Manchester Christmas Markets: A Photo Diary | Blogmas #13

Happy Wednesday! It seems like this day of the week in particular has been an eventful one for me throughout December so far. Last Wednesday, I went to a concert over in Liverpool with one of my best friends, to see Steps and Vengaboys perform at the Echo Arena (which was an incredible gig!) and today, I visited the German Christmas Markets in Manchester and did some shopping around the city. I had a really great day, even though it was a super challenging one for my anxiety disorder because ALL THE PEOPLE! I spent too much money and my feet are killin' me, but it was lovely to immerse myself in some Christmas culture, which has left me feeling more excited for Christmas Day and also a lot less worried about having everything sorted in time, since I was able to get some more Christmas gifts for my loved ones today too :) Anyhow, I thought that it would be nice to share some photographs with you all from my trip to the Christmas Markets, and I hope you all enjoy reading! 

The Christmas Markets in Manchester are absolutely awesome :) I love exploring all of the streets lined with little wooden cabin-esque huts that remind me of Santa's grotto. Each one is filled with something interesting, whether it's an independent artist's creations, Christmas deco from around the world, or some kind of delicious sweet treat! I have been visiting them each year now for the last three years, and it's nice that many of the same stall vendors come back everytime so you can usually get something that you were tempted to buy the year before, never did and ended up regretting it all year! There's also lots of new stalls there too, so it's great fun having a nosey at everything. I love the aesthetics of the Christmas markets, which are traditional German and Dutch ones, with all of their festive decorations and lighting strung along the roof of each hut. It's like they've bought a little piece of Christmas in Germany here and I love it! It's a dream of mine to go to Germany, The Netherlands or Belgium during the festive season. Before I get carried away with talking about what else I love about Christmas Markets... here are some photographs, haha!

You can read more about these scrumptious German treats on one of my previous Christmas posts here! 

It's so tough not to come home with too many Christmas decorations than your house needs or can actually hold when you go to the Manchester Markets, because there are stalls and stalls (and then some more stalls!) filled with a variety of fabulous traditional European decorations! I can't wait until I have my own place one day to decorate so that I can finally buy some of them! I always come home with one or more small tree decorations though; my favourite are the wooden handmade/hand-painted style. And I didn't break from tradition this year... I'll show you all what I bought in tomorrow's post :) Another thing that I do every single time I go to the Christmas Markets is buy a Dutch Sugar Waffle! Omgosh, they are amazing! The stall makes them in front of you, so you eat them warm with whatever topping you choose. I always get a Nutella one, sprinkled with icing sugar. To be honest, Dutch waffles are one of the main reasons that I go to the Christmas Markets! That's just how good they are... 

Of course I bought myself some of that fabulous, yet pricey as hell, fudge! I can't wait to try it although it cost me just under £5 for four pieces because they weigh so much! They better be nice! I also got myself one of the annual Christmas Market mugs. How lovely is this mug!? I didn't like the design much last year so I didn't get one, but as soon as I spotted these I just couldn't not get myself one! So, here's my little photo diary of my afternoon/evening spent in Manchester city. I took a lot of photos!! It was awesome as always, and I definitely recommend it!

Thankyou for reading! 

♥

Have you ever been to a Christmas Market? 

I'd love to hear all about it in the comments :) 

Festive Drinks at Costa #2

Today, I made another trip to the local Costa to try out some more of the Christmas drinks, and as promised here is another review post all about what I thought of them. Have any of you tried the Christmas drinks for yourself yet? Let me know which and whether you enjoyed it in the comments! I hope you all enjoy this post :) 

The Christmas drinks range at Costa includes gingerbread latte, salted caramel cappuccino, toasted marshmallow hot chocolate, honeycomb latte, lindt hot chocolate, mint hot chocolate and black forest hot chocolate. So many flavours that sound delicious! Last month, I got myself a honeycomb latte and tried the black forest hot chocolate too, since my mum was with me and that's the flavour she decided on. You can read all about them what we thought of them here. Today, I opted for the salted caramel cappuccino since I've been drinking a lot of hot chocolate this month haha! My mum chose the mint hot choccie. 

I was intrigued about how this cappuccino would taste, whether it would be reminiscent of the caramel latte, which is my personal favourite hot drink, or not. I'm not actually a huge fan of salted caramel, not that I dislike it, I just wouldn't usually choose to eat something of this flavour, however I was curious about the drink. The Costa website describes the Salted Caramel Cappuccino as 'the frothiest of coffees with a dash of salted caramel syrup, topped with shimmery salted caramel fudge crumb'. 

I always really enjoy the froth of my cappuccinos, it's delicious especially when topped with chocolate. I don't know if my local Costa had the 'salted caramel fudge crumb available because my mum ordered our drinks whilst I found us a table, and when asked what topping she would like, she just asked for chocolate. However, it would been good if the crumb was still added before the chocolate, but nevermind! The Salted Caramel Cappuccino itself was great, although it had a lot more of a bitter taste than I usually go for. If you are a fan of strong, bitter coffee, then I think you'll definitely enjoy this Christmas flavour. 

I would have liked to order the mint hot chocolate for myself but I tend to avoid mint flavoured things whilst I'm out because they often irritate my IBS, which sucks. Costa state on their website, 'Costa Hot Chocolate with a dash of mint syrup, topped with freshly whipped cream and served with an elf-sized candy cane'. 

Although the description says a dash of mint, the mint flavouring in this drink was actually really strong. My mum said she enjoyed it very much as she loves anything mint chocolate, although it was very strong and because of this, the after-taste was a little too much. It was almost like too much syrup had been added. I had a little sip of the hot chocolate, and definitely agree, way too much mint haha I think it was very cute that they added a little candy cane! The barista even gave me a candy cane, too :)

I love Costa and I will definitely be going back to try a Christmas hot chocolate before they are no longer available. I'm very much looking forward to it! I might also see what the gingerbread latte is like because I've never tried a gingerbread flavoured hot drink before. What do you think of gingerbread lattes?

Thankyou for reading!

 ♥

What's your favourite hot drink? Which of the popular coffee shops is your go-to for hot drinks? 

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Festive Drinks at Costa #1

If you follow me over on instagram, you may have seen that on Tuesday, I decided to take a trip to Costa in hopes of getting my first Christmas hot drink of the year. Luckily, the Costa not too far from my house was serving the festive drinks, unlike the little Costa I went to at the local hospital a few weeks ago. There were so many drinks to choose from but I was feeling in the mood for coffee VS hot chocolate. I decided to get myself a Honeycomb Latte and since my mum was there, she chose a Black Forest Hot Chocolate. 

As you read this post, I'll be spending the day having a little best friend date. We were supposed to be going to see Melanie Martinez in Manchester this evening, but unfortunately the lovely Melanie is poorly and has had to cancel the rest of her tour :( So instead, me & my best friend have gone to watch Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, followed by a trip of Frankie & Benny's. So I'll just be sharing a short post today, of my thoughts on the Honeycomb Latte :) I hope you enjoy reading!

Can I just start off by saying how awesome and pretty the festive cups are at Costa this year!? I love them, especially the medium cup which is a gorgeous shade of wintery blue with super cute snowmen on :) Fellow hot drink lovers... which is your favourite design of the current Costa cups? I'd love to know.

For those of you who have a serious sweet tooth like me, I'm sure you'll love the Honeycomb Latte. It was lovely but very sweet, so if you don't like your drinks tasting like liquid sugar, then maybe choose another of the festive drinks on offer. I absolutely loved this drink though :) I would definitely get it again. The costa website describes the Honeycomb Latte as 'A smooth and creamy latte with a dash of honeycomb syrup topped with freshly whipped cream and pieces of chocolate coated honeycomb'. 

The Honeycomb Latte reminded me a lot of my favourite flavour of latte, which is Caramel. It has a very similar taste but was much more sweet. The drink is a lot more resembling of caramel, with a lovely golden colour, vs an actual caramel latte from Costa. My latte came with whipped cream on top, but I didn't get any honeycomb pieces which is shame :( I'm going to give this drink a 7/10 altogether and I would recommend all my coffee fan readers to try it.

My mum opted for the Black Forest Hot Chocolate, which she really enjoyed. She usually finds Costa hot chocolates a little too strong and sickly for her, however she thought this festive hot choc was lovely and said she'd  get it again :) I'm not personally a fan of actual Black Forest gateau, but I had a sip of my mum's hot chocolate and thought it tasted good. However, it's still not my tea of cup. It tasted very much like an ordinary hot chocolate but with a subtle berry taste, which matches up with the information about the drink on the Costa website: 'Costa Hot Chocolate with a dash of Black Forest syrup, topped with freshly whipped cream, chocolate sauce and a real cherry'. I don't remember my mum's drink having any chocolate sauce on but she was given a cherry on top of her cup as you can see in the photos. If you like fruity flavours, then I recommend this festive drink for you!

I'll be going back to Costa very soon to try some of their other Christmas drinks. As well as the two flavours I mentioned today, they also have available a Gingerbread Latte, a Salted Caramel Cappuccino, a Lindt Hot Chocolate, a Mint Hot Chocolate and a Toasted Marshmallow Hot Chocolate. Chocolate overload! The sound of these drinks make me happy and I can't wait to taste them.

Thankyou for reading!

♥

Have you tried any of the festive drinks at Costa yet? If so, tell me what you think. 

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Boxing Day 2015

Christmas is over and New Year is on it's way! I've been spending the last few days resting and recuperating from Christmas Day and Boxing Day, colouring illustrations in my new colouring books and pretty much non-stop reading Divergent until the early hours of the morning! Even though I had such a fun time, dealing with the events of Christmas was exhausting on both my physical and mental health. I don't talk about depression much but it makes some days really difficult, and Boxing Day was definitely one of those days. So I'm writing this post to highlight all of the great things about the day and to share with you all how my family spend Boxing Day. What do you do on Boxing Day? Of course, I started the day with a lie in and spent the whole day in my PJs :)

Every year of my life, we have always had a big buffet on Boxing Day. On the days leading up to Christmas, I am more excited for this than Christmas dinner. We use the left-over turkey from the day before to make sandwiches and we have all the delicious nibbles that traditionally go on buffets. As usual, my brothers and my nieces and nephews came over and the house was really hectic! It was nice to listen to my nieces and nephew talk about Father Christmas and all of the presents they'd received. My nieces were thrilled that my mum had bought them each a rainbow alpacasso, because they absolutely love mine :) 

 

This is not even the full buffet! We couldn't fit some of it on our tiny dining room table. Looking at these photos is making me so hungry right now! After stuffing ourselves with food, some of my family played board games and hearing my nephew getting so excited that he won one of the games was so cute! He was telling everyone haha I spent the afternoon editing blog photos, writing up my What I got for Christmas post and watching movies on TV. So, that's how I spent my Boxing Day!

I forgot to show you all this awesome Christmas present that my mum put together for me. I love it! Knowing me, it will not last as long as it should but I can always re-fill it! Did you get any homemade style presents this year?

Thankyou for reading!

 ♥

If you've written a post all about how you spent Christmas and/or Boxing Day, please me know :) I love having a good old nosey at what everyone else has been up to. 

 

Blogmas Day 26 | What I got for Christmas

I can't believe Christmas is over for another year! I had such a lovely day yesterday and I was very spoilt with all the great presents I received. As I started blogmas a day late, I said I'd also write on Boxing Day :) I hope you all enjoyed my blogmas posts... I'm looking forward to taking part again next year. This post is going to pic heavy. I hope it doesn't come across that I'm showing off or anything, I just really wanted to share my joy and I hope everyone else got wonderful gifts too ♥

 How adorable are those Simba slipper socks? The Lion King is my favourite Disney movie. I've wanted these gorgeous TY fox all year, after spotting it when I was out shopping months ago. I'm impressed that my mum remembered that I wanted it. I got the gingerbread man money box from my brother. I'm going to use it next year to save up money for all my friends and familys Christmas presents. 

I love my new perfume :) Vera Wang's Be Jeweled was on my Christmas wishlist so I'm really glad I got it. It's a lovely mixture of fruity scents with little floral undertones.  I'm not a fan of strong floral perfumes so I'm lovin' this. I was surprised with another perfume. I love Anna Sui! The design of her perfume bottles and the interesting mix of fragrances are great! Another lovely fruity combination: mango, raspberry and pink pepper are the main scents, with notes of bamboo, pink peony, rose, vanilla and sandalwood. 

SO MANY ADULT COLOURING BOOKS! I think my mum knows I like them haha. I want to collect all of the colouring books by Millie Marotta because they are just so beautiful. The Game of Thrones colouring book is amazing! I thought it would be filled with scenes and characters that resemble the TV show, but the illustrations are actually the artist's interpretation which I think is so awesome. I like how they've drawn the children of the forest! Each page also contains a quote from the books. 

My beautiful Disney Alice in Wonderland Vans! I LOVE LOVE LOVE them! Who else got Disney Vans? 

Yayy! New books to read *heart eyed emoji* I can't wait to start them. How cool is this 5 year Q & A Journal? It asks you a different question on every day of the year and then includes a space to answer the question every year for the next few years to see how your answers may have changed. I love the idea of these and I'm glad I now have my own to start in the New Year. 

Who doesn't love new PJs and cute socks? The PJs are nice and love primark, but a lion cub with leopard print pants? It's like pairing zebra print pants with a horse themed top haha the animal nerd in me doesn't like that :D but of course, I'll still be wearing them :) & BUNNY SOCKS! ♥

This gorgeous Tsum Tsum stationary was one of the first things I asked for. As soon as I saw an advert announcing the new range in Wilkinsons, I was so excited! I can't believe my mum bought me so much of it. I'm over the moon about it. I also adore this beautiful cupcake recipe book. I love the design of the book: the little cupcake tabs and the fantastic photographs inside. 

  

 I got lots of awesome stationary. Yes, I'm 23 years old and yes, I asked for the Moshi Monsters doodle book! :) My niece got one earlier in the year for her birthday and my mum remembered that I'd said how fun it looked and that I wanted one! It's about time that I learnt how to use makeup brushes so I asked for some simple ones to start with. I got some of those Lindt orange chocolates and they are so amazingly delicious! I'll probably have eaten them all by tonight. 

I think this has to be one of the best presents I received! 'Feeling Philoslothical' XD it makes me smile everytime I look at it. Plus, its so bloody cute! That's the majority of my Christmas presents :) I've been so lucky this year! I'm just waiting for a smashbook in the post and I also got an Etsy gift card, too. Thankyou for reading! I hope you all enjoyed this post. 

 ♥

What was the best gift(s) that you received this year? 

 

Blogmas Day 25 | The Christmas Tag

I had the Christmas tag written on my little list of festive blog post ideas and really wanted to do it, so finally here it is! Merry Christmas Everyone.... I hope you are all have a wonderful day! Only one more sleep now! Instead of tagging people to answer, I'm just going to invite anyone of my lovely readers to answer the tag if you want to. Please let me know if you do... I love reading these kinds of posts. 

(1) What is your favourite Christmas Movie(s)?  

My absolute favourite Christmas movie is The Grinch. Read about my top 5 Christmas movies here :) 

(2) Do you open your presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas morning? 

We open our presents on Christmas morning. My mum Father Christmas always puts mine & my siblings presents in the same place in neat piles every year so we know where to find them. I love Christmas morning! I love the moment of walking into the living room and seeing all the presents with the light of the Christmas tree making the shiny wrapping paper twinkle and being able to smell the turkey cooking in the oven.

(3) Do you have a favourite Christmas memory? 

The majority of my favourite memories from childhood involve when I received awesome presents. I remember how happy I was when I got my Playstation 1 for Christmas when I was 8 years old and some of the good old classic games like Rayman, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro. I'll never get bored of playing those games, they are still amazing! 

(4)  Favourite festive food?

I love all festive food! Sunday roast is one of my favourite meals and Christmas dinner is like a bigger, more awesome version of that so I always clean my plate. If I had to choose a favourite though, it would definitely be pigs-in-blankets. They are so yummy! 

(5) Favourite Christmas gift? 

I kind of answered this for Q3 but I have lots of favourite Christmas gift memories from when I was little. Another that I'll never forget is a cassette tape (haha how times have changed!) I got that was personalised. It had a song on it called 'Coco's Christmas Cracker' that was all about an Elf and then when you turned the tape around, there was another song on there that sang 'Merry Christmas Sarah'. I was so fastinated that it knew my name! I loved it! I was 5 years old when I got it and I still remember all the words to both songs ♥

(6) Favourite Christmas Scent?  

The smell of  the food cooking in the oven, especially the turkey. As for candles, this year I LOVE the 'Berry Trifle' and 'Snowflake Cookie' Yankee Candles. 

(7) Do you have any Christmas Eve traditions? 

We don't have any Christmas Eve traditions. My family & I just usually spend the evening watching Christmas movies on TV or listening to Christmas songs whilst wrapping some last minute Christmas presents and munching chocolates. 

(8) What tops your tree?  

 For the last few years we had a pretty little Christmas fairy to match our then white tree, but this year since we have red & gold decorations we've used an older tree topper. It's an angel dressed in red with gold wings and covered in gold stars. 

(9) As a kid what was the one (crazy, wild, extravagant) gift you always asked for but never received? 

 I don't remember if I ever asked for something extravagant for Christmas, but I aways remember asking for a pet, especially a dog. I really wanted a dog growing up! I can't wait until I have my own home so I can get a dog (or five) :) 

(10) What's the best part of Christmas for you?

I love watching my loved ones opening the presents that I've bought for them. In fact I just love watching them open any presents, the look of joy on their faces and seeing them smile. 

I'll just leave this adorable dinosaur here! 

Merry Christmas!

 

Blogmas Day 24 | Strawberry Santas

Happy Christmas Eve! 

 I'm in such an excited mood right now! I cannot wait for tomorrow! I'm also making my gingerbread house later today so I'm really looking forward to that even though it was really difficult last year to get the walls of the house to stick together and I'm not the best at putting together things that require accuracy so it took a long time to complete it, but at the end I get to decorate it and that's the best part. For today's blogmas I'm going to show you the adorable Strawberry Santas that I made yesterday evening. I was inspired to make them because of this year's Aldi Christmas advert and I love the way they turned out (even if they are a little messy!). 

They were really easy to make and will look great sitting on the table with the rest of your Christmas food. The original recipes all include cream cheese but I don't like cheese (unless it's red leicester, which is the only cheese I'll eat other than Walkers cheese & onion and Wotsits crisps. I'm a very fussy eater!) so I tweaked the recipe to suite me. Here is a link to the proper recipe :) This is what I used to make my little strawberry santas... 

To make each of my Santa's, I used large strawberries and whipping cream. I chopped the green tops off and then cut the strawberries so that I would have one part for the body and a pointed part for the hat. Then I simply whipped the creamed using an electric whisk and using a spoon placed a blob of cream on top of one half of the strawberry, sat the hat part on top and then added a tiny bit of cream to the top of the hat. I also attempted to use the cream to make buttons on the Santa's but as you can see from my photo, I didn't do a very good job of that but I'm sure you'll all be much neater than me when making your own haha :) Finally, I popped 2 chocolate chips into the cream to make eyes, and when I'd completed all of my strawberries I sprinkled some icing sugar over them to look like snow. 

 Here's is my finished Strawberry Santa Gang! They are so cute! 

 ♥

 Have you done any festive baking or making this year?

What's your favourite Christmas treat?

 

Blogmas Day 23 | Festive Baking #3

As promised, today's blogmas is going to be another baking-themed post. I've been really in the mood to bake lately, probably because of all the Christmas food adverts that have been on TV. I've been excited for Christmas dinner all week! And, the buffet we have every Boxing Day. So much food! Today, I made shortbread biscuits and of course I decorated them all Christmassy. 

Here are my finished biscuits! I used some of the left over cake decorations from making yesterday's Christmas cupcakes and some blue fondant icing. I attempted to hand-draw some snowflakes, too and although they are rather messy, I still love how they look. Do you want to have a go at making your own Christmas shortbread? Here's what you'll need: 

For the shortbread biscuits

125g butter 

180g plain flour 

55g caster sugar

(optional) a few drops of vanilla flavouring

For the decoration

You can decorate your biscuits however you like but this is what I used :) 

125g icing sugar 

15ml warm water (but you may need more)

Packet of ready-to-roll fondant icing

Christmas cake sprinkles and characters 

 How to make the shortbread biscuits 

(1) Preheat the oven at 190ºC/ Gas Mark 5 

(2) Mix together the caster sugar & butter until it's a light, fluffy mixture

(3) Next, stir in the flour and keep mixing until you have a crumbly mixture

(4) Now you can knead the mixture together into a ball ready to roll

(5) Sprinkle some flour onto the surface you are about to roll out your dough on to prevent it from sticking, as well as the rolling pin too. 

(6) Roll out the dough until it's around 1 & a half cm thick and cut out any shaped biscuits you want

( I wanted circular biscuits but didn't have a cookie cutter so I used a glass. I really need to buy a circular cutter! haha I did however have a heart cookie cutter so I used the last bit of dough to make 2 little heart biscuits). 

 (7) Grease a baking tray and place on the biscuits ready to pop into the oven. 

The recipe I was following (find it here) said to put the biscuits into a fridge for 20 minutes before baking but since the other recipes I had a peep at didn't include this step, I decided to just bake my biscuits straight away.

(8) Bake your biscuits until they are light golden brown, for 15-20 minutes. 

 How I decorated my shortbread biscuits 

  For the icing covered biscuits, place the icing sugar into a mixing bowl and gradually mix in 15ml of warm water, adding a little bit each time and stirring. It says on the box that you may have to add more water and I did have to use more, I used around 30ml altogether. Then simply, spread the icing sugar on top of your biscuits and add any decorations you want. 

For the blue snowflake biscuits, I used ready-to-roll fondant icing. Sprinkle a little icing sugar (or you could use flour if you don't have any icing sugar) to stop it sticking to the surface and roll out as you did with the shortbread dough for the biscuit preparation. Then, use cookie cutters to cut shapes out of the fondant. I used the same glass I used to cut out my circular biscuits so that the icing would fit perfectly on top. I then decided to make another batch of icing sugar and using a knife, draw a snowflake onto four of my biscuits. 

Here are some close up photos of my shortbread biscuits ♥

 

Just after taking these photos, I couldn't resist eating one of the snowflake biscuits. It was delicious!

I hope you enjoyed reading 

♥

What's your favourite kind of biscuit? Have you ever make shortbread?