Christmas Jumpers & A Catch Up

Morning guys and welcome to Blogmas Day 19! Can you believe it's less than a week until Christmas? I don't know about you guys but I am so so excited!

This week has been a fun one. Usually I don't get up to that much during the week, apart from going to work I'm generally a bit of a hermit but this week it's all been 'go'.

On Tuesday we had a bit of a family gathering round at my brother's house as it was his birthday. We got the chance to mingle with his partners family and just have some quality family time. I spent half my evening cuddling the puppy and the other half wolfing down mozzarella sticks and all sorts of other buffet goodness. I think my brother really enjoyed his day ( I hope he did).

Wednesday evenings, as you may or may not know, is the evening that I meet up with my dad for a Coffee so it was nice to see him, as always. After that, not long after I got home one of my bestest friends Fern called me up as she had just finished University for the Winter. Next thing I knew we were on our way to Frankies & Bennies out for dinner. It was so much fun, it's always lovely to see Fern, she is one of my oldest friends and is such a laugh. PS. I would 100% recommend anyone who loves Peanut Butter to make their way to F&B's asap, Fern & I both had one each and we were left speechless, it was amaze!

Last night I totted round to my other friends house, Katie. My Sister & I got invited over for Tea which was really nice. We got the opportunity to explore her new house and had the chance to have a real catch up. Me and Christy also made an excuse to wear our new Christmas Jumpers - duh!  Mine is a quote from Elf in case you were wondering! Katie made me an amazing Hot Chocolate in a Kilner jar with a Matchmaker dipped in it and loads of squirty cream on top, mmm! We had such a laugh, my jaw was actually hurting from laughing!

And of course, tonight is Mad Friday (the last Friday before Christmas) which definitely calls for going out into town with my best friend April for drinks and also hopefully bumping into other familiar faces along the way. I can't wait to get into the festive spirit and shout my head off to The Pogues - Fairytale of New York!

Hope you all have a fantastic weekend and  I will check in with you all tomorrow!

A Christmas Treat - Gingerbread Cupcakes

Morning guys and welcome to day 2 of Blogmas! It wouldn't be Blogmas without some festive baking now would it?! So today I thought I would show you guys how to make some super festive Gingerbread Cupcakes.

Now, I'm not professional baker but it's something I love doing, even more so at Christmas time. These Gingerbread Cupcakes are inspired by the ones I've seen in Costa and I thought I would give it a go at putting my own spin on them.

So let's get down to business...

What You'll Need

• 3 & 1/2 Cups of Self Raising Flour
• 1 TBSP Baking Powder
• 1 & 1/2 TBSP Ground Ginger
• 1 TSP Cinnamon
• 1 TSP Ground Cloves (Optional, I used these as the recipe indicated but I would advise leaving them out as they don't break up even when you whisk them and have a very strong taste!)
• 200g Butter (Again optional! I actually forgot to put Butter in my recipe but they still turned out very nice!)
• 1 Cup Golden Syrup
• 3 Eggs
• 1 Cup of Brown Sugar
• 1 Cup of Hot Water

The Method

As usual with the majority of my baking recipes - they're all pretty simple. You can either do the all in one method with this mixture and then blast the electric whisk on the ingredients once they're all in the bowl or you can add ingredients in gradually at your leisure. There is no right or wrong way of doing this!

The mixture makes enough for about 20 Cupcakes. Set your oven to 180 degrees and bake between 10 -15 minutes (all ovens vary).

One you've cooked your Gingerbread Muffins you need to let them cool - NOTE your kitchen will smell all lovely and festive! Whilst the Muffins are cooling you need to make the Buttercream which is just a basic Buttercream Frosting - 1 Cup of Butter & 2 Cups of Icing Sugar. Stick to that ratio and you're good to go.  Give it a good whisk and then decorate however you like. I did a mixture between mini Lindor Reindeers & Santa's, Milky Buttons and Chocolate Chips and then dusted them all with icing to give that lovely Snowwy effect.

Hope you guys enjoyed this post! If you have any Christmas inspired baking recipes please do let me know in the comments below, I would love to see what you're all whipping up in the kitchen!

Christmas Organisation Tips & Some Exciting News!

Hello my lovelies...pinch punch first day of the month, hooray December is finally here! Although I'm super excited about the prospect, I imagine for the majority of you reading this the 'D' word fills you with dread, don't worry I've got it all covered.

So today I thought seen as it's the first day of December it would be nice to share with you guys my top tips.

1. First things first, let me just say that Christmas Shopping is not as scary as you think. If  the thought of traipsing through shopping centers throughout Decembers makes you shudder at the thought then just remember you now have another option available - Online. Tonnes of people now opt for online shopping for their Christmas shopping, it's a lot more convenient in many ways. For example if you work a lot of hours and just simply don't have enough hours in the day to put aside some spare time to go shopping, online shopping is quick and simple. The majority of brands these days also offer a gift wrapping service which means everything is done and dusted, all you have to do is place the gift under the tree!

2. Write a list - Seriously this is my answer to anything organisation-wise but it genuinely works! Writing lists are great because it means you get the chance to write down everything that is floating around in your head and actually put a method to the madness. If you don't write down your to-do's then there's a chance that it could be missed off, which is obviously something you don't want to happen. If you're super geeky you could even write several lists, i.e. one for food shopping, one for gifts to buy, one for what needs to be done on each day of December in the run up to Christmas.

3. Something that I think is really important at Christmas time is to stick to a budget. I know what you're thinking 'it's easier said than done' but honestly it is actually fairly easy. Before you start spulging on gifts - write down (another list for you ;) ) how much you're spending on each person and stick to it. I mean, I'm the worst for sticking to a budget, Kyle & I set a budget each year and pretty much every year we go over it but this year we will stick to it! My words of wisdom would be, don't set a budget you can't afford, there is nothing worse than spending all this money on everyone to end up leaving yourself poor for the rest of the month. There's no doubt December is the most expensive time of the year but be clever with the money you have so you can enjoy the festive season as well.

Now for the exciting part - I am pleased to announce to you guys that I will be taking part in 'Blogmas'. Which for those of you who don't know means that every day throughout December until Christmas I will be posting a new blog post. So that's a post every single day for 24 days! I'm super excited about this because generally I only post about 3 times a week so posting every day will be challenging but I reckon I'm up for it.  So this is Blogmas Day 1! I will be featuring a lot of festive blog posts through December along with my usual content so don't forget to check my blog out each day for something new! :)

If you're taking part in either Blogmas or Vlogmas please leave a link below :)