Lemon and Thyme Loaf

The latest blogger challenge post, which I am very late in writing, was food. So for this topic I thought I'd share my favourite cake recipe: lemon and thyme loaf. Before I share as a little disclaimer this is a Nigel Slater recipe, I didn't come up with it, I saw it on T.V and had to try it for myself. It is a delicious recipe that makes a very lemony cake and always goes down a treat!*

For the loaf:

• 200g Butter (or margarine)
• 200g Golden Caster Sugar
• 100g Plain Flour
• 100g Ground Almond
• 1 tsp Baking Powder
• 4 Eggs
• Zest of 1 Lemon
• 1 tsp Thyme Leaves

For Syrup:

• 4 tbsp Sugar
• Juice of two lemons
• 1/2 tsp Thyme leaves

1. Preheat oven to 160 degrees C. Line a loaf tin.
2. Cream together butter and sugar then separately sift flour and baking power and mix this with the ground almond.
3. Lightly beat eggs and add a little at a time to the butter and sugar, also add some flour mix each time egg is added until all is combined. 
4. Mix the lemon zest with thyme leaves and add to the mixture.
5. Spoon the mixture into the tin and bake for approx 45 minutes (or until a skewer inserted to the center of the cake comes out clean.)
6. For syrup dissolve the sugar in the lemon juice over heat and add thyme leaves.
7. As soon the cake is removed from the oven poke holes with a skewer into the top and drizzle the syrup over the cake while it's still hot. Leave to cool.

The syrup flavours right though the cake, making this a perfect recipe for lemon lovers. You can eat it cold or I like it still a bit warm from the oven. 

 

February Fashion Lust List

I'm on a bit of an unofficial spending ban at the minute as I'm saving and fundraising for my volunteer trip to South Africa in the summer (keep an eye out for my blog sale coming soon) but despite knowing this I'm still forever browsing online and looking at things I can't buy right now. So I thought I'd share a few fashion pieces I'm coveting at the minute. 

H&M Straight Cut Jacket £14.99
I've recently decided, thanks to pinterest, that a blazer is something I'd like to add to my wardrobe. I found this one browsing on H&M and I love it, it's less structured than some others I've seen so is much more casual and something I'd wear often, probably over white t-shirts. At £14.99 it's a bargain as well, however with my trip still to pay I can't justify it right now.

Missguided Deynara Rose Print Collared Dress £29.99 
I spotted this dress a few weeks ago scrolling though Missguided and fell in love with it immediately. I love the cute little collar and the rose pattern is a perfect winter floral. I think this dress could easily be dressed up or down to wear anywhere with heels or flats.

ASOS Floral Blouse with Curved Collar £15.00 (sale)
This blouse popped up shopcade a few weeks ago and I immediately added it to one of my lists. Like the missguided dress it has a great little collar and is perfect for everyday, maybe even with the H&M blazer? Currently in the sale it's also a steal at £15.00.

Zara Mini Skort £25.99
I've seen quite a bit about skorts lately and I'm loving this one by Zara. Looks like a skirt but is actually shorts and in black will go with pretty much anything you want it to. I'm way too tempted to buy this at the minute but if you think £25.99 is a bit much for a pair of shorts I've seen blog posts about Primark dupes!

Topshop Vibrant Snake Ballet Pumps £16.00
With all of the current rain storms ballet pumps are probably not the most appropriate shoes but when Spring finally rolls around these pale pink snake ones will be perfect to add a little pastel to any outfit.

Warehouse Oriental Print Top £28.00
This morning I woke up to an email for ASOS about new season style and scrolling through the Warehouse page linked in the email this top caught my eye. I love the floral oriental pattern and the pastel colours, it's definitely something I could see myself wearing a lot.

Are there any fashion pieces you've been lusting after lately? Have you picked any of these ones?

Mally Lip Favourites

Mally High-shine Liquid Lipstick Pen

Before I start I thought I'd say a quick sorry for lack of posts recently but I do have a lot lined up at the minute but also my laptop has just broken so I'm having to borrow my mums and so posts might still be a bit irregular until I can sort something out with mine.
With that out of the way this post is about one of my favourite brands for lip gloss: Mally. A while back when I did my 'Day-to-day make-up' post I had my Mally Peach Sorbet lip gloss in there, it's still probably my favourite lip gloss so I thought it was about time it and my other Mally lip glosses got a review.
All three of these Mally colours are great to wear everyday or for any occasion. This product claims to be lip primer, lipstick, lip gloss and lip liner all in one tube and in my opinion it lives up to this pretty well. I've never used a lip primer so I can't really comment on that but this 'Liquid Lipstick' is well pigmented and very glossy without being sticky. It also stays in place a good few hours so it's great if you don't have time to be touching it up every 5 minutes. I also love the twist up tube, it means you can easily see how much product you have left and there's less waste than with other lip glosses.

Punch: This is the pink colour, I think this is very much a 'your lips but better' colour, and of course it's glossier than natural lips. The pink tint in the gloss is noticeable but not too loud making it perfect for a day to day colour.

Peach Sorbet: This is probably my favourite of the three colours, it's a perfect peachy lip colour and is again amazingly glossy.

Super Natural: This is an amazing nude colour which is great for creating a nude lip without ending up with a 'foundation lips' kind of look, it's definitely my favourite on days where I fancy a nude lip.

Have you used Mally before? What's your favourite lip gloss?

Ketchup Clouds: Book Review

Being a beauty blog book reviews are not somethings I'd normally post, however I'm a big reader (when I'm not swamped by college work) and this book deserves a review and, as it happens the current 2014 blogger challenge topic is books.

"I've done something wrong. Not a little bit wrong or even quite a lot wrong. What I've done is awful. And do you want to know the worst bit? I got away with it."

Zoe Collins has a secret - a dark and terrible secret that she dares confess to no one she knows. But then one day she hears of a criminal of death row who knows all about secrets. And lies. And betrayal. Desperate to confide in someone Zoe picks up a pen, and takes a deep breath. These are the letters she wrote.

I'm not sure what caused me to pick up Ketchup Clouds when I was book shopping at the start of last summer, I don't remember if it was the name or the cover but the blurb - above - had me dying to read it, I was intrigued and had to know what Zoe Collins had done, which, despite my efforts, could not be found by reading the first few pages stood in Waterstones. 

To start off we quickly learn that Zoe Collins is not the name of the girl writting the letters, she's so scared that she'll be found out that even a prisoner on death row half way across the world cannot know her real identity and address. Just in case. And without ruining the story I think I can say that not too far in we find out her terrible secret. She killed someone. 

This entire book is written as letters to a Mr S Harris, prisoner on death row in America who killed his wife, the letters switch betweens Zoes tales of what is currently happening in her life - like the person she killed's mum coming over - and the story of how she came to kill someone. What if find really lovely about the way this book is written is that you see Zoe become more trusting and familiar towards Mr S Harris, her first is rambling, it begins 'Dear Mr S Harris' and ends 'From Zoe' but letters and letters later, when Zoe writes her last letter she begins 'My dearest Stu' finishing the letter, for the first time with her real name. 

Throughout the book, in her letters, Zoe tells Mr Harris not only her home life, with two sisters one of whom is deaf, but also of school and parties and particularly the relationships she develops with two boys who she meets on the same night at the same party. I don't want to spoil the story for you so I don't think I can say a lot more or I'll get carried away and have told you every detail, however this is a strangely beautiful and inevitably sad story that I recommend everyone read. So to wrap up my review I'm going to share one of my favourite lines of the book, I couldn't tell you why but it seemed to stick in my head:

It was the wisest conversation anyone had ever had and I smiled wisely because of my great  wisdom and also possibly because of the whisky.

Review | MAC Extra Dimension Blush: At Dusk

MAC Extra Dimension Blush in At Dusk

Personally I've never been someone whose been very into blusher, however when I received an e-mail from MAC about their Extra Dimension collection I thought it might be time to buy a new one. So, not wanting to buy a new blush without seeing myself first I popped up to the MAC counter at Fenwicks and invested the remains of Christmas money in my first MAC blush.

The Extra Dimension Blush is available in three different shades, At Dusk is the palest of the three. As someone who is very pale usually I went for the palest of the blush shades and I really love it. I've worn this everyday since I bought it, At Dusk is a beautiful, subtle, pale pink colour that's perfect to add a little colour to pale skin. The blush, as the name of the collection might suggest, also has a subtle shimmer to it so it is slightly highlighting as well. The colour is easy to build if you find it a little too light at first but for me the colour is the best I've used and I'm afraid my photos don't really do it justice, the top two look a lot paler than it actually is.

As well as the colour I adore the pattern on the blush, I know as I use it it will become faded but I think it's a really pretty touch. As a first impression of MAC blushers it's lovely and when it runs out I'll definitely be going back to find a similar shade. I have however found that the colour does fade throughout the day, when I have a full college day by the time I'm home most of the blush has faded away, I don't know if that's just because it's a pale colour anyway or if people find this with MAC blushers.

Have you tried any of the Extra Dimension collection? What is your favourite blush?

Elemis Freshskin Favourites

Elemis Freshskin Overnight Serum

Elemis Freshskin Skin Clear Treatment Gel

This is another blogger challenge post, this week on the theme of skincare. I've previously posted (with atrocious photos) about my Liz Earle cleanse, tone and moisturise routine so I'm now posting about two of my favourite Elemis products.

I first found out about the Elemis freshskin range - a skin care range specially formulated for young skin - when the overnight serum was listed on a Vogue article online. I then bought several products from the range and of them these are the two which have stuck. The range consist of products in two different coloured packaging; pink for normal skin and blue for oiler skin. 

As far as evening skincare goes I'm not great with sticking to my routine but when I do remember, instead of moisturiser I use the freshskin overnight serum, unfortunately this means I can't give a very good review on how well the product works. Despite this I do really like the texture ad smell of this product, as a serum it has a texture more like a gel cleanser than a moisturiser which I really like as it's a little different, I'm not really sure how to describe the smell of the product other than to say I find it slightly citrusy. The product claims to unclog and tighten pores, which is originally why I wanted to try so I should probably get into a better routine with it to find out if it really work!

My skin breaks out fairly regularly so a good spot gel is an essential for me to have. I really love this Elelmis one, it has the same smell as the overnight serum which I find nicer than in other spot treatments I've tried in the past. I've also found that for me this product does work - if I can leave spots alone long enough to let it - you can feel it tingle on your skin when you apply it and it does shrink spots.

Have you tried the Elemis Freshskin range? What do you think of it?

eos Smooth Sphere: Pomegranate Raspberry

 If you start to read my blog a lot you will begin to discover that when it comes to lip products I'm a bit of an addict, which of course is why I've wanted to try an eos Smooth Sphere for a while now. Sadly, as an American product they're not very widely available in the UK. 
A few month ago Topshop instagrammed a photo of these lip balms as they were starting to sell them in their Oxford Circus flagship, however not online or in any stores near me (I checked). As a  full time student without a job, living in Newcastle, I cannot just pop down to London whenever I fancy for the sake of a lip balm. However my dad was in London on a training course last week and I asked him if he got any spare time if he could pop into Topshop and pick one up for me. He did, what a star! Even though I've only had this product a few days I absolutely love it!
As first impressions go, this little sphere is pretty handy. I love the packaging, the colour varies between flavours but as far as my pomegranate raspberry one goes, I love the colour! The sphere design is super easy to use, you twist off the top and the lip balm sticks up in the shape of the lid you just took off. Now I love my carmex and I know you can get it in tubes and sticks but the little pot I have gets impractical if I'm wearing gloves and I need to moisturise my lips or if my nails have gotten long and I end up with lip balm in my nail. This isn't an issue with the eos Smooth Sphere as the shape is perfect for applying straight onto your lips.
The lip balm itself smells amazing, I met up with some friends yesterday and immediately had them smell this, maybe that's a little weird, but that is how much I love the smell. It tastes pretty good if you happen to lick your lips whist you've got it on too. The Smooth Sphere definitely lives up to it's name as well, it's very moisturising and smooths my lips when they are dry, working at least well as chapstick. My only issue with the Smooth Sphere is, in my opinion, it's a little pricey. When my dad arrived home I was not expecting to be told that my new lip balm was £7, I don't know what kind of lip balms you use or how much you're usually willing to pay for one but as a student I find £7 a lot, I'm pretty sure I've spent less than that on foundation before so I'm hoping this sphere lasts a while!
Have you tried eos Smooth Sphere's before? What do you think of them?   

Also, just a little note to say I reached 100 followers not too long ago!! Thank you so much to everyone who reads and follows my blog, I love writing it and I really hope you enjoy reading it just as much!