Topshop nails in Flamingo Coral.

This post was supposed to be up yesterday but I was busy all day. My family from France are over so we spent the day shopping and then in the evening we went to the Royal Albert Hall to watch the Proms and I had an amazing time. I bought this beautiful colour from Topshop as a little birthday gift to myself and it is now part of my ever growing Topshop Nails collection. I love the name as I feel like it describes the colour perfectly and its a fantastic shade to wear this summer. The colour was surprisingly thick but I'm wearing two coats for added effect. I can't wait to go back and buy another colour, I might even go for yellow. As I didn't get this up on time, I will be posting again today so make sure you check back to read the second part of my NCS experience!

Tosin

Birthday Dinner at Giraffe.

Its ma 16th Birthday! Wheeeee! I didn't have much planned for today, I've just gone shopping with my sister and now I'm going to have a chill evening at home watching a couple of movies. I did go out on Saturday night though with my best-est friend as she traveled today. We went to Giraffe, one of my favorite restaurants so I made sure to take a coupe of photographs to write a post.

Giraffe is one of my favorite places to go and eat. The service is always great as well as the food and 

atmosphere. We decided to eat at the Giraffe in Blackheath Village as it was one that I had gone past a few times but never had a chance to stop at. The decor was super cool and we were seated straight away.

 The food was absolutely delicious. I ordered the Hot Thai Duck Stir Fry which I had had once before and it was just as amazing as the first time. Masite ordered a veggie goats cheese burger which she said tasted really good. We also ordered some wedges and onion rings on the side and finished up with a yummy slice of key lime pie for desert. We had a great time and had a long chat afterwards since she'll be gone for so long. I've had a great 16th birthday and I'll be doing another post in a few days about all the gifts I've been given so make sure you check it out!

P.S My hiking video that I mentioned in this post is 50% uploaded so will be up later tonight! The link will be in the post.

Tosin

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Banana Cupcakes.

I've been in the kitchen again! This time with a recipe that I've created myself; its pretty simple and straightforward so not really that much of an achievement but I'm proud of it none the less. Without further ado I give you chocolate chip banana cupcakes.

Ingredients:
- Self-raising flour 100g
- Caster Sugar 100g
- Margarine 100g
- 2 Eggs
- 1 Banana
- Vanilla Essence 2tsp
- Handful of Chocolate Chips

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Line a cupcake tin with 12 cases.

2. Add the margarine and caster sugar into a large mixing bowl, using a hand mixer, whisk until light, creamy and fluffy. Make sure the mixture is super fluffy as this will really shape the cupcake.

3. Crack in the two eggs and add two teaspoons of vanilla essence. Whisk the mixture.

4. Slowly and carefully add in the self-raising flour making sure to whisk well after adding each bit of flour.

5. Using a fork mash up the banana in a separate bowl. Now add this to the mixture and whisk well.

6. Throw in a handful of chocolate chips and stir in. Scoop table spoon sized dollops into the cupcake cases and put in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

7. Voila! Your cupcakes are done! Enjoy cupcakes with a cold glass of milk.

This is a really easy recipe to adapt to your liking. If you don't like chocolate chips, then skip that step or if you just want plain cupcakes stop at step 4. Either way if you try this recipe, then be sure to let me know!
I'll be posting everyday this week so check back tomorrow.

Tosin 

My NCS Experience - Part One.

I mentioned a couple of times here and there about things I would be getting up to this summer. One thing I had signed up for was NCS The Challenge, a three week course which consisted of a personal challenge, a team challenge and a campaign to help the community. The program is available for 15 to 17 year olds inside of the UK. I signed up after hearing loads about how great NCS is but I was still really apprehensive. I'm not a very sociable person and sometimes find it incredibly difficult to keep even a simple conversation going so signing up for this was scary for me. Luckily, I managed to convince one of my other friends to sign up on the same wave as me.

Leading up to the first week I was super excited. I was getting ready to do things that I had never done before and some of these things terrified me but I was excited none the less. I packed my suitcase full of jogging bottoms, old jeans and old t-shirts ready to live in the outdoors for a week (by outdoors I mean the High Ashurt Outdoor center in Surrey). The day came for me to meet my team and my mentor and I was a bag of nerves. My team turned out to be a lovely bunch of people and my mentor was the nicest person I have ever met in my life (I'm not exaggerating, I swear).

We all got in a coach and started the short one hour journey to the Surrey outdoors center. Once there, we settled into our cabins unpacked and got to know each other a bit better. We also took a nighttime stroll through the woods which although I wouldn't admit it at the time, scared the begesus out of me. The rest of the week consisted of challenging ourselves personally (and physically I feel I should add). We climbed a rock climbing wall, we mountain biked, we played archery (which I found that I LOVED) and also completed a number of trust exercises as a team. The big challenge came on Wednesday when we had to make a 6 hour hike to our campsite where we would spend the night. Although the hike was really hard at times (especially when I needed to pee three hours in) I thoroughly enjoyed it and the feeling of liberation that washes over you when you get to the campsite is indescribable.

 Some of the views on the hike were amazing and I really wish I took more photographs but I did make a video! The Only problem is that its about 8 minutes long so will take agessss to upload. I'll try and get it up tomorrow [Video up now! Click here] I feel like I have been babbling on for too long now so I'll just quickly sum everything up by saying all though there were times when I really found it tough in terms of making conversation and gelling as quickly as everyone else did I had a really great first week and I definitely felt as if I challenged myself.

I will be blogging every single day this week so make sure you check back everyday for a new post! Part two and part three of my NCS experience will also be up this week. If you have any questions about the National Citizen Service then please feel free to ask me! Have any of you been on NCS?

Tosin

Where have I been?

Source

I have not blogged since the 17th of June. That was well over a month ago, so I thought I'd write a quick post to let you all know where I've been, what I've been doing and what I'll be doing next! As I mentioned in the last post, I've been trying to do things out of my comfort zone and one of those things included signing up for and attending NCS The Challenge. It was a three week course which consisted of a bunch of cool things that were intended to challenge you as a person and as a team. Since I've been gone, I've had absolutely no time to do anything let alone write blog posts but I'm back now and I'm ready to roll. Since the course had three separate parts I was thinking of writing three different posts (hopefully the first one will be up later this evening!). Apart from that, as I've hardly blogged and one of my new years resolutions was to blog more (fail) I will post at least once, every single day for the next week starting from today! I love blogging but I never get the chance to write a post everyday, but this week, I'm going to try really really hard to make the time. Enough about me, how has everyone's July been? Let me know in the comments!

Tosin