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BUY OUT OF DATE STUFF
Okay don't actually buy out of date stuff, but look for the food that is going out of date in the next couple of days and is freezable, like bread. I used to buy bread for like 50p because it was going out of date the next day, chuck it in my freezer and boom cheap bread that isn't actually going to go mouldy because it's now frozen. (Please don't buy out of date stuff and then eat mouldy things because you will be very ill.)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

A Week Of Happys #2

LOOKING BACK
I really enjoyed doing this post last week so why not do it again, eh? Here's a few things that made me happy last week. Happiness starting now...

1. LEON: THE PROFESSIONAL 
Leon is my favourite film and I watched it again this week, and it just makes me so happy. Leon is so cute and I have a huge weird crush on him (to the point where I named my plant, Jean Reno, after the actor... <3). Watching Leon again just confirmed why I love it so much.

Leon and Radler to celebrate my last night at uni. 

2. BEACH DAY
We went to Chichester Harbour last week, which is a lovely little beach crossed with countryside. The weather was gorgeous and it was just so nice to walk along the seafront in the sun! Plus we had scones, so that bumped up my happiness levels quite a lot.

3. FINISHING UNIVERSITY
I finished my first year of university this week, and it's so crazy because this year has gone hella fast and it only feels like a few months ago that I nervously started. I have loved my first year of uni, and to be honest, it was hard not to when I live on the most gorgeous campus ever. We have sheep and cows in all the surrounding fields, and I get to walk past lambs on my way to lectures. Oh god, it's so great <3 And as if the animals weren't good enough, my course is the best. I study creative writing which means I just to write stories and talk about books. Living that ultimate bookworm life yo.

Me in my university room.

4. BEST HOME AND AWAY EPISODE EVER
I'm a huge fan of both 'Home and Away' and Simon Baker, so when you combine those two things it gets excellent results. Simon Baker (star of TV show 'The Mentalist') is Australian and was in Home and Away when he was much younger (I think from about 1993 to 94, ish) and they showed an episode starring him last week. The best thing about it? He was on the beach wearing just Speedos. Amazing :')

5. EMIL AND THE DETECTIVES
My mum and dad went to London last week and whilst there they bought me a beautiful hardback edition of the book Emil and the Detectives! We used to listen to the audiobook of this in the car when I was really little and last year I saw the stage show of it with my Mum, so it's quite a big part of my life. And this lovely hardback edition is a very welcome addition to my book family.

6. RICCARDO
Riccardo is my little avocado tree baby and I love him so much (probably an unhealthy amount actually). He lives with me in my uni halls, but unfortunately is now too big to bring back and forth too often, so during holidays I have to leave him at uni by himself :( When I went back to uni for a couple of days last week I was very excited to see that he grown a new leaf. BUT that's not the best part! (He grows new leaves all the time and whilst I'm always proud of his leaf efforts, it's not as exciting as the first few.) The exciting part was that his new leaf had grown in between branches rather than at the the top of his trunk like usual. This means he is hopefully going to start growing outwards rather than upwards! #proudplantmother

The smallest leaf in the middle is his new one!

THIS WEEK
And that's it, time to start living this week! Tell me in the comments below what has made you happy recently!

Thanks for reading, remember to follow me for weekly posts.

Hope you're having a rad day.

Love Chloe x

Coffee Cups With Chloe // University

HEY

So guess what.... It's been another busy week. And that's why yet again you're getting a coffee cups with Chloe post. I guess this one is a bit different though because I'm drinking coffee on a train station rather than in my bedroom. Changing it up, getting crazy with the coffee themed posts. (I'm waiting for a train... I'm not just sitting on a platform especially so this post can be different!)

MY WEEK

So my week is been hella busy. And that is thanks to deadlines at university. It sounds crazy to say, but this is pretty much my last week as a first year uni student. I'm going back on the 28th for an exam and then that's it, I'll be packing up my little room and moving back home for the summer. I have no idea where this year went, it feels like only yesterday that I nervously started university! 

I study creative writing at uni, and luckily I love writing. Handy, since I do so much of it. This week has been spent in lectures and writing up portfolios of work to hand in this week and the start of next week. And if you don't believe me that I was busy then I'll tell you about my day yesterday to prove it: 

I started working at 11 (okay so I don't sound busy now but I gotta maintain that student lifestyle yo) on my poetry portfolio. This meant typing up the poems that were handwritten, editing others and reading through them all until it was perfect. Once that was done I moved onto my other portfolio which I can put any kind of writing in. For that I wrote about my travels in Australia and then a short poem about a family friend. This portfolio was pretty much done but I just needed to do the final touches. AND THEN, I had to pack a bag for coming home today. I stopped working at 6 o clock. During that time I only had an hour break to have lunch and watch an episode of Beverely Hills 90210 to relax my brain a bit. So that's 7 HOURS of work. Jesus. 

TV 

It's not all work though, I have had some free time, haha. I've been watching My Kitchen Rules a lot this week, as I missed it all last week because of my adventures around bath and Bristol. I love that programme. It's just relaxing to sit down and watch it after working all day and I don't know what I'm going to watch instead when this season ends! 

I've also just got into Desperate Housewives. I've watched a few episodes here and there and always enjoyed them, but I wanted to watch it properly because there was so much I didn't know that was making it less exciting to watch. Like what were the secrets they were all keeping? So I bought season 1 and I'm loving it. It's an excellent mix of humour, romance, drama and mystery. 

ALSO I SMELL GREAT

Yeah, you heard me. I smell great. When I was shopping last week I saw some Library of Fragrance perfumes in the clearance section of Boots. I'd heard  about these perfumes before because of the book scented one they do (still need to get my hands on that because I strive to smell like books). I sniffed all the different scents and decided to buy 3 - peach, marshmallow and moonbeam - as they were just £1.65 (!!!). They only had the testers for marshmallow and moonbeam but there was only a very little bit gone from them so I decided it was better than nothing. Then when I went to pay the lady gave me the testers got free! 

TL;DR - I got three amazing smelling perfumes for £1.65. Best bargain ever. 

I'm wearing the Moonbeam one right now and it smells like heaven. I keep getting whiffs of it and remembering how delicious I smell. 

FIN

I think that's probably enough for now, my book (White Cat by Holly Black) is calling me so I going to read that for the rest of my train journey (oh yeah, the train came while I was typing this, so this post has been brought to you via two different locations). 

Thanks for reading. Remember to follow me for new posts every week, and sometimes more :) 

Hope you're having a rad day! 

Love Chloe x

25 Accomplishments of 2014

I don't remember who it was, but last year I saw someone talking about writing a list of 25 things they accomplished during the year, and I thought that was such a rad and positive idea, so I put together my own list. 

One year on, I still think it's a rad and positive idea and so I've made my list again. And since I have this blog now, I thought, why not share it? 

Here are my 25 accomplishments of 2014: 

1. I finished college with good A-Level results.

2. I got into bath spa university - somewhere I've been dreaming of going to for years now. 

3. Living by myself at uni. 

4. I finally visited Australia! (Bucket list stuff that is!) 

5. I read 50 books. 

6. I reached 160 subscribers. 

7. Met Jack and Dean. 

8. Met Bertie Gilbert. 

9. Met Ben Cook. 

10. I met Noel Fielding... Who I may or may not have a huge fangirl style crush on and have had for about 8 years now...

11. I made new friends, both in real life and through the Internet. 

12. I completed my first term at uni! 

13. I held a wild rosella whilst on the Great Ocean Road.

14. I fed a kangaroo and also held hands with him. We're best friends forever now. 

15. I held a starfish. 

16. I stroked a koala. 

17. The million hour long flight to and from Australia. 

18. Changing a lot of my beauty products to cruelty free ones.

19. I gained a tiny bit more confidence. 

20. I got good eyebrows! 

21. I kept up with a good skin care regime. 

22. Growing Riccardo, my beautiful avocado tree, from an avocado pit.

23. Wrote over 100 pages of my novel, Curious Winds.

24. Expanded my cacti collection.

25. Handed in my uni work on time. 

Some of these things are a big deal and some of them are just small things that probably only I would be proud of. 

I encourage you to make a list of your own! It's such a nice way to look back on your year and think about the good stuff that happened to you. 

I wish you all a fantastic 2015. And hopefully I'll be blogging more this year, after all it is one of my New Years resolutions! 

    Love Giddy x 

Photo: my top 14 photos of 2014.