IT'S CHRISTMASSSSSSSS! *SCREAMS WITH EXCITEMENT!*

Hello my lovelies!

Just a quick, festive post to wish you all a Merry Christmas.
 I don't expect anyone to be reading this today, I expect you all to, hopefully,

be with your friends and family eating a lovely bit of turkey and being merry. But for anyone who is reading this, or is reading it after Christmas, I just want you to know, that I am thinking of you all and of how thankful I am to have all the lovely support from you, my readers!

So I hope you have the best Christmas, and I wish you all well and luck for the future! I hope this blog continues to bring you joy. There will be of course some posts before the new year, so please stay tuned for them!

Much love

Hello my festive friends! Today I have an awesome recipe for you. Now it's not one of my own but it is one that myself and my dad have followed this year, and honestly it creates such yumminess! I got the recipe from All Recipes. I'll post the recipe here too, but please follow the link to the website for more recipes. I love this site and use it a lot!

Ingredients

• 110g (4 oz) butter
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
• 4 teaspoons cocoa
• 225g (8 oz) Rich Tea biscuits, crushed
• 1 handful of raisins
• 225g (8 oz) cooking chocolate - half milk & half dark

This is the easiest thing to make and taste super! So if you're looking for a quick and easy recipe for Christmas, this Tiffin will do the trick!

Method

1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, sugar, syrup and cocoa. Add the biscuits and raisins when melted. Stir to combine.
2. Pour mixture into a Swiss roll size tin and press down. Melt the cooking chocolate and pour over the mixture in the tin.
3. Pop the tin into the fridge and leave for about 1 hour to set. To serve, cut into about 20 pieces.

 I hope you enjoyed this recipe! Let me know if you use it and how it went!

Speak soon
 and MERRY CHRISTMAS!
 

Hi guys, there is only 4 more sleeps until Christmas!!!

I shall, as promised be uploading some Christmas recipes, however I do most my Christmas baking on Christmas eve, so I'll be uploading them then most likely!!

Today I wanted to talk to about clothes- so yes, it is indeed another fashion post. I realised that all I tend to wear whilst at Uni is leggings and hoodies and a lot of the clothes in my wardrobe I never wear. So I made myself a pact, and this shall also be a New Years Resolution too, to wear more of my nice clothes. I think a lot of the time I hold back from wearing these clothes because I feel they are 'too nice' or I tell myself it's 'not an important enough occasion'. However if I keep telling myself that, I'll never wear the clothes. So I promised myself to not hold back and to stop waiting around for an occasion to dress nicely, and to just go ahead and wear them.

So far I've managed a week and a bit of dressing nicely each day. By nicely I of course mean wearing my pretty tops, my shirts and not being afraid to wear skirts. And I'm really quite proud of how I've done, and I have to say it's made me feel more confident and pretty.

It may sound like a silly thing to do, but so often in life we buy things and then never get the chance to use or wear them. This is because we are waiting for a chance to be presented to us, when in fact   we need to present ourselves to the possibility of a chance. So this is what I've done.

I've fished out some lovely shirts that I had from Next and matched them simply with a pair of jeans to make them more casual rather than smart. I've worn tights and some of my lovely skater skirts too, which go fantastically with a block colour top. Today I made my denim skater skirt, which I would normally wear in summer, work as a winter outfit, by pairing it with a black polar neck top and black tights, finished with my Chelsea boots.

I already feel so much better for wearing these clothes, because I have a feeling that if I hadn't done, then I may have ended up getting rid of them. Now I have a new found love for all of my clothes, it's as if I've gone shopping in my own wardrobe, everything has a new leash of life!

So why not do the same? Give your clothes another chance to prove to you why you bought them in the first place! Also a little tip, if you buy something they doesn't look right on you, if you are handy with a sewing machine, why not transform it into something else? Maybe something that works much better for you.

Hope you've enjoyed reading this post! I will try my best to upload a couple of Christmas recipes before Christmas!!

Speak soon

Okay, so those of you who were here maybe last week (or was it the week before?) will know that I started a diet. I want to make it clear why I am dieting (so that I don't get comments about it). I am in no way overweight, but I don't have the healthiest lifestyle as it's hard at uni. Therefore, I want to introduce a healthier diet, and lose a couple of pounds where they are unwanted!

So it went okay for the first few days. I didn't get a Domino's on Tuesday which I had originally promised myself. I did however buy cake... And then on Thursday I did get a Dom's but only because me and my boyfriend realised we hadn't eaten dinner at midnight and so we needed something quick (and it was our last night together before Christmas). So there were ups and downs.

Now back at home and I weighed myself and I am 8 stone 10. Which is pretty good, however because I have short legs and all the extra pounds go there, I'd like to lose a couple of pounds to make my thighs more slender. I'd like to point out that I am only 5 ft 3 by the way.

I actually bought some new dresses which I was really excited about and one was too baggy and the other was too tight which is always frustrating!! But the aim is to try and fit into the tighter dress eventually.

But then, gerund breaking news: I finally got my blood test results back. And I may be Gluten intolerant!! So the doctor has now advised me to go Gluten free for 6 months, which will be hard considering carbs are my favourite! However I am looking forward to trying new foods and hopefully it'll promote a healthier lifestyle whereby I watch what I eat more and feel better, both physically and mentally! So fingers crossed. I have decided over Christmas that I will try out a few gluten free products to get used to them, however I will go completely gluten free after Christmas!

So what's new with all of you? How are you staying healthy over Christmas?

Speak soon

Hello my lovelies, as you can probably tell by the title of this piece, I recently hit 30,000 views on this blog. To some it may not seem much but to others it is a lot, and it is the constant care and support from my followers that have helped me reach it.
         I could have reached that target a long time ago had it not been for moving back to uni and having to focus on my dissertation, but nevertheless I reached it! So a huge thank you to every single one of you.
         Also, once again thank you for all the lovely comments, tweets and likes on social media and on here - they are always read and always appreciated. So I won't ramble on too much, but I do have some beauty posts coming up and some baking posts - yum! Of course it's getting nearer to Christmas now so I'm hoping to do a few Christmas segments!
        For now, here are the top 5 things I look forward to at Christmas:

Hello, so I thought I'd let you know how my first day of dieting went. Somehow I feel like blogging it will help, but who knows. Well it wasn't a complete failure, but it wasn't exactly a win.

The day started off well. I had a good sleep and had a dream about finding loads of dinosaur eggs which hatched to reveal slimy baby dinosaurs which were mint green. I had to get the eggs to the 'lab' asap but when I showed them to my lecturer (for some reason) he kept throwing up, which was a weird reaction I thought, but then again it was but a dream.

I had two clementines for breakfast and then I headed out to the gym. I probably burnt around 300 calories I reckon which isn't half bad I suppose (better than nothing!). I then walked around town for a little bit so shall we add 50 more calories to that? I'm going to!

Despite really craving pizza, I resisted and made myself some potato and leek soup for lunch. I'm afraid it was out of a can rather than homemade, but come on guys, I'm a student! I then had another clementine for pudding (I think!) and a cup of tea.

Not going to lie this is when it all went wrong. I made the mistake of picking up my box of Wonka sweets and of course this led to me having a few. And if you've had Wonka sweets you'll know how good they are, and you can't have just a few, you have to have lots. And, well, I finished the box off, but there wasn't THAT many in there. Look at me, trying to justify it!

I then continued to crave pizza but was good and resisted as much as I could. After staring at the Domino's webpage for about twenty minutes I closed my laptop and went downstairs to cook myself a curry. Not the healthiest of meals but the rice is a good source of energy (is it? Am I just making stuff up now?) and the chicken is good protein, and the sauce is just yummy! Although of course not all of this was fully prepared by me, and of course how could it be... I can't grow a chicken! But I do honestly feel like the best way to diet is to take your time and prepare all your meals yourself. that way you know exactly what you're putting into your body! Whilst cooking I munched on some frozen grapes, which by the way are amazing!!

After my curry I went further down hill and had four little cookies with a cuppa. And then another cuppa, and some of my chocolate Santa... and some more Wonka sweets. I'll brush my teeth well I promise!!!

So what can I say, it's only day one, and besides my sweet tooth, I think I did okay. I'm glad I got a little workout in and didn't cave too much.

I'm hoping it'll get easier but I fear the worst. Tomorrow's post (if I get round to one) could be about how I've given in. But let's try and be optimistic and pray that tomorrow brings good things!

Speak soon!

Who else is obsessed with food? Because I know I am. I love food so much and feel like I need to be eating all the time. It's terrible I know but it's so easy to get into a bad routine. Being a student doesn't help either. It seems so much hassle to buy salad and veg and prepare it, when half of the time you don't have the space to cook properly. Pizza and biscuits are so much easier.
But Christmas is coming up and lets be honest, if there is one time of the year where it is almost the law to over eat, it's Christmas! I want to make sure I look good and feel good before I go home (in preparation). So enough is enough!

I am giving myself an intervention, a food intervention. It'll be hard as I'm not exactly rich, however I won't be eating rubbish and I'm going to try really hard not to buy any. There might be, sorry WILL be a few slip ups I'm sure, but I really want to try this. AND if I can, I MAY even try and daily blog it/vlog it! How does that sound?

Okay so here is what I may try and do for my diet:

• Drink plenty of water
• When I feel a little hungry, have a green tea.
• Eat fruit as a snack rather than biscuits.
• Try and cook a balanced dinner e.g. chicken with veg and mash etc
• Go to the gym a few times a week.
• Do the fitness workout that I created on this blog before bed.
• Walk rather than get the bus.
• Jog down to the sea front.

There is probably more, but that sounds doable right? Gosh I hope so, it's going to be horrid cutting out chocolate and sweets and cookies and PIZZA!! Help me, I'm addicted.

Anyway, who else is on a diet? Who has tips for keeping healthy and keeping the munchies away? I'd love to hear from you!

Kisses
- L

(Sorry I've been obsessed with PLL recently! But more about that later... ;) )

Hello my peepsickles, okay, so let's not ignore the elephant in the room. I know I haven't blogged in a while, but as I'm sure you are aware, because I've told you, I've been super busy with Uni work. Not only that but I haven't felt as motivated recently, for uni, for the gym and for blogging. And it's not because I don't want to blog anymore, because I DO! But sometimes life gets in the way a bit, but all you need is to pick yourself up and carry on. So that's what I'm doing.

So on Wednesday myself and my housemate went to London. it was originally supposed to be a day of Christmas shopping, but then we remembered that we are poor students and also the fact that we'd have to lug all the shopping bags around with us all day, and so we mostly shopped for ideas!

We got the 8:20am coach which meant getting up at 6:30am, and we arrived in London at about 10:50am.

First we headed down Oxford Street. Here we perused shops such as TopShop, Miss Selfridge, Selfridges and Primark. We were so worried we wouldn't have enough time for the other things on our agenda, that I think we ended up rushing Oxford Street. It did get rather hot and busy though so I'm not sure I would have liked to spend to much more time there.

We then went from there to Hyde Park for our picnic lunch that we'd purchased the night before-thank you Tesco! We had little pasta pots and sausage rolls and were surrounded by hungry pigeons!

We were also lucky that we walked past a lady giving out free Cadbury Amaze Bites, which are new, for free! Yum!

Next we went to Covent Garden. I hadn't been since I was 15 and so it was lovely to see what it looked like, as I almost couldn't remember. The shops are so sweet there and there was a really impressive string group playing music, which we stopped and listened to. We also went to a little cafe for some afternoon tea, and we had a gingerbread Christmas tree too!


Next on the list was Camden Market. I'd never been, so I wasn't sure what to expect. Wow, I have to say I adored it. The place was not what I was expecting at all, but it was brilliant. I got myself some henna and a gorgeous throw/wall hanging, which I am in love with.

We then had left ourselves about 3 hours to get to the Southbank Christmas Market. That was the other reason for our trip and we were looking forward to getting some mulled wine and food there. However when we got there it was all closed for the evening which was really sad. However sometimes things like that happen in life so that you have to make spontaneous decisions which often turn out to be brilliant. So we decided to go to China Town. We sat down to a Chinese buffet for dinner which was lush and just what we needed, and it turned out to be a brilliant end to the night.

We popped into the M&M shop which was really cool but also kind of strange! But apparently I am a white M&M. We went on the interactive thing and it told me that, and that I was having a moment of clarity (that will soon pass) ha!


We finished our adventure by sitting in Leicester square which was good as our feet were aching and we were getting pretty tired.

It was a brilliant day, full of adventure! Spontaneous trips are always the best!

Don't ask why this is the photo for this post- I just feel very proud of mine and my housemate's jelly shots, and wanted an excuse to put it here!

Okay, so I am guilty again. Guilty of not blogging in a while and it's only because I've been working super hard and have been rather busy. But, as promised I will post when I can. So I thought I'd just do a little lifestyle and update post so you all know what's going on in my life right now. To start with a '5 things that make me happy', followed by how uni is going, and to end, what is to come for myself and the blog in 2015.

Ingredients:
4oz Butter
4oz Caster Sugar
2 eggs
4oz Self Raising Flour
Vanilla Extract
Icing Sugar
Food Colouring

If you want to make more, you could double (8oz) or do 6oz of everything and 3 eggs.

Recipe:
1.) Measure out the butter.
2.) Measure out the sugar.
3.) Put butter and sugar together in a big bowl.
4.) Mix butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
5.) Crack the eggs. You may wish to beat them first.
6.) Add the eggs to the mixture one at a time. Be careful not to let it curdle.
7.) Stir until light and creamy.
8.) Measure out the flour.
9.) Sieve the flour into the bowl.
10.) Mix the flour in, using figure of  eight motions and add the vanilla extract.
11.) Spoon into paper cases, ready for the oven.
12.) Remove from the oven after 15 minute and leave to cool

To make the butter cream

Mix icing sugar with butter- you have to guess a lot with this as it depends how you like it. Then add the food colouring of your choice and pipe onto the cupcakes.




Speak soon