Abu Dhabi

Brace yourselves guys. I'm going to bombard you with information today.
Firstly, I'm in Abu Dhabi. A thousand, 'hands in the air' emojis. Tense words with my husband aside, we made it here in one piece and so far so good. 
Our weekend went as follows:

The promise of a cocktail date on Friday evening prompted an afternoon of panic shopping at Yas Mall - obviously because I had nothing to wear. (Our airline luggage receipts would disagree, but whatever.)
After hitting the major players twice, you know, just in case I missed anything the first time, I settled on a white dress from Topshop. Being ambitious, I picked up a Petite size 8. There's nothing pretty about trying to squeeze a non Petite arse into a petite dress. Anyway, that's irrelevant because it turns out that said dress was a whole world of spaghetti-strap trickery. Two sizes later, with an elbow pinned against my nostril and my earrings in my mouth, I'd admitted defeat.  
Any item of clothing that difficult to put on is not for me. 
During a moment of sanity, (and to my husband's relief) I decided that I would just wear something that I already owned, rendering our entire day a fruitless venture. 
Okay, not entirely because I did end up buying this piece of leopard print heaven...

link
I'm currently hung up of the idea of finding a perfect blue, chambray shirt so I can team it with my black skinnies, a red lip and this leopard bag. Pinterest has a lot to answer for. 

We spent Friday evening at Ray's Bar in Jumeirah at Etihad Towers. It's a modern, cocktail bar on the hotel's 62nd floor and the views were spectacular. Unbeknownst to us, it was happy hour until 10pm - I could have been ready a whole lot earlier for half price cocktails! The real star of the evening was their tempura style fries. Yes, they are a thing and my goodness, are they amazing! It has intrigued me as to what else I could encase in tempura batter. 
Is tempura cheese a thing?
We briefly did the whole, 'pool thing' on Saturday and then hit the home shops with force. I'm currently sitting amidst a tree's worth of catalogues and I feel good about it. Saturday was also the first time I ever went into IKEA and left, A) Still smiling, and B) Having not spent a single penny. 
That, my friends, is an early Christmas miracle. 
Did anyone get up to anything fun this weekend?