Review: Cowshed Spa

I seem to be finding it very difficult to have my full-time job and post at sensible intervals! :( New challenge for myself, I think every Sunday I will try and post something new. Once a week is probably about right and hopefully will get me into a routine :)

Also, exciting news! I am so close to my 100 follower giveaway! This is super exciting for me as this blog was never set up as something that people would read, but rather for me to put my thoughts down and enjoy a little bit of writing. I feel truly blessed that so many people have deemed my blog worthy of following, so thank you everyone :) I reckon my next Sunday I'll be writing my giveaway post, eh? ;) Let's hope so!

So today I wanted to share my experience of going to a Cowshed spa. I'd never heard of them before, but after doing a little research I found that they are a rustic style chain of spas that have locations all around London (see the picture below) as well as some in the USA, Germany and Istanbul. If you live outside of London, they have one in Somerset and one which will soon open in Oxfordshire too. They use their own products at their spas, which are also available to buy in store or on their online shop. Their range is full of "honest, natural and therapeutic plant-based" products that aim to ensure to enjoy a spa like experience even in your own home.

Jewellery Picks

Hello everyone! :)

It's been a little while since my last post, but I've got lots of ideas and material that I need to publish, I just need to get around to writing the posts! This is one that I've been really excited to write!

I'm the sort of person that loves a competition. Especially if they're not too difficult to enter, a quick retweet or hashtag. I especially believe that competitions from smaller companies are really good to enter for both the company and you! Often they are not afraid to give away a really great prize in order to get a bit of publicity & by retweeting/sharing them you are helping them to get noticed, even if you don't win :)

I did exactly that when I retweeted a tweet from This Material Culture, a small company located in Liverpool (UK) that hand make quirky pieces of jewellery. The prize was a super cute cloud necklace & when they told me I'd won I was so happy! Looking through their website there's loads of items that I just love & it got me thinking about cute, quirky jewellery shops that I know of. So here's a few of my favourites!

This Material Culture

Graduation Day!

It's been another busy week! I graduated on Monday, had an interview on Tuesday, got a job offer on Wednesday, went on a spontaneous camping trip to visit my brother and his girlfriend until Friday, met up with some old college friends Friday night and then have been getting the flat ready for Alex's return from New York over the weekend! Phew, I feel tired just writing that! I want to tell you all about my graduation in this post, but a quick update first!

Firstly, I am lucky enough to say that last Wednesday I was offered a job and now will be starting my career this Wednesday! I'll be working at Mindshare, a media agency based in London, as an Account Executive. I'm super excited and can't thank everyone enough for being so supportive throughout my time at university, since finishing and through interviews and everything! I feel super lucky to have found a job within the industry I studied and doing something that I know I will really enjoy :)

Also, my blog hit 75 followers today! That might seem like a small achievement to some, but to me it is huge and I can not be grateful enough to everyone that takes the time to read this and follow my rambling! If you head up to my giveaway page you will find that once I hit 100 followers I am going to start a giveaway for a set of personalised handmade jar tea light holders :) Just a little thank you to everyone that follows!

Ok, enough side notes! Back to graduation! To me, your graduation ceremony is a day that marks all the hard work you have done and all the achievements you have made during your time at university. It is a day to share with family and friends and will be treasured for the rest of your life. I think it's important to mark such a special occasion and ensure you are feeling your best, so I want to share a few things that I did to make my own day memorable to me.

Review: Paw Paw Papaya Moisturising Balm

I see a lot of review for beauty products and although I'm not the sort of person that owns lots of them, I thought I would at least start to share which products I have and what I think of them.

I think a good one to start with is my Paw Paw Papaya Moisturising Balm.

Friendship Bracelet Earphones

I actually really love this idea and think it's a really cute way of making dull earphones a little more exciting. I saw this while on Pinterest and immediately dug through my sewing box to see if I could make it. It did take me a while, but this is something easily done while watching the telly/relaxing, it can be a little confusing at first, but once you do it a few times, it becomes second nature and is actually really easy!

Healthy Banana Pancakes

It's been so long since my last post! A whole 10 days! This probably upsets me more than it upsets anyone that may read this, ha! It's been a busy time and I keep doing lots of stuff and think, I need to blog about that! And then it never happens..

So I'm super happy to be writing this one! I've made these before and everyone that has ever eaten them have loved them as much as me. They're super yummy and really good for you too! This recipe has been floating around the internet for a while, but is often featured on super fitness sites because of how high in protein these pancakes are. But I think these are something that everyone should be aware of. They definitely do not replace the holy pancake, but they're a great alternative as pancakes are pretty bad for you! They're really easy to make too, which is a bonus.

To start, you'll need 2 bananas and 2 eggs. This will feed 2 people (or 1 hungry person!) and you can then add any toppings that you like. You can mix things into the pancake mixture, such as fruit or chocolate chips, but then cooking them becomes a little more difficult. I like to stick with toppings, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't explore!

*To note, the original recipe states 1 banana, 2 eggs per person. However, I'm a banana lover and I really don't think it needs the extra egg!

Baby Jar Tealight Holders

Thanks to my sister and my three beautiful nephews I've had an endless supply of baby jars for the past 4 years or so. Now that her youngest is almost off of baby food I had a moment of panic that this supply would end! However, my brother and his girlfriend are now having a baby, so it won't be too long until I'll have theirs instead! Yay for nephews! (And an unknown niece or nephew).

I've done loads of things with jars over the years. They're a great DIY start as you can do so much with them! Baby jars are definitely my favourite because of how cute and small they are & this is one of my favourite DIYs! I first come up with the idea as I needed a gift for Alex's Mum. She also makes lots of handmade items, so hopefully likes (most) of the presents I make for her! She did really love these ones and even asked me to make a set for one of her friends.

Bacon, Blue Cheese & Spinach Quiche with a Sweet Potato Crust

This one was a bit of a challenge for me! I was trying to follow a mix of a couple of recipes to do this, but I had to make so many changes that the recipe sort of became my own!

I really love quiche, it's one of those things that I never have had that much of, but still manage to get excited about when someone brings one out! Alex's Mum makes lovely quiches and during the summer the family can often be found on a Sunday tucking into salad, crusty bread, roast chicken, potatoes and quiche. Does it get much better?! No. It doesn't. We actually had one the other week and I decided that I had to make one of my own. However, quiche is pretty bad for you! The filling isn't too naughty (depending on what you have) but the pastry is sinful, hence this beautiful invention!

I thought of doing a crustless quiche, but where's the fun in that?! So after some careful Pinterest surfing, I managed to put some things together and make :) And after the warm reception on Instagram/Twitter from the picture, I knew I had to put the recipe together :) (For you, Alan!)

Here's that picture!

Review: East Street

A few weeks back I visited East Street, a pan Asian restaurant in London, to catch up with a few of Alex's university friends. I love going to places that our friends recommend and taking their advice as to what to order, it's a great way of discovering new places. Imagine if each one of your friends recommended one restaurant to you, you'd have loads more places to eat! Plus you know that your friends will be honest with you, so it's gonna be good!

Revamping Old/Cheap Jewellery

My first DIY, how exciting! And also quite ironic that this is my first time doing it too, ha! To be honest, this isn't a new idea, so I'm not pretending to be the brains behind this, it is quite a common thing to do. However, I've only ever seen people do parts of jewellery. Here's what I mean..

                            Start                                                  Finish

Spiced Apple Cake

If you're anything like me, telling me to not eat anything sweet causes me to run around my flat and find anything and everything that has any sugar in it. It's one of my less glamorous traits, I admit. In times like this (which are far too often than I care to admit) books such as The Hairy Dieters have been my saviour!

Buy it here (I've also just discovered there's a third book! And I've just bought that too..)

My Love For Vintage

I can honestly say I never thought I would write a blog post about style. Although I wouldn't say I dress badly, I would never claim to know anything about fashion. That said, I suppose I do have my own styles that I like and one of those is everything and anything to do with vintage clothing. I'm a sucker for a vintage shop/fair, even if I don't buy anything. To be honest, I don't usually buy anything! But, while in Manchester last weekend I walked past the cutest of vintage shops. Usually it's just my luck that the item I want is in the window and this was no exception! We walked away from it to begin with but when we stopped just round the corner I dragged Alex back to check it out with me. It was a great shop full of treasures, I was so engrossed I didn't take any pictures! Booooo :( Well, it was called Retro Rehab and after finding their website here's a few pictures from there to show you what it was like.

Review: Red's True BBQ

It's restaurant review time! As I was chatting to a friend the other day about this blog, she suggested blogging about my restaurant adventures and the many delicious photos that you can see down my instagram. So I'm taking her advice (thank you, Georgia!) and here's my first.

On a side note, Georgia is a blogger herself and throughout trying to start this one, her blog has been both my motivation and inspiration to make this one as good as possible! Be sure to check out her awesome blog, mappedout.

Back to food. This was a restaurant in Manchester, but there are branches in Headingley, Leeds and Nottingham. I was surprised (and seriously upset) to not see London! If anyone from Red's sees this, please tell me whyyyyyyy?! I would actually suggest a trip to Manchester just for this restaurant. Meat lovers only. It's one of those glorious places that puts ingredients together that makes most go ergh and makes me go, take my money please.

The restaurant itself is styled with many church related items, including confession box toilets, 'the good book' menus, which includes the 10 commandments, and 'praise for' sauces. This place is literally for the worshipper of meat. However the actual restaurant has a more trendy feel and has less church related decor, but it still looks awesome! Find more pictures on their website.

Weekend Away In Manchester

It feels like ages since I last posted! It has been over a week, but I have been doing a little bit of housekeeping over the past couple of days and I also had a weekend away over the bank holiday. I'm a Essex/London girl, so I was quite excited to visit Manchester. I've never been there before and I felt it was a good city to explore! Me and Alex have some friends who live up there now, so we did a little visiting and had a nice explore around too! There's loads I want to talk about, so I'm going to split it up into a couple of posts so they're easier to find :)

Manchester is a really interesting city, there are loads of places to eat and drink and because its actually pretty small you can walk everywhere! We had loads of great food, and I'll be sharing a few of those too! We were also lucky enough to catch the opening of Home. It brings together a gallery, theatre, cinema and lots of different events into one big.. well, home. Check out their website here. They had a street party to celebrate the opening and it was a lot of fun!

Key Lime Tarts. Sort Of.

Dessert anyone?

I didn't really know what to call this post. The recipe for this dessert is from a blog called Nutritionist in the Kitch and she rightly calls them Key Lime Tarts. But, when I was making this recipe I realised I pretty much had nothing in that the recipe called for. However, I did have a lot of things that I thought I could substitute. So, I thought, why not?! I like the idea of making up my own recipes and I suppose this is the place to start, learning to substitute! I didn't really realise that I couldn't call them key lime tarts until Alex come home and after telling him about my fun making them, he reminded me there is no lime in them. Oops.

Kiwi tarts makes me feel like I'm lying, because the only kiwi is what you see on top. I'm open to ideas here..

Find the original recipe here.

Orrrrrr, follow mine! Oo, exciting!!! Here goes..

Here's a nice picture to get you interested.

Homemade Chicken & Mushroom Ramen

Time for a recipe I think! As stated before, I don't usually make up my own recipes, so will always give credit to where I get them from.

This particular recipe is from an awesome blog called Fork Knife Swoon. I absolutely love her stuff, very simple and usually pretty quick. It is usually my boyfriend that makes this recipe, but last night I decided to have a go. It didn't come out as he usually does it, so I'll be asking him whether he does anything different! I followed the recipe in half (because there was only one of me last night).

Find the original recipe & instructions here.

Here's the ingredients I used:

A Rainy Day

All it's done today is rain! So it's been a pretty boring one really. Done three loads of washing, made pasta (I did not remember to get the chicken out early enough, so I had bacon pasta), tidied up a little. Not much really! I have however redesigned this here blog. Considering no-one has seen it yet anyway, no-one will know that, so I feel I had to say it! I don't feel particularly good at this, so yesterday I found a pretty flower pattern and just changed some of the fonts/colours to suit my likes. It was very pretty, quite pink and not at all like my personality really! Although it looked nice, it didn't represent me at all. I usually go for something much more minimal, but I feel like playing around with this a little. So now, as you'll see if you read this before I change it again, it has a bicycle background and is mostly blueish (this colour is my favourite) so it feels a little more like my blog. I was trying to sort a few of the pages out. I think I'm thinking of this more like a website? I feel there needs to be different pages for each of the different things that I'll post. Like, one page for recipes, one for bicycles, one for handmade stuff etc. But I thought, well what will be on the home page then? I've done a bit of blog research and found that no one does that and it is more of a everything goes on the homepage sort of thing. The difference is usually they're talking about the same thing all the time, like beauty or food, whereas I'm just dabbing in everything. Oh well! This is me, so I'll just put it all out there. It has made me think about the archive over on the right though, if that's the only way to find stuff, I need to name my posts very well! It feels a bit all over the place to me, but I want to really give this a try! Anyway, that was my day! Interesting, huh? Just smile and nod..

First Post - A Hello and Introduction

This is a blog.

Blogging is something I've always wanted to try, but never quite been brave enough to do it properly! I always felt as if it was something for experts and you had to know everything to do it. Now I'm about to graduate from university (eeeeek!) I thought, why not? I have tried before on tumblr and on wordpress, but neither went very well. I didn't like the structure of the websites more than anything, so hopefully this will be better.

I've been studying marketing and advertising, so I feel this should come pretty naturally.. That's what I'm hoping anyway!

So, what will this blog be about? To be honest, I haven't decided yet. I've always thought of doing a sort of 'thought piece/diary' blog where I can just ramble on and not even worry if anyone is actually reading it. So that's how I'm going to start! I'll just talk about something. Anything. Just to get going.