Liebster Award

A very exciting blog post for today and that is to do with the Liebster Award. The lovely Chloe has nominated me for this award and I am very thankful, it's so lovely someone has tagged me in this!

So I am not fully aware of what this award is but I have heard of it! So from the information I have gathered this is how the rules go:

1. thank the person who nominated you, and post a link to their blog on your blog

2. display the award on your blog — by including it in your post and/or displaying it using a “widget” or a “gadget”

3. answer 11 questions about yourself, which will be provided to you by the person who nominated you

4. nominate blogs that you feel deserve the award, who have a less than 200 followers. (I've gone with google friends connect followers.)

5. create a new list of questions for the blogger to answer

6. list these rules in your post. Once you have written and published it, you then have to

7. Inform the people/blogs that you nominated that they have been nominated for the Liebster award and provide a link for them to your post so that they can learn about it (they might not have ever heard of it!)

So with all the rules listed and done here are my answers to the questions I was sent:

1. Why did you start blogging?

I actually started blogging because I have always been inspired by YouTubers to create my own channel, but the thought of filming myself is a little scary although myself and my friend Beth have plans to start soon! So I thought of blogging as I know that is how a lot of YouTubers started and I love writing and photography.

2. What's your favourite fashion piece?

Now this is very difficult for me to answer as I am obsessed with shopping, so I think my answer has to be anything I feel flatters my figure! I say this because when I feel like I look good then in myself I feel fantastic. If one piece I'm wearing feels wrong it makes me feel very self conscious! 

3. What's your favourite make-up brand?

This is also a tricky question so the brand I wear the most that is probably my favourite would be Benefit! There Hoola bronzer is my saviour.

4. Drugstore or High End make-up?

In the last question I just said Benefit bronzer is my favourite and I believe this brand to be high end as it is pricey. However, if I had the pick I'd say drugstore as I really feel there are some amazing brands out there that sell makeup the same quality as high end brands.

5. Do you have any pets?

I do indeed, I have a goldfish who will be 9 on August 31st and a rabbit who is 13 weeks. There will be a blogpost about him soon!

6. Who is your style icon?

I personally don't have a style icon! I tend to just buy pieces I see in the shops that I feel comfortable in. However, I do like to look on pinterest at outfits as inspiration!

7. If you won the lottery what would you do?

So I'm going to say I won the biggest jackpot because that's the dream right?! Well after screaming and fainting from joy, I would save a bit that I could take with me on a MASSIVE shopping spree, but really boringly I would actually save the rest Bank so it could get a load of interest and the money could work so I don't have to!

8. If you had to choose one country to visit where would it be?

So if I HAD to choose one country it would probably be Australia because I have always wanted to visit their beautiful beaches! But then overall, I would just go to any country with beautiful beaches and blue sea, because just wow!

9. What's your favourite food?

My favourite is a total meal that is Salmon with Egg Fried Rice, and there will be a post about it on my blog soon!

10. TV Series or Movies?

I would have to go with TV series because when you find a good one and get hooked, its fantastic to get into watching each episode!

11. What's you favourite type of blog post?

I actually don't think I have a favourite type of blog post, I just love blogging and reading any blogs!

So that is all the questions answered! And it's time to nominate:

http://jennoshealth.blogspot.co.uk

http://millydaydream.blogspot.co.uk

http://www.anasoup.com

http://thejeansspace.blogspot.co.uk

http://eenacolada.blogspot.co.uk

And girls these are your questions:

1. Why did you start blogging?

2. What do you enjoy about blogging?

3. Your favourite clothes shop?

4. Your favourite clothing piece for any occasion?

5. How are you today?

6. Your perfect way to spend a day?

7. One makeup piece you can't live without?

8. Do you have any pets?

9. Your favourite food and drink?

10. Your summer essentials?

11. Something you can't live without?

Well this is the end of this blog post thank you again Chloe, and enjoy answering these questions (girls I tagged) 

Love El 

xxx

Nails Of The Week

I really quickly wanted to tell you all about one of my favourite nail polishes. Now if you saw my last "Nails Of The Week" post you may know I am a fan of W7, and so I wanted to share another fabulous one I have from them. 

This week is a bronze/rose gold nail varnish that I really like. This varnish is fantastic as it only really needs one thin coat and you're done, however I always like to do two. The second fantastic thing about this varnish is that each layer dries super quick so it is really appealing as I am that impatience person who can't wait for her nails to dry! Although there is one downside to this nail varnish and that is the fact it chips fairly easily, but other than that I really love it!

Love El

xxx

 "52 Bronze Chrome"

This picture is actually with 2 coats, but both pictures looked exactly the same as it really does look this good with one coat.

Eye Makeup For The Day

Today I did something different with my eye makeup, now when I say that it just means I put effort into it! I usually just slap on some mascara and I'm off, but for some reason I did more than that. So I have kept it simple as it is day time and I'm just seeing family, but I'm blogging about it just because I quite like how it turned out. 

Now I did use liquid liner to create a wing, I don't actually know if this suits me or not but I did it anyway! After this year of college, I did a makeup course (still haven't got my results so don't know if I'm a "makeup artist" type person yet) but this course TOTALLY put me off makeup as it really wasn't a good year. I suppose, however, as I randomly decided to do this makeup I'm now getting back into it. 

As I said this is a subtle look. It has a small amount of beautiful glitter in it, unfortunately I do not feel the pictures have done it justice but you can get the general gist of it.

The products I used are below the eye pictures, hope you enjoyed this post.

Love El

xxx

p.s. elwillmer.blogspot.com just hit 1000 views! I'm finding this insane, THANK YOU!

Without Flash.

With Flash.

Marks and Spencer Black Liquid Eyeliner.

Benefit "They're Real!" Mascara

I used the Naked 2 palette from Urban Decay to create this look.

I used the colours "Bootycall", "Chopper" and "Tease", I used these as an ombre effect, "Bootycall" in the inner half, "Chopper" in the outer half and "Tease" in the crease and very outer corner.

A Beautiful Evening

So this is a very impromptu blog BUT I had to share these photos with you all! 

I was outside and I went round the corner of my house to see a stunning sunset cloud combination thing (you'll soon see what I'm on about) and thought I must get an Instagram  picture, so 21st century, so I got my Instagram picture HERE, little self promotion there sorry, but if you're interested, do tell me in the comments if you've followed me and I'd love to follow back! But as I was sat looking through the 4 I took, and thought why not share them with bloggers. So here are the pictures, enjoy (and aren't they amazing!)

Love El

xxx

My Marc Jacobs Dream Capsule

I was just on Youtube watching Gabby from Velvet Ghost and saw her "The Dreams Tag" video about Marc Jacob's new perfume. After hearing about being able to create your own "Dream Capsule" I thought I'd give it a go! When going onto the Marc Jacobs fragences website I saw you could win prizes so I really thought why not! I also like the fact that you give them your email and they send you your capsule a year later, this way you can see if you have achieved anything on there yet or just see if your tastes have changed!

So I had a go, it was quick and simple to do, and you end up seeing what you might like to achieve I suppose! And this is mine:

You may already know from other posts that I want to live by the sea when I'm older and that is what the 2 top pictures represent! The bottom left picture shows love, I feel this picture could symbolise a partner or a close/best friend. And finally is my "look" section, I went simple and saw nail varnish, a phone and laptop, and this picture stood out the most as the fashion ones weren't really my style and hey what girl doesn't like/secretly love painting there nails, talking to friends on their phone and watching Youtube or reading a blog on their laptop! And that concludes my Marc Jacobs Dream Capsule.

I thought this was a really awesome idea and wanted to let you all know about it if you didn't already and you can see what capsule you get!

Love El

xxx

Coughton Court

As it was such a beautiful day today my family and I decided to take an afternoon trip out. We are all members of the National Trust (yes I'm 18, yes I'm a member of the National Trust, but don't laugh, as well as being beautiful places they also do great cake! So that makes the membership okay, right?) so as we're members of the National Trust we went to a fairly close property, Coughton Court. 

I didn't get anywhere near as many photos as I wanted and they were all taken on my phone I'm afraid, BUT I still wanted to share the pictures with you! There is more to Coughton than just the areas in the pictures put as I said it was only an afternoon out! Even so I still wanted to share these photos with you and as you can see it is a magnificent place!

Love El

xxx

Coughton Court House.

Stained glass windows.

View from the roof.

Another view from the roof.

My Summer Wish List

For this blogpost I was tagged by the lovely Jade, owner of http://myroutinesjade.blogspot.co.uk

Therefore this is going to be my summer wish list!

The first thing on my summer wish list, just as it is on Jade's list, is to get a tan. This so far has not been working for me and I have been relying on Garnier Summer Body Moisturiser in deep, and for summer I swear by this stuff! I use a couple of layers to build it up but that's because I am naturally very pale! So as far as getting a tan, mine comes from a bottle at the moment!

The second and third item on my wish list is to go to Cornwall or Wales, as I do every year. Although this year being able to go to my cabin in Wales as a family has been disrupted and so may not happen but I still hope it will! The main reason I want to go to Wales or Cornwall is because I love bodyboarding and generally swimming/being in the sea.

And as for a trip to Cornwall me and my family are planning to go at the end of summer.

Another item on my wish list is to see my family and friends as much as possible! I think this will be easier this year than ever before because of the fact I can now drive and have a car! Here's a couple of pictures of some of me and my friends.

Me and my cousin.

And the final thing on my wish list is just to enjoy the summer holiday, to have fun with everyday and to relax! As I am planning on looking for an apprenticeship rather than doing anymore education (couldn't face it anymore! Plus I'm really not the academic type) I don't know when my next summer holiday will be!

I tag:

EVERYONE WHO WANTS TO DO THIS TAG

And thank you so much again to Jade for tagging me!

Love El

xxx

Nails Of The Week

For my nails recently I have been applying fake nails. The fake nails that I use I would highly recommend and the glue is also pretty decent! You can get the false nails HERE. But after realising my nails were not in the best condition (my own fault, not the falsies) I would leave them to grow out. After waiting for, what felt like months, I have finally realised the condition is so much better and I can paint them again! YAY!

So for my first time painting my own nails again after so long I decided to go for matte white, it felt sort of summery, to me anyway, plus white makes you look tanned. The white I have gone for is the W7 34 White nail polish. I got this quite a while ago now (probably 2 years) but it is fantastic! Its a great white, dries quickly and only needs 2 thin coats, or one thick one, but I've always found thin coats dry better, just a tip from me to you! The W7 polish's also have a really lovely shine too them.

AFTER COAT ONE

AFTER COAT TWO

In order to get my white nails matte I used the Rimmel Lycra Pro Matte Finish nail polish. I'm not entirely sure if this is still available in shops as my cousin went on a search for this matte nail varnish everywhere and couldn't find it! However, if you can find the Rimmel Lycra Pro Matte Finish nail polish I would recommend it! As long as you blow on the product as soon it's applied, I find this certainly enhances how matte it can make your nails! 

So those are my nails for the week! 

Love El

xxx

Chocolate Olive Oil Cake - A dairy free recipe

Hi guys, so today I am doing another recipe! As the title suggests this post is going to be chocolate olive oil cake. I originally saw this on BBC Food's website by Nigella Lawson, but I am putting the recipe up here on my blog because there can never be too many chocolate cake recipes! One fantastic thing about this cake is the fact it's completely dairy free, and so my mum and any other lactose intolerant people will be happy! 

If there are any steps you're unsure about there are pictures below the recipe to show you how each step looks! The attachment to my mixer is also photographed below.

The ingredients you'll need are:

• a little olive oil for greasing
• 50 grams of cocoa powder
• 125ml of boiling water
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract (I only use 1 teaspoon as I'm not a big fan of the taste)
• 150 grams of ground almonds OR 125g of plain flour (I use the plain flour and it tastes fantastic using plain flour!)
• 1/2 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda 
• a pinch of salt
• 200g of caster sugar 
• 150ml of regular olive oil
• 3 large eggs

First:

Preheat your oven to 170ºC (Gas Mark 3). Then line you springform tin (22 or 23cm/9 inch) with a little olive oil and then line the base with baking parchment.

Second:

Sift your cocoa powder into a bowl and whisk in the boiling water until you have a smooth, still runny (only just) paste. Into this bowl then whisk in your vanilla extract. Leave this bowl out of the way to cool a little and until you need it.

Third:

In a different small bowl combine you flour (or ground almonds) with the bicarbonate of soda and a pinch of salt.

Four:

Put the caster sugar, oil and eggs into a freestanding mixer with paddle attachment. (If you don't have this then you can use a bowl, whisk and some good old fashioned elbow grease.) Beat this mixture vigorously for around 3 minutes until it looks like a pale primrose, aerated thickened cream.

Five:

Turn down the speed a little and pour in all of your cocoa powder mixture gradually. After that add all of flour mixture gradually.

Six:

When everything is mixed together pour it into you tin and bake for 40-45 minutes (until the side looks cooked and the top looks damp.) If you use a cake tester it will pull out of the cake looking mainly clean but with some crumbs. 

Seven:

Let the cake cool in its tin on a wire rack for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes get the cake out of the tin and leave to cool completely.

I cooked my cake in the oven for 38 minutes.
To present your cake you can it with ice cream, I put icing sugar on top and I feel this made a real delicious difference to the taste.

This recipe is so delicious so enjoy baking AND eating!

Love El
xxx