'Happiness can be found in the darkest of places if one remembers to turn on the light'
It’s the halfway point!!
14 days done, 14 to go 👊🏻👊🏻
It’s been going well so far and I havnt missed eating the chocolate as much as I thought, however I do think that you sniff out substitutes to make up for the chocolate shaped hole in your life!!
There will be no Valentine’s chococolate for me this year!!
I set a fundraising target of:
So far I’ve have raised…
Are you taking part?
How are you getting on?
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
Dechox is a fundraising campaign set up by The British Heart foundation to help fight ‘heart break’ (Very apt for this month!)
The campaign involves you giving up chocolate for the month of February, and in the process, raising lots of money for charity.
& a very worth while charity it is.
I will be carrying out the challenge from Fri 1st Feb until Thurs 28th Feb.
No chocolate, no chocolate flavourings, nothing with chocolate in at all. #sendhelp
Here is the website where you can find out some more information.
So, keep your fingers crossed for me and good luck to anybody who is also taking on this (insane, let’s be honest!) Challenge!
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
As I have said previously, the festive food goodies are one of my favourite bits of Christmas.
It’s great to enjoy some yummy treats, surrounded by friends and family.
There are a few treats that we get every year and this year we (mainly me haha) have taken that a bit further and have been creating a ‘Festive snack table’.
Everytime we’ve gone to a supermarket or seen a tasty, tempting snack we’ve picked it up for the table and it’s starting to look rather good.
This is great for cosy evenings and if any guests come over during the festive period.
Here’s what we have included on our snack table…
Chocolates
Festive chocs are a must! Especially for a chocoholic like me!!
A Christmas classic is the matchmaker style chocolates. I picked these up in Aldi in both the chocolate orange and mint flavours.
I also got a selection of truffles.
We have the new Malteaser truffles that are amazing and, my husband’s favourite, the Lindt Lindor truffles. I picked those up in the original milk chocolate flavour and the new Mint flavour, they look so festive 🎄
You have to have a tub of chocolates at Christmas time, it’s a must. Whether your favourite is Heroes, Celebrations or Quality Street these just feel so Christmassy.
My favourites are Heroes (Cadburys ftw!) Where as my husband’s is Celebrations.
Biscuits
Shortbread is my absolute favourite biscuit and a Christmas must have. I love those festive tins too. I have my favourites, the Tesco tin, and I’m also trying out the Aldi shortbread too.
Mince Pies
I’ve really been enjoying mince pies this year and I’ve been testing as many different ones as I can (It’s a tough job but someones gotta do it!!)
Co-op have come out on top so far but I’ve also been trying the Tesco, Aldi and M&S ones, just to be sure! Haha.
Specialty items
I discovered my love of Panattone last year when I was gifted one, so this year I purchased one of Aldi’s Pandoro, I can’t wait to try it.
Savoury Snacks
Our savoury snack choices this year were of course Pringles and Aldi’s version, stackers as well as Twiglets and Mini cheddars.
Other
These cute Robin treats were part of Aldi’s Christmas range and we couldn’t resist. On the right is a hollow chocolate robin character and on the left is a chocolate orange celebration cake.
I hope I can bring myself to cut into them, they are pretty cute!!
So, that’s our snack table! What’s your favourite festive snack?
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
Here’s another delicious, festive recipe for you guys to try over, the Christmas period.
Its super easy and quite quick to make, but it looks impressive and really festive on a Christmas buffet/party table.
This is a Rocky road (are you sold already!!!) Bombe, decorated to look super festive as a Christmas pudding.
I love this idea and it’s so effective!! As soon as my husband saw this recipe he wanted us to give it a go.
The great thing about the Tesco Real Food website is that it has everything you need to know to make the recipe, tweak it if you want to add an extra festive touch but also, if you are doing your food shop you can add all the ingredients that you’ll need to your basket in one go, no hunting for everything you’ll need!!
You can add or take out too if you don’t want to strictly follow the recipe.
I’ll leave the link to the recipe below for you, definatly take a look at the page and some it their other yummy recipes too.
1. Melt the dark chocolate over some boiling water.
2. Whilst it is melting crush up the biscuits, don’t crush it too finely.
3. Once the chocolate has melted, pour it into the biscuit mix.
4. Add the raisins and mini marshmallows and stir altogether.
5. Make sure everything is coated in the dark chocolate.
6. Pour into a medium sized plastic mixing bowl. Flatten the top.
7. Leave to cool down and harden in the fridge.
8. Once it has cooled for an hour or so, take out of the fridge and ease it out of the bowl. Turn upside down onto a plate and lift off the bowl to reveal the dome.
9. Melt the white chocolate over boiling water. Once it has all melted pour it over the top to look like the icing on a Christmas pudding.
10. Garnish with a little sprig of plastic holly, to add the finishing touch. Serve.
Yummy!
Let me know if you have a go at making this.
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
One of my favourite bits of Christmas is the build up and of course advent calendars are a big part of that.
I thought I would share with you guys which calendars I have this year.
This is the first time during a blogmas (& I think this is year 3 of me doing it) that I havn’t had a beauty advent calender. None of them took my fancy this year and the ones I’d had previously hadn’t changed a lot either. Plus is it just me or are they very expensive!!
So let’s take a look at the ones I did go for.
Chocolate first of course! And the king of chocolate, so it had to be, Cadburys.
I went for the ‘1994’ style edition as I thought it looked super traditional plus I’m a 90s kid so I thought it was cool.
I love having a little chunk of Cadbury chocolate every morning to look forward to.
I also got myself a colouring advent calendar too, just for a bit of fun!
You get a different picture for each day of advent and they are all Christmas themed.
It’s quite relaxing doing my colouring in the evening whilst I catch up on I’m a celeb.
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
I havn’t done a baking post in a little while and as the Autumn/Winter months draw closer it’s all about cosy comforts, and these are perfect.
Plus, it’s Bake Off season so who doesn’t love a bit of inspired baking.
I used a BBC Good Food recipe as they always work so well. I’ll leave that here
I modified this recipe to create these Malteaser filled beauties.
In addition to the ingredients you’ll need:
Just mix these into the chocolate stated in the recipe, melt them together to make them extra special. Add the Malteaser buttons to the melted chocolate mix too but, keep some as decoration.
These went down a treat at the Macmillan Coffee mornings that I attended.
Happy baking!
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
Let me start by saying HAPPY NEW YEAR! ITS OFFICIALLY 2018, CRAZY!
I hope that you guys had a great Christmas. I love watching and reading what people got for Christmas so I thought that I should share with you what I received.
This isn’t meant to be me bragging about what I got, I just thought that it would be fun to do!
So, lets take a look…
This is a cook book with lots of super easy and yummy ideas. I love the idea that there are only five ingredients for each recipe, it really puts me off when there is a massive list of ingredients, ain’t nobody got time for that!
I also received the illustrated version of J K Rowling’s Fantastic beasts and where to find them. The pictures are beautiful and this book works so well with pictures, perfect! ⚡️
I was very lucky this year with my make up haul. My lovely hubby bought me Tanya Burrs ‘Beauty and the feast’ make up box and it is AWESOME. It is full of great products from palettes for the eyes and face, highlighter, lipsticks and lipglosses. My friend Demi works for Dior and gave me some cool samples to try out as well as a lovely pinky NYX lipstick. I also got another NYX lipstick this one is a liquid lipstick in the shade ‘Istanbul’.
I was very lucky to also receive the Zoella pamper box set. You get a brilliant selection of products in there, perfect for a pamper. I love the Snowella scent, its really fresh. I especially like the scent in the hand cream.
In the box you get…
The box is really lovely too, perfect for storage once you’ve used the products.
The Body Shop shower gel. I really love these body shop shower gels, the seasonal scents are lovely. I really enjoyed the pumpkin and sweet vanilla scent in Autumn and in Winter they have released this one, Frosted berries. It smells so fruity and delicious.
LUSH is one of my favourite shops and I LOVE their bath bombs. This year I got a few different things from LUSH that I havn’t had before and a few that I have.
My sister got me my favourite LUSH product off all time, ‘The Comfort.er’ bubble bar. A super fruity scent that creates the most awesome bubbles
I also got the Butterbear bath bomb which is lovely and soft on your skin, with cocoa butter.
My hubby got me one of LUSH’S new body sprays, the one he got me is called ‘Twilight’ This is supposed to help you sleep and the predominant fragrance is Lavender, it smells so soothing and makes you feel relaxed and cosy. I spray this before bed and use alongside ‘Sleepy’ the body lotion.
In the colourful set above, the ‘Intergalactic’ bath set, you get the ‘Thundersnow’ bath bomb, The ‘Shoot for the stars’ bath bomb and the ‘Intergalactic’ bath bomb. I can’t wait to try these out!
I also received some vouchers. A Primark Voucher, my favourite shop! I’m looking forward to spending that! Me and the hubby also got a Nando’s voucher, we cant wait to go on a date night and use that too, we love a cheeky Nando’s.
My father In law (knowing the avid Harry Potter fan that I am) got me two tickets to the Harry Potter book night at our local museum. Me and my sister tried to get tickets for this event last year but it sold out! We can’t wait to go, the place is decorated, everyone dresses up and you have activities, food, Harry Potter themed cocktails and so on. Its going to be so much fun!
Is it even Christmas if you don’t ett a Terry’s chocolate orange!?!? These are my ultimate fave, a Christmas must have and a great stocking filler too. Mine didn’t make it past Christmas day haha.
Any suggestions would be greatly welcome guys!
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
Its day two of Blogmas and its an advent update. I have two advent calenders this year, a chocolate one (Cadburys of course!)
…and a beauty advent, Tanya Burr’s ‘Tanya’s treats’ beauty calendar.
Tanya’s beauty advent calendar is 12 days of Christmas so every other day my Blogmas post will focus on what I have got inside the calendar.
I love having a beauty advent and I wasn’t able to get my hands on Tanya’s last year so I was really pleased to get one, I love her beauty range.
The calendar is really nice, I love the rose gold and shiny burgundy colour scheme and cute sweet shop scene.
Lets take a look at day one!
Behind window number one was a lovely red nail polish. I love the packaging of her nail varnishes, the large gold top and gold writing look really sleek.
The colour is ‘Festive Red’ and is a beautiful and bold Christmas red. This is perfect for the festive season.
(Apologies for the state of my nails!!)
I cant wait to open the next door on Sunday!
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
As you’ll know if you’ve read day blog before I do Slimming World so I thought I would share with you some of my favourite low syn snacks.
I know the ‘syns’ of things won’t apply to someone who isn’t following Slimming World but these are handy to know if you are and also if you want a snack that will keep you on track when you are trying to be good, and I know lots of people look to start the new year well.
Its all about balance at the end of the day, I know if I try and stop myself eating something I’ll only want it more.
Let’s go…
These are a low syn alternative to a full sized digestive with the same great taste. These are only 1.5 syns each instead of 4 for a normal choc digestive. I grabbed these in milk chocolate and dark chocolate form.
You can also buy individual packs of digestives in the milk and dark chocolate variety that only have two digestives in them. These are good if you want a full sized biscuit without the temptation of a full pack.
Aldi do loads of great low syn crisps but this week I’ve been loving quavers. These multi pack bags are only 4.5 syns which is fab compared to the standard bags of Walkers crisps. These multi pack bags of sweet & salty popcorn are only 2.5 syns, amazing! I’ve really got into sweet & salty popcorn at the mo so these are great to grab for a yummy snack or to take to the cinema.
These rice cake bars are also from Aldi and are only 4.5 syns. These are a great sweet treat as they are covered in orange flavoured dark chocolate, So yummy! They also come in plain chocolate too.
Something else to satisfy a chocolate craving is a good old Freddo bar. A nice little bar of Cadbury Chocolate you can quickly grab. I have to be honest, they aren’t as big as I remember but I was smaller then too! Ooh almost forgot to mention, these are 5 syns each.
These granola bites are so yummy to have with a cup of coffee and taste so sweet and oaty. Each ‘bite’ is 1 syn. These are again from Aldi.
The last few snacks I thought I’d include are the Pink N Whites marshmallow/wafer sandwiches. These are only 2 syns each.
Kallo choco-coconut rice cakes are only 3.5 syns per pack and you get 4 mini chocolate and coconut covered rice cakes in each pack. Yes these are aimed at kids but I dont care! Why should kids get all the good treats aye!! These are also great to just grab quickly or for your packed lunch.
As you can tell I have a definite sweet tooth but these are just so good to keep you on track if your trying to be good and are super yummy too.
I hope you’ve found this handy 👍
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
On Saturday me and the girls decided to go out for dinner & drinks! We haven’t done this in ages.
We chose the new resturant ‘Cosy Club’ in the newly refurbished Buttermarket shopping centre and it didn’t disappoint.
Now first things first, cocktails! 🍹🍸 They had some really yummy ones to choose from, I had 2 different ones..
1. Solero
Inspired by ice cream and the Spanish sun. Smirnogf vanilla vodka and passover over crushed ice with orange, fresh passionfruit and lime juice then finished with cream. Zesty & refreshing. £7.50
2. Cosy Swizzle
Whisking you away to the carribbean with a blend of aged Bermudan and Dominican rums, pineapple juice, fresh passionfruit and a dash of pomegranate liqueur. Grass skirt optional. £7.50
These were so yummy, especially the Cosy Swizzle 😋
The food was also AMAZING.
I went for the Mac N Cheese and it was hands down the best I have ever had 👐 I added chorizo into mine for a little extra and that was so good too, I would defiantly recommend adding the chorizo unless of course your veggie.
I also got a side of beer battered onion rings, I can never resist them! These were yummy too although I had to share them as I was so full!!
For dessert I had the chocolate pot. It has raspberry coulis on top then underneath is a mix between a chocolate mousse and a ganache. It was really rich but very nice and on the side you got a melt in the mouth shortbread biscuit! Always a winner.
The decor in the resturant was really cool, lots to look at and it worked so well altogether.
I loved the carved wood panelling on the walls behind our table & the cute vintage China plates that the candles sat on.
Even the napkins were pretty ⚘
Here are some pics of us 🙆
We had a lovely time, we all loved our food and came out stuffed.
Next stop, more drinks. We went on to Vodka Revolution as it was still quite early so it’s a bit nicer in there to have some chilled out cocktails.
This is the cocktail that I had in Revs, ‘Fizzy Fruit Salad’. It came in this cute metal milk bottle 👌
After the first round of cocktails we went onto our usual drinks to get the night going, and that meant only one thing… SHOTS!
Once we had all had a little more to drink and the atmosphere (& dance floor) had picked up a bit, we had a dance 💃
& my lovely hubby kindly picked us up from town and drove us home 😁
It was such a fun night 🙄 We definatly need to do it more often.
Until next time,
Roseanne 🙂
Roseanne Byford 