My 20 years on Earth

I'm taken aback at myself, I am embarking on a brand new decade, my twenties. This is by far the scariest one yet, probably- Although I've only lived through another decade previous so I haven't much to compare it to.
I associate early twenties with living in lots of different flats, trying to carve some sort of beginnings to a career path, but really waitressing while I figure that out, then somewhere towards the end of my twenties (really really near the end) thinking about finding someone to spend significant periods of my life with, and then maybe forever, and then maybe a mortgage? A ring? A family?
It seems crazy that I could be in that position in under ten years, or that I'd be ready for that sort of madness.

If I could speak to myself ten years ago, and I really wish that I could, I would say so many things to make the journey from age 10 to age 20 that much sweeter.
I think I would tell myself most importantly to do what it is that I would like, I've always been a sensible-Sally so I was never an outrageous one- reading and sewing in my spare time is just fine.

Boys really are not that important, ever.

It never feels like it will happen but my siblings will move out and spending time together is suddenly not as easy, times together become something that is treasured as I get older.

Everything will be alright, absolutely everything, yes even that, the things that feel like the world will never ever be right again, they fall into place in their own odd way, which creates a more flexible and resilient character.

I honestly feel a bit sick and emotional at the thought of this being my twenties, kind of like my one and only decade where I can take a good stab at life, and once this decade has passed the rest of my life is mapped out, whether good or bad.

For the meantime I am going to take my own advice that everything, everything falls into place in it's own odd way.

Nail polish floods shopping mall!

 It was my mums birthday yesterday and she got some vouchers so we decided to head to a shopping centre to get some fun bits and pieces for her, but before any of that, we were greeted by this giant acrylic shape in the middle of all the shops. From the ground level it just looks like a futuristic perspex shape, but from above you can clearly see that it's a spilt nail polish bottle oozing with a gooey pink river! It's a Models Own makeup booth, and I initially don't associate them immediately with nail polish as their iconic product, but I guess, perhaps they do!

After all that, we went on the lookout for some fun kitcheny stuff in Lakeland, I just love that shop it has so many cute and innovative products, my mum ended up getting a food processor and some cute ice cream ceramic dishes too, I on the other hand was delighted at this adorable sight.

It's supposed to be the White House made out of white chocolate and using a standard gingerbread cottage mould (the kind you'd use at christmas) I already have the gingerbread cottage mould from last christmas but I never actually used it yet, and I never would have thought to have used it this way, It's of course in honour of the 4th of July and I just thought it was adorable and wanted to share it. If you click the picture to make it larger you can see a little mini Michelle and Barack Obama made out of chocolate!

 Then we went for lunch at Wagamamas which is such a relief as I'd been craving it for weeks. My mum had the Katsu curry but didn't eat all the rice as it is a mini mountain of rice, but it's essentially a chicken curry.
My mum also had the carrot and ginger juice, which made me feel nauseous, it honestly felt like I was drinking pasta sauce, maybe I'm just ignorant I  don't know. I on the other hand had the strawberry, apple and mint juice, it was so delicious, and tasted really fresh and raw.

 For lunch I had Cha Han which I believe is 77 on the menu, and besides it being delicious, I adore that it comes with a side of pickles, which are so incredibly delicious and tangy and crunchy and a miso soup aswell which I always drink last.

 I then went on to get some cards and gifts for birthdays and weddings coming up, and I was blown away at these gorgeous cards, the ones on the right are 3D cards that you make yourself, and behind the 3D dog you can perhaps make out the outline of a pirate ship which is another 3D card, and the pirate ship rocks from side to side!

Finally, just before I left Percy Pig sweets which are really really popular in the UK were celebrating his 21st birthday so they had a whole display stand with loads of variations of the Percy Pig sweets, one of the cute gifts was this piggy back, but I loved the grass on the bottom of it, so cute!

Tomorrow I am excited to be filming a brand new video for you guys to go up at the weekend!

Birthday Sister!

It was my sisters birthday yesterday, but after all the commotion I was too tried to upload all the pictures until today, plus I was eager to show you the new video that I uploaded.
But here is the run down of the day!
A whole group of us went out for lunch which was amazing! We ate at a place called 'The Goods Shed' which was a converted train shed or something so a really unusual building but absolutely freezing, there was snow on the ground!
For starters I had a duck egg tartlet, which sounds very fancy but it was basically pastry with a mushroom filling and then a poached duck egg on the top and some salad... I'll show you:

It was soooo delish, I was sad that it ended, and then filled up on a bread basket until the main course arrived which was...
Steak with vegetables and potato:

For dessert me and my sister shared a chocolate mousse with honeycombe pieces all over it, but I forgot to take a picture of it!

Later, we went back to my sisters for cake! She had two birthday cakes, they were so pretty!

I got my sister a guestbook for her wedding day, it had the couples names on the front and the date of the wedding, but the most fun gift I think came from my mum, it was a wedding trinket box made especially for the wedding day, it included all sorts of personal details.

 Here is has the whole bridal party, including the bridesmaids and flower girls, all in the colour scheme! And there's a little indication to my sisters dress if you look reallly closely

 On the side it has even more cute details including their shared interests!

 On the front is the bride, groom and the flower girls (I can't tell if they are bears or mice)

Then, a very cute and accurate painting of the front of the wedding venue!

Picture overload, It's nearly half 1am! I'm getting me some sleep!

Post-Birthday presents!

It's been a month since my birthday but it still feels like my birthday as there was some delayed arrivals!

This is the delayed arrivals a la my sister!

A bottle of palmers cocoa butter- I love this stuff, as does so many other people, it truly is delicious. I used to only have a baby sized bottle that I used up a long time ago, but now I have this lusciously huge bottle to last me a whole lot longer! I put some on and walked in the kitchen and someone went 'ooh, who smells like hot chocolate?'

Neutrogena Pink grapefruit face scrub, which I may say smells like a fruity dream and is very good for oily skin like mine, and coulnd't have come at a better time as my Oxy face scrub is just about used up

Two, yes two pots of Burts bees banana hand cream, which I've blogged about previously and how much I love it, and my container for that is just about empty too so now I have two as back ups!

Some Burts Bees lip balm which is very appropriate for the chilly weather that seems very relentless up here

Neutrogena face wipes- especially good for nights when you can't quite make that trip to the sink to wash your makeup off

Nautically wonderful, stretchy leggings from Republic

A makeup mirror with one side having a 5x zoom! Hello blocked pores..

and the grand finale gift...

A Liberty Hello Kitty gift set

It's seriously wonderful, and comes with Hello Kitty face scrub, bubble bath, moisturiser, spray, wash mitten, eye mask etc... It's wonderful, and the scent isn't sickly sweet like you might think, it's actually sophisticated and lovely. Inside the case is a mirror, and the print on the outside has Hello Kitty's face hidden in it. It's so beautiful, I don't know where to display it!

Hooray for birthdays, even if your birthday was a month ago!

Birthday aftermath and I betcha weren't expecting that!

It's officially the end of my birthday, and now today is someone elses birthday- maybe yours? I always find letting go of birthdays hard, I don't like retraining myself to say that I am another year older because the age I have just been is always in my mind 'the best age' until the following year, and then that age becomes the new 'best age'. Maybe I get sad when my birthday is over because I have doubt that my next year can be even better than the past, although it has been so far!

So here's my little birthday wrap up, aside all the commotion- because people always ask me 'what did you get for your brithday' and I can never remember! So here is a little peep into some of the most unexpected presents that I bet you never thought I'd get!

An electric toothbrush, since leaving my old one at home I've really not enjoyed using a manual- it just doesn't give the same 'zing' feeling of clean

A Bobble water bottle- it has an in built filter that filters as you drink, you just replace the filter every couple of months hooray! I really don't like the taste of most tap waters but paying for bottles of water is such a drag

A new hairdryer- nothing super fancy, just mine was a million years old and I was a little worried it might just blow up on me!

 

 

Some multivitamins- They are mother approved

 

A box of Peppermint tea- My favourite!

 

A new jar of Burts Bees banana hand cream, if you know me, you know I actually go weak at the knees at the smell of this stuff and I was in need of a new jar...

 

 

Yip-a-dee-doo for weird and wonderful presents!



It's my birthdaaaaaay!

Another sweet birthday has passed on by and now I can't believe it's all over

It's been filled with delightfully pink candyfloss clouds of love and happiness so I simply cannot complain.

I love birthday gestures that indicate that people just 'know' you, like how my friends made me Barbie cupcakes using one of those kiddy mixes, because they know I think Barbie is the queen of sass and style!

And how my roomate knows that I get excited over recieving mail, so she put my birthday card in the post box rather than just handing it to me over breakfast!

And how my mum travelled hours just to see me on my birthday and shower me in lots of love! And lots of brithday cake... this was my cake, a hot pink pig!

It tasted so amazing, after those Percy Pig sweets they sell in Marks and Spencers, so the icing was a delicious strawberry scented goodness, I love birthday cake so much that I think all birthday cakes should be sponge cakes, chocolate to me seems more like an 'all year round' cake

To top it all off, we ate in Wagamama's and I had the Cha han of course (no prawns, extra chicken) and it was yum-a-dee-doo

P.S If you were wondering about presents, I'm kind of weird with them, I like to keep them all together in a pile in the corner of my room and not put them away for about a week so that I can just absorb them in and look at them all together in one go, even if I use something that I got for my birthday I will put it back in the 'birthday pile' for example, a bottle of perfume- I would use some of it then place it in its original packaging back in the pile- I don't know why I do this, I have done it since I can remember! I do it at Christmas too- I just have a hard time putting presents away!

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow

Tomorrow is one of my most favourite days in the whole year...

It's my birthday!

I am very excited for tomorrow but celebrated with my friends tonight. This brithday is my first birthday ever away from home so it's already going to be different from the rest- but luckily home is coming to me and my mum is coming to visit for the whole of my birthday so it won't be too odd after all.

I was totally delighted when I opened my mailbox this morning and saw a small wedge of pretty envelopes inside, I love recieving mail when it's fun mail!

This is my 'pre birthday night' outfit or a little corner shot of it, I'm wearing my pink ruffly satin shirt that was from Topshop but I got it in a second hand store for super duper cheap and then some black trousers made from 'leggings' material, then my comfy black heels and a shoulder-pad jacket.

On my eyes I'm wearing the Naked Palette, a combination of Virgin, Smog, Darkhorse and Sin

A little side note is these crazy toilet doors in a bar that we went, they were opaque from the outside, but when you were in the cubicle you could see straight out- oh my gosh it was so confusing! I felt like everyone could watch me pee!
Here was my secret view

Woohoo for crazy toilet decor and almost-birthdays!

Thank Zip for that!

Today, thanks to Google's adorable doodle we all know that it is the birthday of Gideon Sundbäck!

Who? You say....

The man who invented the Zip, Zipper, Zippy or Zip-Zip whatever you want to call it

Zip is such a funny word when you think about it, the word zip actually sounds like the noise that a zip makes! Maybe that's why he called it that!

Look at all these great things that never would have come to be if it wasn't for good ol' Gideon...

Zippy! You'll remember this if you were around in the 80s/90s

A purse made entirely of zips!

A dress made of zips, something about this doesn't seem so classy though; although you could unzip certain sections to make your dress look diferent each time- or to cool off, while keeping it modest!

A trainer that with a few unzips- becomes a flip flop! Great space saver

And the only thing that I might actually wear among this stash- these zippy boots, although imagine the annoying 'jingle-jangle' every time you walked!

A Zip file! If it wasn't for Gideon maybe they'd be called velcro files, or popper files!



Zips are surprisingly important when I think about it, I'm more inclined to buy bags and purses with zip fastenings because they feel safer, but maybe that's just me!

Sister, Sister

Today was my sisters birthday, so we drove on down to see my sister!

One & only and favourite sissy! (She had not been awake long when I arrived and as you can tell, less amused by a camera lens in her face)

She got this fanciful picture of shoesies! All in a pretty and modern frame to jazz up her house! We both agreed pictures like this are way more fun than modern art where you can't distinguish anything specific, just fragments of 'what might be'

 

You are never too old for a Colin Catterpillar cake!

Just wanted to show you these lil' chicks in the mail this morning! They made me laugh so much, the one in the middle on the floor looks as though he went through some real trauma in the post! 

I love spending days with my sissy! It's not like when we were younger and would get to see each other every day! We had a fun day of shopping and picking a pretty dress for her to wear to a wedding, and then we ate lunch at one of our favourites 'Cafe Rouge'

I love wonderful and sunny Saturdays, and Birthdays!!

Cakes can be art too!

My beautiful friend makes to most incredible cakes, they are so delicious and cute- with iddy bitty icing detail so perfect it looks like it's been modeled from clay.

The most amazing part is that she's had no professional training, she just taught herself!

But she has oodles of talent and creativity, I hate having to cut into beautiful cakes like these...

I love the detail on the motorbikes- that would be so fiddly and need such a steady hand!

My favourite part of these is the iddy bitty rubber ducks! They're so cute, and the ruffly icing- I never saw ruffles in icing before!

I love how this compiles so many of Gagas looks, with a little icing version of her shaking her hiney!

Does this remind anyone else of a real life Farmville! The perfect little rows of cabbage and the white picket fence, so dreamy!

I sure hope these pictures made your day a little sweeter! Personally, it's gotten me hungry for cake...

Which ones your favourite? Mine is the last one, the perfect garden!

Birthdays and Camera troubles

Today I've been wrestling with my camera once again to recover lost videos that I've had recorded for some time now, I'm not going to give in and share what they are yet because I still have hope of them being edited and uploaded, but my camera at present is refusing to turn on.

After the frustrations of that I went to dinner for my friends birthday and then a group of us stayed at her house, it was fun to have a slumber party like back when we were little. I sported a cow print onesie for jammies, it was a christmas present and it came from Primark, they did all other kids of fun prints, tigers, paw prints and blue stars! I liked my cow one the best and it kept me snug because there wasn't much bedding between eight of us and it's pretty freezing in Janurary to sleep without a blanket!

Last night was a great night for inspiration as I've been waiting for a great Valentines day makeup tutorial to pop into my head and a little something came together in my thoughts yesterday so I'm looking foward to filming that and showing you guys what I've come up with!
I love taking requests so show me what you've got and I'll try and make it happen (trying to avoid the smokey eyes though, Youtube is all smoked out!)
Whatever time it is where you are, have a great rest of your day and I'll 'blog you later!'
(instead of see you later, geddit?)