Etsy Finds

I've been browsing Etsy for a few days now and I can't get over how adorable most of the stuff is on there. I found a few awesome things that I really want to buy, but I'm stuck in my personal financial crisis at the moment. Job hunting is a bore, but it's gotta be done! So I settled on a blog post with some of my finds.


Real Fake French Macaron Charm (in Mocha)

How cute is that?! I'm allergic to nuts, so I can't really eat real macarons. I've always found them so yummy looking. :[  The only time I've ever seen them is when I bought some from France on my way back from Belgium. I was a little naughty and had a couple (no I didn't die), they were chocolate flavour and I've been obsessed since. I've had a look around and I haven't found anywhere that sells them in Nottingham so far. So, I might have to buy this cute little charm when I get some money to keep me happy until I get the real deal. 


It's $10 from TheRealFakeBakery. 


Real Fake Mille-Feuille Pendant

Alright, I like this shop. Tiny cakes on necklaces that look yummy, what's not to like?! The tiny strawberries look so juicy and real and the flaky pastry looks like the real thing! 


$9 from TheRealFakeBakery. 


Fake Cupcake Candy Shoppe Classic Swirl Collection Jars (Set of 6)

Long title, huh? These jars look amazing. The "frosting" on top makes me want to bite into it because it looks exactly like the soft icing you get on cupcakes! They're not as big as they look though, they're roughly half the size of a can of pop, smaller means cuter though.  All made by hand and in a set of 6. 


$28 dollars for 6 from 12LegsCuriosities. 


Coffee and Cream Goats Milk Shea Butter Soap

I'm a devil for anything that smells or tastes like coffee, so when I spotted these I was instantly digging them. Of course you can't smell them over the internet or know what the results on your skin would be like but they sound great to me. 


$3.50 for one bar (3.5" long x 1" thick x 2" wide). from LostRiverRags.


Chocolate Candy Vintage Buttons (15 buttons)

Finally something edible! These are pretty different from the Cadbury milk buttons. Think of all the chocolate cakes! They also make Sugar Buttons (perfect for wedding cakes!)


$12 for 15 buttons (that's plenty for a cake!) From Andiespecialtysweets. 


Antique Brass Eyeglasses Necklace

Nothing to say about this, really. I just thought it was fantastic. 


$10 from Morikaty.


Curiouser Necklace

"’Curiouser and curiouser!’ Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English). ’Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!’ (for when she looked down at her feet they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off)." 


$22 from UntamedMenagerie (some great stuff in their shop).


"Love Love" Necklace

You can see why I might like this. DALEKDALEKDALEK!! I'm a bit of a Dr. Who nut at the moment and I've been hinting at anyone who will listen that I want this necklace! 


$9 from Egyptianruin. 


I'm gonna be hooked on Etsy for a while, and there'll be no helping me when I get some form of income! At least Christmas will be easier for me when it comes around because I've already got a list forming (It's only May!) 


<3

Things I ❤

I feel a blog post is long overdue. 

Shots at The Square


I could get very very drunk at this place, very easily. Their booze doesn't even taste like booze. With an extensive cocktail and shooters menu there's plenty of excuses to go get a bit merry. Plus, they all look so pretty!

Breakfast in Belgium.


Probably the BEST breakfast I've woken up to. And most certainly the prettiest. A bowl of fruit, freshly baked croissants, strong coffee, fresh squeezed orange juice and yoghurt. 

Teriyaki Salmon & Micro-veg.


I got a bit hooked on those little bags of veg you steam in the microwave. Rice, peas, broccoli and sweetcorn with a little butter and pepper is just heaven. Top that with teriyaki salmon and it's just plain epic. 

My Dog. 

Taz has been a bit under the weather lately, in and out the vets all week, not eating and generally being ill. He's just been lying around the house looking depressed so I took a trip home to keep an eye on him while the parentals went out. Luckily he's perked up a lot now and seems to be on the mend :D <3

My Alexander McQueen Scarf.


Just look at it. It's awesome. I pretty much wear it every day and I really shouldn't. I'm terrified of losing it or wrecking it. (I'm prone to food stains.)

Presents from Lush.


That picture doesn't do it much justice, lol. Luke ran off to Derby straight from work to get himself a new board, saying he'd get me a present. Laura and I went off and bought stuff to make Oreo Balls with (see here.) And he came back with a wrapped box which contained these lovely smelling things. He got me the Ray of Sunshine gift set which includes (L-R) Sugar Scrub, Two's a Pair Massage Bar, Olive Branch Shower Gel and a wedge of Sexy Peel. Let's just say I spent an extra 20 minutes in the shower that day. :) <3

My Makeup.


That's quite a lot of makeup, now I look at it. The top picture is Benefit Ooh La Lift (£16.50) & Confessions of a Concealaholic (£28.50) which I use if I need an extra pick me up after a long night. The bottom picture is my main makeup: 
-Collection 2000 concealer stick (£1.99) (The best concealer I've ever used.)
-Benefit High Beam. (£18.50)
-Benefit Some Kinda Gorgeous. (£23.50) 
-Benefit Dandelion Blusher (£23.50) (Only blusher I use.)
-Collection 2000 Pressed Powder (£1.99)
-Benefit Erase Paste (£19.50)
-GOSH Touch Up Concealer (£5.99)
-Collection 2000 Big Fake False Lash Mascara (£5.99)
-Collection 2000 Eye Definer White (£1.99)
-GOSH Extreme Art Eyeliner (£4.99)

Monster Ripper.


Best. Drink. Ever. 

Minecraft.


It's my other hobby.


<3 Long post was looong.

Iced Coffee

My God. I love Costa Coffee. Seeing as I'm having a personal economic crisis at the moment, I've had to cut back on my spending and every time I get off the bus to work there's a Costa Coffee opposite me :C It's way too warm at the moment for a Cinnamon Latte so I've been slurping Mocha Frappuccinos when I've had the pennies. 

Asda recently had the Starbucks bottled frappuccino on sale at £1 a bottle and I think I ended up buying about 10. I had plenty of trouble carrying them all back to the fridge. They're pretty good, obviously not as good as the instore freshly made ones, but great for a chilled caffeine hit. But, somehow I can't seem to force myself into buying one at the full price of £1.68. :/ 

Nescafé Cool. What the heck are these things? I wandered into B & N Bargains the other day with Laura and spotted 20 sachets of these for 75p and snatched them up thinking they looked pretty nice. I opened up the bag when we got back to find all the instructions in an unrecognisable language. So I just added milk and hoped for the best. They're alright I guess. Nothing amazing, but I could be doing it wrong somehow. They just taste like sweet milk, I couldn't detect much coffee and it didn't dissolve very well. Any ideas? 


<3

Oreo Balls Recipe

My first recipe post! These are really easy to make (especially if you have no gas and can't use an oven...like me.) But onto the recipe for these tasty tasty balls. ;D This is gonna be an extremely picture heavy post...

What I spend my wages on.

Ingredients
You will need:
- 2 packs of Oreos.
- A load of chocolate of your choosing, I used more than half of that massive bar.
- Either cream cheese (Philadelphia will do) or a little tub of icing. (we went all out and used Betty Crocker chocolate fudge)
- Toothpicks/Cocktail sticks.
- Icing to decorate, if you want.

nomnom.

Smash it up as fine as possible. 

This stuff smells amazing.

Add it to your mess!

Keep mixing until it reaches a nice fudgey consistency. 

Make your bawlls. (Laura sacrificed her clean hands for this.)

Yummy balls. 

Melt your chocolate! (I did mine in the microwave, stopping every minute or so to make sure it's not burnt.)

Dip your bawlls in the chocolate. 

Took a lot longer than expected. 

Pop them in the fridge to set.

Take this opportunity to clean your hands :P

When they're set, take them out and cover them in silly patterns.

I was so proud :I

I TRIED to make a rosebud. Not sure why it's blue though.

Laura went crazy on the decorating. 

This beast.

So yeah! That's how you make oreo balls. Ours are still setting in the fridge and I'm slightly reluctant to eat them, it's like eating my love-children D: 

<3

Cybercandy Mystery Box

Cybercandy offers a great range of worldwide sweets and drinks, and I'd been debating buying some stuff off there for a while but every time I pick some stuff out it usually goes way over £20 for a few sweets. So, when I saw their mystery parcel section it tipped me over the edge and I had to order one. My mystery parcel was the "Cybercandy Bargain Mystery Parcel worth over £25" with £25 worth of sweets for £14.99. I also threw in some Tootsie Pop Drops and a York Peppermint Pattie which I'd tried before. 


My parcel arrived pretty quickly and I rushed home after work to tear it open in excitement. LO AND BEHOLD! 

I got a lot of AWESOME stuff. It was mostly American and I think I only had one thing that was Japanese but for £15 it's an impressive haul. I got: 
- 1x KitKat Chunky Cookies and Cream. (Absolutely amazing, really creamy with bits of Oreos inside.)
- 1x PB Twix (I couldn't eat this because of my nut allergy :c )
- 1x Dipdab (The same as the ones we get in the UK.)
- 1x Junior Mints. (Awesome. Like Mint Poppets but creamier and nicer.)
- 1x Strawberry Turkish Taff. (Not what I expected but really nice, soft and tasted like strawberry sweets.)
- 1x Liquorice Car. (I didn't eat it because I hate liquorice.)
- 1x Toffee Apple lollipop. (Very very sweet apple candy lollipop with toffee covering it.)
- 1x Apple Air Heads (Scarily green with a very strong apple flavouring.)
- 1x Goo Goo Cluster (Couldn't eat this but it was peanuts mixed up with chocolate and marshmellows, looked nice.)
- 4x Tootsie Pops. (Very sweet. Kinda hurts your teeth after a while but that tootsie center is delish.)
- 1x Tootsie Pop Drops (As above, but smaller and without the stick.)
- 1x box of Orange Airheads. (Not my kinda sweets, small orange flavour waxy balls.)
- 1x Cherry Ripe (LOVED IT. Like a Bounty bar but with cherry flavouring.)


Here's a few pics.

My lovely Cherry Ripe in its shiny packaging.

And after I'd taken a huge nom. It's literally like a thin Bounty with cherries. I need to get more of these. <3

Strange Hello Kitty sweets I left off the list because I don't know what they are. They're grape flavour tiny tiny balls, you bite into them and there's a strange popping sensation. It gets weirder because they taste more like white chocolate than grape. 

Eerily green Air Heads. 

Epic haul of sweets that lasted me a few days :D Go buy some! 


<3

CHANGES!

So, you may have noticed my blog is changing a bit. This is due to the fact that I've decided to not only blog about food, but all sorts of fun stuff. :D I've been reading a lot of beauty blogs lately and decided it looked like fun, it'll still mostly be food but I'll throw in a few beauty blogs too.


Wish me luck.


<3

Lockstone Pub Lunch

Lockstone, 22 Market Place, Nottingham NG10 1LT, 0115 946 9950.

On a surprisingly sunny day, (for Britain) me and my buddy Laura decided to have a bite to eat at Lockstone, seeing as it looked like a semi decent place to eat in Long Eaton. We wandered in and had a snoop around and it all looked pretty good, nice lighting and seating and OHYES Costa Coffee! I was sold and ushered her to a booth to have a look at the menu. 

Pretty good pub lunch stuff, the usual burgers and fish and chips, jacket potatoes and salads. But me and my carnivore friend were set on steak. So I wandered up to the bar to order food and get us some drinks, of course I get ID'd, what with looking 15 and having pink hair (And being about 5ft...). But I'm overjoyed as they have one of my favourite drinks ever. 

Brothers Toffee Apple Cider. 

I bloody love this stuff. I can't stand normal apple cider but this stuff is great, it actually tastes like toffee apples! Nice and sweet and really refreshing with ice in a glass. I got Laura a Kopparberg Pear cider which is equally as lovely, but I find it a little sickly after half a bottle. 

But back to the food. We settle ourselves down and after a short while the waiter brings our food over, but there's a problem. 

"I don't know which is the rare one and which is the medium one..." Uh, okay. So I say it's no problem, we'll figure it out when we start eating. Then he hands us our cutlery and they only have one steak knife. 

One steak knife. Really? 

Well, it looked pretty good. And it tasted good too, though BOTH steaks were medium in the end. The onion rings were the best part of the meal though, nice and crunchy :D We both tossed aside the tomato and tucked in and we enjoyed it. Laura finished hers first (because she's a hungry beast) and the waiter pounced on us. When he asked if we were finished and Laura said yes, when I say "No, I'm still eating" it's not a cue to take both our plates and leave me mid chew with a knife and fork in my hand,  staring at you blankly as you steal my food. 

</3 

  

Assorted Desserts, Cakes and sweet stuff!

So January and February seem to have been all about sweets, which ain't half bad :D 

Asda Café -Fudge cake & Cookies and cream -£3.50 each.


The local store where me and my friend tend to go when we get bored/hungry has a little eat in section which Kirsty and I decided to try out, slightly apprehensively. Took us a little while but we managed to settle on a couple of cakes and some cappuccino. It's all very school cafeteria styled, you take a tray along the counter and grab what you want then you go make your own drink on the coffee machine. The coffee itself was nice, the cakes were really disappointing. They looked really nice, can't fault them on that but they were SO dry. They must have been left out for hours. The fudge cake was okay, the fondant was nice but it was way too dry to finish. The cookies had gone hard and the amount of cream was immense. The strawberries were good though. :I 




Asda - Chocolate Mini Doughnut Balls £1 for 15.

I'm a massive fan of chocolate doughnuts, Asda used to do really nice chocolate doughnuts covered in powdered sugar but they decided to stop making them for some reason </3 so I found these and decided to try them out. They're nice enough for £1 a box but they just felt a little too... doughy. Sounds weird, right? The texture was just off, I have no way of describing it other than they were undercooked in the bakery. They tasted good, just felt strange. They were nommed up pretty fast though :D




The Cheesecake Shop


I've pretty much fallen in love with The Cheesecake shop! Massive slabs of amazing cakes for £3.50! I've only tried two so far, of course they're chocolate flavour. 

Boston Mud

The Cheesecake Shop's Boston Mudcake was absolutely delish. Really moist and chocolatey, not too heavy and the chocolate shavings on top melted in your mouth. I almost ate myself into a chocolate coma :] And the bonus of getting it half off because it had to be sold made it even sweeter. ;D 

Jamaican Chocolate Cheesecake

If I thought the Boston Mudcake was chocolatey, this is just... I don't even know. This cake almost exploded my tastebuds with chocolate. It's so, so, so, so rich & nice and soft. The base is sweet and crunchy which works well with the almost melted feeling of the chocolate :D Awesome cakes. 

<3