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Tuesday 30 December 2014

Laydey Katabella 2014

laydey katabella


I’m going to reflect on to the year today. It’s not to brag by any means, I just think it’s good to acknowledge the years achievements with the new year ever looming.

This year I’ve had the opportunity to work with some amazing brands which I’d never done before and found very exciting. Black Tied, Argan Dew and Curious.com as well as a few others which I won’t name now as it’ll spoil the upcoming blog posts.

I’ve also been mentioned in a few places of the internet world, Face Lace’s press page and modelling Black Tied’s jewellery on their website too.  It’s so lovely to get a mention!

laydey katabella

laydey katabella



My wedding stationary was also a huge hit this year, with my DIY rustic wedding invitations uploaded in February and hitting over 33,000 views (and counting) on youtube by December. 

laydey katabella diy rustic bohemian wedding invitations

It’s insane but I’m so glad people like it and find it inspiring for their own weddings.  Something I made as a bit of fun whilst making my own wedding invites has been so popular and so much so that I was approached by Curious.com to work with them as a teacher on their site. Here you can enrol on my course and learn how to make all of my wedding stationary from save the dates right through to thank you cards.

In September the blog had a huge make-over to what it is now. Originally it was a basic layout of stars and crappy font which didn’t really reflect my blog well at all.

laydey katabella
laydey katabella

I somehow managed to create the new layout myself through some guess work, googling and lots of cups of tea. I’m so glad I figured out how to do it myself as I got exactly what I wanted and I love it! This has spread to the Youtube channel too which has benefitted from a new logo and a touch more editing which I’m still playing around with and hope to further improve in the New Year.
laydey katabella youtubeI’ve also got involved a bit more in the blogging community which has been fun but I must admit a bit nerve-wracking. It’s definitely been a positive experience though as I’ve met some wonderful ladies, some of which I asked to guest post this month whilst I’m on my holidays. It’s so exciting having amazing creative bloggers taking time out to write for my blog and I’ll always be so grateful to them.  My favourite blogs are listed under “blogs I heart” at the top of the blog if you want to see who’s blogs I enjoy reading.

It’s definitely been a good year, the best year in fact for the blog and youtube channel. I know some of you reading will think my years “achievements” are very small scale but to me they’ve been exciting and fulfilling. I came into youtube and blogging with no agenda and no expectations and do it primarily for my own enjoyment as a hobby. Anything else is a bonus in my opinion so to get this far has been great and I only hope that I can do this well next year. We shall see!


And finally, thank you once again for reading, watching, subscribing and following. I really do appreciate it and hope my blog continues to bring you some enjoyment.



Tuesday 23 December 2014

Guest Post | DIY Salt Dough Ornaments


DIY Salt Dough Christmas Ornaments!

diy salt dough ornaments

Hello everyone!

It’s very lovely to meet you all, my name is Megan and my lifestyle & craft blog is called Room With a Bloom. I was just so excited when Kat asked me to create a crafty guest post for you all. Her blog is one of my absolute favourites and I was just so thrilled to be able to contribute to it. Of course I don’t need to tell you how wonderful her blog is- You’re already here!

Today, I wanted to share with you my very quick and easy recipe for salt dough ornaments.
They were so much fun to create and paint. I even think it would be a wonderful holiday activity for the kids too! The best part is that you will most likely have all these ingredients already in the kitchen! Shall we get started?!

What you will need:

1 cup of plain flour
½ cup of water
½ cup of standard table salt.

Preheat your oven to 100 degrees & line your tray with baking paper

diy salt dough ornaments

Mix all of these ingredients together in a mixing bowl until combined. You may want to add the water gradually as not all of it may be needed. Once combined, sprinkle some flour on your work bench and begin kneading the dough until soft. 

diy salt dough ornaments

Using a rolling pin, roll out your dough to create the thickness of your ornaments- This is completely up to you! My dough was about a centimetre thick.

diy salt dough ornaments

Use some festive themed cookie cutters to stamp the shapes for your ornaments. I was able to make about 12 ornaments using this quantity of dough. Remember, you can always adapt this recipe to create as many as you’d like! Lay the ornaments on a prepared tray ready for baking.
Don’t forget to use a skewer to create the hole so you can hang your creation! 

diy salt dough ornaments

These ornaments will take approximately 3 hours to dry out in the oven at a low temperature. I’ve read online that alternatively, you could put them in the microwave for 3 minutes on a high setting and achieve the same result. If you try this method, I’d love to hear how it worked out for you!

diy salt dough ornaments

Once they've fully dried out and have cooled down, it’s time to paint them! I've just used basic acrylic paint for these ornaments but you have the creative freedom to do whatever you’d like- Why stop at paint when you can get crafty with glitter or fabric? The options are literally endless!

diy salt dough ornaments

This was by far my favourite part of the project! Doesn't the little reindeer just look so adorable?!

diy salt dough ornaments

Once the paint has dried, just thread some ribbon or string through the hole and tie a bow. Now your little handmade creations are ready to be placed on your tree!

diy salt dough ornaments

I think these little decorations just look so cute! They really were just so easy to create.

diy salt dough ornaments

Thank you everyone for having a read of my post, it’s been so much fun being a part of this gorgeous girl’s fantastic blog! If you create these at home, send me your pictures on Twitter- I’d love to see all of your wonderful works of art!

If you liked my post today and want to see some more crafty creations, head on over to my blog :)
www.roomwithabloom.blogspot.com


That’s it for today! I hope you all have a lovely day and a very merry Christmas!

Love Megan xo

Friday 19 December 2014

Guest Post | Christmas Happy List

Image source Pinterest (original here)


Hi everyone! I'm Lucy and I blog over on 'From Lucy With Love'. When Kat asked me if I wanted to do a guest post I jumped at the chance because we have been blogging buddies for a while and I really enjoy reading her blog and catching up on her YouTube videos too. Over on my blog I mostly document bits and pieces from my every day life and try to upload a weekly beauty video on my YouTube channel too. Why not pop over and say hello? It'd be great to see you there!

So, let's crack on with today's post. I felt like a festive 'Happy List' would be a way for you to get to know me - let's do this!
 
It’s a given that Christmas time should be happy time for everyone, but I also think it can be a time of reflection. I think it is so important to keep your spirits up and create your own traditions that help you keep in a positive frame of mind as well as taking some time for yourself as the year draws to a close.

Here are my top 5 things that make me super happy during the festive period. Why not tell us about yours in the comments too?

:: Dec the halls!
My fiancĂ©, Joe, and I have a bit of a tradition which involves a home-made Christmas CD, or 'mixed tape', if you are old enough to be familiar with one, putting up our tree and generally throwing spare tinsel over anything that looks bare! It wouldn't seem right to put up our tree without a bit of Whams! 'Last Christmas' or, Joe’s favourite, ‘Driving Home for Christmas’, playing in the background! The process of making our home all cosy and Christmassy together makes us both very happy indeed.

:: Christmas film marathon
These days it is a rarity that I get a lay in, same for poor old Joe. It's not like we have kids, just a very wide awake cat. Because of that we tend to be up before the sun and sitting in the lounge frantically searching the TV for something remotely interesting to watch. However, in the run up to Christmas, this isn't something we have to worry about. In December we start on our mission to watch all the Christmas movies we can lay our hands on, usually at 6am! We snuggle up in our pyjamas on the sofa, with steaming hot tea and, occasionally, a couple of slices of fruit toast too...if we are feeling like a treat! I really enjoy this early morning time together, it is rare I am awake enough to watch a film in the evenings, so I treasure this a great deal.

:: Glitter, glitter, everywhere
...well, on my nails at the very least. Shiny things make me happy, too happy really! I feel like, these days, I can only get away with the tiniest amount of glitter but, you know what, it's Christmas, so let's live a little. Right now I am loving a little glitter polish on my accent nail. My favourites are: Barry M Rose Quartz glitter polish, a silver and pink clear polish which looks fab worn as one coat or over the top of a darker polish, and the Maybelline Brocades polish in Knitted Gold, which I have had since last Christmas and still applies perfectly! I think it looks pretty without being over-kill and tells the world you are feeling festive!

:: Christmas markets
If you are not yet in the festive spirit, I can almost guarantee you that a trip to a Christmas market will sprinkle a little fairy dust over you. The smell of all the food, mulled wine and fresh Christmas trees and decorations are a delight to the senses!

:: Red lips
Old fashioned glamour is the best at Christmas. One of my favourite looks to create at this time of year is a subtle wash of gold eye-shadow over the lid, along with a flick of liquid eye-liner, and a full on red lip. It sings out glamour and makes you feel a million dollars. For long lasting lips that don’t budge I enjoy using the Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvet in the shade Hot Pepper.

:: Games night
This has been a bit of a tradition in our little friendship circle for a long old time. Cranium is our favourite as we can make utter fools of ourselves in every possible way, such as trying to make your partner guess you are making Corn Flakes out of the green Playdough in just 30 seconds! Crack out the board game, throw on Spotify and let yourselves be children for a few hours, you won’t regret it, that’s a promise!

Lucy's Links:
www.fromlucywithlove.co.uk
@lucycarterart
https://www.youtube.com/user/fromlucywithloveblog

Tuesday 16 December 2014

Quick update

laydey katabella

Hey everyone, it's only 9 days until Christmas! Can you believe it!? I'm currently packing like a loon before flying off to America tomorrow for three weeks! I'm SO excited!!! And with my birthday 5 days away it gets better and better.

Anyway I just wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone for subscribing to my blog and my youtbe channel this year- I really appreciate it. I blog and film as a hobby which I really enjoy and the fact that people read my posts and watch my videos is an added bonus which I'm really thankful for. I hoe you continue to watch and read in 2015. I've got lots of ideas in the making already and some exciting ideas too!

In the meantime I have some guest posts coming up between now and the New Year so keep your eyes peeled for those and I hope you enjoy them.

I've also filmed a little thank you and update video (although I've basically said it all here!) so click below if you want to see that:



And that leaves me to simply say have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Best wishes,


Friday 12 December 2014

The Christmas Tag


Happy Friday lovely people! I've done another tag this week and it's a festive one. The Christmas tag is now on my channel, click below to watch:




Have a great weekend!


Tuesday 9 December 2014

Loving, Needing, Meh!

Image from Laura Ashley

This post is 100% inspired by the lovely Lucy at From Lucy, With Love who came up with this idea. It's a regular feature on her blog and I thought I'd try it for myself!

Last week was a super busy one, enjoyable but also stressful. Here's my round up:

Loving

  • James Bay's song Let it Go. Don't get confused with the Frozen song my friends. This song is a piece of beauty and I literally fall in love with it more every time I hear it. So gorgeous!
  • Festive food, drink, and family. I spent the weekend with my wonderful husband, dad and sister before we go away for Christmas. The atmosphere was so cheery, you can't beat this time of year!
  • Home delivery. I did ALL of my Christmas shopping online this year and having it delivered is such bliss. No jostling in crowds or crazy Black Friday for me!
  • Early morning dog walks. I've been a bit poorly recently so dog walks before work got put on the back burner. I've gotten back into the swing of it and I'm so glad as there's something so tranquil and calm about taking the hound out first thing in the morning. He loves it too!

Needing

  • To get organised with moving in the new year. I really ought to hire a van sooner rather than later and order some bits for the house!
  • More hours in the day, I have so much I want and need to get done and several lists of things to tick off. Everything accelerates in December!

Meh!

  • If you're not familiar with my Youtube channel then you may not know I'm off to America for Christmas. This is all super exciting however when the flights were booked I lived in Cyprus...after speaking to the airline I have to get the flight from Cyprus to London or my second flight from London to America gets cancelled... So looks like I'm going to Cyprus and coming back for the sake of the second flight not getting cancelled!! It works out cheaper to do that than re-book. Talk about ridiculous right!? Fuming doesn't even cut it.. however this could make for an interesting vlog on me and Chris's Vlog Channel! This also explains my ranting tweets on Twitter last week...
So that's my weekly round up! I hope you enjoyed this style of post for a change. Have a great week!


Friday 5 December 2014

Me Time Tag

the me time tag

Yup in case you haven't already guessed todays video is the "Me Time" tag. Created by EstĂ©e and Amelia Liana  I thought I'd try it out.

Here are the questions if you fancy doing this yourself. I tag everyone to have a go!

Questions

What do you watch or read during me-time?
What do you wear during me-time? #nobra
What are your me-time beauty products?
Current favourite nail polish? 
What do you eat/drink during me-time? 
Current favourite candle?
Do you ever have outdoor me-time? 
Would you ever go see a movie alone? 
Favourite online shop? 
Anything to add? What else do you do during me-time? 


Click below to see my answers:







Tuesday 2 December 2014

The Perfect Christmas


When you fantasise about the perfect Christmas, what springs to mind? For me it's all about Scandinavian style and cosiness. I am literally obsessed with Scandinavian decor! It's so simplistic, beautiful and clean. I can definitely see my home taking on this kind of style next year and adapting it with christmassy throws and cushions during the festive period!


FOOD! This is a major factor to my perfect Christmas. Home made Christmas biscuits washed down with  nice cup of tea or a mince pie and a glass of mulled wine. The flavours of cinnamon and ginger are typically Chrismas tastes in my mind. Or a nice glass of champagne coupled with smoke salmon and cream cheese- to die for! Just thinking of these luxuries are making me hungry.

And of course having family and friends over at this time of year for hearty meals and festive drinks. That's what it's all about. A time to share and be merry. What more could you as for?

What's your perfect Christmas? Are you feeling festive yet?



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