Christmas and My Amazing Birthday

So it is now January, I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and I wish you all an awesome 2012! 

First of all I would like to say that I did actually solve the advent calendar problem, if I acted like a small child trying to open it rather then ripping into it, like come sort of crazed being, then I did actually have to break the tin foil. I just had to remember to be a child when opening it. That probably made absolutely no sense what so ever... but it works. 

You may or may not know that it was my 18th birthday on the 22nd and a couple of my friends, Dan, Amy and Maddy (mainly Dan), had been going on about my birthday surprise. Now I literally thought they were going to decorate the table at the meal or something but oh no... they can do SO much better than that!  At some point in the afternoon around 3pm I think, I was just in my room with my sister and I was checking out my new laptop, which by the way is gorgeous, and I realised I hadn't had lunch yet. I was literally just getting up to go and make some toast when I received a call from a very creppy Maddy, who had made it an unknown call to add to the creepyness, telling me that a package had been left outside my house and I was to get it, read the instructions and leave the house in approximately 5 minutes with Ella. 

Maddy then hung up before I could even say anything, but as you can imagine I was a little confused and so my facial expression was a mixture of :S and :O 

Anyway, I went to the door and there was a HUGE brown envelope (they had stuck lots of big ones together) with a little white envelope stuck to it with 'Instuctions' written on. Me being me was to excited and opened the big envelope first to find a Stephopoly (Steph monopoly) board. It was awesome, it had road names round my area and so I was confused what I had to do. Zoe, my sister, told me that I should probably have opened the instructions first, so I did that and basically I had to leave the house and follow the board round. I left the house with Ella and Zoe and started to walk down the road. My board told me to look out for a fellow blonde and the first thing I saw was a blonde haired girl at the bottom of the road and I immediately knew it was Katie. As we got closer I could see she was holding a balloon, something Ella had not seen before, and so there was a lot of barking and dragging and eventually Zoe ended up taking her home - too much excitement! 

She gave me a 'cheeky chance card' telling me to swap an item of clothing with her, Katie gave me a scarf and I forgot to even give her anything - fail. I then walked down an alley way to find pictures up of me on the fences and my friend Amy at the other end, who's chance card told me to pole dance on the next lamp post. I thought they were filming me so I only swung round it... soz. There was also something about giving someone a piggy back but I don't know where that fitted in. We then walked on to where the board told us and found my friend Dani, and later on Keely and then finally Tim. All had chance cards but I did not fancy begging the person on my left to squeeze my bum - Daniel you disturbed little boy. 

The board then led me back down my road and to my house, where I found a banner and balloons on the door and Happy Birthday music coming from my bedroom. I entered the room to find it decorated with more balloons and banners and Dan, Amy and Maddy having a little party in my room. We then hugged it out, because we are awesome like that and then they gave me lots of lovely cards and presents. 

Later on we went to Zizzi for my birthday meal, where we wore pirate party hats and threw table confetti at each other. Mature adults we are. At one point they all passed party poppers around the table without me knowing and then all at once popped them over me! After the meal the restaurant staff dimmed the lights and they all sang happy birthday to me while they brought out a cake Dan and Amy had made. Unfortunately I laughed and blew the candle out early... oops :( never mind. I was so stuffed from my meal I could not even have a small slice of cake, I had to leave it until the next day and it was DELICIOUS!!! 

After the meal we went into a pub and Imy bought me my first legal drink, a cider. And it was very nice too! After staying a while in the pub we went back to mine and then after a while everyone but Dani was gone and she traditionally always sleeps over for my birthday. 

It was, to say the least, the BEST birthday EVER! And I would just like to say a MAHOOSIVE, GIGANTIC thank you to the lovely Dan, Amy, Maddy, Imy, Dani, Amy, Katie, Keely and Tim for making it so awesome!! I do love you guys rather a lot!!! Also a huge thank you to all my family that came round in the morning to give me cards and presents, and well done all of those from keeping the secret - I had no idea what so ever!! 

Online Shopping

The other day I logged on to facebook to find that I have been invited to Maddy's 18th birthday party, in which she clearly specified that dresses and suits must be worn. I obviously accepted but the thought of having to actually wear a dress kills me! Yes, I have worn them before at recent weddings etc but that was hard enough to find a dress that I actually liked and looked nice in. 

Even though this party is a month away, I thought it would be best to go and do a bit of online shopping to see if there was anything I liked the look of and I noticed a trend throughout the websites I looked at - the clothes models. They were all the 'perfect' size and therefore the pictures of the models in clothes are completely useless for anyone who is not the 'perfect' size as they have less of an idea whether the clothing would look any good on a slightly bigger person. Now I won't deny that I am not the 'perfect' size and I found it incredibly annoying because it means that I can't exactly shop online, as I am likely to be sending everything I buy back because the models give me no idea what so ever how it would look on a person a different size to the models.

I have no idea whether I am the only person that this annoys but it would be nice if there were a couple of different models for each bit of clothing, or at least a range of models used throughout the site, so that it would give people of different sizes a better idea of how it might look. But I suppose until they change I will go in store or deal with having to send everything back when it doesn't fit me... yeah I'll shop in store thanks! 

A Lovely Day

Today has been a really lovely day, a great day to start of the holidays! The only bad part of my day was being woken up at 9:30am by banging noises from next door,  must be doing some building work or something.

However, that did mean that I could play Sims 3 before I went out at all, which was good because I succeeded in being able to have a ghost sim baby. I names him Colin... because my mum suggested it and I thought it was funny. And it reminded me of Colin the banana. Here he is. Taadaa...

Once my mum and sister got up we decided to go on a bike ride, so we had lunch and got ready to go out. While mum was eating lunch me and Zoe went into the bike shed, where we had to socialize with the spiders (as Zoe says) to get all the bikes out.

We stopped off for a nice ice cream and sat behind a wall to avoid the wind and then we set off back home (stopping for a bag of candy floss and a sugar dummy to take home), just to satisfy our inner children. The ride on the way there was more difficult than the way back as we had the wind blowing in our faces so it was quite cold and stopping us riding as easily.Mum reckons we must have done about 10 or so miles so it wasn't very long at all, we usually do 18 or 20 or something like that.

After socializing with spiders again we went inside and Zoe ate her sugar dummy, while I shared my candy floss with mum. It was so nice! I know it's only sugar and flavours and colours but it tastes so nice! After that I had about an hour before I had to go and get on a bus to go out with my friend for a belated birthday meal for Tim's birthday.

On the way there I saw Annie on the bus, so it was nice to have a bit of company, otherwise I would have been bored out of my brain! Annie was invited to the meal but couldn't come so she gave me the remainder of her packet of chocolate raisins to give to Tim, which I did and he gave them to Imy to keep hold of and then they were forgotten about... so Imy got them.

I got in to town 30 minutes before we were going to meet as the bus was fairly early so I sat at the bus station and waited for Tim to get off his bus, then we went to meet Imy, Julian and Ben in town. The meal was really nice, especially my ice cream hazalnut bombe for dessert. Yum!! It was also funny because Imogen fancied the waiter and kept trying to make conversation and twiddling her hair...we kept reminding her she has Gary...

Me and Zoe were playing with bubbles earlier and I nearly put the bubble stick in my mouth for some reason... I think I'm tired! It was really funny and at least I didn't actually put it in my mouth! That would be gross... bubbles don't taste good!

Happy Birthday Timotei

Today it is one of my best friend's birthday (Tim) and he asked whether he could have a birthday blog... and clearly, I said yes because I am nice like that. 

Tim has been counting down to his birthday for ages now on Facebook and now the day that he was waiting for is finally here so HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIM!! 

Happy birthday to you, 

Happy birthday to you,

Haaaaaapppy birthday dear Timoteeeiii,

Happy birthday to yoooooouuuu!!!

Like I did for Amy's birthday, I brought out my creative side and wrote a little poem  about birthdays and driving etc to put in his card, just for fun. I was pretty proud of myself, even though it was only small but still. And I also made him a cake, of course. He asked for a 'special' cake, by which he meant that he wanted something other than my traditional button cake that I make so instead I offered him an idea and he liked it so here it is...

It was the first time I had used fondant icing so I think it turned out pretty well to be honest. Although, how ever much red food colour I put into the fondant it WOULD NOT turn red, so I had to settle for pink... or else it would be more food colouring that fondant. I'm not too sure what made me think of doing a French flag but the reason why is says Jean Claude Pierre White is because that is Tim's French alter ego.

Anyway, Happy Birthday Tim! Enjoy the rest of your day!!

Happy Birthday!

To most people today is just like any other day, nothing special, nothing too important, normal. But according to my friend Amy it is the most important day ever. Don't know why that is, it must have slipped my mind! 

...

...

...

Nope, I still don't have clue.. OH I know, it's her birthday! 

Happy birthday Amy!! Let's have a little sing song... 

Happy birthday to you, 

You live in a Zoo, 

You look like a monkey, 

Aaaaand you smell like one, too! 

Yep, that song was absolutely perfect for her, right Amy?

For Amy's present I brought out my creative side and made a pretty damn awesome card (which I am quite proud of) I also made a story board of the story of Dan and Colin, because it is an awesome story. And finally, I am pretty proud of my photo-shopping skills - I think Amy will agree that it is amazing! She seemed pretty happy when I gave it to her and it gave her laugh so I would say I have succeeded.

Just like Amy had near my birthday, I have had a running countdown from her for AT LEAST 3 weeks just to let me know how many days it was until her birthday. I can't remember when, but I promised Amy that I would write her a birthday blog (hence why I am writing this) because she always reads my blogs. I hope you enjoyed the blog Amy and enjoy the rest of your day!!

"I'm Just Cheese"

Many of my friends will know that I am a cheese string fan as I have one in my lunch box every day, but they say that I don't eat them properly because usually I just eat in the same way you would eat a sausage or a banana rather than peeling bits off! Occasionally I do peel but most of the time I just can be bothered with doing all that, even though it doesn't really require much effort. So I suppose they are right, so I will try and eat them properly as much as possible - you heard it here first :)

My friend, Lauren, asked me today if I had seen the cheese string spaghetti advert and yes, I had and then she said "yeah, when I dry my hair and don't straighten it... I look like that!" Obviously that made me laugh because that would be really funny if she literally had a giant afro on her head and so I asked if she dries her hair and then says "I'm just cheese". I can just imagine that, it would be so funny!

Anyway, on to my main reason for the blog - cheesestring top trumps! Recently cheese string have been putting 6 cards in each pack of cheese string so you can collect all 30 of them. (The cards are of Mr Strings in different countries, such as Australia, Kenya, Japan etc.) Well, I have 25 and in addition to that I have got 16 double/triples of some of the cards and I also gave 4 of them away to my friend, Amy, today. I'm a little disappointed as I have noticed that cheese string have STOPPED putting the cards in their packs of cheese string and I am thinking 'excuse me, I am 5 short. And where the hell if the UK in these cards?' I mean how dare they stop, I was getting all excited about maybe being able to complete my pack of cards but... NO... my dreams have been shattered - how depressing!

I am hoping that they might bring them back a some point or something because I would quite like those last 5 cards to add to my collection!

P.s. Amy has been reminding me that is is 5 days until her birthday ALL DAY so she'll be happy if I mention it - not like it's important or anything. ;)

It's my Birthday Eve!

It is my birthday tomorrow :) and I am rather excited!! I have a friend coming over and I also asked my mum to make me a pass the parcel... I'm totally not turning 17 tomorrow.......

Now, as much as I love the snow it has rather cocked up my plans for tomorrow... well a little but I think I will live!

To start off with my brother had rather nicely booked me my first driving lesson on my birthday but due to the snow it has had to be cancelled... for obvious reasons. But yes, I can live with that as it's not the end of the world!

Secondly, I was planning to have 3 of my friends over for a sleepover but now only 1 can come... just like last year! But really the snow is not to blame as it is the ice which is the problem and I can totally sympathise with my friend's mum not wanting to drive in the snow! But really the second friend that is now not coming has nothing to do with the snow!
Never the less, I will have a good time and I will see them another time :)
I would invite other people instead but I don't want them to feel like they are second best if you know what I mean even though I would have liked these people to come in the first place but we simply don't have the room!

Lastly, I would just like to add that the ICE made me fall flat on my bum the other day when I was watching down my hill... not cool! Like I said at the time to my sister... if it is possible to break your bum, I think I did! Although I clearly didn't as I quickly forgot about it after a while as it stopped hurting!

Regardless to the snow now ruining a few of my plans I did have a great time sledging the other day... however I was a little bit pissed off when my BRAND NEW sledge which cost £20 (expensive!!!) got a hole in the bottom of it after just 3 goes down the slope! But the be fair it was probably when I couldn't stop and then went off the end of the slope and landed the other side of a small drop on some snow covered stones!
But I think I will try and fix the sledge as I am not going to go out and buy another one... and I can always use the other one that I went and bought too. Although my sister might moan... but I don't care haha!

But I am afraid there was no snowman/woman/animal as I was too cold after sledging to go outside! So that will have to wait until next time :)

I don't think I am the only one who is a little bit annoyed that the snow didn't come a week later that it did because then we would have had a white Christmas... shame :( I would have been so happy, but then again it may have stopped me seeing my Dad which would have sucked!

Now I'm not sure where we got our association of snow with Christmas because it rarely ever snows at Christmas in the UK... but perhaps its just an association with Winter or Santa or something like that!

My top 5 favourite things about Christmas:

1. The Food - Got to be THE BEST thing about Christmas! There is always lots of great food like turkey, pigs in blankets, mince pies, Christmas pudding. And towards the end of this week I shall be attempting a ginger bread house... hopefully that will go well :S

2. The TV - TV at Christmas time is always so good! There are loads of great films like Elf and Horton Hears a Who. And also Christmas specials of our favourite TV shows which are (usually) good!

3. The Christmas Tree - Whenever it is time to put the Christmas tree up it really does put me in the Christmasy mood! Always a good thing!

4. Family - So I admit this is an obvious and perhaps cheesy one, but what would Christmas be without family! This year I am at my house for Christmas morning and Christmas lunch (and I will persuade my family to play monopoly) and then in the afternoon I will be going off to my Dad's house which will be great too :)

5. The Music - This is a bit like the tree but whenever I hear a Christmas song it really puts me in the Christmasy mood and I can't resist a little sing along :)