Blogmas Day 15: The Office Night Out

I may have slipped up and missed three days of Blogmas. I really thought I'd be able to post every single day, but I wasn't feeling well at the weekend, and then I didn't plan anything in advance for yesterday. I'm back now though, and plan to try and blog each day until Christmas.

Last night, we had out office night out for Christmas. We had a lovely Italian meal to start with, before moving onto a couple of bars for some drinks.

I planned to take lots of photos and do a bigger blog update, but it turns out there's only a couple of pictures from the whole night.

Blogmas Day 11: Deck The Hauls Of Advent

This year, I decided to really get into advent by buying my first ever beauty advent calendar. There's so many out there to chose from, but I picked the Tanya Burr one because a) she's one of the people I watch most on YouTube and b) It was reduced from £25 to £15 which seemed like a pretty good deal.

I'm the biggest fan of false eyelashes, but I'm pretty impressed with everything else, especially the eye shadow and lip glosses.

I also may have finished opening it all before the 12th of December, but I really wanted to see what was behind door 12.

Blogmas Day 10: My Christmas Tree Is Up!!!

Today's blogmas post is going up a little bit later than I had planned. I've not got in the habit of writing posts in advance and I didn't get home from work until after 8pm.

My Christmas tree is finally up!! Since I don't have a car, I managed to find a decent tree in Argos with pretty cheap delivery, although they did show up at a completely different time than I had booked the delivery in at which always seems to be the case.

My decorations are a collection I've built up over the years. My brother bought me the Santa duck when he was in London last year, and my mum bought me all the owl decorations. My favourite ones are the little girl holding the newspaper which I picked up in Macy's NY when I was there a couple of years ago, and The Rescuers one I bought myself in London this year.

I'm trying to decorations for the rest of my flat, so I'll do some kind of Christmas flat tour post in the next few days.

Blogmas Day 6 - Vegan Christmas Sweets

This Christmas will only be my second since I started following a plant based diet, so I'm still getting used to not being able to eat my way through boxes of Celebrations and bags of chocolate coins in December. Luckily, there's lots of vegan friendly chocolate out there to stuff your face with this festive season, and I've picked out my top 5 for you to have a look at.

1. Booja Booja

I got a box of these as a present when I was leaving my old job, and they were some of the best truffles I've ever tasted. I'm not really a big fan of the ginger or expresso ones, but all the other ones are delicious, especially the champagne ones.

2. Hotel Chocolat 

Hotel Chocolat do a range of dark chocolates which are suitable for vegans, but this is one of the more exciting in the range. It's their chocolate & cranberry slab and it's only £3.95.

3. Moo Free Chocolate

Moo Free chocolate is probably the brand of vegan chocolate I eat the most, especially since there's a shop across from my work that sells it. They also make one of the only selection boxes I've come across.

4. Rudolph's Round Up

Round Ups are vegan wagon wheels that taste so much better than original wagon wheels. I only had one for the first time last month, but I managed to pick up a few at Vegfest Scotland today (I'll do a vegan haul in the next post) to last me through Christmas.

5. Caramel Choices

I got these in an Easter Egg this year, and they filled the void left behind the fact I can no longer eat a Cadbury's Caramel. Trust me, they taste just as good!

Blogmas Day 5 - My Christmas Wish List

Since it's day 5 of Blogmas, I thought it was about time I put together a Christmas Wish List. If you didn't already know, my birthday is two weeks after Christmas, so it's a bit of a birthday list too. To be honest, there's not anything that I really need, but I had a look online and picked a few things out that I wouldn't say no to receiving for Christmas or my birthday.

1. Unicorn Tears Gin

Gin is something that I'm still slowly getting into, and it taking a little longer than I thought it would, but I have a feeling this is a gin you can't not like the taste of.

2. Harry Potter books

I know I'm over a decade late to the party, but I'm become obsessed with the Harry Potter books in the last couple of months. I'm almost finished book number four, so I need to get started on the remaining books as soon as I can. 

3. 'Vegans For Real' Baseball Shirt

I've been meaning to pick up this shirt the last couple of times I've been in the Vegan Cross Shop in London, but I always get distracted by all the food they have. I only own one baseball shirt at the moment, so I feel like this would be a good addition to my wardrobe.

4. Unicorn Night Light

It's a UNICORN NIGHT LIGHT!! I don't even need to explain why this is on my list. And yes, I know my wish list as a bit of an theme going on.

5. Disney Vans

And finally, I thought I should pick something without a unicorn on it. I already have the Little Mermaid ones, but it's hard not want the Cheshire Cat ones too.

So that's my little Christmas Wish List. If you've not bought me a present yet, then feel free to pick something from the list above!

Blogmas Day 4: My Christmas Playlist

Welcome to Blogmas day 4!

For today's blog, I thought I would share my ultimate Christmas playlist.

If you didn't guess from the album cover above, one of my favourite Christmas records is The OC Chrismukkah album. If you haven't listened to it before and loved The OC as much as I did, then it's sort of a must-have album to get a copy of for Christmas.

My favourite song on the record is the Ron Sexsmith track below, and the rest of my playlist is made up some lesser known and really classic festive songs.

Ron Sexsmith - Maybe This Christmas

Mariah Carey - All I Want For Christmas Is You

She & Him - Little Saint Nick

Darlene Love - All Alone On Christmas

Elton John - Step Into Christmas

Aled Jones - Walking In The Air

Jimmy Eat World - Last Christmas

Shakin' Stevens - Merry Christmas Everyone

Julian Casablancas - I Wish It Was Christmas Today

Home Alone - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

Blogmas Day 1 & 2: Flu

It's that time of year again! I get to eat chocolate as soon as I wake up, and it's the start of blogmas. I follow lots of people who take part in both blogmas and vlogmas every December, but I've decided to challenge myself to actually take part this year.

Things got off to bit of a slow start since I've spent the past few days shaking off a horrible flu bug and generally feeling like blogging was the last thing in the world I wanted to do. So I thought I'd share of a photo of my advent calendar and let everyone know that normal blogmas will resume tomorow. I plan to spend the month blogging about how I'm celebrating Christmas in Edinburgh, and also sharing playlists, recipes and everything else you can think of to do with this festive time of year.

So I hope you enjoy checking back throughout December!

Sarah x

Christmas in London.

London was pretty much all about Covent Garden, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Harrods, Selfridges, Planet Hollywood, Five Guys, Camden, Cookies and Scream, and the London Aquarium. 

New York, New York

New York was AMAZING!! I've been before, but going back just before Christmas was completely different. It was also great to see Jenn since she's been travelling since the start of August. Plus, there's nothing like a trip to help you escape from reality for a week.

Day 1/2

I didn't arrive at my hotel until 11pm (that's 4am UK time) on Sunday night. So i pretty much just went to bed, but good old jet lag kicked in so i was awake a few hours later. Monday morning started with giant pancakes before i took my first trip to Macy's. Then i went to meet Jenn and David for food, cocktails, and a trip to Toys R Us. 

Day 3

The joy of snow wore off pretty quickly on Tuesday, and it wasn't helped by the wind and -2 degree temperature. Although it was kind of nice to feel like you've stepped inside a Home Alone movie. So we decided to go for pancakes, walked around Times Square, and then went to see the Rockefeller Center. And then at night, we took our first trip to the theatre to see Wicked!

Day 4

On Wednesday, we walked around eating cake batter ice cream while everyone stared at us like we were crazy. Then we took on a matinee performance of Phantom of the Opera, which was great apart from the slightly confusing ending. 

Day 5

Thursday was my favourite day of the entire trip. We took a walk up to The Met so we could pretend we were in Gossip Girl, and then spent the afternoon ice skating in Central Park.

Day 6
HI BROOKLYN!! We crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, drank the strongest drinks for $4 each, and then Jenn and David ended the night with a giant argument. I guess this is what happens we you drink lots on an empty stomach!

November Instagram!

1. I spent the first weekend in November up in Dundee with my best friend Cara, and we took on the Science Centre, Ryan Gosling and Nando's.
2. I discovered some vouchers for Pulp and ended up buying this t-shirt which some of my family seem to think describes some of my mood swings. Obviously IT DOES NOT!
3. A Christmas fair at Hopetoun House is officially the best way to bring in the start of the festive season.I took this photo in one of the gorgeous decorated halls.
4. My favourite Christmas tree is the world is inside Jenner's on Princes Street in Edinburgh. I always go and take a photo of it as soon as it goes up.
5. I've jumped on the green smoothie bandwagon this month! And for a first attempt, this one was really good.
6. The BBC version of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe will always be 100 times better than the films. I watch this on repeat as soon as it starts to get cold outside.
7. Yo Sushi have started serving chocolate banana sushi rolls. I had some with the family after my brother's hospital appointment. Trust me, they are AMAZING!
8. I started to replace my old breakfast of cinnamon buns with smoothies and healthy pancakes.
9. I spent last Saturday helping my mum at a Christmas fair at her work. I got to serve people tea and cakes, and then i came away with all these goodies for just £6.