Happy 93rd Birthday Grandad!

Happy Fathers day everyone :) 

Today my family are having my Grandad over for lunch to have a nice Sunday roast and then rhubarb crumble! Yum :)  I'm suffering with such a bad cold though at the moment, my nose is constantly blocked so i  can hardly breath and my taste buds have also gone :( I hate not being able to enjoy my food!

I've tried so many solutions to try and get my nose all clear, you name it and I've tried it but nothings working! It's so frustrating.

Anyway, yesterday was my Grandad's 93rd brithday, yep i said 93! I made some poppy seed cakes with lemon butter icing and then decorated this one for my grandad using cocktail sticks, crete paper and string. Now i'm no cake decorator so they were a bit, lets say rustic but i thought the decoration was pretty and my Grandad was pleased :)

  

Grandad: "I usually do 20 press ups in the morning but today i managed 28!"

Grandad: "When i was a child, 60 sounded really OLD but now it sounds so young"

These really made me smile, he never gives up and he's always out and about and i suppose many people never really think they will reach this age and it's a great achievement if you do. He's really grateful for how lucky he's been with his health and counts himself even luckier that he managed to survive serving in the war when he saw so many friends lose their lives. I'm so proud that he's my Grandad :)

Hope you all have a great fathers day

xx

Buzzing stripes

I'd never tried this OPI nail colour before, it's just been sat in my box amongst the other nail polishes and it's just never grabbed my eye, so i thought i'd give it a go, the second time one after the other - must be good!

Believe it or not, the lines are actually green, though they look grey/black in the pictures.

L-R: OPI 'Don't Talk To Me', Miss Sporty 'Raindrop'

As you can probably tell, i didn't use stripping tape for these. I just simply did a coat (or 2, i can't remember) of this OPI polish and then did some lines. I just love using this OPI polish, it goes on so smoothly and it's such a gorgeous colour (the photo's don't do it justice) 

I can't quite describe the colour, it's kind of yellow but with a tinge of green in there but anyway i really like it :) and it stands out lovely when i was wearing black!

Hope you're all having a good week! What other OPI polishes are really nice? I own a few but would love to get more becuase of how smooth they go on and the colours just seem different and really special.

xx

Rabbit's are underestimated

Hi everyone :)

I hope you're all great! A bit of a different post today...

The other day it occurred to me that not many people actually have rabbits as pets. Well, I know a lot of people do but if you compare it to the number of people who have cats and dogs it's a lot less. I think rabbits are underestimated and people assume they're boring when thinking of getting a pet so go with a cat or dog instead because they're more familiar.

So today ladies I'm going to do a post on rabbits an why I think they make brilliant pets ;)

Now as you know I have a 5 year old dwarf lop called Parsnip. Here's a picture to show you how gorgeous he is!!

I suppose I didn't really know much about rabbits when we got ours and I wasn't so clued up on them but I'm proud to say he has impressed me and shown me how clever he is (I swear he is!)

Here's some little bunny facts for you because I didn't know all of these and wish I had because I might have been surprised:

• Rabbit's can be litter trained
• A rabbit can live as long as 10 years, occasionally longer
• They can make verbal noises like purring like a cat
• Rabbit's need hay to help them digest their food and stop hair balls
• Predators can literally scare a rabbit to death
• Rabbit's are really clean and can groom themselves
• The only place a rabbit can sweat is through the pads on it's feet
• Rabbits have great sight, hearing and smell - i was so surprised that if there's a fox in the area, Parsnip will thump because he's scared and i now have a mothers instinct and even in the middle of the night i will hear him and get up (his hutch is in the garden and my room is at the back of the house) even if i can't see a fox Parsnip can sense it.

When I got Parsnip I just kind of thought "oh how cute is he but doesn't he just sit there and sleep all day?!" I was wrong! Here's just a few of the things that Parsnip does that I never thought he would:

• He knows when it's feeding time. In the morning he sits right at the front of his hutch looking out ready. Then when you unlock the door he stares right at you and then as soon as that doors open he runs around like a loon because he's so excited (I don't blame him I rather feel the same way about food) then when you actually try to put his bowl in his hutch he practically jumps into his food bowl and scoffs the lot!

• He acts like a dog. He doesn't actually know the command 'fetch' but when I go outside (or when the neighbours cat is there) he picks up his toy carrot and races around his run with it in his mouth. It's hilarious to watch and he loves the attention.

• He gets super super excited when you play with him. He does the whole toy carrot in his mouth act and whilst he's running he will thump to make sure he has my attention. He will stand up on his back legs looking up at me (as you can see from the picture above) and he just loves having someone talk to him.

• When he's running around like a mad bunny if you run around too then he will follow you. Then when you stop he will too and if you change direction so will he. I don't know how he has so much energy coz I get knackered!

• He recognises when we get up each morning because when I go in the shower he gets up and runs around in his hutch (yet again with his carrott)

I would absolutely urge anyone who wants a pet to get a Rabbit or at least look into it. I love Parsnip to bits and can't imagine it without him. It's great because he loves his own company so is fine in the day to do his own thing and then loves company when i get home. I'd love him to be a house rabbit but i think he quite enjoys being outside and Rabbit's don't cope too well in the heat like with central heating.

You know when mothers go on about being proud of their child and insisting that their offspring is the best...i feel like that about Parsnip. I feel like a really proud mother :)

I hope you enjoyed my ramblings today, i just felt the need to share the love!

 

xx

Dear 16 year old me

So I've just finished reading this book and found parts of it quite interesting. I have to be honest that i didn't fully know who all of them were but on the whole i recognised their names.

Basically in this book famous people write letters to their 16 year old selves giving them tips on life, what the future holds and things to look out for.

It really got me thinking what i would tell my 16 year old self. I'm only 22 so not that old but i feel like I've grown up quite a lot (not like i feel so sensible no but more the way i look at life and the things i find important now).

Also my sister is 16 and i find her saying things and i realise how different i think now and i find it hard to stress my point about things not to worry about, but we've all been there and think no one else has been 16 and life is so tough!

So i thought i'd share with you my top 5 things I'd say to the younger me, it would be great if you could add more things below or feel free to do this post on your blog :)

1. Don't worry about what people think about you - obviously this is hard to believe when you're 16, it's all about what people think and who's friends with who and what gossip happened at this weekends party. I wouldn't say i worried so much but now there are only a handful of people i still speak to from school and it's pointless wasting time on thinking about people's opinions that you won't ever see again.

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2. Don't stress too much about exams - i was a  real stress head and when you're at school it's drummed into you that your GCSE's, A-Levels and University are the most important things in life. They're not! My sisters currently stressing over her exams and i try telling her that now, 6 years on i cannot remember ANYTHING about geography, physics or most subjects really. I've never needed any of that information yet at the time we were taught that we needed to know everything down to how many people died in a certain earthquake. Why?! I never went to uni either because it just wasn't for me - and once most teachers knew that they kind of abandoned me which is silly really because I'm glad i didn't follow the crowd and end up doing something i regretted with a debt.

3. You will learn to understand boys more - OK to relationships are the most talked about/stressed over/cried over/argued over subject that happens in school. Then you leave school and open your eyes and learn that school was a minute part of the world. I met Glen when i was 16 (which is so scary to think i was my sisters age) and we didn't go to the same school, which i am glad for. Sometimes you have to follow your instincts and do as your heart says no matter what anyone else thinks/says. You know best. I'd like to tell any 16 year olds to not rush things with boys, when you're older it DOESN'T MATTER how old you were when you had your first kiss or sex or how many boyfriends you have. Boys will always be complicated and equally the opposite sex won't understand how each others brain works but things get slightly clearer as you get older.

4. Be grateful for your loved ones - when you're younger it's all about going to parties with friends and then you grow up and realise that loved ones won't be around for ever and neither will your friends so make the most of the loved ones because they will be the ones who have no choice to leave you; especially the older ones. You can't bring anyone back once they've passed away and no one should regret not spending time or getting to know them better. I bought my Grandad 'Dear Grandad, From You to Me' and i am SO SO glad! Basically it asks him loads of questions about his life from when he was a child right up to now. It means i have this forever so that i can re-read it and get to know him and make his memories live on. I urge anyone and everyone to get this book or one similar for family members so you never regret not knowing something!

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5. Don't worry about the future so much - things will work themselves out. I am so so bad at doing this, well i used to be, I'm not so bad now but i used to come up with ridiculous scenarios in my head about what could happen (though very very unlikely) and I'd work myself into such a state. I don't know how i got through it but I've convinced myself not to worry or think so much about the future because some things are inevitable and you just have to ride the rough with the smooth. I also realised i wasn't living in the moment or enjoying the most of life. I now do and i think this may be because i think each day of things i am grateful for - it makes me focus on the positive things in life.

So there we go, phew! Those were my 5 main ones, I'm hoping to write them all up so that i can look back on them one day or give them to my children or niece's if i ever have any. I hope you've enjoyed this different kind of post today :) Let me know.


Oh and Lauren, keep hold of any nail polishes you have! You'll be needing those :)

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xx

Roses are Red

I finally got some stripping tape! About time too! I've always seen amazing mani's done but never actually bit the bullet and got some; until now. 

So here's how i did these little beauties :)

1. I started off with 2 coats of 'OPI Don't Talk To Me' on all my nails 

2. I then cut the green stripping tape and using tweezers (don't know what i would have done without them!) and placed them on my nails

3. Next i added some redish blobs on my accent nail and thumb nail to use for the roses.

4. Then using my nail art pens i just added some detail to the roses, at this point though i was getting a little nervous that it wasn't going to plan.

5. Luckily I carried on and added some little green leaves and hey presto they looked like roses!

     

L-R: OPI 'Don't Talk To Me', Active Cosmetics - got this ages ago and it doesn't have a name, Miss Sporty  'Raindrop', Models own nail art pen in white and models own nail art pen in pink.

  

I was so happy with these and proud of my little roses for a first attempt but because i did them on holiday after i'd finished them i went to the beach which probably wasn't the best idea because the stripping tape started to peel up at the edges even though i used top coat so i had to take all of that nail polish off and start again. 

This time i did the same colour base coat but placed the stripping tape on diagonally and then did a top coat of Miss Sporty 'Raindrop' (the same colour as the leaves)

So this was the final-final look and i'm actually really pleased. They stayed on my nails for ages aswell which i was pleasantly surprised about because i couldn't remember how well this Miss Sporty nail polish stayed on but it lasted about 5 days and even then it was just flaking a tiny bit.

Which design do you prefer?

Hope you've had a great weekend and if you live in the UK lets hope this sunny weather sticks around for the rest of the week (not that i'll be able to enjoy it because I'll be at work but it's nice to look out the window and see sunshine)

xx