Review and Shopping the new Shoe Zone Winter Collection

I reviewed and styled a pair of the Shoe Zone Sandals in the summer time, so when they launched their new winter collection they got in touch again to ask if I would review a pair of their winter shoes! What girl would turn down shoes!

Anyway, I finally decided on this pair of double buckle knee high black boots, you will have seen them in my John Lewis Christmas PR Event Outfit Post last week, and I have been wearing them quite a lot this past few weeks. I chose the small heel as I find completely flat can often make my feet ache after a while, yet I can deal with bigger heels, plus high heels aren't too practical if it gets icy. The top part is shelrling lined so they fit really snuggly and are nice and cozy, great for keeping me warm in the winter.

I had a tough decision choosing which pair to go with, all I knew was that I wanted a pair of boots that would be good for the winter, but weren't too trend focused so they would last a few years if needed. Here are the other boots that were in the running, you can find them all on the site here, ranging in price from £19.99 to £29.99 they are all very reasonably priced!

Anyone bought a new pair of winter boots for this year?

Recipe Review - BakingMad.com

Today I bring you a recipe and site review for BakingMad.com! When the lovely PR girls got in touch and asked if would like to try out some of the recipes and the products they use I thought it might be a bit of fun, and something a bit different for you, all my lovely readers out there. So when they sent me this parcel of fun baking items I had to decide which of the 100's of recipes off their site to make with them.

The most obvious thing that came to mind was cupcakes!! I decided to use this recipe for Crown Cupcakes. But altered it so they weren't just plain vanilla cupcakes... they were Pastel Rainbow Cupcakes!! Well I had to use all those pretty food colourings, didn't I? Then Jon could have some fun helping me decorate them too!

Now, I'm not really a baker so this recipe had to be pretty simple! So this is what I managed to bake in the end! We did double the quantity as there were lots of us home to eat them afterwards. 

Pretty aren't they!

The ingredients and recipe for the basic cupcake on on the link above.

Here is what I did:

 Mixed the sugar and butter, till smooth

Slowly added the flour

Keep mixing till it's all nice and combined, add vanilla extract - or another extract you fancy!

Then the fun part. 

Split the mixture between 4 bowls and add drops of food colouring to each, mix and add more until you get desired colour. I kept one plain, until I found some red dye in the cupboard and added that to the last bowl, just to add more fun to the mix!

Place a little of each colour in each cupcake wrapper, and gently shake the whole tray so the mixture settles into the moulds and flattens out. Then pop in the oven.

 tick, tick, tick...20 minutes later...ta da freshly baked coloured cupcakes now to decorate!

 Some got blue icing treatment and some snowflake toppers c/o JustBake.co.uk (there will be a review of them this week) others got traditional butterflied with butter icing.

 Others got butter icing frosting and sprinkles or grated chocolate flakes. The dark chocolate flakes are from a caramel and sea salt bar I got sent by Miki from Miki's Scrapbook and were so tasty!!

 And this is what they looked like inside - the photo doesn't do them justice, they were a bit brighter than they look. And oh so yummy!

Bakingmad.com has literally 100's of other baking recipes and I will be trying out a few more on the lead up to Christmas

*I was sent the items free of charge in exchange for this post, but all opinions are my own*

Review - Holga Lens Case for iPhone 5

The guys from Three Mobile got in touch recently to ask me to test out the Holga Filter Lens for the iPhone 5. As I am a bit of an Instagram and Twitter fanatic I figured it would be a bit of fun, I take lots of pictures with my phone, as most of you know, so why not add a little effect to a few of them.

So this is what it looks like, most of you will have seen one or something similar. You can get it on Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com

It fits my phone nice and snuggly, and I was surprised it was so light. It is a little bulky at the top but wasn't too much of an issue in my pocket or handbag. I have actually left it on for the last 3 weeks without any problems

Even without using any of the effects the plain lens gives you a nice little vignette, which I really liked on my pictures. 

So here are the effects you can produce:

2 lens splitter

3 lens splitter

 4 lens splitter

Had some fun with the heart frame in work, it was a little hit and miss on how clear the heart showed up.

 Blue spot lens, good for putting a focus on something

 Yellow Spot Lens, wasn't really as obvious to see, the colour wasn't really bold enough

 Green filter, does what it says

Red filter, again self explanatory
Now all the lenses above are just a bit of fun and not something I would use all the time. But what I was really impressed by was the Macro lens, as a blogger I often want to take close detailed shots of things, especially my nails for a mani of the week post, and the general phone camera just wont allow you to focus that tight to the nails themselves. This macro lens is simple but very effective, I was able to get so much closer to the nail, really show off the colour and quality of the polish, and the polish label itself as we all know how tiny the writing is on those bottles. This is something I have been finding very useful over the last 3 weeks and think a lot of beauty bloggers and crafters who write tutorials would really find it an advantage. Here is one of the detailed shots I took this week.

Now the photo below is the one they use to advertise the lens and you can see how much closer you can get.
So I may not buy this lens just for the fun factor, whilst it is good I don't think I would use it much or often, it would be a bit of a fad for a few months I think, although I think it might be a fun gift for someone who loves taking images on their phone. But I would genuinely buy it as a macro lens, even if I just put it on when ever I needed a detailed shot of my nails or something else, it has been so helpful for some of my blog post!
Have you tried this lens or something similar? What are your opinions?

*I was sent this lens from Three Mobile to review free of charge, all opinions are truthful and my own

Review - TomTom Handsfree Car Kit for Smartphones

I was recently asked by Tesco Compare to join their team of safety and security testers and review the new TomTom Handsfree Car Kit for Smartphones. As I now have a 1 hour commute each way to work, and we are launching the photography company, having a safe way to make and receive calls whilst I'm driving is really helpful and convenient for me. So I was happy to try out the kit, I have tried head sets and internal car systems before and usually find that the calls drop out easily or the quality of sound is low. So here is my review of the TomTom Handsfree Kit: Not only is the TomTom Handsfree car kit a safe way to make and receive calls, but it conveniently charges your handset at the same time. It has a great flexible dual mounting system so it can be mounted to your windscreen using a sucker like a sat-nav, or straight to the top of your dash using the sticky mounting disc. I chose to put mine on the windscreen on the drivers right hand side, so I could easily reach it to accept calls and it wouldn't block any of my view out the windscreen. The mount can swivel to display your mobile in the traditional portrait orientation or in a landscape sat-nav style position, it is great if you use your mobiles maps to find your way around.  Connection to your mobile is via bluetooth, so you don't even need to mount your phone in the holder, just turn on the bluetooth setting and pop the phone in your pocket or handbag and forget it. I leave my bluetooth on all the time now, that way when I jump in the car my phone automatically connects even when it's buried at the bottom of my bag. When you start the engine, TomTom lets your know 'phone connected' (or not connected). To answer or cancel a call there are two easy to press buttons, and should you need to adjust the volume there are two side buttons. The read mounted speaker gives plenty of volume to clearly hear the person on the other end, and an extension cord for the microphone is also included to make sure they can hear you.

 Installation was easy (for Jon!) using the microphone extension cable to place the detachable microphone on my sun visor to aid clarity for the caller when I have music on. The power cable is kept neat and tidy with the included sticky cable clips as you can see below!

After some testing I found the handsfree kit really easy to use, and so convenient. I leave my phone in my rucksack on my drive to and from work, and use the TomTom in landscape orientation to hold my iPod which I connect to my car stereo, this leaves the buttons easily accessible, and keeps my iPod nice and close for changing tracks. Plus if you have an iPhone you can use the kit and your voice command to control your phone for making calls, brilliant!

So this is what it looks like set up in my car on a daily basis! I would totally advise people to get one of these if they drive a lot or are really busy phone wise! Has anyone else tried one of these? Or another car phone kit?

Outings - Trip to Bath, dinner at Sotto Sotto

We went on a trip to Bath last week to see my bestie Heather and her other half Pete, we stayed the night and went for dinner at the most amazing italian restaurant called Sotto Sotto. It is the Bath number 1 on Trip Adviser at the moment, you need to book well in advance, but amazingly it is really reasonably priced! We shared 2 big garlic pizza breads to start, then we had a main course each, me and Heather shared a £20 bottle of wine, Pete had a pint and Jon had a soft drink and the bill only came to £65? Isn't that great for 4 people to have 2 courses and drinks! The quality of the food was really high, you could tell everything was made fresh and they used quality ingredients, they could have charged double and it still would have been worth it!

This was the simple garlic pizza bread

And we had a cheese and pesto pizza bread, which was so tasty

Me and Jon

Heather with her Pasta

Pete and his Pizza - oh and did I mention the restaurant is in the arches underground by the river! Bloody amazing venue, so cool.

Jon's super tasty Pizza

Heathers Cabonara was really tasty 

I had butternut squash and goats cheese cannelloni which was really rich and flavourful 

And this was our wine, which had a great crisp fresh taste to it.

My lovely friend and her BF

Before we met up with Heather and Pete we called into a really cute little Cafe called The Roscoff Deli and I had my first ever Cannoli! And I can tell you now, it was so delicious!! It was a pistachio and mint creme filled one, oh so good! Seriously!

  And this little lady made herself comfy on our bed when we were out! This is Tilly!