Life: 2016 In Photos (#2)

I shared part one of my 2016 in pitcures series back in May so part two is long overdue (better late than never though, right?)

Since my last post I took my very first European city break with my boyfriend when we headed to Paris in early August. I'd never been to Paris (or France) before so I was so excited to explore - I wrote a blog post all about my trip which you can read here (if you'd like).

LUSH Halloween Haul

I'm sure that if you're into beauty then the news that the LUSH Halloween (and Christmas) products launched recently won't come as any surprise. Ever since returning from my holiday I've been itching to see the latest LUSH offerings and I finally got the chance to pop into the Meadowhall store last weekend where I picked up a few products from the Halloween range.

I managed to pick up most of the products featured on my recent LUSH wishlist post (with the exception of the Lord of Misrule Shower Cream which I will definitely try to stock up from before it disappears!) 

Natasha Paris Bakes: Bailey's Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake Recipe

Over the weekend I made a very Autumnal Baileys Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake (with a little help from my boyfriend) to enter into the latest Tesco Twitter #BakeOn competition.  Although I've never shared a recipe post on my blog before I was really pleased with how the cheesecake turned out so I thought I'd share in case anybody fancies giving it a go.

Having never made a cheesecake before I started by searching for recipes online (who knew there could be so many variations of a cheesecake?!) In the end I settled on using this recipe as a base before adding a few of my own tweaks.

The ingredients I used to make this Bailey's Pumpkin Spice Cheesecake were:

For the base:

300g (1 packet) of ginger nut biscuits  

150g unsalted butter 

For the filling:

750g of cream cheese 

300ml double cream

100g icing sugar 

150ml Bailey's Pumpkin Spiced Cream Liqueur

For decoration:

A sprinkle of cinnamon (optional)

Travel: Natasha Paris in Madeira

After a couple of days in Porto we flew to Madeira for a week,where we had opted to stay in a villa situated in Arco Da Calheta which had the most stunning views (yes I'm still completely obsessed with the view from the villa's terrace *all the heart eyed emojis*)

We decided that we'd dedicate a couple of days of our holiday to lounging around the pool and reading, I managed to read a couple of different books during our holiday, my favourite of which was Giovanna Fletcher's Always With Love. As much as I enjoyed having some time to relax and read it was also nice to head out and explore.

After spending our first full day relaxing we headed out to do the Levada Das 25 Fontes walk, I'll be honest at times I found this walk to be a struggle but I'll admit that the views were definitely worth the aching legs (and me nearly falling from a ledge...oops.)

Beauty: Lush Halloween Wishlist

It's no secret that I'm a big fan of LUSH, so the recent launch of their seasonal Halloween and (dare I say it) Christmas products got me a little bit excited. I haven't had chance to pop into store yet to have a look at the physical products but I hope to do so very soon. In the meantime I thought I'd share my LUSH Halloween wishlist.

I've seen the Autumn Leaf bath bomb appearing on Instagram quite frequently lately and I think it looks oh so pretty. After looking at the ingredients online this seems like it would have a lovely fresh scent and I can't wait to have a sniff. 

The product which really caught my eye in this years Halloween collection was the Monsters' Ball bath bomb, I think it looks kinda cute (can I say that about a bath bomb?) and I can imagine it transforms the water into a lovely pool of colour once it's popped into the bath. 

Travel: A City Break In Porto

If you follow me on Social media you might know that I recently went on holiday with my lovely boyfriend (so recently in fact that I'm writing up this post the day after I returned home - I just couldn't help myself). Given that we visited both Porto and Madeira there will be two posts about my holiday, the first stop on our trip was a couple of days in the city of Porto.

Due to a slight flight delay we arrived in Porto around midday, where we headed straight to our Air B and B apartment to set down our suitcases after being offered an early check in by our lovely host. After checking in we headed out to spend an afternoon wandering around the city.

During our afternoon wander we stumbled across this lovely little street called Rua das Flores, where we also headed back for dinner later that evening.