Today's my birthday.

So as the title suggests today is my 32nd Birthday, so I thought I'd share a few of my pits and peaks (as the kardashians would say) of the past year with you all before my family comes round to enjoy a slice of my homemade birthday cake.

The first peak that sticks out in my mind is Mr H getting his new promotion/job role. I'm so proud of everything he achieves this has however been a double edge sword with the new role come more training courses that eat away at our family time. Changing onto the Psychology degree pathway in May is another major peak for me, it finally gave me a focus I'd been lacking for the past few years and I think I've found my passion. 

My last peak has to be my girls, over the past year they have both blossomed and they continue to amaze me everyday. Miss K has transformed from a shy little girl lacking in confident into a confident cheeky (a little too cheeky at times) pre-teen who now stands up for herself more. While Miss T is just as crazy, bouncy and loving as ever, academically she's come on so much. It's hard for me to process that from Sept both my babies will be in Junior classes, they need to stop growing up. 

The pits seem to have been few and far between but the few we've had have really stood out. Miss K had us worrying for a few months as she was suffering from frequent headaches, thankful after a ton of tests the root cause has been found, she suffers from quite a few allergies that cause her sinuses to inflame, causing headaches. She's now on medicine but at the time it was terrifying watching her struggle.

Another pit of the past year is my weight gain, I've piled on the pounds while studying as I tend to comfort eat when I get stressed which happens whenever I have a deadline looming. I've made alittle progress in the last few weeks to loss a few pounds but I have a long road ahead of me to get back to post baby size. My first goal though is to lose between 1 and 2 stone before June, when my besties is having both her daughters christened and I'm a godparent, and as her girls are like nieces to me I want to be able to look back and treasure the moment without obsessing over how fat I look in the photos. 

So there you have them my peaks and my pits of the past year. 

I'm now going to put the kettle on and relax with a quick brew before my family descends on me. 

x B x

Easter Baking: Devil's Food Cake

Ever since the gorgeous Easter themed Chocolate & Hazelnut Loaf by RedVelvetBaking popped upon on my Twitter feed earlier this week I've been itching to bake my own little Easter cake. This weekend I got my chance as we decided to spend our weekend enjoying some quality family time celebrating both my birthday and Easter early as Mr H is away at work for both. As Miss K is allergic to tree-nuts chocolate/hazelnut loaf is a no go so instead i decided on Devil's Food Cake, it's a firm family favourite!

Recipe wise I just used a simple Devil's Food Cake recipe I found online but for the icing I cheated and used a ready mix Chocolate Fudge Icing I already had in the cupboard. My icing making skills aren't that great and I just didn't fancy spending ages making sure it was totally smooth, which for me never seems to happen. 

Chilli Jam Making.

I've been wanting to try this recipe out ever since I saw it on a Nigella Lawson special but no matter how many times I watched Nigella throw this jam together I had convinced myself it was going to be an epic task that I would easily mess up until the other weekend when I decided to just go for it. 

If it's a failure then at least I could say I tried right! 

I sterilised my kilner jar by sitting on a sheet of newspaper in the cooker (preheated to 140 degrees), it takes about 10minutes or so. To sterilise the seal I just popped it into my smallest pan and pour boiling hot water over it and left it there until the jar was done. 

With that done I started on the fun part, the jam making!

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus

Dydd Gwyl Dewi Hapus everyone from a raining Wales. 

I know I was super quiet during February, I had a lot going on in my personal life but everything seems to be calming down alittle now.

So everything should get back to normal from here on in. 

x B x

Nail Polish & Cookbooks?

Thursdays are mine and Mrs J's (one of the besties) dedicated Frankie's breakfast and girly shopping day. And last week we decided it had been far too long since our last wander round TKMaxx. 

So after happily munching down Pancakes with syrup and bacon (I'm never going to lose weight!) and gossiping like we haven't seen each other in an age, we had by the way just two days before for coffee! We headed over to our local TKMaxx where I couldn't resist buying a few goodies. 

March's Elle magazine is a Comic Relief special and just £2.99, it was an easy purchase decision to make as its a good cause, while the Nail Inc polishes were just £3.99 each and just screamed bargain buy. They had a ton of different polishes on the shelves and it was mighty difficult to decide which ones to take home, it literally took me 1/2 hr to decide (Mrs J can vouch for this as she ended up walking off bored and leaving me too it!). I did however manage to stamp down my urge to take them all home and whittle it down to just 4 polishes.

International Fanworks Day.

Today's post is something alittle different, I thought I'd share with you a few of my favorite fandoms, ships and OTP's (one true pairings) to celebrate International Fanworks Day. 

I've always loved reading, since I was a little girl it's been my way to escape my troubles and stresses. Every free minute I have tends to be spent fangirling over one ship or another and when I'm not reading or watching videos of them, I'm writing my own drabbles about them. There is no better feeling than that of pouring my thoughts and feeling into a story and then have someone love what I've written... it's also one of the scariest as well.

The waiting game and changes afoot..

I'd love to say I'm a patience person but I'm not and the 10 working days wait for my TMA results drives me crazy every time without fault. So while I try not to pull my hair out I've been having a tinker round with my blog design. No major changes really I've jazzed it up abit, changed the font and colours, added an Instagram widget, although there had been one kinda big change.. Have you guessed it... course you have I've changed my blog title! 

I've not been totally happy with it for the last few months, I've been wanting something alittle more personal that gives me more freedom and inspiration, while also reflecting me just that little bit more and I'm quite happy with it, well for now at least. 

I'm also planning to branch out abit where topics are concerned as I'm much more comfortable sharing parts of my personal life with you all now, of course there are things I won't share  Mr H got me a Kitchenaid Mixer for Christmas that I've been dreaming about purchasing for years. 

I've also finally got the hang of using my bright and shiny new cooker, so between that and the fact that this beauty is just too damn pretty to stand neglected on the worktop, I've promised myself I'll bake at least once a week so you can expect plenty of baking and recipe posts in the future. 

If you didn't already know Memebox decided last month to no longer ship internationally so sadly that means no more Memebox beauty boxes to review. I do however have quite the stock pile of goodies I need to try and review so I'm also hoping to share more of my product reviews.

Our gardens (front and back) are also going to be undergoing changes this winter/spring, I have so many plans the first few are to move the veggie plot, add more edible plants into the flower borders and maybe plant some more fruiting trees. First things first though we have to have a good sort out inside and out and fill the 8 tonne skip that's sat on our drive.

Before I get started on all that though I think I'm going to make a brew.

x B x