MINI GETAWAY – DESTINATION EDINBURGH

Good evening beautiful souls,

I have been savouring my last two days off relaxing in gorgeous Edinburgh with my sister. For once I was lucky enough to find a really cheap first class ticket from Durham to Edinburgh and I enjoyed the finer things. Well, I tried to; I kinda messed up the first class thing never having been before and missed out on half of the breakfast I could have had. Oh well, I’ll know for next time. I still enjoyed my croissant and chamomile tea whilst gazing out at the ever-changing scenery and listening to the Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

It was a peaceful journey up, and I arrived with plenty of time to have another cuppa in a cute cafe near Haymarket before going to find the German consulate to get myself a German passport. Once that was all sorted I got on the bus google maps told me would take me to my sisters, however here was me failing at my finest because I didn’t think to check in which direction I would have to get the bus and so of course I soon realised I was half way out of town going in the wrong direction. The bus driver made my day though when I told him what I’d done and he gave me a free day ticket before letting me off to catch a new bus in.the correct direction. So a good hour later I finally found my sister.

We spent the whole afternoon relaxing at hers, but it felt nice to just chill drink tea, eat good food and really catch up. We don’t get many chances to spend quality one on one time together so it’s always nice when we do.

Today after athe relaxed start to the day we wandered around Edinburgh almost freezing ourselves to death it was so icy. But it was lovely all the same as the sun was out. Once we got to the Christmas market we treated ourselves to some delicious mulled wine to warm us up. It was yummy, and I decided to keep the cute mugs too. I love walking through the Christmas markets, they always make you feel so festive. It’s good I didn’t have much cash on me either because there were so many cute stalls with beautiful goods, I’m always especially attracted to the handmade wooden things, from tree ornaments to bowls.

When we’d seen most of the market and with still over an hour to spare till my train home, we popped into costa so I could finish this blog post. I bought a large Americano and was thoroughly disappointed, it came in what looked like a soup bowl with two handles and did not taste grear either. I swear I am spoilt with coffee now aha, since getting used to good coffee, its difficult to not compare coffee to my dads nowadays. Anyway after a short but sweet stay, I am now on my way back to Durham, but sadly not in first class.

Here are just some photos from my brief time with my sister in Edinburgh, enjoy!

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Hope you’ve all had a good week!

Love Carina xo

CHRISTMAS WISHLIST!

Hey there beautiful souls,

Now that autumn is slowly transcending into winter and Halloween and bonfire night are well and truly over I can slowly start to get excited for Christmas! I love Christmas, I mean who doesn’t bar the Grinch!?! The last few years I haven’t really had a Christmas wishlist but this year there are actually a few things I really want and I can’t wait to share them with you and look forward to reading your wishlist posts too!

Dinosaur £25 Wilkos – I know I am 24 years old, supposed to be adulting, but I’m sorry this Dino is just way to cute!!! And my childhood dream of having a large cuddly toy has yet to be fullfilled!

Epilator £44.99 Amazon – Anyone else hate shaving? It’s so tedious so I love using my electric shaver to just quickly go over my legs. Admittedly it’s not as clean a shave as using a razor, but does the job if you’re in a hurry. So as my old Philips epilator/shaver decided to give up I would really like a new one for Christmas and this Braun epilator seems a great deal. I’ve shopped around and amaxon definitely has the cheapest deal.

Milk and Honey £6.99 Amazon – This book has been on my wishlist for ages. I keep seeing her words float around instagram and have thus wanted to read her work for a while now.

Turtles all the way Down £7 Amazon – I really enjoyed all of John Green’s other books so I’d love to read his new one. Although I do already have a huge to.read list! Let’s be honest you can never have too many books!

Catan Extension pack £22.73 – this is one of my favourite games, but when my flatmates and I get together there’s often more than four of us so I would love this extension pack so that more of us can play together, because it’s not really a game you can play in teams.

Vikings Seasons 1-4 £34.99 Amazon – I absolutely love this series nand really want to rewatch it. However now that I do not have Amazon prime anymore I thought the best option was to add this series to my collection.

Bamboo Bathtub Caddy £17.99 Amazon – I love a good bath, who doesn’t!!! I go all out and make it a real pamper experience. I get out the wine, the candles a healthy snack and watch an episode of something. However there’s never enough space for everything, so I’ve had my eye on a bath caddy for ages! Hopefully this will be under the Christmas tree!

So here are just a few of the things that are on my wishlist this year. What about you? What’s on your wish lists this year??

Love Carina xo

CHRISTMAS HOMEWARE HAUL

Hey beautiful souls,

I have been so excited to share this blog post with you! I am obsessed with homeware and just love decorating the house, so of course I get very excited about Christmas and can’t wait to make the house all festive. I do have a rule though that Christmas decorations can’t go up until December, however as I am now currently in northern Ireland, I did make an exception to this rule and started a little early.

The milk bottle ghosts and pumpkins have been taken down and the Christmas candles and decorations are slowly being put up. Here are some of the Christmasy bit’s and bobs my housemate Jessica and I picked up on our trip to Newcastle the other week:

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Star tealight holder £5 Wilkos – Red Display plate £1 Wilkos – Bath bomb £1 Wilkos – Candles £3 Primark – Room spray £3 Primark

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Tealight holders £1.50 each Tiger – Cookie tin £3 Tiger – Napkins £1 Tiger

These are only the first few Christmasy decorations we bought and I can’t wait to buy some more bits and bobs, put the tree up and finish decorating the house! Have any of you started decorating yet??

Love Carina xo

DURHAM LUMIERE

Good evening beautiful souls,

On Thursday the Durham Lumiere began. It is the UK’s biggest light festival and works with different artists to bring various light displays to the centre of Durham. The Lumiere is a four day event drawing in people from all over England to come and see the light festival. This is the Lumiere’s 4th year and it’s the first time I have been!! I was only at uni in Sunderland, so just up the road really, so I don’t know why I never bothered to come home to Durham to see the previous Lumieres I realise now I totally missed out!

So I was very excited to finally go and see all the light installations! I went with my housemate Jessica and we walked around for a good 2hs; I absolutely loved it! We only saw about half of the Lumiere and I’m gutted I didn’t go back another day to see the rest, but Sunday after work I was just far too tired to go out into the cold again.

Anyway, here are the things we went to see:

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Did anyone else go and see the Lumiere? What were your thought’s on it?

Love Carina xo

MY WINTER READING LIST

Good evening guys,

I absolutely love reading but recently I’ve been so caught up in binge watching Netflix shows that I haven’t picked a book up in ages. Abandoning my books has left me feeling guilty; it’s high time I finally get reading again. My fingers have been itching to pick up a book and so I thought I’d share my winter reading list with you. I have at least 40 books on my ‘to read’ bookshelf but here are the books I am currently in the mood to work my way through.

TINTENHERZ – CORNELIA FUNKE

The Inkheart trilogy, written (originally in German) by Cornelia Funke, is a series I have actually already read when I was about 12 years old. One of the reasons I am picking this trilogy up again now is that I haven’t read a German book in ages and I really need to keep my German reading up. I am noticing that it is getting more and more difficult for me to read with ease in German; it’s not that I don’t understand it anymore, but it definitely takes a lot more concentration for me to take everything in and not drift, so I figured a young adult’s trilogy would be a good start to get me back into German books. Moreover, I remember wolfing these books down the first time round and I have been eager for quite a while now to delve back into the beautiful world of this trilogy.

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WOLFSANGEL – M.D. LACHLAN

I picked this book up the last time I was in Barter Books in Alnwick. It intrigued me with its blurb about wolves and Vikings. As of yet, I haven’t read a book set in the Viking era, but I love series like Vikings set in this ancient era and so I’m excited to give this a go.

THE LITTLE BOOK OF HYGGE – MEIK WIKING

MAKING FRIENDS WITH ANXIETY – SARAH RAYNER

Of course there had to be a book or two of non-fiction. I am trying to incorporate more non-fiction into my everyday reading and for my winter reading list I of course had to choose The Little Book Of Hygge to give me all those warm cosy zen feels and then I also decided on Making Friends With Anxiety a book I picked up quite a while ago in the hope  that it would give me some insight and maybe suggest some new coping mechanisms for anxiety, which I suffer from on a daily basis.

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THE REVENANT – MICHAEL PUNKE

I believe this book was a Christmas present about two years ago and I still haven’t got around to reading it! I picked this myself with a book voucher as I wanted to see what all the hype from the movie was about. I always want to read the books before I watch the movie or series adaptations, so I still haven’t seen the movie wither yet; before I get more books for Christmas that get put aside for two years aha, I thought it was high time I ticked this one of my list.

THE HANDMAID’S TALE – MARGARET ATWOOD

This has been on my ‘to read’ list for quite a while and with the quite recent hype of the televised show based on this book I decided I couldn’t put this one off much longer as I really want to watch the show, but as I just mentioned I refuse to watch it until I have read the book, so it’s time to get reading.

 

 

 

 

Have any of you already read any of these books? If so what did you think of them? I’d love to hear your thoughts and tell me what’s on your reading list too!

Love Carina xo

ORANGE PUMPKIN CRISPY CAKES

Good evening guys,

On Friday I hosted a Halloween games night and made these cute pumpkin crispy cakes. I thought you’d like this easy recipe, so here you go.

You will need:

  • Silicone moulds (these pumpkin ones were from Lidl)
  • 195g mars bars
  • 90g butter
  • 3 cups of rice crispies
  • Orange extract
  • 200g milk, dark or white chocolate

Melt chocolate in the microwave and pour a little into each silicon mould. Pop into the fridge to cool. Now chop up butter and mars bars and melt on a low heat until smooth. Add a couple drops of orange extract. Once smooth take off heat and stir in rice crispies. Take moulds out of fridge and fill with rice crispy mixture. Leave to cool down before putting moulds back into fridge to set. You’ll be able to enjoy them after an hour or two.

Love Carina xo

BEST HALLOWEEN MOVIES

Good evening guys, 

It’s time for my next blogtober Halloween post! I’ve seen so many people in this past week share their choice of favourite Halloween movies. I’ve enjoyed reading these posts and reminiscing over some of my childhood favourites like The Little Vampire, as well as realising how many movies I haven’t actually seen yet. Thinking of all these great Halloween movies really put me in the mood to snuggle up and have a movie binge night. So I thought I’d share a list of my favourite Halloween movies and add a list of the one’s I have yet to watch too because these are the ones I’ll be working my way through tonight once I’ve crawled under my blanket with a bowl of pumpkin soup in living room by pumpkin light.

Some Favourites

  • Casper The Friendly Ghost
  • The Little Vampire
  • Rocky Horror Picture Show
  • Sweeny Todd
  • The Addams Family

To Watch

  • The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • Corpse Bride
  • A Nightmare On Elm Street
  • Beetlejuice
  • The Craft
  • Hocus Pocus

That’s all from me today; do let me know what your all-time favorite Halloween movie is!!!

Love Carina xo

MINI GETAWAY – DESTINATION ALNMOUTH

Good evening beautiful souls,

At the beginning of the week I was away in Alnmouth, a beautiful village on the seafront. It is my dads 50th this November and he’s celebrating early with his brothers, sister, their spouses and his mum who have all flown over from Germany so they can enjoy a weeks holiday together in Alnmouth. I could sadly only visit for three days as I had to work, but I did enjoy three days with my extended family. I took the train up on Monday and on Wednesday we all drove down back to Durham together so the family could see our hometown. Although short it was so lovely in Alnmouth; I am already missing it. Anyway the coastal scenery is just so beautiful there I just had to share some photographs with you.

On Monday we went to Bamburgh a short drive up the coast from Alnmouth, for a lovely walk at the beach, although it was so windy the sand whipped around our legs in a bit of a sandstorm.

The next morning the sun was rising over the beach and I enjoyed my breakfast with a view. The living room window had a lovely window seat looking out onto Alnmouth beach and it was the most peaceful breakfast I have had in a long time – breakfast goals on point!

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After breakfast I went for a walk at the beach with my dad which was lovely as the sun continued to shine. The weather was just fab!

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Later on in the day we went to the Alnwick Gardens where we had booked to eat lunch in the tree house in which is just so cute and quaint. The food was amazing and we all enjoyed ourselves. I sipped on my favourite Rose Lemonade, had a terrine for starters and pork belly with broccoli and apple mash for mains which was just scrumptious!

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After our meal in the tree house I walked to Barter Books in Alnwick. It is one of the cutest bookshops I have ever been to. A large building filled with secondhand books, antiques and first editions. One can really spend half a day here browsing through all the books. If you are ever in Northumberland I totally recommend you take the time to visit this quaint bookshop. There is a little cafe for refreshments and chairs to sit and read in oh and there are some CD’s and DVD’s too, but only a small section. As far as I am aware you can also exchange books, as in if they don’t already have certain books you can trade them.

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On Tuesday evening we continued family time and had a lovely night reflecting on the past by looking at old photos which was cute.

Well that sums up my mini getaway in Alnmouth; thanks for reading! Also I’d love to know if you have ever been in Bamburgh, Alnmouth or Alnwick, so please do let me know!

Love Carina xo

RECENT BUYS – HAUL TIME!

Hello guys,

So I’ve been really excited to write this blog post! I have been spending a little too much money recently aha but sometimes I just can’t help it, all things fashion, beauty or homeware just excite me too much and I don’t always have enough willpower to listen to my reason telling me ‘No Carina you don’t need this!’ aha. So here is my haul, anything I can find online I will add a link to. I hope you enjoy!

Unicorn Slippers – £4.99 B&M

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Black Loafers – £15 Asda, Sunglasses – £1 B&M

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Palm Leaf Duvet Cover – £14 (King Size) Asda, Yellow Cushion – £4 Asda

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Buddha Tealight Holders – £3 each Asda, Fairylighs – £1 Poundland

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Ivy plants – £1.50 each B&Q, White Romantisk Tray – £7 Ikea, Napkins – £0.90 Ikea, Tealights – £1.35 Ikea

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Trinket dish – £1.50 Ikea, Candle holder – £2 Asda

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Reusable Glass Bottle – £3 TKMaxx

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Anybody else in a current shopping phase and buy anything exciting?

Hope you are all having a lovely day!

Love Carina xo