January instagram

I feel bad for January, a little bit. It's always dark and dreich, and everyone is skint, so counting down the days until the end of the month. But hey, it's over! It's pay day! Bring it on February. 

Here's a little recap of my very chilled month, in instagram form...

1. Getting up on a Monday morning is hard enough... but getting up on a Monday morning when it's -6 degrees outside? Ouch, thanks Scotland!

2. Started a writer's club with my pal Niki, in an attempt to actually finish a book this year! We write in completely different styles (Niki is a plot master, with ace dialogue and gritty scripts & I go "dragons! magic! eee!"), but I think it's going to be a lot of fun. And we had cake.

3. I've been pinning my hair up in a mini beehive-thing a couple of times this month. I like that it's quite different to how I'd normally wear my hair up (not that it looks it from the front!), and it looks ace with a scarf tied round it too.

4. Had a lovely night in with my friend Rae, and she taught me how to make mushroom risotto! It was gorgeous.

5. Drank some Embra beer (from Cornelius) at my Burns supper. The ingredients were "wheat, barley, hops, Scottish water and passion".

6. Post beehive hair (see photo 3). SO MUCH VOLUME. Ridiculous. I was genuinely worried that a bit had started to dreadlock over the course of one day! I had to absolutely drench it in conditioner before I started to look like a normal human again.

7. A trip to our future house! Ours is the second phase they are working on (it's on the left hand side of the photo), but it now has walls and roof, and is all going on schedule for April. We've picked our kitchen, bathroom tiles and flooring now - HOW EXCITING.

8. Feeling inspired after a trip to Dobbie's (to scout shed prices) we drew up plans for our future garden! I draw like a child, clearly, but love the idea of having loads of plants and colour everywhere! We also made the mistake of trying out a massive garden daybed... a bit like this. It was love at first sight (sit). It's hundreds of pounds. Oh dear.

Dotty Primark dress

January has been a really, really quiet month for me as I've been trying to stay in as much as possible to save money. So it was a lovely treat to have a Burns night with my friends, and do something fun on a Friday night. (This sounds really pathetic - I am secretly a massive hermit, and have enjoyed my chilled out start to the year!).  

I really like this dress and thought it would be nice to get photos that I could show on here - naively not realising how awkward it is to pose for outfit photos... especially when you have five minutes before you have to leave and have to get your (very patient) boyfriend to take the photos! (Quote from Craig - "stop shutting your eyes like a nutter". Thanks darling).

Anyway! Here's the best of an awkward bunch. Dress from Primark (*bought with vouchers from a press night), cardigan from H&M, and (just visible) my current favourite necklace from Hannah Zakari.

I used one of the nude shadows and brow shaping wax from the Benefit Smokin' Eyes palette. My hair was backcombed into a mini beehive.. but just looks mega scruffy from the front (ha!).

The Burns supper was great, being Scottish is wonderful, and pals are lovely. Happy days.

Floral stripey nails

I really like this nail art! I saw it on a blog ages ago (absolutely cannot remember which one - please tell me if it was yours), and I really liked how spring-like it was. It's quite Cath Kidston like too!

I painted the base colour first, then went over this with a white nail pen to add the stripes. I wasn't patient enough when letting my base coat dry, which is why loads of the lines are smudgy/look a bit gritty (oh well). Then on my thumb and ring finger I painted the flowers by doing two big dots (one pink polish, one red polish) and swirling them round with a kirby grip. I added small strokes of green polish to make the leaves, and added a couple of highlights with the white nail pen on the flowers.

Up close the flowers look just like smudges of colour, but I think they have a definite flower-like appearance from a distance. I hope so anyway!

p.s. sorry for my horrendous photoshopping of the background! I took the photo at my desk at work (my main source of natural light during the week!) and forgot to move my super bright mousemat. It was really distracting, so I had to (badly) edit it out.

How to: make a vanilla cheesecake

I'd never made a cheesecake before and always thought they would be a bit tricky... after all, you are turning cream cheese (yuck) into pudding-esque cake (yum).  I didn't even know you could make them without using an oven! Turns out you can.

So. Ingredients. You'll need to look out a dish in advance - I just used a fairly big cake tin (with a loose base).

• 12 digestive biscuits
• 125g butter
• 200g philadelphia cheese
• 85g icing sugar
• 300mls double cream
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• some raspberries

Start by crushing up the biscuits - a fun way to do this is by putting the biscuits in a sandwich bag and bashing them with a rolling pin (very satisfying). Then melt the butter and mix the two together. 

Line the bottom of your tin (cake pan) with the mixture. Really squish it down and fill in all gaps. Pop in the fridge while you prepare the rest of the mixture.

Mix together the cream cheese, icing sugar and vanilla extract. Make sure it's nice and smooth.

Whip the cream, and then fold it into the cream cheese/sugar mixture. Folding basically means that you want to mix it all together, but gently so that all the air that is now in the mixture (from the whipped cream) stays there. 

Now get the tin from the fridge, and add the mixture on top of the biscuit base. Smooth over using a spatula to get it as even and flat as possible. At this stage you could just pop it in the fridge and have a nice vanilla cheesecake, but I wanted to use raspberries.

 First I squished them through a (very old) sieve, to get the juice.

Then added icing sugar, plus a wee bit of whipped cream (just a spoon or so that I scraped from the bowl) to thicken it up. I just made it up as I went along really - I just wanted it to be thick enough that it wouldn't go EVERYWHERE when poured on top.

Spoon onto the cheesecake in whatever style works for you (I went for splodgy, but it would look lovely and smart with the raspberry syrup all over the top). Add raspberries to decorate and put in the fridge to chill.

I've read lots of different advice on how long to leave cheesecake.. some places say 1 hour, some say 4, some say overnight at least! We left this for about two hours and it was still a little soft when cut into, but very nice nonetheless.

Black Swan in 60 seconds

Something a little different today! My lovely pals Jude, Murray and Niki are taking part in Empire's Done in 60 Seconds, where you remake a film in under a minute (the clue's in the name, I guess).

Grace and elegance.

They've gone for Black Swan and you can see why... Muzza has ballerina written all over him! All of the competition films are up online, and the finalists (top five with the most votes, I believe) get sent down to London to battle it out.. with the winners going to the Empire Movie Awards!

If you'd like to help my friends out then all you have to do is watch their film (which is here!) and click LIKE on the video. I am obviously totally biased, but it is really funny!

p.s. maybe don't watch this if you haven't actually seen Black Swan... it is spoilerific!