August in Photos

AUGUST RECAP
Whoops might've forgotten that August had ended and that this was thing I do over here. Sorry about that, but hey who cares that September is nearly halfway done now, let's just look at what I did in August.

THE PHOTOS

WHAT'S GOING ON HERE?

1. This was taken on the evening of our first day in Italy. We were in Rome and hey, turns out Rome does gorgeous sunsets. 
2. Arrived at the villa we'd be living in for the week and made friends with a horse. 
3. Ice cream gang. 
4. There was a festival in our local town of Scala to celebrate their patron saint, St. Lorenzo. It began with a religious procession through the streets, and then a brass band played and they had the most amazing fireworks ever. They sounded like cannons and filled the air with beautiful colours and smoke so thick you could hardly see through it. It was an incredible night. 
5. Pompeii! It was very very hot on this day and there wasn't much shade in Pompeii so we didn't get to spend as long as we liked there, but what we saw was amazing. It's so interesting to see this town preserved in a slightly terrifying way. 
6. "We're just planning our pose!" (Still in Pompeii btw)
7. The whole Italy gang! Kinda miss these guys. 
8. Exploring Amalfi. It's a very busy, touristy town, but it was also very italian and very cute. I particularly love this photo because it's at the end of Amalfi, literally the end. You couldn't go any further.
9. The view from a pre-wedding party we went to. We were Italy for the wedding, only 4 of the 10 of us where going to the wedding (I was not one of the four) but doesn't mean the remaining six of us couldn't gatecrash the party and take full advantage of the free food and drinks. 
10. The Rogers family feet on the last night in Scala :(
11. Last night in Italy here. We went to a fancy restaurant, met two Australian men who worked on CHANNEL 9 AND CHANNEL 11 WHAT? and had complimentary limoncello. Please ignore how dead my face looks in this photo, I didn't look like that irl. 
12. Our hotel room in Rome got upgraded and we had a hot tub and a gym in. our. room. 
13. The Colosseum!
14. Annnnd back to England. 
15. I went to that massive lush on Oxford Street. 3 floors of Lush... no big deal. 
16. THUNDAMENTALS. These guys were amazing and I loved every second of the concert. They need to come back asap. Also not to brag but Tuka, one of the frontmen, liked my photos on instagram. Pretty rad. (I have a pretty big crush on him btw, so y'know.)
17. Hilltop Hoods were the headline band on that night and they were also amazing. I love them and I sang along very loudly, especially when they sang Cosby Sweater. 
18. This was taken in a secret bar in Bristol called The Milk Thistle. It was like one of the prohibition, speakeasy bars. Very swanky. Very cool. 
19. Back to Walkabout in Bristol for bundy and burgers. 
20. Cocktails. I can't remember what was in this but it was really good. It might have been a daiquiri?
21. During a cute little pub crawl in London. This was at The Black Lion. 
22. This was the next pub along, it was called The George and Devonshire. I suuuuck at pool.
23. And at darts. 
24. My sister's moved to Australia and so we had to celebrate her birthday a bit early. This was our breakfast from that day. 
25. Pro fashion tip: make sure your dress matches the flowers of the place you're visiting. 
26. The day before she left we went to Chichester Harbour for a British beach day. It's cute there. 
27. Our feet at the seaside! 

ONTO SEPTEMBER

I hope you're all having a rad September and I hope the rest of it is rad too. 

And tell me how your August was in the comments! Did you do anything fun? Travel anywhere? 

Thanks for reading, speak to y'all soon. Remember to follow me for weekly posts. 

Love Chloe x

How To Cheaply Eat At University

My kitchen last year.

TO UNIVERSITY
So it's getting to about that time where people are starting to go back to school, and for some of you that might mean starting university. I'm in my second year of uni and so I've gained a little bit of uni knowledge during this past year, that I thought I would pass onto y'all.

It's a known fact that students are generally poor and so it can be hard to eat well when you're living on such a budget. However, I ate pretty well whilst living in halls last year, and for pretty cheaply too. And I'm gunna tell you how so you can all go to university and eat like the little hobbits you are.

PORTION
You can use this trick with most food things, but it's particularly effective when it comes to meat. Firstly, when you're in the supermarket look for the offers. I always used to buy my meat in sainsburys where they had the rad offer of 3 of $10 (the dollar sign should be a pound sign but I can't find that on my keyboard so just pretend). That meant I could but chicken, minced beef and salmon all for just $10. YAY. Then I'd make it last for ages by portioning it. So for example, the mince: I would split it into four, put each portion into separate containers and freeze it. That way I got four dinners out of one thing and I wasn't wasting anything. Heck yeah.

BUY OUT OF DATE STUFF
Okay don't actually buy out of date stuff, but look for the food that is going out of date in the next couple of days and is freezable, like bread. I used to buy bread for like 50p because it was going out of date the next day, chuck it in my freezer and boom cheap bread that isn't actually going to go mouldy because it's now frozen. (Please don't buy out of date stuff and then eat mouldy things because you will be very ill.)

BULK BUY
Places like Costco and Makro are the best for when you need cheap food. Bulk buying food that you know you eat a lot (for me that was pasta... I eat pasta so freaking much) will help keep the cost down, because you won't have to keep buying it every day. Same goes for everyday things like toilet rolls, bulk buy them, it's cheaper.

FRUIT AND VEGETABLES
They're cheap yo, so eat them. Plus your mum will be proud.

ACTUALLY COOK
Buy cookery books, take cookery classes, get your chef friend to show you simple recipes, I don't know, but actually cook things. When you're cooking your own food it's probably going to be slightly healthier (well depends what you're cooking really but it's probably better than takeaway pizza), and you won't be spending your money on takeaways every day. Plus, if you just learn to make really simple things that smell amazing, your housemates that can't cook will be hella impressed, which is a bonus.

GOOD LUCK
Some of these tips might be obvious, but if you're student going to uni for the first time then hopefully this helped you out a little bit. Uni is pretty rad, don't worry.

Thanks for reading! If you have any other tips for surviving in the kitchen then leave them in the comments.

Love Chloe x


BONUS TIP
Be careful with knives. I stabbed myself in the hand whilst cutting an avocado and had to get it glued up in hospital. It was disgusting and hurt like hell. Also v. embarrassing because I was wearing stupid socks and had a lot of medical people in my room trying to help. So yeah, don't do that. 

The Great Bookshelf Tidy of 2015

My bookshelves before and after I'd sorted them out.

BOOKWORM ALERT

I jut counted my book collection and I have a ridiculous 264 books, and that number is just going to keep growing and growing (especially since I don’t even have all the books I need for uni yet!). So as you can probably gather those 264 books take up a hell of a lot of space in my room. Which is why I was in desperate need of a new bookcase. So I bought one, my dad built it for me, my mum and I reorganised my room to be able to fit it in, and the end result was my beautiful new reading wall. I’m slightly obsessed with it. 

Pre-tidy! That's Chet Faker on my laptop... his singing accompanied me.

THE SET UP

I organised my books in colour and genre shelf by shelf, so for example I have the non-fiction books on one shelf, which includes travel books, memoirs, biographies, that sort of thing. I have the young adult/teen shelf which ranges from Northern Lights by Philip Pullman to my John Green collection. And so on and so on. 

And after! <3

TOURS

I already have a bookshelf tour up on my youtube channel but since then I’ve bought heaps more books and completely reorganised, so I might do another bookshelf tour again to update y’all on how things are in my book world. But until then, I filmed ‘The Great Bookshelf Tidy of 2015’ which is now live on my channel, so if you wanted to watch that then there’s a link down below. 

QUESTION TIME

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: How many books do you own? And what’s your favourite? I’d really love to know, talking about books is my all time fave thing to do. 

Thanks for reading! Remember to follow me for weekly posts!

Hope you’re having a rad day. 

Love Chloe x