Peppermint Bark

 If you’re like me, Christmas isn’t Christmas without treats, especially if you make them. So here’s a quick, easy, bake-free recipe for peppermint bark. Just remember, it isn’t the healthiest since it is chocolate but if you don’t eat it, you can give it as a gift!

Ingredients:

• 1-3 bars of white chocolate
• pieces of dark chocolate to drizzle
• 3-7 candy canes

Supplies:

• rubber spatula
• oven safe pot
• metal tin (square or circle shaped)
• bowl
• rolling pin
• parchment paper

Steps:

Start by taking your white chocolate and breaking it into about 2-4 small pieces so that it’s easier to melt. Then, take about 2-2.5 candy canes and put them in a plastic bag. Using a rolling pin, smash them until you have a good size of candy cane pieces.

Put aside the candy cane pieces and grab your broken up chocolate. Place the pieces in a pot and melt them over the oven. An easier way to do this is using candy melts and melting them in the microwave. Either way, you have to stir a lot to prevent the white chocolate from burning.

Once the chocolate is melted, put your candy cane pieces from before inside and stir it all up. Remember that I’m using only one chocolate bar so my bark was fairly small. Next, you want to grab a metal tin. I would recommend a rectangle or square shape, but since I didn’t have any small ones, I used a circular tin. 

Before pouring in your chocolate, make sure you use parchment paper otherwise, it’ll stick to the tin. The parchment paper will let it easily slide of whiteout chipping it. Then you want to take your spatula or anything convenient, to spread the mixture out once you pour it on the parchment paper in the pot. Try not to make it too thick or too thin. I suggest about 1/4 or 1/2 of an inch. 

Once you pour it in, you’ll want to work fast. I crushed more candy canes to sprinkle on top and shredded some dark chocolate shaving to give it more diversity.

Lastly, I drizzled leftover dark chocolate that I melted on the stove. I ended up placing more candy cane pieces on top because they all got covered. Finally, you want to freeze it for at least 30 minutes, so that when you touch it, it doesn’t melt in your hand right away. Once it’s ready, take it out and just break it apart.
Thank you guys for all the continued support. Hope you all have a Merry Christmas, but for noe, Merry Christmas Eve!

5 Tips for Coping with Tests/Exams

Hey everybody! With exams coming up (soon-ish), I’ve decided to make some tips to study for exams, and ways to de-stress and relax. These can also help with organization! And if none of these work buy your teacher chocolate and hope for the best (don’t actually haha)

1. Keep your notes organized:

This may be hard, but it is crucial for exams and tests. The way I do it is I write titles, subtitles, and the date  in pen. Since I prefer using a pencil, I write my notes in pencil. I write my title on the top line in the middle in a larger font and underline it. To start my notes I skip a line after the the title. For subheadings, I write them towards the left of the line, and underline them.Lastly, I highlight anything that is important like key words in a definition. 

2. Study Properly

Studying is hard, but I’ve got some tips to make it a little bit easier. Start by reviewing your hardest notes or the ones you don’t know too well first, and review them before bed to help memorize them easily. Test yourself repeatedly or ask someone else to test you. You can even find an app that helps test you by making flash cards. It’s also important to eat a balanced diet. Try eating oatmeal for breakfast. And lastly, make a calendar and plan specific study days per subject.

3. Make study notes for every test and quiz

If you refer back to my last two points, I said I highlighted the most important facts. That’s what I use to make my study notes from and any work/notes we copied in class. I also keep all my study notes. This helps because I can use all the notes from previous quizzes for a unit test. For extra practise, I can re-copy all those notes. Then, I can use my notes from tests to study for exams. I love this tip because I have any notes for exams ready already and all I have to do is re-read and memorize. I usually make my notes on lined paper, but cue cards are great especially for definitions and writing in different colours also helps. 

4. Take breaks

After every 30 minutes of studying, take a 5-10 minute break. Stand up, grab a snack or just close your eyes and rest. Stretching is also important because you don’t want to strain your muscles. Watching a tv show or going on snapchat DOESN’T count! Your eyes are tired so focus on something far away after looking at your notes, don’t make it worse by looking at a screen. If you can, go outside and make sure you go to sleep earlier or on time.

5. Pamper yourself

At the end of a busy week of tests or exams, treat yourself especially if you think you deserve it. Take a bubble bath with a bath bomb or bath melts, light some candles, or just listen to music. After that, you can give yourself a facial, manicure/pedicure. This can help unwind from all the stress. It also helps to snuggle up with hot chocolate, a fuzzy blanket and a movie!

Bath & Body Works Feel Good Tin

*Btw-this is the first post since my relaunch* 

Although this is from the Christmas (Winter 2015) range, I still haven’t used this and received it as a gift. It’s called the Feel Good Apple Tin. This big green apple comes with travel sized lotion, sugar scrub, body butter and shower gel. I haven’t used any of these yet, but as a quick first impressions, I LOVE THE SCENT. It’s very fresh and not too sickening sweet. Kind of like apple juice but not as sugary. Here are some pictures of all the items and the package they’re in.

Body Butter:

Sugar Scrub:

Shimmer Lotion:

Shower Gel:

Overall, the scent is amazing and although I haven’t used the products, I have pretty high expectations. Let me know if you’d like any info on any of the products and I’ll do my best (I can even try it out and tell you if I recommend it)

-Julie xxx

Blog Relaunch

Welcome to my new and improved BLOG RELAUNCH!!! The main reason for this is because I was very limited with time this past year due to school and other things too complicated to explain right now. Also, I thought it was time to add more uniqueness to my layout and make a logo. Soon, I might replace the logo with a header that will also most likely include the logo. I also have a new layout that is slightly based on a pinky-magenta colour, along with the watercolour logo. I have also decided that I will be making a schedule soon or at least plan out when I’m going to post. To add on, I will change the logo and layout to match the seasons/ holidays! Along with the updates, this year should have more time for me to post and write. 

Thank you all for all the patience and support.xxx

P.S; You’ll have to wait a bit longer, as I’m going on vacation from July 31 to August 21 (I know, 3 weeks) to Austria (for a few days) and to Bulgaria (I have family there), but don’t worry, expect lots of posts and pictures.

P.P.S (I can do that right? P.P.S, that’s a thing, isn’t it?) there are more changes and new updates to come, some might be for my layout and some about my posts, anyway, they may be a surprise so keep your eyes peeled.

That’s my temporary logo^ 

And that ^^^was my other option if I changed the layout to blue, maybe it’ll be used in the future. 

Here’s another one I also liked.