Valentine's Day Gift Guide

Should you wish to buy your loved ones (or yourselves) a present this coming Valentine's Day I have a handy guide for boys and girls if you are stuck for ideas! Show the special people in your life how much you really love them with lots of stuff.

For the girls

1. Date Jar
2. Chloe Perfume
3. Jewelery Box
4. Leather gloves
5. Slate Coasters
6. Indoor Allotment
7. Bee Necklace
8. Clutch
9. Candle
10. Flowers
11. Selfie stick

For the boys

1. Scarf
2. Bracelets
3. Grooming kit
4. Hunters hip flask
5. Cufflinks
6. Smartphone projector
7. Robcop mug
8. iphone speaker
9. Remote controlled helicopter
10. Lap tray

C x

Christmas Presents

I thought I would share with you a selection of my Christmas Presents as I know I love seeing what other people received! I got some crackers of presents this year.

1. My main present from Leigh. I have been going on and on about how rubbish the lighting is in my kitchen and how I can never take decent photographs for Pourable Sunshine. All this is about to change as he bought me a photography light which should help improve the quality drastically!

2. My parents bought me the beautiful Rose Gold Michael Kors watch I have been lusting after for most of the year. I am in love!

3. Another Leigh present! An i-music pillow (which works with all devices including my Samsung. Not sure why it has to be called an i pillow...) so I can watch all of my youtube videos at night without disturbing him.

4. I received a couple of new cookbooks to add to my ever growing collection, one of my favourites was this one.

5. I got a very interesting looking bread maker from my brother and his girlfriend

6. Some lovely bowls from my youngest brother

7. Leigh's parents got me a cake stand to display my wares

8. A fondue for making melty chocolate and cheese!

9. My old microwaveable toy was falling apart so now I have a new one!

10. The sorting hat put me into Slytherin so Leigh thought I should have the scarf

11. Jelly Babies are my favourite sweet and now I have loads of them

12. This Camembert baker will be used more that it should be...


What did you get for Christmas that you love? Let me know in the comments below! I hope you had a lovely Christmas!

C x

*Disclaimer: I have not written this post to brag or gloat but merely to share what good taste my family have in presents.

My Birthday!

As usual I like it best when my birthday is spread out over as many days as possible and this year has been no acception to that. Normally in the 6 months up to my birthday it is all I can go on about but this year I have been strangley quiet about the whole affair. This might have something to do with the fact that I have no entered in to the slow and steady 30's hill and the only way is down. No more can I say I am in my early or even mid twenties. I am 26. Oh the horror!

Now that I've added just a hint of melodrama to the post I can continue. This year I decided to join forces with another friend of mine who is also on the slippery slope and we chose the Monopoly Pub Crawl as the best place to begin. As my birthday was on a Monday and his on a Tuesday we decided to do it the Saturday before, inviting about 80 people and knowing that only 10 where going to turn up at best.

If you havent ever done the Monopoly Pub Crawl it really is great fun. This was the second time that I have attempted it, making your way round 26 pubs from 10.30am - midnight and drinking 13 pints (you have half pints at each pub) this is not a challenge for the faint hearted. Its almost impossible to keep to the time limits and last time we made it round 20 of the 26, feeling satisfied with out attempt. This year we wanted to try and beat our previous record however.

You can download the route here (we went for the quickest way, not the in-order of the board way). It's such a good experience but you do have to be prepared to move quickly, you can't really sit around or you wont make it round. Rather than bore you with the repetition of - we went to a pub, we had a half pint, we moved on - here are some fun pictures of the day!

We made it round 21 pubs in the end and went and got a chinese at 12.30am to celebrate!

***

On my actual birthday I woke up relatively early and opened all my presents :) My parent's got me a digital photo frame and some kitchen ceramics. My wonderful boyfriend bought me this gorgeous necklace which creates little rainbows if it catches in the sun and its just perfect.

I took the day off work as I think its the one day that I shouldn't have to work but as luck would have it the rain decided that it was a good time to show up and so my previous plan of a picnic went out of the window. Instead we spent a couple of hours uploading pictures on to the new photo frame before moving on to the very important baking of the birthday cupcakes. If you are a avid reader of my blog you will know how much I love to bake but I decided it was my birthday and I was going to be lazy so they were made courtsey of our good friend Betty Crocker.

Once they were iced and had cooled we packed some up and headed into town and Oxford Street so I could do a little bit of shopping before Leigh took me out for dinner at a yummy pizza place called Pizza Pilgrims. They serve wine in big carafes and I had a black pepper salmi pizza and Leigh had spicy sausage.

After that we went to go and meet my close friends for a few drinks, blowing out of a tealight (nobody had candles!) and general merrymaking. It was quite lovely.

Thank you to everyone who celebrated with me one way or another, and to the woman at the pub who ID'd me on my birthday so I got to hand it over with a "IT'S MY BIRTHDAY" cry. Also thank you for thinking I look young enough to get ID'd, you made my night.

xxx

Christmas Pressies

I thought I would share with you all how very lucky I was this Christmas time and let you have a look see at some of the presents that were at the bottom of my stocking this year. 

Firstly some of my presents from Leigh:

He got me this beautifully shiny new hairdryer:

A few years ago Leigh bought me a necklace with a 'C' attached which I sadly lost so because he is a sweetheart he got me a new one this time with added locket, which opens out four times. Isn't it pretty?

At work I have a secret emergency food drawer so Leigh got me this handy little tin to keep the secret creme eggs in:

I also got this adorable home made stamp so I can stamp all of my creations:

And from others: 

I was very lucky this year from my parents. They got me a brand new Samsung camera. After my old one died earlier this year from Glastonbury related injuries I have been quite at a loss but lucky that is all over now as I have a shiny new one - it's 14.2 megapixel, touch screen, and has wifi so I can upload all my lovely pictures straight away if I want. It's just yummy:

My mother also cross stiched me this adorable picture. Everyone says that I look like one of girls from the gorjuss range, so I have slowly been building up a collection of things and now I have this picture which I love:

Leigh's mother knitted me these lovely hand-warmers. I haven't had anything knitted for me in years and the are very cozy:

 His parents also bought me Katy Perry's new perfume, Killer Queen. I don't normally own celebrity perfumes but I tried it in the shops a month or so ago and really like it so it went on my Christmas list. The desciption given is one of dark berries and lush plum that blend into an opulent floral heart. Just lovely:

I also received the Salted Caramel Yankee Candle which I mentioned here. It just smells divine and it's the first thing you can smell when you walk in to the house now:

  My lovely aunt and uncle got me this adorable lunchbox which I will be putting all my healthy food in for new year's diet:

One of my brothers and his girlfriend got me these two plates that I had asked for, the design on them is delightful with lots of little animals and one colourful rabbit:

 

My other brother got me this pretty canvas which will go perfectly in my bedroom:

And last but by no means least my Grandparents got both Leigh and I a pressure cooker which makes me very happy as kitchen accessories always do:

And those are most of the gifts I got this year, I have been very lucky indeed to have such a wonderful Christmas, not only with the presents my family have been lovely enough to give me but also the time I have had which can be found in my earlier post.

I hope you also all had a perfect Christmas.

xxx

Disclaimer: I am in no way writing this post to show off or gloat but instead to thank everyone for their lovely gifts.

Happy Christmas!

As you may have guessed I love Christmas. 

Every year Leigh and I alternate spending time with my family and Leigh's and this year it was my turn for Christmas Day and Leigh's for Boxing Day. I am pleased about this because my brother is moving to Australia in January and we don't know how long he will stay so it was nice to have all the family together.

It's so special spending time with family and although it's hectic it's so much fun. I'm so sad its over for another year  because I really do wish it could be Christmas everyday!

I hope you all had a very lovely Christmas :)

xxx