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Let's not lie to ourselves - we are all familiar with the faff of sending cards, invitations and flyers out. How many times has your Facebook buzzed to remind you it's your best friend's birthday that weekend and - shit I'm a bad friend, I haven't got a card or stamps or anything. How many times has it been a hashtag on Twitter that's reminded you it's Mother's Day?

Obviously most of you aren't quite as bad a friend or daughter as I am, but I put it more down to disorganisation than anything else! But luckily, my friends and family have realised this after eighteen years - but fear no more.

When Paperless Posthttps://www.paperlesspost.com got in touch with me to find out if I'd be interested in reviewing their service in exchange for some free cards and invitations, I was at first a bit dubious because I didn't really understand the concept. A card...but online? Of course, we all remember the days of e-cards, and essentially that's what Paperless Post does, but in a much fancier way. 

They specialise in cards for all sorts of occasions, such as birthdays, Mother's Day, Father's Day, cards especially for your sisters and brothers and aunties and uncles, cards for every birthday. They do wedding invitations, business launch invites, save the dates, kids party invites. Basically, if there's a special occasion for someone in your life or you have an event to throw - this is where Paperless Post are needed. They've also worked with a range of designers and stationery companies to make sure there's a huge variety of designs available on their service, such as Rifle Paper Co., kate spade new york and Oscar De La Renta.

And it's actually a really easy service to use. Here I am demonstrating by sending (yes, you guessed it) a belated birthday card (YES THEY DO THOSE) to my best friend Vicky. I did actually remember her birthday, for those who are about to attack me for forgetting - I just never got round to sending her a card, so here you go, fave eggy pal.

The belated card I chose was this super cool Great Gatsby but DICTIONARY themed card, because come on, I'm an English student...dictionaries and literature in one card? Yes.

From there, it's super easy to customise your card - you can even add a cool background and I went for silver sparkly things. V pretty.

(This is the moment where I realised photographing a laptop screen is actually really hard so simply reverted to screenshots...you'd have thought I'd have worked that out by now but no)

This is the message I sent her...as you can see, very mature and grown up and I'm sure she will appreciate my heartfelt apologies. No, come on, we all know I'm a tit.

 But what's a picture of an envelope doing here?! YES THAT'S RIGHT you can even customise the envelope it comes in. You can choose the colour, the liner, and on the front you can even choose a cute little stamp and postmark. When it says paperless post, it really does mean paperless post.

From there, it's really easy just to type in the email address(es) of the person (or people) who you want to send your card(s) to. Then, you press send and voila, it's sent! That's how instant and direct a service it is, and honestly, it's so much less faff. They even have this handy feature...

...which is an address book stored on your account so anyone you send a card to gets stored in there, making it really easy to send cards to them again.

So here's the age old question...do I think this will catch on and is it worth it?

Well, from a point of view from an extremely disorganised person who often needs to be able to do things like this at the touch of a keyboard and the click of a mouse, it's super helpful and I'd definitely use it again. But, the sentimental, Countdown-watching, tea-loving twenty something grandma inside me really loves the thrill of sending and receiving actual paper cards in the post. I love being able to do my pretty calligraphy in cards and write huge long essays about how much I adore the recipient (usually to make up for the fact it's a week late) and see the excitement and have the hugs upon opening (you see, win win). Plus, while Paperless Post does have some free options, the card I sent to Vicky cost 5 'coins' (the PP currency which I did find out is non-refundable so I'm not sure how I feel about that) and you can buy 20 coins for £5, I can imagine it would rack up quite a bill if you were sending them out to lots of people.

So overall, I'm not sure so far about Paperless Post, but I think the principal and the idea behind it is a really cool one and who knows, this is the digital age and the digital generation. We do everything else on our phones, tablets and laptops, so who's to say it won't become a wildly popular thing in the next five years or so? Certainly not me!

What do you guys think to services like Paperless Post? Do you think they'll catch on or do you think we'll always go for good old lick-and-stick envelopes and handwritten cards?

Em xx

Five Good Things From The Week #9

Hey kids! It's been another unintentional two weeks since I touched this little space on the internet but I'm back after a pretty crazy last week of uni. It's been a very stressful one but I'm back and hopefully here to stay a little while.

01 // Today is the end of first year! I know, crazy early, but all my timetabled lectures and seminars ended today and I have four deadlines between now and the 4th May but after that, summer begins. I tell you, I am so excited for first year to be over. One of my units is also over today after I submitted my final piece of coursework about ten minutes ago so that's another weight off.

02 // I'm off home tomorrow evening after the Leeds Great Northern anti-Brexit March which me, my dad and my sister are going to again! Very excited for going home as well, and then skiing with the usual family crowd next week.

03 // I bought oven chips and they're lovely.

04 // Finally, finally I went to see The Greatest Showman this week!! It was everything I wanted it to be and so so much more and I'm so looking forward to getting it on DVD when it comes out - I'm in love. I've been listening to the soundtrack for a while anyway but it's been on repeat now since I watched it! Would highly recommend.

05 // Off to the sister's tonight to have some sister time with pizza and garlic bread. I haven't seen her in a while so it's long overdue so I'm looking forward to sitting down and having a good ol' chat with her.

What are five good things from your week?

Em xx

Just Another Student Pasta Dish...

Oooh look at me being all fancy and posting a recipe!! Good one Em.

So today I am sharing with you a staple of every student's life...a pasta dish. Come on, we'd be lying if we said we didn't eat pasta at least four times a week. Yes it may be carby but it's filling, delicious and there are so many things you can do/put with pasta. Seriously, sometimes I just eat pasta with cheese if I need some hardcore comfort food. Plus, it's cheap which is what we alllll want in life.

So this is the recipe for the pasta dish I was talking about in this post which I literally made a ton of, depending on how much you eat in one sitting I reckon I got about four or five portions out of this recipe and considering it cost me about £4 to make I'd say that's pretty good going. Plus you get a veg fix and a meat fix and it's very yummy so what's not to love? Carry on reading if you wanna find out how to make this my loves...

Ingredients

The prices in this list are all based off Lidl prices as that's where I shop, but mysupermarket.co.uk makes it really easy to compare prices and put together a shopping list so you can easily find out how much this would be at your local supermarket. Not sponsored, just a really really useful website!

🥘 300g pasta 89p for 1 kilo or 45p for 500g

🥘 1 head of broccoli cut into florets 63p

🥘 1 onion 55p for 1 kilo

🥘 1 200g pack of bacon lardons 99p

🥘 Garlic 75p for 3 ( although I use granules as they last longer and they're much less faff - I'll tell you how to substitute later)

🥘 300g pot of double cream 99p

Trying to make it look more appetising with a fancy photo but let's be honest, it doesn't really...

Method

1. Begin by cooking the pasta and broccoli according to their instructions. I tend to do pasta for 20 minutes and broccoli for about fifteen but it depends on how you like it - I like pasta al dente and my broccoli slightly mushier than normal so do whatever you like best.

2. Cut up the onion into really tiny pieces and toss it in a large pan with the bacon and garlic to fry. If you're using cloves of garlic use 2, and if you're using granules substitute half a teaspoon of granules for each clove so for this you'd use a teaspoon of granules instead of two cloves.

3. Once they're done cooking (the onion will be slightly soft and the bacon slightly crispy), pour in the double cream and bring to the boil. In the meantime drain the pasta and broccoli.

4. Add the pasta and the broccoli to the sauce and if you like, stir in some grated cheese for extra comfort and happiness.

...and that is literally it. The hardest part of cooking this is probably the cutting up of onions if your eyes are as sensitive as mine appear to be!! I mean it when I say an idiot could cook this, because as my flatmates tell me probably on a daily basis, I can cook this and I am the biggest idiot in the world.

Hope you enjoyed this extremely simple, extremely cheap but extremely delicious recipe! Let me know how you get on and if you change anything - it would be so easy to add peas or sweetcorn, cooked chicken or even some spinach or kale if you wanted to get even more healthy goodness and protein in there too.

What sort of things do you/did you cook at university?

Em xx

Five Good Things From The Week #8

Punctuated with a nice picture of my uni room! Yes, I question the colour of that wall too, not quite sure what they were going for but don't think it turned out that well. Very excited to move on from the ugly salmon. It's still kind of cute though. I guess.

01 // I joined a blogger groupchat this week set up by the gorgeous Chloe! Having a new network of girls to chat to all the time and getting to know new people has been amazing and some of us already have plans to meet in June for BlogConLdn and I cannot wait I tell you!

02 // Following the massive wave of support from all the lovely ladies I've hit 600 followers on Twitter! Seems like such a huge number so thank you everyone who's interested in my little life. (also as a little bonus good thing Zarte off Countdown followed me on Twitter and he's from my hometown and I'm fangirling way too hard. Twenty something grandma or what)

03 // I cooked the nicest pasta dish for dinner this week, a literally massive batch of it so I have lots of food stockpiled and feeling like a very efficient adult. May publish the recipe on here soon if anyone is interested!

04 // I finally picked up my paintbrushes and painted something again! And did cool makeup!! Having been stuck in an art/makeup rut for so long it feels good to be branching out and putting my (rusty) skills back into use. Head over to my Instagram to see what's been going on!

05 // I've joined a fitness class!! It's only a weekly HIIT class that PureGym are running at my accommodation for free but I've met some great girls from my block and a couple others, plus fitness classes are actually really fun I've discovered!

What are five good things from your week?

Em xx

5 Things No One Tells You About University

So university is tough and we all know it can be. But they never tell you the tough stuff on open days, and while uni is great and everything often is sunshine and daisies, there are definitely things I wish I'd known about uni before I went. So here are a few things I've learned over my first year (which yes, is nearly over?? My last deadline is on the 24th April and then hello summer, seems a bit ridiculous to me!). 

01 // The academia isn't really that difficult.

The academia is the easy part. No one told me that at my open days! I have eight contact hours a week, and while I do spend most of my other time reading, this year my exams consist of quizzes I can do over and over until I've got 100% in them, and in-class essay exams where the papers are pre-release so we know how to prepare! It may just be my course, but the academia is not difficult. I've struggled much more with having interest in my courses - no one told me on my open days that I couldn't choose my own modules until second year so therefore I'd be stuck doing units in my first year that I am bored out of my mind by. But of course, you'll do things all the way through life that you're not interested in, but when you're so looking forward to studying what you've chosen, to find out that's not the case is a bummer.

02 // You actually do have to clean stuff.

Yeah, did you know kitchens need cleaning? We haven't cleaned our toaster corner for a couple weeks now and the crumbs are about an inch thick. And bins need taking out, toilets need bleaching, floors need hoovering and cookers need scrubbing. Which means not only do you have to be disciplined with cleaning routines, but you have to buy cleaning materials. And more often than not, Sainsbury's Basics cleaning stuff doesn't work. (Honestly I so wish someone had told me what cleaning products are best so genuinely if anyone wants a handy list of what we've found to work best hit me up)

03 // Most of the friends you make during Freshers' will disappear in a month or two. And popularity is a thing of the past.

Seriously. I made friends in Fresher's Week that I don't think I've seen since Freshers'. I now have a really nice little group in my accommodation, a nice little group on my course and a girl I go to the gym with and a few people I know from athletics. Uni is not sixth form and "friendship groups" are sort of a thing of the past. And you don't need a massive friendship group to be popular because popularity simply doesn't exist at university. Most people go to their lectures and go home again and that's it. No one cares how many people you've slept with, who got with who at who's party and no one really cares about having an established friendship group anymore.

04 // University is Hard. With a capital H. And Lonely. And Boring. With capital Ls and Bs.

Hard from an emotional point of view. Lonely and boring because even though you're surrounded by people, you actually spend 90% of your time holed up in your room Netflix binging. And to some this may sound super appealing, but try doing that for three days at a time when you haven't changed out of your pyjamas or eaten a proper meal in that time either. And while you're definitely surrounded all the time, when it's not by your family, people you've known your entire life and people you're 100% okay with, and nothing is familiar anymore, it can be a lonely, lonely time.

05 // It's not all it's cracked up to be.

It doesn't necessarily mean endless partying or staying out until 7am. In fact I've done that once in my entire first year and I hated it. It's not constantly running around being sociable and having the absolute time of your life. It's presented as the best thing in the world and the best thing you'll ever do, but sometimes it's really not. The days I've spent in bed with Netflix crying on the phone to my mum because I just want to go home are the reality of moving three hours away from home. The freedom you expect doesn't really come and in a way, you still feel like a little kid. There are times when it really does hit me that this is life now, I'm never going to fully live at home again, but there are also times when I'm expecting it to end and everything will go back to normal again. The problem is, normal doesn't really exist.

If you have anything you'd particularly like to add onto this list please feel free to drop a comment below! University can suck and this list did take a slightly negative turn so maybe I'll do another in the future called five good things about university?! 😂

What did you learn in your first year of uni?

Em xx

Life In February & March Goals (?)

Ooh look it's a Southerner encountering not even a centimetre of snow! Yes, in other words I'm losing my shit. Snow just doesn't exist in the south!

So February. February. Wow, what do I even say?! February wasn't the greatest four weeks in the world, emotions running wild, working my tiny arse off and dashing to and fro around the country makes a tired gal at the end of it.