Can you believe it’s Christmas in FIVE days?

Here’s how the day normally pans out for my family. It starts early, very early, about 8am these days. There used to be years where we would be opening presents at 6am. We were a lot younger then and we value our sleep a lot more now!

The really embarrassing part is that i’m the one who still wakes everyone up, yes I’m a little child inside and there’s no shame!

I still have a stocking but I have a feeling that this will be the last year! Followed by a chocolate croissant breakfast with bucks fizz of course. Then we get ready for our family dog walk, this is the only time of the year that this happens!

This year we are having “elevenses” so we can have a later Christmas dinner. This is all part of my Dads plan to delay our last present a bit longer, I'm sure. 

Obviously after being stuffed from all the food we ate from Christmas dinner, we all collapse on the sofas to watch some classic christmas TV, I mean it would be rude not to right?

Then we normally get our last present that I mentioned earlier. This is called out “tree present”, it’s something unexpected that we haven’t asked for so it’s a huge surprise! it’s pretty exciting! By this time, everyones exhausted from all the excitement. 

Tea is obviously leftover sandwiches followed by more TV.

The best part? All being together of course! Unfortunately this year, I’m working on Boxing Day but that’s fine by me. All the exciting bits are over by then.

How does your Christmas go?

December

To start off with, I cannot believe it’s December already. Seriously where has the year even gone? There’s something about December that’s really comforting.

Of course I love Christmas, if you hadn’t guessed already. The decorating, shopping, food and most importantly spending time with family. This year, I have the best advent calendar that I won in khrissieloves giveaway! I’m going to try and paint my nails each day with the new colour I get but there’s no promising anything. Follow me on instagram to keep up with the different colours I get!

I’m also making a lot of my Christmas gifts this year but I won’t be able to share many with you because my amazing family read my blog! All I can say is that I can’t wait to get started over the next few weeks.

What can you expect from me this month? Lots of Christmas themed posts of course! Plus my standard A to Z posts which I’m now over half way through, plus so much more. I would also love to be able to get to do a Christmas giveaway if I get to 115 bloglovin’ followers. Tell all your friends!

I’ve got my work cut out for me but I’ve got a good feeling about December!

Neapolitan Cupcakes

I found this on pinterest and loved how the layers looked so I had to make some!

I used a basic cake recipe and added strawberry flavouring and pink colouring for the icing.

Ingredients:

Cupcakes -

4 oz self raising flour

4 oz butter

4 oz sugar

2 eggs

½ oz cocoa powder

A splash of vanilla essence

Icing –

5 oz butter

10 oz icing sugar

1 – 2 tbsp milk

Pink food colouring

Strawberry flavouring

Start by making the basic cake recipe, if you have a mixer you can chuck all the ingredients together. Having just started my job, I’m yet to be able to afford such equipment.

So for you all in similar situations, cream the sugar and butter together. Followed by beating in the eggs then folding in the flour.

Halve the mixture, to one half add some vanilla essence and to the other half add the cocoa powder.

In each cupcake case, put a layer of chocolate mixture and smooth it down so the top is even. Then put a layer of vanilla mixture and smooth it down evenly again.

Don’t forget that you only have half the mixture that you need to divide evenly between 12 cases.

Bake in the oven at 170C for 15 – 20 minutes. Then allow to cool.

While they are cooking, make the icing to this recipe, replacing the blue colouring with pink and adding some strawberry flavouring.

I love the layers in this cupcake, it makes it really different to any that I’ve made before and as with the ice cream, the flavours all work together.

What’s your favourite flavour cupcake you’ve made or tried?

Madame Tussauds September 2014

As I mentioned previously I went on a tourist trip into Central London. On this day I went to Madame Tussauds. We hopped on the underground to go to Baker Street and Madame Tussauds was only a minute away from the station. Buying your tickets in advance means that you get to skip the queue, even though there wasn’t one anyway.

We headed in and an entire room of wax figures greeted us and we suddenly turned into overexcited kids! Literally…we didn’t know where to head first.

Now I’m going to warn you, it is no secret that I love One Direction (sorry not sorry). About a year ago, they made their wax figures that went all over the world to all the different Madame Tussauds locations. They are now back in London so I was a bit overexcited, but don’t worry I’m not like one of those completely crazy fans who basically lives for them. Anyway, I just had to buy the professional photos but luckily Sarah works for Merlin Entertainment and we got a discount!

After we both managed to calm down a little, we carried on seeing all the different wax figures. There are hundreds and I don’t want to bore you by describing them all! So I’ll show you some of my favourite ones here…

If you ever get the chance to go to London and you are looking for something to do then I would highly recommend going on the London Eye and to Madame Tussauds.

It was one of the best days out I’ve had and I haven’t laughed that much in a while.

London Eye September 2014

On Sunday I went on a tourist day into central London with Sarah. We hopped on the train to Waterloo and walked down to South Bank to get on the London Eye. First of all you get some photos taken in front of a green screen and they come out as if you are sitting on the London Eye. Pretty awesome! Then you see a 4D show which is a prelude to going on it and it lasted roughly 5 minutes. I thought it was great! You get to see what it is like during the day and night and you see it all from a bird’s point of view, I guess the point of going round the London Eye! Sarah really hates Ferris Wheels so she was quite nervous but wanted to conquer her fear, but this scared her!

We checked out our photos after then headed to get on the London Eye. We had fast track tickets straight away.

The pods are quite big and you can walk all around the edge and there is a bench in the middle. It took just under half an hour to go all the way around, it goes a lot quicker than you would think but you don’t feel it at all.

The views were great, you got to see up and down the Thames and see Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. I was slightly disappointed, I thought you would have been able to see a lot more and more London landmarks, but the view of Big Ben is one I will never forget.

It was a truly great experience and I’m so glad that I was able to tick it off my bucket list.

Sarah also did it! I’m not sure if she loved it as much as I did but we’re both proud of her for actually doing it!

I definitely want to go on it again during the evening; I can imagine it being so pretty all lit up!