Christmas Gift Ideas - Mistle Toes

Hi everyone! So it's nearly Christmas now which is super exciting so I've decided to write another gift idea post. Again I saw this on Pinterest (and this blog) and though it looked so nice and I'm always one for little pun!

It's so simple to make all you need is:

• A nail varnish of your choice
• Foot cream (although I used hand cream because I couldn't find any foot cream when I went out shopping)
• Cellophane (or a square bag if you know where to get them!) 
• Stapler 

The first thing you need to do is make your bag (obviously skip this step if you already have a bag). Simply cut out a rectangle from your cellophane and staple the edges together leaving enough at the bottom to make a base otherwise you won't be able to fit your stuff inside!

Then simply put your nail varnish and foot cream in your bag and you're pretty much done! If you want to go that little bit further (I didn't!) you could find some fake snow or glitter and put it in the bottom of the bag to add to that Christmassy feel!

Now you have two options here! You can either make your own Christmas mistle toes banner to go around the top (which is what I did) or you can save re-size to your needs and print the picture below which is the one I made!

Once you've got your banner all you have to do is staple it in place and your done! 

Hope you are enjoying these slightly different kind of blog posts & let me know if you make one and how it turned out for you! Thank you for reading! 

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!

Where have you been???

Hi everyone! I am so so so sorry! I realised I haven't written a new post for about 3 months now and I'm so sorry I just kind of stopped! I did write a little post before saying that I might not be able to post every week because so much was going on in my life but I think I may have under estimated that massively! So I thought I would bring you up to date!

I am well into my As Levels now in sixth form. If you were interested I am doing them in Maths, Further Maths, Physics, History and DT Product Design! But doing 5 subjects has proved a lot harder than I originally anticipated and sometimes I do question if I have bitten off more than I can chew! But I am enjoying it so much and the freedom and respect you get in Sixth Form is great! So I know some of you might be in the middle of deciding what you are going to do next year and I would totally recommend going to sixth form or college if you can - although I wouldn't recommend taking on 5 subjects!

I have also been working 16 hours a week at Boots now and I absolutely love it! I'm not going to lie though - standing on the till for 8 hours or going in and out of the stock room re stacking the shelves is a lot of hard work but the people there are so nice and the working atmosphere there is great! When the tills are quite you can have a chat with anyone else who is on the tills with you and I've met so many nice people! The one problem working there is the trains! I live about a 10 minute train ride away but I work on a Saturday, Sunday and Monday and the trains aren't as frequent as I would like! So instead of spending 16 hours in Bath I'm actually spending about 25 hours over the week which just makes me even more tired than I would usually be - I've been using my frees at the moment to try and catch up with sleep which probably isn't the best use of the time but I need it!!!

Another thing I haven't been able to do is keep my room tidy so just ignore the mess!!!!!!

So with all this going on top of the things I already do in the week such as Rainbows, Brownies, Rangers, going to the gym, I just haven't been able to justify spending the few hours I have writing blog posts which I know sounds incredibly rude but I don't mean it like that and I know you will understand!

BUT I HAVE GOOD NEWS! I am currently working towards my Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award which is an award you can get by completing lots of different sections and at the end you go to Buckingham Palace to get your certificate!!! That is a pretty poor description but you can either Google it or I'll probably write a post about it at some point! One of the sections is a skills section and guess what?! I can put blogging down in that section! This means that I'll have a legitimate reason to devote my time to making this blog better so expect a lot more posts in the new year (and hopefully a couple before)!

So was just supposed to be a quick update and to let you know I'll be back soon but it ended up turning into a bit of a ramble - sorry! Thanks for reading!

Review of 'NYC Rock Muse Smoky Top Coat' in 'Green Day'

Hi everyone! So I was in my local Superdrug and I just had to walk past the NYC stand and I saw they had these new Rock Muse Smoky Top Coats. Now I'm not sure if they are new, or if my local store has only just got them in? Anyway they kind of looked like the Revlon Moon Candy nail varnish which I really wanted to try it out but they are around £7, but rumour is, Barry M is releasing something very similar to it but hopefully half the price! Anywho, as usual it was only £1.99 so I thought I would give it a go!

I've been loving dark, rocky-ish colours on my nails recently so I picked up the black which has green sequins and bits of glitter in, hence the name Green Day! I quite like the rock themed names but I did have a bit of a stuggle finding swatches of it online as googling: Rock, Muse and Green Day, didn't really give me what I was looking for!

I first applied my base coat which is my Barry M one (I found it again!) and I did two coats because I was using black as my base and I really didn't want it to stain my nails.

I then applied my first coat of my base colour. I decided to go for a black, also from the NYC collection, as the smokey top coat although appears dead black in the bottle, but if you apply it straight on your nail it's a very pale and watery black. I think my nails were good to go after one coat of the base colour but

on the odd nail it was a little thin.

I then applied my second coat of the black base colour just to have a really deep black. It seemed to dry pretty quickly and was very glossy which is a huge bonus for me!

I then applied the first coat of the 'Smoky Top Coat' and to be honest I was a little disappointed. Don't get me wrong - it does look really cool! But it wasn't anything like the Moon Candy ones which is what I thought it would be like but I guess I can't blame them for that as they never advertised it as an alternative to it! It is basically the same as a glitter coat.

I don't think NYC is great for glitter nail varnishes as the spread of large bits of glitter and small bits of glitter isn't very even! But I think this is one of the best ones I have tried just because of how the green really stands out against the black when the light hits it! For this reason, I would definitely recommend you check it out!

I didn't apply a top coat as this polish is labelled as a top coat! I just cleaned up all the stray polish and they were done!

I really like how it turned out even if it wasn't like I expected it to be! I think I might go back and have a look what other colours they do that might be more suitable to wearing any time! As much as I like it I think the effect of green and black is quite Halloweeny for me as I don't usually wear stuff like this! Let me know what you think of this more rocky look - would you try it out? Thanks for reading!

EuroQuest: Day 6 - Slovakia

Hi everyone! So this was sort of our first and last day in Slovakia! We had to get up really early, which on the one hand, was an opportunity to leave the creepy hostel, but on the other, was  at 5am! One of leaders has a girl in her unit whose Mum (Marianna) is from Slovakia, and they happened to be on holiday in Slovakia the same time we were staying there, so we went to visit them!

It was a long bus journey to their house as they lived in Smolenice, outside of the capital Bratislava where we were staying. When we got off the bus we were told we were going off on a little hike through the forest, but thankfully Mariannas husband was there to take our huge rucksacks off us and take them straight to their house! We walked a little bit up the road to find a space to eat the breakfast Marianna had brought with her for us. She had a mixture of breads and some jam to go with it, which was delicious! My favourite was this sweet bread which I think was kind of like brioche?

We then started to walk into the forest and up a hill to visit some caves. Sadly, we weren't allowed to take any photos of the caves but they were absolutely stunning! Some of them were huge and when we all went into the main cave he turned the lights off to give us a sense of what the people who first discovered the caves and it was ridiculously dark! When we came out, we climbed on the rock side of the hill to to the top where we could see the entrance where the first people climbed into the caves from! As well as that, we could see all over the forest and it was amazing!

We then headed back down and went on further into the forest to this sort of big old office thing? Anyway, it had a tower which we all went up and we could see all over the town as well as back into the forest. It was then a short walk to Mariannas house where she had cooked a BBQ for us and much to my delight, she had bought some tofu for myself and Evie! It was so nice to have actual vegetarian food again!

We then caught the bus back and I think everyone fell asleep because we had been up since 5am! We got off at the port where we were catching the hydrofoil to Vienna. It was so windy on the back of the hydrofoil and there was some reenactment of Titanic!

We got the the hostel and it was really nice! I was in the room of 6 and it was pretty packed because there were 2 bunk beds and each had a little pull out tray with another mattress in which basically took up the whole floor! As we got there pretty late and there were no restaurants near where we were staying we decided to get take away pizza!!!

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

SLOVAKIA VIDEO: COMING SOON!

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

Review of 'Instant Nail Effects Crackle' in 'Black Magic'

Hi everyone! So I thought I would try a new thing out on my nails! I got this crackle effect last Chirstmas but I always thought it looked a bit tacky (I still do if you match it with the wrong colour) so I haven't actually tried it until now. I think you can buy it for £3.99 which is the average price for any effect nail varnish Barry M has.

I have been loving the rockish look lately of mixing black with gold and I really wanted to see if I could apply this to my nails. First I painted my nails gold (which I wrote about HERE) which acted as my base colour. On it's own, I'm not too sure about having full gold nails so I probably wouldn't use it without placing some sort of effect over the top.

I then applied the first coat of the crackle effect whilst the gold was still drying (I'd left it about 5-10 minutes but it was still a little tacky). I wasn't quite sure if I should be applying it with a thin coat or a thick. The first nail I did, I painted a very thin coat on, but then found I needed more polish to cover the whole nail. However, by the time I had got some more on the brush the thin strip had already began to crack. So, my advice would be to make sure you have plenty of varnish on your brush and just paint a slightly thick coat over the top of your chosen base colour.

The cracking started almost instantly and it only took about 1 minute for the whole thing to be done. I continued painting all my nails until my whole hand was done.

I like that the crackle is random so every nail is different, but I found, especially with my pinky, that the crackle had basically split into 4 sections. Personally, I think this works best when there are lots of thin cracks all over the nail.

I then added a top coat to give it a lovely shine as the crackle is kind of matt. I LOVE how my nails look as I think it is quite edgy and something different than just a plain colour. I've received quite a few compliments on my nails this week because of it (including a couple from some guys!). I think it works really well with the gold as a base colour, but you definitely have to be careful what you use as a base colour because obviously some will look great and some will just look plain tacky.

I would recommend this product as I think it livens up your nails and although I haven't tried the other colours (I think I'm right in saying you can also get it in purple, pink, blue, white and gold?) I think that black is probably the best colour to get, as in theory it will go with a wider variety of base colours!

Let me know what you think of the crackle effect! Thank you for reading! (:

Review of 'NYC Quick Dry Nail Polish' in 'Full Metal Jacket'

Hi everyone! I bought this nail varnish when I went through the phase of buying nail varnishes from NYC as they were on a 3 for 2 deal and are only £1.79 each anyway. I had picked it up with the intention of using it at Christmas to jazz up my nails, but I thought I would give it a little test now!

It's a very strong gold metallic colour and I wasn't too sure about wearing it as I think sometimes it looks a little bit tacky when people have gold nails. I don't really like gold anything to be honest - most of my jewellery is silver. I think this dislike of gold has come from seeing pirates in films and cartoons with gold teeth.

I applied my base coat, which some of you may have noticed is not my usual Barry M, but in fact my old Collection one! This is basically because I couldn't find my Barry M one when I was painting my nails (although I've found it since).

I then applied the first coat of colour and was pleasantly surprised! With only one coat my nail was fully covered without the usual streaky appearance that lots of the nail varnishes from NYC seem to have. You could definitely get away with only applying this one coat, but I wanted to apply a second more to protect the nail varnish from chipping!

So the second coat made very little difference to the colour, which is great as it proves you can get away with only applying one coat of colour!

I didn't apply a top coat as I wanted to test out something on top of it which you will be able to read about in a few days time!

I love how well this nail varnish goes on and how your nail colour looks the same as the bottle after one coat, but I'm still not sold on the idea of having purely gold nails. If you like having metallic nails then I would, without a doubt, recommend you get this as it is one of the best ones from the NYC collection. If you have never tried metallic nails then this would the perfect one to try out because even if you don't like it you won't have spent a huge amount on it.

Do you like metallic nails or have you never tried them? Let me know! Keep an eye out for what I tried next with this look and thanks for reading! (:

EuroQuest: Day 5 - Budapest/Slovakia

Hi everyone! This was our last day in Budapest and so we decided to head to one of the places Budapest is quite famous for - the spa! We went to the Gellert Spa which was in a really fancy hotel which looking as we did in Guiding uniform and shorts we didn't really fit in!

None of us actually had any spa treatments, so we just used the pools which were separate to the spa. There was a main pool in which every hour they turned on the wave machine; a hot pool which has heated to 36°C and it literally felt like a bath, and a freezing cold tub next to the sauna. I decided to wear my new swimsuit I had bought a couple of weeks prior to my trip from Primark and it was a really nice nautical style one which could be worn with or without straps. However, I fell into a little bit of predicament when one strap unattached its self I couldn't get it back on so I decided to just wear it strapless. Big mistake! Firstly, without any straps to hold it up, it looked very unflattering as I think it was designed for someone with a smaller chest than mine. Secondly, when the wave turned on I was left with the struggle of holding it up in order to retain my dignity. It was also the first (and last) day that I got sunburnt, but thankfully it was only a little bit on my shoulders and nose!

We then headed to the train station to catch a train to Slovakia! By now it was about midday and 41° and we were traipsing through Budapest with our giant rucksacks on, literally sweating buckets! Our train was so late arriving that several of us decided that the platform floor seemed a good place to have a little nap! We actually got seats on this train but it was so hot outside the air conditioning wouldn't work! The man in the serving food and drinks was going mad with the heat which brightened up the journey a little bit!

The strange thing about the train was they didn't announce the stops so suddenly we found ourselves rushing to get everything packed away as ours was the next stop! The station we got off at didn't seem like a main station should - it sort of looked like the station in my town! But we were assured that it was Bratislava's main train station. The temperature when we finally got there was still ridiculously hot!

We got to the hostel, which was basically some student halls for a university nearby and I think this was the scariest place we stayed in! As we were waiting in the lobby there was a giant wasp flying around on a mission to kill, but thankfully a man who was also waiting managed to swat it with a tray (not that I condone the killing of insects but I see it was self defense because it looked like it was ready to kill us!)

We then went up to our rooms and found out that it was 1 bathroom per 2 rooms, but we had all been split up so we were essentially sharing a bathroom with people we didn't know... but then it got worse! I was sharing a room with Frances and thankfully no one seemed to be in the room next to us and we had a lock on the bathroom door unlike some of the others, but I then lifted the duvet from my bed to find the mattress and sheet were blood stained - which is just what I wanted! Safe to say, I slept on top of the duvet. Jenny and Emii met there neighbour, only to be told he kept a basket of girls back at home (which later turned out to mean he had a lot of sisters)! Tash and Evies neighbour brought back a girl in the night and well... the walls were pretty thin so I don't think they got much sleep!

Once we had put our stuff in our rooms, we headed over to the 24 hour McDonalds as it was the closest food place near to us, but they didn't have any of the vegetarian options such as a veggie burger/wrap/sandwich which we have over here. I ended up ordering a salad, which wasn't too bad! (Although I didn't use the strange blue cheese dressing that they gave me with it!)

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

BUDAPEST VIDEO: COMING SOON!

SLOVAKIA VIDEO: COMING SOON!

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