Friday 23 January 2015

A BIT OF HOLIDAY BAKING

It's the last week of holidays before school goes back (ew), and so far I've done quite a bit of baking. Over the Christmas period, I made a whole lot home made ice-cream, I think enough cupcakes and icing to swim in, and used enough butter to give someone a heart attack. In January, I've tried vanilla macarons, which did taste pretty good, but were kind of burnt (and not exactly the most photogenic out of them all). I've gotten the shape right, I just needed to get the buttercream right and not burn them. The next ones I'm going to try are matcha green tea ones, and I'll definitely do a blogpost when I get around to making those! I also made some banana bread, because what else do you do with ripe bananas that are ripe beyond freezing and putting into a smoothie? Along with that, my family tried creme brûlée, which worked, except our blowtorch decided not to work. Amongst all these other sugary treats, I made what I like to call my babies, cream puffs.

I'd heard so much about how choux pastry is so hard to master, and that they can deflate and go wrong like a balloon that has a tiny hole in it. This recipe makes the thought of making choux pastry not as intimidating as I thought it was. On top of all of it, they taste delicious! They don't look exactly perfect, and they're pretty lopsided, but they're delicious, so that doesn't really matter does it? (Unless you're like Donna Hay).



I like to call them my homemade dream puffs, heheh ^-^ 

- Jess xo

Monday 12 January 2015

BEAUTIFUL SUNSETS AND A VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Hi All,
It was my birthday on the tenth, and let's just say that it wasn't my best day. I felt quite sick, and it just wasn't great. But on a happier note, I wrote up my full list of goals for 2015, and mentioned my major ones last post. One big one that I forgot to mention was to appreciate everything. Appreciate the smallest of things, not just the big things, as if I've learnt anything it's that we often take things for granted. We take our friends for granted, we take our family for granted, and you end up falling into a routine where you're so used to it, that once it's taken away, you realise how much they actually mean to you. I want to get more into photography this year, and since we do have a pretty nice DSLR camera just sitting around with it's battery uncharged most of the time, I figured I'd learn how to use it a bit. 

I was about to close the curtains tonight when I looked outside to see the sky streaked colours, the clouds a beautiful shade of scarlet, and the sky going from a light blue, to blue grey, to a candy orange and then pale yellow. It was one of those things I had to capture to appreciate before it was gone, because that's what sunsets do. They appear, and before you can blink they're gone, as if those beautiful streaks of red, orange and yellow didn't even exist.



















Rainbow streaked skies and amateur photography,

- Jess xo

Thursday 1 January 2015

HERE'S TO 2015

A new year, a new me. At least, that's what everybody else likes to say, or think.

2015; it sounds pretty daunting right? Especially for some people like me who will probably find themselves writing the date as 2013 at some point this year. I'm not really into the whole 'New Year, New Me' thing and 'New Years Resolutions' because honestly, if you think about it, going into 2015 is the same as going from the last day of August to the first day of September, or just from the 15th of May to the 16th of May. If you were to say that with a new year comes a new you, wouldn't it be the same as saying a new day comes a new you? Saying that it's a new year is just a way of drawing a line in time, or all that jazz about the earth orbiting the sun. I'm not even sure if any of that made any form of sense, but let's move on from that. 

New Year's Resolutions aren't exactly my thing, because I find that year after year I make resolutions which I convince myself I'm going to keep and keep them for the first two weeks; most of which have to do with working out. It's always 'only a little bit', but I had to face that there was absolutely no way that unless with some real hardcore dedication, I'd be able to do my 'workout' every day for 365 days. I would tell myself at the start 'that it's only fifteen minutes of my day, and that's the time I probably spend instagram stalking every day', but nope. I find it funny that despite the defintion of resolution; 'A firm decision to do or not do something' it's hard to keep that firm decision to do it. I just personally prefer goals. Although both being quite similar, I see resolutions as something that I tell myself I can do and eventually drop. Goals are something that you can see in the distance and continue working hard to achieve. Again, i have no idea if any that actually made any sense, but oh well. I thought that I'd list my goals for this year.


Jess' Goals for 2015

- Improve My Handwriting; Some people like to say that my handwriting is neat, but sometimes it's so messy that not even I can understand it. I went on instagram and took screenshots of handwriting that I like and put it in an album called 'handwriting goals' :P

- Work Harder; I am happy with my grades, and although they are above average (academically; I've given up on physical education -.-) but there's always room for improvement.

- Procrastinate Less; I procrastinate a hell of a lot, way more than I should. Last year I left way too many tests to study for the day before, thinking I could rely on my class knowledge and go on Twitter, YouTube or any other form of social media and ended up producing a mark where I could've gotten better. Procrastinating less is just goes hand in hand with the previous one.

- Be Nicer and Love More; because sometimes I find myself being not as nice as I should be, and not watching what comes out of my mouth. I also want to appreciate everything in my life including my family and friends, because sometimes I realise that I don't treasure them as much as I should. 

- Grow Closer to God; I don't know how many read my blog, and I doubt that there's many, but I am Christian, and I feel that sometimes I slack on my relationship with him (a lot more than I should) and I want to improve on my relationship with him.

- Not Be Afraid; sometimes I find that I'm afraid to try new things, to speak my mind, to do things in general in fear of being judged. I'm slowly learning, but I want to be less and less afraid to not care and worry what people think, to not hold back on new things and speaking my mind, because we only regret the chances that we didn't take. 

Despite what I said earlier about not believing in the whole 'New Year, New Me' thing, I do believe in the whole starting over. I know people like to see the new year as a blank page; a clean slate; that with a new year comes a new start. I believe in this outlook, but I prefer to believe that instead of with a new year comes a new start, that with every day comes a new start. A new year is just another 365 new starts to me. Here I'll leave you with two not very good photos of the sunset today, because I'm not very good at photography. 





I hope you all had a lovely and safe New Years, and here's to 2015. - Jess xo