Holidays Are Coming

Everyone knows Christmas is here when they see the Coca Cola advert. Its a classic. And they haven't changed it unlike some other Christmas adverts - yes Im looking at you Toys R Us.

Anyway. Turns out the legenday coke truck goes on tour around the UK at Christmas time and this year it stopped at The Mall Cribbs Causeway in Bristol so of course, the boy and I headed down after work.

They parked right next to the Winter Wonderland area, played Christmas music and handed out mini coke cans. You could also queue up to get your picture taken but the line was huge so we didnt do that!

We also had a little wander round to fully soak up the festive spirit.

It was a lovely evening, very festive and I love doing something a little different from the usual.

What Christmassy things have you been up to?

See you soon,

Chloe

Christmas Nails 6: Pretty Snowflakes

Here we are then. The last day of my nail series.
I thought I'd end on a prettier note. The other nails have been more cute than anything but sometimes you just want something pretty.
Oh, hello snowflake nails.

 As long as you can do (sort of) straight lines on your nails then you'll be good to go on this one.
Lets go!

Start with your base colour. I chose a light, icy blue but it would look nice on reds, greens and darker colours.

 Using the silver nail pen draw a line through the centre of the nail from top to bottom.
Then go across to make a cross shape.

Draw a smaller line in each corner.

You can stop here if you wanted too, just wait for it to dry and go over it with clear polish.
OR you can do little silver dots above the smaller lines for extra silver goodness.

And you're done!

I really enjoyed doing this nail series and think I might do a few more in the future.

What do you think? Did you like this series?
Any feedback would be amazing!

See you soon,

Chloe

Christmas Nails Day 5: Rudolph Nails!

Its day 5 of my nail series!
This is the last character type tutorial and the last one which will be up tomorrow is still very festive but more for being fancy than fun.

So Rudolph nails are perhaps the easiest in this series its just dot,dot,dot done.

Lets go!

Start with a brown nail

Using the black nail pen put two fairly large dots in the top third of the nail to make eyes

Next, using your red nail pen to do a big red nose in the middle of the nail

Now, you can leave it there if you like. He totally looks done already but I like to use the teeniest bit of white nail polish and dot it on the eyes (the same as the penguin tutorial)

And you're done!

So cute, so simple!

If you give any of my nail ideas a try please let me know!

See you soon,

Chloe

Christmas Nails Day 4: Penguins!

Todays festive nail tutorial is penguins!
This is a pretty easy one though I will say getting the "m" right proved more than a little challenging to me as I dont have a steady hand at all.

Lets get started!

Start with a full white nail.

Using the black nail art pen draw an "m" across the top third of the nail and fill the top third in.

Like I said - not so much with the steady hand on this bit!

Using the same black pen do a dot either side of the point for eyes

Then using the teeniest white polish dot a bit in the black to make eyes

For this last bit you can either use an orange polish if you have it or a gold nail pen.
Draw a little triangle as a beak.

All done!
Once its all dry put on a clear coat just to seal it all in nicely.

How are you enjoying the nail series?

See you soon,

Chloe

Christmas Nails Part 3: Candy Cane

Its day 3 in my Christmas Nails series and today Im going to show you how to do candy cane nails!

So start of with a pretty red nail.

For the stripes there are 2 different ways you can do it:
1)
Once your nails are dry, you can cut some tape into little stripes, put them on your nails and paint over with white polish.
Once the white is dry, take off the tape and you will be left with perfect straight candy cane stripes.

2)
Taking your nail art brush, start by doing a line through the middle of your nail from corner to corner.

Use this as your central stripe and do one more either side.

When dry, paint over with clear nail polish.

Done!

Now you have pretty candy cane nails. This would look cute on all ten digits or as accent nails.

Have you tried this?

See you tomorrow for day 4!

Chloe

Christmas Nails 2: Fairy Lights

Welcome back!

Here is the first nail tutorial in my Christmas Nails series - fairy lights!

Lets get started!

Start with a plain, white nail:

Then, using the black nail pen draw the wire for the lights, from one corner of the nail to the other.

I put a little twist in mine just to make it something different but you don't have to.

Once this is done you can then pick whichever pen colour you want to dot on the lights. The technique is to dot the light and then use the pen to drag the polish to a point.
When dry, just paint a clear coat over the top to seal it in.
You're done!

It's one of the more simple nail looks but its pretty different and I get lots of compliments on it.

Did you try this look?

See you soon,

Chloe

Christmas Nails pt 1

Welcome to part one of my Christmas Nails series!

I love making anything festive and the top of my list is always nails. Sometimes Ill be tip tapping away on the keyboard at work, look down and remember how festive they are and it makes me happy all over again.

Here are the looks Im going through this series:

We have fairy light, candy canes, penguins, Rudolph and a snowflake.

To start off I thought I would detail what you will need.
You dont need any special nail tools for any of these looks though if you have the dotting tools you could use them for the circle work.

The base colours you will need are:
White
Red
Brown
Blue

I didnt go for any specific brand, just ones I plucked from my collection but they did the trick!

You will also need these:

 These are the nail art pens from good old Primark. They are £2 for two which is a total bargain!
One end has these little gems in, the colour in the middle is the nail polish. Now, at the other end You have these little pens that looks like this:

You just (gently) squeeze the nail polish tube and it comes out of the pen, making it much easier to do those festive designs!
But then, if you put the cap back on and unscrew that side you get the nail striper. An extra long nail brush that you can use to make straight(er) lines.

So now we have the kit out of the way, check back Wednesday to find details on how to do the first design!

See you soon,

Chloe

Oh, Christmas Tree

Two weeks ago we went to get our Christmas tree. We were both really excited to go to the place round the corner from our house and pick the perfect tree.
When we got there a guy asked us what we wanted and picked a tree "like this?" he said. "No, I want that exact tree" I said. Much to the Boy and the employees shock. I feel it normally takes longer than just looking at one tree but this one was perfect!
We took it home & I dressed it immediatley while the boy made a yummy dinner.
Here it is in all its glory!

We've been living together over 2 years now and we started off with pretty but cheap tree decorations with the idea of buying some extra lovely ones each year to build up a collection.

 The cute chubby bird was last years purchase along with a wooden heart and little tree.
Some of them are handmade by me, like the little star in the last picture,
This year I found a little bag of very cute vintage tree decorations at the charity shop for £2 and fell in love with them immediatley. We have 2 trains, one wooden one shiny, a stocking with presents and my personal favourite, the little nutcracker/soldier. Hes just lovely.

We've been spending nights watching movies in the glow of our beautiful tree, drinking hot chocolates and feeling very festive!

Do you have any festive traditions or favourite decorations?

See you soon,

Chloe

The Toasty Snowman

We've done some clearing out of the last few weeks and had a lot of documents etc that we didnt want to just shred or throw away so we bought an incinerator on Sunday and had a little bonfire.

After watching it for quite some time (does anyone else find a bonfire completley hypnotising?) I thought we were missing something.

Then I remembered I had been to the pound shop the other week and bought some marshmallow snowmen with the intention of using them to top hot chocolates with cream.

Marshmallows + Fire = YUM

Now, we didnt have any kind of skewers so had to make do with chopsticks. This meant getting stupidly close to the fire and at one point taking some ash to the eye. Do not try this at home with chopsticks.

You'll have to excuse the outfit/hair situation, it was a Sunday and I was feeling uber cosy!

If you toast a snowman marshmallow just right, all his features will be lovely and toasty.

Yum yum yum.

See you soon,

Chloe

Clevedon Pier.

This last weekend we went to Clevedon to go to a friends wedding reception. The morning after we had to go out in search of full fat coke to wake up and cure our ever worsening hangovers.
The hotel we stayed in wasn't far from one of my most favourite places ever.
Clevedon Pier.
Clearly other people love it to as it won Pier of the Year (who even knew that was a thing?)

Look how lovely it is? Completley traditional and not an arcade machine in sight.
This isnt even the best part for me. The sides and the floor are pretty much entirely covered in brass plaques with different messages on them. Some are marriage proposals but most are in memorial of someone. This doesnt mean they are all morbid and sad. Some of them are so touching and sweet while others have a lot of humour in them. Either way, they will bring a smile to your face.

Here are some of my favourites:

Antonia, I love you. Will you marry me? Ken x

Please don't commemorate me with one of these. Tom Pearse

Gerbil. Loves by everybody (except the postman)

Weetie. Catkins, sunshine, swifts, sweet peas, cups of tea and badeadas baths.

We were here.

And if you havent had enough picture based content, here are some more beautiful pier photos (if I do say so myself)

Someone had yarn bombed the very front of the pier. I kind of like it!

Clearly I have a big space in my heart for Clevedon pier.

Do you have a place like that? That you just love?

See you soon,

Chloe