DIY Mothers Day Nail Kit Jar & Personalised Candle

Hi guys,

Since Mothers Day is this Sunday in the UK i thought i would share what me and my sister decided to gift our mum.

My mum never really gets time to paint her nails with looking after my two little brothers and helping my sister get ready for University this September and therefore doesn't own a single nail polish. With that in mind we decided we would buy her some and put them together with all other nail essentials in a cute gift.

Originally the jar was going to contain all of her Mothers Day gifts except for the candle. But because we bought everything before buying the jar, that idea didn't go according to plan We ended up purchasing a jar that couldn't fit everything in that we had bought. So now we are having to find a cute Mothers Day gift bag that can fit in the jar, candle, fluffy socks and her favourite chocolate bars (I live in a small town with not many shops so this is a lot more difficult than it sounds).

Anyway back to the jar situation: i luckily had a cute jar on hand that i haven't used in forever so i popped it in the dish washer and now it looks like i have only just bought it and all of the nail items fit perfectly. In the end we went with four nail polishes, cotton pads, nail varnish remover, cuticle kit set and a nail polish correcter pen. The last two products were a random, awesome find!

 Everything except from the cuticle kit and corrector pen (which both came from Poundland. POUNDLAND!!) came from Superdrug. Every item above cost £1 or less! The nail polish colours are stunning up close and there were so many to choose from it took 10 minutes to decide. The make is MUA which in my opinion is perfectly good brand - more people should give it a try.

Now to the candle. I saw this idea on pinterest and had to give it ago because honestly, i didn't think it would work. And it did! And it's bluddy brilliant!

You draw anything on wax paper, hold it against the candle wherever you would like the drawing to be (i taped it on after burning my fingers with the hairdryer) and then apply heat until it melts (literally!) into the candle. Because i ended up melting an area of the candle more than i would have liked and it was no longer smooth i decided to scratch a pattern all over using a cocktail stick once my picture had melted on.

I wasn't really sure on what to draw, i didn't want it to be anything i wasn't sure on in case it did work, but at the same time i didn't want it to be anything too intricate in case it didn't.
In the end i decided to put mine and my siblings' birth dates in a heart shape. I thought this was very fitting with it being a Mother's Day gift and it didn't take very long to draw out properly once i had done a few practice drawings and found the order of things i liked.

If anyone is stuck for what to get a mum, nan, aunt, sister or even friend one day i recommend making your own personalised candle. It would be great if you had young kids because you could get them to draw a picture to put on the candle as a gift from them.

By the way, i found this candle in Wilkinson's for £2 and already had the bright pink pen and wax paper. :)

Love Jade x

Ps. Please be careful if you do decide to make one of these candles because the wax will melt in places you're not applying the heat to and i ended up ruining my favourite blanket because i wasn't paying attention and wax dripped all over it :( it is also EXTREMELY hot and i would hate for anyone to get burnt.

Choc Chip Cookie Bars

Yup you read the title right. I said choc chip cookie BARS!

A few days ago i stumbled upon a whole page of yummy bars on Pinterest. There were all sorts of treats that people had made into a bar. Now this intrigued me because, being British and married to an American i was well aware that American bakeries sell bars of things (Huge Flour Child Bakery social media stalker) and no British bakeries do. I've always wanted to try a dessert bar, but because i have never been to America i have not got to try any YET.
 So when i stumbled across THIS recipe i wasted no time in getting in the kitchen and baking up a batch. A huge batch at that.

The recipe was so easy i'm tempted to go out and buy every single variety of 'chips' that the supermarket has to offer so i can make a ton of different sorts.... But i best finish the huge plate sat in my kitchen first!

I should have known they were going to be awesome when i saw the finished cookie dough waiting to be put in the tin *baker heaven*. I mean seriously, how can anything that starts off looking like this end up being terrible???

Of course i ended up tucking into one as soon as they had cooled down enough to handle. They were still warm and gooey inside which is just how a chocolate chip cookie should be eaten in my opinion. Next time i may add less chocolate chips as the taste of the brown sugar and everything else that makes a good tasting cookie was lost in the flavour of the chocolate (which isnt necessarily a bad thing). 

Now off to munch one since my mouth is watering after talking about them!

It was a short but sweet (get it?) blog tonight but i hope it persuaded you to give this recipe a try!

Love Jade x


Psst...  to clarify: this is NOT my recipe. (I wish it was haha)

A useful yet fun gift!

So my sisters 18th birthday passed not long ago and in the run up to the day i was having trouble finding something to give her as a gift. I mean what do you buy an 18 year old these days that they don't already have?

Then i got thinking about gift baskets. I am obsessed with gift baskets. Every year i hope and pray that someone gets me one but it is yet to happen! Anyway, get back on track Jade.... So i decided i would put her together a gift basket full of things she likes and might need. Taking into consideration all the things she'd pointed out that she liked in town and that she was going to university in a few months, i went to work.

Firstly i went on the hunt for a basket to put everything in. That's where i stumbled across a bathroom caddy in Wilkinson.This one to be precise.Why a bathroom caddy you may ask? Why not i ask you back. It is a useful thing for anyone going to university to have to keep all of their shampoos, conditioners, hairspray, soaps etc in. When making  a gift basket you should choose a 'base' that you know they will get great use out of.

So that was the basket sorted, i then went into the factory shop and bought the birdcage tea light holder she had been eyeing up when she last stayed at my house. This isn't something she necessarily needed now she was turning 18 or going to uni, it was just something nice that she liked. I then added in some face masks (she loves them), mini bottles of different flavoured vodka, shot glasses, a coloured wine glass, some ibuprofen for the morning after, a birthday card, dessert flavoured lipbalms, an 18 key, a money box, a grapefruit box (she loooooves grapefruits but only eats them half at a time) and last but not least a Lindt reindeer (her favourite chocolate).

I made sure to choose things she either really liked or that could be used more than once. There's nothing worse than being given a gift that you don't really need or will never use.

 I think that she has already started on the vodkas, munched the reindeer and used the face masks. She has definitely used her wine glass although not for wine... Does anybody else do that? I know i drink coke out of wine glasses every now and then just because it is fancy...or because there are no other glasses and all that is left to drink out of is a mug. I just can't bring myself  to drink a cold drink out of a mug.

Once i  had gathered all of the goodies I lined the caddy with tissue paper and then arranged everything in a way that i liked before covering in cellophane and wrapping a bow around the whole thing to make it look like a massive present.

She loved it! I also got her tickets to the Harry Potter Studios but because the date i managed to get them for was past her birthday i just had to get her something and this was it!

I love giving gifts that are useful and fun. I especially love making gift baskets for people because they can be personalised to suit anybody :)

Love Jade x

Valentines!

Hiya!

Since Valentines wasn't really that long ago i would use the day as the topic of my first ever blog! :) 

This year i went down the DIY route for my husbands gifts once again (last year when we were doubting i made him a word cloud) and made him a picture using his favourite chewing tobacco cans as well a drinks carrier with some of his favourite things in as well as a few cheesy things. He LOVED them both. I also bought him a card which is currently taking up residence on the fish tank. 

We also went out to dinner at Giraffe. Normally we would have gone somewhere Italian and i so wish we had booked in January to go somewhere we actually like because as it turns out, Giraffe is not a very good place at all. I now know why it always looks empty when i walk past on my way to the cinema. My food was ok but my husband said his was not good at all apart from the potato wedges and we both agree the service was terrible.

I chose the Chorizo Carbonara and Rocky Road Sundae and Chris had the Beer Battered Cod with the Chocolate Brownie for dessert. Now when looking at a menu i always expect the description to tell me exactly what i am going to be eating if i choose that particular dish. Suffice to say the chorizo carbonara's description failed to mention that it would make my lips and tongue burn.Don't get me wrong i like a bit of spice but i like to KNOW when something is going to be that hot. I removed all the pieces of chorizo to the side of my bowl and the heat automatically dispersed when finishing my pasta, however it left the dish tasting very rich. I normally love chorizo but something tells me the chef cooked it with something extremely spicy which completely ruined the dish in my opinion. 

The Sundae was nothing to write home about either, just a few scoops of ice cream with a drizzle of chocolate sauce, warm brownie pieces (since when is there brownie in rocky road?!) and some marshmallows which were like little bullets. Oh, and a strawberry (the best part of the whole meal aside from my hubby's company).

I also had a bite of one of chris' potato wedges - they were awesome and a bite of his brownie - it wasn't very good, there was something other than chocolate in it which made it taste a bit odd. He said that the fish was tasteless.

Gosh that turned into a bit of a restaurant review didn't it?! I would like to go back again to try something different but the service was just so bad i don't think i ever will. 
Anyway, we had a lovely day overall and i LOVED crafting his gifts. They are so much more personal than shop bought items i think :)

Love Jade x