The Reading List - Marshmallow cups, a shocking fact about teenage girls and Downton Abbey singing One Direction.

♥As a female former A level English language student, I loved reading this article on the reasons girls add extra letters in text messages.  I know that I'm guilty of this and I know that my male friends are too.

♥"25% of young American women would rather win America’s Next Top Model than a Nobel Peace Prize" - this fact makes me sad.  I demand that all females read this fantastic article and join me in making a change.

♥How to make marshmallow cups in three easy steps.  Need I say anymore?

♥Effective organisation is definitely one of the things I'm aiming for this year.  This list has a tonne of different ways to easily incorporate it into your life.

♥I've been trying out the new social media channel Vine over the last few weeks, here's a great post to get you up to speed and some tips to make awesome 6 second videos!

♥I'm fed up of seeing unoriginal posts all over the blogosphere! I took a long hard look at what I was blogging and decided to go my own way just like GalaDarling suggests!

♥Food colouring icing frosting is hard work.  However this pretty diagram makes it so simple!

If you haven't watched all of the videos of Jennifer Lawrence at the Oscars we can't be friends anymore.  Seriously, watch them ALL starting with this one...


I hate One Direction but I LOVE this video of the cast of Downton Abbey singing one of their songs.

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The ASOS Cake Dress.

This adorable tea dress went on sale today for a slightly expensive £70.  I first spotted it last week in this month's ASOS Magazine modelled by Marina (& The Diamonds).   If it was cheaper I would definitely be adding it to my shopping bag for summer events.  

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London: Day 2 in pictures

On Thursday 2nd September and I after 6 hours sleep, I dragged myself out of bed at 7:30am and hauled myself over to Victoria station for 8:45am.  'Why so early?' I hear you ask, I was queuing for dayseats for Wicked.  Yippee!  I ended up being the first one there which completely confused me because I had never day seated before and I had no idea where to queue.  However, after about 20 minutes of watching commuters rush from Victoria station a lovely Japanese couple joined me and we ended up talking for the remaining 55 minutes.  She really liked my bunny iPhone case ^_^.   After securing the centre front row seat when box office opened at 10am, I made my way to Portobello Road for the first time ever.

I had heard great things about Portobello Road but I found most of it disappointing.  Because it was a Thursday not many stalls were out and the shopkeepers didn't seem at all friendly.   One even tried to sell me a plastic replica of Kate Middleton's engagement ring for £10! After walking the length of the road I decided to go back and buy a burgundy dress I spotted in the window of a store on the way to Portobello Road and a glass trinket box from a antique/bric a brac shop.

I headed back to Selfridges to buy gifts and to Monki - the new concession there which I found to be slightly like H&M but with an edge.  Although I didn't buy anything, I'll be visiting again because everything was very wearable and was a nice price.

Liberty was my next stop and I went upstairs for the first time!  I love the wood in this store - it's so English and well made.  They also have a great mix of heritage and contemporary pieces like the light below.   They even had their Christmas department open which made me start panicking about Christmas presents!

When I got to Covent Garden, after a nice walk from Holborn and a quick look in the new Kate Spade store (oh so colourful and chic!), I literally ran through and ignored all of the main Covent Garden Square!  Instead I went to one of the better shopping destinations - Neal Street and Seven Dials. I visited the cutest Japanese stationary shop - Artbox, the popular musical and theatre store - Dress Circle and Europe's largest forbidden planet because..  you know..  I'm a geek.  After all of this shopping I was really starting to get exhausted so I made my way back to the hotel to be reunited with my new best friend - aircon!

Fifteen minutes of freezing air, a quick dress change and a Krispy Kreme was all I needed to shop again on the way to Wicked!  I discovered the Whole Foods store in Kensington where I found myself worshiping mountains of Rocky Road and Meringues.  I also found these adorable cupcakes.  Whole Foods is food mecca.  

Wicked!  Ahhh one of the best musicals in the world! I took my front row seat (with fresh Krispy Kremes from Victoria station) and fell in love with the musical all over again! Rachel Tucker was an amazing Elphie as usual and Mark Evans playing Fiyero was just lush!  I swooned the whole way through!

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The week of early starts, fundraising and heights

To say that last week was busy would be an understatement!

  It all started with the beginning of Charity Week at my part-time workplace.  This year I have been partly organising the events and with the help of an awesome co-worker, we managed to get hold of a Snoopy outfit!   On Monday morning, myself and Snoopy roamed the streets to raise money for Alzheimer's Research UK and raised £67.33 in three hours!  The kids and old ladies loved Snoopy and I got unlimited hugs!  Result!

At 7am on Tuesday I was in a car off to a work meeting in Enfield, London!  Enfield was one of the places that got rioted and I could see the burnt out Sony factory from the meeting room.

Burnt out Sony factory in the distance.

On Wednesday, I went to GoApe in Cannock Forest with my family and friends!  If you haven't heard about it before, it's basically an assault course in the trees! I climbed ladders, went down awesome zip wires and balanced on some VERY uneven walkways. In my opinion, the best part was the zip wires, the rush of excitement was exhilarating and I couldn't stop smiling! 

Leaning tree

Uneven log walkway!

Cannock Chase is SO pretty!

Trees & Trees & Trees

It was back to Charity Week on Thursday and it was cake day!  Woo! Wednesday night we baked cakes and delivered them at 9am to be sold to the customers!

Noms

By Friday I was exhausted but still ended up helping with the family shopping (I carried the heavy bags) and finding pictures of myself as a child! 

The weekend was filled with work as usual and I ended up collapsing into the sofa on Saturday night in front of the TV to watch Doctor Who (yay!) and Mean Girls with two boxes of Pocky for my efforts.

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Strolling around Lyme Regis.

I'm on holiday!  Yay!  Today we went from Weymouth to Lyme Regis where we found a street  filled with nautical novelties and bakeries.  Due to my unlucky bids on eBay I wasn't able to get a lomography camera in time so I put all of my photos through the Instragram app!

Chips in Lyme Regis

Vinyl cakestand - £80

Buckets & spades in Lyme Regis

Beach huts in Lyme Regis

Vintage glass from an antique shop on Lyme Regis.  (£4.50 & £4)

Cake!

Lyme Regis street of shops

My Dolly Mixture cupcake!

Weymouth promanade

Checking to see if the other car is ok!

Bowleaze Cove where we are staying

My sister and I - she was weirded out by her forehead spot..

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Anna Sui for The Outnet

It's not a secret that like every girl, I adore cupcakes and when Anna Sui's exclusive collection for theoutnet.com arrived on my screen, I was in cupcake heaven!

Anna Sui cupcake-print silk dress - £153

Still on the subject of heavenly cupcakes, I visited the Tesco next to uni today to find that they didn't sell any of the beauties without chocolate!  I've given it up for lent!  I had to retire to the library with water and cheesy crisps instead :( 

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