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20 Feb 2015

Chocolate Tea Party

When I was young I spent rather too much time in Great Ormond Street Hospital For Sick Children in London. The hospital was fantastic and I’ve no doubt I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for them, but even as a child I knew that me being sick was often harder on my parents than it was on me.

While in hospital, my parents would make a daily hundred mile round trip to come and see me. As if having a sick child wasn’t enough, they had the stress and expense of spending half their lives traveling.

It’s for these very personal reasons that I’ve been keen to support the charity The Sick Children’s Trust. The trust was founded at Great Ormond Street Hospital in 1982 when I was 12 and has a simple objective; to provide a safe, comfortable place for parents to stay while their child is in hospital. It’s a little thing that makes a huge difference in people’s lives.

So why am I telling you all this on a chocolate blog? Well, every year the trust organises The Big Chocolate Tea Party, an opportunity for anyone to help raise funds and have a lot of fun in the process.

The idea is simple, you host a chocolate tea party with friends, family, at work, or wherever you want. You eat cake, drink tea and collect what you can for this fantastic cause.

20 Feb 2015

Bread

Making a great loaf of bread is a process that takes time — from the few hours to make a quick yeasted bread to up to 48 or more when working on slow fermented sourdough breads — so it’s usually a good idea to plan ahead a little bit. And in order to plan well, knowing all the steps involved in the project you are about to start helps a lot.

When you are familiar with the steps, you can work on your bread with confidence, without worrying about whether you forgot something or looking for ingredients you forgot, just when you should be mixing them in.

This is why today, in this post, I will share with you the 14 steps of bread making.

As always, I suggest you try it yourself — and experiment a lot! Change some elements from here and there and look at the results: What worked? What didn’t? Did the change help you with your bread making schedule?

16 Feb 2015

H&M’s beauty collection is coming this fall and will feature over 700 products

We don’t need to tell you that H&M has the fast fashion game on lock, but now the brand has set out to create a beauty line that can keep up with that pace. The full H&M beauty collection will be released this fall in select stores, and the line will eventually make its way to over 900 stores worldwide.

The initial release will include 700 (yes, you read that right) products that will focus on current runway trends, or “fashion for the face,” as concept designer Sara Wallander is calling it. Matching your skirt to your lipstick will seriously never be as easy as it’s about to be.

Including everything from skin primer to nail polish, the line will embody the H&M ideology of designer aesthetics at super-low prices (ranging from $7-$25). The line will also include two subsidiary collections: premium beauty (higher quality and price point) and Conscious beauty, a line of sustainable products.

Browse the H&M beauty collection below and look for it in select stores this fall.

16 Feb 2015

Nikon 1 J5 Review

Introduction
The Nikon 1 J5 is a new compact system camera featuring a 20-megapixel 1”-type CX sensor format sensor with no low-pass filter and the Nikon 1 lens mount. Boasting continuous shooting speeds of 20fps with continuous autofocus and 60fps with fixed-point autofocus, 4K and Full HD 60p video capture, time-lapse movie shooting, an advanced hybrid auto-focus system with 171-points, Best Moment Capture and the unique Motion Snapshot Mode, the Nikon J5 also offers more conventional shooting modes like Programmed Auto, Aperture and Shutter Priority, as well as Metered Manual. Also on-board is a tiltable 3-inch touchscreen LCD display, an electronic shutter, a sensitivity range of ISO 100-12,800, next-generation EXPEED 5A image processor, built-in Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity, a new control wheel, an aluminium housing and a built-in pop-up flash. The Nikon 1 J5 is available in three colour combinations: all-black, silver-white and silver-black. The Nikon 1 J5 costs £349.99 body-only, $499.95 / £429.99 / €539.00 with the 1 Nikkor 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 PD-Zoom lens, $749.95 / £559.99 / €709.00 with both the 1 Nikkor 10-30mm f/3.5-5.6 PD-Zoom and 1 Nikkor VR 30-110mm f/3.8-5.6 lenses, and $1,049.95 with the 1 Nikkor 10-100mm f/4-5.6 lens.

Ease of Use
The Nikon 1 J5 is mostly made out of aluminium with magnesium alloy reinforced parts and is therefore heavier than you would think based on its size alone (98.3 x 59.7 x 31.5 mm), weighing in at 231g for the body only (40g heavier than its predecessor, the J4). It now has a small hand-grip which can accommodate two fingers, a big improvement on the grip-less J4, plus there’s an new thumb-grip on the rear too.

The new J5 has a clean, minimalist front plate that’s dominated by the Nikon 1 lens mount. Instead of being a scaled-down version of the good old F mount, it’s a completely new design that provides 100% electronic communication between the attached lens and the camera body, courtesy of a dozen contacts. Just like on the manufacturer’s F-mount SLR cameras, there is a white dot for easy lens alignment, although it has moved from the 2 o’clock position (when viewed front on) to the top of the mount. The lenses themselves feature a short silver ridge on the lens barrel, which needs to be in alignment with said dot in order for you to be able to attach the lens to the camera. While this may require a bit of getting used to, it actually makes changing lenses quicker and easier.

3 Feb 2015

What a View

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Integer ac fermentum felis, sed luctus dolor. Cras faucibus turpis eget congue laoreet. Vivamus nec tortor lacus. Nunc vel mollis est. Donec eget lectus ultricies, aliquam magna ut, congue nulla. Integer a ante quis massa cursus convallis eget pharetra sapien. Donec quis ex eu tortor vulputate maximus. Fusce dictum nulla non eros hendrerit volutpat. Donec egestas commodo velit, sed bibendum purus tincidunt sed. Sed consectetur dignissim tristique. Nulla facilisi. Suspendisse mattis, purus eget egestas elementum, metus ipsum mattis nisi, ac bibendum sem eros non nulla.

3 Feb 2015

Jellyfish In the Sea

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Integer ac fermentum felis, sed luctus dolor. Cras faucibus turpis eget congue laoreet. Vivamus nec tortor lacus. Nunc vel mollis est. Donec eget lectus ultricies, aliquam magna ut, congue nulla. Integer a ante quis massa cursus convallis eget pharetra sapien. Donec quis ex eu tortor vulputate maximus. Fusce dictum nulla non eros hendrerit volutpat. Donec egestas commodo velit, sed bibendum purus tincidunt sed. Sed consectetur dignissim tristique. Nulla facilisi. Suspendisse mattis, purus eget egestas elementum, metus ipsum mattis nisi, ac bibendum sem eros non nulla.

2 Feb 2015

Seagulls at the Pier

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec mattis lobortis lacus a rhoncus. Ut rutrum, ligula sed consequat bibendum, ante tellus lacinia turpis, pretium lacinia justo lectus eu orci. Quisque vulputate sit amet odio at suscipit. Morbi luctus ligula elit, vel iaculis quam cursus vel. Sed aliquet nibh vehicula felis pellentesque dapibus. In bibendum metus sit amet orci porta maximus. Duis porta pharetra vestibulum. Maecenas orci purus, ornare in lectus interdum, bibendum lacinia lorem. Donec scelerisque, libero eget posuere fringilla, tellus elit interdum nisi, at elementum dui massa vel orci. Maecenas et placerat ipsum, sit amet fermentum est. Ut sed turpis arcu. In sollicitudin mauris at sollicitudin varius. Vestibulum fringilla nibh libero, a sodales quam maximus ac. Donec interdum sed nibh vitae molestie. Maecenas sed fringilla metus, eu lobortis purus. Phasellus sit amet mauris in turpis bibendum cursus.

Quisque nec massa feugiat, venenatis orci non, tincidunt erat. Ut efficitur condimentum lectus a sagittis. Morbi ac ante nec arcu rutrum pretium in in tortor. Fusce at elementum lorem, non faucibus lacus. Curabitur et felis lacus. Fusce tempor nec diam sed convallis. Integer pretium vulputate lectus, nec lacinia orci fermentum sit amet.

 

6 Ene 2015

FAST LEGS, BUMS & TUMS

Short on time but fancy a workout? Then this brief, intense class has your name all over it. A series of circuit-style exercises will put your legs, bums and tums through their paces.

Good for: Tone Up, Muscle Gain

6 Ene 2015

FAST LEGS, BUMS & TUMS

Short on time but fancy a workout? Then this brief, intense class has your name all over it. A series of circuit-style exercises will put your legs, bums and tums through their paces.

Good for: Tone Up, Muscle Gain

6 Ene 2015

FAST LEGS, BUMS & TUMS

Short on time but fancy a workout? Then this brief, intense class has your name all over it. A series of circuit-style exercises will put your legs, bums and tums through their paces.

Good for: Tone Up, Muscle Gain