balls.

Blah blah blah, insert hideous selfie from Martin's Birthday here… Mmmm look at those rolls!

Christmas presents!!!

Using Christmas presents! (soo manly ;)) 

Trafford Center!  Okay so this was such an awesome day!  To cut a long story short, we skipped the shopping (definitely not like me) in favour of the farrr more fun option of playing in the arcade.  We spent four hours in there and won a tonne of tickets which we fed to machines in order to claim 2 mugs, 3 Maoims and a tub of bubbles.  Unsurprisingly the bubbles were the most popular prize for us!  We did have a mooch round the Trafford Centre as well though and the Christmas lights were so pretty!

We fought over these bubbles and the half hour of entertainment they provided!

Some silly birthday snaps:

 

Cute :')

The day I left we made some chocolate shapes from Magic chocolate that I got given, for Christmas.  Unsurprisingly mine were CLEARLY better!

Mine...

Also mine...

Again, this masterpiece is mine....

I'm sorry Martin but really?! It was suppose to be a dog!

When I finally got back to York my Mama and me went to the pub before she headed back.

And last but not least, today I had a Criminology exam and as I was walking back I got some of the most gorgeous shots of my campus.  Ghost town it may be, but you can’t deny it isn’t beautiful too!

So many pictures! But I had an absolutely awesome Christmas break - minus revision which was less fun!

And then I became a Smurf...

So what an awesomely crazy stupid evening I’ve had.  My flat basically had a last minute Christmas meal tonight and no expense was spared.  Stolen toilet paper from the common room as makeshift tinsel.  Stolen poster paper from the elevator to make snowflakes.  £1 Iceland chips.  Kitchen role paper hats.  Yep we certainly went all out for this one, SCREW THE BUDGET!

Nobody can tell us we didn't try.

We’d originally planned (although ‘planned’ is used loosely, you know how I feel about organising anything!) to have the meal on Thursday when we’d have time to nip down to Aldi and grab a cheap (but nonetheless jolly) turkey.  Sadly, my wariness of anything organisation based was reinforced when I discovered that two of our flatmates were going back to China for the holidays on Wednesday.  Yeah.  Thanks for letting us know guys.  Needless to say the whole thing was a mad dash rush but at the end of the day, death toll by fire was minimal and most of the injuries sustained shouldn’t be too long term... So I’d call that a success.

To cut a long story short, I started the evening looking like this:

And ended it looking a bit more like this:

With a large amount of this thrown in for good measure:

Ahh yes, what an attractive sexual beast I am.

So I was going to say that for those still reading and haven’t been scared off by my beautiful face but just realised that I am the only one here and since I haven’t been scared off, everything is good to go.

Anyway the evening started with the whole flat in a mad dash to prepare food.  We’d decided since no one had actually planned any Christmassy food, we would all just contribute one or two things in the hope that it would somewhat resemble a buffet.  Needless to say that unless buffets use frying pans as Doritos holders we fell rather short.

Unsurprisingly since my flat is made up of mostly Chinese international students (it’s a long story), all us English people were outshone, out done and just generally out of the kitchen (boy do those people invade!).  I guess a £1 bag of chips from Iceland doesn’t really compare to a prawn dish, a chicken curry and honey marinated chicken wings, but although my contribution may not have been fancy, the plate was licked clean! 

For some reason I decided that Christmas = Faces painted and whipped out my Maybelline 24 hour colour tattoo eye shadows and a MUA lipstick in order to bully my flatmates into submission.  To prove a point I painted myself the most ridiculous so no one could argue that there was any favoritism of patterns involved.  JThough not an art student myself, no one can say I didn’t try.  I’m sure you’ll agree, my talents are wasted as a Law student.  I'm just a bid ol' smurf with a pot of eye shadow!

From there we ate our mains, had some desert (chocolate log and ice cream), neglected to clean up (tomorrow will not be fun), then decided to play… musical chairs.  Now.  Musical chairs you may ask.  Why musical chairs you may think?  The real question is, why would you NOT finish off a Christmas meal with musical chairs!?

After a few (rather violent) rounds next to the lift to which our resident Indian had prewarned us rather menacingly that he had ‘never lost a game of musical chairs in his life’.  We headed back into the kitchen for some crazy photo taking session before people started to filter back to their rooms.  One of our guys had an essay to finish to be handed in for the morning that counted towards his overall mark to finish.  I would pay money to read what he wrote, tipsy and covered in glitter after he left!

All in all, although I may not have the most party crazy, mad drinking flat, and although I am unexpectedly in an ethnic minority, I really do love these kids <3

I shall leave this post here (since it’s rather long already) with a bunch of photos taken throughout the evening by our resident photographer.  Some of my camera phone ones will be filtered in as well although no prizes for guessing whose are whose!

I believe my victi... volunteer at this point asked whether or not she should trust me to decorate her face which I obviously replied she shouldn't.  She laughed at the time but she isn't laughing now ;)

 

CONSISTENCY! Our expressions haven't changed, just the colour of our faces!

Me and our lovely photographer!

(Most of the) Girlies from the flat! Me on the end.

And finally leaving with one of the many ridiculous faces I pulled whenever someone faced a camera towards me.  It's my new tactic to stop being photographed that will hopefully scare off anyone crazy enough to want to point a camera at me in future!