Saturday 29 November 2014

My Christmas Tree

I don't know about anyone else but I'm feeling very festive already this year! I'm eating Christmas Tree shaped crumpets and Stollen bites with my Christmas Spice candle lit. I couldn't resist getting myself a Christmas tree and putting it up. It's actually pretty exciting because It's my first proper Christmas tree in my own flat. I thought I'd share with you some of my favourite finds.



I got the tree and lights from B&Q after much deliberation,



I also got these two 'origami' decorations which I thought were a little bit different. This little santa and snowman are from B&Q too.



Another two of my favourites are these two from Sainsbury's.




Finally, these three are from the range. I like the matte white ceramic of the tree and the snowflake and just thought the heart was adorable.

As you can see I went with a white theme, it wasn't intended but it just happened to be that all the decorations that stood out to me that were a little bit different happened to be white. I'm really pleased with how it turned out and I will of course add to it over the next few years.




Saturday 1 November 2014

Alton Towers Scarefest

 
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Me and 3 friends went to Alton Towers on Thursday and stayed in the Splash Landings Hotel for the night meaning that we had two full days in the park.

On Thursday we arrived and after a delay getting into the car park we got on the monorail and took a relaxed attitude, we had a look around at the Halloween pictures and did some picture posing and grabbed some food.



This relaxed start didn't pay off too well on a busy day in half term and we only made it on about 4 rides. We then went to check into the hotel which had a lovely pumpkin display at the entrance. The theme of the hotel and the room was water and the beach, Our room had a beach carpet with sand and sea and my favourite touches were the pineapple lamp and the shaped shower gels. We had a room for four which contained a double bed and then bunk beds which I had kids activity packs on (none of us are children but it was a nice touch).


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After freshening up we headed back into the pack for our pre-booked slot in the Scarefest mazes at 7.45. Unfortunately, the time slot didn't seem to make a difference as we were waiting to get into the first maze 'The Sanctuary' until about half 8. However, Once we were in there it was a scary experience! The theme of the maze was based on the ride 'The Smiler', an institute to correct you and make you permanently happy, it seemed the procedure had its side effects as when we were walking around (with our hands on the shoulders of the person in front of us), we were jumped out at by demented patients who liked to chase us, breathe on us and generally terrify us all. We then moved to the next maze 'Terror of the Towers' but unfortunately were asked to leave a couple of minutes in due to technical difficulties. There didn't seem to be as many actors in this one and we were asked to leave again before the end. We had hoped to get on a ride in the dark before the park closed at 9 but due to delays that wasn't possible and we headed back to the hotel.
The hotel had entertainment available but we chose to retrat to the room and we enjoyed playing with the smart TV.

Friday was an overall much more successful day, we started with the hotel breakfast which had lots of choice and was good. We then checked out and upgraded our park tickets from the previous day for only £6 each, we also recieved a hotel fasttrack ticket for all the popular rides (except smiler).
Keen and earlier than the previous day we got started with our fasttrack which worked out brilliantly, we got on 10 rides before even stopping for lunch. We chose then to queue the 2 hours for the newest and most anticipated 'The Smiler'. I'm so glad to say that I've ridden it as well as all the other big rides but it was so terrifying with it's 14 loops and the two unbelievably high elevations that I have to say I didn't enjoy it as I was just too scared. When it was dark we went on a few more rides and our final and 13th ride was Oblivion in the dark which was much scarier than in daylight, it was nice to see a proposal at the top too!

The Smiler Featured
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Of all the rides I think my favourite was Thirteen which we went on twice, I had also not been on Nemesis- Sub Terra which was very surprising and I got suitably scared at the end when someone jumped out at me. The fasttrack and the success of the friday along with a pleasant night in the hotel made it all a very good experience.