The Ultimate Christmas Gift Guide 2018

  Hello everybody!

  This week’s blog is a Christmas gift guide post! I know that some of you may be thinking it’s too early to be thinking about Christmas, but I have already started my Christmas shopping and I think it’s better to start early or at least start getting an idea of presents for people! So, here’s ‘The Ultimate Christmas Gift Guide 2018’

▪️ Women:

Chanel Chance Eau de Toilette 50ml - £77

Jo Malone Pomegranate Noir Home Candle - £47

Next charcoal Embellished Scarf - £22

▪️ Men:

Tommy Hilfiger Damon Watch - £150.00

Hotel Chocolat The Winter Chocolate Puddings Sleekster - £22.95

Pringle - 3 pack black plain and argyle socks in a gift box - £20.00

▪️ Teens:

JBL Flip 4 Bluetooth speaker - £119.99

Adidas Originals Tape Fleece Overhead Hoodie - £65.00

Morphe The Jaclyn Hill Eyeshadow Palette - £37

▪️Children:

Schwinn Amplify 18 Inch 2018 Kids bike - £145.00

Boxer robot - £80

Chad Valley 60cm Unicorn Soft Toy - £15.00

  That’s all for this week’s blog post! I hope you enjoyed! Now I definitely feel Christmassy and also want to just go out and gift shop! I will see you next week for another blog post! Love you all!

  Byyeee!!!!

Gingerbread Loaf

  Hello everybody!

  This week’s blog post is a bake! Some of you may be thinking it’s too early for gingerbread but I can explain! I went to Zara Home yesterday and every year I buy a gingerbread candle for Christmas and when I smelt it I was instantly in a festive mood and wanted everything gingerbread! Hence why I baked a gingerbread loaf!

Makes: 1 loaf

Prep time: 8 mins

Cook time: 1 hr

Ingredients

175g unsalted butter

200g caster sugar

3 tablespoons golden syrup 

250ml milk

250g plain flour

1 tablespoon ground ginger 

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C / Gas 4. Grease and flour a 20x10cm loaf tin.

2. In a small saucepan, combine the butter, sugar, golden syrup and milk. Bring to the boil, then remove from heat and set aside. Sieve the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and allspice into a large bowl. Stir in the boiled mixture until just blended. Pour the batter into the prepared tin.

3. Turn down the oven to 160 C / Gas 2 1/2 and bake for 1 hour or until the top of the loaf springs back when lightly touched.

That’s all for this week’s blog post! I hope you enjoyed! This bake ticked every box for me and now I feel ssoooo festive! This loaf has such an explosion of flavour and the texture is great and soft. Make sure you wait until it has cooled down to cut it because if it’s too warm it can be crumbly. I will see you next week for another blog post! Love you all! 

  Byyeee!!!!

Monthly Favourites

  Hello everybody!

  This week’s blog post is a Monthly Favourites for October! I have a few things that I’ve been loving last month to show you so let’s get right into it!

▪️ Fit Boutique teddy bear jacket - I’ve been looking for one of these jackets for ages so when I finally found this one I was so excited! It’s a camel coloured jacket made from faux Sherpa fleece. The fit on it is lovely because it isn’t huge and oversized but it is almost like wearing a duvet! I just want to be wearing it all the time!

▪️ Matalan pink slide on slippers - As it’s getting cooler, slippers are a must! I like these ones because they are so easy to slip on which actually makes me want to wear them more! The colour is a pretty dusty pink with a little pink velvet bow detail!

▪️ Peacocks black shoulder bag - I really like this bag because it’s the perfect size to keep all your essentials in! It also goes with almost everything so I can use it for nearly every event or outfit!

▪️ Bijou Brigitte mirrored sunglasses - I somehow lost my last pair of sunglasses :( so I wanted to get some new ones and I knew Bijou Brigitte had some so when I found these I was in love with them so had to get them!

▪️ Word Cookies app game - This game is so addictive! I always play it if I don’t have WiFi since it doesn’t require a WiFi connection and even when I’m at home bored. It is a word searching puzzle game in which you have to find all of the hidden words. This game really makes you wanna think and can make you laugh with all the silly words you try and convince yourself are real! 

▪️ Netflix - I recently got Netflix and I’m so excited to be able to snuggle in bed with a hot chocolate and binge watch some series! If you have any recommendations please leave them in the comments!

  That’s all for this week’s blog post! I hope you enjoyed! If there’s anything you’ve been loving this month too I’d love to know what it is in the comments! I will see you next week for another blog post! Love you all!

  Byyeee!!!!

Halloween Food

  Hello everybody!

  This week’s blog post is all about Halloween food! Last night my family had a Halloween party at our house and the food was spookily great, so I thought I’d write about it! This menu is good for a sit down meal or a buffet!

Starters

▪️ Stuffed cockroaches - We stuffed dates with cream cheese and finely chopped walnuts, by cutting a small slit into the the dates and piping in the cream cheese and walnut mix. These really looked like cockroaches so they were very effective and so easy to make! It looks even more effective if you put some fake plastic cockroaches on the plate too!

▪️ Pukin’ pumpkin - We carved a pumpkin to make it look like it was vomiting and put some spicy bean dip coming out of its mouth to look like vomit. We then added a small pot of salsa in the part of the head cut out to make it look like brains! We put the pukin’ pumpkin on a plate and surrounded with Doritos for dipping.

▪️ Mini pizzas with spiders - This is pretty simple - all we did was cook mini pizzas and cut up a black olive to make it look like a spider and placed it on top of the pizza!

▪️ Mummy sausages - We got frankfurter sausages and wrapped puff pastry strips around them to make them look like mummies!

▪️ Cheesy Halloween shapes - We cut out ready-made puff pastry using cookie cutters in Halloween shapes such as ghosts, pumpkins, bats and tombstones etc. They were brushed with egg wash and sprinkled with cheddar cheese on top and then baked in the oven!

Mains 

▪️ Chilli with pumpkin purée - We cooked a normal chilli, but put pumpkin purée in it! We served it with rice and sour cream.

▪️ Monster tacos - We made normal tacos using a taco kit and then sliced some black olives and put them in the filled tacos to look like monster eyes!

Desserts

▪️ Halloween cupcakes - We bought some cupcakes from Morrisons that were Halloweeny and they were delicious.

▪️ Mixed berries cheesecake - We bought a mixed berries cheesecake and stuck fake finger into it to make it look like there was a hand emerging from the cake! We added puréed fresh mixed berries as a finishing touch to resemble blood!

▪️ Strawberry jelly brain - We bought a jelly mold from Morrisons to make some strawberry jelly and it was really cool because it wobbled so much (so much that I dropped mine lol) and it looked like a real brain! We put some worm sweets around it too.

  That’s all for this week’s blog post! I hope you enjoyed! I hope you all have an amazing Halloween if you celebrate it! I will see you next week for another blog post! Love you all!

  Byyeee!!!!

Halloween Makeup

  Hello everybody!

  This week’s blog post is Halloween themed! I’ll be showing some of my favourite Halloween makeup! Credit to the people included in this post. I’m so excited for Halloween and this blog post is perfect to get you into the mood!

▪️ Half-skull

▪️ Witch

▪️ Pennywise

▪️ Day of the Dead skull

▪️ Pumpkin

That’s all for this week’s blog post! I hope you enjoyed! I’d love to know if you have planned your Halloween costume and makeup, so let me know in the comments below! I will see you next week for another blog post! Love you all! 

  Byyeee!!!!

October 2018 Playlist

  Hello everybody!

  This week’s blog post is something I haven’t done in ages! I’ll be showing you what’s on my playlist at the moment and I’d say my taste in music is quite mainstream, but there are the odd songs that are different! I have Spotify (@ISayBell.blog) so you can listen to my playlists! I last did a blog post like this in April 2018, but I have downloaded so many songs since then so I’ll be sharing them with you now!

▪️ I Love You So - The Walters

▪️ Warned You - Good Morning

▪️ Ava - Famy

▪️ Waving Through a Window - Ben Platt

▪️ Turning Tables - Adele

▪️ Personal (Jaded Remix) - The Vamps

▪️ Imagination - Shawn Mendes

▪️ Hawaiian Party - Club Sport

▪️ No Control - One Direction 

▪️ Your Song (Cheat Codes Remix) - Rita Ora

  That’s all for this weeks blog post! I hope you enjoyed! I know these songs aren’t new releases, but they are songs I’ve been loving and listening to over this month! If there any songs you’ve been listening to recently, I’d love to know what they are in the comments below! I will see you next week for another blog post! Love you all!

  Byyeee!!!!

Simple Cinnamon Rolls

  Hello everybody!  

  This week’s blog post is a baking post! This bake is different to anything I’ve baked before! I’ve always loved cinnamon rolls, but I’d never attempted to make my own, so I was really excited to see how these would turn out! This recipe is a simple version because it doesn't use yeast and therefore no need to let it proof.

Makes: 8 

Prep time: 40 mins

Cook time: 35 mins 

Ingredients

300g self-raising flour

2 tbsp caster sugar

1tsp ground cinnamon 

100g butter, melted, plus extra for glazing

2 egg yolks

150ml milk, plus extra for glazing

For the filling

1 tsp ground cinnamon 

55g light brown soft sugar

2 tbsp caster sugar

1 tbsp butter, melted 

For the icing 

150g icing sugar

1 tbsp cream cheese, softened

½ tbsp butter, softened 

½ tsp vanilla essence 

Method

1. Heat the oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Grease a 20cm loose-bottomed cake tin and line the bottom with baking parchment. Mix the flour, caster sugar and cinnamon together with a pinch of salt in a bowl. Whisk the butter, egg yolks and milk together and combine with the dry ingredients to make a soft dough. Turn out onto a floured surface and roll out to a rectangle, about 30 x 25cm.

2. Mix the filling ingredients together. Spread evenly over the dough then roll it up lengthways, like a Swiss roll, to form a log. Using a sharp knife, cut the dough into 8 even-sized slices and pack into the prepared tin. Brush gently with extra milk and bake for 30-35 mins or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and cool for 5 mins before removing from the tin.

3. Sift the icing sugar into a large bowl and make a well in the centre. Place the cream cheese and butter in the centre, pour over 2 tbsp boiling water, and stir to mix. Add a little more water until you have a drizzly consistency. Stir in the vanilla essence, then drizzle the icing over the rolls. Serve warm or cold.

  That’s all for this week’s blog post! These tasted great however they weren’t the easiest thing to bake. They were maybe a tad dry and not the neatest, but overall I think they were a success and my family and I are looking foward to eating them in the morning with a hot chocolate or a cappuccino. I will see you all next week for another blog post! Love you all!

  Byyeee!!!!