2014 Resolutions, Successful or Not?

 Before going ahead, diving straight in and telling you my 2015 Resolutions (which will be up tomorrow!) I'm going to look back last years and see what I achieved! 

2014 has had some ups and some very sad downs. It's been a difficult year, but the good times have been wonderful and I look forward to many more of those in 2015. The bad times have been very hard and very sad, but have made me a stronger person.

1. Write a blog post at least once a week. 

I did achieve this one, with a total of 108 blog posts this year, in equates to two a week! This is something I am definitely going to keep up.

2. Song write more and learn more songs on the piano

Oooooops. Not achieved, which actually makes me quite sad. I'm on a music degree and this one should of been achieved a long, long time ago. 

3. Start Vlogging.

This one definitely happened! Can I get a whoop whoop?! It's made me very happy filming videos and I try to do at least two a month. I uploaded six videos this month, never thought I'd be doing that! I don't get thousands of views and I don't have hundreds of subscribers, but my channel is growing, slowly but surely. 

4. Be Happy, Confident, Healthy and Positive.

This one is a hard one to sustain for a whole year. I had very motivated moments and some less motivated moments and overall I am a very happy person, but I do let lack of confidence and negativity get me down sometimes. 

5. Be more proactive and organised!

This one is pretty similar to the one above, it depends how motivated I am! But it's something I'm going to work on this year.

What were your resolutions? Did you achieve them or not?

xxx

Winter Wonderland, Hyde Park

Something I like to do every year around Christmas is visit Winter Wonderland in Hyde Park. Henry and I headed up to London for a festive date night.

Twinkling christmas lists, mile high christmas trees, (over priced) mulled wine and lots of festive cheer.

It's best to go in the evenings, due to the atmosphere, but it normally means it's absolutely paaacked! 

There's music, rides and lights everywhere you look!

Sweet Tooth cravings kicked in and I needed a sugar rush, so went for a Nutella Crepe! 

Henry & I settled down at one of the tables in the Mirror Bar to watch Collectiva's second set of the day. 

Incredible vocals, funky bass solos, banging drums and some awesome guitar, Collectiva were sounding seriously great. Go and see them if you're there, it's open until the 4th January.

Crowds danced and sang right until the last note and they went down and absolute storm. 

Despite the crowds, it was a lovely christmassy evening with my Mr!

I hope you all have a wonderful christmas! 

xxxx

NEW VIDEO // Fifteen Festive Favourites!

I filmed the Fifteen Festive Favourites Tag with one of my best friends, Abi! 

Get into the festive spirit, grab a hot chocolate and a tin of quality street, wrap up on the sofa and watch! 

If you enjoy it, don't forget to like and subscribe! 

xxxx

University Christmas

When you are at university and living away from home, your friends become your family. 

You over share, you laugh, you cry, you get drunk and you love them all to bits.

We thought we'd have a little christmas together before we headed home for the festive period. 

I was very excited about laying the table, as make-shift as it was! (We used the garden table from my balcony!)

Myself and Fran's first attempt at cooking Christmas Dinner, pretty great if you ask me! But I didn't have loads of time to snap it, I was staaaarving! 

THIS is house students do christmas. Just look at that magnificent tree... 

After we'd stuffed our faces, we continued to stuff our faces with Quality Street, open our secret santa presents, play ridiculous games and celebrate into the early hours! 

Not beautiful photographs, but they hold a lot of happy memories for me so I wanted to blog about it! 

Did you have christmas with your friends? 

BAKE: Mince Pies!

I am a huuge Mince Pie lover, I get excited for them every year! I thought it was only appropriate to film a video and write a blog post on the recipe I use to make them every year!

If you prefer to follow a written recipe (which I recommend you do for this, turns out I made a few mistakes in the video but still managed to make amazing mince pies!)

8oz Self Raising Flour
6oz Butter (cut into cubes)
1 tbsp. Caster Sugar
1 egg (separated)
Zest & Juice of half an orange
2 (or 1 large) jar of Mincemeat
Caster Sugar & Orange peel strips (optional) to decorate.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.
Sift the flour into the bowl, rub in soft butter until it resembles breadcrumbs.
Dissolve caster sugar in egg yolk and add 2 teaspoons of orange juice. (I find the dough muuuch easier to handle the way I accidentally did it, probably as it's a lot less dry - two tablespoons of sugar, egg whites & juice of a whole orange - but they both make very yummy mince pies, so either is fine!)
Add this to the flour mixture, along with the orange rind and mix together with a round bladed knife to form a firm dough.
Roll dough on a floured surface until a quarter of an inch thick. The dough is quite sticky, so make sure you move it in between rolling!
Use a big circle cutter for the base and whatever shape you’d like for the top. If you don’t want any mincemeat showing, make sure you poke a hole in the top on the mince pie to let air out whilst cooking.
Place these in the oven for 15 minutes, until golden brown.
Take out and immediately sprinkle caster sugar on top.
Make a cup of tea, flick the Christmas tree lights on, snap an instagram and enjoy!

Please let me know if you make them!

Hope you're having a wonderful few days up to christmas! 5 sleeps to go!