A little about me...

My God Sister did a blog similar to this the other day, and I thought it was a fab idea for my readers to get to know me a bit more (if you really want to, that is). So I decided to do this "10-Day-Challenge", but in one blog. Enjoy! Let me know what you'd answer to these things, too. 

Well, here goes...

Ten random facts about myself:

• I don't like the wind when it's strong. 
• I have a deep love for fairy lights, lanterns and bandstands.
• I have always dreamed of going to Paris.
• I don't like it when I find a really gorgeous dress with a lovely pattern on, and then I realise it's one of those playsuit things. That disappoints me.
• I love calling people nice things, like "darling", "honey" and "poppet".
• The first thing I draw when I start doodling is always a heart.
• I taught myself how to play piano.
• I talk to myself all.the.time.
• I wear odd socks - I'm never caught wearing an even pair of them.
• I have a major sweet tooth. 

Nine things I do everyday:

• Text one of my best friends Kat. 
• Cuddle my cat. 
• Pray
• Sing a Taylor Swift, Demi Lovato, Big Time Rush or any other of my idols' song.
• Check my Twitter and Facebook as I'm eating breakfast or before I get up.
• Eat Peanut butter
• Drink tea out of my Piglet mug in the morning
• Play with my hair
• Fuss my dog

Eight things that annoy me:

• When people don't have good manners like please and thank you. Especially when you open a door for them and they just walk straight past... I'm like, YOU'RE WELCOME. 
• When people ask me why I'm a vegetarian and tell me that the animal's already dead, it doesn't feel pain, animals are meant to be eaten blah blah blah. I'm perfectly happy being veggie and I have no problem with anyone else eating meat, I just can't personally face eating it. 
• Barbie and how everyone wants to look like "her". 
• That nobody understands the illness I have (M.E/CFS). 
• When people say they hate celebrities and send them hate.
• People calling Demi Lovato fat, Big Time Rush lame or Taylor Swift a slut. 
• When the authors of movies or books make characters die. Especially when it's the main characters. It just seems so pointless to me.
• How time always goes so quickly when you're having fun, but so slowly when you're not.

Seven fears/phobias:

• Bees and wasps.
• Losing control.
• Tornadoes/hurricanes.
• Losing my family or close friends.
• Never recovering from my illness. 
• Never being able to dance again. 
• Sick/being sick.

Six songs I'm addicted to:
This one is really hard because I have about 300 songs I can't live without, but I'll condense them down to six...

• Dear John - Taylor Swift
• Give Your Heart a Break - Demi Lovato
• Fallin' For You - R5
• You Never Let Go - Matt Redman
• Not Yet - Jenn Bostic
• Stay Stay Stay - Taylor Swift 

Five things I can't live without:

• My family and friends
• My phone
• Dancing
• Music
• God

Four memories...
Oh gosh, where do I start with this one!? It's gonna take a while for me to think of just FOUR memories...

• Me and my two friends Kat and Becca were in Tesco once and this one old man came to the checkout in front of us with 25 boxes of cheerios and 30 cartons of milk. I will never forget how confused we were and how much we were laughing, thinking, "when is he going to eat all that to himself!?". Yeah. You had to be there. 
• My close family friends Rosie, Harriet and Yvonne, my mum and I were all camping in Cornwall and it was near a beach. Rosie, Harriet and I were playing in the sea and we came across some jellyfish. They were really still and didn't seem so scary but we were scared because we knew they could sting. Obviously we screamed and ran back to our mums, so they came over and laughed, telling us they were dead. So we were "daring" enough to touch them, and we buried them in the sand. 
• When I was younger we'd visit my grandma and grandpa in Scotland and they lived near a forest park. Sometimes we'd take a drive through one of the forest drives, and there was this song I was just obsessed with. It was "I wish I Knew How It Feels To Be Free" by the Lighthouse Family, and something about it just struck me. I made my grandparents listen to it over and over, and now every time I hear it, it reminds me of my lovely Grandma. 
• The first song I ever wrote was called "Punk Rocker". My brother had secretly listened to me playing it in my room on my mini guitar, and when I went through in to the kitchen I found him playing it to my own family - only he had changed it to "Prawn Cracker" and was making fun of my song! I had such a huge strop after that one. But in his defense, it was an awful song and it did sound like prawn cracker.

Three words I can't go a day without using:

• Wonderful
• Love
• Literally

Two things I wish I could do:

• Draw
• Teleport myself anywhere whenever I wanted

One person you can trust:

• My mum

So I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about me, and if you didn't well I'm sorry I bored you :( But let me know what you'd answer to all these questions! I love these challenge things. 

Lots of love, 
Ellie xxxx

PS: here's the song I was obsessed with from the "four memories" part. 

The Future

The future is one of those things that everyone has bittersweet feelings towards. It seems so daunting, so scary and so unpredictable; but then on the other hand it's exciting and empowering, because you can do whatever you want with it.

Most things that we aspire to do with our futures when we're young change by the time we turn 7, and then again when we're 10, then again when we're 13, and so on. But sometimes, there's that one dream that always seems to stick and even though it may be an unrealistic or very tricky dream to reach - you still have to dream it because without these dreams, we wouldn't have any motivation for the rubbish things in life.

      For example, when I'm doing Science homework or whatever and I really can't stand it and I just want to quit and say "You know what? Stuff it! I don't care if i fail my science GCSE!", I keep going, because without the two science GCSE's, I can't be a dancer. Don't ask me how that equates, but to get in to a college or school to do a dance A-level, you need 5 GCSE's. I'm only doing 5, so I need to pass all of them in order to train to be a choreographer.

The future is a beautiful place but only if you allow it to be. If you look at the future as a place filled with dreams-come-true and people you love, it can be a magical place. But if you look at it as a place filled with bills and money to earn and a boring life to live, it's a scary, daunting place. 
The future begins every single second. You're growing and changing every second. You're life moves on every second. So I think we should all do what we want and not wait for anything, because before we know it, we may have run out of time! 

We should all approach the future with an open and positive attitude, because if we do this we won't regret anything and we'll be happy with what we have. 

Until next time, 
Ellie x x x

Cheerio Cookies!

Hi everyone! Today, mum and I did some more baking (we bake a lot in this house). I thought I'd share with you the recipe I used to make some Cheerio Cookies! They are delicious and I hope you make them yourself. 

Ingredients:

• 100g Margarine
• 100g sugar
• 2 tablespoons golden syrup
• 175g self raising flour
• 30g Cheerios or any other cereal you like!

 Pre-heat your oven to 160 degrees Celcius/140 fan oven. 

Cream together the margarine, sugar and golden syrup until smooth. 

Add the self raising flour and mix in to the butter mixture. 

Combine the cereal with the cookie mix until fully mixed together.

Use a dessert spoon to put on to a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. 

And the finished product should look something like this. Decorate with some chocolate chips if you want, depending on personal taste. 

The cookies should be crispy on the outside and chewy in the middle. A tip on how to do this well is to take the trays out of the oven after around 10 minutes of baking and hit on the side of a work surface or on the oven shelf. This makes them even softer in the middle and improves the texture :)

Hope you like them! They are so easy to make and it's good to get everyone involved. The recipe makes around 20 cookies. Let me know what you think! 
xxxxx  

 

Not Me, Not Yet

This song showed up on my Twitter timeline the other day, and something just drew me to listen to it. It was a day I was struggling a lot; with missing someone special, my M.E and a few other things. It was one of those days where I just remember everything bad that's ever been said to me by all different people and I couldn't stop thinking about it.

The lyrics started settling in and I realised this song was perfect for me. 

"Go on and take your sweet time
It's just my heart you set aside
I've done everything I can
Done everything you've asked
Think I'll stand here and wait?
Think I'll fall, think I'll break?
Think I'll give up and forget?
Not me, not yet.

"Stop pretending, I don't care
Comparisons won't get me, they won't get me anywhere
We're all diamonds in the rough
It doesn't matter what you think, I'm good enough."

For those of you who know me personally and know my situation, past and present, you can probably see why this song is so relatable to me. It's a song about not letting people who disapprove of you get you down; its about fighting for your own happiness and your own goals no matter what people think or say or tell you how wrong it is. A lot of things have been said to me and a lot of things have happened to me and also those close to me, and so I think this song sums up what we all must think when things stand in the way of what we want, or sometimes even what we need - whether it be freedom from an argument, accomplishing a dream or just getting through a tough spot. 

I think this song is an inspirational and motivational one.

For when you just keep trying, you keep pushing and you keep doing what things/people ask of you, but it still doesn't seem good enough. For when people try to knock you down and obstacles get in your way.       

      It reminds me to just keep holding on and be faithful that God will sort things out one day. The people you need will come around, and the dreams you aspire to will eventually come true if you believe that you won't just stand there and wait; you won't fall and break; you won't give up and forget... not you, not yet.

Baking day...

My mum and I had no idea what we wanted to do this afternoon, until I suggested doing some baking! We made some fruity tea loaf, fairy cakes and I invented a recipe for some muesli bars. 
I only got pictures of the fairy cakes so I thought I'd post some piccies and also give a recipe for anyone who is thinking of making them.

So here they are before I iced them - all warm and fluffy and they smelled gorgeous; I just wanted to eat one there and then!

And here's them when they were finished! They look so colourful and delicious, we can barely stop ourselves from eating them all.

So here's the recipe... it's simple, quick and easy.

Ingredients:
4oz self raising flour
40z  caster sugar
4oz margarine or butter
2 medium eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
      For the icing:
Pack ready-to-roll icing
2oz icing sugar
1oz margarine
Water
Hundreds and thousands

1. Pre-heat the oven to 190 degrees (170 fan oven). 
2. Mix all the main ingredients together (an electric mixer is a lot quicker and easier!)
3. Line a baking tray with fairy cake paper cases and spoon about a dessert-spoon-ful in to each one. 
4. Put in the oven for about 15 minutes or until cooked through and golden brown.
5. Leave the cakes to cool. Roll the icing out to about 1/2cm thick and use a cutter the size of the top of your cakes. 
6. Mix the margarine and icing sugar together to form a butter icing and spread on to each cake. Then, take the cut out icing and place on top.
7. Use a pastry brush  to brush water over the top of each cake and then dip in to a plate of hundreds and thousands. Believe it or not, they will stick and stay there!

I love baking. I find it so therapeutic because you put all these random ingredients together, put it in the oven and it comes out as an amazing, new, tasty creation that you've done all on your  own or with friends. It's so fun and relaxing and all though because of my M.E. I have to get some help when I do it, I still find it fun and I love inventing new recipes.
Everyone should have a go at baking because homemade treats are always 100x nicer than bought. Also, this recipe is so simple that even the most amateur of bakers can make them successfully. 

Until next time, 
Ellie x x x x  

Growing up!

It was my birthday a week and a half ago, so I'm officially fifteen. I don't feel any different, but who really does until they look back two years later and realise how much they've changed, matured, grown up? 

In the book I'm reading, the main characters best friend is thirteen, and all she starts caring about is boys, makeup and parties, saying it's just her "growing up". I think a lot of girls go through this, and begin to believe that's what it means to be mature. But when you're a bit older - in you're late twenties or early thirties, say - will you really be classed as mature if all you care about is boys and partying? I think very few people would be. 

When I was thirteen, I never wanted to be one of those girls who partied and got drunk and stuff, because I knew that wasn't maturity. But I can remember clearly the day I left primary school, I was already trying to pose like one of my teenage friends in pictures. I still look at those "selfies" I took on that day and cringe, because, well... it was seriously cringe-worthy. 

So now I'm fifteen. And although I don't feel any different, I know I am very different to the girl I was last year on March 31st (my birthday). And I'm glad I've changed!

      My birthday was amazing. We were in Yorkshire, in this little cottage we've been to every year since I was 4. I had one of my best friends with me this year (Rosie), and that made it even better. We headed in to Ilkley and went up to the Cow and Calf (Ilkley Moore) and sat there for a while. It is SUCH an amazing view. Then we went in to town and looked around, then went for a Costa. We had some cake in the morning, for lunch we had a picnic on the Cow and Calf, and then for dinner we had a typical party meal - sausage rolls (vegetarian ones), potato smiles, mini pizzas, party rings. It was perfect! Thank you every one for making it so special and giving me my wonderful, thoughtful gifts.

 

This is my birthday cake! Isn't it magical?

Here's me blowing out my candles.

And there's the inside of my gorgeous cake. I love it!

Until next time, 

Ellie xxxxxx