Florida | Scrapbooking

"Boredom ignites your creativity" - Aaron Benjamin

My trip to Florida was one of those trips I had dreamed about for years so to finally be there it was a dream, over a year on and I still can't believe it. No I will never shut up about it. During the first lockdown I was unfortunately, like a lot of people in the uk furloughed from my job and although I was feeling extremely lucky to still be employed I was left with the feelings of how the fuck am I gonna entertain myself?

I always knew I wanted to create a physical space for my memories, not just social media. Yes I have this blog that I rarely post on and every year tell myself "jess this year you're gonna post at least once a month" and I usually start off pretty well and then come April I've stopped again. I needed something to entertain myself whilst I wasn't working and I've always wanted to have these photos in a physical form to look back on. 

That's how I fell into scrapbooking. 

I like to think of myself as quite a creative person, but a digital creative person. I can create artwork in a digital format but on paper I don't even like my own handwriting. I had seen a lot of Tik Toks about people scrapbooking all kinds of things and I was inspired to say the least. So way too much money later, I was ready to go.

I got a lot of my materials from the range and hobby craft. I can't go into a store anymore without looking at their craft aisle. Some pages are a lot more experimental than others but my favourite pages are Gringotts and the Harry Potter portraits, I'm obsessed with how they turned out.

I used the free prints app to print off all of my images (this isn't ad although I wish it was) you get 45/50 free prints per month just have to pay a couple of quid for shipping. All images are printed 6x4.

I wanted to just insert some pictures of my scrapbook to hopefully inspire someone to push themselves out of their comfort zones this lockdown and create something new. I found so much peace and joy making this scrapbook I've already planned the next one I'm going to make! 

No Bake Baking | Halloween

Spooky Scary Ghouls and Pumpkins 

Happy October, I love this month because in my christmas obssessed brain it's the beginning of the festive period. We have Halloween, bonfire night, thanksgiving for my American friends and then its the big day!

 

After the year we've had so far I wanted to really celebrate spooky season this year, I don't love Halloween but I do love autumn and frankly I will take what I'm given. Myself and Hilly decided to try some halloween baking, these recipies don’t include any actual baking just chilling in the fridge. 

I just want to begin by saying we didn't use any measurements we just eye balled it - I know I know it's incredibly professional here.

Strawberry Ghosts:

What you will need: 

• Strawberries
• 2 Bars of white chocolate
• Black icing - easier if it's in a tube

We started off melting the chocolate in a bain-marie (yes I googled that leave it out) I find this the easiest way but you could probably chuck it in the microwave. We melted the chocolate until it was completed lump free, once that was completed we delicately and gracefully dipped the strawberries into the chocolate. Once submerged we placed them onto a plate, then put the plate into the fridge. 

Once the chocolate has hardended (approx 15 mins) we took them out of the fridge and decorated them. Hilly is amazing at art so I allowed her the highest of honours by doing most of the work, especially decorating. 

They turned out great and tasted amazing! Would highly recommend if you're looking for a little spooky snack, would be perfect for a halloween film night. Plus its fruit so that makes it healthy...right?

Due to using 2 bars of white chocolate once we completed the strawberry ghosts we had a good amount of melted chocolate left. We decided to use these for our Rice Krispie pumpkins.

Rice Krispie pumpkins:

What you will need:

• White chocolate (melted)
• Marshmallows preferably white
• Orange food colouring
• Green Fondant 
• Matchmakers we went with orange flavour to add to the autumnal feel 

The first thing we did was added the marshmallows into the Bain-marie with the melted chocolate, it's important to continuously stir to avoid burning the chocolate. TIP: work fast 

Once we have our marshmallow chocolate mixture, we added our orange food colouring, again absolutely no measurements just eyeballing.

It immediately started turning bright orange so we quickly added the Rice Krispies along with the remaining food colouring. I have to say the colour of these pumpkins is amazing they turned out so vibrant. 

With this gloop use your clean hands to mould them into balls and slightly push the top and bottom in to create the pumpkin shape. We decided to use a muffin tin and before placing them in the fridge added the matchmakers as the pumpkin stalk. 

Whilst the Krispies are hardening in the fridge, take a sharp knife and the green fondant and start to create the leaves. We weren't super precise, some pumpkins have only one leaf others we piled a couple of leaves on top of each other. Using the same fondant we rolled it super thin and curled it around itself to create the stringy leaves?

Once hardened we removed the pumpkins from the fridge, added the greenery and once again Hilly drew cute little faces on them all to give the carved pumpkin effect, you could miss out this step if like me you aren't very artistically talented. 

Overall, I am super happy with how our baked goods came out, a perk of these recipes is you don't need to use the oven, and could melt the chocolate and marshmallows in the microwave if you so wished. I feel these would be perfect for a spooky film night or even a cute halloween activity to do with children.

Let me know if you make either of these or anything else you can think of! 

Massive thank you to Hilly for arguably doing all of the work, literally could not have done it without you. 

Self portrait | photography

When you can't meet models, become the model.

It's no secret that I am not a model, I rarely even post on instagram.

One day in quarentine I was really in the mood to do some photography, I started by taking pictures of random things round the house but it wasnt quite what I wanted to do. Next thing I know i'm doing my make up for the first time in 2 weeks, I am a different person in lashes. 

Due to not taking many selfies (apart from ugly snapchats) I didn't really know where to start. I had seen a lot of TikToks of self portraits but they were a little too extreme for me. I wanted to try something that wasn't just selfies. 

I am happy with how the images turned out, they clearly arent my best work but I did what I could. I grabbed my mums plants and stuck my face in them.

To my fellow photograhers out there I employ you to give self portraits ago, it was out of my comfort zone but I did enjoy it. I find myself watching more and more videos about it and I have so many more ideas for the next time I fancy putting lashes on.

Harry Potter Studios 2.0 | Pandemic

As I write this I should be living it up in Disneyland Paris with my best friend but due to COVID-19 that has not happened, yes I am very sad.

Last year myself and Molly planned this trip to celebrate her birthday at one of our favourite places but just days before we were meant to set off all 6 Disney Parks closed. I accept that it's for the best but it still sucks. I am trying to keep a positive mindset throughout this entire lockdown situation.

We were determined to make the most out of this trip so we decided to go back to the Harry Potter Studio Tour in Watford. We went last May for my birthday (post) and weren't planning on going back until the summer as they are showcasing the Slyherin common room and we need to show our house pride. Both Molly and I are big Harry Potter fans so it might not be Disneyland but there's still plently of magic.
We also decided to extend our trip an extra night and go and see the West End show Jamie. I personally have never seen it but Molly loves it so I was excited.

My trip started on Saturday, I jumped on the train down to Derby to meet Molly and her family for her birthday meal at Pizza Hut and starting off the trip well I had to pay £110 on the train as my railcard had expired (who knew they had to be renewed thought after I was 25 I couldn't use it anymore apparently not). As you can imagine I was thrilled.

Once I arrived in Derby we went for a lovely meal and then I got to hang out with Molly's dogs Paddy & Seamus who I love very dearly and miss so very much.

The next day Molly and I travelled down to London where we followed our tradition of having a Nando's every time we see each other. Nandos baby I miss you. We then went back to our hotel chilled and watched Tik Toks and chatted all night.

Althought we had been to the Harry Potter Studios only last year it is still so interesting and fun to be there. We got extremely lucky as the studios was closing at 8pm that day, so although Disney let us down Harry Potter did not! 

We spent the day going around the studios being idiots and getting our fake passports stamped (low key so fun & free highly reccommend) which was something we didn't do last time.

I have so much love for Harry Potter so going to the studios is one of my favourite things in the world and one of my favourite places to visit! I can not wait until we get to go back and celebrate Slytherin in all it's glory.

I didn't know what to expect walking into the studios but it was relatively busy. No where near what I have experienced before, we got the first avaliable slot of 10am to make the most out of the day, I highly reccomend this as you can stay at the studios until it closes if you wished. Jumping on the train from Euston to Watford Junction at 9am and waited for the hogwarts express! 

The shuttle bus from the train station to the studios is a £3 return which I dont think is bad. It's always exciting seeing Warwick Davis talking to you about the studios as you drive through Watford.

After a day at the studios we headed back to our hotel to collect our belongings and move to our second hotel in covent garden. We decided to move hotels to be closer to the theatre and it was cheaper.

We sanitised every inch of our souls before getting on the tube (Corona tings you get it) and ventured to Covent Garden. 

We checked in to our hotel and went out to meet Becca who I have known for years and years but never met (Vamps friends who lives at the opposite end of the country problems) before we were going to go to see Jamie on the West End.

We had a lovley Bella Italia, it was so nice to finally meet Becca! Make sure to check out her Youtube Channel - Link
Then 40 minutes before the show was meant to start the tories started acting up and the show was cancelled. That was fun. 

Mol & I really went through it this trip all we have ever wanted was to go to Disney together but we can go next year and we will go Florida together. I still had a lovely time even if I did complain the whole time about how much I hate Corona. 

I hope everyone is staying safe, regularly washing their hands and self isolating where possible we can get through this! Can't wait to be in a GCSE text book. 

Here is a collection of images from my few days off work before I was furloughed: 

love ya mol cya after Corona