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Monthly Archives: March 2016

Happy Birthday Bella!

18 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by alifrankle in Baking blog, German Shepherd, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

baking, bella, birthday, birthday cake, cake, germanshepherd, gsd, puppy, recipe

Bella is 1! I can’t believe it! In celebration I decided to bake her a dog friendly birthday cake, I have shared the recipe below. I’m really proud of how far she has come along in the last year, her behaviour has improved massively and she has such a great personality. She actually manages to make me laugh on a daily basis; I can no longer picture life without her in it. (Taking it over)

So, for the cake you will need the below:

1 egg

65g peanut butter

60ml vegetable oil

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

80g honey

135g grated carrots

120g wholemeal flour

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

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First step set the oven to 180°C and grease a cake tin

Second step, mix the egg, peanut butter, oil, vanilla and honey together in a bowl

 

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Next, add the grated carrot and mix well.

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Then sift the flour with the bicarbonate of soda into the bowl and fold into the mixture. I found that the wholemeal flour didn’t sift very well; I had to use a spoon to get it through the sieve.

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Lastly spoon into the tin and bake in the oven for 40 minutes.

This is the first time I have made a cake like this, and I wasn’t sure it was quite done after 40 minutes, but I think it was. My cake tin was a bit too big for this mix, so when it had cooled down I cut it into the shape of a bone.

I gave Bella a little taste of the off-cuts and she seemed to enjoy it. To be honest, she will eat pretty much anything. The only thing I’ve found that she won’t eat is lettuce. There is a little video on my YouTube channel of it if you want to check that out.

Here is the finished cake 🙂

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If you make this please comment and let me know if your dog likes it. I’ll be spoiling Bella on her birthday with some new toys, a bone to eat and of course a little bit of cake.

One more of Bella, watching me patiently making the cake and using her biscuits as decoration.

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She is so cute!

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Ali xx

 

Rimmel Super Gel review

16 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by alifrankle in Uncategorized

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Hi, this is my first review of a product on my blog, here goes… I have decided to review the new Rimmel London Super Gel nail varnish. I picked to review this particular nail varnish for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because it’s new, and I am a sucker for anything new or that I haven’t tried before. This counts with pretty much everything, not just beauty products. New chocolate bars, new bread, new shoes, new TV programmes, just anything new, I want to try it.

Secondly, I picked this nail varnish because it is a gel nail varnish that can be used and applied without a lamp. Sounds good to me!

So, I applied the nail varnish, two coats of the nail varnish followed by two coats of the top coat as directed on the bottles. So far so good, it went on easily, dried quite quickly, and even after all four coats it didn’t feel any different to when I would wear my usual nail varnish. I even managed not to smudge it.

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Usually, nail varnish lasts a day or two max on my finger nails. This is mostly my fault, I carry on as normal; cleaning the kitchen, bathroom etc. without gloves. I know this is a big no, no, I do have gloves, I just think I’ll only wipe the side down, it will take me a minute, it will be a faff to put on gloves. But my hands and nails are paying the price.

Anyway, this nail varnish managed to survive for a whole week and a little more! In my opinion, that is fantastic. Ok, so it didn’t quite make the “up to 14 days” as promised on the bottle, but I’m sure it would have lasted so much longer if I hadn’t cleaned anything or done any washing up. BUT I am genuinely impressed. I will be investing in a further colour to try out. I resisted until I had seen what one was like.

Photo of what my nails looked like after one week; not the best, but I promise this is what they usually look like after 2 days.

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However, I must add, I applied this to my toe nails at the same time, I think it would last a year on them (if they didn’t grow of course). It really is sturdy stuff. Go and give it a go.

I hope you like my first review, let me know if there are any other products I should try out, I am happy to use and test new products.

Ali xx

 

 

Baking bread

10 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by alifrankle in Baking blog, Uncategorized

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Tags

baking, blog, bread, breadmaker, delicious, frenchbread, recipe, russell hobbs

I love bread. I love the smell of fresh bread, I love the smell of bread being baked, and I love eating bread. I love bread so much, that when on holiday a few years ago I made my family stop at every bakery we saw just to go inside to look at and smell the bread. I was the designated driver for the holiday, so they didn’t really have much choice! So that’s why I thought I’d write a blog about baking some bread.

Anyway, due to my love of bread, for Christmas my boyfriend bought me a bread maker. Amazing. I have made bread from scratch a few times, but this bread maker just makes it so, so much easier, it’s wonderful.

I thought I would share with you one of my bread making sessions, today I chose to make a French bread style loaf. Now, normally you would expect this to be in the form of a baguette, but this is just a regular loaf shaped bread. Still tastes great though.

For this, I used my Russell Hobbs breadmaker. It comes with a leaflet that gives you recipes for different types of bread, I have made a few of them before, but this is my first time trying the French bread recipe.

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You will need:

300g strong white bread flour

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of dried yeast

200g of water at room temperature. (The water is measured in grams in the recipe book so I just weighed it on my scales as if it was a dry ingredient.)

 

I was obviously making this in my bread maker, so you put all of the ingredients inside the loaf tin ready to be mixed. However, you must add the ingredients in a certain order, otherwise the yeast may activate too early or not activate at all and then disaster will strike. The recipe book advises that the wet ingredients are added first, so water on the bottom. Then dry, so I added the salt before the flour (salt and yeast need to be kept well away from each other). I added the yeast last, so there was a flour barrier between it and the salt.

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That is basically all the hard work done. The rest is up to the brilliant machine! You just pop the loaf tin into the machine, select the programme you require and off it goes. It mixes, kneads, proves and bakes the bread without you having to do anything else. It then beeps at you to tell you it’s ready. Can you tell I’m a little bit in love with it?!

The French bread recipe takes 3 hours and 40 minutes from when you start the machine to when it’s baked. There is also an option to set the machine to come on at a certain time, I haven’t tried it yet, but I want to set it to be ready for breakfast. Imagine waking up to a house smelling of fresh bread that you can literally go downstairs and start eating! Heaven.

This is about 10 minutes after I started the machine, all mixed together ready to start proving.

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This is with about an hour to go, so just about to start baking I think.

 

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The finished loaf! I was practically drooling as I took this photo, I had a slice as soon as I’d taken it. Yummmmmmmmmmmmm!

 

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For any of you who like bread as much as me, I hope this has inspired you to get baking. I do see it as a bit of a cheat, but honestly, it’s so good, you need to try it.

Ali xx

 

 

Feb faves

03 Thursday Mar 2016

Posted by alifrankle in Beauty blog, German Shepherd, Uncategorized

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Tags

bbloggers, beauty, benefit, blog, blusher, candle, favourites, garnier, germanshepherd, hand cream, kate moss, lipstick, puppy, rimmel, salt spray, schwarzkopf, ultimate blends

I see a lot of monthly favourite blogs and vlogs so thought I’d give it a go myself. I did actually film a video of this, but haven’t put it up yet, not sure if I will or not… such a tease ha.

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I of course had to start my February favourites with the Garnier Ultimate Blends Shampoo, The delicate soother – 1, because it genuinely is the shampoo I’ve been using throughout February, and has become my favourite, and 2, because I really like it! (See my previous blog post :))

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Next up, is my Blogger box! I won this in a competition (see my first blog post) and so I thought it deserved a mention. This arrived with some really helpful blogging items; a tripod for your phone, fairy lights, a candle, some photo props, and of course the shampoo, conditioner & heat protector. It all came nestled neatly inside the box, with gold tissue paper, very exciting! I am keeping the box as I’m sure it will come in handy, it’s sturdy too.

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This Garnier Miracle Wake Up Cream, was a little freebie from L’Oréal from the photo shoot. I have been using the same day cream/ moisturiser for a couple of years now so I thought I’d give this one a go. I firstly really enjoy the fact that it’s pink. Since using it, I’ve found my skin has been a lot softer and has helped with the general eye-bagginess that I have been getting.

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I recently had my hair cut from quite long, to just above my shoulder, and as I had a new hair length, I decided to try a new style too, so went on the hunt for some salt spray. I didn’t have to hunt very far as the shops are full of them, I chose the Schwarzkopf beach matt MERMAID look texturizing salt spray. I may have been slightly persuaded by the mermaid look part of the description…but it basically is great. You just spray onto wet hair, dry it, and then style how you want. I’ve found whatever style you want to do, it helps keep it that way, I’ve curled it, made it wavy, straightened it, gone outside with it half dry in the wind (as suggested on the bottle) and it works all ways.

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This is the lovely candle that came in the bloggers box, it’s called Green Tea & Fig and it’s by Fashion Fiend. I haven’t heard of this make of candle before, but I’m definitely going to seek some more out. It smells incredible. I mean, even when it’s not lit, you can still smell it when you walk into the room, which is pretty good for an unlit candle. Another great thing about this candle is that it’s made with natural oils and soy wax so there are no horrible fumes emitted when lit.

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This Garnier Hand Intensive 7 Days smoothing hand cream, was another little freebie from L’Oréal (thank you) and I do mean thank you, I have been using this SO much. I wash my hands countless times throughout the day due to Bella being so blimmin’ messy, and slobbery. Also, due to cleaning and other general hand washing reasons. So I have dry hands and am forever applying hand cream. However, this is brilliant. I have been using it for over 7 days now and I don’t have horrible dry hands anymore, yay!

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Three little make-up bits I’ve been loving this month are;

1 – Rimmel Lasting Finish 25 hour foundation. I find this gives excellent coverage and does last a long time. I haven’t actually tested to see if it lasts the full 25 hours as I remove my make-up at night.

2 – Collection Lasting Perfection concealer. This really does its job, it covers up my dark circles really well and I’ve actually worn this out without any foundation on top, so definitely a winner for me.

3 – The Benefit Rockateur blusher mini. For Christmas I received the Benefit selection box (not sure of its official name as I got rid of the box, kept the minis obv) and this blusher was one of the minis. I have been using it ever since, and considering it is a mini, I didn’t think it would last long, but it looks almost untouched. I really love the peachy pink colour and again, this really lasts long. I wear blusher, pretty much every single day as being so pale I feel I need something to brighten up my face or everyone, including me, thinks I look ill. This one works a treat and goes well with my skin tone.

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The photo made me laugh, I did actually take a more professional one, but had to use this one as it shows just how nosey (see what I did there?) Bella is. Excuse the foot. I was trying to take a photo of my lipsticks to add to this blog and she couldn’t help herself and stuck her nose in too! Bless her.

Anyway, these are the Rimmel Kate Moss lipsticks in 38 and 16. Now, lipstick is a new edition to my life and I’ve got to say why didn’t anyone make me try it before?!?!?!?! I’ve always, always, always worn Vaseline, and on occasion lip gloss, but lipstick is fantastic. I still wear Vaseline all the time, but lipstick on top of Vaseline, is so much better than lip gloss. Lip gloss is so sticky and, your hair gets stuck to it, and it doesn’t last very long and yeah, lipstick is definitely the way forward. It lasts way longer, and isn’t sticky! What’s not to love? As you can see by the colours that I picked, they aren’t very daring, but to be honest I got a little over-whelmed from the ginormous range of lipsticks available that I chose two pinky, nudey colours to start with. I will be buying more to try out in March, so make sure you check out my March favourites too!

Ali xx

PS follow me on Instagram and Twitter using @alifrankle 🙂

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