Wednesday 29 February 2012

SUBU Elections

Last night we all trotted off to our Student Union Club for the SUBU (Student Union Bournemouth University) election campaign night. All of the candidates were walking around chatting to people and trying to persuade drunk people to vote for them (I don't think it was an official campaign evening!)

Three friends are candidates so we all went to support them and have a little dance at the same time! The candidates are basically running to be elected into different full time positions within the Student Union so everyone is basically voting for their full time job for a year, its like the worst interview ever!

My lovely friend James Rodgers is running to be Vice President of Education and his campaign is based around making the students have a stronger voice. Its such a tricky one because every candidate has their supporters and its all about becoming noticed really! But I think as soon as anyone chats to him they'll realise he's the best for the position, I mean look at the handsome fellow!


Every candidate can have a campaign team to help them spread the word and James cleverly picked some gorgeous girls to persuade people to vote, luckily Jess and Charlie were on hand to help! Who would say no to these girls?!


Another course mate of ours is running to be the President who DJ's at the SU club so he managed to get a HUGE projection on entrance to the club to make sure everyone knew he was up for the vote!


Lastly, Mark James Lowe is running for Vice President of Campaigns, you might have seen him around the student shop and he is honestly the sweetest boy ever, just trust me!

We had a good old dance at Milk, for those of you who aren't from Bournemouth and are wondering why I was dancing in a dairy product last night its a weekly Indie night with a room with 80s and Motown tunes and another room with the indie kid music. The 80s room plays some classic crooners so we can sing along and have a boogie!


If you haven't voted yet or have literally no interest in the vote, quickly log on and vote for Josch Young, James Rodgers and Mark James Lowe (shameful plug for my friends eh?)

You can vote for them here: http://www.studentvoting.co.uk/index.php

Tuesday 28 February 2012

Pinterest

Pinterest is my favourite website at the moment, I'm literally on it every 5 seconds! It is a beautiful website where you can repin people's pictures which they have virtually 'pinned' onto their online mood board. 


You can make your own boards with different themes like Fashion, Home and Food for your pins, you can follow companies, blogs and people you like to see their pins. You can also pin from other websites like blogs or even your own pictures, the options are endless!


I have 6 boards I think with themes like My Style, Fashion Inspiration, For the Home, Christmas, Food and Celebrity. You need an invite to join but you can either be invited by someone you know (I can invite if you comment below!) otherwise I joined the waiting list when I found it about a month or so ago and received a login email in about 5 minutes!


Here is an example of the gorgeous photography you can find on this website, they really inspire me to think about what my life will be like "When I'm Grown Up..."



{Love engagement}


{Rachel Bilson, pretty in pink}


{Sequin dresses}


{Peonies Centerpiece}


{Pink Hundreds and Thousands Cake}


{Lace and Pastel Blue Outfit}


{Peach and Turquoise Macaroons}


{Chanel + Champagne}


{Turquoise Louboutins}


{Lionel Ritchie Hello?}


{Cherry Blossom}


{Summer}

There really are some gorgeous, inspiration photography on there and its perfect for a bit of distraction from work!

This is my Pinterest board http://pinterest.com/rosie_springett/ so follow me for more photos like this. All I can say is I'd recommend joining this lovely website!


P.S. I read an article yesterday that Pinterest may be in trouble about copyright infringement laws so I'd better say that the Copyright of all pictures belong to the different artists on Pinterest, links to their sources are on my Pinterest page! 

Monday 27 February 2012

Ben Howard Gig

Last Friday my sister and I went to Ben Howard's gig at Shepherds Bush and it was just brilliant!

We had such a lovely day wandering around the shops in Covent Garden before going to one of our favourite cocktail bars called Henry's in the middle of Covent Garden for dinner.

We ordered some amazing cocktails which will most definitely be made at home now! Lucy ordered a Raspberry Tatanka which had crushed raspberries, vodka, apple juice and a dash of lime so a pretty simple cocktail but it had a sour and sweet tang to it which was delish!



I had a Bianco Spritzer which was another simple cocktail with a bit of a twist from the classic G&T, it had crushed grapes, elderflower cordial, Gordon's Gin and soda with a couple of little grapes on top! Very sweet and yummy


Then we had our dinner which was really great, good portions and the prices are about £10 a main meal (we did a little cheat where you can get £5 or 20% off the bill if you sign up to their newsletter online, well worth doing!)

Lucy was craving a burger so ordered a huge beef burger with extra pancetta and cheese, what a fattie!


I ordered a more refined belly of pork with potato dauphinoise, roasted vegetables and a beef gravy, it doesn't look very pretty but it definitely tasted good!


Once we'd finished stuffing our faces we hopped on a tube to Shepherds Bush where a friendly man somehow guessed we were lost and looking for Ben Howard and helped us along our way while telling us about the 'brilliant acoustics' of the venue.

We were on the top tier, right at the front and had a brilliant view. The support act were great, a band called Daughter who are unsigned and had heard a few times before. The main singer had such a beautiful voice and was a great live act. If you don't recognise the name you might recognise their album cover of a young girl at school. Here is one of my favourite songs:


{Daughter - Candles}

Then Ben Howard came on and he sang so incredibly, it was such a good gig where songs you wouldn't think to dance to had your toe tapping and your shoulders moving. He really went for it and you could tell he was so thankful to be there (he kept saying thank you for coming, he'd sold out the venue completely!!)

And even better Fearne Cotton and Greg James from Radio 1 came along for the fun, sitting on a suspiciously well lit balcony!

He sang a song I hadn't heard as it wasn't on his album which is fast becoming my new favourite song of his, unfortunately I think there's only live versions of the song so sorry about the quality!


{Ben Howard - Depth Over Distance}

It was a really lovely day and I hope I can see Ben Howard again, if you can see him anywhere and the tickets haven't sold out, go do it! You won't regret it!

Friday 24 February 2012

Ben Howard Excitement

Today my sister and I are going to see the incredible Ben Howard at Shepherds Bush Empire and we're so excited!

I bought these tickets for her birthday in November so we've been waiting for this for a long while. He's just brilliant and I missed out on seeing him in Bournemouth which was supposedly brilliant so I have high hopes for tonight.

We've been listening to him non stop this week in excitement for the gig, so heres a few of my favourite songs and videos from him, I wish my life was as serene as his music and videos! 


{Only Love - Flash Mob gig}


{Oats in the Water Radio 1 Live Lounge - his new track of 2012}


{The Fear - Secret Sessions Video}


{Old Pine}

If you haven't heard of him before then shame on you and sprint over to iTunes and get his brilliant album!

I will post pics on Monday of the gig and the rest of the fun we had at the weekend! Have a good weekend everyone :)

Thursday 23 February 2012

Best Banana Loaf Ever

This recipe is from the Hummingbird Bakery book and it is honestly the best baking book I've used, the recipes always turn out brilliantly and look so professional! I would strongly suggest buying the book.


The banana loaf is such an easy recipe, anyone could do it, and its seriously good stuff!




You will need:


270g soft light brown sugar
2 eggs
200g peeled bananas, mashed
280g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
140g unsalted butter, melted


(I told you I'd do a proper recipe soon!)




You need to do this:


1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees, for AGA lovers I put mine on the floor of the top oven with the grid shelf on the floor and put the cold shelf on the second shelf (complicated huh?)


2. Put the sugar and eggs into your mixer with the paddle attachment and beat until smooth, for those without the wonders of mixers just beat for ages with a wooden spoon until your arm is dead! Mash you bananas loads, the older they are the better because they're more squishy! It looks gross but its yummy, I promise.


3. Add the flour, baking powder, bicarb, cinnamon and ginger and mix until all incorporated, pour in your melted butter (30 seconds in the microwave) and mix until it looks a bit like this, it should be quite thick:




4. Prepare your loaf tin with butter all over and then lightly dust with flour. Don't leave any excess flour so tap the tin and tip the flour out.




5. Pour your delicious mixture into the tin and smooth it over with a spatula. Put into the oven for 1 hour or until a skewer through the middle comes out clean (I checked it at 45 mins as you can judge how much longer it needs by then)





6. Take it out of the oven and let it cool in your tin for a few minutes until transferring onto a wire cooling rack. You're supposed to wait until its completely cool to cut it into about 1  inch chunks, but we were too hungry to wait so cut it when it was still warm, this just means its slightly crumbly.





You have to make these, they're absolutely delicious and so easy! So next time you have some old bananas that you want to get rid of then make these! We;ve already eaten almost half of the loaf and its barely cool!

Wednesday 22 February 2012

Lent

So the dreaded day of the year comes when you have to tell people what you're going to give up, only to buckle under and lose your willpower a few days later!

I usually prefer New Years Resolutions because at least you can have a fun resolution like 'live life to the fullest everyday' or 'this year I WILL go on that amazing travelling holiday I've always wanted to do'. But lent is just giving up things you like and that's never fun.

This year I've decided to say goodbye to that old procrastination tool of Facebook. This website has taken too many hours of my life and I refuse for it to take me and my dissertation down with it.


(Pictures are not my own!)

So today is the first of 40 days without Facebook. I am fully prepared to be out of the loop for 40 days, who knows after this I may just be obsessed with Twitter instead?!


Whenever lent comes around I think it's a perfect chance to restart your New Years Resolutions of detoxes and losing weight so here goes a healthier and Facebook free 40 days!

What's everyone else giving up? Good luck with whatever you choose and see you on the other side!

Tuesday 21 February 2012

Burberry A/W '12

I think I've read possibly 20 or more Pancake status' and tweets about Pancake Day with varying recipes depicting the same lemony sugary plate of crepes.


So I decided not to add to this flipping talk and talk about the gorgeous Burberry A/W '12 catwalk I watched this morning, I missed their live streaming yesterday afternoon so caught up with their full show on youtube:




What a show it was! The music, the Front Row and the rain all complimented an amazing show, they're so spot on with this Autumn Winter season. Watch the video all the way through, the finale is amazing and the last 5 minutes shows behind the scenes prep by Christopher Bailey.


The themes were belts, bows, big pockets, winter animals (cute owls!) and luxurious fabrics like tweed and velvet. Here's my favourite looks (all photos copyright to Burberry!):



{Pastel pink bow with tweed}


{Rope belt + wax jacket}


{Cute owl T-Shirt}


{Shearling and velvet}


{Beautiful deep plum velvet coat}



{Smart tweed + burgundy spots}


{Cosy jumper}


{Smart trench, suit + gentleman's umbrella}

It really was lovely and the Front Row were equally as stylish:



{Clémence Poésy}


{Eddie Redmayne}


{Eddie Redmayne, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley + Mario Testino}


{Kate Beckinsale}


{Rosie Huntington-Whiteley}


{Burberry Front Row}

The rain finale was just beautiful, almost makes you want England to rain more just so you can make an excuse to buy a beautiful umbrella like Burberry's!


{Rainy Finale}

So Happy Pancake Day everyone, stuff your faces before lent comes our way tomorrow!

Monday 20 February 2012

Panettone and Butter Pudding

This weekend we travelled up to Norwich to look at UEA University for Lucy, the car journeys were LONG so we made sure we had a lot of reading material...




We saw some of the Finch family while we were there and the rest of the weekend we had a bit of a film marathon! We watched Crazy Stupid Love (not bad), Drive (very violent), How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (classic!) and Chalet Girl (Ed Westwick, yum).


For Sunday roast we made a delicious Panettone and Butter Pudding for dessert, the Panettone was left over from a Christmas present so we thought we'd do something a bit different with it, our very rough recipe is here!


You will need:


A small panettone (you probably won't use it all so you can eat the rest and be transported back to Christmas!)
Couple of handfuls of raisins
4 teaspoons of dark rum
Butter spread
2 eggs
142ml double cream
225ml milk (we didn't have cream so just used 375ml full fat milk)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp golden caster sugar
Granulated sugar (to sprinkle)


You need to do:


1. Soak the raisins in the rum for as long as you fancy (the longer you leave it the stronger it'll be) and leave to the side.







2. Cut your Panettone into thin wedges, spread with butter and cut in half to fit into your tin, keep doing this until its full, mine looked at bit like this



3. Drizzle the raisins around the dish, try not too get too much of the rum liquid in there!



4. Now get the custard going, put in your eggs (we ended up using 3 eggs but start with two and see how much it fills your dish), milk (and cream if you have it), sugar and vanilla extract and give it a good whisk, Mum really went for it!




 5. In our traditional thrifty way we put the rum into the mixture too, you can decide which you'd like to do. Then use a little sieve to pour the custard all over your panettone, the sieve stops all the strange blobby bits (technical word) from the egg getting into your lovely custard.



6. Pat it all down so all of your custard gets soaked into the panettone, this is where we added our extra egg and a bit of milk but just try to sense how much custard you have coming up sides, you want about a third at least filling up your dish.


7. Ours looked a bit like this. Now sprinkle over the granulated sugar for a bit of browning on top. Put in your oven at 160 degrees for about 35 minutes until the white bits of your panettone are nice and golden.


Serve with a good dollop of ice cream, we had some homemade coconut yoghurt ice cream which went perfectly!



Today's is a very customised recipe, I promise I will post something a little less homemade and professional looking soon! Pancake Day tomorrow so expect some yummy pics of sugar and lemon crepes!