Bargain Beauties.

Hi there Folks,

As a student, I really like to try and save money where I can. But the thing is...I'm a girl. A girl who loves make up, nail varnish and pretty much anything shiny! So you can bet that I was super excited when I discovered that Poundland sells a stash of pretty decent make up and nail polish products for, yes you guessed it, £1!! (I know that after the documentary on it the other night it might be a bit controversial...but I don't care!)

I reguarly read AThriftyMrs' Blog and she has posted several times about the little gems she's found chilling out in Poundland, so I thought that I too would share the little treasures that I have found.

Today I'm going to show you my nail varnish. I love love love that you can pick up Revlon nail varnish in Poundland. Below is my little stash, I managed to pick up some lovely pastel colours for summer time, a lovely jubbly shimmery purple with foil style flecks in it and also a beautiful emerald green which has a matt finish that I intend to use once they weather starts getting a little more wintery.

So the colours are (L-R): Blue Lagoon (004), Minted (028), Sunshine Sparkle (042), Royal Cloak, Emerald City (032), and Rendez Blue (745). 

I will definitely try post some pictures in the future of how they look on the nails too. And stay tuned for an upcoming post on my Poundland make up goodies.

Has anybody else picked up some bargains from Poundland recently? If so please share!

Ciao for now,

JB

What I'm Loving #1.

Hi there Folks,

So I've decided that I wanted to have a couple of regular posts that I do on the same day every week, just to have a bit of consistency, ya know? So Wednesdays are going to be 'What I'm Loving' and will just share things that I'm really enjoying or using a lot of that week.

So first of all this week I'm really loving my new baby niece! She was born last Friday and I've been to visit her and my mum and sister yesterday and she's just so beautiful! And so teeny tiny too, I can't get over it, just look at her little hands!

I'm also really loving my Skullcandy headphones. I do a lot of walking to and from work and then also I've spent time travelling to my sisters by train and I'd definitely be lost without these babies! Especially as I forgot my book so I only had my music for entertainment. These are the Lowrider model and I bought them from TK Maxx for £16.99 I think, which was a really good deal. I really rate Skullcandy, they have really good sound quality and this particular model fold up so I can store them in a little pouch and don't have to worry about snapping them.

Finally I'm loving my Olympic scarf. I got it from Next and they were reduced to £1! I've been eyeing them up for a while but kept putting it off, but I couldn't resist for that price. My mum got one too and wore it with pride all yesterday. It's got the red and blue lion motif on it and all these little stick men doing different sports, I love it. I thoroughly enjoyed the Olympics, we did so unbelievably well and I was so sad when it finished, so I'll reminice when I wear my scarf.

That's all for this week...stay tuned for next weeks loves.

Ciao for now,

JB

Home Style - Floral Lanterns.

Hi there Folks,

I just thought I'd share a really cheap but lovely looking piece of home decor that I found in...wait for it....Poundland! I know after last nights programme Poundland is probably a bit controversial now, but seriously I feel that £1 is ridiculously cheap and I doubt you would find something like this cheaper elsewhere.

So the item in question is these lovely little tealight lanterns. 

Aren't they sweet?! Well I think so anyway. As you can see in the photo I have them sat either side of my bookcase and when they're lit up at night they cast a lovely little floral pattern onto the walls which feels very cosy and calming...they're so cute!

Has anybody else got any bargain homeware that they would like to share? Please feel free and we'll all have beautifully decorated homes that don't break the bank!

Ciao for now,

JB

Lets Cook - Sweet Potato & Garlic Soup.

Hi there Folks,

Today I'm going to share a recipe for Sweet Potato and Garlic soup that I tried out over the weekend. It turned out really yummy, although not as thick and wintery as I initially imagined, but super tasty none the less!

The recipe was taken from my new 100 Calorie Cookbook which I bought from Marks and Spencers (it was £5 if you're wondering, you can have a better look at it here).

The book has some really tasty looking recipes in it that are allegedly 100 calories or less per serving. Now I'm not so sure if I entirely believe this, plus the servings look pretty small, so I'm thinking that even with my "on the larger side of life" servings they'll still be fairly healthy and lower calorie (which is always a bonus, plus means more calories for chocolate!)

So anyway, back to the soup. I used pretty much the exact weights that it asked for in the recipe just to see how it turned out. In my opinion, this amount wouldn't make enough for 4 of my servings, I did manage to get three decent bowlfuls though.

Ingredients

1 garlic bulb - cloves separated but skins left on

Small 'glug' of oil (I use canola oil, but olive is fine)

1 onion - peeled and chopped

2 medium sized sweet potatoes - peeled and cubed

1 litre vegetable stock

120g french beans - trimmed and finely chopped

salt and pepper to taste

3 tbsp low fat natural yoghurt

Recipe

1. Assemble and prepare your ingredients. Set the oven to 190°C, place the separated garlic cloves onto a small baking tray and place in the hot oven for around 20 minutes (or until they're nice and soft). Once done set aside to cool slightly.

2. Heat some oil in a pan and gently cook off your onion until translucent with no colour. Once the onion is done add the sweet potato to the pan and cook gently for about 5 minutes, being careful not add any colour. 

3. Prepare your stock (I used stock cubes but real stock is great), add to the pan, place the lid on and simmer for around 10 minutes.

4. Squeeze the garlic flesh from their skins. Add this to the pan along with the finely chopped green beans and simmer with the lid on for a further 10 minutes, or until the sweet potato is softened. Remove the pan from the heat and leave to cool slightly. 

Now, once the cooking was finished, the recipe in the book asked that you remove two tablespoons of the green beans from the pan which will be added to the soup once its been processed to give texture. I found that this was more effort than it was worth so left this step out, but by all means you can do this if you have more patience than me.

So now the final task is to blend the soup, season and serve.

I used my food processor but a hand held blender would work just as well. As I mentioned earlier, the soup wasn't as thick as I had anticipated, although I did follow the weights to the letter.  But it still turned out lovely :]

As a finishing touch swirl a tablespoon of natural yoghurt into your soup to add a bit of creamyness and to make it look pretty. The recipe said to garnish with chopped chives - I had none so improvised with some freshly ground pepper.

This soup was a definite hit, as well as being really easy to make, I will definitely be giving it a go again, although I think I'll add a bit more sweet potato next time to thicken it up slightly.

Ciao for now,

JB

This post can be found at the following Linky Parties:

Not Just a Housewife

Delightful Order

Knit Knit Hooray!

Hi there Folks,

Today I'm feeling very pleased with myself, as this morning I finished off my first ever knitting project!! It may only be a super basic scarf, but I spent hours getting really annoyed trying to teach myself to knit not so long ago, so for me, this is an achievement.

Here's what the finished project looks like...

It's grey, it's super chunky and its long, just what I wanted for a nice, snuggly scarf to help me face the northern winter.

The pattern I used was really basic, literally two different rows repeated over and over (the original pattern can be found here). But I decided to jazz it up a bit once I'd finished by adding some fringing/tassles. I used 12mm plastic needles and James C. Brett 'Rustic' Mega Chunky wool in the colour CS2 (both needles and wool bought from here, although they don't have the actual wool I used on the website, sorry!)

I know there are plenty of tutorials for how to make tassles etc. on the web, but I thought I'd add onto here how I did them. It was a bit of a process as I'd initially not made them long enough and didn't like them so had to start all over. This means I have lots of lengths of wool that I really don't want to waste that I need to find a use for...I'm thinking pom poms?

Anyway, here's how I did it.

1. I wrapped the wool round a DVD box (in this case - Band of Brothers Bluray Boxset) until I had the right number of loops. I wanted 27 as I chose to do 9 tassles each using three lengths of wool.

2. I then cut the middle of the wrapped up wool and was left with all my ready made lengths.

3. Using an old, clean chopstick I folded the wool in half over the top of it and used this to push the strands through the gaps on the end of my scarf.

4. Finally I pulled through, evens the lengths out and then wrapped the top loop over the tail ends to create a slip knot. I pulled the lengths tight and voila! Was pretty speedy once I got my method down and I found that the box I used gave the perfect length for what I wanted.

And here is me looking all pleased and warm wearing my lovely new scarf :]

Ciao for now,

JB

An Introduction.

Hi there Folks,

Welcome to JB's Eats & Treats! I thought I would start by writing a little introduction about who I am and what I'm going to blog about.

 

So I'm JB. I'm 22 years of age and live in the North West. I'm currently studying to be an Occupational Therapist and am about to start my final year next week...holy moly! Recently my OT head has been telling me that my occupational balance is a bit off...I need more leisure time in my life so lets see if blogging is something that I can get some enjoyment out of! I've been thinking about starting a blog for a little while and tonight I just decided to bite the bullet and do it! I imagine its going to take a little bit of work to get it going but I'm making a start.

 

I haven't really decided what I'm going to blog about as of yet. But I really love to cook yummy, healthy food for myself and my boyfriend, so I think I would really like to share some of the successes. I'm also really interested in starting to craft. Now I'm not the most creative of people, and I think I left any artistic flair that I had in GCSE Art, but I really want to start challenging my creativity. So I thought I would document this process and lets see if I can release the little creative person thats (hopefully) hiding somewhere inside of me.

 

I also think I'll just post about random things that I like, I don't really want to give myself a strict genre, I just want this to be a place for me to share my thoughts, ideas and projects. I would love for anybody who reads this or any future posts to chip in and share, I love discovering new blogs and seeing other peoples ideas!

 

I think thats everything for this very first venture into the world of blogging. Hopefully I'll get into the swing of things and start posting reguarly very soon!

Ciao for now,

JB