Scrumptious Shortbread Biscuits

I spent this bank holiday baking some short breads (Oh and going to the cinema so see Pitch Perfect 2 which I loved!) From ever since I started baking short breads I had  been using the same recipe from the same baking book but this time I thought I should go and try a different recipe.
So searching through the internet I found this one and wanted to share it with you because the end result was very very yummy!

For Ingredients you will need

• 115g Butter
• 55g caster Sugar 
• a pinch of Salt
• 40g Ground rice 
• 130g Plain flour 

Measure up the amount of butter you need put it into your bowl and beat until soft then add in your sugar and salt and mix that all in. 

Sift in the flour and the ground rice and mix into a smooth dough if it doesn't seem smooth to you it won't hurt adding in a bit more butter.

Grab yourself a cake baking tray (15cm) and line it with grease proof paper. The trick is to try and handle the mixture as little as possible. Make your mixture into a dough and place onto the grease proof paper flatten it out (gently) with your hands. 

I decided to add a few chocolate drops to mine. I also took a knife and roughly outlined where I would cut once it was ready just so it was easier to see where to cut. Once your done place it in the fridge for about 15 minutes or so and then after that put it in the oven for an hour, 

And there you have yourself some very tasty shortbread biscuits. 

Oh don't forget to add in that extra naughty bit of sugar and just sprinkle it on top of the biscuits, definitely makes a difference having sprinkled sugar on top! 

xxx

Polaroid Picture Fun.

To me there's something really special about Polaroid pictures and Polaroid camera's. I find them so unique and fun to have. I recently purchased some Polaroid style photo's from Polagram which is an app you can download on your phone and get some photo's delievered to your door. I do actually own a proper Polaroid but I usually use that for special occasions and there's photo's I had taken from a normal Camera but thought they would look cute in a polaroid style.

Another thing which I love about Polaroids is the fact that you can write on them, I think it adds something extra to the photo's.
I decided to stick them up above my bed because my walls looked a little bare there. I love how it's turned out and will probably end up continuing to add more photo's as I go.

xxx

Yolo.

I was scrolling though my timehop this morning and came across this which I posted a year ago. I felt like this was still so relevant to my life right now. Reading this really does make me realise that I've spent most of my life hating myself, putting myself down, criticising every thing I do. I'm always worried that I'm never going to find love, or that I'm never going to 'love' myself and be happy. The way this has been written makes me feel pretty annoyed because I know we've all heard it before "You only live once" but this one life that I'm living I'm spending it with all these negative vibes about myself and a fear of what other people think. I've surrounded myself with all this negativity that only comes from my own mind. Yes there's negativity around me they'll be people who doubt me and they'll be negativity in general. But really at the end of the day It's me who controls what I think about life and what I think about myself.
I love how this has been written because it really does remind you that this life we have is actually very short. We shouldn't be wasting these precious hours that we have hating ourselves, hating other people, or hating life. We should be appreciative of the fact we have been put on this earth for a reason and use that reason to make the most of everything that you have when you can. From now on I'm going to try my hardest to not pressure myself about finding love, and instead I'm going to try all I can to love myself. The right person will come alone when the time is right. I'm going to make the use of these days and try to get rid of all that negativity inside of me and instead fill it with positive things.

xxx

An app to send you asleep.

Do you have trouble sleeping? I know I do especially when it comes to knowing that I really need to sleep in order to get up early the next day. Knowing that I need to get up the next day I then begin to start counting down "so I'll have this many hours if I fall asleep now, If I fall asleep now I'll have that many hours" and so on. Often I'll be so tired throughout the day and then when it comes to me going to bed my mind decides to play games with me and automatically tells me "Oh your not tired, I was just tricking you lets see how long you can stay awake for blah blah blah" y'know what I mean? And then this is when my mind gathers all of it's thoughts and makes me think about them over and over again in every detail which drives me crazy! I was thinking of doing a 'tips for sleeping' post but realise that actually I do not have many tips at all because I'm not always the best at sleeping and a lot of tips don't work for me personally.

But I wanted to share with you an app that I have lately found helps me to 'wind down' and to feel a bit more 'calm' when I go to bed. It doesn't necessarily send me to sleep straight away but it does help me focus on the sounds that I'm listening to instead of thinking about other things that I don't want to think about before bed. The app that I'm talking about is called 'Sleep Pillow' when you buy it it'll come with a few main sounds but you can always download some more from the store. I actually use all of the sounds at different times because I find that they all help me to feel calm. The sound effects of "Whales" is beautiful and makes me feel like I'm at an aquarium just on my own watching the fish swim by. Listening to the Waves sound effects is also one that I love, the sound of waves is one of my favourite sounds and I love how it makes me feel like I'm at a sunny beach when really I'm just in my bed room.  Another great one is the first one which is water running. To me there's no sound more calming than water either when it's raining or from a fountain. But I think you get the idea. If your like me and take quite a long while to wind down and fall asleep this is something I recommend to you. I prefer sleeping with a bit of noise, I can sleep when it's completely silent but I just prefer to have some sort of noise in the back ground (as long as it's not snoring haha!)
xxx

A peak into my bucket list

As I grow older there's a lot more things that I continue to add to my bucket list. I'm one of those people who are always like "Oh life is too short not to do things you love and not to do things you want to do" and then somehow time flies by and I haven't done anything. It's the same with New Years resolutions for me I always make resolutions but then of course I either completely forget about them or It'll be too late.
But then again It's never actually too late to achieve anything you want to achieve I think a lot of those times when we say it's too late we're just using it as an excuse. So here are some things that I would love to get ticked of my bucket list big and little. I would just like to add that none of these are in any order and these are only a few of what's actually on my bucket list because that might end up being a pretty big post haha.

Be happy
This is always the first thing that comes to my mind and I'm sure it's the same with any one. Because all we ever want in life is to be happy.

Do something out of my comfort zone 
I don't know what this 'something' will be but I want to do something that I never thought I would do and that other people would have never expected me to do.

Raise money
Throughout my life I've donated bits and pieces to different charities as a lot of us do but I've always wanted to do something 'big' and raise some money for some charities. I just need to think of something I can do and raise money in a fun and exciting way,

Meet Taylor Swift 
Yes, yes here comes the fan girl side of me haha. But in all seriousness there's no person that I want to meet as much as I want to meet Taylor.

Move out into my own place
I'm hoping that this is something I can do within the next couple/few years. Of course I love living at home but I'd love to become more independent and just have a place of my own oh and also have the excitement of decorating it!

Be Healthy & Fit
I admit at this moment in time this is not one of my strongest points I'm not the most healthiest person and I don't do as much exercise as I could do but this is definitely something that I want to focus on and start doing more of. It's important to look after your body and I'm so inspired by people who continue to do this and have their own routine. I'd love to find my own routine and just start getting fit. If you have any tips on how to stay healthy and keep motivated I'd love to hear them!

YouTube
Some day I'd love to start a YouTube channel. I think Youtube has become such great and interesting community. I actually have a channel at the moment where I mostly upload a few covers here and there but also upload a few other types of videos and I would definitely love to start putting more effort into my channel and try upload regularly.

Have a family of my own
To be honest this has been one of the main things I've been looking forward to in life of course I don't plan on having any any time soon but Some day in the future I'd love to become a mum.

Have more confidence in myself
Confidence and shyness is always something I've struggled with. I want to step out of my own bubble and just not be as shy to approach people and to generally just socialise. Often I can get quite anxious in social situations which stops me from socialising properly with people. Hopefully some day I can over come this and find it easier to be myself more.

Travel
Life is way too short to stay in the same place all the time. I mean some people prefer to stay in the same place but me? I love to go out and explore, I love adventuring out into the world. This earth has so much to offer and I want to try my best to see as much of it as I possibly can.

So there's a little sneak peak into my bucket list of things to do. God knows when I'll do them but I'll do my very best to tick them off.
What is on your bucket list?

Hope everyone is having a good week!
xxx

A little shopping haul.

In a previous post I did a 'part 1' shopping haul which was mainly things I bought from Boots in fact I think everything I got in that haul was from Boots. But I also went to a couple other shops like H&M and New Look, most of the Items I took home with me were from H&M (No surprise there! but It's my favourite shop!) 

They have just recently done up our local H&M and I really love it! There's definitely a lot more choice than what the other one had.  So I thought I should share with you the Items I took home with me.

The first thing I noticed was this spotted shirt, it's quite funny material actually it's that type that creases really easily but It actually gives it a nice effect in a way and it also keeps you quite warm (But not too warm) I just thought it was a really cute design. 

I haven't warn this yet but it already looks like it needs to be ironed. I loved the lilac colour which I thought would be perfect for this spring. And I absolutely love pastel colours and honestly don't own many pastel colour clothing. I believe this was around £6,99 and you can't really go wrong with that can you?

I love me some spotted tshirts! Blue is one of my favourite colours to wear too.

This is one I actually got from New Look. New Look is often a 'hit or miss' with me It used to be my favourite shop until I spent more time In H&M and then left New Look behind (Sorry New Look!) haha. But I do still often go in there I usually end up getting a lot of my jewellery from New Look because I always find nice pieces from there. 

Anyway, this Kimono was something I saw as soon as I had walked into the shop and it was just the beautiful colours and patterns that caught my eye It was something I was debating whether to get but in the end I decided that I couldn't leave it in the shop and not take it home with me. 

These beautiful bangles are also from New Look which I think I purchased for around £5 or so? But I loved the designs on these bracelets and thought they would be super cute to wear in the summer especially.

I'm currently changing my wardrobe from it's jumper/wintery theme to a spring/summer theme! So I'm sure they'll be a few more shopping trips to come soon which means more haul posts, yippee! 

Hope your all having a good bank holiday weekend, I unfortunately have to work tomorrow (10 hour shift!) which to be honest I'm not really looking forward to but hey I guess we've all gotta do things that we don't want to at times! 

xxx