My First “Book and a Brew” Box.

Even hearing the name, “Book and a Brew” got me excited. It’s probably one of the most self explanatory subscription boxes out there. It comes with a (hardback) book and (a box of) tea! What could be better?

I’ve spoken on social media many times about wanting to read more because I want to expand my writing past my favourite actors autobiographies and I want to read more books that I wouldn’t necessarily pick up on first glance. This subscription box helps with exactly that; you don’t get to choose the book or even the genre, it’s a total surprise and you don’t get to choose the tea either. If you’re a book lover, I can honestly say this box is for you! One of my good friends introduced me to this box and I’m so glad she did (despite the fact I haven’t even started the book yet!)

It comes packed in tissue paper with a little “book and a brew” sticker on top (as you can see above!) alongside your box of tea. You also get a little information page about the book that was chosen this month and a description of the tea that was chosen for the month. You also get cute little Brew Quiz cards that you can tweet the answers to the tea company themselves.

This month’s book is called “The Fair Fight” by Anna Freeman. The information page describes the book as “a gritty Georgian tale” and in turn, the Fruit Punch tea by the Brew Tea Company also “packs a punch” matching the description of the book. This isn’t a book I would have picked up admittedly but I’m excited to read it and see what I think. If I like it, great! And if I don’t? At least I read something outside my comfort zone, therefore expanding my reading even further.

For an average hardback book, you would pay between £10-£15 and a good box of tea can cost up to about £7 or so; this box costs either £12.99 (if you sign up to the subscription service) or £14.99 (if you want to buy a one off box) so you are pretty much getting a free box of tea each month, which is phenomenal.

If you want to find out any more information about this UK based company (but they do ship to most of the E.U too!) and more about the box, you can click right here!

I hope you enjoyed this post and I’m sure I’ll be posting about my progress on the book throughout my Twitter, so make sure you check back. And this wasn’t a sponsored post, I paid for this myself with my own money and as always, all opinions are 100% my own.

SS: Sunday Saves (#13)

This Sunday is probably one of the best Sunday’s because it means I don’t have to go to work this entire week! If you can’t love that, what can you love? In this week’s Sunday Saves, I’ll be talking about Twitter chats, reading and living your life to the fullest!

1. Anne Smiles (An Active Summer #HealthHour No.4)

I’ve started talking to Anne just over the past few weeks, all because I found out about #HealthHour. If you don’t know what Health Hour is, it’s a Twitter chat hosted by Anne about health related topics on Monday nights at 8pm. It’s the first Twitter chat I’ve ever looked forward to every week and even though I’ve only taken part in two so far, I love connecting with everyone. Anne posts recaps every week of the previous chat, to tell people what we had been talking about and to give an insight into what questions were asked. So if you’re into health, fitness and food, you should join in with us!

2. Momentarily Dreaming (8 Ways To Do More Reading)

I’m always looking to read more, I think it’s really important for everyone to take a step away from social media and take a minute for yourself with a book. (I should really listen to my own advice sometimes too!) Even though Sam’s post is from last year, I only just found it this week and she gives some quick tips on how to read more. I think the tips that would work for me the most would be taking time away from social media, setting an amount of time for reading each morning/night/day and setting myself some goals. Everyone who reads my blog, know that I’m a goal setter, so these are perfect for me.

3. Always Inspired Life (Top 10 Goals To Create A More Meaningful Life)

In Alina’s post, she talks about leading a more motivated life and I couldn’t agree more. If you’re living for someone else, not doing what you want to do or just going through life in the easiest way you can, I don’t believe you’re truly living. Being yourself, working on yourself, taking chances and being passionate are just some of the ways she mentions in her post, and I think it’s so refreshing. There’s so many posts out there on “being a better person” but this post isn’t like that, I love the way she has written this one, it’s honestly such a lovely read.

That’s all from this week’s Sunday Saves. My favourite thing about Sunday Saves is exploring new blogs, connecting with new people, finding out about different things that I might not have even known before and most importantly, to always keep learning. You can find me over at @RetroSnowflake on Twitter if you’ve found any new blogs or even want to send me your own blog. Have a lovely week!

Why I want to read more.

Reading is such a huge part of life, whether we want to admit it or not, we read every single day. We read databses in work, we read Twitter and Facebook, we read magazines, we read billboards, we read the ingredients on our foods in the supermarket. Reading is everywhere but the reading I’m focusing on is novels.

Why don’t I read?

I wish I had a truly good reason why I don’t. But I can’t give it to you. I’m tired, I don’t have time, I have other things to do, I need to be in the mood. Yes, all valid reasons, but I don’t want to put off reading forever. I’m always going to either be tired, or not have the time or have other things to do. I have to learn to priortise my goals in life.

If you read my latest Sunday Saves, I mentioned a post by Sweet Passions 07 and she talked about making time for reading and it’s something that I want to bring into my life and into my daily routine. 

So what am I going to do to fix this?

1. I’m going to set a time.
   I get really tired when I start to read. That’s why the only time I truly read a book is when I’m about to go to bed. I’m going to try going to bed earlier for a start, and bring a cup of tea with me, and see how that goes first. I think setting myself a goal for half an hour a night isn’t too much and very achievable.
2. Read through the books I have before I buy any more.
   I’m onto Rob Lowe’s second book “Love Life” at the minute, and I think I have about five new ones sitting back at home waiting to be read. If I give myself that limit of a “No Book Buy” until those ones are finished, it’ll possibly urge me to ge through those faster.
3. Expand on my reading genres.
   I’m a non-fiction girl. As I said, I’m reading Rob Lowe’s second book, and the majority of books I have read have been autobiographies which is great and those are my favourites but I want to expand out more. I’m not a Harry Potter girl (Don’t kill me!) or a Lord of the Rings (I know, I know) or even Game of Thrones (I know, don’t kill me). I just want to find books that I enjoy, and I don’t want to force myself to read a Game of Thrones book if I’m never going to enjoy it.

I’ll check in in a month and update on my reading progress!

SS: Sunday Saves (#2)

Week Two of my new series where I choose three blog posts that I’ve read throughout the week (new or old), I talk about them, and why I like them!

1. Life Of Kitty (Thinking About: Why I Exercise)

   Katie’s blog is filled with everything; whether that’s food, fitness, beauty or lifestyle, it’s a nice all rounder that I love. She started a series where she chooses something that she wants to talk about or has stuck in her head, it’s such a good idea. This post is about why she exercises and I can really relate to it. I also love the gym, there’s nothing better than the buzz you get after a long workout and you’re sitting on one of the heavy weights machines and you’re putting your all into the last set before you feel like you can’t go any more. That’s the buzz I like.
   Fitness in general is so important and I think it’s important to do it wherever you can. Katie talks about finding the time, which a lot of people use an excuse (We all do it at some stage, don’t we?) I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve been slacking on the gym this past month, which I’m not happy about, slowly by surely though, I’m catching up with myself again.

2. Sweet Passions 07 (Making Time For Reading)

   I’ve been thinking about reading a lot lately and I’m going to be writing a bigger blog post this week on my lack of reading, something that I’m not proud of, but I loved reading this post. Antonia gives us tips about making more time for reading; they’re simple tips but everyone has their reasons for not reading more even though we could all make time for just one chapter or if we set the bar too high for ourselves, then we just give up. Just taking it one step at a time then if you don’t read regularly, like me, then you could even get yourself into a routine to read every night (like I’m planning to do!)

3. The Blogging Gals (Things We Should Have Been Taught At School)

   We’re always told that our education is one of the most important parts of our lives and I couldn’t agree more, it’s very important. I think it’s also important to note that you only learn through experiences as you grow older. You can play with a fake baby in class for example, but that’s not the true experience of having an actual baby. Some of the points that Sophie writes about is handling budgeting/finances and mental health; two of the most important things, in my opinion, that should be included heavily in education. Everyone uses these in their daily lives, so it makes complete success to introduce them into children and young people’s lives very early on. I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach English, Math or Science, they’re still something that we will always need, but we need children to leave school knowing the essentials about life. I do disagree about Soph’s point on cooking; I had Home Economics in school for three years and we learned how to make a lot of dinners, but I think we need to learn a lot more about nutrition and fitness as well as good dinners.

♥ My 2016 New Year’s Resolutions ♥

Say what you will about New Year’s Resolutions, I can see it from both sides, but I think they’re so much fun and it has a little planning element to it, so I love it!

1) Go outside every day!
There’s some days where I don’t leave the house at all. I work a full time job so Saturday is normally my relaxing day and I don’t leave the house but I think even going for a fifteen minute walk would benefit me. Obviously if I’m really sick or if the weather looks like it could really blow me away, I won’t be stepping outside, but I want to make more of an effort to go outside for a little while on days where I’d be in the house all day.

2) Advance further in yoga.
As you’ll see from my 2015 Reflections (which will be linked here soon!), I came on leaps and bounds in yoga. It’s almost my yoga birthday and I don’t know what I would do without it now. I want to challenge myself even further in yoga though, and I’d love to be able to get up a little earlier in the morning to do some before work. Or even skip a Saturday lie in every once in a week, and have a good long session.

3) Save more money!
I started to save for a holiday to Canada then I started to dip into the fund around September, and it’s basically back down to it’s original amount. I have a few places I want to travel to this year as well as Canada hopefully in 2017, so I need to keep saving. I just need to figure out a reasonable amount every month that won’t make me feel like I have nothing left after rent, bills and other expenses.

4) Write every day in my One Line A Day book.
I bought myself a Q&A One-A-Day book two years ago and I missed out so much of it and I’m really annoyed with myself that I can’t go back to it seeing all the blank spaces. This is why it’s extra important that I keep this up (I don’t want blank spaces in this too!). If you haven’t seen it before, here’s a photograph from my Instagram.

5) Read more books!
So this feels quite similar to a resolution I had a few years ago, I think it was for 12 books and I didn’t succeed. I was going to set myself a goal of twelve books this year but I know if I just set myself “more” rather than a number, I might not be so hard on myself. I sometimes find it hard to read (I get very sleepy very fast) but I’m going to make a conscience effort this year.

6) Knit more!
Again, this is quite similar to the books. I don’t want to set myself on a number but I knit two (almost three) things last year so I want to pass that number with flying colours this year. I also want to try and advance myself a little too, maybe try something more difficult than the knit and purl stitch.

7) Keep up with my blog!
This was my resolution last year and I failed about 90% of it. I think if I blog what I’m passionate about then I’ll keep myself interested but it got to the point where I was just posting beauty favourites and I got really bored. This year will change that, I know it.

8) Learn a new language.
I disappoint myself knowing that I studied French for five years, including two years for GCSE but if you were to ask me to speak French, I would know the very very basics. I want to expand my language culture; I also plan on going to at least one new country this year so I want to learn their language, so even if I can learn the basics and build from that, I’d love that.

9) Spend more time with my boyfriend.
Okay, the ultimate cheesy one! We haven’t been together very long but we have so much planned to do together including starting Game of Thrones together, cook new meals, visiting new places. 2016 is just going to be such an exciting year and I can’t wait to share it with someone who is so wonderful. (Want me to hand anyone the sick bucket?)

NYR: January Update.

To make sure I keep up with my New Year’s Resolutions, I thought I would do an update post at the end of every month and it’ll be nice to look back in December when I probably wouldn’t have remembered half the things I done in January.

• I signed up to a six week yoga class, I went to a taster class on 8th then started the term class on 12th January.
• I went to another Kirtan event last night (31st January) on my own this time, and it was definitely very weird going to something on my own.
• I started Amy Poehler’s Yes Please on New Year’s Day and finished it on 11th January.
• I found two new recipes over the month and I bought a nutrition/cookbook from a local nutritionist.
• As you can see, I started my WordPress blog and I’ve been keeping up to date with it.
• I done Meatless Monday for all four Mondays!
• I’ve completed one month of Jantastic!
• I went to Southampton for the first time the weekend of the 23rd, to visit some friends at Uni.
• I’ve been reading more blogs and here are some of my favourite blog posts from the month:
  (Fleur De Force) http://fleurdeforce.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/blogging-block-book-update-and-january.html
  (Hello October) http://www.hello-october.com/2015/01/the-lazy-girls-introduction-to-exercise.html
  (Essie Button) http://www.essiebutton.com/2015/01/19/love-tea-top-teas-favourite-mugs/
• I used up 22 beauty products this month; I didn’t expect to use up that much! (x)
• I hit 20,000 steps on my FitBit and got my little 20,000 steps badge.