Seven Happy Things #4

I absolutely love writing these posts and a lot of people seem to enjoy reading them, which makes me so incredibly happy. This week I've decided to change the format slightly though, I don't know if it will be a permanent thing or not, we shall see. Instead of writing one thing or moment from each day that had me made me happy, I am going to write seven things that I have been grateful for this week. In all honesty, sometimes it's quite difficult to find things in a day that are exciting or interesting, some days are just really boring and mundane. However, I know that there are plenty of things that I have to be grateful for each week, so I am going to give this a go!

1. McBusted - As I mentioned it last week's Sunday post, I went to see McBusted on Monday in Dublin and it was so wonderful I can't even explain. I've always loved Busted, I think they're great, to this day. I remember the moment I first heard McFly, I was standing in front of the TV in my old house in England when the music video for "Five Colours In Her Hair" came on and I went crazy. They are my all time favourite band. This afternoon I also put the Busted album " A Present For Everyone" in the boy's car and we listened to it the whole way through.
   
   
2. The Danny Duncan Show - This is a a podcast by Danny Duncan, the drummer for the We The Kings, who also now does daily vlogs with his girlfriend, Lindsey and their pup, Mr. King. I started listening to it this week and it cheers me up so much. He's always accompanied by long time friends and/or band members. My favourite podcasts have been the ones with Lindsey though, they seem like two of the most genuine people out there.
   
   
3. Good Internet - We have amazingly fast internet in my house, which makes blogging a lot easier in terms of uploading large pictures and generally just getting things done faster. It was cut off for two days this week though, which meant no blogging or youtube videos or twitter blogger chats. So yes, this week I am even more grateful for the internet, and the fact that it is back in my house again.
   
   
4. Ice Cream - 99 cones with a flake, to be exact. Probably a weird thing to be grateful for, grateful probably isn't even the word. I am more grateful that the weather in Ireland has been nice enough to stop for an ice cream on the way home multiple times this month.
   
   
5. My Dogs - I have two dogs, Ollie and Max. Max is a Jack Russell and Ollie is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Max is mine and Ollie is the family dog. I have so much love for these two. I would have probably gone insane a long time ago if it weren't for them. Ollie is the sweetest pup in the world, I've had really bad days when I've just cried and Ollie has sat with me, pawing at me and falling asleep next to me. I will be forever grateful for him.
   
   
6. The Boy - He reads these so I'm not going to go on for too long and inflate his ego. In short, he is the most wonderful person in the world. I'm grateful to have him in my life every day but this week marks the fourth year of him being around. He has been extremely good to me in the past four years and I am super excited for all the years to come. I am also very glad that he now loves Max as much as I do.
   
   
7. Books - I don't read as much as I would like to, or as much as I should but this week I gave the boy "The Fault In Our Stars" to read and he's really enjoying it. There's nothing better than giving someone a book and seeing them love it as much as you did. Earlier, I purchased Giovanna Fletcher's new book "You're The One That I Want", so I am now even more excited to be heading off to Paris next week so I can read it. I read her first book "Billy And Me" last summer, it's a fantastic, I would highly recommend reading it if you haven't already.
   
   
   
   So there you go, seven things I have been grateful for this week! Leave me a comment down below letting me know what you have been grateful for this week. Also, if you're feeling kind, I'm looking for guest bloggers for the middle of June, I have a post about it here, I would really appreciate it if you had a read and maybe got in contact if you'd like to get involved! 

Guest Bloggers Wanted

As you've probably heard (because I tweet about it non stop and mention it in nearly every post), I'm going to Paris next week, not for long but the week before and after are going to be pretty hectic too. I do have some pre written posts and I am going to schedule them to go up while I'm in Paris. However, I would love to have some posts from a few other people too. I love the idea of guest posts, I've done a guest post on one blog before and I really enjoyed doing it. I also think it would just be fun to do something different, keep things interesting! So here are all the details, I'll also let you know how you can contact me at the end of this post!

• I will be posting them between Monday the 9th of June and Friday the 20th. You can choose whatever day you like and I can work my posts around it.
  
• I'll leave it up to you as to what you would like to make a post on. Something that reflects your blog maybe, to give readers an idea of what to expect from you. If you're a regular reader of In Katie's Corner, you'll know that I post about pretty much everything.
  
• Please don't be afraid to get in contact. I am terrified of no one actually wanting to participate. I was super nervous about my first guest blog post, I was nervous about even emailing to enquire about doing it. It turned out great though.
  

If you would like to help me out on this one, you can email me at katierose.bacon@gmail.com or send me a direct message/tweet me @inkatiescorner. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you and I promise I don't bite!

"Would You Rather" Beauty Edition // Tag

Last week, I was tagged by the lovely Lauren to do this tag so a big thank you to her. I will leave the links of the people I tag to do this below but feel free to join in anyway! 

Would you rather lose all of your mascaras, eyeliners, lipsticks, and lip glosses or lose all of your palettes and eye shadows?

I would much rather lose all of my palettes and eye shadows. I don't use them on a daily basis anyway but mascara is a must for me. 

Would you rather chop all of your hair off or never be able to cut it again?

To be honest, I'd probably prefer to chop it all off. I've toyed with this idea for a few years anyway because I really want my natural hair colour back as I've ruined it with dye. I also feel like if I was to never cut it again the ends would be awful.

Would you rather have coral cheek or pink cheek? 

Pink cheek for me. My cheeks are naturally rosy majority of the time anyway so I never over do it with blush.

If you had $1000 to spend, would you rather buy clothes or make up? 

This is a difficult one, I think it would be clothes though. I feel for me there is such a thing as having too much make up. I know that I wouldn't use half it, I'd find the bits I really like and then put the rest in a box never to be seen or heard of again. Where as I get a lot of mileage out of all of my clothes.

Would you rather apply lipstick as eyeliner, or eyeliner as lipstick?

Hmm, after careful consideration, I think eyeliner as lipstick. A purple eyeliner if I had to choose, maybe I could pull it off....probably not.

Would you rather only shop at MAC or Sephora?

I've never shopped at either (shock horror) but I would have to say the same as Lauren for this one, Sephora. As she said, Sephora has lots of brands to choose from but if you choose MAC, you would be restricted to one.

Would you rather only use one eye-shadow colour or one lip colour for the rest of your life? 

Eye shadow colour, definitely. As I said above, I don't wear eye shadow all that often and when I do it's generally the same ones. I absolutely love trying out different lip products though.

Would you rather wear winter clothes in summer or summer clothes in winter?

Winter clothes in summer. I would rather be too hot than too cold!

Would you rather have dark nails or bright nails all year round?

I wear bright nails majority of the year anyway, they make me happy. So I would have to say, bright nails! 

Would you rather give up your favourite lip colour or favourite eye product?

I would rather give up my favourite lip colour. I cannot wear make up without wearing mascara. I look terrifying.

Would you rather only be able to wear your hair in a ponytail or a messy bun?
With my hair the way it is at the moment, a messy bun. I love ponytails but when I wear my hair in one the boy says it looks like a fox's tail. He's charming, I know.

Would you rather never be able to paint your nails again or never use lip gloss?

I never use lip gloss anyway. I think I own one lip gloss. I do however, always have my nails painted. I had a bad experience with acrylic nails a couple of years ago and my nails haven't been the same since so I always keep them painted.

Would you rather shave your eyebrows and have none at all or sharpie them in everyday?

After seeing all the pictures of celebrities without eyebrows, I'm going to say I would rather sharpie them in everyday. I'm not particularly fond of the thought of either though, if I'm being honest. 

Would you rather live without make up or nail polish?

Even though I previously said that I always need to have my nails painted, I think I could hide the disaster that is my nails. I really enjoy trying out new make up though, and I enjoy applying it. Also, there are some days when I need make up to make myself feel a bit better. So I would much prefer to live without nail polish.

Phew, that seemed like a lot of questions. I had lots of fun answering them though, so thank you again to Lauren for tagging me and I am going to go ahead and tag Kirsty, Cait and Jemma! 

Doggie Day Out #2

I have made one of these "Doggie Day Out" posts before, which you can find here. I was hoping to have made more of these by now but alas, that did not happen. I'm sure we'll be taking the pup lots of fun places of the summer so I should able to share those trips with you. Last week we took Max to The Gearagh, which is about 40 minutes outside Cork City Centre. We gave him a travel sickness tablet again three hours before we left and he was perfectly fine, maybe you guys don't care about this but you know, just in case any of your dogs aren't too good with travelling, this might help someone! It was a really warm day and for some reason I decided to wear a jumper, I do not know what possessed me to do that, or the thought process behind it. I let Max off of his lead, he walked beside or in front of us, the whole walk. There weren't any other people or dogs around, if there were I would have put him back on his lead while the came by. Not because he's vicious or anything like that, he just likes to go up and sniff everyone, say hello but you don't know how people feel about dogs and I don't want to make anyone nervous. This is a very picture heavy post so I hope you guys enjoy looking through pictures of our day! 

I love this picture, I wish he wasn't kind of blurry but he was running towards me.

Excuse his puppy butt, his tail was cut off when he was a young. :(

We found that he liked to walk on the path and not on the grass.

Still following the path..

So that was our day. On the way home we brought Max to Brian's house for the first time. I was very proud of him for being so good off the lead and really good in a new house. I probably sound crazy but he's my pup. As I'm writing this it is currently pouring down with rain, which is meant to continue into the weekend so our plans of going somewhere this weekend have been put on hold until we get back from Paris. I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend though, whatever you're doing!

Strawberry Blondies

It's that time of the week again, that time where I share my favourite recipes with you guys. It's my favourite time of the week and these are definitely my favourite posts to make. So I hope you all enjoy reading them, and hopefully give them a go! I'm always looking for new recipes to try so if you ever have any requests feel free to tweet me or leave a comment and I shall spend my time perfecting and tweaking recipes to make the best one. This week I bring you, the Strawberry Blondie. Now, the name is debatable, I could call them "White Chocolate & Strawberry Brownies" because Blondies aren't always made with white chocolate and generally use brown sugar but when I think of a Brownie I think of rich, dark chocolate so I feel that calling these Blondies is a bit less misleading. Also, you can barely taste the white chocolate, so if you're not a lover of white chocolate, do not worry, you can still try these! 

You can change the recipe to include all different types of berries. If you would like, you could also add some chopped pieces of white chocolate. Feel free to use brown sugar instead of white if you prefer a more "authentic" Blondie taste. These were also super easy to cut which I was really surprised by, I cut mine into 12 bite-size pieces (they may be slightly bigger than bite-size, I'm just greedy/I have a big mouth) and they tasted fantastic, if I may say so myself.  

Ingredients:

120g butter
100g caster sugar
2 eggs 

120g plain flour
200g white chocolate
100g strawberries 

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4 and line a square baking tin with baking parchment. 

2. Melt the butter and white chocolate together. (You can do this in a microwave just make sure to keep an eye on it as you go.)

3. In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and sugar. Then add the butter and chocolate mixture.

4. Slowly sieve the flour into the bowl, folding it gently into the mix.

5. At this point, add in the strawberries and any other things you would like.

6. Pour into the tin and bake for 30-40 minutes, or until golden brown. (Mine are slightly too brown on some parts as you can see, oops.)

7. Wait until completely cooled to cut into pieces and then all that's left to do is eat them! 

** When I make brownies/blondies, I line the tin so that there are two baking parchment flaps over two sides of the tin, so that when I remove from the oven I can pick it up using them, straight from the tin and transfer onto a wire rack. I hope this made sense, I'll be sure to take a picture next time!