Christmas Gift Ideas - Reindeer Hot Chocolate Cones

Hi everyone! Now I know they say you should never start something with an apology but that is exactly what I'm going to do. I am really sorry that the pictures aren't great quality because they were taken with my phone rather than with my proper camera but I do have a reason for this!!! I've downloaded the blogger app on my phone so I can now write my posts on the go which is a real life saver! I'm currently writing this sat in Nero drinking a nice hot chocolate if you wanted to know! Which leads me onto what this post is all about....

I saw a picture on Pinterest (which was linked to this blog post here so you should check that out!) of these Reindeer hot chocolate cones and thought it was such a cute idea and looked so easy to make I just had to give it a go. It's basically a reindeer made from hot chocolate powder and some other things but it makes such a nice little present and I mean - who doesn't like hot chocolate!!

So there are a couple of things you will need to make this:

• Cellophane (Or a coned clear bag - which if you know where to get these from please please let me know because making the cone is honestly the hardest part!)
• Plate or something round
• Sharpie/pen
• Scissors
• Sellotape
• Hot chocolate powder
• Mini marshmallows
• Googly eyes
• A pompom
• A pipe cleaner/printed out/hand drawn antlers
• Elastic band or some way of fastening it
• Superglue

Okay so the first thing you need to do is make the cone (if you already have cone bags you can skip this step!). Place your plate near a corner of the cellophane and draw around the top arch and then cut this out.

Now try and roll this sort of triangleish shape you have just cut out into a cone. This might take a while (it took me ages!) but the important part is to make sure there isn't a gap at the end of the cone because you don't want your hot chocolate powder all falling out! Once you've made this conical shape put tape along all the edges and the point to make sure everything stays in place.

This can get a bit messy! You have to pour in your hot chocolate powder into your cone and depending on how big the cone you made was will depend on how much powder needs to go in. The first one I made was way too big and needed 4 servings of powder in there but these ones I have photos of only needed one!

Then pour your marshmallows on top. Again just put as many in until it looks right!

Now secure the top of the cone with an elastic band and make sure it's tight because you don't want your powder spilling out the top either!

Okay so now we are at the fun part! Stick on your googly eyes just at the top of the powder part. Even if you have ones with peel off backs that self stick you may still want a little bit of superglue on there especially if they have to go in a bag to be transported!

Then stick on your pompom nose! Ideally this should be red but we didn't have any in the house and I didn't have time to go out and buy any so I just used orange which doesn't look too bad?!

The picture I saw had antlers made out of twisting a brown pipe cleaner around the elastic band but I didn't have any so I improvised! I simply googled 'simple outline of antlers' and clicked the first result and printed that out. I then attached these again with superglue!

And voila! That's your reindeer hot chocolate done! I hope you thing they look as cool as I thought they did and enjoy making them! I hope you enjoyed this slightly different kind of post and let me know if you try it out and how it went! Thanks for reading!

EuroQuest: Day 2 - Zagreb

Hi everyone! So onto day two! We got up pretty early (or at least by my standards) because we were going SEGWAYING!!

Clearly I hadn't planned my outfit well - green top, green helmet & pink hair!!

We first got breakfast from this cute little bakery place near our hostel and ended up eating our pastries in the shade of a statue in the main square before embarking on our journey to the segways. We had to go to this really fancy hotel to get the segways and it was so pretty with a fountain near by. We split into two groups as there wasn't enough segways for us all to use and I was in the first group. So we went up to the terrace of this hotel and the guy was really nice and gave us a little demonstration and then once we were all happy with the basic controls we went off!

On the terrace practicing 

It was basically a tour around Zagreb on segways! We were on the pavements, which he assured us was legal there (it isn't in England) although not many people seemed to understand that as we got a few angry word thrown in our direction as we went along. We then stopped in one of the many parks and he took us off beginner mode. This basically meant it was easier to steer and we could go faster - much to Saras delight!

After about an hour we went back to the hotel to swap with the other group and we were let off to explore the area. We didn't really do much exploring but we did however find a new flavour of capri sun: Mystic dragon! I think it was some sort of dragon fruit concoction but it tasted really nice!

After the other group had finished we had lunch and had a little rest in one of the parks we had segwayed through before deciding to head over to the zoo.

An actual Zebra crossing!

We didn't actually go into the zoo as it was quite expensive and none of us were particular bothered about going in so we were let loose in the huge gardens next to the zoo in our groups of 5. However, we basically sat in a place called the Palladium of Echos for two hours and talked, where we found out we all basically spent too much time on the internet!

We had to meet back at the cafe afterwards where we performed our beloved pony song where 2 waiters (who didn't have a clue what we were doing) joined in and added some... interesting dance moves (!) rather than copying what we were doing!

Walking to the top

We headed back into the center and went to find the funicular railway which to our dismay was out of service meaning we had to walk all the way to the top! But it was definitely worth it! There were so many hand made craft stalls up there and the views across Zagreb were amazing. I really liked some tables that belonged to the bar which were covered in maps. They looked like something you would normally find on pinterest!

Market stalls

Cute table covers

The builiding in the old part of the town were also so beautiful. When I first saw the roof tops I honestly thought they were knitted?! They of course weren't - but they were so well made and everything was so clean compared to England which we decided was due to the lack of cars as there were so many trams you just didn't need a car.

Pretty roof tiles

View over Zagreb

On the way to the restaurant for dinner we went into to this adorable handmade shop that the other group had discovered the day before and it was amazing. I ended up buying a candle that looked like a glass of beer but there was so much cute stuff in there I wish I could have bought more!

Then came one of the most eventful nights of the whole trip. The night we were serenaded by drunk Spanish boys. At least, we think they were Spanish - the couple of us that took Spanish could pick out a couple of words but I'm not sure how accurate we were (although I believe Emii did get and A*/A for GCSE). Anyways, they basically kept knocking on our door asking us to let them in and then they started singing some random English songs to us. Eventually they left but I don't think they realised our age (these suspicions were confirmed when we were met with their guilty faces in the morning)

If you want to see more I filmed a bit of what we were doing so you can check that out here:
The video is a montage of several clips and pictures throughout the time we spent in Zagreb as apposed to these blog posts which a split by day.

ZAGREB VIDEO: COMING SOON

I hope you enjoyed reading this and feel free to leave any comments!