Christmas Gift Ideas - Mistle Toes

Hi everyone! So it's nearly Christmas now which is super exciting so I've decided to write another gift idea post. Again I saw this on Pinterest (and this blog) and though it looked so nice and I'm always one for little pun!

It's so simple to make all you need is:

• A nail varnish of your choice
• Foot cream (although I used hand cream because I couldn't find any foot cream when I went out shopping)
• Cellophane (or a square bag if you know where to get them!) 
• Stapler 

The first thing you need to do is make your bag (obviously skip this step if you already have a bag). Simply cut out a rectangle from your cellophane and staple the edges together leaving enough at the bottom to make a base otherwise you won't be able to fit your stuff inside!

Then simply put your nail varnish and foot cream in your bag and you're pretty much done! If you want to go that little bit further (I didn't!) you could find some fake snow or glitter and put it in the bottom of the bag to add to that Christmassy feel!

Now you have two options here! You can either make your own Christmas mistle toes banner to go around the top (which is what I did) or you can save re-size to your needs and print the picture below which is the one I made!

Once you've got your banner all you have to do is staple it in place and your done! 

Hope you are enjoying these slightly different kind of blog posts & let me know if you make one and how it turned out for you! Thank you for reading! 

Christmas Gift Ideas - Reindeer Hot Chocolate Cones

Hi everyone! Now I know they say you should never start something with an apology but that is exactly what I'm going to do. I am really sorry that the pictures aren't great quality because they were taken with my phone rather than with my proper camera but I do have a reason for this!!! I've downloaded the blogger app on my phone so I can now write my posts on the go which is a real life saver! I'm currently writing this sat in Nero drinking a nice hot chocolate if you wanted to know! Which leads me onto what this post is all about....

I saw a picture on Pinterest (which was linked to this blog post here so you should check that out!) of these Reindeer hot chocolate cones and thought it was such a cute idea and looked so easy to make I just had to give it a go. It's basically a reindeer made from hot chocolate powder and some other things but it makes such a nice little present and I mean - who doesn't like hot chocolate!!

So there are a couple of things you will need to make this:

• Cellophane (Or a coned clear bag - which if you know where to get these from please please let me know because making the cone is honestly the hardest part!)
• Plate or something round
• Sharpie/pen
• Scissors
• Sellotape
• Hot chocolate powder
• Mini marshmallows
• Googly eyes
• A pompom
• A pipe cleaner/printed out/hand drawn antlers
• Elastic band or some way of fastening it
• Superglue

Okay so the first thing you need to do is make the cone (if you already have cone bags you can skip this step!). Place your plate near a corner of the cellophane and draw around the top arch and then cut this out.

Now try and roll this sort of triangleish shape you have just cut out into a cone. This might take a while (it took me ages!) but the important part is to make sure there isn't a gap at the end of the cone because you don't want your hot chocolate powder all falling out! Once you've made this conical shape put tape along all the edges and the point to make sure everything stays in place.

This can get a bit messy! You have to pour in your hot chocolate powder into your cone and depending on how big the cone you made was will depend on how much powder needs to go in. The first one I made was way too big and needed 4 servings of powder in there but these ones I have photos of only needed one!

Then pour your marshmallows on top. Again just put as many in until it looks right!

Now secure the top of the cone with an elastic band and make sure it's tight because you don't want your powder spilling out the top either!

Okay so now we are at the fun part! Stick on your googly eyes just at the top of the powder part. Even if you have ones with peel off backs that self stick you may still want a little bit of superglue on there especially if they have to go in a bag to be transported!

Then stick on your pompom nose! Ideally this should be red but we didn't have any in the house and I didn't have time to go out and buy any so I just used orange which doesn't look too bad?!

The picture I saw had antlers made out of twisting a brown pipe cleaner around the elastic band but I didn't have any so I improvised! I simply googled 'simple outline of antlers' and clicked the first result and printed that out. I then attached these again with superglue!

And voila! That's your reindeer hot chocolate done! I hope you thing they look as cool as I thought they did and enjoy making them! I hope you enjoyed this slightly different kind of post and let me know if you try it out and how it went! Thanks for reading!

Where have you been???

Hi everyone! I am so so so sorry! I realised I haven't written a new post for about 3 months now and I'm so sorry I just kind of stopped! I did write a little post before saying that I might not be able to post every week because so much was going on in my life but I think I may have under estimated that massively! So I thought I would bring you up to date!

I am well into my As Levels now in sixth form. If you were interested I am doing them in Maths, Further Maths, Physics, History and DT Product Design! But doing 5 subjects has proved a lot harder than I originally anticipated and sometimes I do question if I have bitten off more than I can chew! But I am enjoying it so much and the freedom and respect you get in Sixth Form is great! So I know some of you might be in the middle of deciding what you are going to do next year and I would totally recommend going to sixth form or college if you can - although I wouldn't recommend taking on 5 subjects!

I have also been working 16 hours a week at Boots now and I absolutely love it! I'm not going to lie though - standing on the till for 8 hours or going in and out of the stock room re stacking the shelves is a lot of hard work but the people there are so nice and the working atmosphere there is great! When the tills are quite you can have a chat with anyone else who is on the tills with you and I've met so many nice people! The one problem working there is the trains! I live about a 10 minute train ride away but I work on a Saturday, Sunday and Monday and the trains aren't as frequent as I would like! So instead of spending 16 hours in Bath I'm actually spending about 25 hours over the week which just makes me even more tired than I would usually be - I've been using my frees at the moment to try and catch up with sleep which probably isn't the best use of the time but I need it!!!

Another thing I haven't been able to do is keep my room tidy so just ignore the mess!!!!!!

So with all this going on top of the things I already do in the week such as Rainbows, Brownies, Rangers, going to the gym, I just haven't been able to justify spending the few hours I have writing blog posts which I know sounds incredibly rude but I don't mean it like that and I know you will understand!

BUT I HAVE GOOD NEWS! I am currently working towards my Gold Duke of Edinburgh Award which is an award you can get by completing lots of different sections and at the end you go to Buckingham Palace to get your certificate!!! That is a pretty poor description but you can either Google it or I'll probably write a post about it at some point! One of the sections is a skills section and guess what?! I can put blogging down in that section! This means that I'll have a legitimate reason to devote my time to making this blog better so expect a lot more posts in the new year (and hopefully a couple before)!

So was just supposed to be a quick update and to let you know I'll be back soon but it ended up turning into a bit of a ramble - sorry! Thanks for reading!