Christmas: A Cracker of a Saving

What did Adam say to Eve on the day before Christmas?

It's Christmas Eve, Eve!

Christmastime can be tough for a student. The first student loan is almost gone, you can't move for shoppers on the high street and there's always that one person you know who has been singing Christmas songs since mid-October.

That person is me. 

I just can't help it - Christmas gives me some much-needed quality time with my family, my friends, and some really great food, and it's something I desperately wanted to recreate at university. But when I started totting up how much it would be to buy food, a tree, decorations and presents I was easily looking at a number in the hundreds, So I started thinking of ways to cut back the costs without sucking the joy out of christmas.

Oh Christmas Tree

Decorating the Christmas tree is one of my favourite childhood memories - I have my own personal decorations, gathered from when I was too small to understand what Christmas was, and decorating the tree marks the beginning of the Christmas period.

I desperately wanted a tree for our student house, but there were a couple of small problems - we didn't really have the space for one and to be honest, I didn't want to spend at least £50+ on a real tree. There are of course fake options like this one for less, but nothing really says Christmas like the smell of pine needles. With the price of baubles and tinsel and other tat added on, getting a Christmas tree was out of the question.

So instead we bought a small, wooden Christmas tree ornament from Tiger for £8, quite similar to these Christmas pegs, also from Tiger:

 Standing at around a foot tall with small bell-like ornaments, for me and my partner Dan it was a compromise between my obsession with a real Christmas tree and the realization we had no room and no money.

The Table
In the week before the end of term there is a tradition to hold a Christmas meal amongst flatmates and friends - and they can be expensive. In an effort to recreate the home comforts of a meal cooked by mum and dad, we tend to splash out on all the trimmings, which can stretch our already-tight bank balances. Christmas isn't Christmas without corny cracker jokes, and there are so many ways to to cut the costs.

W.H. Smith quite reguarly give out 20% discount vouchers, and coupled with their regular special offers and partnership with o2 Priority I managed to pick up a box of cards for free, and a box of 8 Christmas crackers for a brilliant £2.60 (originally £4.99, they were a third off, and then 20% off with the voucher).

I also picked up a huge pack of Christmassy napkins from a student favourite, Poundland, and a lovely little centrepiece from Primark for £1.50.

Presents Galore
Easily the most expensive part of the holidays, presents can rack up your holiday bill faster than you can count the receipts. So, as a way of demonstrating that you don't have to spend more than your yearly rent in one month, I challenged my partner Dan: 3 presents for £5, with discounts and points allowed, and it was easier than you'd think.

My first stop was Boots, where I've been collecting points on my Advantage card for months, to pick up something small - and came across these wonderful smelling Original Source shower gels for men. For 200 points I left with a bottle of the Black Mint shower gel, and I'd spent none of my £5.

My next stop was W.H. Smith, where I still had a 20% off voucher, and was immediately greeted with a huge stand full of £5 books. A Hairy Bikers Great Curries book was perfect for Dan, and with 20% off it came to only £4.

My final stop was Superdrug, to pick up a small box of Peanut M&M's - they're sold in a lot of shops with but 10% student discount it was 90p rather than £1, and I'd only spent £4.90 in total.

Yes, Christmas can be expensive, but that doesn't mean we have to miss out - for an £8 tree, £5.10 on table decorations and under £5 for presents I spend only £18. A budget Christmas is so doable and easy for students and non-students alike!

An Ice Cream Alternative

Sometimes being on a diet can be really tough - it's hard to say no when all you want to do is enjoy takeaway night or watch a film with ice cream and popcorn like everyone else.

Unfortunately binging on ice cream doesn't exactly fit with my whole healthy-eating ethos, not to mention they can be incredibly sugary and fatty - and I also discovered while doing research that some of my favourite brands actually contain gelatin, which is a big no no for a committed vegetarian.

The last few summers have led to an incredible rise in popularity in frozen yoghurt. Billed as the healthy ice cream alternative, it's been impossible not to notice them beckoning from inside the supermarkets' frozen chillers: even now, in the colder months. So, on a whim (and using a voucher or two), I bought some.

What I really wanted to do was a taste test, and a comparison of the number of calories and amount of fat to find an overall winner, so I enlisted the help of my boyfriend and lovely flatmates and settled in front of the tv to try them all.

Ben and Jerry's Greek Yoghurt Vanilla Honey Caramel

Calories - 220kcal
Fat - 8g
It was really hard to believe this wasn't ice cream - very sweet and smooth, and with almost overwhelming honey and caramel flavours. It was Dan's and my flatmate Emma's favourite of the 5 we tested, but having looked at the nutritional information I wasn't quite sold. Not only was it the highest of the five in calories, it also contained an abnormally high amount of your day's sugar allowance - over 25%! Yes it tasted great, but is only marginally better for you nutritionally than ice cream.
Overall - 2/5

Yoo Moo Frozen Yoghurt Strawberry Swirl

Calories - 148kcal
Fat - 1.3g
The bits of fruit on top was an unexpected bonus, and made this look like a cornetto - which really isn't a bad thing. Often with strawberry-flavoured things you find that they taste of this awful synthetic strawberry, which we really didn't get with this creamy strawberry yoghurt. However the whole point of choosing frozen yoghurt was to get away from the excessive additives in ice cream, and on a closer inspection of the ingredients I found a sugar content higher than that of a McDonald's apple pie! Not great.
Overall - 3/5

Lick Fat Free Frozen Yoghurt Banana and Honey

Calories - 108kcal
Fat - 0g
This really tasted of yoghurt. It doesn't even pretend to be an ice-cream, this was the very definition of a frozen banana yoghurt in taste. with the occasional swirl of honey. Unfortunately my flatmates aren't big fans of banana but I love the stuff, and I really enjoyed the flavour. My only issue is that the nutritional values weren't very easy to find when going back to do this review, and so am unsure of exactly how much sugar is in this. Calories and fat-wise though, this is incredibly low and one I wouldn't feel bad about eating.
Overall - 4/5

Snog Frozen Yoghurt Berry Blue Acai Burst

Calories - 130kcal
Fat - 3.5g
Although
This one unfortunately scored an immediate low ranking as it was impossible to get a straight answer on whether or not this was even vegetarian - the ingredients list mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, a particularly unhealthy type of fat that can sometimes be derived from animal fats. I did a lot of googling and actually e-mailed Snog but got no response. The flavour wasn't great either: an eclectic mix of sharp 'berry' flavours, but apparently with a very authentic acai taste too, although it definitely wasn't one of our favourites.
Overall - 1/5

Lick Fat Free Frozen Yoghurt Strawberry and Elderflower

Calories - 110kcal
Fat - 0g
Our last yoghurt dessert of the night was another Lick contender, this time in the unusual strawberry and elderflower - and it went down surprisingly well. Low in both calories and in fat, this was my favourite and my flatmates loved it too - again, as with the other Lick frozen yoghurt, I wasn't able to find the nutritional values online, but flavour-wise this was just brilliant and my personal favourite.
Overall - 5/5

The overall winner here was definitely Lick - more specifically, Lick Strawberry and Elderflower. Both Lick offerings we tried were leaps and bounds better nutritionally than the others we tried, and truly embodied the 'healthy alternative' title without any drop in taste. I will definitely be repurchasing!

Halloween Spooktacular Part 2: Pumpkin Pies

I have been so ill recently. Ill enough that I haven't been able to blog properly, or do much really - and I've hated it. I really enjoy blogging and I've been desperate to get back to it. So I wanted my first post back to be something sweet and comforting.

Despite Halloween being nearly two weeks ago my local supermarkets are still selling pumpkins, albeit for a heavily discounted price, and I do love a bargain. I had planned on using the pumpkin I carved for Halloween night but the poor soul looked a little bit worse for wear, so I picked up a brand new pumpkin from Waitrose, carved it up and got ready to make yummy pumpkin pies to cheer myself up.

Comfort Pumpkin Pies
Time to make: 2 hours 30 minutes
Cost per portion: £0.44
Portions of your 5 a day: 1
Calories per portion: 148

You will need:

• 700g pumpkin, deseeded and cut into chunks
• 200g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 125g butter
• 200ml milk (I used soya milk but you can use cow's milk)
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tbsp pumpkin spice (1/2 tbsp cinnamon, 1/4 tbsp ground ginger, 1/4 tbsp ground nutmeg, 1/2 tsp ground cloves, 1/2 tsp ground allspice)
• 50ml water
• 100g digestive biscuit crumbs
• Roasting tin
• Tin foil
• Cake or cupcake tin
• Mixing bowl

Preheat the oven to 200c. Carve the pumpkin into chunks, removing all the seeds and flesh. Place the pumpkin chunks skin side up on a roasting tray and sprinkle over 1 tablespoon of the pumpkin spice. Add 50ml of water to the tray and cover with foil. Bake for 20 minutes.

While the pumpkin is cooking, combine the digestive biscuit crumbs, 75g of sugar, 100g of melted butter, and half a teaspoon of cinnamon in a mixing bowl.

If you are making them in cupcake tins, roll the mixture into 8-10 equal balls and press them into the shape you want your pie crusts to be in the cupcake molds - if you're making one pie crust, scoop the mixture into the tin and do the same.

Bake in the oven with the pumpkin for 10 minutes, then remove both. Allow the pie crust(s) to cool and harden for an hour. When the pumpkin is cool, remove the flesh from the skin and push it through a sieve to remove the excess moisture and mash into a puree (you can also blend).

In a mixing bowl, combine the eggs, the milk, 125g caster sugar, 25g butter, and the rest of the pumpkin spice in a bowl, and then add the pumpkin.

 Pour the pumpkin pie mix into the pie crust(s), and bake in the oven at 180c for 45 minutes. Remove and leave to cool.

 I took two slices of this to my partner's house and we had a lovely evening watching Mock the Week reruns and eating Pumpkin Pie - both of us have been really unwell recently and so it was lovely to just switch off and stop worrying about everything. Yum!

Halloween Spooktacular Part 1: Pumpkin Spice Syrup

This is Halloween

Everybody make a scene

It's nearly Halloween, and I cannot move for pumpkins - be they lining the walls in the supermarkets, appearing in our coffees or peering ghoulishly out of windows, they're everywhere. Using pumpkins for decoration is big in the UK, but once we're done with our pumpkin lanterns we tend to just throw them out.

Our US counterparts have a different idea - pumpkin and pumpkin flavoured things are huge in America. They blend it, they bake it, they roast it and they worship it. Being on a student budget I kind of didn't want to waste any of the pumpkin I got for the house, so I bought a cooking pumpkin - they're smaller and a lot sweeter than regular carving pumpkins, and they look so darn cute when carved.

In Part One of my Halloween Spooktacular Blog Posts I'll be using the chunks of pumpkin I removed when carving, and in Part Two I'll be using up the rest of the leftover pumpkin.

This year, I finally decided to try something everyone's been talking about: the Pumpkin Spiced Latte.

The hype surrounding this one drink is just insane - it has its own hashtag on Twitter and Instagram (#psl) and the walls of my local Starbucks are decorated with writing encouraging me to come in and try one.

Don't get me wrong, now that I've tried them I love them, but I couldn't drink them everyday: mainly because my budget doesn't stretch that far, and their high sugar content doesn't exactly fit in with my healthy lifestyle. So I decided that I would instead make my own syrup - one that would be healthier, cheaper, and Vegan too.

Pumpkin Spice Syrup (makes 20+ portions)

Time to make: 30-40 minutes
Cost per portion: £0.08
Portion of your 5 a day: 0 (fresh pumpkin counts but not in this quantity)
Calories per portion: 20kcal

You will need:

• 1 culinary pumpkin
• 250ml water
• 100g granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 Tbsp Ground Cinnamon
• 1/2 Tbsp Ground Ginger
• 1/2 Tbsp Ground Nutmeg
• 1 Tsp Ground Allspice
• 1/2 Tsp Cloves
• Roasting Tin
• Tin Foil
• Blender
• Bottle, for the syrup

Preheat your oven to 200c. Carve the pumpkin as you normally would, removing the seeds and flesh and putting to the side the bits of pumpkin removed when carving. These are the bits you're going to use for the syrup.

  Place your pumpkin chunks skin side up on a roasting tray and sprinkle over 1 tablespoon of cinnamon and the rest of the spices. Unfortunately here in the UK we don't have what's called Pumpkin Spice, which is a mix of all these ingredients, and I was not going to fork out £8 just for the only little jar of Pumpkin Spice I could find. Add 50ml of water to the tray and cover in foil. Roast for 20-30 minutes, or until the pumpkin is soft and tender.

Bring to the boil the rest of the water and the sugar, stirring occasionally to make sure all the sugar dissolves. Remove and discard the skin and add the pumpkin and the leftover water in the bottom of the tray, and allow to simmer for 5 minutes before blending until smooth. Sieve the mixture before allowing to cool and bottling.

I'm drinking a pumpkin spice hot chocolate as I write this and it tastes delicious - I think the best part of this syrup is the fact it's so versatile, and it's so much cheaper than buying a single pumpkin spice latte, especially as it can be stored for up to a month in an airtight container. A perfect autumnal drink.

Soup for Sick Students

This week I've felt like Patient Zero for some previously unknown influenza, transmitted via students and causing widespread headaches and sniffly noses.

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration - I've got Freshers' Flu, and it's been going from person to person in my house and making us all feel a bit ill and groggy and generally sorry for ourselves. If I was at home I know exactly what I would do: steal all the tissue boxes from around the house, build myself a little fort with them while vegging out on the sofa or in bed and whine at my mum to make me magic soup to cure my many ailments.

But part of going to university is about growing up and learning to take care of yourself, so amongst the numerous trips I've made to the shops to stock up on tissues I bought myself a massive butternut squash (googly eyes not included).

Whenever I'm ill my mum always offers me something with squash in it, and this oddly-shaped vegetable works miracles, so I decided rather than wait for my mum to hand-deliver a bowl-full of soup - I'd probably be waiting a while to be honest - I would make my own.

Red Pepper and Squash Soup

Time to make: 45 minutes
Calories per portion: 119
Portions of you 5 a day: 2+
Cost per portion: £2.60

You will need:

• 1/2 a butternut squash, peeled and chopped into chunks
• 1 red pepper, chopped into chunks
• 2 sticks of celery, diced
• 1/2 onion, diced
• 250ml vegetable stock
• 1 1/2 Tbsp smoked Paprika
• Oil, for frying
• Salt, to taste
• Pepper, to taste
• Blender

Preheat the oven to 200c. Place the squash chunks, pepper and celery onto a baking tray and drizzle with oil and a tablespoon of paprika. You can also add cumin seeds, or teaspoon of cayenne pepper or crushed chilli flakes if you like a little extra kick. Roast the veggies in the oven for 30 minutes, or until soft.

While the veggies are roasting, fry the onion in a saucepan until golden (you can of course fry it in a frying pan, but to save on washing up I fried mine in a saucepan) and make up your vegetable stock.

When the veggies are done take them out of the oven and place them in a saucepan with the onions, stock and the rest of the paprika. Bring it to the boil and then allow to simmer for 10 minutes.

Add everything to a blender or blend with a hand blender in the saucepan until smooth - if it's too thick add a little more water. You can blend hot foods in a blender as long as you remove the stopper, as the steam can cause a mini-explosion in the blender if you try to blend it with the stopper still on. Just cover the hole with a kitchen towl first! Add salt and pepper to taste, then you're ready to serve.

This recipe makes enough for one big bowl if you're feeling particularly sniffly, or some to put in the fridge for the next day. I planned to save some, and then I ate it all. Whoops.

The paprika adds a little kick that helps clear out your sinuses and I ate mine topped with black pepper and a spoonful of sour cream. If you've never tried squash before, it's so worth buying on just to try this soup - I may even head back to the store later on to get another squash for more.

Does This Make Me Look Fat?

When I pick up a jumper, a pair of jeans or a jacket, I don't think about the patterns, or whether the colour will compliment my skin tone: the one thought that goes through my mind is will it make me look fat - and it can influence when and where I go shopping, and who I go with.

This week was the Churchill Square Student Lock-In, and I was both excited and terrified about going - I love the feeling of finding new clothes as I enjoy looking good and keeping up with the latest fashion trends but sometimes I have this mean little voice in the back of my head whispering that everyone, including the friends I go with, are looking and judging me because I won't fit; because I'm bigger than them; because I don't belong here. It's probably why I have so much makeup and so many shoes - they don't discriminate.

Last year I went with my flatmates, who I'd really only just met and who were a lot skinnier than me, and I didn't buy anything because I couldn't bring myself to try on a size 3 times larger in front of them and risk humiliation. This time I went back with one of the girls I went with last year, and I was able to try things on, but it got me thinking - was it because I was more comfortable with her, or because I'm a good 20lbs lighter and able to shop more easily in the same kind of stores?

Issues with size and weight affect almost all of us, especially those who are larger than the perfectly poised mannequins I was confronted with in store windows - I'm definitely not trying to skinny-shame, as that just passes the humiliation associated with being a certain size from one person to another, but when surrounded by plastic thighs the size of toothpicks it's hard to not feel like I was huge and should be directed to the plus-size clothes.

The Google definition of plus size is something that is 'outsize' or outside of the norm, and the current average size of women in the UK is a Size 16. So if that is normal, then why did I feel so huge at a 16 and continue to feel overweight now at a 14?

I wanted to find out what the students I was shopping with felt like, so my friend and I asked our fellow shoppers their opinions on what a plus size is and would they consider themselves, or myself, to be plus-sized.

Of the shoppers we asked, half believed that they were plus-sized - which just astounded us, as we had asked people of different body shapes and personally, I felt barely a quarter were technically 'plus-sized'. We also asked the students what they thought the average size of UK woman was, and the answers ranged from size 8 to size 16, with the average being a size 14.

A quarter indicated that they felt that I would be plus-sized too - I was wearing the outfit above, so nothing too tight and clingy and nothing that drowned my frame. This feeling of being outside of the norm was just exacerbated when we went into Zara. I asked what size the XL equated to and was told that it was a size 14. I didn't feel extra large, so why was I being labelled as such?

I asked my friends their opinions on plus sizes and they all said similar things - that they found it frustrating at the lack of diversity in clothes for them and their friends, and that some struggled to shop with others because they felt self-conscious and worried they would be judged. As one put it succinctly: 'we define ourselves as plus size because that's what the stores tell us'.

It's unfair that so many of us struggle with issues over the way we look, and part of it is down to shops in our local shopping centres and the term 'plus-size' - we're not out of the norm just because we have curves, and when stores like Topshop, Zara, Miss Selfridge and Pull and Bear (which were the busiest stores all evening) only stock up to a 14-16 it doesn't support a healthy body image - I'd been happy with my progress on my weight loss journey, but to know that I would still be considered large in the shops I frequent really dragged me down, and that is not okay. I am eating correctly, I am healthy, and I'm more than just a plus-size label, nor should I let it get to me in the way that it has.

Nobody puts Baby in the plus-size corner.

Skin That's Just 'Lush'

Looking after your face and your skin is the most important thing in any makeup and skincare regime. It's one of the first things you notice about another person and bad skin is a source of a lack of self-confidence in so many people.

Everyday we're confronted with images of smooth-skinned women in the media, with barely a blackhead or blemish in sight, and for me and a lot of people I know having glowing, spot-free skin like Cate Blanchett's is something I dream about. Honestly, I don't even think my skin was that smooth when I was born!

I've struggled with acne since I was about 14 and, like many teenagers, I had this idea that it was something that only teenagers dealt with and as soon as I hit 18 they would disappear overnight.

That didn't happen.

It's now becoming clear that I will be dealing with spots my whole life, and I really am not enjoying this. I have combination skin - which means that I have patches of dry, flaky skin and other areas that are particularly oily - and then on top of that I get blackheads and hormone-related spots. Essentially, I never have clear skin, and I have tried everything to combat this. I've tried face masks; I've tried scrubs; I've tried harsh cleansers; I've tried going completely makeup-free: big-name brands or high street products - you name it, I've tried it.

So when a friend recommended I start using Lush products, I was intrigued - they use natural ingredients to create a multitude of cleansers, moisturizer, bath bombs and other items, and they make sure to use only ingredients that haven't been tested on animals, which is something that really spoke to me.

It was a little overwhelming, standing in front of 15 different moisturizers not knowing which one to try, but the staff at my local Brighton store were so helpful when I asked for advice and it's something I've noticed in other Lush stores too; they know their products and ask the right kind of questions to narrow down the products that will work best for you.

It was suggested I try Angels on Bare Skin as an everyday cleanser, with the mild Ultrabland to use when taking my makeup off in the evenings; the sweet-smelling Eau Roma Water toner to calm redness and hydrate the skin; the zesty Ocean Salt face scrub to help clear my pores; and the mattifying Enzymion moisturizer to combat my combination skin.

I've been using the products for just over a month and almost immediately after I started using them I saw such a visible increase in my skin. Excuse the pout but this was the difference in a week and a half: 

My pores are smaller, my skin is more balanced, and the products smell so divine it's a joy to use them everyday. The only downside is the price, which are a little student unfriendly and just seem to be going up and up - when I first found the Enzymion moisturizer it was £11.95 and last week when I checked online it had gone up to £14.50, which is a tad frustrating.

There's no denying the products work though, and it's refreshing to know what exactly I'm putting on my face - they also offer free samples of the products so you can ensure before buying that they won't cause a reaction. I'll never have supermodel skin, but I feel a lot more comfortable without my makeup on. Thankyou Lush!