Shopping & Sushi with mama!

One thing that I love to go is go shopping with my mum, even if it's just food shopping, window shopping or real shopping!
This time we picked up some bits and pieces for my birthday which is not near at all, but I've been into baking lately and I saw some baking gadgets that I knew I had to have!
I'm not allowed to look at them but I can tell you that the first gadget is a cake divider. Sometimes I want to put a filling in a sponge, but when I try to separate the cake it all goes down hill from there and I end up with a pile of chocolate crumbs. It's basically a gadget with a wire that does all the hard work for me (according to its packaging and it is under £5)

Next of all, is a cake carousel mould. I've had a childrens cake cook book for several years now, and I love it purely for the beautiful pictures of cakes inside that look way above and beyond my feeble baking level. One cake that capitavated me was the carousel cake, but it required lots of bits and pieces, kitchen roll tubes and skewer sticks and ribbon and paper horses, it all got a bit much! But Lakeland are currently doing a carousel mould that basically does all the technical work for me. All I have to do is bake a sponge and pour chocolate in a mould, needless to say I am quite excited about that!

Mid shopping break we stopped off for more sushi!
I know not everyone loves Yo! Sushi, but my mum and I love how we can sit down and eat straight away with bottomless drinks and instant deliciousness in our tummy. I also love being able to press a button to get a waiters attention as opposed to having to try and flag someone down. We lost track of what we ate but we had a mini feast!

My Yo! Sushi favourites are as follows:
Gallons of bottomless Miso soup, I want one of those machines in my house!
Vegetable Gyoza - they are vegetable dumpings and deee-licious
Tamago which is a sweet omelette, it tastes like nothing I have ever eaten before but my mum and I love it!
Edamame which are salted soy beans, I eat a whole bowl to myself, you discard the pod and eat the beans!
Kaiso Salad which is crunchy salad in a sesame seed sauce
And finally....
We always share a Dorayaki- a japanese pancake filled with custard and a pot of rich raspberry sauce on the side.

 

Here's a little peek at our mini feast! In the blue bowl you can see the Kaiso Salad, and those green things right at the front are the eaten Edamame and the discarded pods!

I should not write about all the wonderful food I ate today when blogging near midnight because it's just the thing to get me fridge raiding!

Jumping on the favourites bandwagon - July 2013 Favourites

I don't normally write about 'these are my favorites for this particular month' because it would imply I'd have to have liked and used something for the whole 30 days before I can tell you that I like it, I would rather tell you my favorites of the moment so this is a little mix of both. Some things I have liked all month, some things I have liked for years, some things I've liked since last week, but they're all worthy of a mention so here goes:

First of all, and a non-beauty favourite is Lana Del Rey and her album Born to Die. I am just obsessed with her, watching covers of her songs, watching live performances of her, interviews and everything else between. I just can't get enough of her album and it is all that I listen to!

The next, and a kind of 'beauty' favourite that has become a part of my routine is taking a Zinc supplement ever day, and a vitamin B12 supplement too. Zinc is great for immune system boosting properties, and I am prone to getting sick. Vitamin B12 is great for boosting energy!

Next up is my Boots 'Good things' face mask. Not only does it smell absolutely incredible, like a terrific real fruit smoothie, not synthetic fruit scents. But it has a clay texture which means that as it dries on the skin, you can see and feel the impurities being pulled from the skin, it's perfect for a clogged up T-zone

My Ocean Salt face scrub from Lush is my clarifying shampoo for my face. When I'm feeling thoroughly let down by my horrible, dull, blemished and oily skin. One dose of this has it sparkling looking fresh and feeling crisp and clean. It is very gritty, smells of the sea air and feels very 'real' like nature doing good things to your skin. (Not suitable for dry skin!)

Burts Bees hand cream is my old favourite. I still have 2 pots of the stuff in my backup stock. The isntructions suggest using it after every hand wash, but my skin is generaly very oily anyway, so I find it can take more than 30 minutes to skin in to my hands and sometimes elbows, so I prefer to use it before I go to sleep. More than the moisturising element is the sensational scent. It is mind blowing, cramy banana-vanilla amazingness, and one of my favourite scents in the entire world

This is a non beauty favorite but just the other day I caught my first episode Extreme Couponer and I had to pick my jaw up from the floor. Those couponers are amazing and now I always catch an episode when I have a few minutes getting ready or something. I did not know shopping like that existed although I did read somewhere that it is fake, but I hope not!

My mum got me a Hello Kitty pink fluffy Light up Pen which I now keep with my diary, and it has got me back into writing my diary on a regular basis again.

Bobby Brown Shimmer Bronzing brick in shade Bronze is my new bronzer of choice. I usually preach that good bronzers can only be matte but maybe I've been convinced otherwise by this one. It gives my skin a 'glowy' element rather than just contouring which I adore for the summertime.