My New Year Resolutions...

Happy New Year everyone! Welcome to 2013!

I've never really been that good at sticking to New Years resolutions but I think thats because I've been making them too hard! So this year I've decided to come up with a few more simple ones that I can say that I have stuck to by the end of this year...

1) Drink more water - I really need to do this! It will definitely prevent breakouts, I can sometimes go the whole day without drinking anything apart from my coffee in the morning which is really bad! I'm going to start taking a larger water bottle with me to work to encourage me to drink more. We even have a lovely water cooler at work which I can use!

2) Experiment with more beauty products/make up - I usually stick to the brands I know and love so I really need to start buying new products to try. I'm especially getting into nail varnish and nail art, so expect a lot more posts on those over the coming months.

3) Save more money - I think everyone has this on their list, I'm not terrible at saving, there just always seems to be something that pops up that I need to buy or try (usually bills!)

4) Get rid of all my unwanted items and sell/take to charity - We have a spare room full of items that we intended to take to a car boot sale a few months back that we never did. I need to get on eBay and get it shifted or take all the other bits to a charity shop.

5) Experiment more with my baking - everyone should know by now that I love cupcakes but (apart from the occassional cake) that seems to be all i'm making. This year I'd like to try making other things. They'll probably still be sweet things as I don't really enjoy making dinners but I need to experiment more.

So those are my top five new years resolutions for 2013. I hope that I can stick to them. Hopefully at the end of the year I'll be able to look back at this post and see how many I have stuck to!

Have you made any New Years resolutions this year? What are they? Do you think you'll be able to stick to them?

Happy New Year!

I'd like to wish HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my lovely followers. I hope you had an amazing 2012 and have an even better 2013!

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank-you for following my blog. It's hard to believe it's only been up and running since August. I'm enjoying every minute of writing it and I can't wait to get started on some lovely new posts for you this year!

Hope you are enjoying yourselves whatever you are up to!

Love Holly x

My Baking Books...

My most favourite things to bake are cupcakes and over the last few months I have been aquiring a lot of baking books filled with lots of different cupcake recipes.

I could sit and look at recipe books for hours just gazing at the colourful photos and wishing I could make something that looks half as good as in the picture!

I thought'd I'd share my four favourite books with you and show you a few pages so you can see where I get my inspiration.

The first book is the Primrose Bakery book which is by Martha Swift & Lisa Thomas. I love the pink spine and pink ribbon page marker inside. There are lovely full page colour photographs of each of the products which I love because it makes it easier to see how mine should have turned out!

The second book is Boutique Baking by Peggy Porschen, again this book is lovely and colourful and has amazing photos in. I particularly love the jars she uses in the photos to display her creations. The receipes are really well laid out and in a pretty font. I'd love to visit Peggy Porschen's bakery in Belgravia, London (maybe i'll pester hubby to take me when we next go!)

The third book is The Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. This is my most used cookbook so far. The vanilla cupcake recipe is my favourite as it is so easy to follow and means I get perfect cupcakes everytime!

The last of my favourite books is cupcake heaven by Susannah Blake. This book is the most basic cupcake book I have but there are lots of recipes for different flavours of cupcakes. The thing I like most about it is that it purely is just cupcakes.

 I buy most of my books from a book club at my work but you can purchase these through The Book People or Amazon for reasonable prices.

This is my latest attempt at cupcakes...what do you think?

Do you like to bake?  What have you made recently?