my little masterpiece

Just a quick post purely to show off my 21st Birthday Cake. As I mentioned in the last post I wanted to make my own two-tiered zebra print cake. It's probably one of the hardest things I've (ever) done haha and I estimated around 20 man hours went in to it! There was 26 eggs in the sponge and 5kg of fondant icing! That's a lot of cake! Luckily I had lots of friends and family around to give it away to and I'm taking 22 slices in for everyone at work tomorrow.

I'll post a proper post about my birthday soon, I'm currently gearing myself up for starting full-time work from tomorrow onwards. I think it's going to take a bit of getting used too after 6 weeks of doing basically nothing (well nothing important) and being a lazy student before that!

have your cake and eat it

Something I've always enjoyed doing is cake decorating. I'm not saying I'm any good at it but I do like to challenge myself every so often and build on my skills. Here's a few cakes I've made in the past:

This year's Christmas cakes

Last year's mini Christmas cakes

Alex's 21st Cake (he studies Maths)

So I'm making my own 21st Birthday cake this year to take to our family weekend in a Lake District Hotel on Saturday. I'm doing my first ever two-tiered cake as I thought that would be a good skill to learn. It's going to be zebra print and hot pink so pretty tacky haha :) I've taken inspiration from a few photos I found through google image's like this one but I'm using a few of my own ideas too. The cakes combined have 26 eggs in and are going to take ages to decorate etc so I've already baked them even though it's not til Saturday! I'll post again with a picture when it's completed!

Loads of exciting things are happening this week including going horse-riding (that's today eek), ice-skating with friends, birthday drinks, 3 family birthdays and a weekend in the Lakes. And then it'll be down with a bump and into full-time work from Tuesday but nevermind.

I do like having a birthday a week after New Year as it makes the festive period last even longer, hope you're all having a good week!

new years resolutions 2012

I always make new years resolutions and I love looking back to see whether I achieved them. Last year my main two were to lose weight and do well at university. Okay so I achieved one of them - I lost 2 1/2 stone! But I practically dropped out of uni oops.. although I'm going back in September to start my final year again :)


Here are the ones I've thought up for this year:

Get to my goal weight and maintain it 

Although I did really well last year I'd still like to lose another 2 stone and once I'm there I NEVER want to put weight on again haha. Within this resolution I'd like to improve my running, I only started 8 weeks ago but it's my new obsession.

Be more creative

I used to be really creative when I was younger but TV/internet seemed to take over. I've already decided I'm going to start a scrapbook of my year but I'd also like to do some knitting/sewing and maybe join a choir as I love singing - my ideal choir would be something like Glee!!

Be more sensible with money

Over the last two years I've taken my student overdraft for granted and I've lived a little out of my means really but until September I'm going to be working full-time so I'd like to get out of my overdraft and save up for big things that I really want like a holiday abroad with my lovely Alex.

Get my final year at Uni off to a good start

I need to get myself organised and prepare myself over the summer this year so I have a head-start on the modules and hopefully I won't fall behind as quickly as I did this year. 

So there we are, I really hope I achieve my goals this year. Without sounding sickenly positive, I feel like 2012 is going to be a good year. I love reading other peoples resolutions so comment with a link if you've done a similar post.. :)

happy new year and a little rant...

Happy New Year! I hope you all brought in the new year in style, I'd post an outfit post but I basically wore the same outfit I wore to my work christmas do the other week - you can see it here.
I don't want to use this blog to slag people or businesses off, it's not who I am at all but I felt I needed to vent my  frustration with the service I've received from a certain company recently. It's a real shame because from what I can tell the clothes look good quality and good value for money.. I'm not sure whether I've been completely put off using them again because the prices are really good (and I forgive way too easily) but anyway... the company in question is MissGuided. 


Last week - Thursday evening to be specific, I was browsing clothes online as I often find myself doing and I noticed I liked quite a few items on the missguided website so I put an order in and was delighted to see I could still get free next day delivery - Friday. The website seemed a bit slow and right at the last stage it crashed and never came to the page saying order complete. I checked my emails - no order confirmation. So I checked my bank... money left account. So I contacted them and it seemed the order had not gone through but I had still been charged - they promised a refund. 


So I decided to take the risk and order again as I did really like the clothes. This meant twice the money was out of my bank account as the refund hadn't come through (£200 in total which is a lot of money to me). At this point the free Friday delivery was no longer available so I paid for Saturday delivery (£5.50). Order went through - hurrah!
Saturday comes and my parcel arrives on time but the item I was most excited about (the Holly Cord Collar Quilted Jacket) is missing with no explanation on the invoice and I have been charged for it. I contacted them but realised I'd have to wait til Monday for a response what with New Year. No response today until I hounded them through twitter when I get an email saying "Sorry that item is out of stock, we will send you a refund", BUT the website is still saying it's instock!! Surely they could have more efficient stock checking methods?


So I'm now waiting for two refunds from them and in the mean time I can't have the jacket I wanted :( As I said, I'm not saying I'll NEVER use them again but maybe I'll leave it a while atleast. I understand they've probably grown quite a lot very recently what with sponsoring Pretty Little Liars etc and they might not have been prepared for Xmas/New Years/Sales but still it's no excuse really. I'll also say they did give me 10% off that second order as an apology so atleast that's something. 


On a more positive note I found this jacket on the Next website and am thinking of looking out for it when I go Birthday shopping on Thursday, I'll get my quilted jacket fix somehow haha!


Sorry for the rant, I'll be back with a more positive post soon,