It’s my colleague Louise’s birthday next Thursday, but we are going out tonight for dinner at Aqua. To start the celebrations, I decided to make a cheesecake – but one with a brownie base. I used the brownies recipe that I posted previously (a big favourite in the office, and one of my favourite things to bake because its seriously easy. I cheat a bit, and use a big metal mixing bowl on the hob (low low low heat) to melt the butter and chocolate, then just chuck everything else in on top.) then this Nigella recipe for no bake cheesecake. We’ve not cut into the cheesecake yet (I’ll update the post at the bottom when I do) but I’m quite worried that it hasn’t set properly. Argh. Stupid American recipes. WHY WOULD YOU MEASURE THINGS IN CUPS? (S’alright. I’ve complained at the Americans in the office. It did give me a good chance to use my fab Joseph Joseph set* as well – this 6 item set is £12, but the 8 item set* with the additional items being things that aren’t really that useful is about £35. Crazy.)

The items in the above photos though, well, those are mini fairy cakes. I KNOW THEY ARE AMAZING. This recipe from Nigella’s How to Eat* book is seriously easy. Here’s my version of the method:

Ingredients

125g self-raising flour
125g unsalted butter, soft
125g caster sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking powder
milk

Method
Throw all the ingredients in a food processor except the milk. Leave to blend for a few mins until its all mixed together, then drip in a few teaspoons of milk, so it becomes more of a cake batter consistency. Put into cases, bake at 200°C for about 10/15 mins (until they look nicely brown, and a skewer comes out clean)

For the mini cakes though, I had a few packs of petit four cases* (new bad habit when I go shopping – picking up cake cases because they’re pretty. I have about a thousand cake cases now) and bought this cake tin* which the cases fitted into perfectly. I put my cake mix into my icing bag to put into the cases which was a great idea! I picked up some writing icing this morning on the way to work, because I didn’t have enough butter to do buttercream, and wrote the message on with frozen hands when I first got in! Everyone has been decorating their own cakes before they eat them – a good activity for a Friday!

I may be caked out already, and we’ve not even had the cheesecake…help!

edit The cheesecake was a bit sloppy, but lush – creamy and rich but the brownie balanced it well :)

The reason why I created my bloggers map (over 700 people on there now!) was because I wanted to meet up with bloggers in my area and have a cup of tea, and I assumed that others did too. Since creating it, I’ve noticed a lot more meetups being organised, and that is awesome. Its great that other people agree that its actually quite nice to meetup with likeminded people and talk about stuff that perhaps your family and friends don’t really understand.

The thing that I am a little confused about though is the increasing amount of meetups where the organisers feel like they have to provide a goody bag, get some sponsorship, get a brand involved. It turns what could be quite a informal meetup into a giant event – which, while sometimes thats good, could intimidate some people from going.

So I’d like to propose an un-meetup. A small gathering after work one night in Bristol, where you wont get given anything. Well, besides a good gossip and perhaps some new blogs to read. Would anyone be up for that? (Seriously Laura, if you don’t say yes, I’ll cry ;))

If you’re not in Bristol, but you like the idea of knowing who is in your area, please drop me an email and I’ll let you know who your neighbours are! (And as ever, I would love it if you guys could promote the map again – the only way that it will get better is with more and more people signing up!)

People think I’m weird because I have a bit of an obsession with Parma Violets. I find them yummy and sweet, and I love the smell. To others, it tastes like soap and smells like old ladies.

I bought McQueen * from Amazon after someone said it smelt exactly like Parma Violets. Oddly, the 100ml bottle was cheaper than the 50ml at the time, so I bought it quick. Maybe its just my nose, but I don’t really smell the violets.

I bought Insolence* from Debenhams a few weeks ago – I had a gift card burning a hole in my purse, and I had a miniature of this in my bag which I loved until it all emptied out into my bag. The bag still smells quite nice, 2 years later.

Both of these are meant to be quite violet-y, but they just weren’t the right sort of sweet violet. A lazy browse around Amazon lead me to something which I thought was worth buying the body spray of to see if thats the scent I was hunting for since it was only £2 with Prime delivery. Success! It was!

You’re probably wondering what that scent was. Um. Well, its Yardley April Violets*. Which…is an old lady kind of brand.

Oh dear.

Too lazy today to do an outfit post. I tried, but, blah. Have been trying to think about what to wear next month – London Fashion Week has made its way around again, and instead of the one day I managed last year, I’m going to be in London for three days. You may find this odd, but thats (a) the longest I’ve ever spent in London, and (b) the first time I’ve ever been to London and not had any definite plans. I’m incredibly excited, and trying to organise myself to see as many lovely people as possible – I’m hoping to get everyone together on one night for dinner like last time and I’ve been eying up various places that I keep hearing about from other bloggers and never go to – the Diner, anyone?

Above is a little collage of the things I’ve bought lately (or am considering) – a few dresses from ASOS, a dress from COS (I love this, its a similar shape to my many other dresses, but with a strong waistband), a crocheted collar, a gorgeous coat. The shoes, surprisingly, are the only things unbought – I’m trying to hunt down a pair of sparkly brogues – Primark had them on sale for £3, but not in my size – and another pair of shoes with a high, thick, heel that are comfortable. Am I hoping for the impossible?

I’m not even sure yet if I have a pass, or tickets to any shows, but I’m really excited about going, because I know I’ll get to see people I never see. Damn living on the other side of the country!

Todays post was originally going to be an entry into a competition by a company to win a ridiculous amount of shoes.

But obviously, its not. (I think I just heard Alex breathe a sigh of relief.)

Recently, there have been so many “competitions” and “awards” where the main objective for the company has seemed to be to get as many incoming links and mentions on Twitter, increasing their own visibility whilst masquerading as giving something to the blogging community. That may be a very cynical way of looking at things, but before this shoe company (I won’t put the name here, but I think most of you will know – and really, if you don’t, its irrelevant anyway) started their “ambassador scheme”, I doubt many people had even heard of them, and before their competition was announced, I hadn’t even been to the site. The competition is to write about a pair of shoes from their site – before I started this post, I was intending to enter and spent a few hours idly browsing their website and even contemplated a purchase. Job well done, shoe company.

Before Big Fashionista posted her post yesterday about the popularity contest side of things, the shoe company intended to narrow down the hundreds of entries down to 5, then “let the public decide”. My least favourite part of any competition. Y’see, companies have realized that instead of getting a small team together in house to pick a winner based on their actual entry for something, they can instead get the finalists themselves to hunt for votes, whoring themselves as much as possible. You may remember last year, I was one of the final four in a competition to write for a lingerie company website. I felt incredibly uncomfortable asking people to vote for me (I’ve blogged recently about how I dislike promoting myself) but I did as much as I felt comfortable with. I didn’t think I had the best entry, but I didn’t think that the eventual winner was the best out of the four. Does being able to ask for votes really qualify someone to write well?

Which kinda brings me on to blog awards. I’ve made comments on Twitter (of course, its where I get my bitchyness out!) but haven’t really had a chance to get things out properly. Cosmopolitan, Marie Clare, More, Company, Look, Glamour…the list of magazines starting to use bloggers as features is increasing. A number of these magazines have blog awards, and two of them are ongoing at the moment. While I am pleased for my friends who are nominated, it feels quite uncomfortable to me that the prizes in these awards is often the “chance” to write for the magazine. You win the chance to provide them with free content? It just doesn’t seem much of a prize for those of us that blogging and writing is a hobby rather than a career. However much I would love some recognition that non blogging friends would understand, the truth is in my industry, an award for blogging is about as useful as that 400m swimming badge I got when I was…um…15.

The worst part about these awards is when there is more than one person in the category that you like a lot. I ended up registering with a few different email addresses for the Cosmo awards recently so I could vote for each of the lovely ladies in the fashion blogger category – which seems rather pointless!

Blogging is not a competition. We shouldn’t be fighting (politely, of course, but still fighting) over something, but working together. Instead of being evasive over what you’ve said to a company or something, what is wrong with sharing the knowledge? (I’ve gone all evangelical, I do apologise – but I never know how to respond to emails about my blog and I would find it so useful to be able to get help from other people besides poor ol’ Sarah.)

I don’t know. I’ve spilled out my thoughts on this, but I don’t feel any better for it! Am I just burbling away crap to myself, or do you guys agree? Are awards and competitions actually beneficial to the blogger who wins in the end?

I just bought this necklace as a Twitter-birthday present to myself - click the image to go to the Etsy store!

Yesterday, I woke up to the following tweet:

Seriously, five years?

My first tweet was this:

I don’t even remember why I joined. I, like most people when they first join, didn’t really get it, but I really started using it when there were other people to talk to that I knew. (Weirdly, looking back at my Facebook Timeline, when I first joined FB, I used to write my status’ in the same way that most Tweets are written. Odd!)

When I joined Twitter, it looked like this:

and you rarely saw the fail whale back then. But, then more and more people started to join, and the whale was a familiar frustrating sight.

Twitter has been an immense help at all times. From the little things (“What should I wear today?”) to the big – and there have been many, from crazy workloads, to moving across the country on my own, to meeting so many new people, to awful jobs, and yes, you know the story already, but it is how I met my boyfriend. I’m not a very confident person in the “real” world, but on Twitter, I am incredibly chatty, and it has helped so much when I have met people outside of the Internet. Twitter has helped make my life better, and I don’t care if that sounds lame.

So, y’know, thanks Twitter. Thanks for that. Love youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.

I’m pretty useless at wearing jewellery, but for my birthday last year (which I got given a few weekends ago – this means I get an extra birthday day, right?), the Wife bought me this beautiful handmade glass bangle (cuff? bracelet?). Its from www.handmadeprettylittlethings.com (which appears to be down at the moment, unfortunately!) but is a blue glass bracelet with a goldish pattern through it.

I can’t normally wear bracelets, because they bash against my desk, but this one is perfectly shaped so it doesn’t annoy me!

Dress: Primark | Jumper: Clothing at Tesco | Shoes: USC | Necklace: Primark

Lazy lazy day today – actually, just a lazy week all around! We hit Yo Sushi again on Friday with some work colleagues – that 40% off voucher is just too good to resist. This weekend has been about working my way through this stack of books and playing way too much Triple Town.

As many of you know, I’m a huge supporter of Cancer Research, by doing Race for Life. This is my fifth year doing it, and each year, I’ve tried to do something different – running, walking, 5km, 10km, alone and with friends. Pretty much every combination possible.

I was debating on Twitter about what to do this year when I think Gemma suggested that my four feet popped down to Bristol and did it with me. They’ve known me for 20 years so knew my mum as well as I know theirs.

So! On 9th June, we shall be running around the Downs for 5km – although this could change…perhaps a 3 (5 legged) race, skipping or walking backwards? We also need to find something we can all wear…my vote for dressing like the above photo was veto’ed. Damn it.

If you’d like to support us (and I know you would!) please visit our JustGiving page or text FEET88 £1 to 70070 (replacing the £1 with whatever amount you’d like!)

What should we do? What shall we wear?!

As you may have seen on my post on Monday, I have a pretty orange scarf tied to my bag at the moment. I won the scarf in a Twitter competition as part of Vogue’s Online Fashion Week (this is why I have multiple Twitter accounts, so I can enter lots of “RT to win!” competitions without annoying people on my main account!) and forgot about it until a thick card envelope dropped through my door. Inside was the scarf and a booklet of their AW11 collection.

I didn’t actually know what was on the scarf, but once I opened it out, I couldn’t help but smile – is there anything more perfect for me than beautiful watercoloured shoes?

Until I started writing this post, I didn’t realise that Hobbs create new scarf designs each year, but the ones in this post just wouldn’t have suited me quite so well!

If you didn’t win one, you can still buy the scarf from Hobbs direct.

I realised it had been quite a while since I had done a whats in my bag type post, and when better to do one than when you have a new bag that you want to show off just a little bit? Yes, this is my beeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuuutiful new Mulberry bag, bought last weekend after much contemplation. She is a purple Mitzy hobo style bag, with gold hardware. I would have preferred silver or pewter, like my clutch, but I can live with it ;)

Tied to it is a scarf from Hobbs, which I will post about soon. I don’t think you can buy this actually, but the bright splodge of orange looks ace with the purple leather, and orange is the colour of the year apparently!

Inside the bag is too much evidence of trips to Harvey Nichols food hall. I’m a little obsessed with the lemonade by San Pellegrino, and I love these mints by Peppersmith (who get bonus points for their webshop to buy chewing gum called E Buy Gum.) I also bought a new small Bobble bottle*, which is the perfect size for my bag, and stops me from buying bottles of water all the time. (If you don’t know what this is, the black section in the bottle is a water filter, so you can fill it with tap water.)

Theres the usual array of notebooks, diaries, Moo cards and pens and paper, and my iPad is usually in here, but it was on charge at the time. I always have to have a camera in my bag (inside the gold bow case) and the essentials – purse, work badges, umbrella, tea mug, hair brush. Surprisingly, I have a make up bag in here at the moment. Actually putting the make up on in the morning is another thing.

What do you keep in your bag – what can’t you live without?

Dress: Dorothy Perkins, Tights: Jonathan Aston, Shoes: Primark

Whenever Sarah and I get together, we say we’re going to do a series of photos showing all the stereotypical blogger poses. Which we then forget about in the excitement of eating our body weight in cheese and Haribo. I ended up doing this pose…which is actually one of Sarah’s. Sorry dude.

Yes, its another of those bloody circle dresses. I picked this up on the last day of work last year in the sale – it was just £12, but the girl at the till gave me a 10% discount for a stain she noticed on the neckline, which turned out of be water from my umbrella. Score!. The tights are purple houndstooth ones that I picked up for £1 in Boots when I visited Basingstoke for work – it was the most productive part of the day! The shoes are some battered old Primark platforms that were similar to a pair that were in Topshop a few years ago. So comfortable, but they need repairing :(

Alex has been in Seattle this week and got back today so I’ve been all alone again. On Thursday night, I went with a colleague to Nails Inc, after finding out that they were doing mini special effects manicures for just £5. I went for a silver base with a pink glitter crackle, which looked really good, but is already starting to chip. Boo! The offer is on till the end of the month, so its worth a trip!

On Friday after work I met up with Laura and Selina for some Yo Sushi (40% off with this voucher!), gossip and beers. I love meeting up with bloggers, always a lot more gossiping going on offline! I prefer smaller meetups too – much less intimidating. (Of course, if you wanted to do the same, you could use the bloggers map to find others ;))

I would welcome any advice that people have to give on those fronts. (Except the boyfriend part. I quite like mine.)

In a sort of related way (in that perhaps seeing what I can improve will help increase my confidence in what I do), I wanted to ask you guys what your opinion of my little blog was. All of the questions are optional, so you can be completely anonymous (will I regret this?) but I would appreciate as much info as possible. Because you’re ace, you are.

Someone on my Twitter feed linked to Bangs and a Bun’s post yesterday about “Confidence vs Ego”. It basically says that we should be proud to talk about our achievements, and why we’re awesome, instead of hiding it away. An interesting topic.

I know this. I agree with this! But I can’t do it. One of my New Years resolutions (which I didn’t really put this post because its so difficult to phrase without – in my mind – sounding awful) was to not only build new and current relationships to improve my blogging, but to also be able to say about whats so great.

I find it incredibly difficult to self promote. I feel awkward just tweeting a link to a new blog post – I feel like I’m spamming people and that they wouldn’t be interested in reading what I write. I created a Facebook page – not because everyone else was doing it, but so I wasn’t spamming the people who are my friend with blog links. I think I’ve said this to most of you before – when I think about who is looking at my blog or follows me on Twitter, honestly, I always assume there are about 5 people reading this, and it’s strange when people recognise me from these things, or talks about something I’ve posted. (Its not even as if this is a new occurrence. Back in the day, when I was on ol’Livejournal, I wrote a lot – unsurprisingly! – and being one of the few people in my tiny Uni town who wrote, I did have people come up to me on campus to say they saw something I’d done.)

I could give reasons to why I am like this. The main culprit I suspect would be having the wrong people around me who would knock down everything I did. But that doesn’t solve my problem. I want to push myself forward. I want to take the same opportunities as everyone else does – instead of ignoring the email, because they couldn’t possibly mean me. I just don’t know how.

So, dear readers (who do exist and I love the majority of you) – help me. Am I just some sort of freak? How can I change?

I know that you’d expect this sort of post before Christmas, but to me, its in the first few months of the year when that it gets really cold and snowy that I want these sort of home comforts a lot more. Most important on my list would be a soft cotton robe* and cashmere bed socks* with a suitably cute pair of pyjamas underneath. I’d grab my mini hot water bottle* (by the way, these are amazing if you have a lot of back pain – they’re small enough to be able to keep them at work or in your bag. When I’m having one of my back back times, its the best thing I own) and jump into the polka dot* bed with a cute throw* on top to keep extra warm.

I like to watch rubbish TV while I make plans, so I’d write everything down in my diary – I haven’t yet bought one, but I love the monthly Moleskine set* and you can never have too many candles – since money is no object in this little collection, I’d go for this Yankee Candle* set from QVC, and an eye mask* is always necessary.

What essentials do you need for a chilled out night in?