Lifestyle

New Year – How to get over your post Christmas Blues

Jan 7, 2019 autumnleavesandaspringbreezeLeave a comment

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

So, you’ve had an amazing Christmas and New Years day and Eve spent with your loved ones but now you are going back to work or school and you’re feeling kind of down. This is most definitely me, is it you?

I hope you had a really wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year but now I am here to write about a few tips I have to get you to a good start this 2019.

1. Think about all the good things to come in 2019

Instead of dwelling on how sad you are that Christmas is over, why don’t you think about all the good things there are to come this year. This can be things such as trips you have planned in 2019, I have planned a trip to Bath in the Spring and I am now really looking forward to it, also remember how much fun last Summer was with all the sun – we have that to come again. If you don’t have anything particularly exciting planned for 2019 then think about all the people you can meet and all the time you can spend with your loved ones. And on the plus side, next Christmas isn’t really too far off, but don’t think about that too much!

2. Treat Yourself

Another thing I would recommend is either buying something you have been wanting or needing for a while, it could be a little as a Lush bath bomb or a hair product you love and as big as a holiday you want to go on or a new phone. Or if you don’t have anything you’ve have been thinking about for a while then put aside an amount of money – it doesn’t have to be huge, you could have £5 to whatever you feel you can spend and just either go out and have a little shopping spree and buy yourself a nice dress, or a pair of shoes or some makeup or go out and have a meal. Just do something nice for yourself – no matter how little or big it is.

3. Be Generous

My last tip may seem a little simple but at this time of year lots of people try to make resolutions to give up drinking, lose weight, cut down on sugar, start a new hobby etc. But something else (or extra) to do is just to be kind and generous. Just be more conscious of everyone around you. I know you may be feeling glum but there is a definite chance that there is someone out there who is having a worse start to 2019 then you are. I am not saying you need to donate £100 to charity, just a little or even just be aware of these people in need – don’t be ignorant. I know this is not the way the world is but wouldn’t you love to live in a world where a complete stranger could come up to you and say ” I love that outfit, where did you get it from?” or ” I love your makeup” or something as simple as ” Have a great day.’ I’m not saying you need to be creepy and do this to everyone you see or that this never happens. But if you would like someone to say it to you then if the situation seems right then just say something nice, I can almost guarantee that both the person and you will feel better and happier.

Well I hope you find some of these tips helpful and I wish you all a very happy new year! Have a good one!

Autumn Leaves and a Spring Breeze x

Tis the Season to do Festive Shopping in Sainsbury’s!

Dec 16, 2018Dec 16, 2018 autumnleavesandaspringbreeze3 Comments

Hello everyone! How is your December going so far? Is anyone else amazed at how cold it is! (Well, in the UK at least?) But, if you live elsewhere then wast your weather like? So to start off with the festive posts, I personally love seeing what kind of foods and supplies people buy in Supermarkets so last time I went shopping I thought … This is quite a Christmassy shop – maybe I should photograph all the festive foods and write a blog post. So I did!

The first thing is something that some people may not consider a festive food, but I certainly do! So, the reason I bought two different types is because the easy peelers are the kind I love to eat but the other ones are the ones that I chop up and dry out in the oven. These make some lovely homemade oranges decorations but also makes your house smell of lovely oranges for a few hours! All you need to do is chop up the oranges into thin slices and then place on some kitchen roll and then place another piece of kitchen roll and gently pat down to soak up a little bit of the excess juice (You don’t want to mush up the oranges). Then you want to pop them on a baking tray and put them in an oven at around 100oc and leave them in there for around 2 to 3 hours – depending on how you like them.

The next thing that I bought was mince pies, I know some people don’t like mince pies but I absolutely love them! A bundle of spiced dried fruits with a layer of pastry around it, sometimes warmed up with a dollop of cream – that sounds so delicious to me!

These are my favourite Sainsbury’s Christmas treat: British pork & Cranberry sausage rolls. If you haven’t tried them, then please do, they are amazing; a classic sausage roll with a slight sweet kick.

Honestly, sometimes if I’m not too hungry for dinner or Lunch, I just love things like this and after trying them I must say they are really quite delicious and a great little nibble in the evening whether you’re staying in with a blanket and a Christmas show on the TV or if you’re having a little house party! Does anyone hold any Christmas parties? Or attend any?

I also bought a camembert which I also find is a great Lunch/dinner if you’re to very hungry. I like to pop it in the oven and melt it and then dip in some: carrots, bread, oatcakes, cucumber and peppers, yum!

I know this isn’t terribly festive but here are some baking supplied I bought.. I suppose the dark brown sugar is for baking gingerbread cookies so is quite festive!

I love these Glitter Berry J20’s, They just bring me back and just taste like Christmas an New Years to me! I would highly recommend.

Well thats all I’m going to talk about today, there were a few other things I bought, which you can see in the first picture.

I will hopefully be posting a bit more on this last week up until Christmas Day.

Autumn leaves and a Spring breeze (with a little Christmas touch) x

Christmas

John Lewis Christmas Advert 2018

Nov 18, 2018Nov 18, 2018 autumnleavesandaspringbreeze4 Comments

Hello Everyone! How are you all? I am very sorry that I haven’t posted in a while but I’m back! Also would you like me to do blogmas? It’s when I post a Christmas themed Blog post everyday from the 1st of December until the 24th of December? Let me know in the comments! Anyways onto todays post!

So, the one sign to me that Christmas is coming is when the John Lewis Christmas Advert comes out, I do love several other Christmas adverts such as: Marks and Spencer’s, ASDA, Waitrose and ASDA; but I must say that the John Lewis one is really the King of Christmas Ads.

So this advert usually comes out around the 15 to the 17 of November, and this year was no different, although I can’t remember the exact date, it was around the 17th. There were many hints to what it was going to be about and these hints were towards an Elton John song- which it was! “Your Song” was featured and the advert (without giving to much away) was a celebration of his life and his biggest hits and concerts and then at the end showed him as a young boy, receiving his first piano as a Christmas present. It was very moving and I can’t lie, I did cry the first time I saw it. I really liked it this year – it definitely wasn’t the best, I preferred “manonthemoon” and “montythepenguin” , but I wasn’t left disappointed.

Give it a watch!John Lewis Christmas AD

What do you think of it this year? Let me know in the comments!

Thank you so much for reading!

Autumn Leaves and a Spring Breeze x

and a little Christmas touch hehe xx

Autumn

Cosy October Evenings and Healthy Snicker Bars!

Oct 16, 2018 autumnleavesandaspringbreezeLeave a comment

Happy October everyone! I am so happy that it is here because the next three months are my absolute favourite time of the year! In honour of Autumn, I am going to write about cosy evenings!

So firstly I thought I would include this little recipe. I honestly can’t remember where I saw this idea, it may have been Pinterest but I can’t remember but it is a “snickers” healthy version. I mean it doesn’t taste exactly like snickers but it has a slight taste of it and it is really quite delicious. So for them you will need: Medjol Dates (or any other date), Peanut butter and dark chocolate. You simply take the Date and make a little dent in the middle and fill it with Peanut butter and then melt some butter and drizzle on top. They are so simple and really quite delicious! Let me know if you try them out!

Anyway on to how I like to end some of my October days: I have been loving Teapigs peppermint tea, though unfortunately I ran out so had to have the Liquorice and Peppermint which is still lovely. I also grabbed myself a piece of my favourite chocolate: Lindt dark mint!

Lastly, I go into my living room, I grab a cosy blanket and I put on a TV series. At the moment I have been loving scrubs which is about a group of young doctors. What TV shows are you loving at the moment?

Thank you so much for reading, have a lovely day!

Autumn leaves and a spring breeze x

Beauty

Little No7 Haul

Sep 23, 2018 autumnleavesandaspringbreeze2 Comments

Hello Everyone! How are you all doing? How’s your September going? I really am rather excited for Autumn and I am absolutely loving the slightly colder weather! I can’t be the only one? I can assure that there will be lots of exciting Autumnal and when it comes to it Christmassy (if thats even a word!) posts, so keep your eyes out!

Anyways, a few weeks back I needed a new mascara, and mascara is one item of makeup that I am very particular with, personally I prefer little brushes to big ones that help give volume, I find that those brushes often clump, but to each one their own. So one of my favourite makeup brands is No7 which you can find in Boots. I think that it’s affordable but also really good quality, so I decided to get my mascara from here. After looking at the brushes for a while I decided that the perfect one for was one called Stay Perfect, and after using it for a few weeks, I absolutely love it! I think it is the best mascara I have ever owned, or at least one of them!

When I went up to pay, I saw a little deal, and this deal was to buy two products and get a palette worth £25 for free! It was one of my friends Birthday’s soon so I decided to grab something for her and get myself the free palette (it really was a win -win situation for everyone!). The mascara I bought was £10 plus the gift worth around £15 for my friend meant that I got the gorgeous palette for free.

The palette consists of 6 stunning eyeshadow colours, a highlighter, a bronzer and a blusher. The 6 eyeshadow colours are amazing and I have been loving blending two of the colours together.

The bronzer and blush are both very nice, though I don’t use Blush very often at all. I do use bronzer but I prefer just do use ones I have bought before.

The highlighter is really nice and I do use it! I think it will be really nice especially in Christmas and New year time of year!

Thank you so much for reading! If you have twitter then go follow mine Here!

Autumn Leaves and a Spring Breeze x

Beauty

Toni & Guy Illusions-2 Limited Edition Styler Review

Aug 28, 2018 autumnleavesandaspringbreezeLeave a comment

Hello! So this post is going to be a review on The Toni and Guy Illusions 2 styler, I wanted some new straighteners back in the beginning of July, so I went into boots and had a little browse and decided to buy these. There were three main reasons to why I bought them; Firstly, I had heard of Toni & Guy and knew that they were a reliable, good brand, secondly I saw that it straightens, curls and waves and it had a controlled temperature, and lastly because it was £40 (which yes is a fair amount of money, but it was half price reduced from £80!) I also just loved the packaging!

So I bought them! Here it the box, and inside it includes: The straighteners (obviously!), a heat proof mat, a little book of instructions and a gorgeous bag for the straighteners.

This is what the straighteners look like, the have a temperature control, and a 2 metre lead which is really useful if you don’t have a mirror by a plug. It is a really lovely colour, sort of a silver with a touch of copper.

Now onto the review of how the straighteners work. They heat up extremely quickly and have 5 different temperatures, I have used it to straighten and curl my hair (if you want to see how to curl your hair with a flat iron, there are tons of tutorials online!) it works really well and my hair stays straight/curly until the next time I wash my hair, and it doesn’t make my hair feel dry or anything bad like that. Honestly, I really can’t find any faults, for me it really is the ideal straightener!

Here is the beautiful bag it comes with! It’s great because it fits both the heat proof mat and the straighteners in and also it just has a very beautiful pattern!

Well thats all I have to say about these straighteners! If you are looking for some I would definitely recommend these!

Thank you so much for reading and I will be posting again soon!

Autumn Leaves and a Spring Breeze x

Baking

The Tasty Chocolate Cake

Aug 24, 2018 autumnleavesandaspringbreeze2 Comments

Hello everyone! So last month I decided to make to Tasty Chocolate cake. I really like their videos and recipes, and I had done a couple of their simple cookie recipes in the past and the had worked really well so I decided to try this!

So if you would like to follow along to the video, here is a link : Tasty Chocolate Cake

But I will run trough recipe here and at the end I will give my opinion on how it tuned out!

So first of all I will list the ingredients and talk about what they do for the cake! (The ingredients are in cups and this was fine for me as I have cup measurements but if you don’t you’ll have to convert them!)

1 and a half cups of flour

1 cup Dutch processed cocoa powder ( this is supposed to give it a richer darker colour, but I just used normal cocoa powder and it worked fine)

1tsp salt, 1 1/2 tsp Bicarbonate of Soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 cup stout (this is just a standard Guinness beer and it adds a depth to the flavour and don’t worry it doesn’t taste very strong!)

1 tbsp Vanilla

1 tbsp espresso powder, I just used coffee powder and again it worked out fine. (This also adds depth to the flavour)

1 cup butter

1 1/2 cups white sugar

3 eggs

1/2 cup mayonnaise (Yes it sounds crazy, but honestly you don’t taste it! It is used in this cake to make it really moist, without it it would probably be a lot more dry.)

4 ounces of Chocolate chips. (this adds a really nice texture)

So, now the recipe! You want to pre-heat your oven to 160oc and you want to grease and line 3 8 inch cake tins. Then you want to sift your flour, cocoa powder, salt, bicarb soda and baking powder into a bowl. Then in a jug you want to mix together the stout, vanilla and espresso powder, it foams up a little bit which is very fun! Then you want to grab your main bowl and cream together the butter and sugar for quite a long time, just keep going! It should look a little bit like this when you are at this stage!

Then you want to add the eggs one at a time and mix them. Then, you want to swap adding a little bit of the flour mixture and the stout mixture, this is really so that your kitchen isn’t super messy! Then you want to fold in the chocolate chips and pour the mixture evenly into the 3 tins and bake for around 35 minutes!

The video shows a chocolate buttercream recipe but I just used my own partly because it has less sugar! This is what the inside of the cake looked like, there are definitely layers, they are just a little messy, this is probably more about my baking skills rather than the recipe!

I was really happy with how the cake turned out and it went down really well! It was the perfect amount of coffee, with a little subtle hint and the chocolate chips were really nice, though I would maybe add a bit more next time, because I thought there weren’t enough!

I hope you enjoyed this post and let me know if you have made this or if you want to! Also what is your go to Chocolate cake recipe?

Thank you! Also here is my Twitter!

Autumn Leaves and a Spring Breeze x