Blogmas Week 1

Christmas decorations (mittens & star £2.00 each) - Sainsbury's

As promised, here is my Blogmas week 1 :-) Since December 1st 2013, I have been a busy bee! I've been shopping numerous times.. (for Christmas presents and myself), I've written a 5000 odd word assignment, which I still need to upgrade and I've been working a lot too! Ugh, that's all I seem to do :( Hopefully I'll be able to relax slightly over Christmas and New Year, in between working (obviously)..

Anyway back to the point, in the last week Matt and I have decided to get into the festive spirit and wrap presents, put the tree's up and buy baking ingredients! We may have gone a bit over board on the cake decorations but hey ho, it is Christmas right? :-) More on this in a future blog, so keep you eyes pealed ;-)

We bought some little red and gold baubles to go on our own miniature Christmas tree, we even bought some battery powered fairy lights from Primark for it! At £1.50 we couldn't say no.. :-)

  

My ancient advent calender that I have literally had for my whole life, I found it tucked away in a box in the garage :-) There isn't actually anything in the little pouches (at the moment) but I'm hoping Matt someone will magically fill them, without me knowing.. ;-)

These cute stockings were only 50p from Tesco, so I bought one for each of us :-) They are only stuck on with blue-tac as I couldn't find Matt's hammer and nails, so that will be his job tomorrow morning haha..

This is our finished Christmas tree! For the first time in about 10 years we decided to buy a real one rather than use our 429 year old fake one, hoping it would smell like the traditional Christmas tree's, to bring back memories from when I was younger. Sadly it doesn't smell as strong as they used to, unless you stick your head right in it (be careful though, as I managed to get a pine needle up my nose!)

Mmm, I really want to keep this for myself but I'm going to give it to my Aunty Vicky and her partner Steve, I hope they like it! Nothing better than proper Somerset cider with Applewood cheddar ;-)

This isn't Christmas related as such but it is what I am currently reading.. Cathy Glass is one of my all time favourite authors, her books are amazing and I never want to put them down! This one is called "Will you love me?" and it is a true story of Cathy's adopted daughter, who had a terrible childhood and went through many horrible ordeals and transitions.. 

On the back of the book Cathy has written a blurb to give an insight as to what the book entails.... It say's

"Lucy and I believe we were destined to be mother and daughter,; it just took us a while to find each other.

Lucy was eleven when she came to me. I desperately wish it could have been sooner. It breaks my heart when I think of what happened to her, as I'm sure it will break yours."

It truly is an amazing book, I recommend ALL of the books by Cathy Glass. There are reasonably priced on Amazon so do go check it out!

That's about it for my Blogmas for this week, I will hopefully do week 2 the beginning of next week, if all goes to plan.. :-)

Have you decorated your house all Christmassy yet?

Amy x

I am rubbish at Blogmas...

(Original image from Pinterest)

It is now the 11th of December and I have only written 2/3 blogmas posts, that is absolutely terrible and I am very sorry!

I thought it would be easy blogging everyday, but trying to find time whilst being in my last year at college, attempting to meet assignment deadlines and working 20 hours a week, I discovered that maybe I have bitten off more than I can chew :-(

However I'm not completely stopping "blogmas" as I still have Christmassy posts to write and publish, but I'm going to do them in weekly collections, if you will.

I'll do one tonight and and call it week 1, but I won't go in to too much detail about what I've already covered in other posts like "Blogmas day 1/2"... If that makes any sense? 

This was just a quick little update thingy to try and explain what will be going on from now on :-)

What have you been up to recently?

Amy x

Blogmas Sneak Peak!

Boring essay time!

Hi guys, I know this is really late but I've been so so busy this week and haven't had time to write on my blog :-( I have got hauls lined up to do as Matt and I went shopping yesterday and will be again tomorrow. I'm afraid today's post will probably be a short and sweet update, but I promise it will should get better!
So this week has been pretty hectic. Monday and Tuesday I worked at Nursery, making sure all the children had made their Christmas crafts and had their newsletters telling their parents about all the activities that will be happening over the next couple of weeks.. (harder than it sounds!) Tuesday night me and some friends went out for some drinks, it was fun :-) we got to Wetherspoons at around 6.00pm and didn't get home to gone 3am! Way too crazy for a weekday some might say.. However I was definitely feeling it Wednesday morning, so I decided to stay home and sleep it off rather than go to college.. Ooops, now I'm super behind with my External Research Task that's due in.. tomorrow :-( sad times. So of course, I thought I would write on my blog and tell you about it rather than actually finish it. Hmm, great logic there Amy! I am planning on leaving my house at 7.30 tomorrow morning to get to college and crack on straight away, as I plan on finishing college tomorrow at midday to go to Bristol :-) let's see if this actually happens though!
Yesterday was an alright day though (apart from the hungover mess I was in the morning) because we went to Shepton Mallet and did a little bit of shopping :-) we went to New Look, Argos and B&M's. B&M's is actually one of my all time favourite shops now, it's like a really cheap supermarket haha. We also went for a meal at Frankie and Bennies but I'll go into more detail about this in another blog post...
Oh yeah, in this post i talked about never having an expensive advent calender, but when I got home from work tonight I found out Matt had bought me a lovely Thorntons one, after reading the blog post. Bless him :D
Here are some sneak preview photo's from what I've been up to this week, so far...

Like I said there will be more interesting posts coming up, but at the moment I'm really not doing anything that interesting to make blog posts about!
Hope you're all okay :-)

Amy x

Blogmas Day 2!

I decorated this bauble at placement with the children.. :-)

So for today's second Blogmas post I thought I'd do a Christmas Tag, as I haven't done anything particularly interesting today apart from go to placement and work... fun fun!

1. When do you start getting excited about Christmas? When I was younger I would start getting excited around September/October time. Well to be honest it hasn't really changed haha, when the nights start getting darker and the clocks go back, that's when I start getting excited!
2. Do you still have advent calenders? Yes! Without fail every year I will always have one, maybe even two. One year I hope to have an expensive one but for now I'll survive with Cadbury's :-)
3. What are your favourite Christmas films? I love Christmas films so much! The whole sitting in front of the fire with a hot drink, watching a Christmas film just makes me so happy. My favourites are Elf, Love actually, The Grinch, Santa Clause, Santa Who... The are loads more but I can't think at this time of night haha
4. What are your funniest Christmas memories? Hmm, I can't really think of a specific Christmas memory but when I was younger, and we used to spend Christmas at my Nans house, my Gramps would be the life of the party and always be telling jokes. :-)
5. Talk through your typical Christmas day.. Each year it changes because there is always something different going on. When I was younger however it was pretty much the same each year. Christmas morning I would wake up really, really early and me and my step sister Alice would find some torches and go wake up my mum and her dad, then we'd have our stockings then eat breakfast. After breakfast we would go into the lounge and open our tree presents.. Around midday we would sit down and have our Christmas dinner, then play with our new toys and watch some Christmas television..
6. What do you eat for Christmas dinner? Obviously the traditional Christmas dinner! Turkey with ALL the trimmings.. Hmmm.. Then of course mountains of trifle, cheese and biscuits and after eights. (not forgetting chocolate from our stocking!)
7. Do you have any Christmas traditions? Leaving milk and cookies out for Father Christmas is a tradition right? And Christmas morning we would always eat smoked salmon with scrambled egg on toast, mmm..
8. What are your favourite Christmas songs? I love all the old traditional songs, I'm not really into all the new ish remakes. I do like All I Want for Christmas by Mariah Carrey though. :-)
9. What is the best Christmas present you have ever received? Probably my old red and yellow car that I got for my second Christmas. I remember having it for years until my older cousin Dan broke it. I think every child must have had one of those things!?
10. Do you have a real or fake Christmas tree? We have an old fake one but hopefully this year we will be buying either a real one or a nice new fake one.. I love real ones because it reminds me of when I was younger and we'd have one every year. :-)

That concludes my Christmas Tag and Day 2 of Blogmas, I hope the questions made you feel all festive! Sadly I'm not really doing anything interesting in the next few days as I'm at work placement and college, but hopefully I should have some hauls by the start of next week. I tag anyone who reads this to do the Christmas Tag, hope you all have had a lovely day :-)

Amy x

Merry Blogmas! Day 1

It's official. It's December. The year is almost over and Christmas is just around the corner! This morning Matt and I opened our advent calenders before going to work, mine is a milky bar one and Matt's is malteaser :) yep, still kids at heart! I used to have a really nice hand made advent calender when I was little but I don't know where it's gone :( I love the idea of a proper wooden one, I've seen loads I like but they are all so expensive! Not to mention the super amazing Liz Earle advent calender, which retails at £100 but is totally worth it.. However my budget doesn't seem to stretch that far, damn it!

So anyway a change of subject, last week Matt and I had a bit of free time so we thought we would go into Wells and have a wonder around.. After eating a chicken pasty each we decided to go into The Bishops Palace to take some cheeky photos.. It's a really pretty place to visit and for £4.50 each for student entry, it won't break your bank balance. I chose some of my favourite photos to share with you...

This image reminds me of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, when the dementors come..? When everything freezes... haha 

Last but not least, I am hoping to take part in Blogmas and blog every day until Christmas; or maybe the whole of December, I haven't decided yet.. Obviously I don't know for certain that I will be able to post every day, but I will try my hardest.. :-)

Hope you all had a lovely November, do you have any suggestions as to what could be involved in my Blogmas? 

Amy x

Chalice Well, Glastonbury

On Wednesday Matt and I both had the day off, on these rare occasions we like to make the most of the day and do something interesting. As Matt's car was booked in for its M.O.T we were stuck in good old Glastonbury, so we decided to pick up our cameras and go for a walk, stopping at Burns the Bread for a cheeky bite to eat! Matt had a cheese twist and a sausage roll and I had a cheese and bacon savoury with a small slice of ham and pineapple pizza, although i couldn't finish them so I gave them to Matt.. (Top girlfriend points...)

"Chalice Well is one of Britain's most ancient wells, nestling in the Vale of Avalon between the famous Glastonbury Tor and Chalice Hill. Surrounded by beautiful gardens and orchards it is a living sanctuary in which the visitor can experience the quiet healing of this sacred place. For over two thousand years this has been a place where people have gathered to drink the waters and find solace, peace and inspiration."

I will warn you now there are quite a few photo's as it was my first time taking proper photos with this camera, so I was playing with all the features, I hope you don't find this post too boring..

 The photo above was taken without any zoom...

... and this one was taken zoomed in half way. I love the zoom on this camera, although you can zoom in very far it doesn't make the image blurry! :)

When we left Chalice Well we decided to go to the Blue Note Cafe for a drink. We both ordered a large hot chocolate with whipped cream, malteasers and a flake.. YUM! It was well deserved after all the walking we had done.. :)

(This image was only taken by my phone..)

I'm really pleased with the photos I ended up with, I have always loved taking photos and now that I have a decent camera I will be able to carry on capturing little snippets of my life :) 

Have you been on any adventures recently?

Amy x

New Camera and up-to-dateness!

This week has been a good week so far. I haven't really done anything special as such but it has still been good! Yesterday and today I went to placement at my local nursery and we have been starting Christmas crafts, is it too early? I don't think so! Anyway so we started preparing for our seasonal board weeks ago but only got around to actually putting it all together yesterday and we managed to finish it by the end of today, pretty good going I think when you have 2 year old children asking you 'what's that?' every 3 seconds!!

The finished board! (bad quality phone photo though..)

I am also so so excited because I have a new camera! Well I say 'new camera' but it's not brand spanking new as it was my boyfriends mums old one that she doesn't need, but it's still amazing and new to me :-)

I've never had a decent camera before, I usually just take photo's on my phone, so I'm new to the technology world, if you will. It will take me a while to get used to all the buttons etc but I'm sure I'll pick it up in no time at all.. (It helps having a camera-obsessed boyfriend!)

This is my new baby. It is a Fujifilm S5800, and it takes pretty decent snaps if I do say so myself.. Obviously this photo wasn't taken by the camera, it was taken by Matt's big boy camera, a Canon EOS 1100D. But it was taken by me, after trying to figure out how to turn on the bloody thing! So I am going to take credit, sorry Matt!

I would absolutely love a DSLR one day, but for now this little piece of tech is perfect for me.

I'm hoping to upload more blog posts now as I should be taking more photo's haha. Tomorrow Matt and I are hoping to go on a little adventure, so we'll just have to see what happens :-)

Here are some snaps I took...

Have you bought or received anything recently? I'd love to know!

Amy x

Christmas Adverts!

Melted snowmen cookies! (Image from Pinterest)

As we know it's that time of year again when companies bring out their Christmas adverts. I always look forward to seeing them on the telly as it always makes me feel so festive! John Lewis, Marks & Spencers and of course Coca-Cola are all known for their different Christmas adverts each year, never failing to please us.

However after watching Sainsbury's advertisement I couldn't help thinking that they are giving out the wrong impression... I will link the advert below if you haven't seen it but it is basically a mixture of different 'home videos' at Christmas and how they spend the holiday. Don't get me wrong it is all really heart warming, seeing all these families celebrating Christmas in their own unique way, but there is one specific clip I am referring to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49sKKbmuQCg

The clip at the end where the family is making a video for the father in Afghanistan is really lovely and I have to admit it, it brought a tear to my eye! But I can't help thinking that it's giving out the impression to families with young children watching it, that Sainsburys can bring them home in time for Christmas.. Especially as the advert ends with:

"The moments that make Christmas special, brought to you by Sainsbury's"

Hmm, it may just be me reading way too far into it as it obviously is intended to be a completely harmless advertisement, but I just thought it was slightly misleading and insensitive. I suppose you could say that all Christmas adverts are in some way or another..

On a slightly more uplifting note, the John Lewis advert is beautiful! They always manage to out-do themselves every year and this year was no different. I'll leave a link below

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqWig2WARb0

What are your favourite festive adverts? :-) 

Amy x

5 WEEKS UNTIL CHRISTMAS!

'You scumbag you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot!'

Me and my little brother, Henry

Christmas is definitely my all time favorite time of the year and always has been, ever since I was little! The whole aspect of Christmas just makes me feel warm inside, from decorating the tree to giving presents to friends and family. I am an extremely festive girl and I am not ashamed!

The run up to Christmas is my favorite; shopping for presents, going for festive meals & drinks and having cosy nights in front of the fire, watching films with a hot chocolate of course :-) As I am getting older each year Christmas is always slightly different. Sometimes good sometimes bad. Nevertheless I still enjoy waking up on Christmas morning excited to see if Father Christmas has been!

This year will be significantly different as I won't be spending boxing day with my Nan as she sadly passed away in August, RIP Nan - love you always. Christmas always used to be such a huge family gathering, with Nan bringing us all together. It won't feel the same this year..

I'm super glad to have Matthew in my life though, I don't know where I'd be without him today. He has been my rock. I love him to pieces and we're determined to make our first of many Christmas' together a memorable one.

Here are some snaps of my last couple of Christmas' :-)
sorry they're bad quality, they were only taken on my phone! 

Hope you enjoy!

Nan's tree on boxing day

Looking slightly unimpressed (or hungover?)

Surrounded by food and alcohol and you can't see my face, but I like this snap of myself..

Henry, looking young. Christmas 2010

Some of the presents I gave :-)

Mum's table..

Boxing day at nans, 2012 (I think..)

Lush boxing day lunch!

My gorgeous Nan and dad. Love and miss you always Nan xxx

Henry opening presents...

... 

What do you love best about Christmas?

Amy x