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!

Review of 'Holographic Nails Topshop' in 'Wistful'

Hi everyone! I have never actually tried any of the range of cosmetics that Topshop has to offer and thinking about it I don't think I have ever bought any clothes from there either?! But I was given a gift card from the family I  babysat for almost every day after school for nearly a year, as they are moving away and this was sort of a thank you present!

So I went into the Topshop in Bath and had a little look at the clothe,s but the store isn't really that big and nothing exactly caught my eye until I went over to the nail varnishes. A few of my friends and lots of other peoples blogs I read love the nail varnishes from Topshop and I have to say there is a huge selection! Instead of getting a plain colour (although there were some gorgeous colours) I thought I would be a little adventurous and I got this holographic one!

It is £6 and it is really different to other nail varnishes I have seen in Boots and Superdrug and I have never tried anything like it before! They also had a bluey one and a sliver one but as I wear a lot of flowery clothes I thought I would get the pink!

So I applied my base coat from Barry M. Please excuse the state of my nails but they got completely ruined whilst I was travelling around Europe as I didn't really take time to take care of them as I was just having so much fun!

I then applied the first coat of colour. I needed to apply it quite thickly in comparison to what I normally do as it dried quite quickly so when I went I tried to spread out the nail varnish across my nail it just sort of made it really uneven and gloopy if that makes any sense! But once I got that sorted it was all good!

I felt it needed a second coat as in some places it seemed sort of opaque. But the effect was there are after one coat and I actually was surprised how much I liked it! It is very shimmery and does look like those hologram stickers that I always seemed to have when I was younger. I did think it felt slightly odd when I ran my finger over the nail as it wasn't smooth like my other nail varnishes.

I then put a top coat over the top and I was worried that it would ruin the effect but it didn't do anything like that - it just gave it a nice gloss over the top and it made it feel a lot better when I felt it! I also cleaned up an bits of rogue nail varnishes that had crept onto my skin and all done!

I actually really like this nail varnish because the effect it one I haven't seen before and it looks really nice! I don't know if it is the same with all the nail varnishes but I found it dried really quickly which is a huge plus to any nail varnish for me!

Let me know if you've tried any of the other colours from Topshop and if you like the hologram effect? Thanks for reading!