Thursday 25 December 2014

Merry Christmas Everyone!


Merry Christmas to all my wonderful followers, I hope you all have a lovely day whatever your plans are.

Thank-you for reading, supporting, commenting and following my blog over the last year. I can't believe I reached my 1000 follower milestone! I'm grateful for each and every one of you!

Next year, I plan to be more organised with my posts and organise my schedule to create better content. I will be taking a little break until the New Year to spend time with my family, but will be back again soon!



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Tuesday 23 December 2014

The Perfect Christmas Gift For The Disney Lover


If you're a huge Disney fan like I am, then the best present you could receive this Christmas is one of these Limited Edition Disney SteelBooks from Zavvi*. I have been lucky enough to receive one of these to share with you all. Having just purchased Maleficent on Blu Ray, I thought it was only fitting to add Sleeping Beauty to my collection, which is number 16 in the list of Disney Classics.

The artwork inside the case is stunning and is so much better than the boring DVD cases you can get which are just black inside. On the front cover, you have the classic Sleeping Beauty scene with Aurora sleeping and Prince Philip about to wake her. In the middle where the Blu Ray sits, is the beautiful scene of Aurora lying in her dream like sleep and on the back cover is Maleficent looking like a true villain.

The steelbook case ensures that the Blu Ray is protected from damage as it is a bit more sturdy than normal DVD or Blu Ray cases.

I have a classic DVD version of Sleeping Beauty from when it was originally released and it is amazing to see the difference in quality between that and this Blu Ray version. The picture is so clear and crisp and its great that Disney have been able to maintain the same standard of "classic" film whilst not compromising on quality when they have digitally remastered the older classic films.

Zavvi have a large collection of these Limited Edition Steelbooks, including Frozen which will definitely be hugely popular this Christmas as well as all the classics, such as Pocahontas, Fantasia and The Aristocats and many more. The prices of each steelbook range, depending on the title you choose but range from £12.99 to £24.99. Sleeping Beauty is currently available for £19.99.

I recently counted up my Disney DVD/Blu Ray collection and lets just say I could watch one a week for a whole year and still have some left over to see me into the next year! Although this is the first steelbook I have ever owned and I will definitely be adding more to my collection in the future.

So if you're stuck for last minute gift inspiration for the Disney lover in your house, head out to Zavvi now to pick up one of these!


Do you like Disney?
What is your favourite Disney film?



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Saturday 6 December 2014

Creative Christmas DIY | How to make a Lindt Tree Centerpiece


Today I'm bringing you a special Christmas DIY project in association with Victoria's Vintage and Able Skills. The idea is to come up with a DIY featuring home made, space saving decorations.

Every year, our family get together to do something creative at Christmas. This year we have made some handmade Christmas cards featuring gingerbread men and my youngest sister has previously made Christmas cakes and gingerbread houses.

Last year our family made a beautiful Lindt Tree table centrepiece for our Christmas table and evening buffet table. The idea was to be able to make a feature point on the Christmas table without taking up too much space, as you still want to be able to see your relatives on the other side (or maybe you don't...?) As you can see from the photo above, you can definitely still get lots of yummy Christmas food on the table too!

This is definitely something you want to think about making a few weeks in advance as you don't want to be frantically gluing chocolate on Christmas Eve! But once it's finished it really does look spectacular as a centrepiece for your Christmas table.

You will need:
A bucket or pot to use as a base
Plaster of paris
A piece of tube to use as your tree trunk
A polystyrene ball (we got ours from Hobbycraft)
A glue gun
Tissue paper (we chose red)
PVA Glue
Lots and lots of Lindt sweets!
Decorative ribbon

The first thing you will want to do is cut your tube to the desired length (if you've already bought one the right size then you wont need to do this, but we used an old piece of curtain pole so my Dad had to get handy with his tools to cut the right length!)

You'll then want to make up your Plaster of Paris (make sure you follow the instructions carefully) and pour the mixture into the bucket or pot that you are using as your base. While the mixture is still wet, you'll need to place your tube into the centre of the bucket (you need to get this right, as once this dries, it's not going to come out!). The Plaster of Paris takes 1-2 days to dry so whilst you're waiting you can do the next step.

Using the PVA glue and tissue paper, you cover the ball so you can't see the polystyrene underneath. We did two layers so it was definitely covered. We popped the ball into the airing cupboard overnight to let it dry properly. We used red tissue paper as we were doing a red theme but you can make it any colour you want. When all the sweets are stuck on you wont see it, but when they start to be eaten you will see the colour come through.

By now your Plaster of Paris should be set and you can use the bottom half of your tree. Next, you'll want to place your polystyrene ball onto the tube so it starts to look like a tree. We found it easier to put this on first so we could work out where all the sweets were going to go and could cover every part.

Next is the fun part...eating...I mean gluing the sweets! We have a couple of glue guns so two of us could place a blob of glue on each sweet and the other two could place them on the ball. We worked from the top downwards, covering each half until the whole ball was covered.

Lastly, we placed a little bit of ribbon underneath to cover the join of the ball to the tube, and scattered some loose sweets over the top of the bucket so you couldn't see the Plaster of Paris underneath...and voila...a festive, edible centrepiece!

I felt a little sad taking the first sweet off on Christmas day as it looked so lovely all complete!



I hope you've enjoyed this little festive DIY and have had some inspiration for your own Christmas table...let me know if you give this a go..I'd love to see some pictures!





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