summer

Creamy Roasted Tomato and Cheese Pasta

Food

HELLO and happy halloween ❤

*This blog post has absolutely nothing to do with Halloween (sorry!) but I’ve been meaning to post this recipe for a while and today I had some free time so thought “What the heck’!*

A few weeks ago I went around to see a friend and she cooked me the most delicious (and super easy) pasta dish that I tried to replicate when I was in Spain, recently. Her’s was a lot more photogenic looking then mine but I’m still super happy with how my attempt turned out! I made a fresh tomato and garlic and herb cream cheese pasta (baked in the oven) and, oh my, it was tasty…

(See end of blog post for ingredients)

I went to the local supermarket and purchased fresh cherry tomatoes, basil and a tub of garlic and herb cream cheese along with a bag of penne pasta. One of the things I love about Spain is that the fresh food is always SO much nicer than in the UK. So shopping there is always really fun 🙂

After collecting all the ingredients I needed, I pre-heated the oven to 200 degrees and popped my cherry tomatoes in a baking dish with the whole tub of cream cheese in the centre and drizzled the tomatoes with olive oil.

Once that had baked in the oven for around 20-25 mins, a brought the baking dish out of the oven and used a spatula (or fork) to squish down any tomatoes that had not fully popped. I then put some basil leaves on top before placing the dish back in the oven for another 10 minuets.

Once that had all finished cooking in the oven, I started to boil some pasta ready for it to be incorporated into the tomato and cheese sauce.

*Another alternative way of cooking the pasta is using a tin of chopped tomatoes instead of fresh cherry tomatoes and letting the pasta cook in the oven with the tomato juice.*

And this was the end result! I also added salt and pepper when I incorporated the pasta into the sauce to help bring out the flavour. Even my boyfriend who isn’t a massive fan of cream cheese pasta dishes really enjoyed this meal!! I ended up making wayyy too much pasta for the two of us but we still managed to finish it off 😉

It’s super simple to make, minimal effort, tastes great and it doesn’t cost a lot to buy the ingredients. I really recommend making this on a lazy weekend when you feel like a comforting meal but don’t want to spend hours in the kitchen.

~Charlotte x

INGREDIENTS

Pasta of your choice

A tub of cherry tomatoes or a tin of chopped tomatoes

Fresh basil

Salt and cracked pepper

Olive oil

A tub of garlic cream cheese

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Summer in Yellow

Outfits

Hiya everyone!

I wanted to come on here and post about this INSANELY gorgeous yellow beach set I got from NA-KD.com this summer 💛

OBSESSED – also, can we talk about how blonde my hair is here?!

I mean…come ON. SO NICE!! Yellow’s genuinely been one of my favourite colours for years but I never really wear it because I’m so pale skinned naturally, and it washes me out! This summer (with the help of some fake tan haha) I decided that I was going to dress in more brighter colours and when I saw this outfit I had to grab it.

…And I think it looks great 😉

Love the palm tree back drop ❤

The view from this balcony was also perfect for some photos and I loved the palm trees in the back ground on the golf course. I took these photo’s while in Spain a few weeks ago and the weather was perfect for laying around the pool in a beachy outfit like this.

I feel like the only thing missing from these photos is a lemonade haha 🙂

~Love Charlotte x

What I’m wearing:

Tie Detail Maxi Skirt: https://www.na-kd.com/en/products/tie-detail-maxi-skirt-yellow-1774-000011-0024

Balloon Sleeve Tie Detail Blouse: https://www.na-kd.com/en/products/balloon-sleeve-tie-detail-blouse-yellow-1774-000010-0024

Venice

Travel

Good morning everyone ~

If you’re in the UK I hope you are enjoying some cooler weather after the record breaking high temperatures last week. Not great when you don’t have air conditioning…!

On a better note, the week before last I spent 5 days in Venice with my friend Tamsin and we did so much and took a lot of photos. So, I thought I’d share some of my favourites with you here~

Enjoy x

Breakfast at Florian Cafe

On the first day we had breakfast at the worlds first known cafe – Florian Cafe. I had orange juice with a roast vegetable croissant 🥐 . They had a live classical band playing well known tunes while we ate 🙂

Dinner on the balcony

When we arrived from the airport (after a day of cancelled flights 🥲) we were too tired to eat out so made some tomato pasta with Parmesan cheese and sat on our private balcony at our apartment, with a bottle of Merlot, in the warm air (soo good).

Doge’s Palace

We explored Doge’s Palace – once the centre of Venetian power

Had to go on a gondola ride (how can you not when staying in Venice?!)

Where we were staying was very close to Venice’s central hub, St. Marks Square. The streets were jam packed with designer shops, I couldn’t believe how many there were! I’ve never been anywhere where there were so many designer stores in one place (Hermes, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Dior etc). No wonder the rich and famous come to Venice…

Sweet shop – how great do those strawberries look??
Nutella Tiramisu

This was the nicest tiramisu I’ve ever tasted <3. It was a Nutella tiramisu and I got it from the birth place of tiramisu! How cool?!

Lido Island

This was taken at the Peggy Guggenheim Exhibition. It had the biggest collection of world famous art I’d ever seen in real life – including Jackson Pollock.

Evening ❤
Pizza, Gnocchi and Wine

One night we couldn’t finish our wine at dinner so decided to take it back to our apartment…one man thought it was very funny we did this and laughed at us very loudly as we left the restaurant…haha!

I loved Venice, and can’t wait to see even more of Italy in the future. I really want to go to Lake Como, Milan and the Amalfi Coast ❤

~ Charlotte x

DALGONA COFFEE

Food

//Hello everyone ~ and Happy Midsummer if you are living in the UK!

Today is officially the first day of summer in the UK and the longest day of the year <3. The weather has been absolutely beautiful the past few weeks and I’ve spend so many of my lunch breaks and evenings sat in the garden in the sun, happy that’s it’s so warm and bright.

When the weather gets so nice, one of the things I really enjoy drinking is an iced coffee – a ‘Dolgona Coffee’ to be precise! I find them super refreshing and sweet and I think they are the perfect summer drink, so…I thought I’d share with you how I make mine! (p.s it’s insanely simple!) ~

All you need is sugar (or a sweetener alternative), milk of your choosing, coffee and a very small amount of boiling water.

In this photo I’ve used a type of sweetener as an example that you don’t necessarily need to use sugar! I’m also using soya milk but you could experiment with other milks
































Firstly, add three table spoons of instant coffee into a mixing bowl along with 2 table spoons of sugar and a small amount of hot water. Then, whisk together in a fast and continuous motion until the mixture becomes light, airy and fluffy (this can take a while if you are doing it by hand)!

One you have the desired mixture, poor cold milk into a glass with ice but make sure you leave enough room to place the coffee mixture on top. Using a tea spoon, scoop up the coffee mixture and gently place it on top of the milk and it should sit on top without sinking, like in the image below.

Stir thoroughly before drinking and enjoy!

So cuteee!

You can also have this drink hot! For a hot coffee, warm the milk and poor it into a heatproof glass ❤ following all the other steps as before.

This is a really cute and fun drink to create that really makes it feel like summer. It’s really easy to make and due to it’s sweet taste it’s likely even going to be enjoyed by non-coffee lovers! I plan to have them all summer long :)//

~Charlotte x

A week in Aberdeenshire, Scotland

Travel

Hello everyone and welcome to August! ❤

Last week I spent a week in Aberdeenshire in Eastern Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 for a little summer break as going abroad with Covid is still not a viable option right now 😦 (soon hopefully though!!) ~

I thought I’d share some of the photos I took while exploring below:

Look at the SIZE of this mushroom I found :O

We did a lot of things including some lovely woodland walks as the forests around Aberdeenshire are honestly stunning!

They are so dense and vast you could get lost in them – if you’ve ever seen the film ‘Dog Soldiers’ the woods would make you think werewolves are about to pop out and eat you haha.

Not normally something I would eat but WOW they were tasty! (Pleasantly surprised)

We also ate a lot of delicious food (maybe too many nice things…oops) such as these lovely apple danishes that me and my boyfriend ate in the car in the mountains ~

Dunnattor Castle

We also explored some old castles (it’s Scotland you have to!) such as the ruined Dunnattor Castle on the coast.

I find it really fascinating to take a little look into how people used to live and how lucky we are to live the way we do today 🙂

Looking for crabs in the rock pools below the castle ~

The view was brilliant

One of the harder walks we did was up ‘Scotly Hill’.

Very steep hill that has a tower at the top that you have to walk through forest to get to! Such a great walk with lots of wonderful scenery ❤

Sadly in Aberdeenshire there aren’t many Lochs like in the highlands but we did find this small loch that was rather pretty with a castle on it in the distance 🙂

Hope you enjoyed this little blog post ~

Much love,

~ Charlotte xox